Dead Rebel Of The Week
~ Jack London ~
Most Americans only know the crap of his that we had to read in school... To build a fire, Call of the Wild, and White Fang. And that is about it. Well, I am going to tell you about him, and hopefully change your view on him in the process.
He was born John Griffith Chaney, on January 12, 1876, to Flora Wellman and William Chaney. At a very young age, his dad deserted his family so his mother took up with a Mr. John London. This was during the industrial revolution. You may think that there was work abound in times like those, and there was… if you were willing to work 10-19 hour shifts for 30 days, and get 1 dollar for it. So John was the type to always pack up ship and move around to where decent work could be found. Needless to say, young Jack had very few friends because of this.
What most people forget about - or just don’t learn in school, is that this is the era of strike breaking, killing strikers, child labor, imperialism, and romanticism of the upper echelons. This was the very world Jack was born into. This shaped him.
He went to work at the age of 10 as a newsboy. He would wake up about 3am, deliver the news papers and then go to school. After school he would deliver the evening edition, then turn all his money over to the family. He did this until the Londons moseyed back to Oakland, Ca. Here Jack took odd jobs on the docks, and also discovered the world of books.
When he finally graduated Grade school, he set out to work full time at a cannery to support the family, 20 hours a day... Fatigue finally caught up with him, and he crashed. Having a basic knowledge of boats and fishing by working on the docks, at age 15, Jack borrowed money from a wet nurse and bought a boat of his own. It is here that he, with a few friends he had met in the saloons, began pirating oysters from professional oyster fishermen, and selling them on the market at slightly lower prices.
They were making a killing, and London was dubbed "Prince of the oyster pirates". But soon Jack’s own boat was robbed, so he said “fuck it” and went back to work like everyone else. He met a man that was willing to make him an electrician, and Jack eagerly accepted. He was working long hours for $30/week, until he found out that his boss had fired two other employees who were working for $40 a week, and hired on Jack to work those two shifts by himself for the $30!!! In a move that I would copy almost 100 years later, Jack swore off physical labor that made money for others, and set out to become what he called "a brain merchant".
He made his way to the library and read everything he could get his hands on. It is at this time he read The Communist Manifesto, and found thoughts and feelings he had always had, but could not put into word himself. All written years before he was even born. Thus he became a socialist. He joined the Party and also went back to high school to complete his education. But the institutions of learning as he saw them, was passionless. He soon dropped out and dedicated his work full time to the Socialist movement and to try his hand at writing.
Then gold was discovered in Alaska, and the rush was on. He shortly thereafter set off to make his fortune.
In the Klondike London got a dose of what he called reality.
He was a shitty gold miner, not a good musher. Big for his age (all accounts say that he was handsome and in great physical shape), he packed loads for the sleighs, outpacking many of the veterans - but struck no gold.
What he did observe in the camps of Alaska were communities with no real upper class. All were workers, most looked out for one another, and no one was going hungry. A far cry from his roots in the slums of Oakland where there had been that distinct line between the classes, and no one cared about anybody else. This experience made a lasting impression on him that he would later carry over into his writing.
Returning from Alaska he landed a job as a mail man for $60 a month, but before he could accept, his first story was published for $30. He told the mail carriers to fuck off and decided that writing was how he would make his money from then on.
Hardly an overnight success, he found himself a starving artist in the classical sense. Even so, his short stories on the Klondike, fused with a realism that had rarely been seen prior to this, were slowly becoming very popular.
Say what you will about Jack London’s writing style, the characters are always easily related to the reader, because they are working stiffs, LIKE the reader. He even said "I would rather see my work bootlegged and put in pamphlet and have a wider audience, than have it published and read by a few". But this would come later. By 1899, at the age of 23, he was making enough money from his writing that he wasn’t starving anymore.
With everything London was sending to magazines and publishers, he was also writing for Socialist newspapers for free. He was one of the more militant advocates, calling for a peaceful transition from one system to the other, and if that did not work; Revolution. At 25, the Socialist party had him run for Mayor of Oakland, but he lost by a landslide. It is around this same time that The Minions of Midas was published, giving us great classic terms like "wage slave".
1905 and onward would prove to display his most influential work in the socialist movement.
While at a college literature speaking engagement, London gave a speech about socialism, claiming to have lost the original speech intended for this audience. He chastised the audience for being blind, and gave examples of a coming revolution. He stated that in St Petersburg, Russia, the universities were teaming with revolution, but the capitalists were choosing to ignore it. As if on cue, the 1905 Russian Revolution took place. For those of you lame on history, that revolution was a precursor to the Big One in 1917.
Also in 1905, London, together with Upton Sinclair and Clarence Darrow, formed the ISS, or the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. In November of 1905, London set out on a nationwide speaking engagement, touring high and low. As other socialist didn’t want to be rude, London called for armed revolution, violence, bloodshed and, to quote him, "TO HELL WITH THE CONSTITUTION". Because of his outspokenness, his popularity grew with the working class, but the newspapers and critics were loath to give him any credit whatsoever.
In 1906, he gave a legendary speech in New Haven. There was a portrait of London wearing a blood red turtleneck with flames in the background, and one word was on that poster: REVOLUTION. People from all over the region showed up to hear him speak, and speak he did. Again he chastised the students and professors for not having a passion for knowledge, he called upon the capitalists to quell the socialist movement, he pointed out all the flaws in the American system, and he once again proclaimed "To hell with the constitution". At the end of the monologue, the crowd was in so much of a furor, that they carried London on their shoulders out of the auditorium.
The aftermath can be taken in stride; newspapers were calling for a boycott of everything Jack London, Teddy Roosevelt called him “undesirable”, and Jack never felt better. He said in a letter that if he could, he would devote all his time to the socialist movement.
Shortly thereafter London fell ill, and the rest of the tour was cancelled. But his work was not done, he still wrote for the socialist newspapers and also to the general media about the working conditions in the factories and the horrors of child labor. In fact, because of an editorial Jack wrote, Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle.
He also found more time to make bread for his family with White Fang and Before Adam, but his grand opus would be published in 1908, called The Iron Heel.
Based heavily on past experiences and newspaper clippings, The Iron Heel is about a crushed socialist revolution in Chicago. Heavily prophetic, it shows the rise of fascism at the expense of the common folk. This book would be his legacy in socialist circles for years to come.
It is also during this time that London set sail on his boat. It was to be a voyage around the world, but an ill fated one. His family and friends squandered his money while he was gone, and he fell deathly ill in the South Orient. He was forced to come back and try to fix the debts incurred and to recover from his mystery illness. He would spend the rest of his life doing so.
By 1910, London was disenfranchised by The Movement, and trying to make money, he was churning any crap he could think of. In an interview, he stated "If it is good, I send it to the publisher. If it is garbage, I send it to the publisher". By this time, all he was concerned about was finishing his ranch, called Valley of the Moon. He was hiring anyone that wanted work, regardless of skill. London felt it was wrong to deny anyone work. He gave them free board, food, and money. The socialists chastised him, saying "a socialist should not live in a castle", to which London replied "I built this castle through MY OWN LABOR, no one else’s".
By 1910 London was buying plots and story-lines from Sinclair Lewis. He wrote to Upton Sinclair that he hated writing, and if he could, he would just write socialist essays and tell the bourgeois how much he despised it.
In 1913, the day his house was finally finished, it burned to the ground... The product of his work and life was destroyed. He felt that everything he had worked towards had been destroyed. From this he never recovered.
In 1914, London was asked to cover the Mexican revolution for $1100 a week. He felt that the Americans should invade Mexico, and he expressed his hatred for Mexicans, while praising the USA when the country set sail. The Socialists rubbed a quote from his younger days in his face:
"No man can fall lower than a solider. It is a depth beneath which he cannot go. Keep boys out of the army. It is hell. Down with the Army and the Navy.
We do not need killing institutions, we need Life giving institutions."
He returned from Mexico mentally broken and physically worse off than before. He set sail for Hawaii with his wife, hoping that the sun and weather would help. It was here that he and his wife resigned from the socialist party, and soon after, The Movement went in the very direction he had worked his whole life to steer it away from. The Socialist Party became a peaceful organization, voting to elect figureheads, politicians, and peacefully use the voting right to change the system. Feeling that this is counter productive and jaded, he wrote to Upton Sinclair that soon, The Movement would forget he even existed.
Indeed he was correct.
Jack London’s socialist contributions are usually considered nothing but a mere footnote in any encyclopedia. But if you like not having your children work at laundry houses, coal mines, sweat shops, canneries at the age of seven... If you like your union, good pay and benefits at your job... you can thank Jack London and has contributions to those achievements with works like The Apostate and Something rotten in Idaho.
His death was tragic but not unexpected. Crippled emotionally, and weak physically, Jack London killed himself in November 1916 with a morphine overdose. His ashes are under a lava rock on top of a mountain on his ranch in northern California.
As a self educated writer with hardly any formal schooling, he became a giant to those around him. The school system don’t even mention his "other" more controversial works, and instead names the books he wrote only to make ends meet and to put food on the table. His controversial works were in my opinion, as in Jack London’s own, his primary works. It’s sad that history books have glossed over his passion and conviction.
A true Rebel, Jack London went against the grain of everything society as a whole held dear. His story is one of the American dream. Born a pauper, he shows that anything is possible. Never losing focus of his roots, Jack London championed the causes of the down trodden and broken. Always outspoken, always rough, always saying it like it is, he was a leader by example.
Jack London deserves more respect than what he is given.
By
Carman
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