University of California Berkeley
3ack
Condon
at
Vale
JACK LONDON AND STATE SECRETARY IRVINE
Jack London at Yale
Edited by the State Secretary
of the
Socialist Party of Connecticut
Published by the Connecticut State Committee
& Printed at the Ariel Press, Westwood, Mass.
Extract from tfte Chronicle of an Ancient
monastery
Tf N the year of our Lord 1432 there arose a griev-
I ous quarrel among the brethren over the number of
[^ teeth in the mouth of a horse. For thirteen days the
disputation raged without ceasing. All the ancient
books and chronicles were fetched out, and wonderful ;and
ponderous erudition, such as was never before heard of
in this region, was made manifest. At the beginning of
the fourteenth day a youthful friar of goodly bearing asked
his learned superiors for permission to add a word, and
straightway, to the wonderment of the disputants whose
deep wisdom he sore vexed, he beseeched them to unbend
in a manner coarse and unheard-of, and to look into the
open mouth of a horse to find answer to their question-
ings. At this, their dignity being grievously hurt, they
waxed exceedingly wroth; and, joining in a mighty uproar,
they flew upon him and smote him hip and thigh, and
cast him out forthwith. For, said they, surely Satan hath
tempted this bold neophyte to declare unholy and unheard-
of ways of finding truth contrary to all the teachings of
the fathers. After many days more of grievous strife
the dove of peace sat on the assembly, and they spake
as one man, declaring the problem to be an ever -lasting
mystery because of a grievous dearth of historical and
theological evidence thereof, and so ordered the same
writ down."
lack Condon at Vale
HE spectacle of an avowed Socialist,
one of the most conspicuous in the
country, standing upon the platform
of Woolsey Hall and boldly advocating
his doctrines of revolution was a sight
for gods and men." This is how the
Register begins its editorial. We could
not do better. It was just that but it
was more than that it was a sign of
the times. People are still asking, "How did he
get in?"
It is the purpose of this sketch to tell.
Representing the state committee and the New
Haven local, I invited Comrade London to come
to New Haven. His calendar was full. His time
was limited there was a great demand for him.
Nevertheless, he cut out several smaller engage-
ments both of a public and personal nature and
gave to Connecticut January 26th.
All New Haven theatres and halls were en-
gaged for that night. We tried them all and
failed. A small one-horse thing of a dance nature
3acR Condon at Vale [ 4 ] flow it
was going on in Warner Hall. They refused to
give it up. We approached the Y. M. C. A.
They had a hundred thousand dollars to raise
and "therefore 1 ' could not rent their hall for
the purpose. The Christian organizations, be-
ing wholly dependent upon the gains of the
capitalists, cannot afford to even appear to sanc-
tion a lecture on Socialism. If it were Christ-
ian Science or Buddhism or a negro minstrel
show, or anything of that sort, it would pass
muster. In desperation I called upon a Yale
student who had been canvassing the subject on
his own account.
We outlined a plan. London was a literary
man. Yale probably had heard of him. My
friend talked the matter over with an officer of the
Yale Union a debating society. The seed fell on
good soil.
I was called into conference for final arrange-
ments. The conference took place in Vanderbilt
Hall the proper place for such things.
The officer of the Yale Union was a youth of
exceeding great callowness.
"They say he's socialistically inclined, Doctor,"
he said.
"Rather," I replied.
"Well," he said, "I suppose we'll have to take
our chances."
3acR Condon at Vale [ 5 ] BOW Tt
So we did but they looked small just then.
They looked larger later.
There was no money in the Yale Union treas-
ury and the hall would cost fifty dollars.
I guaranteed the hall rent, advertising, etc.,
provided we might charge an admission fee of
ten cents.
He agreed.
In case of a frost or a failure I promised to
make good the deficiency. I also meekly sug-
gested that as compensation for "risk involved "
I would take the surplus, if there was any.
He nodded assent.
He was apprehensive over the attitude of Pres-
ident Hadley.
"Of course if he says nothing about Socialism
it'll be all right."
"Of course," I echoed faintly.
"Will you introduce him?" I was asked.
"Certainly."
I had heard the address three times and I knew
it almost by beart. I could smooth the way.
"Do you know his topic, Doctor?"
"Yes, I do."
"What is it?"
"He calls it The Coming Crisis. 1 "
"Social I suppose, eh?"
.lack Condon at Vale [ 6 ] Ifow it Bappencd
"Yes, it is a suggested remedy for a lot of our
troubles."
44 Ah well, er has he really a socialistic ten-
dency?"
How funny all this was. I remembered the
savagery of satire on things as they are, of the
arraignment of capitalism before the bar of reason.
I saw in vision the sons of the rich listening to
the thunderbolts of this prophet of the new order.
I saw them quiver and shake and squirm I saw
some of them convulsed with silent profanity
so as I sat there playing with words I yearned
for an opportunity to laugh to laugh loudly.
"A tendency did you say? Well, brother, if
when you hear this speech you call it a 'ten-
dency,' I would like to know what the genuine
article is!"
The Socialist student had a few rounds with Lee
McClung next morning. "Me" is the Yale treas-
urer. He didn't know Irvine from a gate post.
London was also an unknown quantity but "Me"
took Prof. W. L. Phelps' word for it that London
was a literary man and he let it go at that.
"Yale is a university," said the brilliant Phelps,
"and not a monastery. Besides, Jack London is
one of the most distinguished men in the world."
A few hours after it was decided that we could
have Woolsey Hall the advertising began. The
Jack Condon at Vale [ 7 ] Ijow it
factories and shops were bombarded with dodgers.
Every tree on the campus bore the mysterious
inscription: "Jack London at Woolsey Hall."
Comrade Dellfant painted a poster which gripped
men by the eyes. In it Comrade London appears
in a red sweater and in the background the lurid
glare of a great conflagration. In a few hours we
had informed New Haven and Yale of the com-
ing event. The information was in red letters.
On the morning of the 26th Yale official and un-
officialawoke as if she had been dreaming. She
rubbed her eyes and again scanned the trees and
the billboards. Then the officers of the Yale
Union were run down. They had previously run
each other down. Explanations were in order all
around. Several of the Yale Union boys in
pugilistic parlance lost their little goats. They
were scared good and stiff.
Several Yale Dons got exceedingly chesty over
the affair. But the New Yale took a hand and
Prof. C. F. Kent and Prof. W. L. Phelps coun-
selled a square deal and fair play.
The Yale Union had a stormy meeting a small
cyclone struck it and never in all its history had
things looked as important as they did now. A
real sensation was at hand and every man in it
was determined to cover himself with glory. It
was indignantly moved and carried that the pres-
Jack Condon at Vale [ 8 ] BOW ft happened
ident of the Union introduce the speaker. Irvine
was a Socialist and everything with a socialistic
tendency was to be cut out. They considered
asking London about his address and offering
some suggestions thereon, but that was abandoned.
A student in sympathy with us wrote me as
follows :
"Yale Union and many of the faculty are
sweating under the collar for fear London might
say something socialistic. The Union realizes
that it would be absolutely useless to ask him
to smooth over his lecture and cut out any-
thing which sounds radical. Also they have de-
cided that it would be a shock to the University
and the public to have you appear'upon the plat-
form in any way shape or manner. They are
going to ask you to cancel your agreement to in-
troduce London. In this I think they are unwise,
but as they are determined it must be so. I
advise you to agree to whatever arrangement they
may suggest. This done, they will "take the
chances" that London will express socialistic
ideas.
Now I fear there will be the devil to pay for
the lecture the University is going to be sur-
prised ; the faculty shocked beyond measure, and
the Yale Union severely criticised !"
The following on the same date is from a mem-
ber of the executive committee of the Yale Union:
Jack Condon at Vale [ 9 ] BOW it Bappcitcd
"At a meeting of the executive committee of the
Yale Union it was voted that the president of the
Union introduce the speaker of the evening as it
would tend to identify the Union more conspic-
uously and also to give it prominence before the
student body. For this reason, wholly beyond my
power and opposed to my opinion, I shall be
forced to forego our little plan which I thought
by far the best. I regret if my suggestion has
caused you any inconvenience in the way of un-
necessary labor. I have written this note in an-
ticipation that is, in case I could not see you at
my room personally when you called. I shall
expect you at my room at the time you proposed
which will leave you and your distinguished guest
ample leisure.
Cordially and most respectfully,"
It had been definitely settled that the lecture
could not be called off and the only thing left
was to make the best of a bad job. When we
arrived on the scene the boys still believed that
any reference to Socialism would be merely in-
cidental.
Woolsey Hall was crowded. The crowd gave
the boys another idea. This time it was a finan-
cial idea. A crowded hall at ten cents per capita
with a large reserve section at twenty-five cents
was responsible for the thought. We gave the
Jack Condon at Vale [10] fiow it fiappened
Yale Union full swing in every particular save
one. We, too, got an idea into our dull heads
and strangely enough this was also related to
finance. Socialists are not familiar enough with
the game to play it successfully, but in this par-
ticular instance we played according to the rules
we furnished the goods, took all risks and bagged
the pot! We gave nine points out of ten. The
tenth was a financial one.
The crowd represented every phase and form
of our city. A hundred professors and ten times
as many students; many hundreds of working-
men ; many hundreds of citizens. A great crowd
assembled in a great hall for a great occasion.
Hundreds of Socialists members of the party
were there, but so overwhelmed were they by
the Bourgeois atmosphere that there was not the
slightest attempt to applaud during the entire
length of the lecture.
If the students had attempted to play horse
with the lecturer there would have been some
exceedingly interesting developments. Working-
men were prepared for such an exigency, but
for over two hours the audience gave the lecturer
a respectful hearing. A woman a lady went
out swearing. A few students tried hard to sneer,
but succeeded rather indifferently. Jack London
gripped them by the intellect and held them to
jack Condon at Vale [n] Bow Tt
the close. There was some applause at the be-
ginning and some at the close, but at neither end
was it intense or prolonged.
At the close of the lecture Comrade London
was invited to a student's room one of the
largest and there he answered questions until
midnight. As the clock struck twelve a member
of the Yale Union came to me and asked me
seriously if I thought there was any hope of
keeping London for a week. "We can fit him
up here," he said," "in fine shape!"
There was a second conference at Mory's and
some tired intellects were handled rather roughly
by the guest of the evening but the students
clung to him and escorted him in the wee sma'
hours up Chapel street toward the Socialist par-
sonage where another reception was awaiting him.
A professor of Yale told me a few days after
the lecture that it was the greatest intellectual
stimulus Yale had had in many years and he
sincerely hoped that London would return and
expound the Socialist program in the same hall.
Press Comments and Remarks
3acR Condon to Vale men
Lecture on Socialism in lUooisey Ran. University Ideals
giean ana nobie but not flifte. Indictment
Against the Capitalist
From YALE ALUMNI WEEKLY, Jan. 31, 1906
M"^R. Jack London, author and Socialist,
I gave a lecture at Woolsey Hall, Friday
evening, January 26, on 'The Coming
Crisis." The lecture, which was under
the auspices of the Yale Debating Association,
drew a very large audience of cosmopolitan char-
acter. Several hundred men from the University
were present, but the majority of those in the
hall were from the city, and included many Ger-
mans, Russians, Italians and Jews, evidently warm
sympathizers with the cause of Socialism.
Mr. London appeared upon the platform in un-
conventional dress a black cheviot suit, with a
white flannel shirt, rolling flannel collar, a white
silk tie and well-worn patent leather pumps. His
hair was combed low over one side of his fore-
head. He looked the man to whom conventional
things didn't mean much. When he was intro-
duced he walked to the edge of the stage and
began to speak in a clear voice, which reached
JacR Eonaon at Vaic (13) Press gommcnts, tc.
easily to the furthest corner of the hall. He used
scarcely any gestures, and rarely raised his voice
even to emphasize a point. His emphasis he got
by reiteration. Mr. London, after his preliminary
remarks to the University men, which are given
below, read the rest of his speech, which was the
same as the one he has delivered in his present
lecture tour, and from which quotations have oc-
casionally appeared in the daily press. From the
expressions heard after the lecture it was a dis-
appointment to most of the audience. He told of
the growth of Socialism fr om its inception to
the present time, and pointed at a crisis not far
off, but gave no remedy, or suggested no way by
which it might be averted. Speaking of the mag-
nitude of the movement he said: "In the United
States there are one million men who begin their
letters, 'Dear Comrade' and sign them 4 Yours for
the Revolution.' In all countries the Comrades' are
gathering now seven millions strong who will
fight with all their might for the conquest of the
world and the complete overthrow of existing soci-
ety. There has never been anything like this revo-
lution in the history of the world. It has nothing
analogous to the French or American revolutions.
It is the first organized movement to become a
world movement, with a history, traditions and a
martyr roll only less extensive, possibly, than
the martyr roll of Christianity. It is an army
that loves peace, but is not afraid of war."
Condon at Vaie [14] Press Comments, etc,
The Socialist indictment against the capitalist
class, Mr. London said, was that it had its op-
portunity and failed. Now the working class
would take a hand and demand its chance. "In
spite of the fact that middle class men are inter-
ested in the movement," he continued, "it is
nevertheless a distinctive working class revolt the
world over. The workmen of the world, as a
class, are fighting the capitalists as a class. So-
cialism's count against the capitalist has never
been answered by that class. The capitalist class
has managed society, and its management has
failed ignobly, deplorably, horribly. The capital-
ist class had an opportunity which was vouchsafed
no other class in the world. It mastered matter,
organized the machinery of life and might have
made possible a wonderful era for mankind in
which no creature could cry aloud because it had
not enough to eat and wherein there would have
been every opportunity for spirit uplifting. Here
was the God-given chance, and the capitalist failed.
There are 10,000,000 people in the United States
who have not enough to eat, and are perishing,
body and soul, because they have not enough to
eat. All over this broad and prosperous land are
men and women and children who are living lives
of chronic starvation. In some respects we are
no better off than the cave man, because our
management is irrational."
Mr. London prefaced his lecture with some
JacR Eondon at yale [153 Press Comments, etc.
remarks directed particularly to the universities,
which, he said, he found clean and noble in their
ideals, but not "alive." These remarks are re-
ported verbatim:
MR. LONDON TO COLLEGE MEN
"I speak tonight on behalf of the Intercollegiate
Socialist Society. This is a society formed, not
for the purpose of getting Socialist votes in the
colleges and universities of the United States, but
for the purpose of starting in the various colleges
an intelligent study of Socialism. It is to be de-
plored that so far in the United States there has
been no such intelligent study of Socialism.
Socialism is something that has been tabooed,
or else it has been misunderstood, misinterpreted,
misconstrued. For instance, I know, I am con-
fident that there is no man in this audience to-
night who knows anything about Socialism who
will say that its aim is anything else and anything
less than noble. Yet, reading the capitalist press
of the United States, one constantly has impressed
upon him the feeling that Socialism is something
in aim that is not noble.
A BIT OF BIOGRAPHY
"Socialism is nothing more nor less than a sci-
ence and a philosophy that deals with the human,
and attempts to make a better world for the hu-
man; attempts to get a more rational organization
of society than we have today. And Socialism
is clean, noble and alive. I, for instance, was
Condon at Vale [ie] Prm Comments, etc,
born in the working class. I lived on a ranch in
California in a state of sordidness and wretched-
ness. I did not have always enough to eat. I am
trying to give this little bit of biography in order
to make you understand my own approach to
Socialism. I had no outlook but what you might
call an up-look. Above me towered the colossal
edifice of society, and I felt that up there were
beautiful clothes; men wore boiled shirts, and
women were beautifully gowned, and there were
there all the good things to eat and plenty of them.
So much for the flesh. I felt also that up there
I would find things of the spirit, clean and noble
living and deeds and ideals, and I resolved to
climb up there. But it was my destiny, before
I climbed, to go down. Starting in the working
class, I went down into what Gorky calls the
'cellar of society,' down into the abyss, down
into the charnel houses of civilization. This is
something it is not considered good form to speak
about, but I went down there and lived, and
'sweated my bloody sweats' in jails and prisons
of various sorts, digging my way, and starving
and looking at society from an entirely new point
of view. I found there, it is true, all the ineffi-
cients of society, the men who were born failures,
but I found there also, and in great numbers, the
men who had been worked out by society, the
m,en who sold their muscles.
Jack Eondon at Vale [17] Press Comments, etc.
THE STATE OF THE SELLER OF MUSCLE
"Now, as I looked, I learned a lesson, and that
was that it was not the thing for me to do to re-
main what I had been, that is, a seller of muscle.
I saw that all men bought and sold commodities,
and that the most unfortunate of sellers was the
man who sold muscle, because his was the one
stock that did not renew itself. The shoe mer-
chant sold shoes, and as fast as he sold shoes,
he put in more shoes in his store. He constantly
replenished his stock. The brain merchant did
the same thing. As fast as he sold his brain, he
replenished it. But the man who sold nothing
but muscle, each day reduced his stock of mus-
cle, until at last when he was forty or forty-five
or fifty years of age he had sold out his com-
plete stock of muscle, and as he had no children
to take care of him, no children fortunately situ-
ated, he went down into the shambles, down into
the abyss, and perished. Whereas, the man who
sold brain, when he was forty-five or fifty or
fifty-five or sixty, he had a finer stock, a fuller
stock, than any time in his life before, and he
was receiving a higher price for his wares. And
so I resolved to become a seller of brain. When
I succeeded in becoming a merchant of brain, I
found that society opened its doors to me higher
up, and I went up there expecting to get in with
people who lived lives that were clean, noble and
alive. I fully expected that, and I, who had come
Jack London at Vale [is] Press gommems, etc
through all this material want and wretchedness,
came in on the comfortable parlor floor of society
and was appalled by the gross and selfish mate-
rialism I found there. I did not find life clean,
noble and alive.
"In the business world well, why should I
stop; why should I take two minutes to tell you
of the business world. You know the base side
of the business world today. Accounts are given
in all our daily papers and all our magazines of
the rottenness and betrayal and crime that per-
tains to the business world. I found there nothing
that was clean, noble and alive. And in the polit-
ical world I found the same thing. I found our
political leaders were men who were mastered by
machine bosses, who obeyed the dictates of ma-
chine bosses who were themselves bought and
sold, who rode on railroad passes and who sold
legislation to capitalist -purchasers of capitalist
legislation.
THE PASSIONATE PURSUIT OF INTELLIGENCE
"I went to the university. I found the univer-
sity, in the main, practically wholly so, I found
the university clean and noble, but I did not find
the university alive. I found that the American
university had this ideal, as phrased by a profes-
sor in the Chicago University, namely: The pas-
sionless pursuit of passionless intelligence' clean
and noble, I grant you, but not alive enough. I,
for one, who am very much alive and who min-
3acK Condon at Vale [19] Press Comments, etc.
gle with men who are very much alive, feel that
such an ideal is a decadent ideal, believing that
there should be a passionate pursuit of intelligence.
And the reflection of this university ideal I find
the conservatism and unconcern of the Ameri-
can university in the great mass of the American
people, the people who are suffering, the people
who are in want. And so I became interested in
an attempt to arouse in the minds of the young
men of our universities an interest in the study
of Socialism. Of course, such is my vanity it
is only human vanity that I personally believe
that practically every young man who has noble
impulses, who wants to go in for something that
is clean, noble and alive that practically every
young man who will study Socialism, its science
and philosophy, will become a convert to its doc-
trines. Such is my belief. . . .
"We do not desire merely to make converts,
to have our young men of the universities all
become Socialists. We do not expect that, but
want them to raise their voices for or against.
If they cannot fight for us, we want them to
fight against us of course, sincerely fight against
us, believing that right conduct lies in combating
Socialism because Socialism is a great growing
force. But what we do not want is that which
obtains today and has obtained in the past of the
university, a mere deadness and unconcern
and ignorance so far as Socialism is concerned.
Jack Condon at Vale [20] Press Comments, etc.
Fight for us or against us. Raise your voices one
way or the other; be alive! That is the idea upon
which we are working."
Condon's Lecture
YALE ALUMNI WEEKLY, EDITORIAL
44 TT is good that Yale students should have as
clear a presentation made to them as pos-
sible of the life and feelings and aims and
beliefs of a considerable portion of their fellow-
men concerning whom, through ordinary channels
of information, they know little. Whatever dis-
appointment there may have been in the lack of
constructive suggestion or of original information
in the lecture by London, many hard, grim facts
of tremendous moment were brought out. It would
be well if there were more of these attempts to
give this side of real life and thought to men who
are here constructing their philosoply of life and
political science, and who some day may be called
upon to meet the issues growing out of these facts.
It does no good to belittle them any more than
it is wise to exaggerate them. The great thing
is to take them into account and treat them and
not ignore them in the development and up-
building of a Christian civilization."
Jack Condon at Vale [21] Press Comments, etc
THERE is a subtle assumption running through
all these comments that Yale is a capitalist and
a class institution, and that the fact that a member
of another class the working class the discon-
tented class had an opportunity to speak there
was on the whole a rather commendable thing
and an evidence of breadth and open minded-
ness.
A few more London lectures would help us to
believe that "Lux et Veritas" really is the motto
of the university. At present, as it is related to
the actual life of the institution, we think it is a
humbug and a farce.
Comrade London donated the proceeds of the
lecture to the state committee.
JacK Condon at Vale [22] Press Comments, etc,
Class lUar
From NEW YORK TIMES, Feb. 1, 1906
IE must commend Mr. Jack London for
the perfect frankness with which he tells
his audiences what Socialism is, and what
it aims to accomplish. He does not dis-
semble. He is not mealy-mouthed. He does not
croak Socialism in timid disguises. He does not
profess to regard it as a mere return to the golden
rule, or as a reform altogether beneficent that will
harm nobody and make the world happier. Mr.
Jack London's Socialism is bloody war the war
of one class in society against other classes. He
says so. It is a destructive Socialism. He glories
in it.
It was reported that the faculty at Yale were
somewhat apprehensive lest Mr. London's views
should be a little too radical for the New Haven
atmosphere. The faculty's apprenensions were
not without ground, for in his address to some
three thousand Yale men at Woolsey Hall last
week Mr. London made these observations:
"When I write to a Socialist, I start the letter
with the phrase, 'Dear Comrade,' and I close the
phrase 'Yours for the revolution.' That is the
practice among 400,000 Socialists in the United
States. There are throughout the civilized world
Ecndon at Vale [23] Press Comments, etc.
7,000,000 Socialists, organized in a great inter-
national movement. Their purposes are the de-
struction of bourgeois society, the doing away
with the ownership of capital, and with patriot-
ism; in brief, the overthrow of existing society.
We will be content with nothing less than all
power, with the possession of the whole world.
We Socialists will wrest the power from the pres-
ent rulers. By war if necessary. Stop us if you
can!
"The grip of Socialism is tightening on the
world. The blood-red banner will soon be wav-
ing wildly in all winds. This is not a vague up-
rising. The propaganda is based on intelligence
and on economic necessity. The workers as a
class are fighting the capitalists as a class.
"The capitalists are in the minority. We are
in the majority. All capitalists are bad and all
workingmen are good. If people object to our
program because of the Constitution, then to hell
with the Constitution Yes, to hell with the Consti-
tution.* President Roosevelt is frightened by our
revolution. He says that class war is the great-
est danger to the country. Class war is our
watchword."
That is what Socialism means. It is to the
accomplishment of these things that Socialism
tends. Consciously or unconsciously, pretty much
all Socialists want to see Mr. Jack London's re-
*This report is perverted of course. See Note following.
Jack Condon at Vale [24] Press lommctm, etc,
forms achieved, and to see them achieved in Mr.
Jack London's way. They all aim at a redistri-
bution of wealth the taking things away from
those who have in order to bestow them upon
those who have not, quite regardless of their
desert, or of any of the principles of justice as
those principles have been formulated and estab-
lished by human society. Very few Socialists,
however, have Mr. Jack London's courage. Again
we say, he must be commended for his courage
and for his honesty. Society can judge Socialism
better and reach sounder conclusions of its merits
when it has a correct understanding of the nature
of Socialism and the intentions of Socialists.
note
COMRADE London delivered his lecture
in Grand Central Palace, New York, on
January 19, 1906. In it he quoted a work-
ingman who, after having been deprived of his
rights and robbed of his labor, is lectured on the
sacredness of the Constitution. This workingman,
said London, is very likely to say, "To hell with
the Constitution." That is the setting and the
sense of the phrase.
At the close of the lecture a young man got up
and asked this question: "Is the first article of a
Jack Condon at Vale [25] Press Comments, etc.
Socialist's creed, 'to hell with the Constitution?' "
After a fierce indictment of capitalism after a
most definite challenge this was the only ques-
tion that occurred to the bourgeois mind to a
worshiper of traditions. Instantly mother Jones
arose in the gallery and said, "I want that young
man to understand that it wasn't a workingman
who said that, but a general in the army." Gen-
eral Bell of the Colorado gang of professional
killers was the man referred to. London antici-
pated a working man saying it, but Bell said it!
Isn't it strange that the Times should be oblivi-
ous of the fact that the same lecture was delivered
three times to immense audiences in New York
weeks before it was delivered at Yale? It quotes
as if he said it for the first time at Woolsey Hall.
Quite a number of comrades have gotten mixed
up on the use of the phrase.
The lecture, 'The Coming Crisis," was pur-
chased by Collier's, months ago, but it is now
fairly well understood they got cold feet on it and
so it is pigeon-holed for keeps.
Jack Condon at Vale [26] Press gommems, etc.
Cbe Gospel of Condonism
THE REGISTER'S pungent Editorial, Jan. 27, 1906
|HE spectacle of an avowed Socialist, one
of the most conspicuous in the country,
standing upon the platform of Woolsey
Hall and boldly advocating his doctrines
of revolution, was a sight for gods and men.
There are doubtless those who tremble at the
thought that Jack London was thus permitted to
beard the lion in his den and take the young men
of the university into his confidence, while he in-
stilled into them the gospel of Socialism, but these
fears and forbodings are entirely misplaced. It
was a good thing that he was brought here, and
it was a better thing that he was allowed to preach
to his heart's content in the very citadel of con-
servatism. There is little chance of his views re-
ceiving enthusiastic approval from the students
of Yale, while there is every probability that the
knowledge of the spirit back of the socialistic
movement will awake slumbering skeptics to the
realization that there is something for them to do
stem the tide of radical thought in this country.
While many of the statements made by London
challenge denial, and while many of his protests
have a solid foundation in justifiable irritation, it
by no means follows that the way out of the wil-
derness of men's selfishness and wrong doing is
Jack Condon at Vaic [27] Press Comments, etc,
through revolution and the destruction of the pres-
ent organization of society. Far more dangerous
than the gospel of Londonism is the cause back
of it. Under normal conditions it would be im-
possible for even a more fascinating speaker than
London to fill, as he did. last evening, that great
assembly hall. Men do not search for new doc-
trines of government and new policies of conduct
when what they have produce equitable results.
It is when the old order seems unable to antici-
pate and provide the needed protection for in justice
that men turn impulsively to any cure that prom-
ises to improve things. There were probably but
few present last evening who were in sympathy
with London's ideas, and who at the close of his
address knew what the panacea is which he has
for the betterment of society. There were fewer,
in all probability, who did not feel unconsciously
that he was in some mysterious way representing
them in their protests against the evils of our times.
If they are unwilling to subscribe to his gospel,
they are ready to listen to his statement of their
grievances, which is only another way of saying
that they have deep-seated grievances which are
not receiving proper consideration at the hands of
those who should be concerned with them.
As for the gospel of Londonism and the pan-
acea which it offers as an escape from burdens
grievous to bear, it thrives and will continue to
thrive so long as legislative bodies continue to ig-
Jack London at Vale [28] Press Comments, etc.
nore matters of common significance and impor-
tance, and confine themselves to matters of spe-
cial and exclusive interest. Jack London may,
therefore, be said to be occupied in a useful public
service, He is rattling the dry bones in a manner
to disturb sleep, and the greater his success the
sooner will they use their waking hours to force
consideration of the welfare of the masses of the
people. As we have intimated above, it is no use
attributing all this revolutionary and incendiary
talk to the foreigners whom we have welcomed to
our shores and given equal rights with ourselves.
We must look for the causes within ourselves and
in our conduct of our own institutions. Of all the
countries in the civilzed world, this country should
offer the smallest territory for the propagation of
socialistic doctrines, and yet today we find it the
most prolific in socialistic movements. It is worth
while we should say for our leaders and students
to begin at once an examination of our national
assets, and not lose sight of the fact that the pres-
ence of London here last evening was an answer
to the call of Yale students, who enjoyed the sym-
pathy of an unusually large audience in the largest
of local assembly halls. Such an examination
must take place, and reforms introduced, or there
may be serious trouble in the land.
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