During the course of the voyage, the other crewmen in the fo’c’sle wearied sufficiently of Big Red John’s bullying that they determined to exact a measure of revenge. Of all the men in the cabin, the Swede was the only one who habitually slept nude, notwithstanding season or weather. During the height of the seal hunt, one of the men distracted Big Red John long enough for others to conceal a big, cold-skinned carcass in his bunk. That night after his watch he stripped in the dark and dove under the covers—there followed a heart-stopping shriek and a good-faith effort at whipping every other man in the cabin.
Only when the hold was gorged with preserved sealskins did Captain Sutherland call a halt and head back south, putting into Yokohama for two weeks.9 Perhaps thinking it funny, Sutherland entrusted all the men’s pay to the seal shooters, sending them ashore to ensconce themselves in a public house before releasing the rest of the crew to try to find them. Having prepared himself for a foreign world, London was shocked and disappointed to discover that Yokohama was largely a Western city, very much in the vanguard of Japan’s concerted effort to join and be recognized by the industrialized nations. It was not at all what he was led to expect from Ina Coolbrith’s library books. Still, he took his first ride in a rickshaw, had his photograph taken, tanned and tough and confident, and experienced one incident that made his list of red-letter memories.
The story of London’s adventure in Yokohama arose in his writing no fewer than four times, twice in fiction, and twice in nonfiction, but the details changed so much from one telling to another that the truth of what happened has been hopelessly lost. During one of his forays ashore, either he lost his money and could not afford the sampan fare back out to the ship, or he ran afoul of the police. After some wall-ripping escapades of his own through hapless tea houses, he plunged into the harbor, either of his own accord, or on a dare. Whatever the circumstance, he drunkenly swam the mile from the wharf out to the Sophia Sutherland, where the next day the harbor police, believing him drowned, brought out his clothes to have them identified, only to discover him safely sleeping it off. The story raced through the moored ships, and London found himself a harbor celebrity.10
At some point during the cruise of the Sophia Sutherland, London came down with a severe, indeed nearly fatal, siege of shingles. It dissipated by the end of the voyage, but it was the first indication he had that his physical constitution was not as impregnable as he posed, and needed to believe. Having departed San Francisco on January 23, the sealing schooner cleaved her way back through the Golden Gate on August 26, 1893, thirty-seven days out of Yokohama. The crew shared final rounds of drinks, and London went shopping: “A second-hand hat,” he recalled, “some forty cent shirts, two fifty-cent suits of underclothes, and a second-hand coat and vest.” Crossing the bay to Oakland, he spent another seventy cents on drinks for his old buddies, and looked up his family, whom he found hanging on in near ruin.11 In a soul-suffocating moment his old life pattern asserted itself, and he handed over the balance of his seven months’ wages to his mother to get the family back on their feet, and moved back into the London household.
Seven months at sea had sated the most urgent of Jack London’s youthful wanderlust. Finding his family in trouble, he braced himself to begin looking for work, but his timing could not have been worse. The financial Panic of 1893 had sunk the country into one of the worst depressions it had ever known, and professional positions of any kind were unheard of. Even laboring jobs were scarce, and for them the near-universal wage was—how it must have deflated him—ten cents an hour, exactly the same as he had made stuffing pickle jars after primary school. Surely he could do better.
Returning to the oyster beds might have seemed lucrative, but he learned now how dangerous it actually had been. After London returned to Oakland he discovered that his former partner, Young Scratch Nelson, had been shot to death by police—a somber warning of what his own fate might have been had he not ended their partnership. French Frank was in hiding, and others of the old oyster pirates who had not evaded capture were doing hard time in San Quentin prison. There was no alternative for it; London must, for the present, become once more the Work Beast.
He learned of a job opening in a jute mill, keeping bobbins wound with fibers that were woven into burlap bags. For a young man who had lived such adventures as he, the jute mill, at a dollar a day for ten hours, loomed like the specter of failure itself. The only bright spot was that they promised him, if he stuck it out for a few months, that he would be raised to a dollar and a quarter per day. Late in August 1893, he bowed his head and put himself back under the yoke.
It was not the worst job he ever had. At a steady ten hours per day, there was even time left over for the beginnings of a social life, and he used the opportunity to embark on a program of self-improvement. He began attending the YMCA for physical conditioning, but he quickly realized this was a mistake. The youths there were wholesome, but callow and inexperienced in the world. Although many were of his own age, London realized that he had become a man in ways that they had not yet dreamed of in their complacent, circumscribed lives. Worse, their sheer innocence and lack of cares made him realize, with something of a shock, that (apart from that one summer spent with Frank Atherton’s family) he had never really had a boyhood to enjoy. These pale boys at the YMCA could see him only as a bad influence, and their society was itself an unending reproach of his own social disability. It was a bad fit.
Fortunately for London, he chanced upon the very friend he needed, one who played the same role as once had Frank Atherton, during his time at the Cole Grammar School. His name was Louis Shattuck, “without one vicious trait . . . a real innocently devilish young fellow who was quite convinced that he was a sophisticated town-boy. . . . Louis was handsome, and graceful, and filled with love for the girls.”12 He was a blacksmith’s apprentice, and therefore shared London’s social class and understanding of the limitations of poverty. Even better, he understood the allure of candy, and best of all, Shattuck didn’t drink. At last London had a chum with whom he could be himself, whose friendship was not bound up in men’s obligation to down alcohol whether they wanted to or not. Neither one had a great deal of free time, but what they had they utilized in hanging out on street corners, smoking, their caps at angles they thought girls must find jaunty. London studied Shattuck’s technique at accosting and picking up girls, and occasionally they would double-date, squandering a whole week’s spare change to treat girls to street-vended hot tamales and ice cream.
Given the chance to follow Shattuck’s suave template in meeting nice girls on his own, however, London foundered—with one exception. It happened at a Salvation Army meeting, in which he found himself seated next to the most adorable girl he believed he had ever seen. In his memoir he called her “Haydee,” but as with Mamie, the queen of the Razzle Dazzle, her real name was for his memory alone. She and her aunt came to the meeting out of curiosity, Haydee taking a seat next to London, who ever afterward claimed to have learned at that moment the truth of love at first sight. She was about fifteen, with brown hair and eyes under a tam o’shanter. They spent a half hour stealing glances and embarrassed blushes at each other. But London never said a word. He who had romanced the Queen of the Oyster Pirates and had called at sailors’ pleasuring grounds on the other side of the Pacific, was never more at sea than at this moment, choking over how to open a conversation with a girl—a nice girl, an inhabitant of that innocent world of youth he had never known.13 Haydee and her aunt soon left the hall, but when London tried to shadow them he was accosted by someone from his past, Young Scratch’s girl, who knew they had been friends, and wanted—needed—to tell him how he died.
It turned out that he did get to see Haydee again; Louis Shattuck knew that she had a friend named Ruth, who was friends with Nita, who worked at the candy store they patronized. London entrusted a shy boyish note to Nita, which made its way to Haydee, who responded with encouragement. They met perhaps a dozen times, innocently,
enjoyably, even if only to share a nickel sack of red hots. London always cherished her memory, as a memorial to the innocent adolescence that might have been his, had he not been a Work Beast from the time he was old enough to throw newspapers.
During the autumn of 1893 it was Flora London who noticed an announcement in the San Francisco Morning Call, a contest with first, second, and third prizes of $25, $15, and $10, for the best descriptive article by local writers no older than twenty-two. Jack should enter, she said, and write up his experience with that typhoon off Japan. London, exhausted every night from earning his dollar for ten hours at the jute mill, was initially unimpressed, but Flora, who had had to hear about the storm over and over again, kept after him. Finally he gave in and worked through two consecutive nights, almost hallucinating from lack of sleep. He produced a piece of 4,000 words, which he then cut in half to meet the contest rules.
It was on the deck that the force of the wind could be fully appreciated. . . . It seemed to stand up against you like a wall, making it almost impossible to move on the heaving decks or to breathe as the fierce gusts came dashing by. . . . A soft light emanated from the movement of the ocean. Each mighty sea, all phosphorescent and glowing with the tiny lights of myriads of animalculae, threatened to overwhelm us with a deluge of fire. Higher and higher, thinner and thinner, the crest grew as it began to curve and overtop preparatory to breaking, until with a roar it fell over the bulwarks, a mass of soft glowing light and tons of water which sent the sailors sprawling in all directions. . . .
The wild antics of the schooner were sickening as she forged along. She would almost stop, as though climbing a mountain, then rapidly rolling to right and left as she gained the summit of a huge sea, she steadied herself and paused for a moment. . . . Like an avalanche, she shot forward and down as the sea astern struck her . . . burying her bow to the catheads in the milky foam at the bottom.
He won first prize, beating out students from Stanford and Berkeley with his eighth-grade education from Cole Grammar School, his long hours of reading Johnny Heinold’s dictionary on the corner table, and his fierce fondness for reading the great masters. “The Story of a Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan” was published on November 12, and Jack London, author, was born. So, too, was Flora London, author’s mother. She had played longer odds than him in the Chinese lotteries for years, and now he had just made $25 for the family, nearly a month’s laboring wages, with a very promising piece written in three days.
As most young writers discover, there is a vast difference between being acknowledged as having talent and making more than casual spending money at it. Immediately he spun out a couple of quick stories that he also submitted to the Call, but they were turned down. Newspapers, he discovered, did not publish fiction—a beginner’s mistake.
As time passed London inquired after the raise he had been promised if he stuck with the job at the jute mill, and when he found it was not forthcoming, he walked away. His family circumstances dictated that he must continue to generate an income, but he realized that it was time to start thinking more strategically about his future. He was still only seventeen; surely that was young enough to start afresh. Turning his mind to what sort of professional career might interest him, he concluded that he was sufficiently intrigued by the modern marvel of electricity to investigate becoming an electrician.
He obtained an interview with the superintendent of the Oakland, San Leandro, and Haywards Electric Railway. He desired, he said, to work his way up through the company and eventually become an electrician. The superintendent heard him out sympathetically. Yes, his was a laudable and workable plan, certainly he could rise in the company in time, but of course he must start at the bottom. Just then they needed a man to shovel coal in their power plant. It was as though he had walked into one of the Horatio Alger novels that had been a staple of his youthful reading. “I believed in the old myths,” London wrote. “A canal boy could become president. Any boy . . . could, by thrift, energy, and sobriety, learn the business and rise.”14 Whatever was left in him of little Johnny London needed to believe that hard work, perseverance, and virtue could lead one to success in life. He had already shown on board the Sophia Sutherland that he could earn respect with determination, frankness, and a sincere effort to do a good job.
However, the coal passer’s job at the electric railway was not as described. At $30 per month for working every day, including Sundays, with one day off per month, he was paid not by the hour but by the amount of coal he was given to shovel and barrow. As a result, every day he was saddled with far more labor than he could do in ten hours.
The power station was three miles from home, and London obtained a streetcar pass with the stipulation that he could sit down only when no other passenger needed the seat. His first day on the job, having arrived at seven in the morning, he finished at eight-thirty that night, weary and praying on the car home that it would not fill up so that he could take a seat. When it did, he was shocked to find that his body seized up, and he could not even stand. Through the course of days and weeks, he sprained both wrists and had to wear heavy leather splints to keep them from swelling. “But I was resolved,” he wrote, “to show them what a husky young fellow determined to rise could do.” There were no girls, no more library books; never had he been more the Work Beast.
Eventually one of the plant firemen took pity on the handsome teenager and confessed that in the job he was doing for $30 a month, he was replacing not one but two men who had made $40 a month—each. The fireman apologized: he would have spoken sooner, but he did not think London would actually stay and continue to labor under such ridiculous terms of employment. Even worse, one of the men he had replaced, according to an article in the newspaper, had just committed suicide in despair of finding another job and being able to support his wife and three children.
There was only so much lying, sly dealing, and ill usage that one young man could take. Had someone attempted to use him in this way on the waterfront, London would have beaten him to a pulp. Galled, scalded, betrayed, London quit the electric railway power station in a fury.
It was not hard work that he objected to—indeed he had already proved his love of physical exertion—it was the pointlessness and the drudgery of it, the idea of slaving at a pittance of a wage for a class of owners and investors who lived like lords and took their sense of entitlement for granted. It was being lied to and doubtless laughed at by owners who never questioned that a dollar a day was the best that people like him should expect for killing themselves.
In a very real sense, the coal he had been shoveling to stoke the boilers of the Oakland, San Leandro, and Haywards Electric Railway kindled another fire instead—hotter, angrier, more cynical. It was the fire lit in the deepest part of his soul to take up arms against this kind of evil.
4
THE TRAMP
Storming out of the power plant may have salved Jack London’s bruised pride, but it was a terrible time to quit a job, no matter how demeaning. The economic downturn engendered by the Panic of 1893 had ossified into a depression that crippled agriculture nationwide, from Midwestern corn farmers to Southern sharecroppers, stagnated industry, and suffocated commerce. Ultimately 15,000 businesses went bankrupt.
Finding a new job, at even the most insulting wage, was almost unheard of at the time. Unemployment doubled from mid-1893 to early 1894, to 2 million workers; by June 1894 there were 3 million. By some estimates, the unemployment rate approached 20 percent, creating labor unrest on a scale unprecedented in American history. The national discourse began including words and concepts only recently thought too extreme for polite conversation: reform, socialism, even revolution. Not surprisingly, the San Francisco area was in the van of fearless thinking on the subject of social justice and institutional change.
Jack London was eighteen when he walked out of the power plant with the leather splints on his sprained wrists. He needed rest, and before he devoted himself to finding new employment he could
at least renew his relationship with the Oakland Public Library. His reading took a more serious and more focused turn, as he was seized by a compulsion to understand, in effect, everything: how things came to be the way they were, why people believed what they did and behaved the way they did. He indulged a fascination for Darwin and the Origin of Species, which was given practical application in Herbert Spencer’s Synthetic Philosophy. In the ongoing financial meltdown, Marx, as well as Nietzsche, made sense to him.
Even with his quick intelligence, however, London lacked coherent instruction while assimilating such raw source materials, and he occasionally misunderstood them. He became enamored of Nietzsche’s expression “blond beast,” equating the term with the super-race. The author actually meant that blond beasts were the segment of the population to be dominated. Understandably, given the white supremacy that was part of Flora London’s daily conversation, it would not have naturally occurred to him that any race that was a candidate for domination could be white.
Wolf: The Lives of Jack London Page 8