'I'm sorry, old man,' that one had told him. 'I'd like to publish your book, in spite of its controversial nature, if it stood any chance at all of success. But it doesn't. Frankly, it has no literary merit whatsoever. I would as soon read a brief.'
'I think I understand,' Wingate answered sullenly. 'A big publishing house can't afford to print anything which might offend the powers-that-be.'
The publisher took his cigar from his mouth and looked at the younger man before replying. 'I suppose I should resent that,' he said quietly, 'but I won't. That's a popular misconception. The powers-that-be, as you call them, do not resort to suppression in this country. We publish what the public will buy. We're in business for that purpose.
'I was about to suggest, if you will listen, a means of making your book saleable. You need a collaborator, somebody that knows the writing game and can put some guts in it.'
Jones called the day that Wingate got his revised manuscript back from his ghost writer. 'Listen to this, Sam,' he pleaded. 'Look, what the dirty so-and-so has done to my book. Look.
- I heard again the crack of the overseer's whip. The frail body of my mate shook under the lash. He gave one cough and slid slowly under the waist-deep water, dragged down by his chains." Honest, Sam, did you ever see such drivel? And look at the new title: "I Was a Slave on Venus". It sounds like a confession magazine.'
Jones nodded without replying. 'And listen to this,' Wingate went on, '"-crowded like cattle in the enclosure, their naked bodies gleaming with sweat, the women slaves shrank from the-"Oh, hell, I can't go on!'
'Well, they did wear nothing but harness.'
'Yes, yes-but that has nothing to do with the case. Venus costume is a necessary concomitant of the weather. There's no excuse to leer about it. He's turned my book into a damned sex show. And he had the nerve to defend his actions. He claimed that social pamphleteering is dependent on extravagant language.'
'Well, maybe he's got something. Gulliver's Travels certainly has some racy passages, and the whipping scenes in Uncle Tom's Cabin aren't anything to hand a kid to read. Not to mention Grapes of Wrath.'
'Well, I'm damned if I'll resort to that kind of cheap sensationalism. I've got a perfectly straightforward case that anyone can understand.'
'Have you now?' Jones took his pipe out of his mouth. 'I've been wondering how long it would take you to get your eyes opened. What is your case? It's nothing new; it happened in the Old South, it happened again in California, in Mexico, in Australia, in South Africa. Why? Because in any expanding free-enterprise economy which does not have a money system designed to fit its requirements the use of mother-country capital to develop the colony inevitably results in subsistence level wages at home and slave labor in the colonies. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and all the good will in the world on the part of the so-called ruling classes won't change it, because the basic problem is one requiring scientific analysis and a mathematical mind. Do you think you can explain those issues to the general public?'
'I can try.'
'How far did I get when I tried to explain them to you-before you had seen the results? And you are a smart hombre. No, Hump, these things are too difficult to explain to people and too abstract to interest them. You spoke before a women's club the other day, didn't you?'
'Yes.'
'How did you make out?'
'Well... the chairwoman called me up beforehand and asked me to hold my talk down to ten minutes, as their national president was to be there and they would be crowded for time.'
'Hmm ... you see where your great social message rates in competition. But never mind. Ten minutes is long enough to explain the issue to a person if they have the capacity to understand it. Did you sell anybody?'
'Well.. . I'm not sure.'
'You're darn tootin' you're not sure. Maybe they clapped for you but how many of them came up afterwards and wanted to sign checks? No, Hump, sweet reasonableness won't get you anywhere in this racket. To make yourself 'heard you have to be a demagogue, or a rabble-rousing political preacher like this fellow Nehemiah Scudder. We're going merrily to hell and it won't stop until it winds up in a crash.'
'But-Oh, the devil! What can we do about it?'
'Nothing. Things are bound to get a whole lot worse before they can get any better. Let's have a drink.'