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TENSION ENVELOPE CORP.
UPTON SINCLAIR
PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
BOOKS BY
Upton Sinclair
THE JOURNAL OF ARTHUR STIRLING
MANASSAS, A NOVEL OF THE CIVIL WAR
THE JUNGLE
THE OVERMAN
THE MILLENNIUM
THE METROPOLIS
THE MONEYCHANGERS
SAMUEL, THE SEEKER
THE FASTING CURE
LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE
SYLVIA
SYLVIA'S MARRIAGE
DAMAGED GOODS
THE CRY FOR JUSTICE
THE PROFITS OF RELIGION
KING COAL, A NOVEL OF THE COLORADO STRIKE
JIMMIE HIGGINS
THE BRASS CHECK
100%— THE STORY OF A PATRIOT
THEY CALL ME CARPENTER THE BOOK OF LIFE
THE GOOSE-STEP— A STUDY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION
THE GOSLINGS — A STUDY OF THi AMERICAN SCHOOLS
MAMMONART
LETTERS TO JUDD
THE SPOKESMAN'S SECRETARY
OIL!
MONEY WRITES!
BOSTON
MOUNTAIN CITY
MENTAL RADIO
ROMAN HOLIDAY
THE WET PARADE
AMERICAN OUTPOST
PLAYS
PRINCE HAGEN
THE NATUREWOMAN
THE SECOND STORY MAN
THE MACHINE
THE POT-BOILER
HELL
SINGING JAILBIRDS
BILL PORTER
OIL (DRAMATIZATION*
XVI LLIAM FOX
UPTON SINCLAIR
PRESENTS
WILLIAM FOX
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
LOS ANGELES (WEST BRANCH), CALIFORNIA
COPYRIGHT, IQ33, BY UPTON SINCLAIR
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
ALL RIGHTS MESEKVIB
UPTON SINCLAIR
PRESENTS
WILLIAM FOX
A FEATURE PICTURE OF WALL STREET AND HfGH FINANCE
In Tu/entytiine Reels with Prologue and Epilogue
A Melodrama of Fortune* Conflict and Triumph, Packed with ThriOb and Heart Throbs* East Side Boy Conquers Fame and Power. The Masters of Millions Envy His Triumph and Hot His Downfall. The Octopus Battles the Fox* The Ehid of a Century! The Sensation of a Lifetime!
Never in Screen History has there been a Feature so Stupendous as this. An Inside Story* a Firsthand Revela- tion of Politics and Finance, with a Ten Billion Dollar Cast of Statesmen and Financiers.
At the sauae time a Story for the Family, tense and mov* ing, with Love, Loyalty and a Woman's Soul* A Romance so fine, so true, so loaded with Laughter and Tears* that none can resist it.
AMERICA WAITS FOR THIS DRAMA!
PUT IT AT THE HEAD OF YOUR PROGRAM!
IT WILL PACK THEM IN!!
FLOYD DELL REPORTS TO A NEW YORK PUBLISHER:
I think this is a very important book.
First, because it tells what a man important to his times thinks about himself.
Second, because of the importance of the war between the financiers and the organizers in this motion picture field.
Third, because of the immense human interest and enthralling excitement of the story. There has never been a book on this subject so completely readable by ordinary people. I myself am bored with statistics, I don't like business stories, and I started this book with no hope of ever being able to read it through. It kept me awake all night — I could not stop reading it. The story has terrific interest and suspense.
Also it hits the public interest of the times right in the center. It will be in every middle class home this winter, and millions of people will be talking about it. It is going to be one of the great literary sensations in the history of American publishing.
Upton Sinclair's reputation has survived every exposes he has handled, and no one has ever sued him for libel, He has the goods on people and they know it. There can be no question but that the facts are substantially as the book states them, for these are all matters of court record. The interpretations alone can be questioned.
I should say that the only reason for not taking advantage of the greatest opportunity of our times in publishing would be a belief in the actuality of this alleged criminal conspiracy, and the fear that the conspiracy would extend to the point of a crimi- nal attempt to pumsti and wreck the publisher who put Fox's case before the public. Or have the bankers burned their fingers enough in this Fox business without attempting illegitimate inter- ference? In the end it would be useless, for the book will be published and they can't stop it
This is the most exciting book I have read for years* It adds a new and significant figure to American industrial biography. It is destined to an immense popularity, and it will make Uptcm Sinclair the most widely read author in America, It will be in front page headlines, and a Congressional inquiry may keep It there for weeks or months. The films are dear to the heart of America,
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE ...........
REEL ONE
REEL TWO
Shoe* Bidding <ant! Lozengers ,...,.,.,» 14
REEL THREE
Pretzels and Buffalo Pans ....... „ . . . 23
REEL FOUR
TsJjtJ^eJodteans and Common Shows ....,..» 32
REEL FIVE
The Ro<i4 to Fortune . ....... , . . . 46
REEL SIX
Over the Hill ...,..,..,...,. 56
REEL SEVEN
The Micbs Touch ..,.,.,„,„..„. 67
REEL EIGHT
Red T^pe ...,...,.*...... 80
REEL NINE
The Vwltum ,....,..»..,... 94
REEL TEN
The Octopus ...„.,..,..,... 102
REEL ELEVEN
Reaping the Whirlwind ..*.».,,... 114
REEL TWELVE
The Fox Trap .......,,..„„„. 127
REEL THIRTEEN
The Fox Hesildtes ......... ..... 140
REEL FOURTEEN
TJw? Pox Bntws .....*,.......!«
vfi
viii CONTENTS
REEL FIFTEEN
The Trap Shuts 167
REEL SIXTEEN
The Fiend Ingratitude 184
REEL SEVENTEEN
BarJ{ Solidarity 1%
REEL EIGHTEEN
Ford Jo\es 207
REEL NINETEEN
The Reptyle 221
REEL TWENTY
Legal Actions 252
REEL TWENTY-ONE
The Scales of Justice 247
REEL TWENTY-TWO
A Judge in Business 259
REEL TWENTY-THREE
The Stockholders Meet 272
REEL TWENTY-FOUR
The Japanese Meeting 287
REEL TWENTY-FIVE
Captain Kidd j0j
REEL TWENTY-SIX
The Business of Loot 315
REEL TWENTY-SEVEN
Empty Shells 326
REEL TWENTY-EIGHT
Surttming Up 310
REEL TWENTY-NINE
Aftermath j^p
EPILOGUE. 360
PROLOGUE
FOR thirty years I have been "'presenting" to the public the princes, dukes and barons of our industrial feudalism. As a rule ! have "presented" them under the guise of fiction* Some- times my critics have said "Good melodrama" and sometimes "Bad melodrama," but always they have agreed that "SIiKlair exaggerates." Learned book reviewers in Siam and Tasmania declare: "Such things are impossible." Living as far away as it is possible to get on this earth, they still feel safe in asserting: "America cannot be like that."
So this time I am presenting a living man. This time I am telling a story which happened in New York City less than three years ago. This time there are names, places, recent dates and an appendix full of documents and court records. This time even Siam and Tasmania will have to admit that ^America is like that" ; for no melodrama that ! have been able to invent in my thirty years of inventing has been more packed with crimes and betrayals, perils and escapes, than the story of William Fox* No thriller among the 750 feature pictures which Fox himself produced during twenty-five years as a producer was ever so perfectly constructed, with its humble hero battling his way to power, its polished villains, conspirators of high estate, each with a carnation in his buttonhole; its complications of intrigue, its mysteries, some of them never solved to this day, its cruel suffer- ing and Its grand climax— the hero escaping with the greater part of his fortune, and the villains dragged down to ruin by the judgment of an implacable Providence*
A couple of months ago I had the honor of being invited to the home of a Hollywood author ; one of those new-style authors of the screen-world who could not think of writing for less than $2»OQQ a week, and who live in Moorish palaces on hilltops, mud have Negro servants in swallow-tail coats to serve you ealavo salad and caviar sandwiches and liquids enough to float E battle- ship. The company fell to discussing the state of Ajoraeiica^ and I explaiiHsd that when I started muckraking thirty yemrfc ago, the sigiuficant phenometsoii Itad been the dimibat5f*g of tlte Iffle
ix
x PROLOGUE
business man by the big business man ; but now the situation had changed, and the feature was the replacing of the big business man by the investment banker. I mentioned a case in Boston* the story of a manufacturer who had his business taken away from him by a conspiracy of bankers. He had brought suit, and after a trial lasting more than a year, the jury had given him a verdict of $10,000,000.
My friend, the Hollywood author, broke in; "Sinclair, why do you fool with pikers like that, little $10,000,000 men ? Why don't you tell us about the $1,000,000,000 men, or the $100,000,000 ones at least?"
I answered that I had never met any $1,000,000,000 men, nor even $100,000,000 ones, and I feared that my imagination would not be equal to the task. Said my host : f* Why don't you write the story of William Fox? There's one made to order for you : a plain hold-up in broad daylight — and by our most eminent and respectable financiers !"
The company talked for a while about William Fox. He had been the biggest man in the industry, the one real business man of them all, the one who could have saved them in this slump. And not because he was in trouble, but because he was so successful, because he was making too much money, the Wai! Street crowd had surrounded him, blocked him offt and taken his profit-making machine away from him. And the strangest thing— when they had got it, they didn't know what to do with it, all they were able to do was to loot the properties, and now they were a shell, ready to collapse. They had bought Fo^s business, but not his brain.
My mind was on other things, and I gave no tttcmght to my friend's suggestion. But a couple of days later my telephone rang, and a woman's voice said: "This is Mr, William Fox*s secretary. Mr. Fox wants to know if he may call to see you/*
I have learned to be shy over the telephone. **Wfaat does lie want?" I asked.
"He didn't tell me," saiC the voice; "but he told me to say he had nothing to sell you."
"Well, teH him I have nothing to buy with/* I answered.
Next morning a limousbe roDed up to my humble door, and WflEarn Fox descended, accompanied by a little gentleman, wtio,
PROLOGUE xi
1 learned, was Ms lawyer* It turned out that he had come to sell me something after all ; in the slang of our commercial era, he wanted to **self me himself. Ever since his battle had begun, he had thought of me as the person to be its historian. His wife had read some of niy books and believed in me* A year ago his brother-in-law had sent me a telegram, asking if I had any plans to come east. As I had no such plans, he had waited until he came west
He showed me some "rushes0 of the story* He brought the stars of the production, one after another, before the foot- lights, some of them persons whom I knew, all of them persons whom the world knows* or wants to know: Herbert Hoover* Henry Ford* John D. Rockefeller, |r.f Charles Evans Hughes, Samuel Unterniyer, Will H* Haysf Bernard M. Barach, Adolph Zukor, Louis H Mayer, Clarence M. Dillon, Albert H. Wiggin, Harry L, Stuart, Harley L, Clarke — a score of leading statesmen and financiers. He pulled the strings and made these figures rehearse their parts. Every now and then Mr. Reass, the lawyer* would think of some detail which had been omitted ; they would take turns, or sometimes it would be a duct.
What William Fox was offering me was a theme for a novel. But I have written six novels of Wall Street and high finance, and the critics of the last one, ^Mountain City/* said I was repeating myself* I saw at once that this, if I wrote it, would be a fact story, told in detail and documented.
I asked for time to think it over, and the limousine rolled away. In the end I said I would go in with William Fox <m two conditions: he would leave the matter of the form, and style of the book to me, and he would pledge me two weeks of his time, with a stenographer sitting by*
He accepted, and we set to work. His story stretched out, and the two weeks became three weeks, four weeks. Eve weeks. Every day for thirty-six days he came to my home, and from 10 in the morning until 1 or 2 he talked and I questioned. The stenographer fell behind and we had to have two* Whea we got through* there were 758 typewritten pages* enough for two volumes. In addition, there Is a suitcase and two drawtars full of correspondence, pamphlets, court records and reports ; also there are die New York uewspapets, both tibe
xii PROLOGUE
and financial pages, telling the day by day story of the year long battle. If you who read this book do not know the story of William Fox, it will be my fault, not his.
William Fox started in the motion picture business in the year 1904, he being then twenty-six years of age, and putting in a capital of $1,600, He worked with demoniac energy for twenty-five years, at the end of which time he controlled from four to five hundred millions of dollars. Only a small part of it, perhaps 10 per cent, belonged to him personally; the rest was the property of stockholders and investors who trusted him. He never took a penny of salary for his labors as president of the Fox Theatres Corporation, and in 1926 he voluntarily stopped his salary of $200,000 yearly as president of Fox Film Corporation. He owned the majority of voting shares, which gave him the power to name the boards of directors, These shares drew dividends on equal terms with all the other shares* and William Fox was content to take his chances with the rest of the stockholders. Practically all the money had come out of profits, and anyone might receive these profits, provided that Fox was master of the machine and allowed to direct its activities*
Just what was it that happened to William Fox? It is no new thing, btit an old story, which I have told several times before. In the year 1908, I wrote a novel called **The Money- changers," which was considered at the time to be a very des- perate and daring thing, I have told in. "The Brass Check** how I got the information for this noveL Suffice it here to say, I charged that the elder Pierpont Morgan deliberately brotight on the panic of 1907, in order to wreck and take over three inde* pendent trust companies in New York which were interfering with his domination* Trust companies were new tWbags in tho®e days, and these three were taking in too much money, and Morgan considered that Oakleigh Thome and F. Augustus Heiaze and Charles T. Barney were improper persons to have the handling of so much money. It is quite true that Thome and Heinle were irresponsible persons, gamblers and hard drinkers ; but the main thing wrong with them was the fact that they did not take Morgan's orders.
The method used was to lend them money and lead them to "extend themselves"; to "string them along" with promises
PROLOGUE xrii
which were not kept ; to start a stock market raid and beat down the price of the securities in which they were known to have invested ; to start rumors that they were in financial trouble, and have all the hired financial writers of Wai! Street publish these reports; then to call all their loans at once, start a *Yun" of their depositors, and use the power of the banking world to see that they got no credit.
That is the way the job is done. You pass the word to cer- tain key bankers that Oakleigh Thome and F. Augustus Heinze and Charles T. Barney are marked for destruction, and that assistance given to them will constitute an unfriendly action towards J. P, Morgan & Co. So they will get no credit, and the three trust companies will close their doors, and interests friendly to J. R Morgan & Co. will take them over, R Augustus Heinze and, Oakleigh Thome will retire into obscurity » and Charles T. Barney will shoot his head off, and Jf the panic gets out of hand and threatens the entire financial structure of the country* J* P» Morgan will summon his banker colleagues to his office and tell them how much cash is needed to stop the runs on banks, and what proportion each of them will put tip.
I heard a, story of that conference. Said one banker; "Mr. Morgan* I have kept my institution safe and sound, and I do not feel responsible for the troubles of those institutions which have allowed their funds to be used for stock market manipulation, I propose to stay inside my bank and let the others look out for themselves."
Old Morgan's purple nose turned several shades darker, and he hit the table a bang and answered : "You stay in your bank, and I'll build a wall around it and you'll never come out of it until you are dead!'1
Twenty years later, I told of another such hold-up in my novel, "Boston." The gentleman who in that novel is called "Jerry Walker11 was a manufacturer of felt; a business man who must have worked with the same intensity as William Fox, for he had taken over most of the felt plants in New England, and was reaching out for allied enterprises. Here was a treasure chest* and the bankers decided that it would be safer in their hands than in his* They promised him new financing and encour- aged him to spread out, then they began staffing, and
XIV
PROLOGUE
they had him surrounded and walled off, and in the end &e was forced to sign his properties over to them.
I got a peculiar line on this story through an old friend in Boston, who owns one of the largest paper manufacturing indus- tries in America. This gentleman thought that on points of law the jury had been mistaken in awarding $10,000,000 damages to "Jerry Walker/' and that the Supreme Court justices of Massachusetts had been justified in overthrowing this verdict for the benefit of their intimate friends and fellow club members, the great Boston bankers. But my friend said that^ there ^could be no question that there had been a bankers* conspiracy, It was a regular practice and becoming more common all the time, Said he: "It is so dangerous that I have not dared to let my business expand as it normally should, because I am afraid to owe money to the Boston banks."
I smiled, and told him of something that had happened twenty-two years back. I had been in the office of "Every- body's Magazine/' talking with R J. Ridgwty, the publisher, These were the old muckraking days, and the magazine was publishing Tom Lawson and my attacks tapon the Beef Trust, and its circulation was growing a hundred thousand a month. Ridgway was needing new carloads of paper, and was bitterly criticizing the concern w&ich furnished him paper, because It would not contract to supply the larger quantity required. **One of those moss-backs up in Boston," he said- "He inherited hits business, and hasn't got the nerve to let it grow/* To give you the full significance of that incident I must add that my friend the paper manufacturer is still head of his concern; while "Everybody's Magazine" was soon swallowed by the bankers, and Erman J* Ridgway retired into private life*
So you see that what happened to William Fox was no accident and no sporadic episode* It is a stage in the evolution of American industrial affairs. There is no longer any room in otir competitive world for the little $10,000,000 business man, nor even for the little $100,000,000 business man. It is the dty of the $1,000,000,000 giants. To sit in at this poker game, it is not: enough to have hundreds of millions in capital, you must have hundreds of millions in surplus* You must have enormous cash deposits in the great Wall Street banks, to ttse in "rigging
PROLOGUE xv
the market" You must be able to beat down the securities of your rivals. You must be able to manipulate your own stocks, driving them up and selling them, then driving them down and buying them back-
If you are an honest executive or director, you are doing these things for the benefit of your corporation, using the profits to increase the corporation's surplus; while if you are an ordinary executive or director, you are doing these things for your own profit. Have your corporation lend you money upon shaky col* lateral or none at all, and then use those funds with your inside knowledge to make a fortune for yourself,
If you are a great Wall Street banker today, you have formed a securities corporation allied with your bank, which will enable you to borrow money from your bank, and to speculate in all the securities which the banking laws of the state and nation do not allow the bank to own. If you are one of tie really big and active insiders, you have forced yourself into a position of power where you are able to intimidate other bankers, and forbid them to lend money to a certain victim whom you have marked for your own. If, for example, you come upon a Fox who owns a treasure chest—something which a Fo% has no buslne&s what- ever to be in possession of — you can take that Fox and put a brand or labd on him : "Property of the Telephone Company and the Chase National Bank. Hands Off/'
If you studied economics in college, you were taught the classic defense of capitalism. You were given the touching picture of the man who worked and saved his money and gradu- ally btiilt tip a business. You were told that he was the "entre- preneur," the one who undertook or adventured, and ran the busi- ness risks, and therefore was entitled to the profits of his great service. American civilization has been built whole out of respect for these great adventurers. The public saw business te the hands of men who had started as office boys, or laborers jta the plant, and had built tip the concern and proved tibeir ability to run it better than anybody elsej so the public bdiored that the system was sound and the claims of the capitalist justified.
But now America has come to a new stage- Bttstoess is »o longer to be left in the hands of the men who built it up. It has become too big, its financial requirements are too great, tad the
xvi PROLOGUE
business man is subject to the financier. In the moving picture industry, for example, it became necessary four or five years ago to make an enormous expansion. The "movies" gave place to the "talkies/' and new sound-proof studios had to be built by the hundred, with enormously expensive new equipment. It became necessary for 20,000 theatres in America to install sound apparatus costing $20,000 per theatre. For all this, new financ- ing was needed, and the ex-clothing merchants and proprietors of nickelodeons who had built up the moving picture industry were obliged to seek allies among the great masters of finance who have the securities and the gold in their vaults, and who are able to create hundreds of millions of new dollars by writing a memorandum on a pad.
And what more natural than that these great men, knowing their power, should look covetously upon a chain of moving pic- ture theatres with millions of patrons? What more natural than that they should think themselves better able to handle such a business than the ex-clothing merchants and proprietors of nickelodeons? The financial men have formed chains of banks-, they have taken over railroad systems and strings of power com- panies, coal mines and steel mills; the securities of these far- flung enterprises are in their vaults, deep beneath the sidewalks of Wall Street, protected by twenty layers of steel and twenty feet of concrete, and various devices in the form of electrically ' charged surfaces, water chambers, poison gas chambers, and cor- ridors in which guards are locked up all night with arrangements of mirrors whereby they can see all around the vault, and electric buttons which they are required to push every five minutes throughout the night.
In the - old days it used to be the business which got into trouble which fell into the hands of the bankers. But nowadays the bankers want all the successful businesses. They know how to run all business — or can hire experts to do it for them. All through the Middle West they are taking over the farms and reorganizing them as corporations. Their directors^ have the financial say in most of the railroads of the country, in most of the power companies, and in the great key industries. ^ So far as the motion picture industry is concerned, they have their directors on the boards of every one of the big concerns, and not one of
PROLOGUE xvii
these concerns would be running today, were it not for money furnished by Wall Street banks and investment houses. This is the new stage to which America has come; and the story of how the change has been brought about, how the wires are pulled and the snares set—you will never see it more plainly and in greater detail than in this "inside" story of Fox Film and Fox Theatres.
One final word as to my part in this narrative, There are scores of interviews and scenes here narrated, at none of which I was present, and concerning which I can give no testimony* This 5s William Fox's story as he told it to me, and my job has been to put it into literary form: to order itT select the vital parts, cut out the repetition, and clear up the obscurities by questioning my subject. Wherever there are letters, affidavits, court records* financial statements, etc., I have mentioned these sources, and am of course responsible for quoting these correctly. Also, I have here and there stated my own opinions, always making clear that they are mine. But for all the statements in the book which rest upon the authority of William Fox, he stands responsible. The manuscript has been submitted to him and the story is his. The letter which I wrote to him, embodying our understanding, declares: "It is agreed that all statements of fact which have been read and verified by you shall he made upon your authority* and that you agree to he responsible for them." The letter further- more states: "It is understood that your interest in the work is the vindication of your good name and the education of the public in the matter of present-day practices in high finance; and I am pledging myself to co-operate with you to these ends and to produce a work which will serve them/1
At the request of William Fox, I state that he has no share in the royalties from this book. He does not wish anyone to think that he is telling his story for money. Not wishing to lag behind him in altruism, I am making the book over to the Sinclair Foundation, and the royalties derived from its sale will be used for the purpose of putting1 a set of twelve vo!uraes*o£ my books into public libraries throughout the world.
REEL ONE CLOSE-UP
1 BEGIN by ''presenting" William Fox as he sat In my study presenting himself to me,
The study is a king high room — like a church, with a row of windows along the north, and open doors through which the Southern California sunshine streams in — -or if it happens to be a day of Southern California "high fog," then there are logs burning in a fireplace* William Fox sits in an old-fashioned walnut rocking-chair, the kind known as a "cradle-rocken" He has beside him a little stand for his ash tray, and his glass of water, and his orange juice or lemonade when it arrives* The stenographer sits at one side, and her fingers fly busily. Benja- min Reass, the family lawyer, listens attentively, for the most part quiet as a mouse. I sit in another rocking-chair, ten feet from my subject, and watch his every aspect and gesture, study his moods, and now and then jot down a question, I never had so long a story told to me, and there are few human beings I have watched for so many hours. If 1 cannot make him real to you, I will prove myself ill equipped for a novelist.
He is a man of my size, which is medium. He used to be stout, but the long battle wore him down, and now he Js medium again. Years ago he wore a black mustache, but now he is smooth shaven, JHe has a good Jewish nose, and a rather round face with a round dome above it* Time and hard work and worry have taken the hair off the dome, and our Southern California sunshine has made it like that of a bronze Buddha,
He is going to play golf in the afternoon* and wears a light blue coat, or sometimes a brown one, and trousers of white flannel or striped* Under his coat is a white sweater; and in an article published in "Fortune/* the magazine which caters to bankers and magnates, I read that WtUjam Fox was accustomed to appear
*"*"" 1
2 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
at directors' meetings of his companies wearing a sweater, also white socks; whereas Mr. Harold Leonard Stuart oi Halscy, Stuart & Co., the investment banker who helped to mist I'ox, invariably appears at directors' meetings wearing a carnation in his buttonhole.
Perhaps I should mention that the sweater ss of soil and fine material, and that it is always clean, Mr. Fox explains that he wears it because his doctor has told him to keep his shouWrrs warm. As to the white socks, he points out that they are free from dye and naturally more healthful, and that they offer less danger of infection.
Since this is not a treatise on hygiene, I content myself wuh remarking that when the directors of a corporation are selected for the color of their socks and the flowers in their buttonholes, it is certainly time for the stockholders of that corporation ^to look out for their own interests ; which proved to IK the case with Fox Film and Fox Theatres.
In the breast pocket of the blue coat, or the brown one, there is a row of long brown cigars, each wrapped in cellophane. At the outset of our session, my subject draws out one of these cigars, tears off the wrapper and rolls it into a little bat! and deposits it carefully in the ash tray; if it rolls off, he picks it up from the floor — from which you may conclude that he has befit well drilled by thirty-two years of domestic life. He lights the cigar and puffs it meditatively for a while, theft he starts lo talk, After a, few minutes, the cigar goes out, and he strikes a match, lights it again, gives a few more puffs, and then forgets it again, This continues all through our session of three or four hours, and at the end the cigars are gone from the pocket and the stubs are in the ash tray.
Our subject has many funny stories, and enjoys telling them. One records how he was temporarily cured of the tobacco habit by no less a personage than Carry Nation* It appears that at the height of her hatchet-wielding career, the old lady from Kansas visited New York, and William Fox engaged her for a thret-a- day vaudeville performance at a salary of $3,000 a week* She was a great hit, and everything was lovely, until she came into the office of the theatre magnate. Says the magnate;
"When I was introduced, I took the cigar out of my motithf
CLOSE-UP 3
and four huge cigars which were in my pocket were visible to the eyes of Mrs. Nation, I said I was pleased to meet her. She said ; 'I'm not pleased to meet you at all* I will not appear on that stage again. I will not work for a man who is an habitual tobacco fiend/ Of course, I was shocked at the idea of losing our stage performer, so I said that I would quit smoking. She said 1 couldn't ever stop smoking, I said : *I give you my word I will never light another cigar for twelve months/ I threw the rest of my cigars away, and Mrs. Nation resumed her lecturing. I ate more candy in the first three of those twelve months thaa ever before, and it was not until November 17, 1910, that I again had a cigar in my mouth ; hut I have had one there ever since/*
IJttJe Will Fox grew up, as you shall presently hear, in a rear tenement on the East Side of New York* He left school and went to work to help support his brothers and sisters at the age of eleven. Therefore, you will not be surprised if I tell you that he is not always impeccable in his use of the English language. Sometimes when he is not on his guard, he will say* "I seen it/* or, "I done it," and frequently he will mix a tense or a declension. A person who spends a good part of his life in the study of words notices these things; but 1 take them as part of the local color of an East Side boy. It may, however, have seemed different to the elegant arid cultured New York bankers with the carnations in their buttonholes; children of Fifth Avenue in its old fash- ionable days, or of Madison Avenue with its dignity and reserve ; boys who had been to Groton and St. Mark's, and then to Har- vard or Princeton or Yak, They would invite this grown-up East Side Jewish boy to luncheon at the Bankers* Oub or to dinner at the Metropolitan Club for business conferences, but their wives would not appreciate him, and he would never belong* to their inner circle of fashionable culture. I have been in those circles on a few occasions, and can hear the matrons whispering over their teacups, and the old dowagers tittering1 while the cards are being dealt at bridge. **My dear, can you imagine — he says insipid when he means insignificant 'The amount is too insipid to be discussed!*1*
I came to New York at the age of eight or nine and went to a public school on the East Side, and played with a swarm boy® just like little Wffl Fox, so I know every tone of Ms
4 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
and every peculiarity of his accent. We New York boys said "becauss" ; we said "seccatary," If we had occasion to use such a long word. Wishing to convey to you our manner of swallow- ing our consonants, I pick one phrase; **a thousan' 'ollas.'* lou must say that phrase rapidly, with your mind upon the supreme importance of the "thousan* 'ollas," the things you could do with it if you could get it There were no movies in those ^days, but they came before long, and we called them "fiH-ums." To me this word is touched with the hues of romance! the emotional tone which attaches itself to events of our lives as they recede into the mists of the distance. It may be that I met little Will Fox in those far-off golden days. He used to sell candy in Central Park, and I used to play all over that park, and many times bought candy in little packages wrapped in pink and blue
thing as a "passenger"
there be such a thing as a "Iozenger'7 Of course! ^
Maybe I paid him a penny, and maybe he took it home and dropped it into his little tin bank; presently, after a month or two, there was a dollar or more, and he took it and ptit it in a savings bank at 3 per cent. Presently there was $100» and he was a capitalist, ready to engage in business ventures* Some of these ventures were funny and some of them were tragic, but all of them are full of the spirit of New York, of the desperate urgency to get ahead, to climb out on top.
William Fox never played and he seldom rested. He learned to work all day and most of the night, and to sleep in snatches when he could, and he came out of it with a strong constitution
v and the energy of a great dynamo*
V "Mr. Sinclair, he was a slave," said Mrs. Pox ; "and the only
/way I could ever have a husband was to go and be a slave with him. We hardly ever got home from the studio before 3 o'clock in the morning, and the canary bird Jn our home adjusted iff hours and sang for us at whatever hour we returned/*
He knew every detail of his business, no matter how vast it
\became. He knows it, no matter how far back into the distance it recedes. He can tell you how much money he made in the "lozenger" business, and how much he stood to lose when hit
CLOSE-UP 5
sandwich business was ruined by a wind storm on the day of Admiral Dewey's welcome to New York. He knows the price he paid for every theatre in the Fox Theatres chain, and how much Mrs. Fox spent for the decorations. He knows these things as ! know the contents of each of my forty volumes, and how many copies they sold. I quote his own statement ;
"My business career — I was as devoted to it as you are to your literary careen For more than thirty years 1 avoided carrying a watch. I never wanted to know what time it was. My day ended when my day's work was completed. Again and again, I didn't go to bed at all during the twenty- four hours. There was work to do. I was working not only for myself but to help others. I had an ambition to build this monumental insti- tution. From a humble beginning, from a scholar at school who hated geography, ! had developed a business so that the flag of the company was flying in every civilized and uncivilized country in the world. My affairs were so organized that at the end of the day, whenever the time arrived, there was never a pipce of paper on my desk for the following day.
"I was acquainted with every story that was selected by my companies. I read every story they ever produced, I made suggestions in the majority of the stories produced by our com- panies. In the early years 1 wrote most of the scenarios* No picture ever produced by the Fox Film Corporation was per- mitted to be viewed by the general public, until every title it contained had been approved and passed by me, and I don't remember a single picture ever made by the company that the titles contained therein were not corrected, edited and rewritten by me, I always bragged of the fact that no second of those contained in the twenty- four hours ever passed but that the name of William Fox was on the screen, being exhibited in some theatre in some part of the world,
**! knew the condition of every nation we traded with, I knew the value of every currency of every nation we traded with. I thought I knew the politics of every nation we traded with. No question could arise that by a push of a button could not be answered from the extensive files that I had adjoining my office. I had it completely systematized, so that I knew every that was made throughout the organisation.
6 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
"The number of theatres controlled by the companies that I was at the head of in the United States alone was more than 800. Early each morning I knew the exact number of people that attended the performances the day before. 1 knew the number that entered that building every hour, and just as soon as one o£ these buildings showed the slightest inclination towards the falling off of receipts, I was able to send for the executive of that theatre and rearrange the policy to prevent it from making a km.
"It was always a charge that the Fox organization was a one- man organization. That was never said as a compliment to ;m% but as a criticism. They were right when they said that It is a fact that if all the executives of the organization gathered to continue the business in case I died or became disabled, they would have had a problem on their hands. If they had produced the knowledge that each had and pieced it all together, they wouldn't have understood that which was continuously being generated in my brain. That is best illustrated in the fact that after I had sold out, and the bankers captured all the executives of the cor- porations, the business crumbled, disappeared and melted away* They provided these companies with millions* but the mtUions were of no avail."
This is, you perceive, an autocrat speafckg. We Irre intidef an industrial autocracy, and get our work done that way* Wllliiuw Fox was called egotistical ; but my feeling Is that if a ffl&n CM do something, he generally knows that he can do it, and It is sensible for him to say so, and hypocrisy not to say so. If you had asked Napoleon if he knew how to command an army, he would have answered just as William Fox answered If you should ask Bernard Shaw if he knows how to write a play, you would get the same sort of response.
Worry and strain have made William Fox impatient:, and delay and obstructions are intolerable to Mm. Mr. Benjamin Reass* his fidus Achates, is the kindest and sweetest little gentle- man who erer practiced corporation law in New York, but hit mind is not geared to the terrific tempos of the FOK dynamo* Sometimes he is asked for a name or a date ; or perhaps he is required to produce a dopy of Fox Theatres balance sheet f0r I928y and he is sure it is down at the hotel, while feis employer thinks it is in the suitcase on the table* When these two {pet t«t*>
CLOSE-UP 7
an argument, it is exactly as if they were married. "Ben, dear!" Mr, Fox exclaims, and the amount of emphasis on the "dear" is proportioned to the intensity of his irritation.
He has a keen sense of humor, and a quick mind which gets instantly whatever you say. Now and then in his narrative I interpose some remark, perhaps a bit of sarcasm bom of my inside knowledge of the big business game ; he favors me with a glance, a twinkle of the eye — and then repeats my words so that they will go into the record. His face is mobile and expressive, and I get a good part of his story there. He begins quietly, speak- ing in measured tones for the benefit of the stenographer. Some- times he goes on like that for an hour, recording figures and facts ; but then comes some part of his story which appeals to bis sense of humor, and his face wears a schoolboy grin ; or he is exposing some rascality, and his lips curl with scorn. Warming up to his job, he gets up and begins to pace back and forth. We have to arrange the furniture so that he has a stamping ground, and will not upset the little stand with the cigar ashes and the glass of water.
His voice rises. He is in the presence of his enemies, and he clenches his hands, and you think of him as a creature more dangerous than a fox, He talks more rapidly — until suddenly he stops and glances at the stenographer and says, "Too fast, young lady ?" — but soon he is going on as fast as ever- When his fighting mood is roused, he orates to our HttJe company of three as if we were the 16,000 stockholders of Fox Film and Fox The- atres— or perhaps the hundreds of taUIioos of Fox patrons all over the world.
! pointed out to him that if I was to make a real job of this book, he must think of me as a family lawyer, about to defend him in a libel suit which involved his whole career, and in which his enemies would have the right to put him on the stand* I asked him every question I could think of, and he answered without hesitation* He took me into the intimacies of his family life and told me his griefs and agonies* He invited me to meet his wife, and I questioned her for six hours, everything about husband from their first meeting when she was ten. Six was too long for politeness, but I forgot the time, like her husband whea I have a job to do-
8 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
He is a man of intense feeling, and it was an ordeal to htm to live over again that series of agonies- Many times his voice trembled, and once he broke down completely. He was telling me about the sufferings of his wife at the height of his trouble. She had been grievously ill out at their home on Long Island, and he was kept in the city day and night for many weeks, getting only a couple of hours' sleep out of twenty-four. It was at one of the most desperate moments of his struggle, he thought he was ruined, and was all but overwhelmed by the mass of slanders which had been poured out upon him. He was ill, and so came the anniversary of his wedding, which happens to be also his birthday and the birthday of the new year. He went home, and when he told me of his wife, and how she appeared* and what happened between them, his voice tegan to break, and he began sobbing, and had to walk up and down for a long time to get himself together.
Afterwards he was ashamed of this, and apologised ; but I told him that I also had had troubles, some of which I would not care to rehearse. As a matter of fact, although I am of Anglo- Saxon descent, I am more like the Jews in my willmgncss to tell my troubles. I have put them into books, and the reserved and aloof Anglo-Saxon critics have rebuked me sternly. But if seems to me that we don't stay so long in this mysterious world t and possibly are not of such importance as we think. If we can help one another, and inform and guide one another, by telling our blunders and the penalties we have paid for them— that is far better than locking ourselves up in an ivory tower, and con- templating the image of our own dignity.
When William Fox is in repose, the lines of his face drop down, and you see that he is a tired and stricken man. The memory of his long ordeal haunts him and goads him. He has lost the one thing in his life which stood first to him, and try as he will, he cannot make anything else take its place* He teUs me that he found bis first happiness in telling his story to me* He takes me not merely as a father confessor, but as a judge who will set him right to the world, I told him that he overestimated my power; he answered that he had come to me because he knows me to be an honest writer* It is not merely that he wants his name cleared, but that his sense of justice is outraged; he
CLOSE-UP 9
cannot understand how such a monstrous evil as a credit con- spiracy could be carried through in America. This, of course, is what appeals to me, and not the individual misfortunes and suf- ferings of William Fox.
"Mr, Sinclair," said tny subject at our first meeting, "I want you to understand that this is not a hard-luck story ; I have more money than I know what to do with." And that was not boasting, but a statement of significance, in its bearing upon the mind of my subject, and also upon the mind of America, of which he is a part. This wary and hard-fighting "Fox"— he likes to play with his own name— got away with $20,000,000 of his enemies* money; they had to pay that in cash to get him loose from his properties. In addition, he has valuable real estate in many cities, and talking picture patents which may some day make him the richest man in the world. And money is convenient ; with large sums, a man can provide for his loved ones a beautiful home in the country, and one in the city, a private railroad car and a fleet of auto- mobiles. But still William Fox is not happy* I had some photo- graphs taken of him by my friend Odiorne, a sleight-of-hand artist who keeps you entertained and busy, and changes his plates and squeezes his bulb so fast that he gets your moods before you know you have them* I picked one of these portrait studies, because it gives you the sadness in its subjects face, and lets you see the marks of the conflict.
When William Fox is in the bosom of his family, he can forget for a while ; but when he is at his desk, he is miserable, and when he lies down to sleep, he broods over the thing he has lost, and to which he gave his lifetime and name. He learned to make moving pictures; he learned to manage theatres in which these pictures could be shown ; he had strings of these theatres all over the United States. He had distributing agendas ineytgt. country in the world* He waft tummg ,out & motion picture every week to keep these theatres busy and perhaps a hundred million people every week were,,seekig Ks" pn>dfK^* and payli^g Wrii money to be used in making more pictures* and in buyin| more theatres, and in building up this tremendous entertainment machine.
This was his life. It was hi* work and Ms pla^r £fae sion of his personality, Presently I ttell ahowjEQji Bcrnaspd
10 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
Baruch a man who had the spending of some $17,000^,000 for the allies during the World War, looking over the nnancial statements of this entertainment machine and exclaiming; "Why, this is a pot of gold!" It was too rich a pot to be left in the hands of one man, a Jewish boy who had been bora m a ""aft? m Htmgary and raised in a slum tenement of the East Side of New York, There gathered around him the elegant and cultured gentlemen of Wai! Street, with the carnations in their buttcm- holes, and they put a whole battery of machine guns against his head, and held him up and took away from him the control of that business. When they took it over, it represented a book value of two or three hundred million dollars. They looted it of more than a hundred million in two years, and haw brought it to a condition where, as I write, its value is abotit $10IDOO»000> and bankruptcy is just around the comer,
WiHiam Fox sits with the recent financial statawwts of the Fox Film Corporation and the Foot Theatres Corpon^ioii m Ml hands, and on h5s face is that look of grief. He finds so maliciow pleasure in the fact that his enemies have been unable to rtm bis machine. On the contrary, his voice trembles* and there Is a trace of tears in his eyes, "Look, Mr. Sinclair! Just todkl'1— mA he shows me how the surpluses have disappeared, mad kys fotre the tricks by which rascalities have been hidden.
There is another aspect of William Fox which must not be overlooked, and that is his religion. He comes back to it again and again. He is not an orthodox Jew, but has "sublime faith in God," and believes in the direct guidance of Providence. He told me how, when he was a cWld, and when the Fox family was hungry, an old butcher trusted little Will for meat, and how Kttite Win promised to repay him by taking care of him in his did age, and carried out that promise. After telling me this story, the grown-up Will added: "Do you mean to tell me that Gad dlAoft give the butcher the idea to give me that meat because He knew that he was going to be taken care of? That was God*i way/'
The present-day William Fox, of course, understands thmt this point of view is considered out of date among the intelligent- sia* He suspected that I would not share his tfaeol<v ^ , and per- sisted in impressing it upon me- Said he :
CLOSE-UP 1 1
"During any calamity that befell me, it always was made clear to me that it wasn't any ability that I possessed that straightened me out again, but it was God Himself who came to my rescue. At the time when my enemies had me down, I read the Bible* and by the passages 1 came upon it was clearly indicated to me that He who wrote this Bible foresaw what was going to happen to me, and saw how it was going to come out ; that there was nothing new in this bankers1 crusade to take my business away from me. Perhaps there was not a description of my particular case, but a general description. I think the Bible shows you clearly what you ought to do and how to save yourself, I intend to show you passages that gave me a clear vision that my diffi- culties would come straight in the end. Of course, I presume God knows which side is right,"
Setting aside questions of external fact, and considering merely those of psychology, it is obvious that a man who goes out to do battle in the world, convinced that he has God behind him, guiding his destiny — such a man will be a more formidable foe than one who relies upon his own powers alone. It will be less easy to discourage him; and the New York bankers who undertook to plunder William Fox may be interested to know why he proved so tough and tenacious, Oddly enough, Mr- Harley L* Clarke, the Chicago utilities magnate who took over his properties, considers himself a devout Christian Scientist, and so one branch of theology was pitted against another.
I would hesitate to deprive any warrior of his shield and buckler, m the questions ! asked William Fox were intended not to weaken his faith in a persona! Providence, but merely to make him plain to you* He explained:
**The mere fact that a man prays to accomplish a thing that is wrong — he is just wasting his time to expect God to hdp him in that That is fair to assume, isn't it? Wall, as I have been taught* He likes the idea of your believing in Him and praying to Him and praising Him, He never can hear too much of that/'
I asked whether this idea of God did not seem to involve a certain human weakness in His personality, a desire to have the attention of human beings. The answer was ;
'Well, I don't think praise in that sense, as you have Just described it, is the praise God expects. Hie praise that a
12 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
expects is vanity, I don't think God is vain, and ! don1! think that Is the reason He likes to have you praise Him, Two men are in a business deal, the one perfectly honest and the other a thief, I consider the prayers of the thief in vain. 1 would like to give you proof that there is a Supreme God, and that when you pray to Him to give you the right thing, He helps you. 1 have had very conclusive proof of it in my life.'1
I pointed out that controversies in men's affairs are same- times complicated. There is right and wrong on each side, and it might be a little difficult for even God to make a choice. But William Fox would not have it so,
"One man in the deal almost always knows he is wrong. Where we all get confused in this religious subject is that some- times you are right, and you pray to God to help you get out of difficulties, and He doesn't, and you think your prayer hasn't been answered, I prayed the Lord not to let these men take my business away from me, I felt at that time that God had not answered my prayer. But I wait, and a year or two later I find that it was answered. The average fellow that sits down and prays, says: 'Well, I prayed this morning, but I didn't get any answer this morning'— he may get it later. If Harley L. Qarke and I both prayed at the same time, the day he bought me out of business he said, Thank you, dear God, You haw an&wettd my prayer1 ; and I probably said, 'Dear Qod, 1 have prayed hard, and here You have destroyed me, You have taken this thing I have built up, and given it to Harley L, Clarke.* But two years later we find Fox in comfort, while Qarke is entirely mined* having started out with the wrong Idea in his mind* When we look back now, we see God answered the right prayer/'
For myself, I cannot claim to know enough about this uni- verse to make assertions about its moral purposes and ultimate causes. But William Fox has his opinions, which are of great importance to him, and therefore are part of his story*
So you see him, a serious man, who will produce serious and moral pictures, such as "A Foo! There Was/' "Thou Shalt Not Steal/' "The Walls of Jericho," and "The Honor System*1 ; also sentimental pictures such as "My Mamie Rose/' and "Mother Machree" and "Mother Knows Best/' and "Over the Hill" to touch the people's hearts and moral feelings. He will «mke it t
CLOSE-UP 13
rule of his company that any rabbi, priest, or clergyman may have any Fox film free of charge at any time for showing in any synagogue, church or Sunday school, any hospital, orphan asylum, or home for the aged. He will dream a wonderful dream of hav- ing the twelve greatest preachers preach their greatest sermons before a sound apparatus, and having these reproduced in a hundred thousand churches all over the world. He will not often please the highbrows and the art-for-art's sakers; neither will his name ever be whispered in connection with any of the numerous female stars he employs. On the contrary, he will be a family man and a good citizen, a Republican in national affairs and a Democrat in New York City affairs, and he will raise millions for the Red Cross in war time, and give away millions of his own money in peace time— he will assert that throughout his whole life he has given 20 per cent of his working time and not less than 20 per cent of his earnings to the service of others.
REEL TWO SHOE-BLACKING AND LOZENGERS
WILLIAM FOX was born in the village of Tulchva in Hungary. His parents were of German descent. His father ran a general merchandising store, and as a side line he~ extracted J£gj|i. He advertised that he was a painless dentist, guaranteeing that no one would feel the pain of tooth extraction. The patient would sit in a chair and strip himself to the waist, and at the crucial moment someone would touch him with a hot iron on the bade, and this would be so painful that the extraction of the tooth would not be noticed. When he came to America, he was not permitted to practice this form of dentistry, but he kept the extracting instruments, and his son often saw them.
Little Will never saw the village in which he was born, because his mother brought him to America at the age of nine months. He has never revisited the place, but years ago he sent *a cameraman to take moving pictures of it, and invited his family and friends to a showing. It was forty-eight years after the elder Fox had left the village, but he said that it looked exactly the same, there had not been a new house built.
^herdd-er -Eoxxam-e to- America to look for his brother, who had come over ten years previously, and had suddenly stopped writing. Th& father searched for him in America for ttt&ny years, but never found him, and never learned what had happened to him. The father found it possible to earn a living in America, so the mother sold the merchandising business and brought her baby to this new world. There she gave birth to twelve other children, of whom two boys and three girls are now living. The father learned the trade of machinist, and worked at it until William Fox arrived at manhood. During all this period, his earnings were never more than a thousand dollars a year.
The first home that little Will remembers is a place on Stanton
14
SHOE-BLACKING AND LOZENGERS 15
Street between Columbia and Sheriff, adjoining the Sheriff Street public school. Little Will attended that school from the age of six. The home was in a rear tenement, an extra building stuck on the back part of the lot, excluding almost all the light and air. What little yard was left had a tall pole in the center of it, and to this pole there were pulleys attached, and from the windows of each tenement ran clotheslines, and from these clotheslines dangled the sheets and bedding of the Fox family and the shirts and underclothing of little Will. The toilet was downstairs and so was the pump, and the family's water had to be carried up in buckets. I can recall visiting such tenements in my boyhood, because we had our washing done there and our clothes dried by this device of pulleys and ropes, and sometimes we would go there to seek a new washerwoman.
I arrived in this world 103 days ahead of William Fox, and if I seem to take charge of him in this book, you may attribute It to this advantage of seniority. We exchanged reminiscences of old days in New York, and one of them was the blizzard of 1888. I remember the snow drifted up to the second story windows, and romping in these drifts with my father and being thrown in. head first. What little Will remembers is that at that time his father was out of a job, and had conceived the idea of support- ing his family by manufacturing stove blacking in the home. It was Will's job to trudge up and down the stairs of tenements, tapping on doors and selling stove blacking to his customers at 5 cents per can. To have the stove well blacked was important to the family dignity, because the kitchen served as the dining room, and also as a reception room for guests. As a rule, there was an inside bedroom or possibly two of such. For a year and a half little Will had been selling stove blacking, and now at the age of nine the blizzard put an end to his business, because it was a week or more before a little boy could travel about the streets.
So then came the business of selling "lozengers," 1 cent a package, or six for 5, with a riddle inside each package. A good place to sell them was at the foot of the Third Street dock, where the excursion boats used to leave. Afterwards, when you had built up the business, you could afford ten cents car-fare to take you up to Central Park and back. The child is father to
16 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
tie man, and you will see little Will at the age of ten fore- shadowing the great captain of industry. He has enlisted the aid . of boys in the neighborhood in the lozenger business. These boys have no capital to buy lozengers, but Will furnishes the capital and pays them a commission on their sales. So now he is a con- tractor, with a string of boys under his orders.
The business was a nuisance in the parks, because the people would throw away the pink and green and blue wrappers of the lozengers; so the Park Department decided to do away with the peddling. But somehow they failed to convey notice of this decision to the kid contractor on Stanton Street. What they did was to send policemen one day and arrest all the peddlers. This included the troop of Will Fox, and because they had no money for bail, they were kept all night in the station house, and next day made their appearance in the 57th Street Magistrate's Court. The parents of the other boys had obtained attorneys to repre- sent them, but the elder Fox did not know what to do, since no member of his family had ever been arrested before; so he brought his family physician with him.
One by one the parents were summoned before the magis- trate, and one by one they stated that they hadn't known what their boys were doing. It had been the contractor who employed the boys and was responsible. "The contractor/' always "the con- tractor." So finally the magistrate said, "Let's have this contrac- tor here/* The answer was, the contractor was before him. The magistrate's desk was high, and he had to rise up and peer over -the top to see the tiny figure of Will Fox gazing up at him. He took one glance, and then said : "Case dismissed. Go home and keep out of the parks." Little Will went home, and after that he kept out of the parks — when the police were looking. The business was an important one, for during the summertime he would earn as much as $10 or $12 a week.
At- the^age of eleven, little Will quit school and took a job with a clothing 1ite^He,contMtted at night' school until he was fourteen. But there were some kinds of education wHch he had decided did not interest him. He could not see, for example, any use in geography — having no idea that some day he would have a selling agency in every country in the world, and would need to know the seating capacity of the theatres in Bangkok, and how
SHOE-BLACKING AND LOZENGERS 17
many milreis, rupees, pesos or piastres it took to make a dollar. He decided that what he needed above everything else was arithmetic. He would have to do that in his head and do it quickly. He became so expert that he would trade answers to questions in geography for answers in arithmetic.
The elder Fox was orthodox, and sent his sons to the "cheder" to learn Hebrew and religious doctrine. It was taught by a little old man, sturdily built, about sixty years of age, with a white beard; he was severe and brutal, and if a boy missed an answer, he would rap him with a walking cane. He was supposed to be representing God, but little Will did not consider this a Godlike method. Class was conducted in the German language, and Hebrew texts were learned by heart and translated into German and explained. The school was In a tenement-house basement, the teacher's home, and there were twenty or more boys in the class. The mature William Fox, looking back upon this teacher, says : "I should classify him as a very stupid, ignorant man. The only thing he knew was what he was trying to teach his scholars/'
On his thirteenth birthday, the orthodox Jewish boy is con- firmed, and takes his sins upon his own conscience, relieving his father of this burden. On his thirteenth birthday, little Will had a responsible position. He was working for the clothing firm of D. Cohen & Sons, and had charge of cutting the linings. There were twelve men and boys working under him — in short, he was foreman of the lining-cutters. He was tall for his age, and he managed to get by by saying he was sixteen years old and acting the part. But now here was a problem. He had to be excused from work for a day, and if he stated why, all Jewish people would know that he was only thirteen years old. So he decided that it was necessary for him to become ill, and two days ahead he began to develop a sore throat. Mr. Cohen, a tall, stoop- shouldered old gentleman with a grey beard, was very kind, and took an interest in his youthful foreman, and Insisted on going out and buying him a bottle of medicine, and seeing that he gargled his throat with it. It was terrible medicine, and little Will did not enjoy the ordeal — nor did It help his throat. The next day he was much worse, and so the boss told him. to stay at home and rest up.
Quite recently the grown-up Will met in New York a man
18 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
who reminded him of having been let in on this grave secret: the tailor who cut the little grey frock coat which thirteen year old culprit wore in the synagogue while taking his sras upon his own shoulders. Presumably the sin of deceiving his kind boss was not included in the accounting, because this deception had been practiced two days previously, and would, therefore, rest upon the conscience of little Will's father, who did not know about it No doubt the old teacher at the cheder could have found somewhere in the Talmud a text covering that detail of casuistry.
I asked for a description of Cohen's place of business and was told: "It was a three-story building. There was no elevator, and only a hatchway for the goods. We were obliged to pull them up by rope and that was not an easy task either. Of course there was no telephone. Orders had to be placed in person or by mail. There was no stenographer or typewriter. AH letters and bills were written by pen and ink. The first floor was the sales room, the second floor the stock room, and the third floor the cutting room. From here the contractors would take the work out to their shops to be made into garments. I started working there when about eleven, and worked until I was fifteen. The highest wage was about $8."
This was his life : he walked to work, an hour's walk, leaving his house at 6 in the morning; he worked from 7 to 12, took thirty minutes for lunch, then worked from 12:30 to 6:30, and then marched home, having his dinner at 7 :30. After dinner he went to the, night school about a block from his home. Concerning all this he says : "I was reaching for a goal, and I enjoyed every moment of it."
The reason he worked so hard was because he watched his father, and was dissatisfied with the progress his father was making. The father had remained a workingman, and was con- tent to remain a workingman' all his life. Says the son ;
"My father was perfectly happy. He was just as happy when he worked as when he didn't work. He never worried. He was very proud of my success. But long before I had reached the point of success, he was perfectly happy and contented. I never heard the man complaining about anything in my life. When I came home and told him that the butcher and baker had refused to trust us any more during the period he was out of work, he
SHOE-BLACKING AND LOZENGERS 19
was sure that tomorrow would be all right, or that the butcher and baker would most likely change their minds."
It was the mother who did the worrying for the family ; you can imagine that, bearing thirteen children and losing seven of them, she had plenty of worrying to do. During the out of work periods, she helped to support the family. Her occupation was sewing slippers for a manufacturer who sent them to the home. It was because of her and through her teaching that the oldest son learned to carry responsibility. From the age of ten, when he began to earn money, he helped to keep the family in comfort, and has done that now for forty-three years, though I could not get him to tell me much about it.
As a boy, Will was not interested in religion ; he was inter- ested in making money and getting ahead. But his father was stern, and insisted that he should pray, and so he learned to pray. On his thirteenth birthday, he was greatly impressed by the con- firmation ceremony, and the fact that he was taking his sins onto his own conscience. From that time on, he did his own praying, and he watched the results, and made note of the fact that when he asked God for anything, God always gave it to him — if it was a good thing for him to have. If God didn't give it to him, he knew it was because it was not a good thing for him to have, and so he stopped praying for it. God gave hy^a^deyoted wife, whow, has been his helpmate and guide for more than thiTty^years. ^God gave him two lovely daughters, and, in due course, gave each of them a lovely son. God gave him continuous and expanding pros- perity, and both he and his wife proved their gratitude by being generous to their relatives and friends, and charitable to the poor.
A vital part in the life story of William Fox is the story of little JEye^L^o. It was an odd coincidence that a Fox should have married a Lioness; they both of them make puns upon this coincidence. I shall tell you much about Mrs. Fox as we go on. I have to tell now the story of the first meeting of Will and Eve when she was ten and he was fourteen. It seems that Will's mother gave a party for her children on Thanksgiving. They had moved now to a better neighborhood and had six rooms in a tenement on Rivington Street, and Will no longer had to carry the water up from the basement.
Little Eve's father was a clothing manufacturer, and some-
20 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
what higher in social station than the German-speaking machinist named Fox. But she came to the party, and when she entered the room, she was introduced to a number of splendid young gentlemen dressed in the costumes of knights and courtiers and Spanish grandees, hired from a costumer's in the neighborhood. It was tremendously impressive to a child, and she seated herself shyly in a corner and gazed with wide-open eyes at the fairy- story scene ; when suddenly there entered a ragamuffin with torn clothing and dirty face and a bootblack's kit over his shoulder. This was just as real to Eve as the knights and courtiers and grandees, and, of course, she was displeased with the little raga- muffin. When he presumed to come up to her and start shining her shoes, her dignity was offended. She was about to order him away, when someone whispered into her ear that this was the son of the host, and that he was not really a bootblack, but a foreman of lining-cutters. As for this foreman, he looked over the girls in their pretty dresses, and decided that there was only one for him, and he has not changed that opinion in forty years. When he was fifteen, Will took on another occupation. He purchased a stock of umbrellas and kept them in the house, and on rainy evenings' lie would rush to the theatres, and sell his umbrellas to the ladies who were coming out and did not want their bonnets and clothing ruined.
Also he found a form of play — at least an occupation which was at once play and work. He met a boy somewhat older than himself, who suggested the idea of embarking upon a theatrical career. Will had become -a- devotee of the drama; he had made the discovery that storekeepers who put announcements of shows in their windows got a couple of tickets in exchange, and if they did not care for the theatre, would sell the tickets for five or ten cents. So after Will quit night school, he would go to the theatre, and he and Cliff Gordon watched Weber and Fields, the burlesque comedians, then at the London Theatre on the Bowery, and they conceived an act in imitation of this pair.
Cliff was taller than Will, and a little cross-eyed, but a very charming boy. He played Fields, and Will played Weber, and I asked the grown-up Will if he could tell me any of the jokes that they gave in those performances. Here are two samples, which you may judge for yourself :
SHOE-BLACKING AND LOZENGERS 21
Said Will : Someone wanted to buy my blind horse.
Said Cliff : No one would buy that.
Said Will: Why do you say that? Ikey offered me $200 for him yesterday.
Said Cliff : Why, he hasn't got two cents.
Said Will : I know, but wasn't it a good offer ?
The other joke was as follows:
Said Cliff: I am having a lot of trouble with my wife. Every morning when I open my eyes she asks me for money. One morning it was $1, then $2, until this morning she asked me for $10.
Said Will: What does she do with the money?
Said Cliff : I don't know — I never give her any,
They gave this act on a number of occasions in connection with dances, and they got anywhere from $5 to $10 a night, and divided it. Two of these occasions stand out in the mind of the grown-up Will. One was at Bayonne, New Jersey, and after completing the performance — which was as bad as usual, or pos- sibly worse — they took off their grease-paint, and Cliff became engaged in dancing, and when the dance was over, they awoke to the discovery that the man in charge had disappeared with the money; It was midnight and they had not a cent in their pockets. They walked from Bayonne to Jersey City, quite a distance, and at 6 o'clock in the morning there was a stretch of water between them and their jobs. How to get across was the question; and you will note the ready wits which servefd to make Will Fox a many times over millionaire. He managed to get hold of a piece of cardboard and a piece of string, and to borrow a pencil. He wrote the word "Blind" on the cardboard, and tied it around Cliff's neck, and the two of them took up their seats at the ferry entrance. The fare was two cents at that time, and before many ferry-boats had arrived and departed, they had four cents and were on their way to New York.
The other notable engagement took place at Arlington Hall on the East Side, and was an entertainment and dance for the benefit of "Spike" Hennessey, a well-known prize-fighter who had developed consumption. When the two actors arrived in front of the hall, they noticed a big three page picture of "Spike" in his prime, and Will turned to Cliff in alarm and said : "If that
22 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
bird is in here, we are going to get a licking." (That is how the grown-up Will tells the story, but I am not sure if we used the word "bird" in those days; we said "bloke.")
Anyway, Will decided that if he was going to take a licking from "Spike" Hennessey, he would have to be paid first. Cliff said it couldn't be done, but after Will insisted, Cliff finally pro- duced $5 which he had received that afternoon, his week's wages as messenger boy for the telegraph company.
They did their act, and there was very little applause, and a few hisses. Will left the building with all his grease-paint and everything on, and walked home just as fast as he could. Apparently the report that "Spike's" lungs were bad was incor- rect, for he had plenty of energy for Cliff. Said "Spike," "You ruined the whole show," and punched him in one of his eyes and blacked it. When Cliff arrived home with one eye and no money, and told his father what had happened, his father punched the other eye and blacked that. It is characteristic of Will Fox that, having driven a shrewd bargain and got his money, his heart was touched by his friend's plight, and he gave him back his $5.
That ended the career of Will Fox as a professional actor. Cliff Gordon afterwards became what is called a "classic." He was the foremost German-speaking comedian in this country, and began producing shows and made quite a success. The acting had been his idea, and he had tried his best to pass on his talents to Will, but in vain.
REEL THREE PRETZELS AND BUFFALO PANS
AT this stage in the life of little Will Fox, he shared the fate -£A* of many an East Side Jewish boy and found out about Socialism. I will let him tell this adventure in his own wards.
, "Between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, I w^.g.jSpcialist. The leader of the Socialist party in "New York at that time was a man by the name of DeLeon. I knew him very well and was his follower, and during the elections of those three years I stood on the soap-boxes and made speeches. In my mind I was satisfied that the system then in operation was wrong, and that the proper social system of the world should be socialistic. I despised both capital and capitalists. Of course, this was during the period when I had as yet not been able to save a single dollar, and my earnings were just sufficient from hand to mouth. Then came the beginning of my savings, and finally in my penny bank I lound myself one day the possessor of $10 in change, with which I opened my bank account.
t( Among my friends and acquaintances, who were likewise struggling and just earning enough from hand to mouth, I had failed to mention that I was opening a bank account. I knew that if I had $10, the proper thing for me to do was not to hide it in the bank but to divide it with my friends. Instead I kept adding to this account, until I had $100 in the bank — and to me that $100 looked like a large percentage of the capital of the world. After that I couldn't make as fine an address on a soap- box. The things that I used to say from this soap-box were contrary to what I was practicing, and the larger my savings grew, the further was I getting away from rny socialistic prin- ciples.
"Then I observed this — that my friends and comrades with whom I was associating socially, and who were earning about
23
24 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
the same wage as I, and whose responsibilities were no fewer than mine, were freely spending that which they were earning, while I was denying myself many things. Therefore, I had a sur- plus each week and was putting it in the bank. Then it occurred to me that we were not equal; that they could also have saved some money, and I began to see the distinction between these different people. As my fund grew larger, one day I found myself the possessor of $500. Of course, up to this time I hadn't cast a Vote— I was a talking Socialist, not a voting one. When my time came to cast my first vote, I was a capitalist. My views had been changed entirely. I then found my political views as fol- lows : for local politics, I was a Democrat, which is the usual thing in the City of New York, and for national politics, I was a Republican/'
The grown-up Will Fox told me this story with a twinkle in his eye. He had an idea somehow that he was teasing me. Yet at the same time I know that he respects me because of my con- victions which I have held to. And, oddly enough, he is anxious that I should not consider him a hide-bound conservative. Later on I shall tell you about his ideas on social reconstruction. ^ Sev- eral times while he was telling them to me, he remarked : "You see, Mr. Sinclair, I have not forgotten entirely what I learned from Daniel DeLeon." The truth is that, like most Americans, he has water-tight compartments in his brain. He can admire and ardently defend Herbert Hoover, and at the same time hold quite sincerely some enlightened ideas on social planning.
At the age of fifteen, Will began working for a concern called G. Lippman & Sons, and here is his story about it :
"Old man Lippman had the reputation for forty years or longer of having always been on time to open the factory and always the last man out at night. He opened the door in the morning and locked it at night. He had a large clock in the center of this loft which was about 100 by 200 feet. He had a shrieky voice. He would wait until it was 7 o'clock and then he would yell the word Time !' That was the signal to begin work. One morning we were ready to go upstairs, but Lippman had not arrived yet. Everybody was perfectly happy about it and having a regular picnic. We all went upstairs, adjusted ourselves, and Lippman appeared and moved the hands of the clock "back to
PRETZELS AND BUFFALO PANS 25
seven, and when he got it there he yelled his usual Time !' — so we were 35 minutes late all around that day/5
In the Rivington Street tenement it was the rule that each occupant had to clean and scrub the stairs and hallway of the floor he lived on. The property belonged to a man by the name of Michael, who had a butter and egg store downstairs, and here is a story of the struggle for existence in the ghetto of New York:
"Michael had a very fine cat, the largest cat I ever saw. I knew Michael's cat lived on cheese — cheese and milk was all this cat would eat. When the week-end came, I would like to go on picnics, so I would go down to borrow the cat and say we had mice, which we did not. Later I would go downstairs and say that I had offered the cat some chicken, and that he wouldn't eat it, and I wanted some cheese for the cat. Michael would thereupon cut some nice Swiss cheese for the cat, and I would leave with the cheese, but the cat never saw it, because I would take the cheese on my picnic. Then on Monday morning, I would bring Michael's cat back. Necessity is the mother of invention. I liked Swiss cheese in those days and that was the only way I had of getting it."
In connection with these struggles and temptations, the grown-up Will reports:
:tl can recall going out with boys when I was sixteen, seven- teen, or eighteen, and though I wanted to do the things they did, on checking up the cost I usually did without. I knew when the soles of my shoes had holes in them that that was the time to have them repaired, but I delayed it by putting pasteboard in them to save the half-soling. It would have been so easy to have spent all that I saved in those years. Every penny was something that I denied myself, with the thought in mind that if I was going forward, I had to have money. I saw that capital was what I needed. Either I had to be content to work for some>- one else all my life, or fight for independence. The latter course made it necessary to deny myself everything I could possibly contrive to do without until I had accomplished my aim and could afford to permit myself the things I missed.
"My father described his lack of progress by saying he had never had an opportunity to save. He was married when he came
26 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
here and could never earn any more than it took to* keep his family. It must have been so because he didn't drink or gamble, and he always worked hard when he could, but could never save a dollar. My mother encouraged me to save, and I can recall many occasions when she thanked me for offering her an extra dollar or two that I'd earned, but said that she would much rather I put it in the bank. I still have the original account in the Dry- dock Savings Bank. That book is one of my proud possessions to this day."
Will Fox continued to work for different firms in the cutting trade and his wages increased until he was earning $17 a week ; and his pennies, nickels and dimes mounted until at the age of twenty he had $580 in the bank. Then he saw his first oppor- tunity. Admiral Dewey had captured Manila, and came back to New York to receive the welcome of a conquering hero. There was to be a parade starting at Grant's tomb, and going down to Washington Square. Will figured out what that enormous crowd would wish to purchase. He drew $500 from the bank, and with one-fourth of this money he bought bottled soda water — "pop," as it was called. With a second fourth he purchased soap-boxes ; for another fourth, cheese and ham sandwiches ; and for the last fourth, pretzels. This is what happened:
Wagons were engaged to move the supplies uptown to the neighborhood of 100th Street and Riverside Drive. During the night it turned cold after a hot spell, and in the morning there sprang up a terrific windstorm. It was impossible to sell the soda pop, because what people wanted was hot coffee. You couldn't sell the soap-boxes because if you tried to stand on one, the wind would blow you off. And as for the cheese and ham sandwiches, the amateur caterer bad neglected to have them wrapped up, and the wind was blowing so hard across the dirt road that the sand- wiches were rendered uneatable.
So all that was left was the pretzels — or "bretzels," as we called them in those days. You may think this a funny story, but don't forget that to the twenty-year old business man it was a serious matter, and might have meant his commercial life or death. He was about to lose the savings of ten years.
"I could picture my ruination. The maximum amount that I could get out of the pretzels would be the $125 plus about 50 per
PRETZELS AND BUFFALO PANS 27
cent profit. Of course I had a dozen or more salesmen with me. I decided there was only one way out, and that was to bring back the $500 in pretzels. We soon learned that we had many compet- itors, who were not only selling at cost, but below cost. I con- ceived the idea of walking ahead of these dozen salesmen of mine, and delivering a talk on the qualities of my pretzels, and that there was a souvenir of Admiral Dewey on the inside of eacB. one. Of course when the purchaser got the pretzels, he broke them apart or bit into them and looked for Admiral Dewey inside, but by that time the procession of salesmen had marched on. We sold those pretzels, and when we calculated the money, we had back our $500 with a slight profit."
For seven years now Will Fox had had his eye upon Eve Leou As he described it to me, he w6oed Eve's father first. The son of an ordinary workingman, he had to make good on his own; he had to convince him that he was a serious boy, with brains in his head and destined to rise in the world. He had a responsible position now, and was earning $17 a week, which was enough to keep a family modestly in those days. Having obtained her father's permission, he invited Eve, now a young lady of sixteen, to go to a show with him,
I must explain that Eve's mother had died when she was nine years old, leaving six children. As Eve was next to the oldest — the oldest being a boy — the burden of being a mother to her little sisters and brothers fell upon her shoulders. And now she was a very sedate and responsible person ; also, I am told by the grown- up Will, the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. The second time they went to a show, they attended a performance of "The Liars," with John Drew as the star. Coming home on the street- car on a bitterly cold winter night, the street-car for some reason became stalled, and there they had to sit for two hours in the cold utiheated car. Will Fox seemed to think that this was a suitable occasion on which to explain the state of his heart to Eve,
He told her that his hands were very cold. She had a fur muff, and it was his hope that she might offer to warm one of those cold hands. Maybe she missed the point, or maybe it was the too great kindness of her heart — anyway, she gave him the whole muff, and told him to put his two hands into it.
28 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
But even so, he managed to become engaged to her, and there was a fine public wedding which Eve's father provided. This wedding took place on the 31st of December, and the next day happened to be Will's twenty-first birthday. It happens also to be New Year's Day, which proved a very convenient arrange- ment, for throughout the rest of their life, the Fox family has been able to combine three celebrations in one. I don't know whether this economy was deliberate, but Mr. Fox^ tells me in this story how carefully he watched all his opportunities.
"Of course, my co-workers must be invited, and they felt their presence to be incomplete unless they contributed to a wedding gift. About forty or fifty had contributed enough apiece to make a fund of $100. They asked me what I wanted and I suggested some furniture. They gave me the money and told me to pick it out myself. I put the $100 in the bank, and bought the furniture on the installment plan."
So now our hero is no longer "Little Will/' but has become a dignified married man, and we shall have to try to find a new way to address him. His wife and intimate friends call him "Bill," but neither you nor I know him that well On the other hand, "Mister" is a somewhat formal and stilted mode of address. I notice that his lawyer and other associates address him as (CW. F.," and that seems to denote about the right degree of Intimacy; so that shall be his name throughout the rest of our narrative.
He had decided now to go, into business for himself, and the IMe^e ;fead s"eteeted was the cloth examining and shrinking busi- ness. It appears that when cloth comes from the mills, the manu- facturer must do two things before it can be used for garments. He must make sure that it is free of imperfections and of correct measurement, and it must be shrunk. This special work required little capital and little space to work in, and so W. F., with one of his fellow employees, established what they called "The
Company/' The
partner was to do the examining and employ people to do the shrinking, while W. F. went out to solicit trade. The salary of the partner had been $25 a week, and that of W. F. had been $17, and for the first year they were hardly able to make this much.
PRETZELS AND BUFFALO PANS 29
That wasn't enough for the restless William Fox. He was casting about for ways to make money more quickly, and in his efforts he very nearly brought himself to ruin again. He had not learned his lesson from the Admiral Dewey celebration ; there was another great public event on the way — the Buffalo Pan-Ameri- can Exposition. This, you may recall, was the occasion on which President McKinley was shot, and chance brought it about that W. F. was walking down Main Street in Buffalo and was within 100 feet of the spot where Czolgosz dsew his revolver and fired. He saw McKinley fall, and remained in Buffalo until Roosevelt came down from the Adirondacks and was made President of the United States. The trip to Buffalo was caused in the fol- lowing way:
"A chap came to me one day and said that he had invented something that could make millions of dollars for himself and the person who backed him financially. He exhibited a patent paper that he had just received from Washington. It was a patent on a small miniature pan about one or two inches in diam- eter, and the length of the pan, including the handle, was about four or five inches. In the middle of the pan was an American flag with a buffalo printed on it; therefore, it was 'Buffalo1 'Pan' 'American' — all he needed was 'Exposition/ and the date of it. He estimated that there would be about 10,000,000 people in Buffalo to see the exposition, and it was fair to assume that every one of these people would buy at least ten of these pans for souvenirs. The price was $1, so the estimated gross return was $100,000,000.
"Whatever money I had at that time I invested in this enter- prise. This was about a year and half or two years after I was married. I thought this was my big chance and proceeded to manufacture these pans. I think the total investment was about $600. Then I was assigned to go to Buffalo and market these pans, and of course the factory could manufacture them as quickly as we wanted them. I remember shipping the pans in cases to Buffalo.
"On my arrival there, I had but $3, as I was confident that my pans would sell promptly. From the railroad station to the fair grounds was about five miles, and on either side of the avenue the city had issued licenses to permit the erection of wooden
30 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
stands on which wares could be displayed to the visitors to this exposition. And lo and behold, all that was displayed on these stands were pans with buffalos and American flags stamped on them I There were enough pans there to supply everybody with 100 pans. I had wired for reservations at the Iroquois Hotel, one of the nicest in town, byt when I beheld those buffalo pans, I •decided to change my residence to a boarding house on a side street, where I paid $1 a day, so I would have enough to last at least three days."
So here again was William Fox fighting for his savings. He walked the streets of Buffalo, and his attention was caught by a five-and-ten-cent store, then something new, owned by a man named Woolworth. This store sold novelties, but it did not have any buffalo pans, so the idea occurred to the pan salesman to get hold of Mr. Woolworth and persuade him to enter the pan business. He wired that he had a very important piece of busi- ness to talk over with him, and gave the address at the Iroquois Hotel, and waited there until the answer came making an appoint- ment. Then he told frankly his hard-luck story; out of his last dollar, he had spent 25 cents for breakfast and 25 cents for a telegram to Mr. Woolworth, He had a wife and baby in New York and a business that was not very prosperous.
The great Mr. Woolworth was "a bit rough" at first. He didn't like the idea of having given an interview, supposedly for his own profit, and discovering that it was an amateur pan sales- man in trouble. W. F. humbly proposed to leave the pans with him on a gamble, and be content with his railroad fare back to New York ; but Woolworth finally paid him the cost of the pans —about $600 — and so once more William Fox was saved for a great careen After the exposition was over, he inquired of Woolworth whether the transaction had proved profitable, and was relieved to learn that it had.
So our hero went back to the cloth examining and shrinking business, and during the second year the business grew and they made a profit of $10,000. Their partnership arrangement con- sisted of a piece of brown paper on which they had written their contract. Says W. F. :
"About the only provision was that checks had to be counter- signed. Our partnership ended when on one Saturday the checks
PRETZELS AND BUFFALO PANS 31
were tendered to me for countersigning, and I refused because there was no money in the bank. My partner insisted that on Monday I could go out and collect enough money to cover the checks and deposit it in the hank before the checks went through, but I said that was no way of doing business."
W. F. decided that he would buy out his partner and run the business according to his own ideas. It became necessary for him to raise the funds, and he went to the bank to borrow $1,000 that was needed, and here is his first experience with a banker :
"I bought myself a whole new outfit of clothing in order to make a good impression so the bank would lend me the money — I had no collateral. The bank was the German Exchange Bank and the president was Mr. Adrian. I can remember his words now ; he said : 'You are broke. Now what made you go out and buy those clothes? What was your purpose? You have done nothing but spend money. When the bank lends money it wants to feel that it is lending it to someone who will save money and be able to pay it back; some day/ However, I got the money, paid my partner off, and as times got better, business grew, and shortly thereafter I found myself with a capital of close to $50,000 made in that business."
REEL FOUR NICKELODEONS AND COMMON SHOWS
IN 1894 Thomas Edison had invented a device which he called a "kinetoscope." Out at his place in East Orange he had spent the enormous sum of $25,000 upon experiments, and had built a shanty covered with tar paper and known to his friends as "the Black Maria." Inside this Black Maria was a huge device weighing more than a ton, a camera with a rapidly moving shutter by which you could take a series of pictures of something in motion— provided that its motion didn't carry it away from the front of the camera. To this place came pugilists and acro- bats and dancers, and they performed in front of the camera, and so there began to spring up in the cities places called nickelodeons, a sort of arcade with a row of machines having eye-pieces. You dropped a nickel into the slot and gazed into the eye-pieces, and you saw as real as life the pugilists boxing and the acrobats turning somersaults and the dancers kicking up their skirts.
Then several years later appeared another device generally called the "vitagraph" or the "bio&cq^e," which threw these same images upon a screen. The camera weighed somewhat less than a ton now, and it could be taken on a truck and placed, say by a railroad track, and so you could see the Twentieth Century Limited emerging from a tunnel and rushing down upon you. I well remember seeing the first pictures in a place called the Eden Musee on Twenty-third . Street in New York. There were wax- works and all sorts of horrors — President Garfield being shot, and the Chicago anarchists making bombs, and a policeman who looked so lifelike that you went up and asked him the way to the labyrinth of mirrors or whatever delightful thrill you were seeking. Then you went into a little court with palm and rubber trees, and sat in rows of chairs, and there was the image of the Twentieth Century Limited. It trembled and jumped so that it
32
NICKELODEONS AND COMMON SHOWS 33
almost put your eyes out, but nevertheless it was so real that you could hardly keep from ducking out of the way as it bore down upon you. A tremendous adventure!
It happened that on Fourteenth Street there was a place called the "Automat," with phonographs, punching bags, weigh- ing machines, chewing-gum machines and, of course, kinetoscopes. The Automat was one of the sights of the town, because no employees were needed, only a watchman. You dropped your nickels into the machines, and down in the basement there was a track running under the machines and a little car running on the track, and as it passed, the machines spilled their nickels into it, and then the car ran around to th o-1^r side of the room and dumped the nickels into a funnel, from tiio other end of which they emerged, all counted and wrapped and ready for deposit in the bank. It was almost as marvei - \s J-: , Chicago stock-yards, where a hog was dropped into the machine at one end, and sausages and buttons and hair-combs came out at the other end.
The Automat pleased W. F., and he made it known that he was in the market to buy an establishment of that sort. Soon there came an agent suggesting that there was one at 700 Broad- way, Brooklyn, owned by a man named J. Stewart Blackton, then president of the Vitagraph Company of America, and destined to become one of the big moving picture millionaires. W. F. made an appointment to inspect the property, and tie tells this story:
"When I went there, by appointment, there was a large crowd. When I went again a little later in the week, also by appointment, there was an even l^xger crowd. I thought it was a good thing, and after certain negotiations, I bought the establishment, I took charge of it on the following Monday, and only about two persons dropped in all day. I realized that someone had supplied the crowd on the two former occasions when I had gone to see the place. This was somewhere around in May, and I was told that business was always bad in summer."
I asked W. F. to describe the agent who had sold him that "salted" gold-mine. The answer was : "He was the handsomest man you ever saw ; well built, well dressed and always immacu- late." Sometime afterwards, it appears, he came to W. F. and said he was broke, and borrowed $50 to go out West. Twenty
34 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
years later, in a brokers' board-room, he recognized his old-time victim, and came up and introduced himself, and repaid the $50. The story he told was that he had discovered land containing sulphur, and had come back and sold it to New York capitalists, and was now worth $7,000,000. He offered his old-time victim a tip, to buy the stock of the Texas Gulf and Sulphur Company ; in a year or two the buyer would make millions. W. F., having bought a "salted" gold-mine from this man, declined to buy a "salted" sulphur-mine. The joke of the story is that the tip was a real one, for the stock went from $40 a share to $240.
But let us return, to No. 700 Broadway, Brooklyn, in the year 1903. It was another crisis like that of the sandwiches and pretzels, or that of the Buffalo pans. How was the crowd to be induced to enter the Fox Automat? Quite recently he had attended a showing of the new "moving pictures" ; he had seen a picture of a tree, and the leaves of the tree had moved, and the man behind him had said that it was a trick, someone was shaking the curtain. But W. F., with his inquiring mind, had talked to the operator after the performance was over, and asked to have the trick explained. No, the screen had not, been shaken; the pictures actually did move of themselves. The operator showed the film, which was nearly three times as wide as it is now, and did not run on sprockets, but merely through a groove. The length of the film was then 100 feet.
W. F. investigated further. He saw the pictures of the Twentieth Century Limited, and a still more marvelous produc- tion, a little story told in front of the camera, called "The Life of an American Fireman" ; then another one, still more thrilling, "The Great Train Robbery." He saw the public pouring in to witness these spectacles, and he examined the premises he had rented and noted that there were rooms upstairs used as a dwell- ing. It occurred to him that he might rent these premises also, and put out the tenants and turn it into a showroom for the new picture stories. If he took the people up by the front stairway, and after the show sent them down by the rear stairway, they would enter the nickelodeon at the rear and have to walk past all the machines, and very probably they would drop some nickels on the way.
With W. F. a thing is done almost as soon as he thinks of it.
NICKELODEONS AND COMMON SHOWS 35
There was a show room with a screen, and 146 chairs, and some display posters outside informing the public that moving pictures were to be seen. But alas, the Brooklyn public didn't know what moving pictures were, and nobody went upstairs. W. F. stood outside for a whole day, gazing anxiously at the public,, and regretting that he had no personal charms to lure them into his establishment.
But then came a man who had the necessary charms. W. F. describes him as a fellow with a great big Western hat. He said: "What are you worrying about?" and W. F. told his troubles. He had the greater part of his fortune in the place, and it wasn't so much the fortune as that he hated to fail. The fellow offered to take charge of it and run it, and told him to shut up the place that day and come back the next.
The next day he came, and had with him a coin-manipulator, a sword-swallower and a fire-eater — which did W, F. prefer? W. F. carried no fire insurance, so fire-eaters were ruled out; also swallowing swords might possibly be dangerous — there might be employers' liability laws. But there could be no harm in a coin-manipulator. He was a little fellow, dressed in black satin breeches and a black satin coat, wearing a black mustache and a little black goatee, neither of which belonged to him. All this was in imitation of "Hermann the Great." He set tip his table and started to work in the doorway of the establishment; and when the crowd gathered, he told them that he would finish the per- formance upstairs, and show them yet more wonderful tricks, and that admission was free for the present. The crowd came trooping up, and there they found out what moving pictures were, and in a week there was such a crowd that the police had to be called in to control them.
So at last W. F. had found a real gold mine ! Here was the way of fortune plain before him, and his one task was to get there ahead of the others. He got two friends to join him, and began renting stores on the crowded avenues of Brooklyn, and in each one of them they set up a screen and a projection machine and rows of chairs — of which the total must not exceed 299. Up to that limit you could have a "common show" license ; but if you had 300 chairs or more, you were a theatre, and the fire laws took strict charge of you.
36 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
So presently here was William Fox with fifteen show places in Brooklyn and New York. I made him search his memory for all the details about those old-time pictures. There was one called "The Automobile Thieves." Automobiles were then just coming into fashion, and some producer had conceived the idea of a new way of stealing. Soon after this someone did actually steal an automobile, and was arrested, and there was a great clamor in the newspapers— this new device of moving pictures was cor- rupting public morals and stimulating crime! The New York "World," which built up its circulation by carrying on crusades, started a crusade against moving pictures.
Also there was one called "The Runaway Wagon." This was a trick picture. It wasn't an automobile, merely a wagon, yet it went running up and down hill all by itself. The trick was that the photographer had blotted out the horse, A still trickier one was a man putting on a pair of shoes and the shoes lacing them- selves.
The names of the companies that made the pictures were Vitagraph, Biograph, Lubin, Pathe, and Essanay.
The clamor against these pictures continued in the^ news- papers. In court the lawyer would say : "Your Honor, this child never stole before. He saw stealing in a moving picture^ and that suggested it to him." This clamor disturbed the associates of W. F., whose wives thought they were in a disreputable business. So W, F. bought them out, and added more places until he had twenty-five. He had his own ideas about the moral effect of pictures, for he noticed that wherever the shows were going well, the business of saloons began to dwindle.
"My conclusion was that the workingman's wage was not large enough to buy tickets to the theatre for himself and family, so he found his recreation in drinking his glass of beer against the bar. But when the motion picture theatre came, he could buy a ticket for 10 cents, and for his wife the same, and if he had a child he could buy a ticket for 5 cents. They could be entertained anywhere from two and a half to three hours, and the man found he was getting a much bigger kick holding his kid's hand, or the hand of his wife, than he would be getting from his drink at the bar. I have always contended that if we had never had prohibition, the motion pictures would have wiped
NICKELODEONS AND COMMON SHOWS 37
out the saloon. We then opened a theatre at 110th and Broad- way. On the corner of this property was a saloon and we tried to buy the lease of the owner but he wouldn't sell Within a year after that theatre opened, he could not get enough business to pay his rent."
W. F. went on to tell me of a later experience when he leased the Star Theatre, on Lexington Avenue near 107th Street, which had been used for melodrama. They were then called "ten- twenty-thirts." • On the four corners of 107th Street there were four saloons, frequently called "gin-mills/* but after this theatre was converted into a moving picture theatre, one after another the gin-mills closed up, and within two or three months were occupied by other tenants.
Not since the days of the forty-niners had there been such a way for the little fellow to get rich as in this new business. Everything depended upon a location where the crowds were passing. W. F. found that in order to get the right location, it would often pay him to lease the whole building — even though the fire laws required that the upstairs tenants be turned out before moving pictures were shown in the building.
He conceived the idea of combining motion pictures and vaudeville, with the admission price of 10 cents to any seat in the house. He tried in each case to find a manager who had a good voice, and this manager would sing what were called illus- trated songs. It was easy to get new songs, because the song writers wanted them popularized before the sheet music was offered to the public. The manager would sing the song and there would be lantern slides with pictures illustrating the songs. The audience would be invited to join the singing — the more the merrier. There was always a line of people waiting to get into these shows. The problem was to rent new places ahead of the other fellow. Rejoe,Js-Ae""*§f6ry of th£ iir$t Fox theatre:
"It was located at 194 Grand, .Street, Brooklyn, and had been devoted to burlesque,, WtoxJ ;vK££t to visit the premises^ it was winter and the agent toii -m» to-bong along rubber boots* I did, and we walked in snow and water up to the knees ; the roof was practically gone and it was the most dilapidated structure I ever saw. When I inquired as to how the building came to be in such a deplorable condition, the agent explained that the building was
38 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
fifty years old and had been unoccupied for two years. He told me that the man who owned the mortgage had it now. It was known as the Bum Theatre and I changed the name to Comedy. I think I paid about $20,000 for the land and building.
"While making extensive repairs, there arose the necessity of a campaign to acquaint the people of the neighborhood that this was to be a theatre for nice people. We made a list of 10,000 names of people living in that vicinity, and for ten weeks we sent them a weekly letter, telling them how this building was progressing. The tenth letter quoted someone as saying that the theatre had been called the 'Bum' because the people around there were bums. I suggested that perhaps those who resented this reference would like to form a parade in the main street of town the night my theatre opened. That night there were 10,000 people in that parade. The theatre did a terrific business, and in a short- space of time we paid off the mortgage and declared hundreds of thousands of dollars in dividends."
J|ie next theatre was the Folly, a place which had been show- ing melodramas and not doing so well. W. F. went to- see a member of the firm, Richard Hyde, who offered the theatre on a ten-year lease for $35,000 a year, and required a deposit of half a year's rent to apply to the last half year. He said^ he would give W. F. twenty-four hours in which to make a decision. He offered to put this option into writing, but W. F. said he would take his word. The option was to expire at noon, and W. F. was on hand at 10 o'clock with a certified check in his pocket But meanwhile, it happened some other motion picture concern had got wind of the matter, and had made Hyde an offer of $10,000 more for the lease,. Apparently it was Hyde's idea that if he could keep Fox pre-occupied until after 12 o'clock, the deal would be off. So he started telling stories, and he told one after another without stopping until 11:15, Then W. F. broke in:
"Just a minute. I wish to give you an answer. I accept your terms and here is the check."
Hyde seemed troubled, and became solicitous concerning the welfare of his would-be tenant. "You had better not be hasty/* he said, "but listen to a man who has been in the business for half a century."
NICKELODEONS AND COMMON SHOWS 39
Hyde called his bookkeeper and ordered him to tell W. F. the exact truth about the property. Said the bookkeeper : "Last year we took a loss of $7,500."
Said W. R: "I am not interested in all that, because the policy I am going to use in the theatre is not the same as yours, and I think I can make a go of it."
Said Hyde: "Darn your soul, I dislike you! You are the first man who has taken my word in the last twenty-five years. I am known as a man who never keeps his word." So Hyde told him about the offer of $10,000 more. In closing the deal, he made 'only one request: "Wherever you get a chance to talk, be sure to tell people I kept my word with you/'
This theatre held about 2,000 chairs, and the performance lasted two hours, with five performances a day. It was a tre- mendous success, and during the first ten years of the lease, it earned from five to six hundred thousand dollars in profit. At the expiration of this lease, Hyde was dead, and the sons renewed the lease to W. F., because they said: "If father were alive, he would want you to have that theatre."
W. F. realized that the. people who were leasing the films to him were making ittore money tfiari. he was-. S$ he began to buy films, and became president of a concern called "The Greater New York Film Rental Company." Two years later the manu- facturers decided to form a trust, and set up a company known as "The Motion Picture Patents Company/' and claimed that they owned all the patents used in motion pictures. All the manufacturers had to have licenses, and nobody could get films anywhere but from them. It was like the old days of the Beef Trust and the butcher stores. They set out to get possession of the business from top to bottom. They would offer to buy you odt, and if you refused to sell, they would cancel your license. They had 120 licensees in America, and in a short time, 119 of them had been either bought out or forced out. The only one left was William Fox, by this time thirty years of age.
This was the greatest battle of his life so far, and he is proud of the service he rendered to the motion picture industry. At that time it was completely throttled. The trust fixed all the prices everywhere. The highest price paid for a scenario was $622.SCX No writer's name ever appeared upon the screen, becattse
40 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
they did not want anyone to become popular, and so have a chance to raise his price. Of course no writer of talent was going to work on that basis. The salaries of the actors were correspond- ingly low, and no actor's name ever appeared upon the screen. So long as these conditions continued, motion pictures could make no progress whatever.
The representatives of the trust sent for W. R, and I will let him tell the story of what happened:
'They said: We have been very kind to you. We have allowed you to make a large profit for the last two years by leaving you to the last. Now we have to get you out of the way_how much do you want for your plant?' I told them I wanted $750,000. They asked me if I thought that that was what I was going to get, and I told them yes. They told me to think it over and come back later. I came back the next day and still quoted $750,000. Then they told me they had decided to cancel my license. The next day there came a cancellation of my license in the mail/'
They had a charge against W. R, whereby they justified their decision to cancel his license. They charged that he had per- mitted their motion pictures to be shown in a house of prosti- tution in Hoboken. W. F. tells a curious story about this which illustrates the method of monopolies, not merely in the moving picture industry, but in all others that I have investigated. It appears that W, F/s concern was supplying pictures to an exhib- itor in Paterson, New Jersey, and after the show the operator would bring the films back to New York and get the material for the next day's show. It appeared that the trust had bribed this operator to take the films each night after the show to a house of prostitution in Hoboken, and the trust had caused a projection machine to be set up in this place and had run the films.
Under the terms of his contract with the trust, they had been obliged to give him fourteen days' notice before stopping the supplies of films, and he used that period to play a shrewd trick upon them. He says:
"I went back and suggested that they tell me how much they would give me for my establishment. They said $75,000* I sold it. Then I said, 'Now you have cancelled my license, I think you ought to reinstate the license, so that you have an
NICKELODEONS AND COMMON SHOWS 41
active business when you take it over and not a pile of junk.' They thought that was a good idea, and the next day I got a letter reinstating the license. A couple days after that I said I did not want to sell out, and I got another cancellation. I then had grounds, and began a legal action, under the Sherman Anti- trust Act/'
This controversy began in 1908 and was carried to the Court of Appeals of New York State, and was not settled until 1912.
"If successful, we were to get triple damages. We were suing for $600,000 dollars and if successful, it meant $1,800,000. ,One evening about 8 o'clock a man called and said that the other people were offering to settle out of court. While the decision was due soon, my lawyer thought we should settle out of court, as there was no assurance that the decision would be in our favor. We drew the settlement papers that night, working until 6 o'clock the next morning, and they paid me $350,000. The next day it was announced that the case had been settled. The judge told my lawyer that we should have waited, because they were in unanimous agreement that the judgment was to be in my favor."
This was a suit for damages, not selling. W. R got his money, and he still had his company and the right to do business. The manufacturers were not permitted to cancel the license, and were compelled to market their films to William Fox at the same prices as to their own company.
The result of this campaign was to put the film trust out -of business. Anyone could make pictures, and many began to do so. Under competitive conditions, writers and actors could ask higher prices for their work, and could demand that their names be advertised ; so reputations could be built up and talent devel- oped. An odd circumstance is that the men who had organized the trust were unable to meet this new competition, and within five years none of those who had fought William Fox were any longer in the business.
All these four years W. F, had been going ahead with the leasing, buying and building of theatres, and turning them into motion picture "palaces." When you were running a regular theatrical production, you had as a rule only one company, and drew your audience from all over the city. But for these 10-cent theatres, you drew the people of the neighborhood, and since
42 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
you could make hundreds of prints of the film, you couM have a theatre in every neighborhood; you could have a chain of theatres all over New York and Brooklyn and the suburbs— it was a series of gold mines, and the deeper you dug into these mines, the richer became the vein. The quality of the films became better, and a better class of people would come to see them. It became possible to have real "palaces" ; to spend money on theatre decorations, and charge 15 cents, 25 cents, even 50 cents admission.
In the case of the City Theatre, Fourteenth Street between Third and Fourth avenues, W. R put in one-fourth of the money; two-fourths of the remaining interest were taken by the two Timothy Sullivans, prominent leaders of Tammany Hall, known as "Big Tim" and "Little Tim." The total amount invested was $100,000, and the building was to cost $300,000. Big Tim produced a contractor who offered to do the rest of the financing, taking SO per cent of his money in cash each month, and taking a six months' note for the other SO per cent, agreeing to renew these notes for an additional six months. In this way the theatre would be making money before the first of the notes became due.
The work proceeded, and at the end of the first six months there was a note for $10,000 falling due at the Colonial Bank. W. F, received a notice from the bank, and set out to find Mahoney, the contractor, and take him to the bank to renew the note. For days W. F. hunted for Mahoney but Mahoney could not be found. Then W. F. went to Big Tim, who saw no reason to worry; it was Mahoney's problem, not Tim's, W. F. couldn't understand this attitude, but realized after a while that Big Tim was accustomed to signing notes quite freely ; it meant no more to him than slapping somebody on the back ; it was part of his stock in trade as a politician. Nobody who wanted to go on doing business in New York City would ever dream of suing Big Tim Sullivan on a note.
But it was different with a little fellow like William Fox. He had never had a note go to protest, and it seemed to him the most terrible thing in his whole life. For a week before the note was due, he worried Big Tim, but in vain. Then he went to the Colonial Bank and presented himself to the president,
NICKELODEONS AND COMMON SHOWS 43
Mr. Walker. W. F. laid $2,500 upon the banker's desk and asked the banker to release him from his share of the obligation. But Walker couldn't see it that way. Under the law, each of the signers was responsible for the full amount. As for W. F.'s statement that Mahoney had agreed to renew the note, Walker said he didn't want to know anything about that. Probably he thought it was just a bluff. Anyhow, he refused to take the $2,500, and when W. F. insisted, he brushed it onto the floor, and when W. F. went on insisting, he pressed a button, and a man in a gray uniform appeared and gently escorted the protestor to the door.
W. F. had until 3 o'clock that afternoon to save his good name, and he was in a terrible state. He called Walker on the telephone and heard him hang up the receiver. Then he waited outside the building, hoping that Walker would come out to lunch, but 1 o'clock came, and W. F. saw a tray carried in, and, peering through a window of the bank, he saw Walker seated at his desk eating his lunch.
"Then I noticed him light his pipe. I have always known that a man with a full stomach is in a better humor than with an empty. Back to Walker's office I went, and my presence caused the man to go into a convulsion. He yelled, 'Get out !' and this time two men came in and just threw me out. Mr. Walker could see me from the window standing outside, because from time to time I would rap on the window to let him know I was there. Finally I saw the clock hands turn to three. I had endorsed this note in good faith and it was to be protested. I knew of no humiliation in my whole career greater than at 3 o'clock that day."
But it turned out. all right, as Mahoney appeared the next day, and the note was renewed, arid the City Theatre was com- pkt&J, and opened with the "Zeigfeld Follies of 1910." It was a loss from the beginning, and presently the theatre was closed, and W. F. leased it from his associates for $75,000 a year, and put moving pictures into it, and it has been making a profit of $45,000 a year ever since.
There is another story having to do with this president of the Colonial Bank ; and W. F. laid stress upon this story, saying : "I want you to see that there is a difference in bankers."
44 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
W. F. thinks that a banker is all right when he is really a banker, and the trouble only begins when he ceases to ^ be a banker, and becomes a speculator and promoter, or a conspirator and bandit. Throughout this period of his career, W. F. dealt with bankers, who looked into his business affairs, judged his character, and loaned him money with which to buy and rent new theatres, or to put up new buildings. If the buildings cost a little more than was expected, or if it took a little longer to finish them, they cheerfully renewed his notes, and in due course he opened his theatres, and the public came pouring into them, and he paid off his notes at the banks with the agreed amount of interest. That is W. F.'s conception of what banking should be, and if all the bankers had been like that, he would never have come to Upton Sinclair to write the story of his career.
Late in 1912 and early in 1913, W. F. conceived the idea of larger and more beautiful houses for the new motion picture art. One was to be the Audubon, on Broadway near 165th Street, and the other was to be on Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. He had at this time half a million dollars in cash, and this was to be the largest venture of his career. There were to be stores in connection with the theatres, and when the construction was half completed, it was found that the cost would be nearly twice as much as had been expected. Money was very tight at this time, and W. F. found himself chasing about the city trying to borrow some. It was the story of the sandwiches and pretzels and buffalo pans all over again — if he couldn't find the money, he would lose the buildings. Let him tell the story himself :
"One day while I was in this quandary, trying to see or find a way out, the man who had the plaster contract of these build- ings called on me. He told me he was in trouble and that I could help him out. You can imagine my feelings as I realized that he must have come for his money. He said; 'I know I haven't any right to ask you to pay rne in advance, but if you could give me a note for four months instead of paying me on the fifteenth, I would be very grateful/ What a load fell from my shoulders at his words ! Of course I gave him the note and he gave me the receipted bill. It seemed that he must have spread the word around because one by one the contractors called and asked for notes. The same thing occurred every month until
NICKELODEONS AND COMMON SHOWS 45
the buildings were completed and opened, which was inside of four months, and before the first payment came due on these notes.
"One day one of the contractors asked if I knew Mr. Walker, the president of the Colonial Bank, and if I had ever done any business with him. I told him I was sorry to admit I had not been successful in my attempt to do business with him. He suggested that I go around to the bank and see him, and he would say no more. I was mystified. I called on Mr. Walker. He remembered me and asked how I was getting along. I told him the whole story. He said, Then you have no worries/ I said, 'Yes, I have, as the first notes are soon due, and I am no better off now than the day I gave them as the theatres are only just opened/ He rang the bell (not the same bell he rang on the previous occasion to have me thrown out) and a young man brought in an envelope. He said : 'Here are $250,000 worth of those notes. The other $150,000 worth are with the Nassau Bank. I knew you were in trouble and sent those contractors to you/ When I asked him why he had done that, he replied : 'I became interested in you that day three years ago when you put up such a battle to keep your name from going to protest. Now it happens that I live across the street from the Audubon Theatre and early every morning during its construction I could see you from my window watching the work in progress, and it made me dizzy to see you climbing around on the scaffolding. And many nights I saw your white roadster circling the property. I felt that a man so zealous of his good name and so untiring and conscientious in his endeavors was a good risk and a good investment. Take your time and pay it back when convenient/
"Within a year after that I had paid that debt all off. One of those places opened Thanksgiving Eve and the other a few days before Christmas, in 1913/*
REEL FIVE
THE ROAD TO FORTUNE
WE find William Fox now with a chain of moving picture "palaces" of all sizes in and about New York, and with hundreds of thousands of people coming every night to see what he has to show them. He has organized a concern called "The Box Office Attractions Film Rental Company" to buy and lease films for the Fox and other theatres ; and his main trouble is to £nd suitable films. He has come to feel that he has a personal relationship with each of these patrons who pay him a dime or perhaps a quarter. If the patron likes the product he will come again, and perhaps bring his family; but some of the pictures are "orf color/' and the patron who sees these pictures may refuse to bring his family. Says W. F. : "I knew how little diversion or entertainment it was my good fortune to receive from the time J was twenty-two. All these years I craved something more than just eating, sleeping and working, but I had missed it. And now the thing that attracted me to this picture business was that I was able to give the pleasure to someone else, I was rather inspired. I had a feeling that I was doing something just a little bit more than making money. I was putting entertainment and relaxation within the reach of all/'
The Box Office Attractions Film Rental Company began to manufacture pictures. The first one was called "Life's Shop Win- dow/' and its cost was six thousand dollars, a liberal sum in those days. It was made from a popular novel, supposed to be a naughty book. But for film purposes it was made moral, and then, unfortunately, there was nothing left of it.
The second picture was "St. Elmo/' by Augusta J. Evans. The heroine is a humble village girl, the blacksmith's grand- daughter, and she quotes long passages of Latin to the villain ; also she swoons frequently. The Box Office Attractions Film
46
THE ROAD TO FORTUNE 47
Rental Company kept the swoons, but omitted the Latin. By this time movie heroines had five reels in which to do their swooning, brought on by tight lacing to acquire the wasp-waist line.
In the meantime the public was manifesting such interest in this new art of motion pictures that illustrated songs and vaude- ville were passing. The nickelodeons and penny arcades had been long since forgotten, likewise the fire-eaters, sword-swallowers and coin-manipulators. The movies 'were advancing to their place among the half dozen biggest industries of America.
At this point we must stop and go back to renew our acquaint- ance with Eve Leo. We left her on the day of her wedding. She and her bridegroom set up in a five-room flat on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, at a rental of $11 per month. It was one of the old-fashioned "railroad type" of flat and W. F. describes it as a veritable doll's house.
"From the beginning Mrs. Fox made our home, no matter how simple, a heaven for me ; her artistic fingers made everything she touched beautiful. I can see it now with those dainty swiss curtains and cretonne hangings at the windows, with cushions here and there to match, and beautiful panels, reproductions of great masterpieces given away with coupons of Babbit's soap, which she had framed to adorn our walls. We still have our old "Le Brun and Child" in our bedroom, from our first home during those days. It has been a sort of mascot all these years."
When prosperity began coming to W. F., someone offered him a real estate bargain in the form of a tenement house. It was only $12,000, and $11,000 of that was mortgage, so he took it, and got a marvelous thrill out of being a landlord at the age of twenty-three. But the thrill soon vanished, as he had no time to collect the rents, and turned the job over to his wife. Then he made the sad discovery that there weren't many rents, for the tenants found out that a hard luck story would touch the kind heart of their landlady. W. F. decided that the business of being a landlord was not as glorious as he imagined, and he sold the tenement at a still greater bargain.
Some time later the Fox motion picture company required a scenario department, and so we find Eve trying to be that depart- ment. In the early days of the industry there were no "execu- tives," such as you now read about. At that time all the pictures
.5
48 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
were made in New York, and when W. F, wanted a story, he would have to find one himself. One can readily imagine that through all his struggles he had very little time to read. But there was his wife who had read incessantly. She would tell him a story which she had been reading, and the next day, when he went to the studio, he would talk it off to a stenographer, or maybe tell it to the director, and between them they would put it into continuity, and after they had selected the actors, they would tell it to the actors. All day directors and actors would work, and in the evening there would be the "rushes," and^ W. F. would inspect them; before long his wife took to coming down and watching these "rushes," and helping him to judge whether their dramatic quality had been fully developed. If there was any- thing wrong, never did she say it in the presence of any other person, but took her husband aside and made her suggestion. That is the way to be a tactful wife ! Says W. F. :
"For five years no one knew the work she was doing, for when the scenarios were submitted, I would pack them up every evening and bring them home to my wife. I remember one story being rejected by her, and the writer of the story then wrote me a letter, saying that his story had just been returned marked 'rejected/ but this was the greatest story he had ever written, and proved that my scenario department was in the hands of incom- petents, and he would recommend that I immediately dismiss the party who rejected the story/'
When the picture was finished and cut, the titles had to be written, and Mrs. Fox would help with that. So began the regime, under which the -canary bird at home had to learn to wake up in the small hours of the morning. Says W, F. :
"It was not a rare occasion that we both left the building at five-thirty or six in the morning. When we were leaving, it was just about time for the job to open again. Even if we took a brief vacation at Atlantic City, the rushes would be brought down to me every night, and in the morning we would sit in some theatre and view them. I earned what I got ; in fact I earned more than I got, because the first year under contract my salary was $1,000, and for the next four years I was to get $10,000."
When you marry a young man who is going into the cloth examining and shrinking business, you are presumably not expect-
THE ROAD TO FORTUNE 49
ing a very romantic or exciting life ; it must have been a startling thing to Eve Leo when in the course of two or three years this prosaic source of livelihood was exchanged for a nickelodeon, and then for a "common show," and then for a string of 125 shows, and then for vaudeville theatres and whole chains of motion picture "palaces" — all of them like hungry birds in a nest, lifting their big heads and opening wide their beaks and clamoring for food. The Box Office Attractions Film Rental Company had to have more pictures, and pictures meant stories; so Eve Leo must hasten to read novels, or she must rack her memory for the novels she had read years ago — little dreaming how she would coin this reading into a fortune !
This went on for many years. They lived uptown, in the suburbs, and each night or early in the morning while they were driving home, Mrs. Fox would tell another story, and they would discuss changes in it, and perhaps make it all over. A few stories they bought from authors, but most of them they took out of the "common domain/' as the copyright decisions phrase it, meaning works upon which the copyright had expired. They made Ouida's "Under Two Flags" and Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities." Also that well-known classic "Les Miserables." I remember when I was a boy, one of my schoolmates read it and told me that he couldn't see why they were called "Less Miserables," because it seemed to him they were more miserable when they finishd than when they began.
The time came when the scenario department became too big for one woman and as others were engaged for the various departments, Mrs. Fox lost her job. She lost several jobs in the course of her life, she told me. Her first had been the tying of her husband's necktie each morning. It seems that when W. F. was a boy, he fell off a truck and broke his left arm, and an unskilled surgeon took out the elbow joint, and so this arm is crippled and his wife had to tie his ties. But after a while, it occurred, to him that this was an imposition and he began to practice and soon learned to do it with one hand. So Eve lost her first job. Her second job was brushing his hair artistically, in an effort to cover his growing bald spot; but as the years passed, this effort became hopeless. The third was the scenario department; the fourth was the job of decorating the Fox the-
50 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
atres, which was lost when the enemies of William Fox took the Fox Theatres Corporation from him, and ran it into bankruptcy, as we shall see.
The quality of moving pictures produced by the Box Office Attractions Film Rental Company, and later by the Fox Film Corporation, was a matter of importance to the public, and it is a matter of importance to this narrative. Altogether there were produced, under the initiative and direction of William Fox, a total of 750 pictures. In discussing the matter with me, he made the statement, "Some of them were good and some of them, I suppose, were very bad/' It seems to me that this statement may be accepted by all parties ; the rest would be a question of percentages. Certainly, no one who saw "Sunrise," "What Price Glory," "Four Sons/' and "A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur," will deny that William Fox produced some good pic- tures. On the other hand, when I read titles such as "Her One Mistake," "Flames of the Flesh," "The She Tiger," "The Splen- did Sin," "The Sin-Sister," "Love Makes 'Em Wild," "Ankles Preferred," and "Girls Gone Wild," I feel quite certain that he produced a number of bad ones.
Little Will Fox left school at the age of eleven, and began working in a clothing factory to help support his parents, and to save half his young brothers and sisters from the death which took the other half. He peddled stove-blacking, "lozengers," umbrellas, sandwiches and pretzels, buffalo pans, and Weber & Fields jokes, and in none of these occupations was there any opportunity to acquire familiarity with "the best that has been thought and felt in the world." If you had wanted true culture in moving pictures, you would have had to get them from men with a different sort of training. But you believed in the sacred principle of American individualism — which meant that Edison's new invention was flung out into the market-place, to be scrambled for by those who had the quickest wit and the highest skill in the picking up of nickels and dimes. So presently you had "The Life of an American Fireman," and "The Great American Train Robbery," and "The Runaway Wagon," and "The Automobile Thieves" ; then presently you had "Life's Shop Window," and "St. Elmo," and "Bertha the Sewing Machine Girl," and "No Mother to Guide Her," and "The Face on the Barroom Floor," and "Silk
THE ROAD TO FORTUNE 51
Legs/' and "Plastered in Paris." You had a swarm of men rush- ing to rent stores and install projection machines — the clothing merchant, Laemmle, and the band-musician, Lasky, and the shoe- maker, Warner, and the fur-dealer, Zukor, and the jack-of -all- trading, William Fox, who spent most of his time reading con- tracts and inspecting the weekly reports of theatre earnings.
I questioned him closely about the sources of his culture, because he passed it on, not merely to a hundred million Ameri- cans, but to other hundreds of millions in Borneo and Iceland and Patagonia. My wife and I went one day to a picture show, and it was a Fox show — there was a time in our home city when you couldn't attend anything but a Fox show, because W. F. bought the West Coast Theatres Corporation, which included all the theatres in Pasadena, and all the leading theatres In eleven states west of the Rocky mountains. We saw a newsreel of some men climbing a tremendously high mountain covered with snow. It might have been Rainier in Washington, or Popocatepetl in Mexico, or Kinchinjunga in the Himalayas — anyhow, there they were, toiling up through endless snow and ice, and when they got to the top, they accomplished their purpose, which was to unfurl to the wind a banner reading : "Fox Film"
There were such banners in every country you could name, and W. F. thinks that in all these places there will be people curious to read this book; his prediction concerning its future sales reads like Colonel Sellers calculating the market for spec- tacles among the natives of Africa. Regarding his purpose and attitude from the beginning, he says :
"The first theatre had 146 chairs. It was strictly a commercial proposition. I was looking for an outlet for my business acumen which hadn't found sufficient expression in the cloth examining and shrinking business. I gradually acquired a chain of 125 the- atres and during this pdtlod the commercial element was still uppermost. But as I became established and expanded my busi- ness, and life was no longer merely a battle to survive, my thoughts changed. I reached the period in 1912 or 1913 where I found myself with $500,000 in cash that I wanted to invest and I realized that there was a great deal more in life than just mak- ing money. What concerned me far more was to make a name that would stand for the finest in entertainment the world over.
52 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
I strove to provide more luxurious theatres than before and to refine the entertainment that we presented. I would not allow anything on the stage or screen I was unwilling to have my wife and daughters see. Many a picture that I had contracted for and would have to pay for whether I used it or not, was shelved on this account. You see, popular entertainment at this time was little above the crude burlesque stage, which had been all right for men, but now our audiences were made up of men and women too."
An important part of W. F/s training he seemingly had for- gotten, until I dug it out of his memory. In the year 1910, he leased the old Academy of Music, a large and famous show-place on Fourteenth Street and Waverly Place, the opera house of New York and the center of its social life in the days of our grand- fathers. It was the home of Denrnan Thompson, who played "The Old Homestead" when I was a child, and gave me the keenest delight which I can remember in the theatre. It is just as vivid in my mind as if I had seen it yesterday— the famous scene rep- resenting Grace Church with the chimes, and the old countryman who comes to town and wants to mail a letter to his family, and is told to drop it into the post-box. He does so, and then stands and gazes in awe, and says : "I wonder if it's got there yet." Then comes the postman, collecting the letters, and the old farmer jumps upon him, shouting "Stop, thief!" Also I remember a production called "The Black Crook," which shocked everybody in New York because the leading lady danced in black tights. ^
Well, W. F. leased this theatre, and here was a grave social and artistic responsibility. He had to pay $100,000 a year rent, and at the same time, he had to produce dramas worthy of the traditions of the ancient institution. Never would it do to put moving pictures into the old Academy of Music where King Edward VII had been entertained at a jgrand state ball I
He tried a stock company, producing fifty-two plays, a year, the admission 10, 20 and 30 cents. He carried out this program for three years, and attended rehearsals and watched the plays. He had his office right across the street, which made it possible' to devote a great deal of time to this branch of production, and it was here that he got most of his schooling and experience in the drama.
THE ROAD TO FORTUNE 53
At the end of the year 1912, he had lost $380,000 in attempt- ing to conform to the traditions of the Academy of Music, He then went up to Boston to see the owners of the property, and told them that he was through. He would rather forfeit the $100,000 he had paid as rental for the last year of the ten-year lease than continue a losing proposition. As he started to walk away, one of the owners called him back "What do you expect us to do with this theatre if you who are in the business couldn't make a go of it — what do you expect us to do ?"
W. F. told them that he had a plan in his mind, but hadn't wanted to give it to them until they asked for it. There were two things to be done : the rental must be reduced by one-third ; and the $100,000 which W. F. had just turned over to the owners must be used to tear down the blank walls of the building which fronted all the way on Fourteenth Street, and the grass plot in front of the wall must be turned into a row of stores. This was agreed to, and another ten-year lease was made, and W. F. went back to try another experiment with the Academy of Music.
He was just then making his decision to go into the business of manufacturing pictures. He was going to tise his stock com- pany for that purpose, and sent his director, J. Gordon Edwards, to Europe, where they were making good pictures, to learn how it was done. In the meantime, the Academy was dark, and one day W. F. was sitting in a restaurant across the way, when a man came over and persuaded him that he had a musical comedy that would be a big hit at $1.00. The Academy stage was big enough for a large production. Says W. F, :
"Before long he had sold me the idea. On the opening night the house was sold out. After the first act, the applause seemed unending. There were a half a dozen curtain calls. In the rear foyer my friends were congratulating me and telling me it was the greatest show they ever saw. I noticed one man standing in the corner, with a big cigar in his mouth and a black hat pulled down over his eyes. He nodded his head for me to come over and asked; 'What are they telling you?' I told him.
"Then he asked me if I believed them, and I replied, *Yes. The applause indicated that/ He then told me it was the worst thing he had ever sat through. He said, 'Come back tomorrow and listen to the remarks of strangers if you want to know the
54 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
truth. Don't listen to your friends.' The next afternoon I took his advice, and what I heard coincided with his criticism. Before the show was over there were only a few people left ; the rest had walked out. At the end of the week we rang the curtain down on about $75,000."
That was the last effort to save the traditions of the old Academy of Music. It was turned into a picture house, and after that, like all the other Fox theatres, it made money.
There is one more story of the old Academy days : W. F/s introduction to the Prince of Wales. This celebrity visited the United States in 1921, and W. F., the best of showmen, recalled the tradition that the grandfather of the Prince had been enter- tained at the Academy of Music Wouldn't the grandson like to come to the theatre and occupy the same chair in which his fore- father sat? The committee in charge of arrangements accepted the invitation and this is what happened to W. F. :
"Several days before the Prince of Wales arrived, a member of his committee visited my office and told me what I should wear on this great occasion, and rehearsed the manner in which I was to receive the Prince, saying that if he offered to shake hands with me, I was to put no pressure in the handclasp but let my hand rest lightly in his. And having escorted the royal visitor to his box, I was to make a graceful exit.
"Finally the day came when the Prince of Wales arrived. Fox News cameras had followed him on his travels from the time he left England until his arrival at the Academy. We rushed these reels through and were ready in time for the show. Invita- tions had been sent to the old-time New Yorkers who had attended the reception to the former Prince, later King Edward. There were fifty or more and they were delighted to attend. The Prince was received in the grand foyer of the theatre by twenty- four debutantes, the blue blood of New York. They wore period costumes, crinoline and white wigs, and made a beautiful picture.
"When I met the Prince of Wales, he seemed a very genial and democratic sort of person and I liked him* I liked the pres- sure of his handclasp and I returned it. He was so natural, I forgot my instructions to address him as "Your Highness" and found myself saying, "Prince, I am happy to meet you, and I wish to express my thanks for accepting the invitation/* When
THE ROAD TO FORTUNE 55
we reached the box, I said, This ends my part of the perform- ance, as I have been instructed by your committee that I am to to leave you here/ He said, 'You will do nothing of the kind. Come and sit with me. Never mind what you have been instructed to do/
"I walked into the box with him. Suddenly he turned to me and said, 'What is that gold chair doing there ?' I told him it was supposed to be the royal chair his grandfather had sat in. He asked to have it taken out as he preferred to sit in one of our regular chairs. After the porter had removed the gold chair, we sat down together. The time alloted on the royal itinerary for the entertainment was to be just fifteen minutes. We had a funny dog comedy called 'The Yellow Dog Catcher/ All the parts were played by dogs ; there must have been fifty of them. The Prince laughed until his sides ached and wanted to know the breeds of the different dogs. After looking at some of the mon- grels I admitted it was beyond me.
"When his fifteen minutes were over, I told him his time was up. He said, 'Now don't drive me out. Isn't it the oddest things that they pick out for you to do on a visit like this? I have visited every dead man's grave in New York and placed flowers on them. This is the first bit of relief I have had since I arrived. Now let me stay/ He stayed about an hour, and impressed me as being just as human as any ordinary boy that came from one of our American families/'
i
REEL SIX OVER THE HILL
ASKED W. F. about the authors he had dealt with in those ~ early days, but he couldn't remember that he had ever met one ; he rarely met them at any time. The purchases were made through agents. For "Life's Shop Window" $100 was paid, Later on prices rose. After some effort W. F. remembered an author— 'Oh, yes, I met Zane Grey. We bought half a dozen of his stories. I don't remember that he made any impression on me. He seemed to be a nice sort of a man,"
You can see how little the author was needed by one curious tale which W. R tells me. "Some other film concern made a motion picture, using a musical comedy star by the name of Josie Collins. When the picture was completed, it was terrible, and there was no possible market for it. It so happened that just at this time Fox Film was behind on its schedule and in great need of a picture, Here was a chance to buy one at a bargain, so they bought it and cut it to pieces, and reconstructed it, making an entirely different story without an additional scene being shot. The aunts became grandmothers, the grandmothers became friends, and if anything was missing, we filled in the gaps with titles. It was previewed, and the trade papers all agreed that it was a fine picture. It was a success."
I asked about the movie stars and how they were made, which brought a very interesting story to mind:
"Before making 'A Fool There Was/ I consulted Robert Hilliard, who had produced it on the stage and played the leading role for years. He said, In my experience, I have had to change my leading lady six times. As soon as one scored a tremendous hi}: in the part, she believed herself to be a Sarah Bemhardt and became unmanageable, and I had to let her go. My advice wotdd be to put the girl you choose tinder contract, as the part will
56
OVER THE HILL 57
make her.' We made a test of a girl called Theodosia Goodman, who had no theatrical experience, and decided she would do. She was the daughter of a tailor in Cincinnati. Miss Goodman gave a very remarkable performance in this picture; and then came our problem. If we were going to continue her services, the name didn't have quite the theatrical feeling, and we must find a stage name for her.
"One day it was conceived in our publicity department that we had had every type of woman on the screen except an Arabian; our publicity director felt that the public would like an Arabian. He conceived the story that this Miss Goodman was born in Arabia — her father was an Arab and her mother a French woman who had played the theatres in Paris. So we took 'Arab/ and spelling it backwards, made it cBara/ and shortened the first name Theodosia' to Theda* and thus the name Theda Bara/ Then the director said, 'Now let's not settle on this until we see if it will go over. Let me invite the newspapers to an interview and see if they will swallow this/
"He dressed her in the regular Arabian costume, and sur- rounded her with the proper atmosphere, and then the newspaper boys all came in. He said, 1 want you to meet Miss Bara/ and gave them her history. He said she didn't speak a word of English. The newspaper men left that day and said that the Fox Film Corporation had discovered the greatest living actress in the world. At first when we would want to attract the atten- tion of Miss Goodman, we would call her 'Miss Bara/ and she would not pay any attention. But after a short time she became used to it, and took to the name perfectly, and she still retains it. Miss Bara got $75 a week for her first picture, and when her contract expired, we were paying her $4,000 a week."
And here is a story of genius and temperament. There was a Broadway favorite by the name of Valeska Suratt. She had the reputation that whenever she got angry, she walked out and wouldn't appear at the studio to finish her picture; so W. R, as a precaution, took the last part of the picture first. There was a scene in a gambling house, and then a scene in which the leading lady fell downstairs. Next she was required to go up to Sing Sing and there encounter a prisoner who had once stabbed her. (They lived a varied and exciting career, the movie
58 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
stars of that early decade.) Miss Suratt was supposed to be happy at the "idea that the prisoner in Sing Sing prison was chopping stones into small pieces. She was supposed to sneer at him, but she said to the director, "I can do anything but sneer at a prisoner. I will laugh at him, but I will not sneer." There was an argument, and in the end Miss Suratt said that she would go home from Sing Sing, and home she went.
They heard no more from her, so W. R decided that they would put out the picture as it was, and it was so announced. Then Miss Suratt came to his office.
"What is this rubbish about this picture being released?"
W. F. assured her that it was a very good picture indeed.
"But there is no ending to the picture !"
"Oh, yes," said W. F., "don't you remember where you rolled down the flight of stairs from the gambling house? The camera photographed you as you lay on the ground, and we have now put in the title, 'And poor Suratt died from this fall/ "
Then W. F. told her that the director had written in some more scenes, The next scene showed a hearse in front of an old house. There were four dirty bums carrying a coffin, and the hearse proceeded down Broadway with the director running ahead with a megaphone yelling, "In this hearse lies Miss Suratt." He went on to describe a scene in the cemetery, whereupon the actress burst out laughing and gave up. She came back, and from that time on never failed to appear on time at the studio.
In the early days the studio was out on Staten Island, and the "rushes" were brought in every day. Later the studio was moved into New York, and in 1916 the production part of the enterprise was moved to Hollywood. On W. F.'s first visit to the studio at the coast, he noticed a man leaning up against a lamp post in front of the door, wearing a very loud cowboy costume.
He says: "Every morning for a week this same figure was waiting, always in a different costume, each one louder than the last, until my curiosity was aroused. One day he approached me and said: 'My name is Tom Mix. I made tip my mind I wouldn't work for any other company until I saw you, Mr, Fox/
"He was a very picturesque figure and I interviewed him and decided to engage him. When the subject of salary was broached,
OVER THE HILL 59
he said that the thing he was interested in was the provision for the care and feeding of his horses. We agreed on $350 a week, including feed and stables for his horses. When his last con- tract expired, we were paying him $7,500 a week. His ftrst pictures were two-reelers and the audience liked them. And though Tom became the hero to the youth of the nation, the interesting thing about him is that he never changed. He was with our company for ten years or more, and to me he waS*«*> different when he got $7,500 a week than when he was getting $350."
I think the production of which W. F. is proudest is the picture called "Over the Hill," produced about 1920. This pic- ture had no stars. It cost $100,000 to make, and netted over $3,000,000 — which is very high praise for a picture. The story- was W. F.'s own idea, and started when he heard a young man recite Will Carleton's poem "Over the Hill to the Poor House." The poem made a sensation, and W. F. was led to read this volume. He was always on the lookout for plots, and this poem brought to mind all the old people left in institutions through the neglect of thoughtless and selfish children.
A short time after Mrs. Fox asked him to do her a favor. An old man had appealed to her to get him into a home./ He was seventy-five years old, in broken health and great need and without a friend or relative in the world. W. F. went to see Jacob Schiff about it, and told him the sad story. A few days later Schiff sent for W. F. and, to the latter's great embarrassment, reported the result of an investigation: the old man had six children, several of them well-to-do. W. F. brought the report back to his wife, and naturally was much annoyed.
A month passed, and Mrs. Fox told her husband the sequel to the story. She had written to each of those six sons and daughters, inviting them to her home on a certain evening. They all came. There were six brothers and sisters meeting one another after long separation, and naturally they wondered what it was about. Said Mrs. Fox:
"I am confronted with a grave problem concerning a worthy old man seventy-five years of age, who appealed to me for help and begged that I provide a home for him, as he hadn't a soul to turn to. In my efforts to have him admitted to a home, I
60 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
find he has four sons and two daughters/' At this point one of the girls was crying with embarrassment and said she knew Mrs. Fox was referring to their father. This daughter had lost her husband and the others agreed to contribute money so that the old man could live with her. They all agreed to send their remittances to Mrs. Fox, so that she could be sure the plan wo^ld be carried out.
X^SS^he story started in the mind of W. F. He worked it out himself. He says:
"We used no script for this picture. The director came to 0ie every morning and I recited the scenes that he would pho- tograph that day. Many times while the story was in progress, fee insisted that the material he had finished could not possibly snake a motion picture."
When it was finished, it was very sad and sentimental It was in ten reels, and nobody liked it as it "preached a sermon." W. F. determined at least to give it a trial. It so happened that* lie had a lease on the Astor Theatre in New York ; the lease was lo expire in five days, and the picture that was showing there was not very good. W. F. decided that since he had to pay for the theatre anyway, he would put in "Over the Hill" for that live days and see what happened. He continues :
'The next night this picture went in, and we gave free passes to fill the theatre. I remember standing in the lobby after the show, asking this one and that one how they liked the picture. One of the last persons to come out was a man whom I wouldn't want to meet on a dark night alone; he had the hardest face of any man I had ever seen. He was smoking his pipe, and I asked him for a light. While we smoked, I asked him how tie liked the picture. He spoke with a Scotch accent and said : *I liked it very much, lad, but it's had a terrible effect on me* You see, I'm a seaman — I am only fifty, but I have been out to sea forty out of those fifty years. I ran away from home when I was a lad and never returned or wrote me mither a line. Ah, but tomorrow I buy me a ticket to go home to Scotland — I am going to see me mither again/ I suggested he had better cable first, because he had been away a long time and his mother might be dead. He said, 'I will go home to Scotland, and if she be dead, I am going to kneel at her grave and ask her to forgive me/ "
OVER THE HILL 61
Says W. F. : "When I realized that this man was so affected that he would travel 3,500 miles to kneel at his mother's grave, I knew I had created a story that would do much good. Men and women by the millions poured into the theatres all over the world and came out thinking about their old parents and whether they were doing their duty. My publicity people communicated with homes for the aged to find out whether there were any old people being reclaimed from these homes ; they found that in the eighteen months following the production of "Over the Hill," more than 5,000 old men and women had been taken back to live with their children ! When the picture was sent to England, the government revised its regulations, and for the first time permitted a moving picture to be shown in the prisons."
Such is the power of the "movies," and that of the "talkies" is even greater. W. F. had a full realization of this power ; and in common with every other producer, he used it to uphold the established social order. The "talkies" will tell all children to be kind to their parents, and all parents to be kind to their chil- dren; but they will never tell anyone that there is anything fundamentally wrong with our social system.
I shall have more to say about this later. For the moment we have come to the war time and W. F/s attitude to that He tells:
"I left instructions here in California that we must do all things that would help our cause, regardless of profit and gain; that sequences should be written into our pictures that would arouse patriotism . . . We sold Liberty bonds from the stage of every theatre we had, many times much to the annoyance of our patrons, who came there to be entertained, and not to be reminded that there was a war. They came to forget there was a war, which we never allowed them to do."
of his time to the raising1 of
*E^4jQuJ5§funds. He was "captain^ of several teams wnicli raised rnilHon^ftrd would have come out ahead of all the other teams with their millionaire captains — except that courtesy required him to permit John D. Rockefeller, Jr/s team to come out No. 1. There is an interesting story connected with this, which I shall tell later, when we find W. F. having business deal- ings with young Rockefeller, and not getting a return of his
62 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
courtesy. Also there was a curious experience with Henry Ford, which I shall save until we come to the Henry Ford part of our story. .
All through the war the Fox Film Corporation prospered ; it prospered even in the panic year of 1920, It broke all records in that year, and never Jb^d a loss so long as its founder was m Jgarge. In' 1525 it became, a public corporation, a0d then it pur- „ chained tfie West Coast chain of theatres. Also the Fox Theatres CaEBofatlon War ;esfiT3BsEe#rtc> take over all the theatres in which* WllKara Fox; was- interested* .Ultimately he had 800 as an outlet for "his productions, and his profits were growing at a rate which astounded Wall Street.
The radio had come in 1921, and had brought sharp compe- tition to the moving picture business. W. F. first noticed it on rainy nights. "Prior to this, on a rainy night our business would be larger than it would be on a clear night When the radio came in, I made a careful observation and found that cm rainy nights we were doing little or no business/' So he began to watch the experiments being tried with talking pictures^ The first efforts in America were made by means of a synchronization of a moving picture film with a phonograph disc. The film was run through a projection machine, and the disc was played by a phonograph, and the enlarged sound thrown into the theatre. But W. F. insisted from the beginning that this method was hope- less; real success would begin only when the sound track was put on the film with the pictures. He tells the basis of this conviction :
"I went to the Warner Theatre one day, to hear a man sing the introductory number of "Pagliacci." Of course, I went expect- ing to be thrilled. This was the first person from grand opera who consented to sing for talkies. The picture started, and he was making all the gestures he used on the stage, and the sound I heard was a banjo playing, accompanied by a colored man singing 'I Wish I Was in Dixie.' Of course the operator had put on the wrong record I And later they ran into this difficulty — they had the problem of shipping the reels to the exhibitor, and if one record was broken, no show could be given. When film gets old you must cut out the brittle part; and of course when this was done, the record and the film did not synchronize. At
OVER THE HILL 63
one time I wrote a paper with 101 definite reasons why it was not possible to have the industry adopt records and film and make them synchronize/'
W. F. stood out for "sound on film/' and tells the very inter- esting story of how he got it:
"In the winter of 1925 I was in California, and in the spring I returned to New York. The first day I arrived at my office I was greeted by my brother-in-law, Jack Leo, who said he would like to show me something in the projection room. I went to the room, and to my amazement, in this projection room that I had visited for many years and that had always been silent, the machine went into operation, and there was a little canary bird in a cage and it was singing. It sang beautifully from the lowest to the highest note it was possible to sing. It sang for several minutes, and then following that came a Chinaman who had a ukelele and he sang an English song. He sang terribly and played none too well, but to me it was a marvel. At the conclusion of that the lights went up, and they said, "What do you think of it?' I said it was marvelous. Leo said, 'It is all right if you think it is marvelous, because I have incurred an expense of about $12,000 without your consent while you were away. Upstairs I have built a temporary sound-proof stage and we have been photographing sound-proof pictures. If you didn't like it, I was prepared to pay the $12,000 out of my own pocket.' I said, 'Like it? This is revolutionary!' This bird sang just as though it were in a tree, and I found that the sound had been recorded on film and that it was reproduced by light from the film to the screen. All mechanical sound was eliminated.
"I went up on this temporary stage floor and saw the tempo- rary sound-proof room, where everything had to be done. I said that couldn't be right. If the photographing had to be done in a sound-proof room, then you are going to rob this camera of seeing nature. They said there was only one way to record sound, and that was in sound-proof rooms. I said, 'That can't ke so — yOU must be in error/ But they were sure of their position, and it was necessary to build a perfected sound-proof room. We let a contract to build our first sound-proof stages on 54th Street and Tenth Avenue. The contractors said it would
take four months to build this studio. 6
64 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
"I called for the inventor, Mr. Case, and said, 'I am going to give you a million dollars, and you can spend this million dollars in the next four months, anyway you like, in experi- menting how to make this camera photograph on the outside without a sound-proof room/ Shortly thereafter they brought the various things they had photographed outside. One was a rooster crowing and it sounded exactly like a pig squealing. Another was a dog barking which sounded like a cow. They recognized that they didn't have it, because of the confusion of sound. About thirty or forty days later they said, 'Here, this time we have it' On the screen there came rushing before me a train photographed on the Jersey Central tracks, and I heard the whistles blowing and the wheels turning just as though the train were with me in that room. I said, 'Now you have it/ "
We shall deal later on with the complicated question of the patent rights to "sound on film," and the enormous financial inter- ests involved. For the moment I am dealing with the cultural aspects of W. F/s activities, and the benefits which the public got from his work. One of these was the Fox Movietone News. For the first time it was possible for the public not merely to see the crowned heads and generals of Europe marching in parades and reviewing their soldiers, but to hear the cheers of the crowds and the playing of the bands. The dwellers in remote cattle and lumber towns of the West could now leap magically over the world, and they came every week for this thrilling ten or fifteen minutes. Sound newsreels became the rage.
Also there was W. F/s dream of educational, religious, and scientific pictures. He had been making silent pictures for schools, and was proud of them. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company claimed all the patent rights for sound pic- tures, and W. F. made a tie-up with them, and took Walter S. Gifford, president of the Telephone Company, to see some of his pictures in a school somewhere on the East Side of New York.
"We showed some of our silent educational pictures we had made to a classroom of boys and girls, and Mr. Gifford came and brought his little son with him. Of course, Gifford was delighted with it and thought it was wonderful. I said, If you think this is wonderful, wait until you see them when we make them in sound/ and he concurred/' We shall hear later of a
OVER THE HILL 65
dispute with the Telephone Company over this issue, and the rights to the making of newsreels and educational pictures. There were mountains of treasure dumped out for those to seize who had the power, and W. F. made the mistake of trying to take his share.
He had been caught napping by the radio, which had taken away his audiences on rainy nights, and in 1928 he saw television on the way, and didn't want to be caught napping again. "I reached a conclusion that the one thing that would make it pos- sible to compete with television was to use a screen ten times larger than the present screen, a camera whose eye could see ten times as much as at present. For example, Roxy's picture screen is eighteen feet wide, and the screen I proposed was, about ninety feet. I believed this 'Grandeur* would come closer to the third dimension we hear scientists talking about/'
W. F. proceeded to form the Fox Grandeur Corporation, and ordered the making of a 'Grandeur* projecting machine at his own expense. 'This was an experiment William Fox was mak- ing— it was not an experiment of the Fox companies, because there was a great hazard about it, and I always took the hazard^ myself/'
The other motion picture producers were greatly disturbed by the development of "Fox Grandeur/' Zukor, president of Para- mount, and Sarnoff, representing RKO, the all-powerful Radio Corporation of America, came to call on W. F. "They said I was about to make a great mistake : the industry had just changed from silent to sound; a great inventory had to be wiped down, and we were just about catching our breath, and here I was trying to upset it again. I was calling it progress, and they called it destruction. They said that enlarging the pictures could be done at another time, when all the companies -would agree on a uniform size. Each company was claiming they had a much finer development at that time, and their purpose was to per- suade me not to give the premiere performance. I described to them the necessity of it, that we could not see television destroy us. Of course, I was firm in my position, that my duty was to further the motion picture business — I hoped it would hurt no one. I was going to give my premiere, and if the public decided it was no good, that would be the end of it. Shortly thereafter,
66 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
we gave the premiere of 'Sunny Side Up/ and it was hailed as a great success, I ordered more pictures made."
So here again we see William Fox, the stubborn and ego- tistical person, making powerful enemies. We shall see him thus making one enemy after another ; playing a lone hand, insist- ing on having his own way, regardless of how much trouble he makes for his competitors, and for the great monopolies of manufacturing and finance. We shall see exactly how they stopped him. For the moment suffice it to say that with his "ousting," the "Grandeur" movement died, and has never been heard of since. A second picture, "The Big Trail," which he had in production, was the last the public ever saw.
And the same thing has happened to the elaborate schemes for the making of sound pictures for churches, schools, scientific institutions and homes. W. F. had this all figured out, and had begun production. He had plans for the making of school and church equipment, at very low prices. He is still cherishing this dream.
REEL SEVEN THE MIDAS TOUCH
WE come now to the point where we must understand the finances of the Fox companies. I assume that my readers will be of two classes, a small number who are familiar with high finance, and a large number who are not. I write for the latter group, and the few more fortunate ones will have to endure a little boredom.
The Box Office Attractions Film Rental Company, started in 1912, was continually expanding, and in 1915 its assets were taken over by a new concern, the Fox Film Corporation. This was a closed corporation; its shares were never offered for sale. Wil- liam Fox took one-half the common stock, and his associates in New Jersey took the other half. There was half a million dollars in preferred stock, which was paid off in a couple of years, so we don't have to bother with it. The point is that the men from New Jersey who invested $400,000 in the Fox Film Corporation got their money back in two years, and in the course of the next fourteen years they got $10,000,000 in dividends, and at the end of that period, their stock had a market value of $10,000,000.
W. F/s arrangement with these associates was that he should select four directors of the corporation and they should select four. It was understood that this arrangement would never be changed. Now comes a curious story:
"Within a month after the company was formed, a man appeared in my office one day. He was a relation of one of the group who had put up the $400,000, and he had in his hand a certificate of stock for ten shares. He wanted to know how much I would give him for it. I asked him where he had gotten it, and he said Mr. Kuser had given it to him. He said Mr. Kuser had allowed him to buy some of the preferred stock and
67
68 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
had given him these shares. I said, 'You ought not to offer that to me. These ten shares would give me a majority/ He said he knew it and that was what he wanted. He said that he had had a row with them and he wanted to get even. He said, 'This will upset the thing Kuser has so carefully planned. If you don't buy them, I am going to give them to you/ I didn't want him to give them to me, so I asked him if $1,000 would do. I gave him the thousand dollars, took the certificate, and put it in my vault. From 1915 to 1925, no man in the Jersey contingent ever knew that I had the majority in that company. For the ten years th?' I had the majority of stock in my vault, at no time did I permit a single resolution to be passed by the board of directors that was not unanimous."
In 1925, the "Jersey contingent" suggested that they would like to have the company listed, so that they could sell the shares on the market if they wanted to ; therefore, by agreement, it was recapitalized for a million shares of stock, of which only half a million were issued at the beginning. The administration of W, F. having been satisfactory, the associates were willing that he should keep control, and the million shares were divided into two groups ; 900,000 A shares which had no votes, and 100,000 B shares which carried the voting control of the company.
This is a new wrinkle in high finance which has come into fashion in the last ten years. It seems to me to be wholly against public policy, and should be forbidden by law ; but many of our biggest corporations have adopted it, and of course W. F. had a right to join the procession. It is amusing to note that his enemies were righteously indignant at the arrangement, and when they finally succeeded in ousting him and taking over his voting shares, they put them into a corporation which was controlled by three shares of stock !
The device of voting shares has one purpose — to deprive the people who put up the money of any say as to how their money shall be handled. It means the removal from our industrial sys- tem of every trace of democracy and self-government. It makes the corporation an absolute monarchy; and you will find what you may have noticed through all history, that absolutism may work not so badly when you have a benevolent monarch, but trouble begins when you get a bad one. So long as William Fox
THE MIDAS TOUCH 69
ran the Fox enterprises, the stockholders made money; but when his enemies took control, the stockholders lost everything. In neither case had they done anything to deserve what they got.
At the outset there were 235,000 shares of A stock issued to the old stockholders, and 165,000 were sold to the bankers at $40 a share, netting the company $6,600,000. The bankers sold these shares to the public for $43. Later on, to make possible the purchase of the West Coast Theatres, the bankers sold to the public new shares, until the total issue was 920,660, All shares paid a dividend of $4 a share per year as long as W. F. was in charge. I will give here a table showing the gross rentals and net earnings of the corporation :
Year Gross Rentals Net Earnings
1914 $ 272,401 $
1915 3,208,201 523,003
1916 4,244,658 365,000
1917 7,118,172 593,000
1918 7,300,301 270,000
1919 ,. 9,380,883
1920 12,605,725 1,413,542
1921 13,715,000 1,605,889
1922 , 12,327,957 2,660,158
1923 11,242,629 1,808,166
1924 9,926,025 2,009,043
1925 11,750,515 2,606,271
1926 14,274,234 3,030,926
1927 17,012,875 3,120,557
1928 22,626,747 5,957,218
1929 30,803,974 '9,469,051
Up to 1926, Fox Film owned only two theatres. That year it bought a third interest in West Coast, and the next year it bought the balance of this concern. At this time, the West Coast owned something over 150 theatres. Under the management of W. F.y it increased the number to over 500. It obtained another hundred in purchasing a company called the Midwest. It is clear enough that when you are turning out a feature picture every week, it is to your advantage to own theatres in every city and town in order to be sure of getting adequate releases for your product. It is what the Chicago packers tried to do when they
70 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
started buying up butcher shops for the selling of their product. The Government stopped the packers, but it permitted the moving picture concerns to carry out this same program.
The figures for 1929 were prepared and issued after W. R was ousted from the company, and it appears that more than $4,000,000 was taken from the 1929 earnings and held over to be reported in the 1930 earnings, so as to save the prestige of the new regime. The real earnings of Fox Film in 1929 were over $13,500,000; and in addition there was a "non-recurring" profit of $8,000,000, to be explained later.
Fox Theatres Corporation was formed to take over the many theatres in which W. F. had investments along with various associates. It became a public corporation with 3,900,000 shares of Class A stock, non-voting, and 100,000 shares of Class B stock, voting. W. F. took the 100,000 shares of voting stock and also 300,000 shares of non-voting stock — this in return for his theatres at their value of $8,800,000, certified to by accountants on the basis of their earnings. The price of the stock was $22 per share, and the bankers took a half million shares at this price and sold them to the public at $25. This netted the company $11,000,000 and made Fox Theatres a $20,000,000 corporation.
• Jlere is a table of the earnings of Fox Theatres during the four years that W. F. was in charge.
1926 $454,101
1927 823,659
1928 1,522,079
1929 , 2,660,261
Get the picture of these two concerns. At the rate at which Wall Street capitalizes its enterprises, Fox Film is worth about $200,000,000, and Fox Theatres is worth about $50,000,000. In the ordinary course of high finance, each of these companies would have issued a vast quantity of bonds and debentures, and the money thus raised would have gone into the pockets of the promoters and financiers — not to mention a handsome rake-oif for the bankers, ten or fifteen millions. You will see, when W. F. - is ousted, that very thing happening. Bonds and stock to the amount of $103,0(30,000 are issued, and by various devices of refinancing the bankers get nearly half of this money. Who gets
THE MIDAS TOUCH 7]
the rest is a mystery of this book; all I can show you is that the amount disappeared in the course of a couple of years.
The fact that W. F. worked day and night for his stockholders and that he paid them their dividends as they were earned — this news spread throughout the United States. It was helped, of course, by the public nature of the Fox business. Everybody saw the Fox Movietone newsreels; everybody went to the Fox the- atres. So when William Fox wanted to buy more theatres or chains of theatres, and to make more pictures and newsreels, he had no difficulty in raising the money. The public hastened to take the Fox securities whenever they were put upon the market. In four years Fox was able to raise a total 6f $135,000,000. There was no preferred stock and no "stale" stock. The companies were owned entirely by their common shareholders and were controlled entirely by the voting shares which William Fox kept in his strong-box. In the case of Fox Theatres there was only one cer- tificate for 100,000 shares of B stock. In the case of Fox Film there was one certificate for a majority of the voting shares. These two pieces of paper were highly precious, being the key of the treasure chest, and whoever owned them, was the master of more than a quarter of a billion dollars. Many men dreamed of getting them, and the final battle over their possession is our theme.
W. F. tells how it feels to be the owner of two such pieces of paper:
"When you create a company and own part of its shares, if all shares vote alike, your responsibility is not very much. These shares have a right to elect the board of directors, and if they haven't exerted their rights, it is their own fault. But when you own the voting shares, exactly the opposite is the case. The stockholders have no power, they have no rights — their rights only come on a dishonest act. So the creator acts in a fiduciary capacity ; the whole burden rests on his shoulders. That was my life during the time I owned these voting shares. I felt the responsibility keenly, and at no time in the Film company did I ever permit a resolution to be passed without a unanimous vote. The majority of the board would pass on the things that would be submitted to it. Ultimately I passed all the things I wanted, but I did it by persuasion and not by a mere vote.
72 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLfAM FOX
"That is enough to make a young man old, to control the voting shares ; but the man shoulders a double burden when he foolishly lends his name to the corporation. He then has a responsibility that he can never escape ; his whole career is wound tip in this enterprise. Of course, if he knows the business and likes it, he can enjoy this situation. With me, it was a new adven- ture every day."
What use does W. F. make of his monarchy? He will make his own statement about that :
"I was the president of the Fox Theatres Corporation and at no time from the time it was created in November, 1925, up to this moment did I ever receive a penny of salary. I was giving my services to Fox Theatres without compensation. I was getting no percentage of the profits. At no time since the creation of Fox Theatres in 1925 until the day I sold out did I ever present that company with a voucher for any personal expenses I had incurred in its behalf. Sometime in 1926 when I realized the corporation had assumed the task of paying $2,000,000 a year in dividends, $4 a share, the earnings were approximately $3,000,000 a year, and I felt that was a close margin between earnings and dividends. Up to this time I was receiving a salary of $200,000 a year from Fox Film and I voluntarily withdrew my name from the payroll. I had no agreement under which I was to receive any percentage of its profits. I was paying for the privilege of being president of these two companies. I had spent of my own funds between 1926 and the day I sold out several hundreds of thousands of dollars, for which I was never reimbursed and for which I never presented a voucher.
"I felt that I was a most unusual president of a corporation. I was receiving dividends on the stocks that I owned on the same basis as any other stockholder. Every other stockholder was receiving his dividends, but was not asked to devote any of his time. No other stockholder was asked to extend any part of his dividends for promoting the companies ; no other stockholder was asked to render services to the companies without compensation. Fox was spending his own money and was not asking for the reimbursement of it/'
The story has now come to the beginning of 1929. All the way through you will note that W. F, is expanding, taking in new
THE MtDAS TOUCH 73
enterprises; always running risks and never learning fear. He thinks he has learned how to make moving pictures which will appeal to the public, and he thinks he knows how to manage the- atres and collect the public's money. He thinks he knows this better than other men, and so he expands. At the same time, when his rivals attempt to expand, he blocks them and thwarts their deals. He is somewhat naive, in that he fails to realize how this makes them hate him. He forgets their hatred quickly, because he is busy with new enterprises. But they do not forget, and wait their turn to pay him back.
^The greatest, xotist€fker-h®,xo^<ie was that he sometimes failed to pay ffie'Fankiers the "rake-off" to'v^ flKShSdves
entitled. Fox Theatres issued more than 700,000 shares which netted the company an average of $25 per share ; and under the rules of the Wall Street game, some one of the big banking houses should have underwritten these shares, and charged about $3 per share for the service, which would have been over $2,000,000. For William Fox to have deprived the bankers of this money and saved it for his stockholders — that was the greatest crime he could have committed in Wall Street, and proved him wholly unfitted to carry on a big financial enterprise. When the time came that his enemies were ready to surround him and block him off, they did not have much trouble in persuading the other banks and investment houses to keep hands off. They could say : "You know this man ; he is an interloper, and does not obey the rules ; he is setting precedents which would put us out of business. It is as much to your interest as to ours that he be punished. So lay off and let us do it."
In the managing of theatres W. F. admitted only one peer to himself, and that was Marcus A. Loew, who was dead, I am sure that he planned to get all the moving picture theatres in the United States under his control sooner or later. He was prepared to pay the price for them. When the others got into trouble, the price became cheaper. I think also that he planned to have the making of moving pictures entirely in his own hands.
He had had the wit to see that recording discs were useless, and that the future lay with sound on film. He had bought the really vital patents covering the photoelectric process. Also he
74 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
had conceived the wide screen and made it known to the public as Fox Grandeur. He had fixed sound newsreels in the public mind as Fox Movietone. It was the object of his enterprises to build up a chain of theatres that would cover the forty-eight states of the Union. Fox Film would acquire theatres from Maine to Illinois, and West Coast would acquire them from California to Illinois, and some day the chains would meet. He had started school pictures, church pictures, scientific pictures. Of course he considered himself the man to run the industry !
At the session I had with W. F. and his wife, there was an interesting little drama. It seems that for years she had been begging him to retire ; she had had enough of being married to a slave, and of having to turn herself into a slave in order to have a husband. "All this fight was unnecessary/' she said ; "he had promised me to retire in a year, and that year was half up/'
I looked at W. F., rather puzzled. I remembered all the new obligations he had assumed during that year, a total of $93,000,- 000 ; I remembered the new plans he had told me, the new com- panies he had bought, and his plans for amalgamation ; the new chains of theatres and their redecoration ; the Grandeur pictures ; the new and cheaper projection machines and sound equipment, that would put talking pictures into schools and churches, into hospitals and orphan asylums, and make them as common in the home as the radio is today. "Did you really mean to retire in the year?" I asked. W. F. smiled a sly smile and said, "I meant to retire as soon as I had got things fixed so that they would run themselves." Mrs. Fox then told me a story about little Eve Leo in the days before her marriage. She had befriended an old Irish woman, and this old woman had made a remark which had seemed dreadfully cynical to the little Jewish girl: "A woman can lay her head on the same pillow with a man for fifty years and never know what is going on inside his head/'
William Fox was a man who did not know how to rest, and who was always undertaking new responsibilities and risks. But you will note that when he issued new stock and sold it to his stockholders or to the public, he gave them real value for their money. When he turned over his own theatres to the public, it was at a proper price, based on their earnings. When he bought other chains of theatres, he saw that he got full value, and proved
THE MIDAS TOUCH 75
it by making these theatres earn dividends. He intended it to be that way with his next move.
Marcus A. Loew died, and left behind him Loew's, Incor- porated, a holding company owning some two hundred theatres throughout the United States, also a prosperous producing con- cern, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The widow of Loew had 400,000 shares of stock in the company, which was close to one-third, and practically carried the control. The stock was selling on the mar- ket for about $75 a share, but of course a block like this which carried the control was a different matter, and the price for the block was $50,000,000. Warner Brothers wanted these shares, and Zukor of Paramount also became a bidder.
W. F. figured what he could do with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer if he got it. Here were two rival concerns, Fox and Metro, with duplicate plants, and 130 duplicate marketing agencies, covering nearly every country in the world; through the elimination of this waste, there would be a saving of $17,000,000 a year; in comparison with this, the price of the Loew shares was a small matter. W, F. obtained an option on the shares and set out to raise the money.
Get this layout in mind. A going concern is to be purchased — in the year 1929 Loew's, Inc., was to earn a profit of nearly $12,000,000, and the $50,000,000 purchase which W. F. is making will give him one-third of the future earnings of the company; this in addition to the expected saving of $17,000,000 a year. W. F. knows that his stockholders will welcome this proposition, and when he offers them new stock, they will buy it eagerly.
We have seen W. F. continually borrowing money from bankers. He now wants $50,000,000, which is too much for ordinary bank borrowing, or any form of amateur financing. It is a job for one of the so-called investment banking houses, and W. F. has a standing arrangement with a prosperous and power- ful concern, Halsey, Stuart & Co.; there is a contract, whereby they agree to do new financing for his companies. They have sold to the public $6,400,000 for a Detroit building, $4,750,000 for a St. Louis building, $4,000,000 debentures for a New England enterprise, $13,000,000 debentures for a chain of theatres acquired in New York, $4,000,000 for a bond issue for studios in Cali- fornia, $1,800,000 bond issue for studios in New York, and a
76 UPTON SINCLAIR PRESENTS WILLIAM FOX
$2,500,000 debenture bond issue in connection with the Roxy theatre; a total of approximately $36,450,000, for which they received a commission of from 7 to 10 per cent, the total being- over $3,000,000.
Now W. F. puts before them a plan for the $50,000,000 cash purchase of the 400,000 Loew shares ; he shows them the lay-out, and they approve it, and with their advice he sets out to raise the money. He goes to the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, the great $3,000,000,000 octopus which owns most of the wire communications of the country, and also is manufactur- ing talking picture equipment, and leasing patent rights, and therefore doing business on a profitable basis with the Fox com- panies. It so happens that the Telephone Company is in the midst of a protracted quarrel with Warner Brothers over patent rights and licenses. The Telephone Company does not want its enemy to get hold of those Loew shares and increase its power by amalgamation. In order to keep Warner from getting them, it agrees to help Fox get them, and it lends him $15,000,000 for one year. Also it takes him to the Chatham & Phoenix Bank and arranges for that bank to lend him $3,000,000 more. Halsey, Stuart & Co. lend him $10,000,000 for a year, and the Bankers' Securities Company of Philadelphia, of which W. F, is a director, lends him $10,000,000, taking a part of the Loew shares as col- lateral. The Fox Theatres Corporation raises $16,000,000 by selling new shares, which makes a total of $57,000,000. That will leave a balance of $7,000,000 on hand for emergency.
This- purchase of the Loew shares took place on February 24, 1929, after negotiations lasting about six months. The financing was of a temporary nature, and all parties concerned understood clearly that the Fox companies could not pay this money out of earnings, but must either sell new stock, or issue bonds or deben- tures to cover it. The loans for a year were to close the deal, and allow time to plan the refinancing.
A few days passed, and then Harry Stuart, who had advised and even urged the deal, and had loaned $10,000,000 to make it possible, sent for W. F. and said that he had thought the matter over and changed his mind about it. W. F. tells as follows :
"He said that I had done a terrible thing. He said, 'Here is a company that has 1,350,000 shares of stock; you have 400,000,
THE MIDAS TOUCH 77
which, is less than a third. What is to' stop them from going into the market and buying these other shares?' I told him I didn't think Mrs. Loew would do that, that I had faith in these people. I paid higher than the market price for them because you could never buy this number of shares in the market, and we didn't want a long-drawn-out process of getting these shares. I said, 'What do you want me to do now ?' and he said, 'I want you to go right in the market and buy the number of shares it will take, so you will have a majority of the total number of shares out- standing.' When I asked what I would buy them with, I was told that I still had $7,000,000 from the $57,000,000; that the brokers would carry the stock on a 50 per cent margin, which