JACK LONDON WINS IN BATTLE FOR A BRIDE.
Messenger-boys, Telephones, Korean Valet, Political Influence, Pleadings, Many Explanations, and a Special Dispensation Finally Won a Marriage License on Sunday for Jack London.
And then next day the Hearst reporters discovered that
this marriage was not legal; Jack was liable to three years in
jail; so, as a matter of precaution, he was going to be married
in every state in the Union! All over the country this story
was telegraphed; such trifling with a sacred institution displeased
certain women's clubs in Iowa, which canceled their
engagements to hear Jack London lecture! Returning to his
home after these excitements, I find Jack being interviewed by
the "Oakland Herald."
That report was all the imagination of the Chicago reporters who
were scooped on the wedding story. There was nothing in that at all.
Later on Jack took another trip to the East, and delivered
his famous address, "Revolution," which you may find in his
volume "Revolution and Other Essays." He is describing
the feelings of a Colorado workingman under the régime of
the militia general, Sherman Bell, whose orders were, "To hell
with the Constitution." Says London:
Nor does the Constitution of the United States appear so glorious
and constitutional to the workingman who has experienced a bull pen
or been unconstitutionally deported from Colorado. Nor are this
particular workingman's hurt feelings soothed by reading in the newspapers
that both the bull pen and the deportation were preeminently
just, legal, and constitutional. "To hell, then, with the Constitution,"
says he, and another revolutionist has been made—by the capitalist
class.
And next morning here comes the "New York Times," not
quite saying that Jack said "To hell with the Constitution," but
carefully implying it; which dishonesty, of course, takes wings,
and from one end of the country to the other Americans read
that Jack London has said, "To hell with the Constitution."
Jack is on his way home, and cannot answer; here am I, as
vice-president of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, under
whose auspices the meeting had been held, writing to the
"Times" to call attention to the injustice it has done to a great
American novelist. The "Times" puts my letter under the
title:
