Kate Crane Gartz - The Parlor Provocateur or From Salon to Soap-Box

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Text originally published in 1923 under the same title.

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Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

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THE PARLOR PROVOCATEUR

OR

FROM SALON TO SOAP-BOX

THE LETTERS OF

KATE CRANE GARTZ

WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY

MARY CRAIG SINCLAIR

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THESE are embarrassing days, when everyone is learning about the hidden desires of the human heart, and by the instrument of psycho-analysis we are probing the depths of our own souls, and discovering how our characters have come to be what they are. Each of us is accused of a shocking preponderance of egotism; and those formerly exalted beings called poets and artists prove to be the worst of all. So what is to be gained by reticence, and why should not anyone who has lived an interesting life write an autobiography? So I argued to Kate Crane Gartz, whose mail contains many letters from people asking to meet her and to know about her, and whose unusual personality has caused the millionaire suburb of Altadena to become known in far-off Russia and India, as well as in the office of the district attorney of Los Angeles County. Novelists, I said, go to great pains to create a character for a novel; they sit down and ponder how to make a heroine real, how to make her seem a living human being. And here you are, already alive, already real, and just as interesting as any painfully wrought heroine of fiction.

But her shyness was not to be overcome; and so it falls to me to tell about her, and to select some of her many letters of protestin spite of her own protest against this step. What value can they have? she asked. Each one was written at a moment when I felt that some evil thing in our community called for the outcry of some justice-loving member of the communityif such a person there were. Many of those evil things are past now and done withat any rate, the victims are dead or forgotten. But then, after a little thought, she realized that the evil things are not past; they are symptoms of a widespread social disease, which is not cured, but on the contrary has what may be a death-grip on humanity. And when she argued that there were other pens more capable than hers, and that a book might be a costly thing, and it might be better to give the money, as so much other money has been given by her, to enable others to voice the cry for justiceto all this I answered that a personality is often quite as effective as a piece of fine writing; an act is as important as a speech; and when a woman, born to luxury and command, dowered with every gift to shine in the so-called great world of pleasure and power, is moved by the elemental impulse of human sisterhood and world sympathy to step from a safe and high place, to break with family and friends, to face sneers and insults, persecution and even serious threat of arrest and prisonthis, I say, is a thing of genuine social significance, and the words of such a woman, untrained as they may be, have an eloquence of their own, and go to the heart of all people of true judgment. At the very least these letters, and the glimpse of such a personality, might arouse other rich women to realize their duty in these grave and cruel days. And if only one such should be reachedhow much good even one might do with the power of wealth!

If you doubt the power that is in the hands of one woman who has vision and the means to realize it, I can tell you that at least those who protect the exploiters are aware of her power. A few days ago an acquaintance of mine happened to be in the office of a public prosecuting official of this vicinity, and the name of Kate Crane Gartz chanced to be mentioned. Oh, you know her? said the official. Well, Ive been trying to get her for five years, and Im going to get her if it takes the rest of my life! This concerning the sister of a world-famous United States ambassador, a woman who is heir to part of one of Americas great industries, an intimate of our so-called best society. The reason for it is because there have been few acts of public injustice committed in the interest of Californias ruling class during the past eight or ten years that this woman has not registered protest, sometimes public, sometimes private, but none the less productive of discomfort to the masters of privilege. They know her also in other parts of the countrythe post office carries her protests to far-off parts.

Mrs. Gartz was one of the first of the so-called parlor Bolsheviks, a phenomenon of our social order which astounded Blasco Ibanez when he came to America. When I was considering what I could do to entertain the distinguished guest in Pasadena two or three years ago, I asked him, should we gather the literati of the bourgeois world, the poets and screen writers, or would he like to meet our parlor Bolsheviks. What are parlor Bolsheviks? he asked at once. Millionaire Socialists, I said; and he was incredulous. This was a paradox! Could such a thing be? I insisted it was true, and set the day for a dinner to prove it to him. A few hours before the event his secretary telephoned to know if dinner-clothes were properwhich showed that he still could not believe that the thing really existed; these parlor Bolsheviks must be cow-boys or ranchers who had got rich quick, through striking oil or gold, and had not yet had time to forget the sorrows of the common peopleor to obtain dress-clothes! Ibanez was amazed to meet eight or ten well-bred ladies and gentlemen in fashionable dinner-clothes. The writer and her husband were the only ones who were not millionaires; and everyone had inherited his millions, and had come to his radicalism as the result of intellectual and moral conviction.

When I first heard of Kate Crane Gartz and her interest in the Socialists, I thought it might be a passing whim, the perverse notion of a spoiled darling of fortune. An old girlhood friend of hers assured me that such was the explanation. She got interested in such people through charitable activities and settlement work with Jane Addams. Having been opposed by some of her family and friends, she persists in it in a spirit of defiance. But I know better now. I have seen her weep too often; I have seen her tried too often; I have seen her dragged hither and thither in discomforting fashion, sharing crises in the lives of those who called upon her for help. I shall never forget the night that the editor of the Dug-out was thrown into jail in Los Angeles. All of us knew that he had served three years as a volunteer in the trenches; also we knew the doctor who had examined him and found his throat rotting away as a result of being gassed. We knew that his wife and child were destitute; we knew that his only crime was that he had opposed the use of returned soldiers as strike-breakers in Los Angeles. So, the night he was thrown into jail, we thought of his weak physical condition, and that a sojourn in that filthy hole might result in pneumonia. I telephoned Mrs. Gartz the news, late at night, after she had retired. In fifteen minutes she had risen, and driven her own car alone through the dark suburbs to my housearrayed in a heavy coat and her night-gown! Early the next morning she placed seventy-five hundred dollars in cash in the hands of an attorney, and the radical editor was out of the physical filth and mental agony of jail.