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Volume 8088

“Politics” has traditionally been a hot-button issue with American citizens. It’s a topic that can generate strong, emotional opinions, often leading to discussion, controversy, and potentially intense disagreements. During his lifetime, Edgar Rice Burroughs was never shy about sharing his political views. For those who wonder about Burroughs’ personal political beliefs, I suggest consulting the Porges biography, where plenty of information can be found about the author’s beliefs on many issues. The purpose here, though, is to provide a survey of statements relating to politics and government that can be found in his fiction.  

Considering the large volume of fiction Burroughs produced during his career, he seldom touched upon the elements of politics and government. He was foremost a chronicler of adventure and romance. Still, “occasionally,” as he noted above, political affairs did crop up in his narratives.

A Perfect Government

“We have just laws and only a few of them. Our people are happy because they are always working at something which they enjoy. There is no money, nor is any money value placed upon any commodity. Perry and I were as one in resolving that the root of all evil should not be introduced into Pellucidar while we lived.

“A man may exchange that which he produces for something which he desires that another has produced; but he cannot dispose of the thing he thus acquired. In other words, a commodity ceases to have pecuniary value the instant that it passes out of the hands of its producer. All excess reverts to government; and, as this represents the production of the people, the government may dispose of it to other peoples in exchange for that which they produce. Thus we are establishing a trade between kingdoms, the profits from which go to the betterment of the people—to building factories for the manufacture of agricultural implements, and machinery for the various trades we are gradually teaching the people.”

While that sounds like a good description of the 20^th century’s autocratic-controlled communist economic system, we have to allow that Burroughs wrote Pellucidar in late 1914 and early 1915, before the first such government and economic system came to power in Russia. In 1919, after ERB had an opportunity to see communism in action, he wrote Under the Red Flag (latter revised as part 2 of The Moon Maid) exposing the evils of the communist system.

“I have no quarrel with peace or virtue or temperance. My quarrel is with the misguided theorists who think that peace alone, or virtue alone, or temperance alone will make a strong, virile, and contented nation. They must be mixed with war and wine and sin and a great measure of hard work—especially hard work—and with nothing but peace and prosperity there is little necessity for hard work, and only the exceptional man works hard when he does not have to.”

Political Parties

Burroughs almost completely avoided mentioning American political parties in his fiction. Only two stories, both of them written very late in his career, contain specific references to the Republican and Democratic parties. The first is in Savage Pellucidar, ERB’s final inner world book. The ship of Ah-gilak, an elderly American man, had been swept down into Pellucidar through the polar opening decades ago. He lamented that if he had had a better ship, “I wouldn’t be down here now in this dod-burned hole-in-the-ground, but back in Cape Cod, probably votin’ for John Tyler again, or some other good Democrat.”

Then, in Tarzan and “The Foreign Legion”, the band of men fighting for survival on the island of Sumatra during World War II included at least one supporter of each major American political party. Captain Jerry Lucas was the Democrat. He became a misogynist after his girl dumped him when he went off to war. “I could have forgiven her throwing me over for a 4-F as soon as I was out of sight,” he told he fellow aviators, “but the so-and-so was a Republican into the bargain.” Sergeant Joe Bubonovitch, waist gunner in the downed American bomber, explained that a man’s political party was of little importance during wartime. “Just to keep the record straight,” he said, “I am a good anti-New Deal Republican.”

Abner Dinnwiddie, another Burroughs character, was obviously a Republican, although the author didn’t mention the party name in his short story, The Strange Adventure of Mr. Dinnwiddie. On boarding the liner Lusonia bound for Honolulu, Mr. Dinnwiddie was mistaken for another man on the passenger list, “Admiral Arnold Dinnwoodie, USN.” The dimwitted Mr. Dinnwiddie decided not to correct the mistake.

 “He was a little put out that they had spelled his name incorrectly. He thought that the ‘admiral’ was just a nautical compliment, but he couldn’t quite make out the USN. He thought it a little New Dealish; and as he had voted for Alf Landon in 1936, he was inclined to take umbrage; but he finally decided that it was either an error or all in fun; so he determined to pass it over.”

(In the 1936 presidential election, the incumbent President Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, defeated Alf Landon, the Republican candidate, in a landslide.)

Politicians

On a few occasions, Burroughs took a jab at politicians in general, regardless of party. In The Deputy Sheriff of Comanche County, Dora Crowell told fellow dude ranch guest Bruce Marvel that she didn’t believe he was a businessman like he claimed. “I’ve been reading a lot about politics in Pennsylvania,” he responded, “and I shouldn’t blame you if you didn’t trust nobody.”

Then, in Tarzan and “The Foreign Legion”, Burroughs likened a certain Sumatran native who collaborated with the Japanese to an American candidate running for election. “Amat tried to curry favor with the newcomers. He was a confirmed opportunist, a natural born politician.”

In The Wizard of Venus, Burroughs again gave politicians a dig. It came at the end of a conversation between Carson Napier and the wizard Morgas.

“No,” I said, “but you are a jackass.”

“You,” I told him.

He smiled appreciatively. “I suppose a jackass is a great person in your country?” he said.

“Many of them are in high places,” I assured him.

Burroughs provided a more sobering commentary concerning the ultimate fate of powerful politicians in Jungle Tales of Tarzan. When Rabba-Kega, the powerful witch-doctor of Mbonga’s cannibal tribe, disappeared, the author pondered his legacy.

Taxes

Burroughs commented on the issue of government taxes several times in Tarzan and the Ant Men. Gefasto and Gofoloso, two princes in the city of Veltopismakus, debated which economic class in their society most felt the burden of government taxes. Like a good Republican would, Gofoloso defended the upper class. “The heaviest taxation falls upon the rich,” he declared. Like a good Democrat, Gefasto spoke for the lower class. “In theory,” he responded to Gofoloso’s statement, “it is true that the rich pay the bulk of the taxes into the treasury of the king, but first they collect it from the poor in higher prices and other forms of extortion, in proportion of two jetaks for every one that they pay to the tax collector.”

Later in the story, another prince, Komodoflorensal insisted that the prosperous class was unduly burdened by the government’s tax structure. “To be poor,” he explained, “assures one an easier life than being rich, for the poor have no tax to pay, while those who work hard and accumulate property have only their labor for their effort, since the government takes all from them in taxes.”

As for the government officials in Veltopismakus, Burroughs explained how they made sure the tax laws favored themselves. Zoanthrohago, another prince, asked King Elkomoelhago to make him a member of the royal council. “He had no objection to Zoanthrohago being a royal councilor,” Burroughs explained, “and thus escaping the burdensome income-tax, which the makers of the tax had been careful to see proved no burden to themselves, and he knew that probably was the only reason Zoanthrohago wished to be a councilor.”

The Courts

Burroughs seldom commented on the American court system in his fiction. However, in The Girl From Farris’s, he had a “retired capitalist” speak out against the grand jury system, as used in Chicago in the early years of the 20^th century.

“In theory the grand jury system is the bulwark of our liberty—it was, in fact, when it was instituted in the twelfth or thirteenth century, at a time when there were several hundred crimes punishable by death; but now that there are only two, murder and treason, it is a useless and wasteful relic of a dead past.

“The court that is competent to hold men to the grand jury is much more competent to indict them than is the grand jury itself. In fact, in cases where the punishment is less than death the court that now entertains the preliminary hearing might, to much better advantage to both the accused and public, pass sentence at once. It hears both sides, but all that it can do is discharge the prisoner or hold him for the grand jury. After this there is the expense of holding the prisoner in jail until his case comes to us, and then all the expensive paraphernalia of a grand jury is required to thresh over only one side of what has already been thoroughly heard before a trained and competent jurist. If we vote a true bill a third expensive trial is necessitated.”

Welfare

While Burroughs didn’t comment directly on the issue of government-sponsored welfare, as a self-made man who created self-made characters, he undoubtedly opposed the concept. All of his heroes took care of themselves, neither expecting nor getting assistance from government agencies. The passage below from Jungle Tales of Tarzan states the theory of self-responsibility, which Burroughs certainly believed.

“Back into the jungle he went until chance, agility, strength, and cunning backed by his marvelous powers of perception, gave him an easy meal. If Tarzan felt that the world owed him a living he also realized that it was for him to collect it, nor was there ever a better collector than this son of an English lord.”

 In his fiction Edgar Rice Burroughs often enjoyed taking a sarcastic jab at some person or institution. In Pirate Blood, the object was the American welfare system. “I had not shaved for two weeks,” Johnny Lafitte admitted. “Only a welfare worker might have found me interesting.”

War Powers

The various city-states in the land of the ant men were continuously at war with each other. According to Prince Gefasto in Veltopismakus, a wise government understands that war is good for its people.

“We must have war. As we have found that there is no enduring happiness in peace or virtue, let us have a little war and a little sin. A pudding that is all of one ingredient is nauseating—it must be seasoned, it must be spiced, and before we can enjoy the eating of it to the fullest we must be forced to strive for it. War and work, the two most distasteful things in the world, are, nevertheless, the most essential to the happiness and the existence of a people. Peace reduces the necessity for labor, and induces slothfulness. War compels labor, that her ravages may be effaced. Peace turns us into fat worms. War makes men of us.”

In The Moon Men, Julian 8^th blamed weak-minded world governments for allowing the moon men to conquer the Earth.

“It was due to the rise of a religious cult which preached against all forms of scientific progress and which by political pressure was able to mold and influence several successive weak administrations of a notoriously weak party that had had its origin nearly a century before in a group of peace-at-all-price men.

“It was they who advocated the total disarmament of the world, which would have meant disbanding the International Peace Fleet forces, the scrapping of all arms and ammunition, and the destruction of the few munitions plants operated by the governments of the United States and Great Britain, who now jointly ruled the world. It was England’s king who saved us from the full disaster of this mad policy, though the weaklings of this country aided and abetted by the weaklings of Great Britain succeeded in cutting the peace fleet in two … reducing the number of munitions factories and in scrapping half the armament of the world.”

In The Master Mind of Mars, Prince Mu Tel of Toonol argued that war was necessary to control overcrowding, not only on Mars, but also on Earth.

“War never brought peace—it but brings more and greater wars. War is Nature’s natural state—it is folly to combat it. Peace should be considered only as a time for preparation for the principal business of man’s existence. Were it not for constant warring of one form of life upon another, and even upon itself, the planets would be so overrun with life that it would smother itself out.”

At times, though, Burroughs included anti-war sentiments in his stories. In The Lad and the Lion, Burroughs stated, “[Some people] prefer hoes in their hands to bayonets in their bellies. Some people are like that, and it is always a matter of embarrassment to their rulers.” Then, in Savage Pellucidar, he observed, “Perhaps the world would have been a better, kinder place to live for all the other animals who do not constantly make war upon one another as do men.”

At the end of Apache Devil, Burroughs paused to condemn the United States for a war of extinction against a native people of North America.

“Geronimo had surrendered! For the first time in three hundred years the white invaders of Apache-land slept in peace. All of the renegades were prisoners of war in Florida. Right, at last, had prevailed. Once more a Christian nation had exterminated a primitive people who had dared defend their homeland against a greedy and ruthless invader.”

Religion

In his fiction, Burroughs had no problem with some of his characters, including Tarzan, having a personal relationship with God. He was openly cynical, though, about organized religions, especially when they were sanctioned and supported by the state. Consider the following statement about religion in Savage Pellucidar.

“Remember, they were just simple people of the Bronze Age. They had not yet reached that stage of civilization where they might send children on holy crusades to die by thousands; they were not far enough advanced to torture unbelievers with rack and red hot irons, or burn heretics at the stake; so they believed this folderol that more civilized people would have spurned with laughter while killing all Jews.”

Of course, the First Amendment in the Constitution guarantees (supposedly) that the government will not mettle in the religious beliefs of citizens. However, that has never stopped organized religions from trying to use the government to force their beliefs on others through government sanction. Already previously noted, the following passage from The Moon Maid deserves mention again here. It shows how religious infiltration in the government can have dire and unexpected results.

“For some reason no further attempts were made to reach Mars, with whom we had been in radio communication for years. Possibly it was due to the rise of a religious cult which preached against all forms of scientific progress and which by political pressure was able to mold and influence several successive weak administrations of a notoriously weak party that had had its origin nearly a century before in a group of peace-at-all-price men.”

Law Making

Burroughs’ occasionally turned his cynical tongue on society’s lawmakers. In Tarzan At the Earth’s Core, Tarzan and Jana waited for their Clovi captors to decide their fate.

“They knew that outside upon the ledge the warriors were sitting in a great circle and that there would be much talking and boasting and argument before any decision was reached, most of it unnecessary, for that has been the way with men who make laws from time immemorial, a great advantage, however, lying with our modern lawmakers in that they know more words than the first ape-men.”

In Tarzan and the Leopard Men, Burroughs took another jab at legislators. In reference to a meeting of the Leopard Men chiefs council, the author noted, “There was a great deal of oratory, most of which was inapropos; but that is ever the way of men in conferences. Black or white they like to hear their own voices.”

Burroughs used humor to discredit American lawmakers in Tarzan’s Quest. At the end of the story, the American pilot Brown first considered selling the Kavuru youth pills brought back from Africa to make a fortune. “The more I think of it, though, the less I like my scheme,” he concluded. “Most everybody lives too long anyway for the good of the world—most of ’em ought to have died young. Suppose Congress got hold of ’em?—just think of that! Not on your life.”

In Tarzan and “The Foreign Legion”, Captain Jerry Lucas had a plan for making sure the Congress in Washington wouldn’t get the country involved in future wars.

“War is rotten. If we ever get home, I’ll bet we’ll do something about the damned Nips and krauts that’ll keep ’em from starting wars for a heck of a long time. There’ll be ten or twelve millions of us who are good and fed up on war. We’re going to elect an artillery captain friend of mine governor of Oklahoma and then send him to the senate. He hates war. I don’t know a soldier who doesn’t, and if all America will send enough soldiers to Congress we’ll get some place.”

There was one law in particular that ERB certainly had no qualms about violating, along with many other Americans. The Volstead Act, codified as the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution, enforced alcohol prohibition in the U.S. from 1920-1933. The law was a major plot element in Burroughs’ The Girl From Hollywood.

“Like many another, (Guy Evans) considered the Volstead Act the work of an organized and meddlesome minority, rather than the real will of the people. There was, in his opinion, no immorality in circumventing the Eighteenth Amendment whenever and wherever possible.”

1^st Amendment

Freedom from federal government interference with citizens’ rights of religion, speech, assembly, and petition are protected by the 1^st Amendment to the Constitution. However, none of these rights are absolute. For instance, telling U.S. government secrets to a foreign enemy agent is not protected as free speech, and the right of people to assemble in groups can be prohibit during an epidemic. Tarzan was obviously a great proponent of personal freedom, but even he knew there were governmental limitations to freedom. He admitted so in Tarzan the Magnificent during a conversation with American Stanley Wood and the Kaji Queen Gonfala.

“You’ve (Gonfala) been through a lot, but I can promise you that when we get to civilization you’ll be able to understand for the first time in your life what perfect peace and security mean.”

“Yes,” said Tarzan, “the perfect peace and security of automobile accidents, railroad wrecks, aeroplane crashes, robbers, kidnapers, war, and pestilence.”

 “I think,” said Gonfala, “that … you make one almost afraid of life. But after all it is not so much peace and security that I want as freedom … Perhaps you can imagine then how much I want freedom, no matter how many dangers I have to take along with it. It seems the most wonderful thing in the world.”

“Well, love has its points, too,” suggested Wood.

“Yes,” agreed Gonfala, “but not without freedom.”

“You’re going to have them both,” Wood promised.

“With limitations, you’ll find, Gonfala,” warned Tarzan with a smile.         (283)

2^nd Amendment

“The inevitable occurred. Orthis seized London and Washington simultaneously. His well armed forces met with practically no resistance. There could be no resistance for there was nothing wherewith to resist. It was a criminal offense to possess firearms. Even edged weapons with blades over six inches long were barred by law.”

National Defense

Proponents of unlimited personal freedom are apt to believe that the national government’s only purpose should be to protect the nation from outside attack. Burroughs’ made an interesting statement about national defense, interesting because it was prompted by the actions of a great ape tribe in Jungle Tales of Tarzan.

“Months of immunity from danger under the protecting watchfulness of the sentries, which Tarzan had taught the tribe to post, had lulled them all into a sense of peaceful security based on that fallacy which has wrecked many enlightened communities in the past and will continue to wreck others in the future—that because they have not been attacked they never will be.”

The Economy

Capitalism is the econoic system the United States government has always promoted, to varying degrees. The means of production are mostly privately owned, and citizens are generally free to earn whatever amount of money their skills and ingenuity dictate. In Marcia of the Doorstep, Della Maxwell revealed the advantages of capitalism, while criticizing the basic tenet of communism.

“It’s the old story. Maybe it sounds good to some; but a world in which all were equal, especially financially, would be about as dull and impossible as the orthodox Christian conception of Heaven. Furthermore, no one would have enough money to buy anything with that anyone would want to have. It would be a drab, mediocre world of Forders.”

On the other hand, In Tarzan the Invincible, Zora Drinov described how completely unfettered capitalism could be dangerous to the United States.

“The bankers, and manufacturers, and engineers of America, who are selling their own country and the world to us in the hope of adding more gold to their already bursting coffers. One of their most pious and lauded citizens is building great factories for us in Russia, where we may turn out tractors and tanks; their manufacturers are vying with one another to furnish us with engines for countless thousands of airplanes; their engineers are selling us their brains and their skill to build a great modern manufacturing city, in which ammunitions and engines of war may be produced. These are the traitors, these are the men who are hastening the day when Moscow shall dictate the policies of a world.”

Organized labor is another economic factor that has loomed large in American politics going all the way back to the birth of the nation. The right to strike and other contrary concerns of labor and business have continued to challenge lawmakers to the present day. In The Moon Men, two neighboring men argue about which American class—labor or business—was responsible for the moon men’s conquest of the earth in the year 2050.

“It’s your own fault, Jim,” said father. He was always blaming our troubles on Jim, for Jim’s people had been American workmen before the Great War—mechanics and skilled artisans in various trades. “Your people never took a stand against the invaders. They flirted with the new theory of brotherhood of the Kalkars brought with them from the moon. They listened to the emissaries of the malcontents and, afterward, when Kalkars sent their disciples among us they ‘first endured, then pitied, then embraced.’ They had the numbers and power to combat successfully the wave of insanity that started with the lunar catastrophe and overran the world—they could have kept it out of America; but they didn’t—instead they listened to false prophets and placed their great strength in the hands of the corrupt leaders.”

“And how about your class?” countered Jim, “too rich and lazy and indifferent even to vote. They tried to grind us down while they waxed fat off of our labor.”

“The ancient sophistry!” snapped father. “There was never a more prosperous or independent class of human beings in the world than the American laboring man of the twentieth century.”

Colonialism

Not much of a political issue these days, colonialism was a major government concern all through Edgar Rice Burroughs’ adult life in the first half of 20^th century. European nations controlling sections of Africa occasionally crept into the plots of the author’s Tarzan stories, including the Belgians in the Congo (Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar) and the Germans and the British in East Africa (Tarzan the Untamed). Most colonized countries earned or were granted their independence in the decade following World War II. Indonesia was one of the first, declaring its independence from Dutch colonial rule on August 17, 1945.

When Burroughs wrote Tarzan and “The Foreign Legion” in 1944, the island of Sumatra, where most of the story’s action takes place, was still a Dutch possession. In the story, Burroughs allowed Tak van der Bos, a Dutch settler on Sumatra, to give a stirring defense of colonialism.

“Under us Dutch, the Indonesians have known the first freedom from slavery, the first peace, the first prosperity that they have ever known. Give them independence after the Japs are thrown out and in another generation they’ll be back where we found them.”

 “Haven’t all peoples a right to independence?” asked Bubonovitch.

 “Only those people who have won the right to independence deserve it,” said van der Bos … “If, with all that background of ancient culture plus the nearly two thousand years before the Dutch completed the conquest of the islands, the people were still held in slavery by tyrant rulers; then they do not deserve what you call independence. Under the Dutch they have every liberty. What more can they ask?”

Referring back to ERB’s statement at the beginning of this survey, the author committed to imparting, “a definite impression of fictionalizing” when using the subject of politics in his fiction. As noted several times through this survey, however, Burroughs had his characters so convincingly state their thoughts about politics and government that the reader is tempted to conclude that the views expressed must certainly mirror what the author himself believed. Whether it was or not will never be known. What is certain, though, is that just getting the reader to ask such questions is a testament to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ literary talent.

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