I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked
By Upton Sinclair
...
What Acting-Governor Merriam really thinks about
old age pensions is proved by his actions. He has been
acting for six months, and what has he done? Our law
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provides a pension for needy persons over seventy years
of age, and fewer than twenty thousand persons are
getting less than twenty dollars per month each; about
eighty thousand more have proved their right to the
pension, but there is no money for them. Has Merriam
moved a finger to get that money, as ordered by the
law of the State? He called a special session of the
Legislature to pass certain fiscal measures; but no word
about money for old age pensions.
...
Acting Governor Merriam got the extra votes which
he needed, and now he is Governor-Elect, and the grin
is on his face, and on the faces of all the politicians
who worked for him, and of all the big business gentle-
men who put up his millions of dollars. The poor de-
luded old people can take their petitions to Congress
and to President Roosevelt, and cherish their dream of
two hundred dollars a month until they die.
The newspapers said it would be that way with our
fifty dollars a month pension. They would challenge
me to say where I was going to get that money, and
when I answered they did not publish what I said.
Im-
possible for any editor of a commercial newspaper to
understand the difference between a profit system in a
state of collapse, driving the State and everybody in it
to bankruptcy, and a system of production for use in
process of growth, providing security and plenty for all.
I used to say to our audiences: "It is difficult to get a
man to understand something, when his salary depends
upon his not understanding it!"
...
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https://books.google.com/books?id=OqqpXJy-fRwC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=109&f=false 
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