The Cotton Pickers • B. Traven

I’ve already read a few books by B. Traven, and I can’t quite say why, but I suddenly felt a strong urge to pick up another one of his. Perhaps it’s because his novels stand firmly in the tradition of classic adventure stories, like those written by Jack London or Karl May. The setting—Mexico in the early 20th century—also has a certain appeal because it’s so unusual. Not least, it’s his sentences: the clear, simple words, spoken in the voice of the proletariat, which I really enjoy. The Cotton-Pickers struck me as interesting in terms of content, so I picked up a used, well-worn low-budget edition on Booklooker. I’d like to take a closer look at it here—as a reading tip for those on a very tight budget.

The Cotton-Pickers follows Gerald Gale and opens at a remote railway station somewhere in Mexico. Not far from there, he finds work as a cotton picker, and Traven describes the living conditions of the working poor. Beyond that, the protagonist takes on a variety of other jobs—always simple tasks, always within the milieu of an impoverished and exploited proletariat. The reader accompanies Gale through different stops in Central America, in the Mexico of the 1920s.

I was not disappointed; in this novel I found again Traven’s pleasantly clear and powerful voice. With great simplicity and clarity, he shows the inhumane conditions under which workers were exploited at the time. He always speaks in the voice of the proletariat. Yet the conclusions he draws—moral and political alike—reveal an author who deliberately renders these scenes with intellectual depth. Traven doesn’t mince words, and that’s simply a pleasure. You sense he writes from personal experience, which makes many of his statements all the more effective. And all the more timeless: ruthlessness, capitalist greed, social brutalization—perhaps not in exactly the same form, but in other guises they recur again and again, even in today’s societies. Because they are a fixed part of human nature—universal, then and now.

“We tried to squeeze as much as possible out of the field we worked. Whether those who had to settle there after us would perish on it was a matter of indifference to us. Everyone looks out for himself first. I graze it bare and even pull out the roots if the grass isn’t enough. After us, the flood. What do my fellow slaves matter to me?” (p. 108)

The period of Gale’s life portrayed here has something of an adventure novel about it, but it doesn’t follow a carefully plotted story; rather, the reader accompanies Traven’s protagonist as he scrapes by from one job to the next. Traven repeatedly allows for side glances, sketching a detailed picture of the simple social milieu. There are scenes in which Gale visits a red-light district, including an excellently written episode from the life of a prostitute. In a café, workers rise up. Another scene that gripped me concerns an Indigenous man who falls asleep on a bench in a public square and is whipped by a policeman. Traven describes it with such clarity, with such unmistakable words that cut deep; the scene crackles with injustice toward people—especially the weakest and the poorest. He also connects these observations to European societies.

In general, Traven’s figures take a neutral, often observant stance. I once read that Traven has been labeled something of an anarchist, which I haven’t really found in his books so far. Rather, he adopts the workers’ perspective and questions their role within capitalist systems—always from their point of view, which lends his arguments even greater weight due to their authenticity. It’s always ragged pirates, Indigenous people, outlaws, and down-and-out day laborers he portrays, yet the societies being put on display are the “civilized” ones whose moral superiority allows and even fosters these conditions.

No! He was not in the right! No! No! The blood rushed to my head. In all the lands of high civilization—in England, in Germany, in America, and even more so in the other countries—it is the police who do the whipping, and it is the worker who is whipped. And then the one sitting contentedly at the trough wonders when suddenly the trough is shaken, when the trough is suddenly overturned and everything is smashed to pieces. But I do not wonder. A gunshot wound heals. A lash mark never heals. It eats ever deeper into the flesh, strikes the heart and, finally, the brain, and unleashes the cry that makes the earth tremble. The cry: “Revenge!” Why is Russia in the hands of the Bolsheviks? Because there, before that time, the most whipping was done. The policemen’s whip paves the way for those who storm in, whose steps make worlds quake and systems explode.” (p. 63)

For a long time it wasn’t clear who B. Traven actually was. After years of speculation and investigation, the consensus now is that behind B. Traven stood a German named Otto Feige. Coming from modest circumstances, this metalworker and trade union secretary had to flee after the failure of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, was detained for deportation in London in 1923, but then managed by various detours to emigrate to Mexico. If you read through his biography, it’s quite an adventure—how he adopted different identities, took advantage of a California earthquake that destroyed records and documents, and assumed a new identity. He worked as an actor, was active in the press, and only emerged as a literary figure in 1925. He wrote several novels that, in total, reached a circulation of over 30 million. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was adapted for film, and that commercial success only fueled speculation about his identity. Allegedly, Life magazine even offered a reward of five thousand dollars to anyone who could track down B. Traven.

My edition is once again from the Büchergilde Gutenberg, which for a long time was Traven’s exclusive publisher in Germany. The book was published in 1974 and is a reprint of the original 1926 edition. Accordingly, it’s a bit greasy with age, and the typeface looks quite old-fashioned. Still, it’s in solid, very good condition, with a sturdy linen cover. It does smell rather musty, there’s no ribbon marker, and in my view it’s a bit oversized. That said, you can pick it up for a few euros—so the price-performance ratio is definitely right. If you browse a bit on Booklooker or AbeBooks, you’ll find plenty of inexpensive editions. It’s always worth reaching for older books, even if a sumptuous new edition is naturally more appealing.

Conclusion: I enjoyed The Cotton-Pickers very much. Traven’s clear language; his portrait of working-class life; Mexico as a setting; and the many scenes that depict the everyday milieu of people in that country—all of it is simply compelling. Traven remains agreeably neutral: he doesn’t wag a moralizing finger or preach, as happens so often these days; instead, he leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions. The way the protagonist drifts from job to job, and the individual episodes, has something of an adventure novel, though the book doesn’t aim to tell a neatly organized story. Even so, it’s highly entertaining. A read I can strongly recommend—especially for those on a tight budget.

Book information: The Cotton-Pickers • B. Traven • Büchergilde Gutenberg • 184 pages • ISBN 3763217711