Book - Oil by Upton Sinclair
About speed cops:
If the speedcop thoght he had seen them coming faster down the grade, that was purely an optical delusion, the natural error of a man whose occupation destroyed his faith in human nature. Yes, it must be a dreadful thing to be a “speed-cop,” and have the whole human race for your enemy! To stoop to disreputable actions - hiding yourself in bushes, holding a stop-watch in hand, and with a confederate at a certain measured distance down the road, also holding a stop-watch, and with a telephone line connecting the two of them, so they could keep tabs on motorists who passed!
Dad had told Judge Larkey what he thought of the custom of setting “speed-traps”-officers hiding in the bushes and spying on citizens; it was undignified, and taught motorists to regard officers of the law as enemies.
No, not yet; but he’ll come; he knows we were speeding. He puts himself on that straight grade, because everybody goes fast at such a place. There you saw the debased nature of the “speed-cop”! He chose a spot where it was perfectly safe to go fast, and where he knew that everyone would be impatient, having been held in so long by the curves up in the mountains, and by the wet roads! That was how much they cared for fair play, those “speed-cops”!
In the midst of these imaginings of accidents, the boy would give a little jump; and Dad would ask, “What’s the matter, son?” The boy would be embarassed, because he didn’t like to say that he had been letting his dreams run away with him. But Dad knew, and would smile to himself; funny kid, always imagining things, his mind jumping from one thing to another, always excited!
Dad’s mind was not like that; it got on one subject and stayed there, and ideas came through it in slow, grave procession; his emotions were like a furnace that took a long time to heat up. Sometimes on these drives he would say nothing for a whole hour; the stream of his consciousness would be like a river that has sunk down through the rocks and sand, clean out of sight; he would be just a pervading sense of well-being, wrapped in an opulent warm overcoat, an accessory, you might say, of a softly purring engine running in a bath of boiling oil, and traversing a road at fifty miles an hour. For the most part, however, his expression was placid, rather bovine, and his thoughts came slowly and stayed a long time.
The boy was thinking about the poor little mite of life that had been so suddenly snuffed out. How cruel life was; and how strange that things should grow, and have the power to make themselves, out of nothing apparently - and Dad couldn’t explain it, and said that nobody else could, you were just here.
And then and looked as if they hadn’t enough to eat; and that was another thing to wonder about, why people should be poor and nobody to help them. It was a world you had to help yourself in, was Dad’s explanation.