Oil! by Upton Sinclair

One outcome of these negotiations, Dad appealed to Vee Tracy: couldn't she possibly do more to keep Bunny out of the hands of these awful reds? Why, he wasn't thinking about a thing else! Vee said she would try, and she did, and it was a further strain upon their love and affection. For Bunny was beginning to know what he wanted now, and he didn't want to be kept from it.

Vee was hard at work on The Princess of Patchouli. It was a silly story, she would freely admit; yet her whole being was concentrated upon making it real and vivid. If you asked her why, the answer would be, it was her profession; which meant that she was getting four thousand a week, with the possibility of increasing it to five thousand a week if she made good. But what did she want with the five thousand a week? To buy more applause and attention, as a means of getting more thousands for more weeks? It was a vicious circle -- exactly like Dad's oil wells. The wobblies had a song about it in their jungles: "We go to work to get the cash to buy the food to get the strength to go to work to get the cash to buy the food to get the strength to go to work -- " and so on, as long as your breath held out.