John Patric
John Patric was an American writer. He was a contributing writer for National Geographic during the mid- to late 1930s and early 1940s and was the author of two books. His 1943 book, Yankee Hobo in the Orient, sold twelve million copies domestically and internationally in both hardcover and digest format. In the 1940s, he was one of the best-known Oregon writers.
He wrote a National Geographic feature article, Imperial Rome Reborn, about fascist Italy, and after writing on World War II shipyard labor practices for Reader's Digest, he gave testimony at a United States congressional hearing. Patric or his works are briefly mentioned by other writers on a diverse range of topics, including political history, an artist biography, an author biography, media history, cultural criticism, ship building, fascism, and Korean history.
In later life, Patric was an early influence on portrait artist Chuck Close, and a perennial political activist and satirical political candidate in his home state of Washington. Clayton Fox of The Olympian described Patric using phrases like, "the bearded bard of Snohomish", "gadfly of golliwoggs and gooser of governmental gophers," and "the pricker of political stuffed shirts, scourge of junkmailers, implacable foe of pollution and corruption, aider and abetter of bees, trees and ocean breezes".
Childhood
Patric was born in Snohomish, Washington, on May 22, 1902. The ground floor of the family home in which he was raised served as the Snohomish public library, surrounding him with books and ideas from an early age. The Patric household consisted of John, his parents, and four siblings. His father, Arthur Noah Patric, originally from Mill City Pennsylvania, was a Snohomish hardware merchant. His mother, Emmeline Eleanor Crueger, originally from Racine Wisconsin, served as the town librarian.At one point during his childhood, Patric "ran away, and hoboed way from Seattle to Mexico and back, and nearly all railway men met were kind to . They shared their lunches with , they helped locate other trains, and sometimes let ride in the cab." Patric returned to Snohomish, and graduated from Snohomish High School as valedictorian and student body President of his senior high school class. He left home shortly thereafter to continue his education, writing, and travels. This period of his life is covered in more detail in his unfinished memoir Hobo Years.
Education, career, and travels
Roaring twenties
A self-styled "hobo", Patric traveled extensively throughout the Roaring Twenties. He worked sporadically as a journalist, and studied at a number of universities across the United States. By 1920, 18-year-old Patric was listed among the "Who's Who of Washington Journalists" as a staff member of The Snohomish Tribune writing on assignment to travel with a friend named Norman Brown from the state of Washington to New York City. In 1922, Patric was writing for the American Insurance Digest.Universities he attended during this time included the University of Michigan, the University of Oregon, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and several others in Idaho, Minnesota, and California. Patric proudly pointed to the fact that he had never actually received a degree from any of these institutions, and that he had been expelled from eight schools in the course of his academic career. These and many other experiences are recounted in his nearly complete memoir manuscript Hobo Years.
Depression era
Blunderbuss
Nearing the height of the Great Depression, Patric studied writing and journalism at The University of Texas at Austin because it was "the cheapest school in the country, considering its facilities". Patric involved himself in campus politics, and he wrote a number of articles and editorial pieces for the University newspaper named The Daily Texan. Following a highly contentious student body election, Patric got into an altercation with the university's student body President Allan Shivers, who was both the primary target of Patric's "vicious" satire and the man who would later become one of the longest serving governors in Texas history:This episode is covered in great detail in Patric's work entitled Simon Legree's Book as well as The Austin Statesman and Austin Daily Dispatch newspaper articles of the time. Having already been expelled from multiple universities by this point in his academic career, the Blunderbuss controversy ended his time at The University of Texas at Austin. Less than two weeks later, Patric's abrupt departure from Austin was noted in an article in the Austin Daily Texan May 25, 1933, stating that police were searching for a missing person following an apparent abduction:
Any concerns about Patric's whereabouts or well-being disappeared when it was learned that Patric had departed Texas in favor of the West Coast in his recently purchased 1927 Lincoln sedan. Living out of his car and selling surplus passenger capacity to fellow west-bound travelers, he wrote of his travel and experiences in a series of letters from the road that were published in The Daily Texan. At turns light-hearted or biting, these letters addressed a number of aspects American life during the Depression, The final installment announced his arrival in Carmel, California, by October 10, 1933.
''Friendly Journeys in Japan''
Saving nearly $400 during the Great Depression selling rubber-stamp supplies while living in his Lincoln, Patric traveled to Seattle in order to book passage for Japan in 1934 aboard the NYK vessel Heian Maru. In her memoir I Married a Korean, American expatriate Agnes Davis Kim wrote of her chance ship-board encounter with Patric, during which his mischievous sense of humor nearly got them arrested for threatening to "assassinate the Mikado" before they even got off the boat in Yokohama, Japan. Patric's first-person narrative account of his two-year tour through 1930s Japan, China, and Korea on a very low budget were first published as a collection of articles for National Geographic under the title ''Friendly Journeys in Japan : A Young American Finds a Ready Welcome in the Homes of the Japanese During Leisurely Travels Through the Islands.''Libertarian views
In 1940, Patric spent a few months touring the country in his automobile with the writer and Libertarian political theorist Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of author Laura Ingalls Wilder. Patric and Wilder Lane's writings from this time expressed similar deep concerns about governmental expansion and "the rise of the state's role in the lives of individuals" as Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal struggled to help the nation recover from the Great Depression.WWII era
''National Geographic''
Patric was still writing and traveling extensively for National Geographic while fascism and tensions were on the rise in Europe. Patric wrote profiles on Benito Mussolini's Italy and pre-war Czechoslovakia.''A Yankee Hobo in the Orient''
When war broke out in the Pacific, Patric quickly reworked his National Geographic Friendly Journeys in Japan material on Asian travel to fulfill the public's demand for more information on Japan. The repackaged and expanded book became his most notable work. First published in 1943 by Doubleday Doran, Inc. under the title Why Japan Was Strong. The book was retitled Yankee Hobo in the Orient for the British edition by Methuen Publishing, and that title was used for subsequent editions.The edition of June 20, 1943, of The New York Times featured a review of this work, stating that Patric displayed "qualities of good sense and poise and instinct for honest reporting sufficiently to give his excellent account of Japan's 'common man' the favorable reception it deserves." In the book's second month of sales, it had climbed as high as seventh place in a list of nationwide best sellers.
The September 1945 7th edition of the book, was substantially revised and illuminated by the author, adding detailed maps and numerous illustrations to accompany the significantly expanded narrative. By November 1945, Yankee Hobo had grown from the 1st edition's 22 chapters in 320 pages, to 45 chapters in 512 pages in the 8th edition. Writing in a foreword, the author described the pains taken in the layout and printing of his still-$2.50 hardcover edition, stating that due to its "especially fine typography and sturdy binding, it is the author's belief that physically, this book has become one of the best for the money ever published." Released only months after the August 1945 atomic bombings of Japan and Japan's surrender, the book now contained lengthy parenthetical asides conveying the author's thoughts on those events, as they pertained to his original work.
In the book and subsequent interviews, Patric emphasized his opinion that the most important point in the book was that a person should seek to reduce "by whatever peaceful means his ingenuity may devise, the power of government – any government – to tell him what to do." In accordance with this doctrine, Patric supported his deliberately modest lifestyle by directly selling his reprinted and personally-inscribed copies of the book from person-to-person, and town to town throughout most of his later life: