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Apart from raising an estimated $1,000,000 and enlisting the solid support of the California Press, the tactics of conservatives have proved largely negative. In self-defense, Acting Governor Merriam espoused, under his breath, the Townsend Plan, a wild-eyed scheme to pay oldsters $200 a month with the understanding that each month's pension be spent in full within 30 days. But nobody took him seriously. Big drive of the "nonpartisan" Stop Sinclair movement took the form of a blizzard of pamphlets proclaiming: "Out Of His Own Mouth Shall He Be Judged." Material was culled from Author Sinclair's iconoclastic shelf of writings over a period of 30 years. These were sorted and directed toward groups in which they would do Sinclair most harm : Catholics, Christian Scientists, Mormons, University of Southern California alumni, Parent-Teachers Associations, etc. Sample: "Christianity has been . . . the chief of the enemies of social progress. . . . We should break down the Catholic machine, and not all the priests in the hierarchy should stop us. . . . It is these [Catholic] societies which . . . are pushing and plotting ... to have Catholics in charge of police and on magistrate benches so that priests who are caught in brothels may not be exposed or punished. . . . Christian Science is the most characteristic of American religious contributions. Just as Billy Sunday is the price we pay for failing to educate our baseball players, so Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy is the price we pay for failing to educate our farmers' daughters. ... In all the world it would not be possible to find more naïve nonsense than the Mormon mythology. . . ." (The Profits of Religion) All this was most bewildering to that great mass of impressionable Midwestern settlers in Southern California.* Southern California is a bourgeois paradise. Few sections of the U. S. offer cheaper food and housing. It is the perfect setting for Utopia. And EPIC is nothing if not Utopian. In spite of the revelations about Mr. Sinclair's past beliefs, therefore, political observers last week were ready to concede him Los Angeles and the Southern part of the State, look to hard-headed San Francisco and the conservative north for Merriam strength. "Poor Relation." Prime epithet used against Upton Sinclair is that he is "an agent of Moscow." Fact is, Upton Sinclair is as American as pumpkin pie. His great-grandfather Arthur Sinclair was a naval officer who fought in the war with Tripoli. Seven other seagoing relatives joined the Confederate Navy. His maternal grandfather, John S. Harden, was Secretary & Treasurer of Western Maryland Railroad. A sister of Upton's mother married John R. Bland, founder of U. S. Fidelity & Guaranty Co. and one of Baltimore's richest men. In Baltimore, Upton Sinclair was born 56 years ago last month. His father was a ne'er-do-well traveling salesman, much addicted to the bottle. The spectacle of his ''good and gentle-souled father" drinking himself to death made Sinclair a life-long Prohibitionist. Nor does he use tea, coffee, tobacco. He came by his radicalism early. Writes Author Sinclair in his autobiographical American Outpost: "Floyd Dell . . . asked me to explain the appearance of a social rebel in a conventional Southern family. I thought the problem over, and reported my psychology as