The Improbable R.C. Hoiles & Some Things that Occupy his Mind

“It is hard for me to see

How any act that is based on

The use of aggressive force

can produce a desirable result

that will promote education,

good will and a better under-

standing of the laws of nature

and the will of God”

R. C. Hoiles

Foreword

or, why this booklet was written

● I had been with the Hoiles organization for about 10 years. Every year Fortune magazine put out a list of the 100 richest men in the world, and I hadn't made it yet. But, I'd been having myself a ball; and I figured anybody can be a millionaire if he's got the money.

And then this old friend of mine-he worked on a Los Angeles newspaper-said to me one day:

“I don't see how you can stand it. R. C. Hoiles is impossible.”

I told him:

“He's not impossible, but he's damn sure improbable!”

That's about as close as I can get to describing R. C. Hoiles. A few years ago, on the occasion of his 75th birthday, they got out a brochure which had a biographical sketch in it. I don't intend to go back over that ground. And if the casual reader is interested, I am sure he can find one of those brochures in any one of the newspapers operated by the Freedom group.

● R. C. Hoiles is a small, irascible bundle of pure energy, a hard-talking soft touch. He has a deadly hobby which he calls “close reasoning.” Sitting around with R. C., just talking about this and that, is about as comfortable as tight underwear. If he didn't offend so many people, he'd have been written up in most of the major magazines by now. But whenever anyone comes around to interview him, he winds up interviewing the reporter and making him sore. Polite effusions are not in him.

R. C. is a zealot, and zealots are never easy to be around. Their enthusiasm begins where the average fellow's leaves off. R. C.'s zealotry is with liberty, in all its many aspects and facets. Briefly—he's for it Oh, Lord, how, he's for it!

Never, in modem times, has a man thumbed his nose at so many conventions and commonly accepted practices as R. C. Hoiles. And with such whopping financial success. Speaking up against all that the political majority holds dear and sacred—e.g., public schools—is supposed to get you clapped in the looney bin or carted off to the poor house.

● But R. C. Hoiles is a millionaire several times over; and it has seemed to establish that the

American people do not embrace conformity as completely as advertised.

I have always liked R. C. Hoiles—and I suspect there are fewer people who like him than there are who admire, fear and respect him. I have argued with him, occasionally with success. I have edited his syntax. I have plodded through those tracts which bulge out of his pockets. I have witnessed a succession of quick-falling stars who bemused him for a time and then fell into the sea. (Like most writers, he gets enthusiastic about catch phrases until they pall. I am glad he dropped “gun-run schools” and “libertarianism” and I hope he gets tired of “voluntaryism” pretty quick.)

● R. C. Hoiles is the best of all possible writers. He writes the way he talks—honestly,

rushingly, earnestly There is nothing slick and polished and Madison Avenue about him. Here is complete honesty speaking out in damnably effective everyday grammar. I think, really, that is the charm and genius of R. C. Hoiles, columnist.

A half dozen syndicate salesmen have told me they would love to add his column to their stable. They think about half their editor-customers would get apoplectic and the remainder would buy him just to see if he's for-real; because he says out loud things that all of us, in the still small voice, have said to ourselves. He fights dragons of any size, bare-knuckled and no-holds-barred. It never occurs to him whether he's offending the biggest merchant in town. In fact one of the many legends about this improbable man is about the time he invited one of his leading advertisers to take his advertising elsewhere if he persisted in thinking he could influence the editorial policy of the newspaper.

● He has, in my memory, expresses his irritation with such untouchables as the Red Cross, the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, the National Education

Association, the National Council of Churches and even some of the sacrosanct societies of the grand and infallible order of newspaper publishers. And I have enjoyed every minute of it. It has been great fun.

I am not going to sing the praises of R. C. Hoiles. I did that in the brochure they got out a few years ago. The purpose of this is to present, in his own words and in his own phrasing, some of the things R. C. Hoiles has written. This is R. C. Hoiles speaking. (Actually, he dictated his columns, which is another reason they read like the spoken rather than the written word.)

Some day there will be editors of Hoiles newspapers who have never known R. C. They will hear about him and what he said and did and what he was like. Right now we have readers and advertisers and gossips who know “about” R. C. Hoiles, but don't know him.

They have read isolated columns, even sentences. They have formed vague impressions. But what is this man all about?

● This is an “inside piece”—that is, it is designed primarily for the editors, publishers,

reporters. admen, printers, pressmen and circulation and business personnel with the Hoiles organization present and future. But if you want to show it around, it's not marked “SECRET.” R. C. didn't know this was being prepared. He'd probably have done it some other way— without the colored ink and the artwork and in eight-point solid so it wouldn't look as if he were “exalting” himself or his ideas.

The purpose of this little booklet (it was made this size so R. C. could stuff it into his coat pockets along with all the others) is to let the man speak for himself, with some semblance of deliberate order.

These are not his “best” and certainly not his most inflammatory. But I think they serve to put down his basic ideas, just as he expressed them. Much of it is repetitive. Some of it is excerpted, but not rewritten. I have deliberately retained this repetition because it illustrates how the same fundamental ideas weave in and out of the fabric of his philosophy, covering whatever subject he is discussing.

● R. C. once wrote six columns a week. He had been doing it forth, well, quite a few years.

One of the cornerstones of the R. C. Hoiles philosophy is consistency. As I reviewed columns. written as much as 15 years apart, I began to realize how consistent this man has been.

What follows is taken from his gross production, in no particular chronological order. I hope you-enjoy some of it and reflect on the remainder.

Those of you who have not known R. C. in person have missed a tremendous experience. I'll have to confess, he's one of me favorite people.

D. R. Segal