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U. S. A, 



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U. S. A. 

I. The 42nd Parallel 

II. Nineteen Nineteen 
III. The Big Money 



BY JOHN DOS PASSOS 
^ 




THE MODERN LIBRARY 
NEW YORK 



COPYRIGHT, 1930, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 
BY JOHN DOS PASSOS 




THE MODERN LIBRARY 

IS PUBLISHED BY 

RANDOM HOUSE, INC. 

BENNETT A. CERP DONA LD S . KLOPFER ROBERT K.HAAS 

^Manufactured in the United States of America 
By H. Wolff 



JOHN DOS PASSOS 

(1896- ) 

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR OF 

"U.S.A." 

By far the most ambitious undertaking of John Dos Passes' 
career as a writer is the trilogy, U.S.A. The three novels, The 
42nd Parallel, Nineteen Nineteen and The Big Money, are 
brought together in one volume, thus fulfilling the author's 
original intention of making these three panels an integrated lit- 
erary pattern of contemporary American life. 

Horn in Chicago, John Dos Passos received his early education 
there and was graduated from Harvard University cum laude in 
1916. Immediately afterward he served with the Harjcs, the 
Red Cross and the U.S.A. Ambulance Services during the World 
War. His novel, Three Soldiers, issued in 1921 (Modern Li- 
brary No. 205), remains today one of the few war books to 
survive as living literature. Since its appearance, each new work 
of fiction has advanced John Dos Pnssos' development, and today 
he is acknowledged!)* one of the 'world's foremost novelists. As a 
participant in the American social struggle, notably as a cham- 
pion of Sacco and Vanzctti, Dos Passos' record is quite as distin- 
guished as is his achievement in the role of social commentator 
and novelist. 



U. S. A. 



The young man walks fast by himself through the 
crowd that thins into the night streets j feet are tired 
from hours of walking; eyes greedy for warm curve of 
faces, answering flicker of eyes, the set of a head, the 
lift of a shoulder, the way hands spread and clench} 
blood tingles with wants ; mind is a beehive of hopes 
buzzing and stinging; muscles ache for the knowledge 
of jobs, for the roadmender's pick and shovel work, the 
fisherman's knack with a hook when he hauls on the 
slithery net from the rail of the lurching trawler, the 
swing of the bridgeman's arm as he slings down the 
whitehot rivet, the engineer's slow grip wise on the 
throttle, the dirtfarmer's use of his whole body when, 
whoaing the mules, he yanks the plow from the fur- 
row. The youhg man walks by himself searching 
through the crowd with greedy eyes, greedy ears taut 
to hear, by himself, alone. 

The streets are empty. People have packed into 
subways, climbed into streetcars and buses j in the sta- 
tions they've scampered for suburban trains j they've 
filtered into lodgings and tenements, gone up in eleva- 
tors into apartmenthouses. In a showwindow two sal- 
low windowdressers in their shirtsleeves are bringing 
out a dummy girl in a red evening dress, at a corner 
welders in masks lean into sheets of blue flame repair- 
ing a cartrack, a few drunk bums shamble along, a sad 
streetwalker fidgets under an arclight. From the river 
comes the deep rumbling whistle of a steamboat leav- 
ing dock. A tug hoots far away. 

The young man walks by himself, fast but not 
fast enough, far but not far enough (faces slide out of 
sight, talk trails into tattered scraps, footsteps tap 



fainter in alleys) $ he must catch the last subway, the 
streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the 
steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, 
answer the wantads, learn the trades, take up the jobs, 
live in all the boardinghouses, sleep in all the beds. 
One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life 
is not enough. At night, head swimming with wants, 
he walks by himself alone. 

No job, no woman, no house, no city. 

Only the ears busy to catch the speech are not 
alone; the ears are caught tight, linked tight by the 
tendrils of phrased words, the turn of a joke, the sing- 
song fade of a story, the gruff fall of a sentence j link- 
ing tendrils of speech twine through the city blocks, 
spread over pavements, grow out along broad parked 
avenues, speed with the trucks leaving on their long 
night runs over roaring highways, whisper down sandy 
byroads past wornout farms, joining up cities and fill- 
ingstations, roundhouses, steamboats, planes groping 
along airways j words call out on mountain pastures, 
drift slow down rivers widening to the sea and the 
hushed beaches. 

It was not in the long walks through jostling 
crowds at night that he was less alone, or in the train- 
ing camp at Allentown, or in the day on the docks at 
Seattle, or in the empty reek of Washington City hot 
boyhood summer nights, or in the meal on Market 
Street, or in the swim off the red rocks at San Diego, 
or in the bed full of fleas in New Orleans, or in the 
cold razorwind off the lake, or in the gray faces trem- 
bling in the grind of gears in the street under Michigan 
Avenue, or in the smokers of limited expresstrains, or 
walking across country, or riding up the dry mountain 
canyons, or the night without a sleepingbag among 
frozen beartracks in the Yellowstone, or canoeing Sun- 
days on the Quinnipiac; 

vi 



but in his mother's words telling about longago, 
in his father's telling about when I was a boy, in the 
kidding stories of uncles, in the lies the kids told at 
school, the hired man's yarns, the tall tales the dough- 
boys told after taps; 

it was the speech that clung to the ears, the link 
that tingled in the blood j U. S. A. 

U. S. A. is the slice of a continent. U. S. A. is a 
group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade 
unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a 
chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stock- 
quotations rubbed out and written in by a Western 
Union boy on a blackboard, a publiclibrary full of old 
newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests 
scrawled on the margins in pencil. U. S. A. is the 
world's greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains 
and hills, U. S. A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with 
too many bankaccounts. U. S. A. is a lot of men buried 
in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U. S. A. is 
the letters at the end of an address when you are away 
from home. But mostly U. S. A. is the speech of the 
people. 



VII 



THE 



PARALLEL 



CONTENTS 

NEWSREEL i It was that emancipated race 3 

The Camera Eye (i) when you walk along 

the street you have to step carefully always 5 

MAC 6 

The Camera Eye (2) we hurry wallowing 

like in a boat 13 

MAC 14 

NEWSREEL ii Come on and hear 23 

The Camera Eye (3) O qu'il a dcs beaux yeux 

said the lady 24 

LOVER OF MANKIND 26 

The Camera Eye (4) riding backwards through 

the rain 28 

MAC 29 

NEWSREEL in "It takes nerve to live in this 

world" 54 

The Camera Eye (5) and we played the battle 

of Port Arthur 55 

NEWSREEL iv I met my love in the Alamo 56 

The Camera Eye (6) Go it go it said Mr. 

Linwood 57 

NEWSREEL V BUGS DRIVE OUT BIOLOGIST 58 

MAC 58 

NEWSREEL vi Paris Shocked At Last 80 



The Camera Eye (7) skating on the pond next 
the silver company's mills 8 1 

THE PLANT WIZARD 82 

NEWSREEL VII SAYS THIS IS CENTURY WHERE 

BILLIONS AND BRAINS ARE TO RULE 84 

The Camera Eye (8) you sat on the bed un- 
lacing your shoes 85 

MAC 86 

The Camera Eye (9) all day the fertilizer- 
factories smelt something awful . 92 

BIG BILL 93 

The Camera Eye (10) the old major who 
used to take me to the Capitol 96 

MAC 98 

NEWSREEL vni Prof Ferrer, former director of 
the Modern School 107 

The Camera Eye ( 1 1 ) the Pennypackers went 
to the Presbyterian church 108 

NEWSREEL IX FORFEIT STARS BY DRINKING IO9 

MAC no 

The Camera Eye (12) when everybody went 
away for a trip 129 

tfEWSREEL X MOON'S PATENT IS FIZZLE 130 

The Camera Eye (13) he was a towboat cap- 
tain and he knew the river 131 

JANEY 133 

The Camera Eye (14) Sunday nights when 

we had fishballs and baked beans 1 47 

vi 



NEWSREEL xi the government of the United 
States must insist 148 

JANEY 150 

The Camera Eye (15) in the mouth of the 
Schuylkill 1 66 

NEWSREEL xii Greeks in battle flee before cops 167 

THE BOY ORATOR OF THE 
PL ATT E 169 

The Camera Eye (16) it was hot as a bake- 
oven going through the canal 173 

J. WARD MOOREHOUSE 174 

The Camera Eye (17) the spring you could 
see Halley's Comet 206 

NEWSREEL xin I was in front of the national 
palace 208 

ELEANOR STODDARD 209 

The Camera Eye ( 1 8) she was a very fashion- 
able lady 223 

ELEANOR STODDARD 224 

The Camera Eye (19) the methodist min- 
ister's wife was a tall thin woman 238 

NEWSREEL XIV BOMBARDIER STOPS AUSTRALIAN 239 

EMPEROR OF THE CARIBBEAN 241 

The Camera Eye (20) when the streetcarmen 
went out on strike 245 

J. WARD MOOREHOUSE 246 

The Camera Eye (21) that August it never 
rained a drop 260 

vii 



NEWSREEL xv lights go out as Home Sweet 
Home 262 

PRINCE OF PEACE 264 

The Camera Eye (22) all week the fog clung 
to the sea 265 

J. WARD MOOREHOUSE 267 

NEWSREEL xvi the Philadelphia!! had com- 
pleted the thirteenth lap 274 

The Camera Eye (23) this friend of mother's 
was a very lovely 275 

ELEANOR STODDARD 276 

The Camera Eye (24) raining in historic 
Quebec it was raining 283 

fANEY 285 

THE ELECTRICAL WIZARD 297 

The Camera Eye (25) those spring nights the 
streetcarwheels screech 301 

NEWSREEL xvn an attack by a number of hos- 
tile airships 303 

MAC 304 

PROTEUS 325 

JANEY 328 

The Camera Eye (26) the garden was crowded 
and outside 349 

NEWSREEL xviii Goodby Piccadilly, farewell 

Leicester Square 350 

viii 



ELEANOR STODDARD 351 

NEWSREEL XIX U. S. AT WAR 361 

The Camera Eye (27) there were priests and 

nuns on the Es-pagne 362 

FIGHTING BOB 365 

CHARLEY ANDERSON 369 



NEWSREEL 1 



It was that emancipated race 
That was char gin uf the hill 
Up to where them insurrectos 
Was afightin fit to kill 

CAPITAL CITY'S CENTURY CLOSED 

General Miles with his gaudy uniform and spirited 
charger was the center for all eyes especially as his steed was 
extremely restless. Just as the band passed the Commanding 
General his horse stood upon his hind legs and was almost 
erect. General Miles instantly reined in the frightened animal 
and dug in his spurs in an endeavor to control the horse which 
to the horror of the spectators, fell over backwards and landed 
squarely on the Commanding General. Much to the gratifi- 
cation of the people General Miles was not injured but con- 
siderable skin was scraped off the flank of the horse. Almost 
every inch of General Miles's overcoat was covered with the 
dust of the street and between the shoulders a hole about an 
inch in diameter was punctured. Without waiting for anyone 
to brush the dust from his garments General Miles remounted 
his horse and reviewed the parade as if it were an everyday 
occurrence. 

The incident naturally attracted the attention of the 
crowd, and this brought to notice the fact that the Command- 
ing General never permits a flag to be carried past him with- 
out uncovering and remaining so until the colors have past 

And the Captain bold of Co?npany B 
Was afightin in the lead 
Just like a trueborn soldier he 
Of them bullets took no heed 

OFFICIALS KNOW NOTHING OF VICE 

Sanitary trustees turn water of Chicago River into drain-v 
age canal LAKE MICHIGAN SHAKES HANDS WITH 
THE FATHER OF THE WATERS German zuchter 

3 



rerein singing contest for canary-birds opens the fight for 
bimetallism at the ratio of 16 to I has not been lost says Bryan 

BRITISH BEATEN AT MAFEKING 
For there's many a man been murdered in Luzon 

CLAIMS ISLANDS FOR ALL TIME 

Hamilton Club Listens to Oratory by Ex-Congressman 
Posey of Indiana 

NOISE GREETS NEW CENTURY 
LABOR GREETS NEW CENTURY 

CHURCHES GREET NEW CENTURY 

Mr. McKinley is hard at work in his office when the new 
year begins. 

NATION GREETS CENTURY'S DAWN 

Responding to a toast, Hail Columbia! at the Columbia 
Club banquet in Indianapolis, Ind., ex-President Benjamin 
Harrison said in part: I have no argument to make here or 
anywhere against territorial expansion; but I do not, as some 
do, look upon territorial expansion as the safest and most attrac- 
tive avenue of national development. By the advantages of 
abundant and cheap coal and iron, of an enormous over- 
production of food products and of invention and economy in 
production, we are now leading by the nose the original and 
the greatest of the colonizing nations. 

Society Girls Shocked: Danced with Detectives 

For there's many a man been murdered in Luzon 

and Mindanao 

GAIETY GIRLS MOBBED IN NEW JERSEY 

One of the lithographs of the leading lady represented her 
in less than Atlantic City bathing costume, sitting on a red-hot 
stove; in one hand she held a brimming glass of wine, in the 
other ribbons drawn over a pair of rampant lobsters. 

4 



For then** many a man been murdered m Luzon 

and Mindanao 

and in Samaf 

In responding to the toast, "The Twentieth Century," 
Senator Albert J. Beveridge said in part: The twentieth cen- 
tury will be American. American thought will dominate it. 
American progress will give it color and direction. American 
deeds will make it illustrious. 

Civilization will never lose its hold on Shanghai. CiviUza- 
tion will never depart from Hongkong. The gates of Peking 
will never again be closed to the methods of modern man. 
The regeneration of the world y physical as well as moral y has 
begun, and revolutions never move backwards. 

There y s been many a good man murdered in the Philippine 
Lies sleeping in some lonesome grave. 



THE CAMERA EYE (i) 

when you walk along the street you have to step 
carefully always on the cobbles so as not to step on the 
bright anxious grassblades easier if you hold Mother's 
hand and hang on it that way you can kick up your toes 
but walking fast you have to tread on too many grass- 
blades the poor hurt green tongues shrink under your 
feet maybe thats why those people are so angry and 
follow us shaking their fists they're throwing stones 
grownup people throwing stones She's walking fast and 
we're running her pointed toes sticking oxit sharp among 
the poor trodden grassblades under the shaking folds of 

5 



the brown cloth dress Englander a pebble tinkles 
dong the cobbles 

Quick darling quick in the postcard shop its quiet the 
angry people are outside and cant come in non nein 
nicht englander amerikanisch americain Hoch Amerika 
Vive PAmerique She laughs My dear they had me right 
frightened 

war on the veldt Kruger Bloemfontein Ladysmith 
and Queen Victoria an old lady in a pointed lace cap sent 
chocolate to the soldiers at Christmas 

under the counter it's dark and the lady the nice 
Dutch lady who loves Americans and has relations in 
Trenton shows you postcards that shine in the dark 
pretty hotels and palaces O que c'est beau schon 
prittie prittie and the moonlight ripple ripple under a 
bridge and the little reverberes are alight in the dark 
under the counter and the little windows of hotels around 
the harbor O que c'est beau la lune 

and the big moon 



MAC 



When the wind set from the silver factories across the 
river the air of the gray fourfamily frame house where 
Fainy McCreary was born was choking all day with the 
smell of whaleoil soap. Other days it smelt of cabbage 
and babies and Mrs. McCreary's washboilers. Fainy could 
6 



never play at home because Pop, a lame cavechested man 
with a whispy blondegray mustache, was nightwatchman 
at the Chadwick Mills and slept all day. It was only round 
five o'clock that a curling whiff of tobacco smoke would 
seep through from the front room into the kitchen. That 
was a sign that Pop was up and in good spirits, and would 
soon be wanting his supper. 

Then Fainy would be sent running out to one of two 
corners of the short muddy street of identical frame 
houses where they lived. 

To the right it was half a block to Finley's where he 
would have to wait at the bar in a forest of mudsplattered 
trouserlegs until all the rank brawling mouths of grown- 
ups had been stopped with beers and whiskeys. Then he 
would walk home, making each step very carefully, with 
the handle of the pail of suds cutting into his hand. 

To the left it was half a block to Maginnis's Fancy 
Groceries, Home and Imported Products. Fainy liked the 
cardboard Cream of Wheat darkey in the window, the 
glass case with different kinds of salami in it, the barrels 
of potatoes and cabbages, the brown smell of sugar, saw- 
dust, ginger, kippered herring, ham, vinegar, bread, pep- 
per, lard. 

"A loaf of bread, please, mister, a half pound of butter 
and a box of ginger snaps." 

Some evenings, when Mom felt poorly, Fainy had to 
go further j round the corner past Maginnis's, down Riv- 
erside Avenue where the trolley ran, and across the red 
bridge over the little river that flowed black between icy 
undercut snowbanks in winter, yellow and spuming in the 
spring thaws, brown and oily in summer. Across the river 
all the way to the corner of Riverside and Main, where 
the drugstore was, lived Bohunks and Polaks. Their kids 
were always fighting with the kids of the Murphys and 
O'Haras and O'Flanagans who lived on Orchard Street. 

Fainy would walk along with his knees quaking, the 

7 



inedicine bottle in its white paper tight in one mittened 
hand. At the corner of Quince was a group of boys he'd 
have to pass. Passing wasn't so bad; it was when he was 
about twenty yards from them that the first snowball 
would hum by his ear. There was no comeback. If he 
broke into a run, they'd chase him. If he dropped the 
medicine bottle he'd be beaten up when he got home. A 
soft one would plunk on the back of his head and the snow 
began to trickle down his neck. When he was a half a 
block from the bridge he'd take a chance and run for it. 

"Scared cat ... Shanty Irish . . . Bowlegged Mur- 
phy . . . Running home to tell the cop" . . . would 
yell the Polak and Bohunk kids between snowballs. They 
made their snowballs hard by pouring water on them and 
leaving them to freeze overnight; if one of those hit him 
it drew blood. 

The backyard was the only place you could really feel 
safe to pjay in. There were brokendown fences, dented 
garbage cans, old pots and pans too nearly sieves to mend, 
a vacant chickencoop that still had feathers and droppings 
on the floor, hogweed in summer, mud in winter; but the 
glory of the McCrearys' backyard was Tony Harriman's 
rabbit hutch, where he kept Belgian hares. Tony Harri- 
man was a consumptive and lived with his mother on the 
ground floor left. He wanted to raise all sorts of other 
small animals too, raccoons, otter, even silver fox, he'd get 
rich that way. The day he died nobody could find the key 
to the big padlock on the door of the rabbit hutch. Fainy 
fed the hares for several days by pushing in cabbage and 
lettuce leaves through the double thickness of chickenwire. 
Then came a week of sleet and rain when he didn't go out 
in the yard. The first fine day, when he went to look, one 
of the hares was dead. Fainy turned white; he tried to tell 
himself the hare was asleep, but it lay gawkily stiff, not 
asleep. The other hares were huddled in a corner looking 
8 



about with twitching noses, their big ears flopping helples* 
over their backs. Poor hares; Fainy wanted to cry. He ran 
upstairs to his mother's kitchen, ducked under the ironing 
board and got the hammer out of the drawer in the 
kitchen table. The first time he tried he mashed his finger, 
but the second time he managed to jump the padlock. In- 
side the cage there was a funny, sour smell. Fainy picked 
the dead hare up by its ears. Its soft white belly was be- 
ginning to puff up, one dead eye was scaringly open. 
Something suddenly got hold of Fainy and made him 
drop the hare in the nearest garbage can and run upstairs. 
Still cold and trembling, he tiptoed out onto the back 
porch and looked down. Breathlessly he watched the other 
hares. By cautious hops they were getting near the door 
of the hutch into the yard. One of them was out. It sat 
up on its hind legs, limp ears suddenly stiff. Mom called 
him to bring her a flatiron from the stove. When he got 
back to the porch the hares were all gone. 

That winter there was a strike in the Chadwick Mills 
and Pop lost his job. He would sit all day in the front 
room smoking and cursing: 

"Ablebodied man by Jesus, if I couldn't lick any one 
of those damn Polaks with my crutch tied behind my 
back ... I says so to Mr. Barry; I ain't goin' to join no 
strike. Mr. Barry, a sensible quiet man, a bit of an invalid, 
with a wife an' kiddies to think for. Eight years I've been 
watchman, an' now you give me the sack to take on a bunch 
of thugs from a detective agency. The dirty pugnosed 
son of a bitch." 

"If those damn lousy furreners hadn't a walked out," 
somebody would answer soothingly. 

The strike was not popular on Orchard Street. It meant 
that Mom had to work harder and harder, doing bigger 
and bigger boilersful of wash, and that Fainy and his 
older sister Milly had to help when they came home 
from school. And then one day Mom got sick and had to 



go back to bed instead of starting in on the ironing, and 
lay with her round white creased face whiter than the pil- 
low and her watercreased hands in a knot under her chin. 
The doctor came and the district nurse, and all three 
rooms of the flat smelt of doctors and nurses and drugs, 
and the only place Fainy and Milly could find to sit was 
on the stairs. There they sat and cried quietly together. 
Then Mom's face on the pillow shrank into a little creased 
white thing like a rumpled up handkerchief and they said 
that she was dead and took her away. 

The funeral was from the undertaking parlors on River- 
side Avenue on the next block. Fainy felt very proud and 
important because everybody kissed him and patted his 
head and said he was behaving like a little man. He had 
a new black suit on, too, like a grownup suit with pockets 
and everything, except that it had short pants. There were 
all sorts of people at the undertaking parlors he had never 
been close to before, Mr. Russell, the butcher and Father 
O'Donnell and Uncle Tim O'Hara who'd come on from 
Chicago, and it smelt of whisky and beer like at Finley's. 
Uncle Tim was a skinny man with a knobbed red face and 
blurry blue eyes. He wore a loose black silk tie that wor- 
ried Fainy, and kept leaning down suddenly, bending 
from the waist as if he was going to close up like a jack- 
knife, and whispering in a thick voice in Fainy's ear. 

"Don't you mind 'em, old sport, they're a bunch o j 
bums and hypocrytes, stewed to the ears most of 'em 
already. Look at Father O'Donnell the fat swine already 
figurin' up the burial fees. But don't you mind 'em, re- 
member you're an O'Hara on your mother's side. I don't 
mind 'em, old sport, and she was my own sister by birth 
and blood." 

When they got home he was terribly sleepy and his feet 

were cold and wet. Nobody paid any attention to him. He 

sat whimpering on the edge of the bed in the dark. In 

tta front room there were voices and a sound of knives 

TO 



and forks, but he didn't dare go in there. He curled up 
against the wall and went to sleep. Light in his eyes woke 
him up. Uncle Tim and Pop were standing over him talk- 
ing loud. They looked funny and didn't seem to be stand- 
ing very steady. Uncle Tim held the lamp. 

"Well, Fainy, old sport," said Uncle Tim giving the 
lamp a perilous wave over Fainy's head. "Fenian O'Hara 
McCreary, sit up and take notice and tell us what you 
think of our proposed removal to the great and growing 
city of Chicago. Middletown's a terrible bitch of a dump 
if you ask me ... Meanin' no offense, John . . . But 
Chicago . . . Jesus God, man, when you get there you'll 
think you've been dead and nailed up in a coffin all these 
years." 

Fainy was scared. He drew his knees up to his chin and 
looked tremblingly at the two big swaying figures of men 
lit by the swaying lamp. He tried to speak but the words 
dried up on his lips. 

"The kid's asleep, Tim, for all your speechifyin' . . . 
Take your clothes off, Fainy, and get into bed and get a 
good night's sleep. We're leavin' in the mornin'." 

And late on a rainy morning, without any breakfast, 
with a big old swelltop trunk tied up with rope joggling 
perilously on the roof of the cab that Fainy had been sent 
to order from Hodgeson's Livery Stable, they set out. 
Milly was crying. Pop didn't say a word but sucked on 
an unlit pipe. Uncle Tim handled everything, making 
little jokes all the time that nobody laughed at, pulling 
a roll of bills out of his pocket at every juncture, or taking 
great gurgling sips out of the flask he had in his pocket. 
Milly cried and cried. Fainy looked out with big dry eyes 
at the familiar streets, all suddenly odd and lopsided, that 
rolled past the cab*, the red bridge, the scabshingled 
houses where the Polaks lived, Smith's and Smith's cor- 
ner drugstore . . . there was Billy Hogan just coming 

ii 



out with a package of chewing gum in his hand. Playing 
hookey again. Fainy had an impulse to yell at him, but 
something froze it ... Main with its elms and street 
cars, blocks of stores round the corner of Church, and 
then the fire department. Fainy looked for the last time 
into the dark cave where shone entrancingly the brass and 
copper curves of the engine, then past the cardboard fronts 
of the First Congregational Church, The Carmel Baptist 
Church, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church built of brick and 
set catercornered on its lot instead of straight with a stern 
face to the street like the other churches, then the three 
castiron stags on the lawn in front of the Commercial 
House, and the residences, each with its lawn, each with 
its scrollsaw porch, each with its hydrangea bush. Then 
the houses got smaller, and the lawns disappeared j the 
cab trundled round past Simpson's Grain and Feed Ware- 
house, along a row of barbershops, saloons and lunch- 
rooms, and they were all getting out at the station. 

At the station lunchcounter Uncle Tim set everybody 
up to breakfast. He dried Milly's tears and blew Fainy's 
nose in a big new pockethandkerchief that still had the tag 
on the corner and set them to work on bacon and eggs and 
coffee. Fainy hadn't had coffee before, so the idea of sit- 
ting up like a man and drinking coffee made him feel 
pretty good. Milly didn't like hers, said it was bitter. 
They were left all alone in the lunchroom for sometime 
with the empty plates and empty coffee cups under the 
beady eyes of a woman with the long neck and pointed 
face of a hen who looked at them disapprovingly from 
behind the counter. Then with an enormous, shattering 
rumble, sludgepuff sludge . . . puff, the train came into 
the station. They were scooped up and dragged across 
the platform and through a pipesmoky car and before 
they knew it the train was moving and the wintry russet 
Connecticut landscape was clattering by. 



THE CAMERA EYE (2) 

we hurry wallowing like in a boat in the musty 
stablysmelling herdic cab He kept saying What would 
you do Lucy if I were to invite one of them to my table? 
They're very lovely people Lucy the colored people and 
He had cloves in a little silver box and a rye whisky smell 
on his breath hurrying to catch the cars to New York 

and She was saying Oh dolly I hope we wont be 
late and Scott was waiting with the tickets and we had to 
run up the platform of the Seventh Street Depot and all 
the little cannons kept falling out of the Olympia and 
everybody stooped to pick them up and the conductor 
Allaboard lady quick lady 

they were little brass cannons and were bright in the 
sun on the platform of the Seventh Street Depot and Scott 
hoisted us all up and the train was moving and the engine 
bell was ringing and Scott put in your hand a little handful 
of brass tiny cannons just big enough to hold the smallest 
size red firecracker at the battle of Manila Bay and said 
Here's the artillery Jack 

and He was holding forth in the parlor car Why 
Lucy if it were necessary for the cause of humanity I 
would walk out and be shot any day you would Jack 
wouldn't you? wouldn't you porter? who was bringing 
appolinaris and He had a flask in the brown grip where 

13 



the silk initialed handkerchiefs always smelt of bay rum 
and when we got to Havre de Grace He said Re- 
member Lucy we used to have to ferry across the Susque- 
hanna before the bridge was built 
and across Gunpowder Creek too 



.MAC 

Russet hills, patches of woods, farmhouses, cows, a red 
colt kicking up its heels in a pasture, rail fences, streaks 
of marsh. 

"Well, Tim, I feel like a whipped cur ... So long as 
I've lived, Tim, I've tried to do the right thing," Pop 
kept repeating in a rattling voice. "And now what can they 
be asayin' about me?" 

"Jesus God, man, there was nothin* else you could do, 
was there? What the devil can you do if you haven't any 
money and haven't any job and a lot o' doctors and under- 
takers and landlords come round with their bills and you 
with two children to support?" 

"But I've been a quiet and respectable man, steady and 
misfortunate ever since I married and settled down. And 
now what'll they be thinkin' of me sneakin' out like a 
whipped cur?" 

"John, take it from me that Fd be the last one to want 
to bring disrespect on the dead that was my own sister by 
birth and blood , . . But it ain't your fault and it ain't 
my fault . . . it's the fault of poverty, and poverty's the 
fault of the system . . . Fenian, you listen to Tim 
O'Hara for a minute and Milly you listen too, cause a 
girl ought to know these things just as well as a man and 



for once in his life Tim O'Hara's tellin' the truth . . . 
It's the fault of the system that don't give a man the fruit 
of his labor . . . The only man that gets anything out of 
capitalism is a crook, an' he gets to be a millionaire in 
short order . . . But an honest workin' man like John or 
muself we can work a hundred years and not leave enough 
to bury us decent with." 

Smoke rolled white in front of the window shaking out 
of its folds trees and telegraph poles and little square 
shingleroofed houses and towns and trolleycars, and long 
rows of buggies with steaming horses standing in line. 

"And who gets the fruit of our labor, the goddam busi- 
ness men, agents, middlemen who never did a productive 
piece of work in their life." 

Fainy's eyes are following the telegraph wires that sag 
and soar. 

"Now, Chicago ain't no paradise, I can promise you 
that, John, but it's a better market for a workin' man's 
muscle and brains at present than the East is ... And 
why, did you ask me why . . . ? Supply and demand, 
they need workers in Chicago." 

"Tim, I tellyer 1 feel like a whipped cur." 

"It's the system, John, it's the goddam lousy system." 

A great bustle in the car woke Fainy up. It was dark, 
Milly was crying again. He didn't know where he was. 

"Well, gentlemen," Uncle Tim was saying, "we're 
about to arrive in little old New York." 

In the station it was light j that surprised Fainy, who 
thought it was already night. He and Milly were left a 
long time sitting on a suitcase in the waitingroom. The 
waitingroom was huge, full of unfamiliarlooking people, 
scary like people in picturebooks. Milly kept crying. 

"Hey, Milly, I'll biff you one if you don't stop crying." 

"Why?" whined Milly, crying all the more. 

Fainy stood as far away from her as possible so that 
people wouldn't think they were together. When he was 

15 



about ready to cry himself Pop and Uncle Tim came and 
took them and the suitcase into the restaurant. A strong 
smell of fresh whisky came from their breaths, and they 
seemed very bright around the eyes. They all sat at a table 
with a white cloth and a sympathetic colored man in a 
white coat handed them a large card full of printing. 

"Let's eat a good supper," said Uncle Tim, "if it's the 
last thing we do on this earth." 

"Damn the expense," said Pop, "it's the system that's 
to blame." 

"To hell with the pope," said Uncle Tim. "We'll make 
a social-democrat out of you yet." 

They gave Fainy fried oysters and chicken and ice- 
cream and cake, and when they all had to run for the train 
he had a terrible stitch in his side. They got into a day- 
coach that smelt of coalgas and armpits. "When are we 
going to bed?" Milly began to whine. "We're not going 
to bed," said Uncle Tim airily. "We're going to sleep 
right here like little mice . . . like little mice in a 
cheese." "I doan like mice," yelled Milly with a new 
flood of tears as the train started. 

Fainy 's eyes smarted j in his ears was the continuous 
roar, the clatter clatter over crossings, the sudden snarl 
under bridges. It was a tunnel, all the way to Chicago it 
was a tunnel. Opposite him Pop's and Uncle Tim's faces 
looked red and snarling, he didn't like the way they 
looked, and the light was smoky and jiggly and outside 
it was all a tunnel and his eyes hurt and wheels and rails 
roared in his ears and he fell asleep. 

When he woke up it was a town and the train was run- 
ning right through the main street. It was a sunny morn- 
ing. He could see people going about their business, stores, 
buggies and spring-wagons standing at the curb, newsboys 
selling newspapers, wooden Indians outside of cigarstores. 
&t first he thought he was dreaming, but then he remem- 
bered and decided it must be Chicago. Pop and Uncle Tim 
16 



were asleep on the seat opposite. Their mouths were open, 
their faces were splotched and he didn't like the way they 
looked. Milly was curled up with a wooly shawl all ovei 
her. The train was slowing down, it was a station. If it wai 
Chicago they ought to get off. At that moment the con- 
ductor passed, an old man who looked a little like Fathei 
O'Donnell. 

"Please, mister, is this Chicago?" "Chicago's a long way 
off yet, son," said the conductor without smiling. "This is 
Syracuse." 

And they all woke up, and for hours and hours the 
telephone poles went by, and towns, frame houses, brick 
factories with ranks and ranks of glittering windows, 
dumping grounds, trainyards, plowed land, pasture, and 
cows, and Milly got trainsick and Fainy's legs felt like 
they would drop off from sitting in the seat so long; some 
places it was snowing and some places it was sunny, and 
Milly kept getting sick and smelt dismally of vomit, and 
it got dark and they all slept; and light again, and then 
the towns and the framehouses and the factories all started 
drawing together, humping into warehouses and elevators, 
and the trainyards spread out as far as you could see and 
it was Chicago. 

But it was so cold and the wind blew the dust so hard 
in his face and his eyes were so stuck together by dust and 
tiredness that he couldn't look at anything. After they had 
waited round a long while, Milly and Fainy huddled to- 
gether in the cold, they got on a streetcar and rode and 
rode. They were so sleepy they never knew exactly where 
the train ended and the streetcar began. Uncle Tim's voice 
went on talking proudly excitedly, Chicago, Chicago, Chi- 
cago. Pop sat with his chin on his crutch. "Tim, I feel like 
a whipped cur." 

Fainy lived ten years in Chicago. 

At first he went to school and played baseball on back 
lots on Saturday afternoons, but then came his last com- 



mencement, and all the children sang My Country y 'Tis 
Of Thee, and school was over and he had to go to work. 
Uncle Tim at that time had his own jobprinting shop on 
a dusty side street off North Clark in the ground floor of 
a cranky old brick building. It only occupied a small sec- 
tion of the building that was mostly used as a ware- 
house and was famous for its rats. It had a single wide 
plateglass window made resplendent by gold Old English 
lettering: TIMOTHY O'HARA, JOB PRINTER. 

"Now, Fainy, old sport," said Uncle Tim, "you'll have 
a chance to learn the profession from the ground up." So 
he ran errands, delivered packages of circulars, throw- 
aways, posters, was always dodging trolleycars, ducking 
from under the foamy bits of big truckhorses, bumming 
rides on deliverywagons. When there were no errands to 
run he swept out under the presses, cleaned type, emptied 
the office wastepaper basket, or, during rush times, ran 
round th corner for coffee and sandwiches for the type- 
setter, or for a small flask of bourbon for Uncle Tim. 

Pop puttered round on his crutch for several years, 
always looking for a job. Evenings he smoked his pipe 
and cursed his luck on the back stoop of Uncle Tim's 
house and occasionally threatened to go back to Middle- 
town. Then one day he got pneumonia and died quietly 
at the Sacred Heart Hospital. It was about the same time 
that Uncle Tim bought a linotype machine. 

Uncle Tim was so excited he didn't take a drink for 
three days. The floorboards were so rotten they had to 
build a brick base for the linotype all the way up from 
the cellar. "Well, when we get another one we'll concrete 
the whole place," Uncle Tim told everybody. For a whole 
day there was no work done. Everybody stood around 
looking at the tall black intricate machine that stood there 
like an organ in a church. When the machine was work- 
ing and the printshop filled with the hot smell of molten 
metal, everybody's eyes followed the quivering inquisitive 
18 



arm that darted and flexed above the keyboard. When 
they handed round the warm shiny slugs of type the old 
German typesetter who for some reason they called Mike 
pushed back his glasses on his forehead and cried. "Fifty- 
five years a printer, and now when I'm old I'll have to 
carry hods to make a living." 

The first print Uncle Tim set up on the new machine 
was the phrase: Workers of the world unite 5 you have 
nothing to lose but your chains. 

When Fainy was seventeen and just beginning to worry 
about skirts and ankles and girls' underwear when he 
walked home from work in the evening and saw the lights 
of the city bright against the bright heady western sky, 
there was a strike in the Chicago printing trades. Tim 
O'Hara had always run a union shop and did all the union 
printing at cost. He even got up a handbill signed, A Citi- 
zen, entitled An Ernest Protest, which Fainy was allowed 
to set up on the linotype one evening after the operator 
had gone home. One phrase stuck in Fainy's mind, and 
he repeated it to himself after he had gone to bed that 
night: It is time for all honest men to band together to 
resist the ravages of greedy privilege. 

The next day was Sunday, and Fainy went along 
Michigan Avenue with a package of the handbills to dis- 
tribute. It was a day of premature spring. Across the rot- 
ting yellow ice on the lake came little breezes that smelt 
unexpectedly of flowers. The girls looked terribly pretty 
and their skirts blew in the wind and Fainy felt the spring 
blood pumping hot in him, he wanted to kiss and to roll 
on the ground and to run out across the icecakes and to 
make speeches from the tops of telegraph poles and to 
vault over trolleycars; but instead he distributed hand- 
bills and worried about his pants being frayed and wished 
he had a swell looking suit and a swell looking girl to 
walk with. 

"Hey, young feller, where's your permit to distribute 



them handbills?" It was a cop's voice growling in his ear, 
Fainy gave the cop one look over his shoulder, dropped 
the handbills and ran. He ducked through between the 
shiny black cabs and carriages, ran down a side street and 
walked and walked and didn't look back until he managed 
to get across a bridge just before the draw opened. The 
cop wasn't following him anyway. 

He stood on the curb a long time with the whistle of 
a peanutstand shrilling derisively in his ear. 

That night at supper his uncle asked him about the 
handbills. 

"Sure I gave 'em out all along the lakeshore ... A 
cop tried to stop me but I told him right where to get 
off." Fainy turned burning red when a hoot went up from 
everybody at the table. He filled up his mouth with 
mashed potato and wouldn't say any more. His aunt and 
his uncle and their three daughters all laughed and 
laughed. "Well, it's a good thing you ran faster than the 
cop," said Uncle Tim, "else I should have had to bail you 
out and that would have cost money." 

The next morning early Fainy was sweeping out the 
office, when a man with a face like a raw steak walked up 
the steps; he was smoking a thin black stogy of a sort 
Fainy had never seen before. He knocked on the ground 
glass door. 

"I want to speak to Mr. O'Hara, Timothy O'Hara." 

"He's not here yet, be here any minute now, sir. Will 
you wait?" 

"You bet I'll wait." The man sat on the edge of a 
chair and spat, first taking the chewed end of the stogy 
out of his mouth and looking at it meditatively for a long 
time. When Tim O'Hara came the office door closed with 
a bang. Fainy hovered nervously around, a little bit afraid 
the man might be a detective following up the affair of 
the handbills. Voices rose and fell, the stranger's voice in 
short rattling tirades, O'Hara's voice in long expostulating 

20 



clauses, now and then Fainy caught the word foreclose, 
until suddenly the door flew open and the stranger shot 
out, his face purpler than ever. On the iron stoop he 
turned and pulling a new stogy from his pocket, lit it from 
the old one; growling the words through the stogy and 
the blue puff of smoke, he said, "Mr. O'Hara, you have 
twenty-four hours to think it over ... A word from you 
and proceedings stop immediately." Then he went off 
down the street leaving behind him a long trail of rancid 
smoke. 

A minute later, Uncle Tim came out of the office, his 
face white as paper. "Fenian, old sport," he said, "you 
go get yourself a job. I'm going out of business . . * 
Keep a weather eye open. I'm going to have a drink." 
And he was drunk for six days. By the end of that time 
a number of meeklooking men appeared with summonses, 
and Uncle Tim had to sober up enough to go down to the 
court and put in a plea of bankruptcy. 

Mrs. O'Hara scolded and stormed, "Didn't I tell you, . 
Tim O'Hara, no good'll ever come with your fiddlin 1 
round with these godless labor unions and social-democrats 
and knights of labor, all of 'em drunk and loafin' bums 
like yourself, Tim O'Hara. Of course the master printers 
ud have to get together and buy up your outstandin' 
paper and squash you, and serve you right too, Tim 
O'Hara, you and your godless socialistic boosin' ways only 
they might have thought of your poor wife and her help- 
less wee babes, and now we'll starve all of us together, ui 
and the dependents and hangers on youVe brought into 
the house." 

"Well, I declare," cried Fainy's sister Milly. "If I 
haven't slaved and worked my fingers to the bone for 
every piece of bread I've eaten in this house," and she 
got up from the breakfast table and flounced out of the 
room. Fainy sat there while the storm raged above his 
head; then he got up, slipping a corn muffin into his 

21 



pocket as he went. In the hall he found the "help wanted" 
section of the Chicago Tnbune y took his cap and went out 
into a raw Sunday morning full of churchbells jangling 
in his ears. He boarded a streetcar and went out to Lin- 
coln Park. There he sat on a bench for a long time munch- 
ing the muffin and looking down the columns of adver- 
tisements: Boy Wanted. But they none of them looked 
very inviting. One thing he was bound, he wouldn't get 
another job in a printing shop until the strike was over. 
Then his eye struck 

Bright boy wanted with amb. and lit. taste, knowledge 
of print, and pub. business. Conf. sales and distrib. propo- 
sition $15 a week apply by letter P.O. Box i256b 

Fainy's head suddenly got very light. Bright boy, that's 
me, ambition and literary taste . . . Gee, I must finish 
Looking Backward . . . and jez, I like reading fine, 
an' I could run a linotype or set up print if anybody'd let 
me. Fifteen bucks a week . . . pretty soft, ten dollars' 
raise. And he began to write a letter in his head, apply- 
ing for the job. 

DEAR SIR (Mr DEAR SIR) 
or maybe GENTLEMEN, 

In applying for the position you offer in today's 
Sunday Tribune I want to apply, (allow me to state) that 
I'm seventeen years old, no, nineteen, with several years' 
experience in the printing and publishing trades, ambitious 
and with excellent knowledge and taste in the printing and 
publishing trades, 

no, I can't say that twice . . . And I'm very anxious 
for the job ... As he went along it got more and more 
muddled in his head. 

He found he was standing beside a peanut wagon. It 
was cold as blazes, a razor wind was shrieking across the 
broken ice and the black patches of water of the lake. He 

22 



tore out the ad and let the rest of the paper go with th* 
wind. Then he bought himself a warm package of peanuts. 



NEWSREEL II 



Come on and hear 
Come on and hear 
Come on and hear 

In his address to the Michigan state Legislature the retir- 
ing governor, Hazen S. Pingree, said in part: I make the pre- 
diction that unless those in charge and in whose hands legisla- 
tion is reposed do not change the present system of inequality, 
there will be a bloody revolution in less than a quarter of a 
century in this great country of ours. 

CARNEGIE TALKS OF HIS EPITAPH 

Alexander*! Ragtime Band 
It is the best 
It is the best 

the luncheon which was served in the physical laboratory 
was replete with novel features. A miniature blastfurnace four 
feet high was on the banquet table and a narrow gauge rail- 
road forty feet long ran round the edge of the table. Instead 
of molten metal the blastfurnace poured hot punch into small 
cars on the railroad. Icecream was served in the shape of rail- 
road ties and bread took the shape of locomotives. 

Mr. Carnegie, while extolling the advantages of higher 
education in every branch of learning, came at last to this con- 
clusion: Manual labor has been found to be the best foundation 
for the greatest work of the brain. 

VICE PRESIDENT EMPTIES A BANK 

Come on and hear 
Alexander's Ragtime Band 

23 



It is the best 
It is the best 

brother of Jesse James declares play picturing him as 
bandit trainrobber and outlaw is demoralizing district battle 
ends with polygamy, according to an investigation by Salt Lake 
ministers, still practiced by Mormons clubwomen gasp 

It Is the best band in the land 

say circus animals only eat Chicago horsemeat Taxsale of 
Indiana lots marks finale of World's Fair boom uses flag as 
ragbag killed on cannibal isle keeper falls into water and sea- 
lions attack him. 

The launch then came alongside the half deflated balloon 
of the aerostat which threatened at any moment to smother 
Santos Dumont. The latter was half pulled and half clam- 
bered over the gunwale into the boat. 

The prince of Monaco urged him to allow himself to be 
taken on board the yacht to dry himself and change his clothes. 
Santos Dumont would not leave the launch until everything 
that could be saved had been taken ashore, then, wet but 
smiling and unconcerned, he landed amid the frenzied cheers 
of the crowd. 



THE CAMERA EYE (3) 

O qu'il a des beaux yeux said the lady in the seat 
opposite but She said that was no way to talk to children 
and the little boy felt all hot and sticky but it was dusk 
and the lamp shaped like half a melon was coming on 
dim red and the train rumbled and suddenly I've been 
asleep and it's black dark and the blue tassel bobs on the 

of the dark shade shaped like a melon and every- 

24 



where there are pointed curved shadows (the first time 
He came He brought a melon and the sun was coming in 
through the tall lace windowcurtains and when we cut it 
the smell of melons filled the whole room) No don't eat 
the seeds deary they give you appendicitis 

but you're peeking out of the window into the black 
rumbling dark suddenly ranked with squat chimneys and 
you're scared of the black smoke and the puffs of flame 
that flare and fade out of the squat chimneys Potteries 
dearie they work there all night Who works there all 
night? Workingmen and people like that laborers travail- 
leurs greasers 

you were scared 

but now the dark was all black again the lamp in the 
train and the sky and everything had a blueblack shade 
on it and She was telling a story about 

Longago Beforetheworldsfair Beforeyouwereborn and 
they went to Mexico on a private car on the new interna- 
tional line and the men shot antelope off the back of the 
train and big rabbits jackasses they called them and once 
one night Longago Beforetheworldsfair Beforeyouwereborn 
one night Mother was so frightened on account of all the* 
rifleshots but it was allright turned out to be nothing but 
a little shooting they'd been only shooting a greaser thaf 
was all 

that was in the early days 



LOVER OF MANKIND 



Debs was a railroad man, born in a weather- 
boarded shack at Terre Haute. 

He was one of ten children. 

His father had come to America in a sailingship 
in '49, 

an Alsatian from Colmarj not much of a money- 
maker, fond of music and reading, 

he gave his children a chance to finish public 
school and that was about all he could do. 

At fifteen Gene Debs was already working as a 
machinist on the Indianapolis and Terre Haute Rail- 
way. 

He worked as locomotive fireman, 

clerked in a store 

joined the local of the Brotherhood of Locomo- 
tive Firemen, was elected secretary, traveled all over 
the country as organizer. 

He was a tall shamblefooted man, had a sort of 
gusty rhetoric that set on fire the railroad workers in 
their pineboarded halls 

made them want the world he wanted, 

a world brothers might own 

where everybody would split even: 

I am not a labor leader. I don't want you to fol- 
low me or anyone else. If you are looking for a Moses 
to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness you will stay 
right where you are. I would not lead you into this 
promised land if I could y because if I could lead you 
in> someone else would lead you out. 

That was how he talked to freighthandlers and 
gandywalkers, to firemen and switchmen and engi- 
neers, telling them it wasn't enough to organize the 
railroadmen, that all workers must be organized, that 

26 



all workers must be organized in the workers' coopers 
tive commonwealth. 

Locomotive fireman on many a long night's run, 

under the smoke a fire burned him up, burned in 
gusty words that beat in pineboarded halls j he wanted 
his brothers to be free men. 

That was what he saw in the crowd that met hinv 
at the Old Wells Street Depot when he came out of 
jail after the Pullman strike, 

those were the men that chalked up nine hundred 
thousand votes for him in nineteen twelve and scared 
the frockcoats and the tophats and diamonded hostesses 
at Saratoga Springs, Bar Harbor, Lake Geneva with 
the bogy of a socialist president. 



But where were Gene Debs' brothers in nineteen 
eighteen when Woodrow Wilson had him locked up 
in Atlanta for speaking against war, 

where were the big men fond of whisky and fond 
of each other, gentle rambling tellers of stories over 
bars in small towns in the Middle West, 

quiet men who wanted a house with a porch to 
putter around and a fat wife to cook for them, a few 
drinks and cigars, a garden to dig in, cronies to chew 
the rag with 

and wanted to work for it 

and others to work for itj 

where were the locomotive firemen and engineers 
when they hustled him off to Atlanta Penitentiary? 



And they brought him back to die in Terrc Haute 
to sit on his porch in a rocker with a cigar in his 
mouth, 

27 



beside him American Beauty roses his wife fixed 
in a bowl; 

and the people of Terre Haute and the people in 
Indiana and the people of the Middle West were fond 
of him and afraid of him and thought of him as an old 
kindly uncle who loved them, and wanted to be with 
him and to have him give them candy, 

but they were afraid of him as if he had contracted 
a social disease, syphilis or leprosy, and thought it was 
too bad, 

but on account of the flag 

and prosperity 

and making the world safe for democracy, 

they were afraid to be with him, 

or to think much about him for fear they might 
6elieve him; 

for he said: 

While there is a lower class I am of it, while there 
\s a criminal class I am of it y while there is a soul in 
prison I am not free. 



THE CAMERA EYE (4) 

riding backwards through the rain in the rumbly cab 
looking at their two faces in the jiggly light of the four- 
wheeled cab and Her big trunks thumping on the roof 
ind He reciting Othello in his lawyer's voice 

Her father loved me, oft invited me 
Still questioned me the story of my life, 
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes 
28 



That I have fast. 

I ran it throtigh y even from my boyish days. 

To th y very moment that he bade me tell it 

Wherein I s-poke of the most disastrous chances 

Of moving accidents by flood and field 

Of hairbreadth 'scales f th* imminent deadly breach 

why that's the Schuylkill the horse's hoofs rattle 
sharp on smooth wet asphalt after cobbles through the 
gray streaks of rain the river shimmers ruddy with winter 
mud When I was your age Jack I dove off this bridge 
through the rail of the bridge we can look way dowi 
into the cold rainyshimmery water Did you have any 
clothes on? Just my shirt 

MAC 

Fainy stood near the door in the crowded elevated 
train j against the back of the fat man who held on to the 
strap in front of him, he kept rereading a letter on crisp 
watermarked stationery: 

The Truthseeker Literary Distributing Co., Inc. 
General Offices 1104 S. Hamlin Avenue 

Chicago, 111. April 14, 1904 
Fenian O'H. McCreary 
456 N. Wood Street 

Chicago, 111. 
DEAR SIR: 

We take the pleasure to acknowledge yours of thi 
loth inst. 

29 



In reference to the matter in hand we feel that much 
could be gained by a personal interview. If you will be so 
good as to step around to the above address on Monday 
April 1 6th at nine o'clock, we feel that the matter of your 
adaptability for the position for which you have applied 
can be thoroughly thrashed out. 

Yours in search for Truth, 

EMMANUEL R. BINGHAM, D.D. 

Fainy was scared. The train got to his station too soon, 
He had fifteen minutes to walk two blocks in. He loafed 
along the street, looking in store windows. There was a 
golden pheasant, stuffed, in a taxidermist's; above it hung 
a big flat greenish fish with a sawtoothed bill from which 
dangled a label: 

SAWFISH (pristis perrotetti) 

Habitat Gulf and Florida waters. Frequents shallow 
bays and inlets. 

Maybe he wouldn't go at all. In the back of the window 
was a lynx and on the other side a bobtailed cat, each on 
its limb of a tree. Suddenly he caught his breath. He'd be 
late. He went tearing off down the block, 

He was breathless and his heart was pounding to beat 
the cars when he reached the top of the fourth flight of 
stairs. He studied the groundglass doors on the landing j 

THE UNIVERSAL CONTACT COMPANY 

F. W. Perkins 

Assurance 

THE WINDY CITY MAGIC AND NOVELTY 
COMPANY 

Dr. Noble 

Hospital and Sickroom Supplies 
30 



The last one was a grimy door in the back beside tho 
toilet. The goldleaf had come off the letters, but he was 
able to spell out from the outlines: 

THE GENERAL OUTFITTING AND MER- 
CHANTIZING CORPORATION 

Then he saw a card on the wall beside the door with 
a hand holding a torch drawn out on it and under it the 
words "Truthseeker Inc." He tapped gingerly on the 
glass. No answer. He tapped again. 

"Come in ... Don't knock," called out a deep voice. 
Fainy found himself stuttering as he opened the door and 
stepped into a dark, narrow room completely filled up by 
two huge rolltop desks: 

"Please, I called to see Mr. Bingham, sir." 
At the further desk, in front of the single window sat 
a big man with a big drooping jaw that gave him a little 
of the expression of a setter dog. His black hair was long 
and curled a little over each ear, on the back of his head 
was a broad black felt hat. He leaned back in his chair and 
looked Fainy up and down. 

"How do you do, young man? What kind of books are 
you inclined to purchase this morning? What can I do for 
you this morning?" he boomed. 

"Are you Mr. Bingham, sir, please?" 
"This is Doc Bingham right here before you." 
"Please, sir, I ... I came about that job." 
Doc Bingham's expression changed. He twisted his 
mouth as if he'd just tasted something sour. He spun 
round in his swivelchair and spat into a brass spittoon in 
the corner of the room. Then he turned to Fainy again 
and leveled a fat finger at him, "Young man, how do you 
spell experience?" 

"E . . . x . . . p . . . er . . . er . . . er . . . i 
... a ... n ..." 

"That'll do ... No education ... I thought aa 



much . . . No culture, none of those finer feelings that 
distinguish the civilized man from the savage aborigines 
of the wilds ... No enthusiasm for truth, for bringing 
light into dark places . . . Do you realize, young man, 
that it is not a job I'm offering you, it is a great oppor- 
tunity ... a splendid opportunity for service and self- 
improvement. I'm offering you an education gratis." 

Fainy shuffled his feet. He had a husk in his throat. 

"If it's in the printin' line I guess I could do it." 

"Well, young man, during the brief interrogatory 
through which Pm going to put you, remember that you 
stand on the threshold of opportunity." 

Doc Bingham ferreted in the pigeonholes of his desk 
for a long time, found himself a cigar, bit off the end, lit 
it, and then turned again to Fainy, who was standing first 
on one foot and then on the other 

"Well, if you'll tell me your name." 

"Fenian O'Hara McCreary . . ." 

"Hum . . . Scotch and Irish . . . that's pretty good 
}tock . . . that's the stock I come from." 

"Religion?" 

"Fainy squirmed. "Pop was a Catholic but . . ." He 
turned red. 

Dr. Bingham laughed, and rubbed his hands. 

"Oh, religion, what crimes are committed in thy name. 
I'm an agnostic myself . . . caring nothing for class or 
creed when among friends; though sometimes, my boy, 
you have to bow with the wind . . . No, sir, my God is 
the truth, that rising ever higher in the hands of honest 
men will dispel the mists of ignorance and greed, and 
bring freedom and knowledge to mankind . . . Do you 
agree with me?" 

"I've been working for my uncle. He's a social- 
democrat." 

"Ah, hotheaded youth . . . Can you drive a horse?' 1 

"Why, yessir, I guess I could." 

32 



"Well, I don't see why I shouldn't hire you." 

"The advertisement in the Tribune said fifteen dollars 
a week." 

Doc Bingham's voice assumed a particularly velvety 
tone. 

"Why, Fenian my boy, fifteen dollars a week will be 
the minimum you will make . . . Have you ever heard 
of the cooperative system? That is how I'm going to hire 
you ... As sole owner and representative of the Truth- 
seeker Corporation, I have here a magnificent line of 
small books and pamphlets covering every phase of human 
knowledge and endeavor ... I am embarking immedi- 
ately on a sales campaign to cover the whole country. 
You will be one of my distributors. The books sell at 
from ten to fifty cents. On each ten-cent book you make 
a cent, on the fifty-cent books you make five cents . . .* 

"And don't I get anything every week?" stammered 
Fainy. 

"Would you be penny-wise and pound- foolish? Throw- 
ing away the most magnificent opportunity of a lifetime 
for the assurance of a paltry pittance. No, I can see by 
your flaming eye, by your rebellious name out of old Ire- 
land's history, that you are a young man of spirit and 
determination . . . Are we on? Shake hands on it then 
and by gad, Fenian, you shall never regret it." 

Doc Bingham jumped to his feet and seized Fainy's 
hand and shook it. 

'Now, Fenian, come with me; we have an important 
preliminary errand to perform." Doc Bingham pulled his 
hat forward on his head and they walked down the stairs 
to the front doorj he was a big man and the fat hung 
loosely on him as he walked. Anyway, it's a job, Fainy 
told himself. 

First they went to a tailorshop where a longnosed yel- 
low man whom Doc Bingham addressed as Lee shuffled 
ou* to meet them. The tailorshop smelt of steamed cloth 

33 



*nd cleansing fluid. Lee talked as if he had no palate to 
his mouth. 

" 'M pretty sick man," he said. "Spen' mor'n thou'an 1 
dollarm on doctor, no get well." 

"Well, I'll stand by you 5 you know that, Lee." 

"Hure, Mannie, hure, only you owe me too much 
money." 

Dr. Emmanuel Bingham glanced at Fainy out of the 
corner of his eye. 

"I can assure you that the entire financial situation will 
be clarified within sixty days . . . But what I want you 
to do now is to lend me two of your big cartons, those 
cardboard boxes you send suits home in." 

"What you wan' to do?" 

"My young friend and I have a little project." 

"Don't you do nothin' crooked with them cartons j my 
name's on them." 

Doc Bingham laughed heartily as they walked out the 
door, carrying under each arm one of the big flat cartons 
that had Levy and Goldstein, Reliable Tailoring, written 
on them in florid lettering. 

"He's a great joker, Fenian," he said. "But let that 
man's lamentable condition be a lesson to you . . . The 
poor unfortunate is suffering from the consequences of a 
horrible social disease, contracted through some youthful 
folly." 

They were passing the taxidermist's store again. There 
were the wildcats and the golden pheasant and the big 
sawfish . . . Frequents shallow bays and inlets. Fainy 
had a temptation to drop the tailor's cartons and run for 
it. But anyhow, it was a job. 

"Fenian," said Doc Bingham, confidentially, c< do you 
know the Mohawk House?" 

"Yessir, we used to do their printing for them." 

"They don't know you there, do they?" 

34 



"Naw, chey wouldn't know me from Adam ... I jusi 
delivered some writin' paper there once." 

"That's superb . . . Now get this right; my room is 
303. You wait and come in about five minutes. You're the 
boy from the tailor's, see, getting some suits to be cleaned. 
Then you come up to my room and get the suits and take 
'em round to my office. If anybody asks you where you're 
going with 'em, you're goin' to Levy and Goldstein, see?" 

Fainy drew a deep breath. 

"Sure, I get you." 

When he reached the small room in the top of the 
Mohawk House, Doc Bingham was pacing the floor. 

"Levy and Goldstein, sir," said Fainy, keeping his face 
straight. 

"My boy," said Doc Bingham, "you'll be an able assist- 
ant; I'm glad I picked you out. I'll give you a dollar in 
advance on your wages." While he talked he was taking 
clothes, papers, old books, out of a big trunk that stood 
in the middle of the floor. He packed them carefully in 
one of the cartons. In the other he put a furlined over- 
coat. "That coat cost two hundred dollars, Fenian, a rem- 
nant of former splendors . . . Ah, the autumn leaves at 
Vallombrosa . . . Et tu in Arcadia vixisti . . . That's 
Latin, a language of scholars." 

"My Uncle Tim who ran the printing shop where 1 
Worked knew Latin fine." 

"Do you think you can carry these, Fenian . . . they're 
not too heavy?" 

"Sure I can carry 'em." Fainy wanted to ask about the 
dollar. 

"All right, you'd better run along . . . Wait for me 
at the office." 

In the office Fainy found a man sitting at the second 
rolltop desk. "Well, what's your business?" he yelled out 
in a rasping voice. He was a sharpnosed waxyskinned 
young man with straight black hair standing straight up.- 

35 



Fainy was winded from running up the stairs. His arms 
were stiff from carrying the heavy cartons. "I suppose 
this is some more of Mannie's tomfoolishness. Tell him 
he's got to clear out of here; Pve rented the other desk." 

"But Dr. Bingham has just hired me to work for the 
Truthseeker Literary Distributing Company." 

"The hell he has." 

"He'll be here in a minute." 

"Well, sit down and shut up; can't you see I'm busy?" 

Fainy sat down glumly in the swivelchair by the win- 
dow, the only chair in the office not piled high with small 
papercovered books. Outside the window he could see a 
few dusty roofs and fire escapes. Through grimy windows 
he could see other offices, other rolltop desks. On the desk 
in front of him were paperwrapped packages of books. 
Between them were masses of loose booklets. His eye 
caught a title: 

THE QUEEN OF THE WHITE SLAVES 

Scandalous revelations of Milly Meecham stolen jrom 
her parents at the age of sixteen y tricked by her vile 
seducer into a life of infamy and shame. 

He started reading the book. His tongue got dry and 
he felt sticky all over. 

"Nobody said anything to you, eh?" Doc Bingham's 
booming voice broke in on his reading. Before he could 
answer the voice of the man at the other desk snarled out: 
"Look here, Mannie, you've got to clear out of here . . . 
I've rented the desk." 

"Shake not thy gory locks at me, Samuel Epstein. My 
young friend and I are just preparing an expedition 
among the aborigines of darkest Michigan. We are leav- 
ing for Saginaw tonight. Within sixty days I'll come back 
and take the office off your hands. This young man is 
coming with me to learn the business." 

36 



"Business, hell," growled the other man, and shoved 
his face back down among his papers again. 

"Procrastination, Fenian, is the thief of time," said Doc 
Bingham, putting one fat hand Napoleonfashion into his 
doublebreasted vest. "There is a tide in the affairs of men 
that taken at its full . . ." And for two hours Fainy 
sweated under his direction, packing booklets into brown 
paper packages, tying them and addressing them to Truth- 
seeker Inc., Saginaw, Mich. 

He begged off for an hour to go home to see his folks. 
Milly kissed him on the forehead with thin tight lips. 
Then she burst out crying. "You're lucky j oh, I wish I 
was a boy," she spluttered and ran upstairs. Mrs. O'Hara 
said to be a good boy and always live at the Y.M.C.A. 
that kept a boy out of temptation, and to let his Uncle 
Tim be a lesson to him, with his boozin' ways. 

His throat was pretty tight when he went to look for 
his Uncle Tim. He found him in the back room at 
O'Grady's. His eyes were a flat bright blue and his lowei 
lip trembled when he spoke, "Have one drink with me, 
son, you're on your own now." Fainy drank down a beer 
without tasting it. 

"Fainy, you're a bright boy ... I wish I could have 
helped you more; you're an O'Hara every inch of you. 
You read Marx . . . study all you can, remember that 
you're a rebel by birth and blood . . . Don't blame peo- 
ple for things . . . Look at that terrible forktongued 
virago I'm married to j do I blame her? No, I blame the 
system. And don't ever sell out to the sons of bitches, son; 
it's women'll make you sell out every time. You know 
what I mean. All right, go on ... better cut along or 
you'll miss your train." "I'll write you from SaginaWj 
Uncle Tim, honest I will." 

Uncle Tim's lanky red face in the empty cigarsmoky 
room, the bar and its glint of brass and the pinkarmed 
barkeep leaning across it, the bottles and the mirrors and 

37 



the portrait of Lincoln gave a misty half turn in his head 
and he was out in the shiny rainy street under the shiny 
clouds, hurrying for the Elevated station with his suitcase 
in his hand. 

At the Illinois Central station he found Doc Bingham 
waiting for him, in the middle of a ring of brown paper 
parcels. Fen felt a little funny inside when he saw him, 
the greasy sallow jowls, the doublebreasted vest, the 
baggy black ministerial coat, the dusty black felt hat that 
made the hair stick out in a sudden fuzzycurl over the 
beefy ears. Anyway, it was a job. 

"It must be admitted, Fenian," began Doc Bingham as 
soon as Fainy had come up to him, "that confident as I 
am of my knowledge of human nature I was a little afraid 
you wouldn't turn up. Where is it that the poet says that 
difficult is the first fluttering course of the fledgeling from 
the nest.. Put these packages on the train while I go pur- 
chase tickets, and be sure it's a smoker." 

After the train had started and the conductor had 
punched the tickets Doc Bingham leaned over and tapped 
Fainy on the knee with a chubby forefinger. "I'm glad 
you're a neat dresser, my boy 5 you must never forget the 
importance of putting up a fine front to the world. 
Though the heart be as dust and ashes, yet must the outer 
man be sprightly and of good cheer. We will go sit for 
a while in the pullman smoker up ahead to get away from 
the yokels." 

It was raining hard and the windows of the train were 
striped with transverse beaded streaks against the dark- 
ness. Fainy felt uneasy as he followed Doc Bingham 
lurching through the greenplush parlor car to the small 
leather upholstered smokingcompartment at the end. 
There Doc Bingham drew a large cigar from his pocket 
and began blowing a magnificent series of smoke rings. 
Fainy sat beside him with his feet under the seat trying 
to take up as little room as possible. 

3* 



Gradually the compartment filled up vfah silent men 
and crinkly spiralling cigarsmoke. Outside the rain beat 
against the windows with a gravelly sound. For a long 
time nobody said anything. Occasionally a man cleared his 
throat and let fly towards the cuspidor with a big gob of 
phlegm or a jet of tobacco juice. 

"Well, sir," a voice began, coming from nowhere in 
particular, addressed to nowhere in particular, "it was a 
great old inauguration even if we did freeze to death;" 

"Were you in Washington?" 

"Yessir, I was in Washington." 

"Most of the trains didn't get in till the next day." 

"I know it 5 I was lucky, there was some of them 
snowed up for forty-eight hours." 

"Some blizzard all right." 

All day the gusty northwind bore 
The lessening drift its breath before 
Low circling through its southern zone 
The sun through dazzling snowmist shone, 

recited Doc Bingham coyly, with downcast eyes. 

"You must have a good memory to be able to recite 
verses right off the reel like that." 

"Yessir, I have a memory that may I think, without 
undue violation of modesty, be called compendious. Were 
it a natural gift I should be forced to blush and remain 
silent, but since it is the result of forty years of study o! 
what is best in the world's epic lyric and dramatic litera- 
tures, I feel that to call attention to it may sometimes 
encourage some other whose feet are also bound on the 
paths of enlightenment and selfeducation." He turned 
suddenly to Fainy. "Young man, would you like to hear 
Othello's address to the Venetian senate?" 

"Sure I would," said Fainy, blushing. 

"Well, at last Teddy has a chance to carry out his word 
about fighting the trusts." "I'm telling you the insurgent 

39 



farmer vote of the great Northwest . . ." "Terrible thing 
the wreck of those inauguration specials." 
But Doc Bingham was off: 

Most potent grave and reverend signiors, 
My very noble