Full text of "U S A"
THE BOOK WAS
DRENCHED
CO > CO
68082
C7M? H ,000
OSMANIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
V
Call No. 5." .} . r~ 7 Accession No
!>>^M
Auth< >r
Title
This book should be returned on or before the date last
marked below.
THE MODE^f LIBRARY
of the World's Best Books
U. S. A,
The publishers will be pleased to send, upon
request, an illustrated folder setting jorth
the purpose and scope of THE MODERN
LIBRARY, and listing each volume in the
series. Every reader of boo\s will find titles
he has been looking for, handsomely printed,
in unabridged editions, and at an
unusually low price.
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
was awful goodlookin' when I married him ... I never
could resist a goodlookin' man."
51
Doc Bingham leaned further across the table. His eyes
rolled as if they were going to drop out.
"I never could resist a goodlooking lady."
Mrs. Kovach sighed deeply.
Fainy got up and went out. He'd been trying to get in
i word about getting paid, but what was the use? Outside
it was chilly j the stars were bright above the roofs of the
barns and outhouses. From the chickencoop came an occa-
sional sleepy cJuck or the rustle of feathers as a hen lost
her balance on her perch. He walked up and down the
barnyard cursing Doc Bingham and kicking at an occa-
sional clod of manure.
Later he looked into the lamplit kitchen. Doc Bingham
had his arm around Mrs. Kovach's waist and was declaim-
ing verses, making big gestures with his free hand:
. . . These things to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline
But still the house affairs would draw her hence
Which ever as she could with haste dispatch
She'd come again and with a greedy ear . . .
Fainy shook his fist at the window. "Goddam your
hide, I want my money," he said aloud. Then he went for
a walk down the road. When he came back he was sleepy
and chilly. The kitchen was empty and the lamp was
turned down low. He didn't know where to go to sleep,
feo he settled down to warm himself in a chair beside the
fire. His head began to nod and he fell asleep.
A tremendous thump on the floor above and a woman's
shrieks woke him. His first thought was that Doc Bing-
ham was robbing and murdering the woman. But im-
mediately he heard another voice cursing and shouting
in broken English. He had half gotten up from the chair,
when Doc Bingham dashed past him. He had on only
Ms flannel unionsuit. In one hand were his shoes, in the
52
other his clothes. His trousers floated after him at the
end of his suspenders like the tail of a kite.
"Hey, what are we going to do?" Fainy called after
him, but got no answer. Instead he found himself face to
face with a tall dark man with a scraggly black beard who
was coolly fitting shells into a doublebarrelled shotgun.
"Buckshot. I shoot the sonabitch."
"Hey, you can't do that," began Fainy. He got the butt
of the shotgun in the chest and went crashing down into
the chair again. The man strode out the door with a long
elastic stride, and there followed two shots that went
rattling among the farm buildings. Then the woman's
shrieks started up again, punctuating a longdrawnout
hysterical tittering and sobbing.
Fainy sat in the chair by the stove as if glued to it.
He noticed a fiftycent piece on the kitchen floor that
must have dropped out of Doc Bingham's pants as he
ran. He grabbed it and had just gotten it in his pocket
when the tall man with the shotgun came back.
"No more shells," he said thickly. Then he sat down
on the kitchen table among the uncleared supper dishes
and began to cry like a child, the tears trickling through
the knobbed fingers of his big dark hands. Fainy stole out
of the door and went to the barn. "Doc Bingham," he
called gently. The harness lay in a heap between the
shafts of the wagon, but there was no trace of Doc Bing-
ham or of the piebald horse. The frightened clucking of
the hens disturbed in the hencoop mixed with the woman's
shrieks that still came from upstairs in the farmhouse.
"What the hell shall I do?" Fainy was asking himself
when he caught sight of a tall figure outlined in the
bright kitchen door and pointing the shotgun at him.
Just as the shotgun blazed away he ducked into the barn
and out through the back door. Buckshot whined over hia
head. "Gosh, he found shells." Fainy was off as fast as
53
his legs could carry him across the oatfield. At last, with-
out any breath in his body, he scrambled over a railfence
full of briars that tore his face and hands and lay flat in
& dry ditch to rest. There wa3 nobody following him.
NEWSREEL III
"IT TAKES NERVE TO LIVE IN THIS
WORLD" LAST WORDS OF GEORGE SMITH
HANGED WITH HIS BROTHER BY MOB IN
KANSAS MARQUIS OF QUEENSBERRY DEAD
FLAMES WRECK SPICE PLANT COURT SETS
ZOLA FREE
a few years ago the anarchists of New Jersey, wearing the
McKinley button and the red badge of anarchy on their coats
and supplied with beer by the republicans, plotted the death of
one of the crowned heads of Europe and it is likely that the
plan to assassinate the president was hatched at the same time
or soon afterward
It's moonlight fair tonight ufon the W abash
From the fields there comes the breath of neivmown h*y
Through the sycamores the candlelight is gleaming
On the banks of the W abash for away
OUT FOR BULLY GOOD TIME
Six Thousand Workmen at Smolensk Parade With Plac-
ards Saying Death To Czar Assassin.
riots and streetblockades mark opening of teamster's strike
WORLD'S GREATEST SEA BATTLE NEAR
Madrid police clash with 5000 workmen carrying black
flag
spectators become dizzy while dancer ^ats orange break-
ing record that made man insane
THE CAMERA EYE (5)
and we played the battle of Port Arthur in the bath-
tub and the water leaked down through the drawing-
room ceiling and it was altogether too bad but in Kew
Gardens old Mr. Garnet who was still hale and hearty
although so very old came to tea and we saw him first
through the window with his red face and John Bull
whiskers and aunty said it was a sailor's rolling gait and he
was carrying a box under his arm and Vickie and Pompom
barked and here was Mr. Garnet come to tea and he
took a gramophone out of a black box and put a cylindei
on the gramophone and they pushed back the tea-things
off the corner of the table Be careful not to drop it
now they scratch rather heasy Why a hordinary
sewin' needle would do maam but I ave special needles
and we got to talking about Hadmiral Togo and
the Banyan and how the Roosians drank so much vodka
and killed all those poor fisherlads in the North Sea and
he wound it up very carefully so as not to break the spring
and the needle went rasp rasp Yes I was a bluejacket
miself miboy from the time I was a little shayver not
much bigger'n you rose to be bosun's mite on the first
British hironclad the Warrior and I can dance a ornpip*.
yet maam and he had a mariner's compass in red and-
blue on the back of his hand and his nails looked black
55
grindy noise in the little black horn came (iod Save the
King and the little dogs howled
NEWSREEL IV
I met my love in the Alamo
When the moon was on the rise
Her beauty quite bedimmed its light
So radiant were her eyes
during the forenoon union pickets turned back a wagon
loaded with 50 campchairs on its way to the fire engine house
at Michigan Avenue and Washington street. The chairs it is
reported, were ordered for the convenience of policemen de-
tailed on strike duty
FLEETS MAY MEET IN BATTLE TODAY
WEST OF LUZON
three big wolves were killed before the dinner,
A grand parade is proposed here in which President
Roosevelt shall ride so that he can be seen by citizens. At the
head will be a caged bear recently captured after killing a
dozen dogs and injuring several men. The bear will be given
an hour's start for the hills then the packs will be set on the
trail and President Roosevelt and the guides will follow in
pursuit
three Columbia students start auto trip to Chicago on
wager
GENERAL STRIKE NOW THREATENS
It's moonlight fair tonight upon the Wa-abash
5$
OIL KING'S HAPPYEST DAY
one cherub every five minutes market for all classes of
real estate continues to be healthy with good demand for fac-
tory sites residence and business properties court bills break
labor
BLOODY SUNDAY IN MOSCOW
lady angels are smashed troops guard oilfields America
tends to become empire like in the days of the Caesars $5 poem
gets rich husband eat less says Edison rich poker player falls
dead when he draws royal flush charges graft in Cicero
STRIKE MAY MEAN REVOLT IN RUSSIA
lake romance of two yachts murder ends labor feud Michi-
gan runs all over Albion red flags in St. Petersburg
CZAR YIELDS TO PEOPLE
holds dead baby forty hours families evicted hv bursting
watermain
CZAR GRANTS CONSTITUTION
From the fields there comes the breath of neivmown hay
Through the sycamores the candlelight is gleaming
THE CAMERA EYE (6)
Go it go it said Mr. Linwood the headmaster when
one was running up the field kicking the round ball footer
they called it in Hampstead and afterwards it was time
to walk home and one felt good because Mr. Linwood
had said Go it
Taylor said There's another American come and he
had teeth like Teddy in the newspapers and a turncdup
57
nose and a Rough Rider suit and he said Who are you
going to vote for? and one said I dunno and he stuck his
chest out and said I mean who your folks for Roosevelt
or Parker? and one said Judge Parker
the other American's hair was very black and he
stuck his fists up and his nose turned up and he said Pm for
Roosevelt wanto fight? all trembly one said Pm for Judge
Parker but Taylor said Who's got tuppence for ginger
beer? and there wasn't any fight that time
NEWSREEL V
BUGS DRIVE OUT BIOLOGIST
elopers bind and gag; is released by dog
EMPEROR NICHOLAS II FACING REVOLT OF
EMPIRE GRANTS SUBJECTS LIBERTY
paralysis stops surgeon's knife by the stroke of a pen the
last absolute monarchy of Europe passes into history miner of
Death Valley and freak advertiser of Santa Fe Road may die
sent to bridewell for stealing plaster angel
On the banks of the W abash jar away.
MAC
Next morning soon after daylight Fainy limped out of
a heavy shower into the railroad station at Gaylord. There
58
was a big swagbellied stove burning in the station waiting
room. The ticket agent's window was closed. There was
nobody in sight. Fainy took off first one drenched shoe
and then the other and toasted his feet till his socks were
dry. A blister had formed and broken on each heel and
the socks stuck to them in a grimy scab. He put on his
shoes again and stretched out on the bench. Immediately
he was asleep.
Somebody tall in blue was speaking to him. He tried to
raise his head but he was too sleepy.
"Hey, bo, you better not let the station agent find
you," said a voice he'd been hearing before through his
sleep. Fainy opened his eyes and sat up. "Jeez, I thought
you were a cop."
A squareshouldered young man in blue denim shirt and
overalls was standing over him. "I thought I'd better
wake you up, station agent's so friggin' tough in this
dump."
"Thanks." Fainy stretched his legs. His feet were so
swollen he could hardly stand on them. "Golly, I'm stiff."
"Say, if we each had a quarter I know a dump where
we could get a bully breakfast."
"I gotta dollar an' a half," said Fainy slowly. He stood
with his hands in his pockets, his back to the warm stove
looking carefully at the other boy's square bull jawed face
wid blue eyes.
"Where are you from?"
"I'm from Duluth . . . I'm on the bum more or less.
Where are you from?"
"Golly, I wish I knew. I had a job till last night."
"Resigned?"
"Say, suppose we go eat that breakfast."
"That's slick. I didn't eat yesterday. . . . My name's
George Hall . . . The fellers call me Ike. I ain't exactly
on the bum, you know. I want to see the world."
"I guess I'm going to have to see the world now," said
59
Fainy. "My name's McCreary. Pm from Chi. But I was
born back east in Middletown, Connecticut."
As they opened the screen door of the railroad men's
boarding house down the road they were met by a smell
of ham and coffee and roachpowder. A horsetoothed
blonde woman with a rusty voice set places for them.
"Where do you boys work? I don't remember seein'
you before."
"I worked down to the sawmill," said Ike.
"Sawmill shet down two weeks ago because the super-
intendent blew out his brains."
"Don't I know it?"
"Maybe you boys better pay in advance."
"I got the money," said Fainy, waving a dollar bill in
her face.
"Well, if you got the money I guess you'll pay all
right," said the waitress, showing her long yellow teeth
in a smile/*
"Sure, peaches and cream, we'll pay like millionaires,"
said Ike.
They filled up on coffee and hominy and ham and eggs
and big heavy white bakingpowder biscuits, and by the
end of breakfast they had gotten to laughing so hard over
Fainy's stories of Doc Bingham's life and loves that the
waitress asked them if they'd been drinking. Ike kidded
her into bringing them each another cup of coffee with-
out extra charge. Then he fished up two mashed ciga-
rettes from the pocket of his overalls. "Have a coffin
nail, Mac?"
"You can't smoke here," said the waitress. "The missus
won't stand for smokin'."
"All right, bright eyes, we'll skidoo."
"How far are you goin'?"
"Well, I'm headed for Duluth myself. That's where
my folks are . . ." "So you're from Duluth, are you?"
60
"Well, what's the big joke about Duluth?" "It's no joke;
it's a misfortune."
"You don't think you can kid me, do you?" "'Tain't
worth my while, sweetheart." The waitress tittered as she
cleared off the table. She had big red hands and thick
nails white from kitchenwork.
"Hey, got any noospapers? I want somethin' to read
waitin' for the train." "I'll get you some. The missus
takes the American from Chicago." "Gee, I ain't seen a
paper in three weeks." "I like to read the paper, too,' 1
said Mac. "I like to know what's goin' on in the world.' 1
"A lot of lies most of it ... all owned by the in-
terests."
"Hearst's on the side of the people."
"I don't trust him any more'n the rest of 'em."
"Ever read The Appeal to Reason?"
"Say, are you a Socialist?"
"Sure; I had a job in my uncle's printin' shop till tha
big interests put him outa business because he took the
side of the strikers."
"Gee, that's swell . . . put it there . . . me, too. . . .
Say, Mac, this is a big day for me ... I don't ofter
meet a guy thinks like I do."
They went out with a roll of newspapers and sat under
a big pine a little way out of town. The sun had come
out warm; big white marble clouds sailed through the
sky. They lay on their backs with their heads on a piece
of pinkish root with bark like an alligator. In spite of
last night's rain the pine needles were warm and dry
under them. In front of them stretched the singletrack
line through thickets and clearings of wrecked woodland
where fireweed was beginning to thrust up here and there
a palegreen spike of leaves. They read sheets of the week-
old paper turn and turn about and talked.
"Maybe in Russia it'll start j that's the most backward
country where the people are oppressed worst . . ,
61
There was a Russian feller workin' down to the sawmill,
an educated feller who's fled from Siberia ... I used
to talk to him a lot ... That's what he thought. He
said the social revolution would start in Russia an' spread
all over the world. He was a swell guy. I bet he was some-*
body."
"Uncle Tim thought it would start in Germany."
"Oughter start right here in America . . . We got
free institutions here already . . . All we have to do is
get out from under the interests." "Uncle Tim says we're
too well off in America ... we don't know what op-
pression or poverty is. Him an' my other uncles was
Fenians back in Ireland before they came to this country.
That's what they named me Fenian . . . Pop didn't like
it, I guess ... he didn't have much spunk, I guess."
"Ever read Marx?"
"No . . . golly, I'd like to though." "Me neither,
[ read Bellamy's Looking Backward, though ; that's what
made me a Socialist." "Tell me about it; I'd just started
readin' it when I left home." "It's about a galoot that
goes to sleep an' wakes up in the year two thousand and
the social revolution's all happened and everything's so-
cialistic an' there's no jails or poverty and nobody works
for themselves an' there's no way anybody can get to be
a rich bondholder or capitalist and life's pretty slick for
the working class." "That's what I always thought . . .
It's the workers who create wealth and they ought to
have it instead of a lot of drones." "If you could do away
with the capitalist system and the big trusts and Wall
Street things 'ud be like that."
"Gee."
"All you'd need would be a general strike and have
the workers refuse to work for a boss any longer . . .
God damn it, if people only realized how friggin' easy
it would be. The interests own all the press and keep
knowledge and education from the workin'men."
62
"I know printing pretty good, an' linotypin'. . .
Golly, maybe some day I could do somethin'."
Mac got to his feet. He was tingling all over. A cloud
had covered the sun, but down the railroad track the
scrawny woods were full of the goldgreen blare of young
birch leaves in the sun. His blood was like fire. He stood
with his feet apart looking down the railroad track. Round
the bend in the far distance a handcar appeared with a
section gang on it, a tiny cluster of brown and dark blue.
He watched it come nearer. A speck of red flag fluttered
in the front of the handcar j it grew bigger, ducking into
patches of shadow, larger and more distinct each time it
came out into a patch of sun.
"Say, Mac, we better keep out of sight if we want to
hop that freight. There's some friggin' mean yard detec-
tives on this road." "All right." They walked off a hun-
dred yards into the young growth of scrub pine and birch,
Beside a big greenlichened stump Mac stopped to make
water. His urine flowed bright yellow in the sun, disap-
pearing at once into the porous loam of rotten leaves and
wood. He was very happy. He gave the stump a kick.
It was rotten. His foot went through it and a little powder
like smoke went up from it as it crashed over into the
alderbushes behind.
Ike had sat down on a log and was picking his teeth
with a little birchtwig.
"Say, ever been to the coast, Mac?"
"No."
"Like to?"
"Sure."
"Well, let's you an' me beat our way out to Duluth
... I want to stop by and say hello to the old woman,
see. Haven't seen her in three months. Then we'll take
in the wheat harvest and make Frisco or Seattle by fall.
Tell me they have good free night-schools in Seattle. I
63
want to do some studying see? I dunno a friggin' thing
yet."
"That's slick."
"Ever hopped a freight or ridden blind baggage, Mac?"
"Well, not exactly."
"You just follow me and do what I do. You'll be all
right."
Down the track they heard the hoot of a locomotive
whistle.
"There is number three comin' round the bend now
. . . We'll hop her right after she starts outa the station.
She'll take us into Mackinaw City this afternoon."
Late that afternoon, stiff and cold, they went into a
little shed on the steamboat wharf at Mackinaw City to
get shelter. Everything was hidden in a driving rain-
streaked mist off the lake. They had bought a ten-cent
package of Sweet Caps, so that they only had ninety cents
left between them. They were arguing about how much
they ought to spend for supper when the steamboat agent,
a thin man wearing a green eyeshade and a slicker came
out of his office. "You boys lookin' for a job?" he asked.
"Cause there's a guy here from the Lakeview House
lookin' for a coupla pearldivers. Agency didn't send 'em
enough help I guess. They're openin' up tomorrer."
"How much do they pay ye?" asked Ike. "I don't reckon
it's much, but the grub's pretty good." "How about it,
Mac? We'll save up our fare an' then we'll go to Duluth
like a coupla dudes on the boat."
So they went over that night on the steamboat to
Mackinac Island. It was pretty dull on Mackinac Island.
There was a lot of small scenery with signs on it reading
"Devil's Cauldron," "Sugar Loaf," "Lover's Leap," and
wives and children of mediumpriced business men from
Detroit, Saginaw and Chicago. The grayfaced woman who
ran the hotel, known as The Management, kept them
Working from six in the morning till way after sundown.
64
It wasn't only dishwashing, it was sawing wood, running
errands, cleaning toilets, scrubbing floors, smashing bag-
gage and a lot of odd chores. The waitresses were all old
maids or else brokendown farmers' wives whose husbands
drank. The only other male in the place was the cook, a
hypochondriac French Canadian halfbreed who insisted
on being called Mr. Chef. Evenings he sat in his little
log shack back of the hotel drinking paregoric and mum-
bling about God.
When they got their first month's pay they packed up
their few belongings in a newspaper and sneaked on board
the Jwniata for Duluth. The fare took all their capital,
but they were happy as they stood in the stern watching
the spruce and balsamcovered hill of Mackinac disappear
into the lake.
Duluth ; girderwork along the waterfront, and the
shack-covered hills and the tall thin chimneys and the
huddle of hunch-shouldered grain elevators under the
smoke from the mills scrolled out dark against a huge
salmon-colored sunset. Ike hated to leave the boat on
account of a pretty dark-haired girl he'd meant all the
time to speak to. "Hell, she wouldn't pay attention to
you, Ike, she's too swank for you," Mac kept saying. "The
old woman'll be glad to see us anyway," said Ike as they
hurried off the gangplank. "I half expected to see her at
the dock, though I didn't write we was jcoming. Boy, I bet
she'll give us a swell feed."
"Where does she live?"
"Not far. I'll show you. Say, don't ask anythin' about
my ole man, will ye; he don't amount to much. He's in
jail, I guess. Ole woman's had pretty tough sleddin 7
bringin' up us kids ... I got two brothers in Buffalo
... I don't get along with 'em. She does fancy needle-
work and preservin' an' bakes cakes an' stuff like that,
She used to work in a bakery but she's got the lumba^c
65
too bad now. She'd V been a real bright woman if we
hadn't always been so friggin' poor."
They turned up a muddy street on a hill. At the top
of the hill was a little prim house like a schoolhouse.
"That's where we live . . . Gee, I wonder why there's
no light."
They went in by a gate in the picket fence. There was
sweetwilliam in bloom in the flowerbed in front of the
house. They could smell it though they could hardly see,
it was so dark. Ike knocked.
"Damn it, I wonder what's the matter." He knocked
again. Then he struck a match. On the door was nailed a
card "FOR SALE" and the name of a realestate agent.
"Jesus Christ, that's funny, she musta moved. Now I think
of it, I haven't had a letter in a couple of months. I hope
she ain't sick . . . I'll ask at Bud Walker's next door."
Mac sat down on the wooden step and waited. Over-
head in a^ash in the clouds that still had the faintest
stain of red from the afterglow his eye dropped into
empty black full of stars. The smell of the sweetwilliams
tickled his nose. He felt hungry.
A low whistle from Ike roused him. "Come along," he
said gruffly and started walking fast down the hill with
his head sunk between his shoulders.
"Hey, what's the matter?"
"Nothin'. The old woman's gone to Buffalo to live with
my brothers. The lousy bums got her to sell out so's they
could spend the dough, I reckon."
"Jesus, that's hell, Ike."
Ike didn't answer. They walked till they came to the
corner of a street with lighted stores and trolleycars. A
tune from a mechanical piano was tumbling out from a
saloon. Ike turned and slapped Mac on the back. "Let's
go have a drink, kid ... What the hell."
There was only one other man at the long bar. He
Was a very drunken tall elderly man in lumbermen's boots
66
with a sou'wester on his head who kept yelling in an in-
audible voice, Whoop her up, boys/ and making a pass
at the air with a long grimy hand. Mac and Ike drank
down two whiskies each, so strong and raw that it pretty
near knocked the wind out of them. Ike put the change
from a dollar in his pocket and said:
"What the hell, let's get out of here." In the cool air
of the street they began to feel lit. "Jesus, Mac, let's get
outa here tonight . . . It's terrible to come back to a
town where you was a kid . . . I'll be meetin' all the
crazy galoots I ever knew and girls I had crushes on . . -
I guess I always get the dirty end of the stick, all right."
In a lunchroom down by the freight depot they go',
hamburger and potatoes and bread and butter and coffee
for fifteen cents each. When they'd bought some ciga-
rettes they still had eight seventyfive between them,
"Golly, we're rich," said Mac. "Well, where do we go? n
"Wait a minute. I'll go scout round the freight depot.
Used to be a guy I knowed worked there."
Mac loafed round under a lamp post at the street-
corner and smoked a cigarette and waited. It was warmer
since the wind had gone down. From a puddle somewhere
in the freight yards came the peep peep peep of toads.
Up on the hill an accordion was playing. From the yards
came the heavy chugging of a freight locomotive and the
clank of shunted freightcars and the singing rattle of tha
wheels.
After a while he heard Ike's whistle from the dark
side of the street. He ran over. "Say, Mac, we gotta hurry.
I found the guy. He's goin' to open up a boxcar for as
on the westbound freight. He says it'll carry us clear out
to the coast if we stick to it."
"How the hell will we eat if we're locked up in 7
freightcar?"
"We'll eat fine. You leave the eatin' to me."
"But, Ike . . ."
67
"Keep your trap shut, can't you . . . Do you want
everybody in the friggin' town to know what we're tryin'
to do?"
They walked along tiptoe in the dark between two
tracks of boxcars. Then Ike found a door half open and
darted in. Mac followed and they shut the sliding door
very gently after them.
"Now all we got to do is go to sleep," whispered Ike,
his lips touching Mac's ear. "This here galoot, see, said
there wasn't any yard dicks on duty tonight."
In the end of the car they found hay from a broken
bale. The whole car smelt of hay. "Ain't this hunky
dory?" whispered Ike.
"It's the cat's nuts, Ike."
Pretty soon the train started, and they lay down to
sleep side by side in the sparse hay. The cold night wind
streamed in through the cracks in the floor. They slept
fitfully. The train started and stopped and started and
shunted back and forth on sidings and the wheels rattled
and rumbled in their ears and slambanged over crossings.
Towards morning they fell into a warm sleep and the thin
layer of hay on the boards was suddenly soft and warm.
Neither of them had a watch and the day was overcast
so they didn't know what time it was when they woke
up. Ike slid open the door a little so that they could peek
out; the train was running through a broad valley brim-
full-like with floodwater, with the green ripple of full-
grown wheat. Now and then in the distance a clump of
woodland stood up like an island. At each station was
the hunched blind bulk of an elevator. "Gee, this must be
the Red River, but I wonder which way we're goin',"
said Ike. "Golly, I could drink a cup of coffee," said Mac.
"We'll have swell coffee in Seattle, damned if we won't,
Mac."
They went to sleep again, and when they woke up they
s thirsty and stiff. The train had stopped. There was
68
no sound at all. They lay on their backs stretching and
listening. "Gee, I wonder where in hell we are." After a
long while they heard the cinders crunching down the
track and someone trying the fastenings of the boxcar
doors down the train. They lay so still they could hear
both their hearts beating. The steps on the cinders
crunched nearer and nearer. The sliding door slammed
open, and their car was suddenly full of sunlight. They
lay still. Mac felt the rap of a stick on his chest and sat
up blinking. A Scotch voice was burring in his ears:
"I thought I'd find some Pullman passengerrs . . .
All right, byes, stand and deliver, or else you'll go to the
constabulary."
"Aw hell," said Ike, crawling forward.
"Currsin' and swearin' won't help ye ... If you get
a couple o' quid you can ride on to Winnipeg an' take yout
chances there ... If not you'll be doin' a tidy bit on
the roads before you can say Jack Robinson."
The brakeman was a small blackhaired man with a
mean quiet manner.
"Where are we, guv'ner?" asked Ike, trying to talk
like an Englishman.
"Gretna . . . Ycu're in the Dominion of Canada. Yov
can be had up, too, for illegally crossin' Her Majesty's
frontier as well as for bein' vags."
'Well, I guess we'd better shell out . . . You see
we're a couple of noblemen's sons out for a bit of a bloody
lark, guv'ner."
"No use currsin' and prevarricatin'. How much hava
Coupla dollars."
"Let's see it quick."
Ike pulled first one dollar, then another, out of his
pocket y folded in the second dollar was a five. The Scotch-
man swept the three bills up with one gesture and
slammed the sliding door to. They heard him slip down
the catch on the outside. For a