NEWSREEL XXXVII 4 страница

He registered for the draft on Stein's advice, though he
wrote conscientious objector on the card. Soon after that he
and Stein quarrelled. Stein said there was nothing to it
but to bow before the storm; Ben said he was going to agi-
tate against it until he was put in jail. That meant he was
out of a job and it was the end of his studying law. Kahn
wouldn't take him back in his drugstore because he was
afraid the cops would raid him if it got to be known he
had a radical working for him. Ben's brother Sam was
working in a munition factory at Perth Amboy and mak-
ing big money; he kept writing Ben to stop his foolishness
and get a job there too. Even Gladys told him it was silly
to ram his head against a stone wall. In July he left home
and went back to live with Helen Mauer over in Passaic.
His number hadn't been called yet, so it was easy to get a

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job in the shipping department of one of the mills. They
were working overtime and losing hands fast by the draft.

The Rand School had been closed up, The Call sus-
pended, every day new friends were going around to Wil-
son's way of looking at things. Helen's folks and their
friends were making good money, working overtime; they
laughed or got sore at any talk of protest strikes or revolu-
tionary movements; people were buying washing machines,
liberty bonds, vacuum cleaners, making first payments on
houses. The girls were buying fur coats and silk stockings.
Helen and Ben began to plan to go out to Chicago, where
the wobblies were putting up a fight. September 2nd came
the roundup of I.W.W. officials by government agents.
Ben and Helen expected to be arrested, but they were
passed over. They spent a rainy Sunday huddled on the
bed in their dank room, trying to decide what they ought
to do. Everything they trusted was giving way under their
feet. "I feel like a rat in a trap," Helen kept saying. Every
now and then Ben would jump up and walk up and down
hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand. "We gotta
do something here, look what they're doing in Russia."

One day a warworker came around to the shipping de-
partment to sign everybody up for a Liberty Bond. He
was a cockylooking young man in a yellow slicker. Ben
wasn't much given to arguments during working hours, so
he just shook his head and went back to the manifest he
was making out. "You don't want to spoil the record of
your department, do you? It's one hundred percent perfect
so far." Ben tried to smile. "It seems too bad, but I guess
it'll have to be." Ben could feel the eyes of the other men
in the office on him. The young man in the slicker was
balancing uneasily from one foot to the other. "I don't
suppose you want people to think you're a pro-German or
a pacifist, do you?" "They can suppose what they damn
like, for all I care." "Let's see your registration card, I
bet you're a slacker." "Look here, get me," said Ben, get-

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ting to his feet, "I don't believe in capitalist war and I'm
not going to do anything I can help to support it." The
young man in the slicker turned his back, "Oh, if you're
one of them yellow bastards I won't even talk to you."
Ben went back to work. That evening when he was punch-
ing the timeclock a cop stepped up to him. "Let's see your
registration card, buddy." Ben brought the card out from
his inside pocket. The cop read it over carefully, "Looks
all right to me," he said reluctantly. At the end of the
week Ben found he was fired; no reason given.

He went to the room in a panic. When Helen came
back he said he was going to Mexico. "They could get me
under the espionage act for what I told that guy about
fighting capitalism." Helen tried to calm him down, but
he said he wouldn't sleep in that room another night, so
they packed their bags and went over to New York on the
train. They had about a hundred dollars saved up between
them. They got a room on East 8th Street under the
name of Mr. and Mrs. Gold. It was the next morning
that they read in the Times that the Maximalists had
taken over the government in Petrograd with the slogan
All Power to the Soviets. They were sitting in a small
pastry shop on 2nd Avenue drinking their morning coffee,
when Ben, who had run around to the newsstand for a
paper, came back with the news. Helen began to cry: "Oh,
darling, it's too good to be true. It's the world revolution.
. . . Now the workers 'll see that they were being de-
ceived by false good times, that the war's really aimed at
them. Now the other armies 'll start to mutiny." Ben took
her hand under the table and squeezed it hard. "We gotto
work now, darling. . . . I'll go to jail here before I'll run
away to Mexico. I'd acted like a yellow bastard if it hadn't
been for you, Helen. . . . A man's no good alone."

They gulped their coffee and walked around to the
Ferbers' house on 17th Street. Al Ferber was a doctor, a
short stout man with a big paunch; he was just leaving

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the house to go to his office. He went back into the hall
with them and yelled upstairs to his wife: "Molly, come
down . . . Kerensky's run out of Petrograd with a flea
in his ear . . . dressed as a woman he ran." Then he
said in Yiddish to Ben that if the comrades were going to
hold a meeting to send greetings to the soldiers' and
peasants' government, he'd give a hundred dollars toward
expenses, but his name would have to be kept out of it or
else he'd lose his practice. Molly Ferber came downstairs
in a quilted dressing gown and said she'd sell something
and add another hundred. They spent the day going
around to find comrades they had the addresses of; they
didn't dare use the phone for fear of the wires being
tapped.

The meeting was held at the Empire Casino in the
Bronx a week later. Two Federal agents with beefsteak
faces sat in the front row with a stenographer who took
down everything that was said. The police closed the
doors after the first couple of hundred people had come
in. The speakers on the platform could hear them break-
ing up the crowd outside with motorcycles. Soldiers and
sailors in uniform were sneaking into the gallery by ones
and twos and trying to stare the speakers out of counte-
nance.

When the old whitehaired man who was chairman of
the meeting walked to the front of the stage and said,
"Comrades, gentlemen of the Department of Justice and
not forgetting our young wellwishers up in the gallery,
we have met to send a resolution of greetings from the
oppressed workers of America to the triumphant workers
of Russia," everybody stood up and cheered. The crowd
milling around outside cheered too. Somewhere they could
hear a bunch singing the International. They could hear
policewhistles and the dang dang of a patrol wagon. Ben
noticed that Fanya Stein was in the audience; she looked
pale and her eyes held onto him with a fixed feverish stare.

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When his turn came to speak he began by saying that on
account of the kind sympathizers from Washington in the
audience, he couldn't say what he wanted to say but that
every man and woman in the audience who was not a
traitor to their class knew what he wanted to say. . . .
"The capitalist governments are digging their own graves
by driving their people to slaughter in a crazy unnecessary
war that nobody can benefit from except bankers and
munition makers. . . . The American working class, like
the working classes of the rest of the world, will learn
their lesson. The profiteers are giving us instruction in the
use of guns; the day will come when we will use it."
"That's enough, let's go, boys," yelled a voice from the
gallery. The soldiers and sailors started hustling the
people out of the seats. The police from the entrances con-
verged on the speakers. Ben and a couple of others were
arrested. The men in the audience who were of conscrip-
tion age were made to show their registration cards before
they could leave. Ben was hustled out into a closed limou-
sine with the blinds drawn before he could speak to Helen.
He'd hardly noticed who it was had clicked the handcuffs
on his wrists.

They kept him for three days without anything to eat
or drink in a disused office in the Federal building on
Park Row. Every few hours a new bunch of detectives
would stamp into the room and question him. His head
throbbing, and ready to faint with thirst, he'd face the
ring of long yellow faces, jowly red faces, pimply faces,
boozers' and hopheads' faces, feel the eyes boring into him;
sometimes they kidded and cajoled him, and sometimes
they bullied and threatened; one bunch brought in pieces
of rubber hose to beat him up with. He jumped up and
faced them. For some reason they didn't beat him up, but
instead brought him some water and a couple of stale ham
sandwiches. After that he was able to sleep a little.

An agent yanked him off his bench and led him out

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into a wellappointed office where he was questioned almost
kindly by an elderly man at a mahogany desk with a bunch
of roses on the corner of it. The smell of the roses made
him feel sick. The elderly man said he could see his
lawyer and Morris Stein came into the room.

" Benny," he said, "leave everything to me . . . Mr.
Watkins has consented to quash all charges if you'll
promise to report for military training. It seems your
number's been called."

"If you let me out," Ben said in a low trembling voice,
"I'll do my best to oppose capitalist war until you arrest
me again." Morris Stein and Mr. Watkins looked at each
other and shook their heads indulgently. "Well," said Mr.
Watkins, "I can't help but admire your spirit and wish it
was in a better cause." It ended by his being let out on
fifteen thousand dollars bail on Morris Stein's assurance
that he would do no agitating until the date of his trial.
The Steins wouldn't tell him who put up the bail.

Morris and Edna Stein gave him a room in their apart-
ment; Fanya was there all the time. They fed him good
food and tried to make him drink wine with his meals and
a glass of milk before going to bed. He didn't have any
interest in anything, slept as much as he could, read all the
books he found on the place. When Morris would try
to talk to him about his case he'd shut him up, "You're
doing this, Morris. . . do anything. . . why should I
care. I might as well be in jail as like this." "Well, I must
say that's a compliment," Fanya said laughing.

Helen Mauer called up several times to tell him how
things were going. She'd always say she had no news to
tell that she could say over the telephone, but he never
asked her to come up to see him. About as far as he went
from the Steins' apartment was to go out every day to sit
for a while on a bench on the Drive and look out over the
grey Hudson at the rows of frame houses on the Jersey
side and the grey palisades.

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The day his case came up for trial the press was full of
hints of German victories. It was spring and sunny outside
the broad grimy windows of the courtroom. Ben sat sleep-
ily in the stuffy gloom. Everything seemed very simple.
Stein and the Judge had their little jokes together and the
Assistant District Attorney was positively genial. The jury
reported "guilty" and the judge sentenced him to twenty
years' imprisonment. Morris Stein filed an appeal and the
judge let him stay out on bail. The only moment Ben came
to life was when he was allowed to address the court before
being sentenced. He made a speech about the revolutionary
movement he'd been preparing all these weeks. Even as
he said it it seemed silly and weak. He almost stopped in
the middle. His voice strengthened and filled the court-
room as he got to the end. Even the judge and the old
snuffling attendants sat up when he recited for his perora-
tion, the last words of the communist manifesto:

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and
class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which
the free development of each is the condition for the free
development of all.

The appeal dragged and dragged. Ben started studying
law again. He wanted to work in Stein's office to pay for
his keep, but Stein said it would be risky, he said the war
would be over soon and the red scare would die down, so
that he could get him off with a light sentence. He brought
lawbooks up for him to study and promised to take him into
partnership if he passed his bar exam, once he could get
his citizenship restored. Edna Stein was a fat spiteful
woman and rarely spoke to him; Fanya fussed over him
with nervous doting attentions that made him feel sick.
He slept badly and his kidneys bothered him. One night
he got up and dressed and was tiptoeing down the carpeted

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hall towards the door with his shoes in his hand, when
Fanya with her black hair down her back came out of the
door of her room. She was in a nightdress that showed her
skinny figure and flat breasts. "Benny, where are you
going?"

"I'm going crazy here. . . I've got to get out." His
teeth were chattering. "I've got to get back into the move-
ment. . . . They'll catch me and send me to jail right
away. . . it will be better like that."

"You poor boy, you're in no condition." She threw her
arms round his neck and pulled him into her room.

"Fanya, you gotto let me go. . . . I might make it
across the Mexican border. . . other guys have."

"You're crazy . . . and what about your bail?"

"What do I care . . . don't you see we gotto do some-
thing."

She'd pulled him down on her bed and was stroking his
forehead. "Poor boy . . . I love you so, Benny, couldn't
you think of me a little bit . . . just a little teeny bit . . .
I could help you so much in the movement. . . . To-
morrow we'll talk about it . . . I want to help you,
Benny." He let her untie his necktie.

The armistice came, and news of the peace conference,
revolutionary movements all over Europe, Trotsky's
armies driving the whites out of Russia. Fanya Stein told
everybody she and Ben'were married and took him to live
with her at her studio apartment on 8th Street, where she
nursed him through the flu and double pneumonia. The
first day the doctor said he could go out she drove up the
Hudson in her Buick sedan. They came back in the early
summer gloaming to find a special delivery letter from
Morris. The circuit court had denied the appeal, but re-
duced the sentence to ten years. The next day at noon
he'd have to report to be delivered by his bondsmen to
the custody of the U.S. District Court. He'd probably go
to Atlanta. Soon after the letter Morris himself turned

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up. Fanya had broken down and was crying hysterically.
Morris looked pale. "Ben," he said, "we're beaten . . .
You'll have to go to Atlanta for a while . . . you'll have
good company down there . . . but don't worry. We'll
take your case to the President. Now that the war's over
they can't keep the liberal press muzzled any more."

"That's all right," said Ben, "it's better to know the
worst."

Fanya jumped up from the couch where she'd been
sobbing and started screaming at her brother. When Ben
went out to walk around the block he left them quarrel-
ing bitterly. He found himself looking carefully at the
houses, the taxicabs, the streetlights, people's faces, a funny
hydrant that had a torso like a woman's, some bottles of
mineral oil stacked in a drugstore window, Nujol. He de-
cided he'd better go over to Brooklyn to say goodby to
the old people. At the subway station he stopped. He
hadn't the strength; he'd write them.

Next morning at nine he went down to Morris Stein's
office with his suitcase in his hand. He'd made Fanya
promise not to come. He had to tell himself several times
he was going to jail, he felt as if he was going on a business
trip of some kind. He had on a new suit of English tweed
Fanya had bought him.

Lower Broadway was all streaked red, white and blue
with flags; there were crowds of clerks and stenographers
and officeboys lining both pavements where he came up
out of the subway. Cops on motorcycles were keeping the
street clear. From down towards the Battery came the
sound of a military band playing Keep the Home Fires
Burning. Everybody looked flushed and happy. It was hard
to keep from walking in step to the music in the fresh
summer morning that smelt of the harbor and ships. He
had to keep telling himself: those are the people who
sent Debs to jail, those are the people who shot Joe Hill,
who murdered Frank Little, those are the people who

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beat us up in Everett, who want me to rot for ten years
in jail.

The colored elevatorboy grinned at him when he took
him up in the elevator, "Is they startin' to go past yet,
mister?" Ben shook his head and frowned.

The lawoffice looked clean and shiny. The telephone girl
had red hair and wore a gold star. There was an American
flag draped over the door of Stein's private office. Stein
was at his desk talking to an upperclasslooking young man
in a tweed suit. "Ben," Stein said cheerily, "meet Stevens
Warner . . . He's just gotten out of Charlestown, served
a year for refusing to register."

"Not quite a year," said the young man, getting up and
shaking hands. "I'm out on good behavior."

Ben didn't like him, in his tweed suit and his expensive
looking necktie; all at once he remembered that he was
wearing the same kind of suit himself. The thought made
him sore. "How was it?" he asked coldly.

"Not so bad, they had me working in the green-
house. . . They treated me fairly well when they found
out I'd already been to the front."

"How was that?"

"Oh, in the ambulance service. . . . They just thought
I was mildly insane. . . . It was a damned instructive
experience."

"They treat the workers different," said Ben angrily.

"And now we're going to start a nationwide campaign
to get all the other boys out," said Stein, getting to his feet
and rubbing his hands, "starting with Debs. . . you'll
see, Ben, you won't be down there long. . . people are
coming to their senses already."

A burst of brassy music came up from Broadway, and
the regular tramp of soldiers marching. They all looked
out of the window. All down the long grey canyon flags
were streaming out, uncoiling tickertape and papers glinted

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all through the ruddy sunlight, squirmed in the shadows;
people were yelling themselves hoarse.

"Damn fools," said Warner, "it won't make the dough-
boys forget about K.P."

Morris Stein came back into the room with a funny
brightness in his eyes. "Makes me feel maybe I missed
something."

"Well, I've got to be going," said Warner, shaking
hands again. "You certainly got a rotten break, Compton
. . . don't think for a minute we won't be working night
and day to get you out. . . I'm sure public sentiment will
change. We have great hopes of President Wilson . . .
after all, his labor record was fairly good before the war."

"I guess it'll be the workers will get me out, if I'm
gotten out," said Ben.

Warner's eyes were searching his face. Ben didn't smile.
Warner stood before him uneasily for a moment and then
took his hand again. Ben didn't return the pressure. "Good
luck," said Warner and walked out of the office.

"What's that, one of these liberalminded college boys?"
Ben asked of Stein. Stein nodded. He'd gotten interested
in some papers on his desk. "Yes. . . great boy, Steve
Warner. . . you'll find some books or magazines in the
library. . . I'll be with you in a few minutes."

Ben went into the library and took down a book on
Torts. He read and read the fine print. When Stein came
to get him he didn't know what he'd been reading or how
much time had passed. Walking up Broadway the going
was slow on account of the crowds and the bands and the
steady files of marching soldiers in khaki with tin hats
on their heads. Stein nudged him to take his hat off as
a regimental flag passed them in the middle of a fife and
drum corps. He kept it in his hand so as not to have to
take it off again. He took a deep breath of the dusty sunny
air of the street, full of girls' perfumerysmells and gasoline
from the exhaust of the trucks hauling the big guns, full

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of laughing and shouting and shuffle and tramp of feet;
then the dark doorway of the Federal Building gulped
them.

It was a relief to have it all over, alone with the deputy
on the train for Atlanta. The deputy was a big morose
man with bluish sacks under his eyes. As the handcuffs
cut Ben's wrist he unlocked them except when the train
was in a station. Ben remembered it was his birthday; he
was twentythree years old.

NEWSREEL XLI

in British Colonial Office quarters it is believed that
Australian irritation will diminish as soon as it is realized that
the substance is more important than the shadow. It may be
stated that press representatives who are expeditious in sending
their telegrams at an early hour, suffer because their telegrams
are thrown into baskets. Others which come later are heaped
on top of them and in the end the messages on top of the
basket are dealt with first. But this must not be taken as an
insult. Count von Brochdorf-Ranzau was very weak and it
was only his physical condition that kept him from rising

PRIVATES HOLD UP CABMAN

Hold the fort for we are coming
Union men be strong;
Side by side we battle onward,
Victory will come.

New York City Federation Says Evening Gowns Are
Demoralizing Youth of the Land

SOLDIERS OVERSEAS FEAR LOSS
OF GOLD V

CONSCRIPTION A PUZZLE

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Is there hostile propaganda at work in Paris?

We meet today in Freedom's cause
And raise our voices high
We'll join our hands in union strong
To battle or to die

FRANCE YET THE FRONTIER OF
FREEDOM

provision is made whereby the wellbeing and develop-
ment of backward and colonial regions are regarded as the
sacred trust of civilization over which the league of nations
exercises supervising care

REDS WEAKENING WASHINGTON HEARS

Hold the fort for we are coming
Union men be strong

the marine workers affiliation meeting early last night
at no. 26 Park Place voted to start a general walkout at 6
A.M. tomorrow

BURLESON ORDERS ALL POSTAL TELE-
GRAPH NEWS SUPPRESSED

his reply was an order to his followers to hang these two
lads on the spot. They were placed on chairs under trees,
halters fastened on the boughs were placed around their necks,
and then they were maltreated until they pushed the chair
away from them with their feet in order to finish their tor-
ments

THE CAMERA EYE (42)

four hours we casuals pile up scrapiron in the flatcars
and four hours we drag the scrapiron off the flatcars and
pile it on the side of the track KEEP THE BOYS FIT

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TO GO HOME is the slogan of the YMCA in the
morning the shadows of the poplars point west and in
the afternoon they point out east where Persia is the
jagged bits of old iron cut into our hands through the
canvas gloves a kind of grey slagdust plugs our noses and
ears stings eyes four hunkies a couple of wops a
bohunk dagoes guineas two little dark guys with
blue chins nobody can talk to

spare parts no outfit wanted to use
mashed mudguards busted springs old spades and
shovels entrenching tools twisted hospital cots a moun-
tain of nuts and bolts of all sizes four million miles of
barbedwire chickenwire rabbitfence acres of tin roofing
square miles of parked trucks long parades of loco-
motives strung along the yellow rails of the sidings

KEEP THE BOYS FIT TO GO up in the office
the grumpy sergeants doing the paperwork dont know
where home is lost our outfits our service records our alu-
minum numberplates no spika de Engliss no entiendo com-
prend pas no capisco nyeh panimayoo

day after day the shadows of the poplars point west
northwest north northeast east When they desoit they
always heads south the corporal said Pretty tough but
if he aint got a soivice record how can we make out his
díscharge KEEP OUR BOYS FIT for whatthehell the
war's over

scrap

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