MOSCOW CONGRESS OUSTS OPPOSITION

It's a mighty rough road from Lynchburg to Danville
An' a line on a three mile grade
It was on that grade he lost his average
An' you see what a jump he made

MILL THUGS IN MURDER RAID

here is the most dangerous example of how at the decisive
moment the bourgeois ideology liquidates class solidarity and
turns a friend of the workingclass of yesterday into a most mis-
erable propagandist for imperialism today

RED PICKETS FINED FOR PROTEST HERE

We leave our home in the morning
We kiss our children goodby

OFFICIALS STILL HOPE FOR RESCUE OF MEN

He was goin' downgrade makin' ninety miles an hour
When his whistle broke into a scream
He was found in the wreck with his hand on the throttle
An' was scalded to death with the steam

RADICALS FIGHT WITH CHAIRS AT UNITY MEETING

PATROLMEN PROTECT REDS

U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE URGES CONFIDENCE

REAL VALUES UNHARMED

While we slave for the bosses
Our children scream an' cry
But when we draw our money
Our grocery bills to pay

PRESIDENT SEES PROSPERITY NEAR

Not a cent to spend for clothing
Not a cent to lay away.

-521-

STEAMROLLER IN ACTION AGAINST MILITANTS

MINERS BATTLE SCABS

But we cannot buy for our children
Our wages are too low
Now listen to me you workers
Both you women and men
Let us win for them the victory
I'm sure it ain't no sin

CARILLON PEALS IN SINGING TOWER

the President declared it was impossible to view the in-
creased advantages for the many without smiling at those who
a short time ago expressed so much fear lest our country might
come under the control of a few individuals of great wealth

HAPPY CROWDS THRONG CEREMONY

on a tiny island nestling like a green jewel in the lake that
mirrors the singing tower, the President today participated in
the dedication of a bird sanctuary and its pealing carillon, ful-
filling the dream of an immigrant boy

THE CAMERA EYE (51)

at the head of the valley in the dark of the hills on
the broken floor of a lurchedover cabin a man halfsits
halflies propped up by an old woman two wrinkled girls
that might be young chunks of coal flare in the hearth
flicker in his face white and sagging as dough blacken
the cavedin mouth the taut throat the belly swelled enor-
mous with the wound he got working on the minetipple
the barefoot girl brings him a tincup of water the

-522-

woman wipes sweat off his streaming face with a dirty
denim sleeve the firelight flares in his eyes stretched
big with fever in the women's scared eyes and in the
blanched faces of the foreigners

without help in the valley hemmed by dark strike-
silent hills the man will die (my father died, we know what
it is like to see a man die) the women will lay him out
on the rickety cot the miners will bury him

in the jail it's light too hot the steamheat hisses we
talk through the greenpainted iron bars to a tall white
mustachioed old man some smiling miners in shirtsleeves
a boy faces white from mining have already the tal-
lowy look of jailfaces

foreigners what can we say to the dead? foreign-
ers what can we say to the jailed? the representative
of the political party talks fast through the bars join up
with us and no other union we'll send you tobacco candy
solidarity our lawyers will write briefs speakers will shout
your names at meetings they'll carry your names on card-
board on picketlines the men in jail shrug their shoul-
ders smile thinly our eyes look in their eyes through the
bars what can I say? (in another continent I have
seen the faces looking out through the barred basement
windows behind the ragged sentry's boots I have seen be-
fore day the straggling footsore prisoners herded through
the streets limping between bayonets heard the volley

-523-

I have seen the dead lying out in those distant deeper
valleys) what can we say to the jailed?

in the law's office we stand against the wall the law is
a big man with eyes angry in a big pumpkinface who sits
and stares at us meddling foreigners through the door the
deputies crane with their guns they stand guard at the
mines they blockade the miners' soupkitchens
they've cut off the road up the valley the hiredmen
with guns stand ready to shoot (they have made us foreign-
ers in the land where we were born they are the conquer-
ing army that has filtered into the country unnoticed they
have taken the hilltops by stealth they levy toll they stand
at the minehead they stand at the polls they stand
by when the bailiffs carry the furniture of the family
evicted from the city tenement out on the sidewalk they
are there when the bankers foreclose on a farm they are
ambushed and ready to shoot down the strikers marching
behind the flag up the switchback road to the mine
those that the guns spare they jail)

the law stares across the desk out of angry eyes his
face reddens in splotches like a gobbler's neck with the
strut of the power of submachineguns sawedoffshotguns
teargas and vomitinggas the power that can feed you or
leave you to starve

sits easy at his desk his back is covered he feels strong
behind him he feels the prosecutingattorney the judge an

-524-

owner himself the political boss the minesuperintendent
the board of directors the president of the utility the ma,-
nipulator of the holdingcompany
he lifts his hand towards the telephone
the deputies crowd in the door
we have only words against

POWER SUPERPOWER

In eighteen eighty when Thomas Edison's agent
was hooking up the first telephone in London, he put
an ad in the paper for a secretary and stenographer.
The eager young cockney with sprouting muttonchop
whiskers who answered it

had recently lost his job as officeboy. In his spare
time he had been learning shorthand and bookkeeping
and taking dictation from the editor of the English
Vanity Fair at night and jotting down the speeches in
Parliament for the papers. He came of temperance
smallshopkeeper stock; already he was butting his
bullethead against the harsh structure of caste that
doomed boys of his class to a lifo of alpaca jackets, pen-
manship, subordination. To get a job with an American
firm was to put a foot on the rung of a ladder that led
up into the blue.

He did his best to make himself indispensable;
they let him operate the switchboard for the first half-
hour when the telephone service was opened. Edison
noticed his weekly reports on the electrical situation in
England

and sent for him to be his personal secretary.

-525-

Samuel Insull landed in America on a raw March
day in eightyone. Immediately he was taken out to
Menlo Park, shown about the little group of labora-
tories, saw the strings of electriclightbulbs shining at in-
tervals across the snowy lots, all lit from the world's
first central electric station. Edison put him right to
work and he wasn't through till midnight. Next morn-
ing at six he was on the job; Edison had no use for any
nonsense about hours or vacations. Insull worked from
that time on until he was seventy without a break; no
nonsense about hours or vacations. Electric power
turned the ladder into an elevator.

Young Insull made himself indispensable to Edi-
son and took more and more charge of Edison's busi-
ness deals. He was tireless, ruthless, reliable as the
tides, Edison used to say, and fiercely determined to
rise.

In ninetytwo he induced Edison to send him to
Chicago and put him in as president of the Chicago
Edison Company. Now he was on his own. My engi-
neering, he said once in a speech, when he was suffi-
ciently czar of Chicago to allow himself the luxury of
plain speaking, has been largely concerned with engi-
neering all I could out of the dollar.

He was a stiffly arrogant redfaced man with a
closecropped mustache; he lived on Lake Shore Drive
and was at the office at 7:10 every morning. It took
him fifteen years to merge the five electrical companies
into the Commonwealth Edison Company. Very early
I discovered that the first essential, as in other public.
utility business, was that it should be operated as a
monopoly.

When his power was firm in electricity he captured
gas, spread out into the surrounding townships in

-526-

northern Illinois. When politicians got in his way, he
bought them, when laborleaders got in his way he
bought them. Incredibly his power grew. He was
scornful of bankers, lawyers were his hired men. He
put his own lawyer in as corporation counsel and
through him ran Chicago. When he found to his
amazement that there were men (even a couple of
young lawyers, Richberg and Ickes) in Chicago that
he couldn't buy, he decided he'd better put on a show
for the public;

Big Bill Thompson, the Builder:
punch King George in the nose,
the hunt for the treeclimbing fish,
the Chicago Opera.

It was too easy; the public had money, there was
one of them born every minute, with the founding of
Middlewest Utilities in nineteen twelve Insull began
to use the public's money to spread his empire. His
companies began to have open stockholders' meetings,
to ballyhoo service, the small investor could sit there
all day hearing the bigwigs talk. It's fun to be fooled.
Companyunions hypnotized his employees; everybody
had to buy stock in his companies, employees had to
go out and sell stock, officeboys, linemen, trolley-
conductors. Even Owen D. Young was afraid of him.
My experience is that the greatest aid in the efficiency
of labor is a long line of men waiting at the gate.

War shut up the progressives (no more nonsense
about trustbusting, controlling monopoly, the public
good) and raised Samuel Insull to the peak.

He was head of the Illinois State Council of De-
fense. Now, he said delightedly, I can do anything I
like. With it came the perpetual spotlight, the purple
taste of empire. If anybody didn't like what Samuel

-527-

Insull did he was a traitor. Chicago damn well kept its
mouth shut.

The Insull companies spread and merged put com-
petitors out of business until Samuel Instull and his
stooge brother Martin controlled through the leverage
of holdingcompanies and directorates and blocks of
minority stock
light and power, coalmines and tractioncompanies
in Illinois, Michigan, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Ar-
kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Maine, Kansas, Wiscon-
sin, Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, Indiana, New
York, New Jersey, Texas, in Canada, in Louisiana, in
Georgia, in Florida and Alabama.

(It has been figured out that one dollar in Middle
West Utilities controlled seventeen hundred and fifty
dollars invested by the public in the subsidiary com-
panies that actually did the work of producing elec-
tricity. With the delicate lever of a voting trust con-
trolling the stock of the two top holdingcompanies he
controlled a twelfth of the power output of America.)

Samuel Insull began to think he owned all that
the way a man owns the roll of bills in his back pocket.

Always he'd been scornful of bankers. He owned
quite a few in Chicago. But the New York bankers
were laying for him; they felt he was a bounder, whis-
pered that this financial structure was unsound. Fin-
gers itched to grasp the lever that so delicately moved
this enormous power over lives,
superpower, Insull liked to call it.

A certain Cyrus S. Eaton of Cleveland, an ex-
Baptistminister, was the David that brought down this
Goliath. Whether it was so or not he made Insull be-
lieve that Wall Street was behind him.

He started buying stock in the three Chicago

-528-

utilities. Insull in a panic for fear he'd lose his control
went into the market to buy against him. Finally the
Reverend Eaton let himself be bought out, shaking
down the old man for a profit of twenty million dol-
lars.

The stockmarket crash.

Paper values were slipping. Insull's companies
were intertwined in a tangle that no bookkeeper has
ever been able to unravel.

The gas hissed out of the torn balloon. Insull
threw away his imperial pride and went on his knees
to the bankers.

The bankers had him where they wanted him. To
save the face of the tottering czar he was made a re-
ceiver of his own concerns. But the old man couldn't
get out of his head the illusion that the money was all
his. When it was discovered that he was using the
stockholders' funds to pay off his brothers' brokerage
accounts it was too thick even for a federal judge. In-
sull was forced to resign.

He held directorates in eightyfive companies, he
was chairman of sixtyfive, president of eleven: it took
him three hours to sign his resignations.

As a reward for his services to monopoly his com-
panies chipped in on a pension of eighteen thousand a
year. But the public was shouting for criminal prosecu-
tion. When the handouts stopped newspapers and poli-
ticians turned on him. Revolt against the moneymanip-
ulators was in the air. Samuel Insull got the wind up
and ran off to Canada with his wife.

Extradition proceedings. He fled to Paris. When
the authorities began to close in on him there he slipped
away to Italy, took a plane to Tirana, another to Sa-
loniki and then the train to Athens. There the old fox
went to earth. Money talked as sweetly in Athens as it
had in Chicago in the old days.

-529-

The American ambassador tried to extradite him.
Insull hired a chorus of Hellenic lawyers and politicos
and sat drinking coffee in the lobby of the Grande
Bretagne, while they proceeded to tie up the ambas-
sador in a snarl of chicanery as complicated as the book-
keeping of his holdingcompanies. The successors of
Demosthenes were delighted. The ancestral itch in
many a Hellenic palm was temporarily assuaged. Sam-
uel Insull settled down cozily in Athens, was stirred
by the sight of the Parthenon, watched the goats feed-
ing on the Pentelic slopes, visited the Areopagus, ad-
mired marble fragments ascribed to Phidias, talked
with the local bankers about reorganizing the public
utilities of Greece, was said to be promoting Macedo-
nian lignite. He was the toast of the Athenians; Mme.
Kouryoumd jouglou the vivacious wife of a Bagdad
datemerchant devoted herself to his comfort. When
the first effort at extradition failed, the old gentleman
declared in the courtroom, as he struggled out from the
embraces of his four lawyers: Greece is a small but great
country.

The idyll was interrupted when the Roosevelt Ad-
ministration began to put the heat on the Greek foreign
office. Government lawyers in Chicago were accumu-
lating truckloads of evidence and chalking up more and
more drastic indictments.

Finally after many a postponement (he had hired
physicians as well as lawyers, they cried to high heaven
that it would kill him to leave the genial climate of the
Attic plain),
he was ordered to leave Greece as an undesirable
alien to the great indignation of Balkan society and of
Mme. Kouryoumdjouglou.

He hired the Maiotis a small and grubby Greek
freighter and panicked the foreignnews services by
slipping off for an unknown destination.

-530-

It was rumored that the new Odysseus was bound
for Aden, for the islands of the South Seas, that he'd
been invited to Persia. After a few days he turned up
rather seasick in the Bosporus on his way, it was said,
to Rumania where Madame Kouryoumdjouglou had
advised him to put himself under the protection of her
friend la Lupescu.

At the request of the American ambassador the
Turks were delighted to drag him off the Greek
freighter and place him in a not at all comfortable jail.
Again money had been mysteriously wafted from Eng-
land, the healing balm began to flow, lawyers were
hired, interpreters expostulated, doctors made diag-
noses;
but Angora was boss
and Insull was shipped off to Smyrna to be turned
over to the assistant federal districtattorney who had
come all that way to arrest him.

The Turks wouldn't even let Mme. Kouryoumd-
jouglou, on her way back from making arrangements in
Bucharest, go ashore to speak to him. In a scuffle with
the officials on the steamboat the poor lady was pushed
overboard
and with difficulty fished out of the Bosporus.

Once he was cornered the old man let himself
tamely be taken home on the Exilona, started writing
his memoirs, made himself agreeable to his fellow pas-
sengers, was taken off at Sandy Hook and rushed to
Chicago to be arraigned.

In Chicago the government spitefully kept him a
couple of nights in jail; men he'd never known, so the
newspapers said, stepped forward to go on his two
hundredandfiftythousanddollar bail. He was moved to
a hospital that he himself had endowed. Solidarity.
The leading businessmen in Chicago were photographed
visiting him there. Henry Ford paid a call.

-531-

The trial was very beautiful. The prosecution got
bogged in finance technicalities. The judge was not un-
friendly. The Insulls stole the show.

They were folks, they smiled at reporters, they
posed for photographers, they went down to the court-
room by bus. Investors might have been ruined but so,
they allowed it to be known, were the Insulls; the
captain had gone down with the ship.

Old Samuel Insull rambled amiably on the stand,
told his lifestory: from officeboy to powermagnate, his
struggle to make good, his love for his home and the
kiddies. He didn't deny he'd made mistakes; who
hadn't, but they were honest errors. Samuel Insull
wept. Brother Martin wept. The lawyers wept.
With voices choked with emotion headliners of Chicago
business told from the witnessstand how much Insull
had done for business in Chicago. There wasn't a dry
eye in the jury.

Finally driven to the wall by the prosecutingattor-
ney Samuel Insull blurted out that yes, he had made an
error of some ten million dollars in accounting but that
it had been an honest error.
Verdict: Not Guilty.

Smiling through their tears the happy Insulls
went to their towncar amid the cheers of the crowd.
Thousands of ruined investors, at least so the news-
papers said, who had lost their life savings sat crying
over the home editions at the thought of how Mr. Insull
had suffered. The bankers were happy, the bankers
had moved in on the properties.

In an odor of sanctity the deposed monarch of
superpower, the officeboy who made good, enjoys
his declining years spending the pension of twenty-
one thousand a year that the directors of his old com-
panies dutifully restored to him. After fifty years of
work, he said, my job is gone.

-532-

MARY FRENCH

Mary French had to stay late at the office and couldn't
get to the hall until the meeting was almost over. There
were no seats left so she stood in the back. So many people
were standing in front of her that she couldn't see Don,
she could only hear his ringing harsh voice and feel the
tense attention in the silence during his pauses. When a
roar of applause answered his last words and the hall filled
suddenly with voices and the scrape and shuffle of feet she
ran out ahead of the crowd and up the alley to the back
door. Don was just coming out of the black sheetiron door
talking over his shoulder as he came to two of the miners'
delegates. He stopped a second to hold the door open for
them with a long arm. His face had the flushed smile,
there was the shine in his eye he often had after speaking,
the look, Mary used to tell herself, of a man who had just
come from a date with his best girl. It was some time be-
fore Don saw her in the group that gathered round him in
the alley. Without looking at her he swept her along with
the men he was talking to and walked them fast towards
the corner of the street. Eyes looked after them as they
went from the groups of furworkers and garmentworkers
that dotted the pavement in front of the hall. Mary
tingled with the feeling of warm ownership in the looks
of the workers as their eyes followed Don Stevens down
the street.

It wasn't until they were seated in a small lunchroom
under the el that Don turned to Mary and squeezed her
hand. "Tired?" She nodded. "Aren't you, Don?" He
laughed and drawled, "No, I'm not tired. I'm hungry."

" Comrade French, I thought we'd detailed you to see
that Comrade Stevens ate regular," said Rudy Goldfarb
with a flash of teeth out of a dark Italianlooking face.

-533-

"He won't ever eat anything when he's going to speak,"
Mary said.

"I make up for it afterwards," said Don. "Say, Mary,
I hope you have some change. I don't think I've got a cent
on me." Mary nodded, smiling. "Mother came across
again," she whispered.

"Money," broke in Steve Mestrovich. "We got to have
money or else we're licked." "The truck got off today,"
said Mary. "That's why I was so late getting to the meet-
ing." Mestrovich passed the grimed bulk of his hand
across his puttycolored face that had a sharply turnedup
nose peppered with black pores. "If cossack don't git him."

" Eddy Spellman's a smart kid. He gets through like a
shadow. I don't know how he does it."

"You don't know what them clothes means to women
and kids and. . . listen, Miss French, don't hold back
nothin' because too raggedy. Ain't nothin' so ragged like
what our little kids got on their backs."

"Eddy's taking five cases of condensed milk. We'll have
more as soon as he comes back."

"Say, Mary," said Don suddenly, looking up from his
plate of soup, "how about calling up Sylvia? I forgot to
ask how much we collected at the meeting." Young Gold-
farb got to his feet. "I'll call. You look tired, Comrade
French. . . . Anybody got a nickel?"

"Here, I got nickel," said Mestrovich. He threw back
his head and laughed. "Damn funny. . . miner with
nickel. Down our way miner got nickel put in frame send
Meester Carnegie Museum. . . . very rare." He got up
roaring laughter and put on his black longvisored miner's
cap. "Goodnight, comrade, I walk Brooklyn. Reliefcom-
mittee nine o'clock. . . . right, Miss French?" As he
strode out of the lunchroom the heavy tread of his black
boots made the sugarbowls jingle on the tables. "Oh,
Lord," said Mary, with tears suddenly coming to her eyes.
"That was his last nickel."

-534-

Goldfarb came back saying that the collection hadn't
been so good. Sixtynine dollars and some pledges. "Christ-
mas time coming on. . . you know. Everybody's always
broke at Christmas." "Henderson made a lousy speech,"
grumbled Don. "He's more of a socialfascist every day."

Mary sat there feeling the tiredness in every bone of her
body waiting until Don got ready to go home. She was too
sleepy to follow what they were talking about but every
now and then the words centralcommittee, expulsions, op-
positionists, splitters rasped in her ears. Then Don was
tapping her on the shoulder and she was waking up and
walking beside him through the dark streets.

"It's funny, Don," she was saying, "I always go to sleep
when you talk about party discipline. I guess it's because
I don't want to hear about it.""No use being sentimental
about it," said Don savagely. "But is it sentimental to be
more interested in saving the miners' unions?" she said,
suddenly feeling wide awake again. "Of course that's what
we all believe but we have to follow the party line. A lot
of those boys. . . Goldfarb's one of them. . . Ben
Compton's another. . . think this is a debatingsociety.
If they're not very careful indeed they'll find themselves
out on their ear. . . . You just watch."

Once they'd staggered up the five flights to their dingy
little apartment where Mary had always planned to put
up curtains but had never had time, Don suddenly caved
in with fatigue and threw himself on the couch and fell
asleep without taking off his clothes. Mary tried to rouse
him but gave it up. She unlaced his shoes for him and
threw a blanket over him and got into bed herself and
tried to sleep.

She was staring wide awake, she was counting old pairs
of trousers, torn suits of woolly underwear, old armyshirts
with the sleeves cut off, socks with holes in them that
didn't match. She was seeing the rickety children with
puffy bellies showing through their rags, the scrawny

-535-

women with uncombed hair and hands distorted with
work, the boys with their heads battered and bleeding from
the clubs of the Coal and Iron Police, the photograph of a
miner's body shot through with machinegun bullets. She
got up and took two or three swigs from a bottle of gin
she kept in the medicinecloset in the bathroom. The gin
burned her throat. Coughing she went back to bed and
went off into a hot dreamless sleep.

Towards morning Don woke her getting into the bed.
He kissed her. "Darling, I've set the alarm for seven.
. . . Be sure to get me up. I've got a very important com-
mitteemeeting. . . . Be sure and do it." He went off to
sleep again right away like a child. She lay beside his big-
boned lanky body, listening to his regular breathing, feel-
ing happy and safe there in the bed with him.

Eddy Spellman got through with his truck again and
distributed his stuff to several striking locals U.M.W. in
the Pittsburgh district, although he had a narrow squeak
when the deputies tried to ambush him near Greensburg.
They'd have nabbed him if a guy he knew who was a
bootlegger hadn't tipped him off. The same bootlegger
helped him out when he skidded into a snowdrift on the
hill going down into Johnstown on the way back. He was
laughing about it as he helped Mary pack up the new ship-
ment. "He wanted to give me some liquor. . . . He's a
good feller, do you know it, Miss Mary?. . . Tough
kinder. . . that racket hardens a feller up. . . but a
prince when you know him. . . .'Hell, no, Ed,' his
name's Eddy too, I says to him when he tries to slip me
a pint, 'I ain't goin' to take a drink until after the revolu-
tion and then I'll be ridin' so high I won't need to.'"
Mary laughed. "I guess we all ought to do that, Eddy.
. . . But I feel so tired and discouraged at night some-
times." "Sure," said Eddy, turning serious. "It gits you
down thinkin' how they got all the guns an' all the money
an' we ain't got nothin'."

-536-

"One thing you're going to have, Comrade Spellman,
is a pair of warm gloves and a good overcoat before you
make the next trip."

His freckled face turned red to the roots of his red hair.
"Honest, Miss Mary, I don't git cold. To tell the truth
the motor heats up so much in that old pile of junk it
keeps me warm in the coldest weather. . . . After the
next trip we got to put a new clutch in her and that'll take
more jack than we kin spare from the milk. . . . I tell
you things are bad up there in the coalfields this winter."

"But those miners have got such wonderful spirit," said
Mary.

"The trouble is, Miss Mary, you kin only keep your
spirit up a certain length of time on an empty stumick."

That evening Don came by to the office to get Mary for
supper. He was very cheerful and his gaunt bony face
had more color in it than usual. "Well, little girl, what
would you think of moving up to Pittsburgh? After the
plenum I may go out to do some organizing in western
Pennsylvania and Ohio. Mestrovich says they need some-
body to pep 'em up a little." Eddy Spellman looked up
from the bale of clothes he was tying up. "Take it from
me, Comrade Stevens, they sure do."

Mary felt a chill go through her. Don must have no-
ticed the pallor spreading over her face. "We won't take
any risks," he added hurriedly. "Those miners take good
care of a feller, don't they, Eddy?""They sure do. . . .
Wherever the locals is strong you'll be safer than you are
right here in New York.""Anyway," said Mary, her
throat tight and dry, "if you've got to go you've got to
go."

"You two go out an' eat," said Eddy. "I'll finish up
I'm bunkin' here anyway. Saves the price of a flop.
. . . You feed Miss Mary up good, Comrade Stevens. We
don't want her gettin' sick. . . . If all the real partymem-
bers worked like she does we'd have. . . hell, we'd have

-537-

the finest kind of a revolution by the spring of the year."

They went out laughing, and walked down to Bleecker
Street and settled happily at a table in an Italian restau-
rant and ordered up the seventyfivecent dinner and a bottle
of wine. "You've got a great admirer in Eddy," Don said,
smiling at her across the table.

A couple of weeks later Mary came home one icy winter
evening to find Don busy packing his grip. She couldn't
help letting out a cry, her nerves were getting harder and
harder to control. "Oh, Don, it's not Pittsburgh yet?" Don
shook his head and went on packing. When he had closed
up his wicker suitcase he came over to her and put his arm
round her shoulder. "I've got to go across to the other side
with. . . you know who. . . essential party business."

"Oh, Don, I?d love to go too. I've never been to Russia
or anywhere." "I'll only be gone a month. We're sailing
at midnight. . . and Mary darling. . . if anybody asks
after me I'm in Pittsburgh, see?" Mary started to cry. "I'll
have to say I don't know where you are. . . I know I
can't ever get away with a lie." "Mary dear, it'll just be a
few days. . . don't be a little silly." Mary smiled
through her tears. "But I am. . . I'm an awful little
silly." He kissed her and patted her gently on the back.
Then he picked up his suitcase and hurried out of the room
with a big checked cap pulled down over his eyes.

Mary walked up and down the narrow room with her
lips twitching, fighting to keep down the hysterical sobs.
To give herself something to do she began to plan how she
could fix up the apartment so that it wouldn't look so
dreary when Don came back. She pulled out the couch and
pushed it across the window like a windowseat. Then she
pulled the table out in front of it and grouped the chairs
round the table. She made up her mind she'd paint the
woodwork white and get turkeyred for the curtains.

Next morning she was in the middle of drinking her
coffee out of a cracked cup without a saucer, feeling bit-

-538-

terly lonely in the empty apartment when the telephone
rang. At first she didn't recognize whose voice it was. She
was confused and kept stammering, "Who is it, please?"
into the receiver. "But, Mary," the voice was saying in an
exasperated tone, "you must know who I am. It's Ben
Compton. . . bee ee enn. . . Ben. I've got to see you
about something. Where could I meet you? Not at your
place." Mary tried to keep her voice from sounding stiff
and chilly. "I've got to be uptown today. I've got to have
lunch with a woman who may give some money to the
miners. It's a horrible waste of time but I can't help it.
She won't give a cent unless I listen to her sad story. How
about meeting me in front of the Public Library at two
thirty?" "Better say inside. . . . It's about zero out today.
I just got up out of bed from the flu."

Mary hardly knew Ben he looked so much older. There
was grey in the hair spilling out untidily from under his
cap. He stooped and peered into her face querulously
through his thick glasses. He didn't shake hands. "Well,
I might as well tell you. . . you'll know it soon enough
if you don't know it already. . . I've been expelled from
the party. . . oppositionist . . . exceptionalism. . . a
lot of nonsense. . . . Well, that doesn't matter, I'm still a
revolutionist . . . I'll continue to work outside of the
party."

"Oh, Ben, I'm so sorry," was all Mary could find to say.
"You know I don't know anything except what I read in
the Daily. It all seems too terrible to me." "Let's go out,
that guard's watching us." Outside Ben began to shiver
from the cold. His wrists stuck out red from his frayed
green overcoat with sleeves much too short for his long
arms. "Oh, where can we go?" Mary kept saying.

Finally they went down into a basement automat and
sat talking in low voices over a cup of coffee. "I didn't
want to go to your place because I didn't want to meet
Stevens. . . . Stevens and me have never been friends,

-539-

you know that. . . . Now he's in with the comintern
crowd. He'll make the centralcommittee when they've
cleaned out all the brains."

"But, Ben, people can have differences of opinion and
still . . ."

"A party of yesmen . . . that'll be great. . . . But,
Mary, I had to see you . . . I feel so lonely suddenly
. . . you know, cut off from everything. . . . You know
if we hadn't been fools we'd have had that baby that time
. . . we'd still love each other. . . . Mary, you were very
lovely to me when I first got out of jail. . . . Say, where's
your friend Ada, the musician who had that fancy apart-
ment?

"Oh, she's as silly as ever running around with
some fool violinist or other."

"I've always liked music. . . . I ought to have kept
you, Mary."

"A lot of water's run under the bridge since then?" said
Mary coldly.

"Are you happy with Stevens? I haven't any right to
ask."

"But, Ben, what's the use of raking all this old stuff up?"

"You see, often a young guy thinks, I'll sacrifice every-
thing, and then when he is cut off all that side of his life,
he's not as good as he was, do you see? For the first time
in my life I have no contact. I thought maybe you could
get me in on reliefwork somehow. The discipline isn't so
strict in the relief organizations."

"I don't think they want any disrupting influences in the
I.L.D.," said Mary.

"So I'm a disrupter to you too. All right, in the
end the workingclass will judge between us."

"Let's not talk about it, Ben."

"I'd like you to put it up to Stevens and ask him to
sound out the proper quarters . . . that's not much to
ask, is it?"

-540-

"But Don's not here at present." Before she could catch
herself she'd blurted it out.

Ben looked her in the eye with a sudden sharp look.

"He hasn't by any chance sailed for Moscow with cer-
tain other comrades?"

"He's gone to Pittsburgh on secret partywork and for
God's sake shut up about it. You just got hold of me to
pump me." She got to her feet, her face flaming. "Well,
goodby, Mr. Compton. . . . You don't happen to be a
stoolpigeon as well as a disrupter, do you?"

Ben Compton's face broke in pieces suddenly the way a
child's face does when it is just going to bawl. He sat
there staring at her, senselessly scraping the spoon round
and round in the empty coffeemug. She was halfway up
the stairs when on an impulse she went back and stood for
a second looking down at his bowed head. "Ben," she said
in a gentler voice, "I shouldn't have said that . . . with-
out proof. . . . I don't believe it." Ben Compton didn't
look up. She went up the stairs again out into the stinging
wind and hurried down Fortysecond Street in the after-
noon crowd and took the subway down to Union Square.

The last day of the year Mary French got a telegram
at the office from Ada Cohn. PLEASE PLEASE COMMUNICATE
YOUR MOTHER IN TOWN AT PLAZA SAILING SOON WANTS TO
SEE YOU DOESNT KNOW ADDRESS WHAT SHALL I TELL HER.
Newyearsday there wasn't much doing at the office. Mary
was the only one who had turned up, so in the middle of
the morning she called up the Plaza and asked for Mrs.
French. No such party staying there. Next she called up
Ada. Ada talked and talked about how Mary's mother had
married again, a Judge Blake, a very prominent man, a
retired federal circuit judge, such an attractive man with
a white vandyke beard and Ada had to see Mary and Mrs.
Blake had been so sweet to her and they'd asked her to
dinner at the Plaza and wanted to know all about Mary
and that she'd had to admit that she never saw her al-

-541-

though she was her best friend and she'd been to a new-
yearseve party and had such a headache she couldn't prac-
tice and she'd invited some lovely people in that afternoon
and wouldn't Mary come, she'd be sure to like them.

Mary almost hung up on her, Ada sounded so silly, but
she said she'd call her back right away after she'd talked
to her mother. It ended by her going home and getting
her best dress on and going uptown to the Plaza to see
Judge and Mrs. Blake. She tried to find some place she
could get her hair curled because she knew' the first thing
her mother would say was that she looked a fright, but
everything was closed on account of its being newyearsday.

Judge and Mrs. Blake were getting ready to have lunch
in a big private drawingroom on the corner looking out
over the humped snowy hills of the park bristly with bare
branches and interwoven with fastmoving shining streams
of traffic. Mary's mother didn't look as if she'd aged a day,
she was dressed in darkgreen and really looked stunning
with a little white ruffle round her neck sitting there so at
her ease, with rings on her fingers that sparkled in the
grey winter light that came in through the big windows.
The judge had a soft caressing voice. He talked elab-
orately about the prodigal daughter and the fatted calf
until her mother broke in to say that they were going
to Europe on a spree; they'd both of them made big kill-
ings on the stockexchange on the same day and they felt
they owed themselves a little rest and relaxation. And she
went on about how worried she'd been because all her let-
ters had been returned from Mary's last address and that
she'd written Ada again and again and Ada had always
said Mary was in Pittsburgh or Fall River or some hor-
rible place doing social work and that she felt it was about
time she gave up doing everything for the poor and un-
fortunate and devoted a little attention to her own kith and
kin.

"I hear you are a very dreadful young lady, Mary, my

-542-

dear," said the judge, blandly, ladling some cream of every
soup into her plate. "I hope you didn't bring any bombs
with you." They both seemed to think that that was a
splendid joke and laughed and laughed. "But to be seri-
ous," went on the judge, "I know that social inequality is
a very dreadful thing and a blot on the fair name of
American democracy. But as we get older, my dear, we
learn to live and let live, that we have to take the bad
with the good a little."

" Mary dear, why don't you go abroad with Ada Cohn
and have a nice rest? . . . I'll find the money for the
trip. I know it'll do you good. . . . You know I've never
approved of your friendship with Ada Cohn. Out home
we are probably a little oldfashioned about those things.
Here she seems to be accepted everywhere. In fact she
seems to know all the prominent musical people. Of course
how good a musician she is herself I'm not in a position to
judge."

"Hilda dear," said the judge, " Ada Cohn has a heart
of gold. I find her a very sweet little girl. Her father was
a very distinguished lawyer. You know we decided we'd
lay aside our prejudices a little . . . didn't we, dear?"

"The judge is reforming me," laughed Mary's mother
coyly.

Mary was so nervous she felt she was going to scream.
The heavy buttery food, the suave attentions of the waiter
and the fatherly geniality of the judge made her almost
gag. "Look, Mother," she said,"if you really have a little
money to spare you might let me have something for our
milkfund. After all miners' children aren't guilty of any-
thing."

"My dear, I've already made substantial contributions
to the Red Cross. . . . After all, we've had a miners'
strike out in Colorado on our hands much worse than in
Pennsylvania. . . . I've always felt, Mary dear, that if
you were interested in labor conditions the place for you

-543-

was home in Colorado Springs. If you must study that
sort of thing there was never any need to come East for it."

"Even the I.W.W. has reared its ugly head again," said
the judge.

"I don't happen to approve of the tactics of the
I.W.W.," said Mary stiffly.

"I should hope not," said her mother.

"But, Mother, don't you think you could let me have a
couple of hundred dollars?"

"To spend on these dreadful agitators, they may not be
I Won't Works but they're just as bad."

"I'll'promise that every cent goes into milk for the
babies."

"But that's just handing the miners over to these miser-
able Russian agitators. Naturally if they can give milk to
the children it makes them popular, puts them in a position
where they can mislead these poor miserable foreigners
worse than ever." The judge leaned forward across the
table and put his blueveined hand in its white starched
cuff on Mary's mother's hand. "It's not that we lack sym-
pathy with the plight of the miners' women and children,
or that we don't understand the dreadful conditions of the
whole mining industry . . . we know altogether too much
about that, don't we, Hilda? But . . . "

Mary suddenly found that she'd folded her napkin and
gotten trembling to her feet. "I don't see any reason for
further prolonging this interview, that must be painful to
you, Mother, as it is to me. . . . "

"Perhaps I can arbitrate," said the judge, smiling, get-
ting to his feet with his napkin in his hand.

Mary felt a desperate tight feeling like a metal ring
round her head. "I've got to go, Mother . . . I don't
feel very well today. Have a nice trip. . . . I don't want
to argue." Before they could stop her she was off down
the hall and on her way down in the elevator.

Mary felt so upset she had to talk to somebody so she

-544-

went to a telephone booth and called up Ada. Ada's voice
was full of sobs, she said something dreadful had hap-
pened and that she'd called off her party and that Mary
must come up to see her immediately. Even before Ada
opened the door of the apartment on Madison Avenue
Mary got a whiff of the Forêt Vierge perfume Ada had
taken to using when she first came to New York. Ada
opened the door wearing a green and pink flowered silk
wrapper with all sorts of little tassels hanging from it. She
fell on Mary's neck. Her eyes were red and she sniffed as
she talked. "Why, what's the matter, Ada?" asked Mary
coolly. "Darling, I've just had the most dreadful row
with Hjalmar. We have parted forever. . . . Of course I
had to call off the party because I was giving it for him."

"Who's Hjalmar?"

"He's somebody very beautiful . . . and very hateful.
. . . But let's talk about you, Mary darling . . . I do
hope you've made it up with your mother and Judge
Blake."

"I just walked out. . . . What's the use of arguing?
They're on one side of the barricades and I'm on the
other."

Ada strode up and down the room. "Oh, I hate talk like
that. . . . It makes me feel awful. . . . At least you'll
have a drink. . . . I've got to drink, I've been too nervous
to practice all day."

Mary stayed all afternoon at Ada's drinking ginrickeys
and eating the sandwiches and little cakes that had been
laid out in the kitchenette for the party and talking about
old times and Ada's unhappy loveaffair. Ada made Mary
read all his letters and Mary said he was a damn fool and
good riddance. Then Ada cried and Mary told her she
ought to be ashamed of herself, she didn't know what real
misery was. Ada was very meek about it and went to her
desk and wrote out a check in a shaky hand for a hundred
dollars for the miners' milkfund. Ada had some supper

-545-

sent up for them from the uptown Longchamps and de-
clared she'd spent the happiest afternoon in years. She
made Mary promise to come to her concert in the small
hall at the Aeolian the following week. When Mary was
going Ada made her take a couple of dollars for a taxi.
They were both reeling a little in the hall waiting for the
elevator. "We've just gotten to be a pair of old topers,"
said Ada gaily. It was a good thing Mary had decided to
take a taxi because she found it hard to stand on her feet.

That winter the situation of the miners in the Pittsburgh
district got worse and worse. Evictions began. Families
with little children were living in tents and in broken-
down unheated tarpaper barracks. Mary lived in a feeling
of nightmare, writing letters, mimeographing appeals,
making speeches at meetings of clothing and fur workers,
canvassing wealthy liberals. The money that came in was
never enough. She took no salary for her work so she had
to get Ada to lend her money to pay her rent. She was
thin and haggard and coughed all the time. Too many
cigarettes, she'd explain. Eddy Spellman and Rudy Gold-
farb worried about her. She could see they'd decided she
wasn't eating enough because she was all the time finding
on the corner of her desk a paper bag of sandwiches or a
carton of coffee that one of them had brought in. Once
Eddy brought her a big package of smearcase that his
mother had made up home near Scranton. She couldn't eat
it; she felt guilty every time she saw it sprouting green
mold in the icebox that had no ice in it because she'd given
up cooking now that Don was away.

One evening Rudy came into the office with smiles all
over his face. Eddy was leaning over packing the old
clothes into bales as usual for his next trip. Rudy gave him
a light kick in the seat of the pants. "Hay you, Trotzky-
ite," said Eddy, jumping at him and pulling out his neck-
tie. "Smile when you say that," said Rudy, pummeling
him. They were all laughing. Mary felt like an oldmaid

-546-

schoolteacher watching the boy//s roughhousing in front of
her desk. "Meeting comes to order," she said. "They tried
to hang it on me but they couldn't," said Rudy, panting,
straightening his necktie and his mussed hair. "But what I
was going to say, Comrade French, was that I thought
you might like to know that a certain comrade is getting
in on the Aquitania tomorrow . . . tourist class." "Rudy,
are you sure?" "Saw the cable."

Mary got to the dock too early and had to wait two
hours. She tried to read the afternoon papers but her eyes
wouldn't follow the print. It was too hot in the reception-
room and too cold outside. She fidgeted around miserably
until at last she saw the enormous black sheetiron wall
sliding with its rows of lighted portholes past the openings
in the wharfbuilding. Her hands and feet were icy. Her
whole body ached to feel his arms around her, for the
rasp of his deep voice in her ears. All the time a vague
worry flitted in the back of her head because she hadn't
had a letter from him while he'd been away.

Suddenly there he was coming down the gangplank
alone, with the old wicker suitcase in his hand. He had on
a new belted German raincoat but the same checked cap.
She was face to face with him. He gave her a little hug
but he didn't kiss her. There was something odd in his
voice. "Hello, Mary . . . I didn't expect to find you
here. . . . I don't want to be noticed, you know." His
voice had a low furtive sound in her ears. He was ner-
vously changing his suitcase from one hand to the other.
"See you in a few days . . . I'm going to be pretty busy."
She turned without a word and ran down the wharf. She
hurried breathless along the crosstown street to the Ninth
Avenue el. When she opened her door the new turkeyred
curtains were like a blow from a whip in her face.

She couldn't go back to the office. She couldn't bear the
thought of facing the boys and the people she knew, the
people who had known them together. She called up and

-547-

said she had a bad case of grippe and would have to stay
in bed a couple of days. She stayed all day in the blank
misery of the narrow rooms. Towards evening she dozed
off to sleep on the couch. She woke up with a start thinking
she heard a step in the hall outside. It wasn't Don, the
steps went on up the next flight. After that she didn't
sleep any more.

The next morning the phone woke her just when she
settled herself in bed to drowse a little. It was Sylvia
Goldsteinsaying she was sorry Mary had the grippe and
asking if there was anything she could do. Oh, no, she was
fine, she was just going to stay in bed all day, Mary
answered in a dead voice. "Well, I suppose you knew all
the time about Comrade Stevens and Comrade Lichfield
. . . you two were always so close . . . they were mar-
ried in Moscow . . . she's an English comrade . . . she
spoke at the big meeting at the Bronx Casino last night
. . . she's got a great shock of red hair . . . stunning but
some of the girls think it's dyed. Lots of the comrades
didn't know you and Comrade Stevens had broken up
. . . isn't it sad things like that have to happen in the
movement?" "Oh, that was a long time ago. . . .
Goodby, Sylvia," said Mary harshly and hung up. She
called up a bootlegger she knew and told him to send her
up a bottle of gin.

The next afternoon there was a light rap on the door
and when Mary opened it a crack there was Ada wreathed
in silver fox and breathing out a great gust of Forêt
Vierge. "Oh, Mary darling, I knew something was the
matter. . . . You know sometimes I'm quite psychic. And
when you didn't come to my concert, first I was mad but
then I said to myself I know the poor darling's sick. So I
just went right down to your office. There was the hand-
somest boy there and I just made him tell me where you
lived. He said you were sick with the grippe and so I came

-548-

right over. My dear, why aren't you in bed? You look a
sight."

"I'm all right," mumbled Mary numbly, pushing the
stringy hair off her face. "I been . . . making plans . . .
about how we can handle this relief situation better."

"Well, you're just coming up right away to my spare
bedroom and let me pet you up a little. . . . I don't be-
lieve it's grippe, I think it's overwork. . . . If you're not
careful you'll be having a nervous breakdown." "Maybe
sumpen like that." Mary couldn't articulate her words.
She didn't seem to have any will of her own any more;
she did everything Ada told her. When she was settled in
Ada's clean lavendersmelling spare bed they sent out for
some barbital and it put her to sleep. Mary stayed there
several days eating the meals Ada's maid brought her,
drinking all the drinks Ada would give her, listening to
the continual scrape of violin practice that came from the
other room all morning. But at night she couldn't sleep
without filling herself up with dope. She didn't seem to
have any will left. It would take her a half an hour to
decide to get up to go to the toilet.

After she'd been at Ada's a week she began to feel she
ought to go home. She began to be impatient of Ada's sly
references to unhappy loveaffairs and broken hearts and
the beauty of abnegation and would snap Ada's head off
whenever she started it. "That's fine," Ada would say.
"You are getting your meanness back." For some time Ada
had been bringing up the subject of somebody she knew
who'd been crazy about Mary for years and who was dying
to see her again. Finally Mary gave in and said she would
go to a cocktail party at Eveline Johnson's where Ada said
she knew he'd be. "And Eveline gives the most wonderful
parties. I don't know how she does it because she never has
any money, but all the most interesting people in New
York will be there. They always are. Radicals too, you
know. Eveline can't live without her little group of reds."

-549-

Mary wore one of Ada's dresses that didn't fit her very
well and went out in the morning to have her hair curled
at Saks's where Ada always had hers curled. They had
some cocktails at Ada's place before they went. At the last
minute Mary said she wouldn't go because she'd finally
got it out of Ada that it was George Barrow who was going
to be at the party. Ada made Mary drink another cocktail
and a reckless feeling came over her and she said all right,
let's get a move on.

There was a smiling colored maid in a fancy lace cap
and apron at the door of the house who took them down
the hall to a bedroom full of coats and furs where they
were to take off their wraps. As Ada was doing her face at
the dressingtable Mary whispered in her ear, "Just think
what our reliefcommittee could do with the money that
woman wastes on senseless entertaining." "But she's a
darling," Ada whispered back excitedly. "Honestly, you'll
like her." The door had opened behind their backs letting
in a racketing gust of voices, laughs, tinkle of glasses, a
whiff of perfume and toast and cigarettesmoke and gin.
"Oh, Ada," came a ringing voice. "Eveline darling, how
lovely you look. . . . This is Mary French, you know I
said I'd bring her. . . . She's my oldest friend." Mary
found herself shaking hands with a tall slender woman in
a pearlgrey dress. Her face was very white and her lips
were very red and her long large eyes were exaggerated
with mascara. "So nice of you to come," Eveline Johnson
said and sat down suddenly among the furs and wraps on
the bed. "It sounds like a lovely party," cried Ada.

"I hate parties. I don't know why I give them," said
Eveline Johnson. "Well, I guess I've got to go back to the
menagerie. . . . Oh, Ada, I'm so tired."

Mary found herself studying the harsh desperate lines
under the makeup round Mrs. Johnson's mouth and the
strained tenseness of the cords of her neck. Their silly life
tells on them, she was saying to herself.

-550-

"What about the play?" Ada was asking. "I was so ex-
cited when I heard about it."

"Oh, that's ancient history now," said Eveline Johnson
sharply. "I'm working on a plan to bring over the ballet
. . . turn it into something American. . . . I'll tell you
about it some time."

"Oh, Eveline, did the screenstar come?" asked Ada,
giggling.

"Oh, yes, they always come." Eveline Johnson sighed.
"She's beautiful. . . . You must meet her."Î

"Of course anybody in the world would come to your
parties, Eveline."

"I don't know why they should . . . they seem just too
boring to me." Eveline Johnson was ushering them
through some sliding doors into a highceilinged room
dusky from shaded lights and cigarettesmoke where they
were swallowed up in a jam of welldressed people talking
and making faces and tossing their heads over cocktail
glasses. There seemed no place to stand so Mary sat down
at the end of a couch beside a little marbletopped table.
The other people on the couch were jabbering away among
themselves and paid no attention to her. Ada and the
hostess had disappeared behind a wall of men's suits and
afternoongowns.

Mary had had time to smoke an entire cigarette before
Ada came back followed by George Barrow, whose thin
face looked flushed and whose adamsapple stuck out fur-
ther than ever over his collar. He had a cocktail in each
hand. "Well well well, little Mary French, after all these
years," he was saying with a kind of forced jollity. "If
youkriew the trouble we'd had getting these through the
crush."

"Hello, George," said Mary casually. She took the cock-
tail he handed her and drank it o