Adventures of a Young Man by John Dos Passos

Author:John Dos Passos [Passos, John Dos]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION, Historical, Action & Adventure, War & Military
ISBN: 9781504015493
Google: b7HBCQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2015-06-23T21:15:53+00:00

5

Tatters of cloud hurried across the sky that sagged low over the square. Glenn stood hesitating a moment on the box beside the small American flag. His breath caught in his windpipe as he looked out over the soggy caps and felt hats and heads of the streetmeeting. The dark mass of people in overcoats, with a woman’s dress making an occasional brighter patch, filled one corner of the square and thinned out along the curved asphalt path, where under the scrawny trees, men were slouched in rows on benches, or talking in knots, or walking hurriedly past. On the street beyond, cars and trucks moved in a shine of enamel and metal against the plateglass showwindows full of bright colors of cheap clothing stores, capped by biglettered signs that cut across the outlines of gawky old dingywindowed buildings. He couldn’t stand there like that. “I’ve come to tell you,” he gasped out, “what I know about the great fight the underpaid Mexican workers are making against the sweatshop system in the state of Texas.”

His voice rasped hollowly in his ears. They weren’t looking at him. Youngsters and girls were chattering and giggling at the edge of the crowd. He had to make them laugh.

“When the pecanshellers complain that four cents an hour isn’t a living wage the bosses say they don’t need any more because they eat so many nuts.” Several people laughed.

The caps and hats turned up now, he could see the white blur of faces, eyes were looking in his face. The crowd was all faces now. Glenn found himself picking out one face, a youngish ruddy face of a curlyhaired man who seemed to be going along with him, and talked straight at it. When he got to the part about the heroic fight the women and girls were making he told it all to a blackeyed jewish girl in a green hat. He ended up with something about how nobody was going to help this poor and exploited foreign language group except their fellowworkers all over the country who must never forget that an injury to one was an injury to all. About half the people clapped when he stepped down.

It was beginning to drizzle. Glenn stood mopping his face while Irving Silverstone hurriedly announced a big meeting for the benefit of the pecanshellers’ defence that night. A gust of sleety rain swept across the square and the crowd began to scatter. Walking away along the path littered with wet sheets of newspaper, past the searching stare of a brokennosed dick from the bombsquad, Irving took Glenn’s arm and said it had been pretty good, but why on earth had he used that old I.W.W. slogan about an injury to one was an injury to all?

Wasn’t it true, asked Glenn. Sure, said Irving, but it was bad tactics to remind the workers of the I.W.W., the I.W.W. was a thing of the past. Anarchosyndicalism was all washed up; and why hadn’t he brought in something about John D.

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