U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [271]
wouldn't let her bring him to the house. He was shorter than she, had dark hair and looked about fifteen although he said he was twentyone. He had a creamy white skin that made people cal him Babyface, and a funny confiden-tial way of talking as if he didn't take what he was saying altogether seriously himself. He said he was an anarchist and talked al the time about politics and the war. He used to take her down to the East Side, too, but it was more fun than going with Edwin. Webb always wanted to go in somewhere to get a drink and talk to people. He took her to saloons and to Roumanian rathskel ers and Arabian res-taurants and more places than she'd ever imagined. He knew everybody everywhere and seemed to manage to
make people trust him for the check, because he hardly ever had any money, and when they'd spent whatever she
-had with her Webb would have to charge the rest. Daugh-ter didn't drink more than an occasional glass of wine, and if he began to get too obstreperous, she'd make him take her to the nearest subway and go on home. Then next day he'd be a little weak and trembly and tel her about his hangover and funny stories about adventures held had when he was tight. He always had pamphlets in his pock-ets about socialism and syndicalism and copies of Mother Earth or The Masses. After Christmas Webb got al wrapped up in a strike of
-270-textile workers that was going on in a town over in New Jersey. One Sunday they went over to see what it was like. They got off the train at a grimy brick station in the middle of the empty business section, a few people standing around in front of lunchcounters, empty stores closed for Sunday; there seemed nothing special about the town until they walked out to the long low square brick buildings of the mil s. There were knots of policemen in blue standing about in the wide muddy roadway outside and inside the wiremesh gates huskylooking young men in khaki. "Those are special deputies, the sons of bitches," muttered Webb between his teeth. They went to Strike Headquarters to see a girl Webb knew who was doing publicity for them. At the head of a grimy stairway crowded with greyfaced for-eign men and women in faded greylooking clothes, they found an office noisy with talk and click of typewriters. The hal way was piled with stacks of handbil s that a tiredlook-ing young man was giving out in packages to boys in ragged sweaters. Webb found Sylvia Dalhart, a longnosed girl with glasses who was typing madly at a desk piled with newspapers and clippings. She waved a hand and said,
"Webb, wait for me outside. I'm going to show some news-paper guys around and you'd better come." Out in the hall they ran into a fellow Webb knew, Ben Compton, a tal young man with a long thin nose and red-rimmed eyes, who said he was going to speak at the meet-ing and asked Webb if he wouldn't speak. "Jeez, what could I say to those fel ers? I'm just a bum of a col ege stoodjent, like you, Ben." "Tel 'em the workers have got to win the world, tel 'em this fight is part of a great his-toric battle. Talking's the easiest part of the movement. The truth's simple enough." He had an explosive way of talking with a pause between each sentence, as if the sen-tence took sometime to come up from someplace way down inside. Daughter sized up that he was attractive, even though he was probably a Jew. "Wel , IT try to stammer
-271-out something about democracy in industry," said Webb. Sylvia Dalhart was already pushing them down the
stairs. She had with her a pale young man in a raincoat and black felt hat who was chewing the. end of a half of a cigar that had gone out. "Fel owworkers, this is Joe Biglow from the Globe, "she had a western burr in her voice that made Daughter feel at home. "We're going to show him around."
They went al over town, to strikers' houses where tired-looking women in sweaters out at the elbows were cooking up lean Sunday dinners of corned beef and cabbage or stewed meat and potatoes, or in some houses they just had cabbage and bread or just potatoes. Then they went to a lunchroom near the station and ate some lunch. Daughter paid the check as nobody seemed to have any money, and it was time to go to the meeting.