U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [504]
"How are you, Don?""O.K. Sure. A little battered round the head an' ears.""He's bleedin'
terrible," came another man's voice. "Comrades, let's sing," Don's voice shouted. Mary forgot everything as her voice joined his voice, al their voices, the voices of the crowds being driven back across the bridge in singing:
Arise ye prisoners of starvation . . .
NEWSREEL LXVI
HOLMES DENIES STAY
A better world's in birth
Tiny Wasps Imported From Korea In Battle To Death
With Asiatic Beetle
BOY CARRIED MILE DOWN SEWER; SHOT OUT ALIVE
-460-CHICAGO BARS MEETINGS
For justice thunders condemnation
Washington Keeps Eye On Radicals
Arise rejected of the earth
PARIS BRUSSELS MOSCOW GENEVA
ADD THEIR VOICES
It is the final conflict
Let each stand in his place
Geologist Lost In Cave Six Days
The International Party
SACCO AND VANZETTI MUST DIE
Shal be the human race.
Much I thought of you when I was lying in the death house --the singing, the kind tender voices of the children from the playground where there was all the life and the joy of lib- erty --just one step from the wall that contains the buried agony of three buried souls. It would remind me so often of you and of your sister and I wish I could see you every mo- ment, but I feel better that you will not come to the death house so that you could not see the horrible picture of three living in agony waiting to be electrocuted.
THE CAMERA EYE (50)
they have clubbed us off the streets they are
stronger they are rich they hire and fire the poli-ticians the newspapereditors the old judges the smal men with reputations the col egepresidents the wardheelers (listen businessmen col egepresidents judges America
-461-wil not forget her betrayers) they hire the men with guns the uniforms the policecars the patrolwagons
al right you have won you wil kil the brave
men. our friends tonight
there is nothing left to do we are beaten we
the beaten crowd together in these old dingy school-rooms on Salem Street shuffle up and down the gritty creaking stairs sit hunched with bowed heads on benches and hear the old words of the haters of oppression made new in sweat and agony tonight our work is over the scribbled phrases the nights
typing releases the smel of the printshop the sharp reek of newprinted leaflets the rush for Western Union
stringing words into wires the search for stinging words to make you feel who are your oppressors America
America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and foul their hired men sit on the judge's bench they sit
back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the dol ars the guns the armed forces the powerplants they have built the electricchair and hired the execu-tioner to throw the switch al right we are two nations
America our nation has been beaten by strangers who
-462-have bought the laws and fenced off the meadows and cut down the woods for pulp and turned our pleasant cities into slums and sweated the wealth out of our people and when they want to they hire the executioner to throw the switch
but do they know that the old words of the immi-grants are being renewed in blood and agony tonight do they know that the old American speech of the haters of oppression is new tonight in the mouth of an old woman from Pittsburgh of a husky boilermaker from Frisco who hopped freights clear from the Coast to come here in the mouth of a Back Bay socialworker in the mouth of an Italian printer of a hobo from Arkansas the language of the beaten nation is not forgotten in our ears tonight the men in the deathhouse made the old words new
before they died
If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at streetcorners to scorning men. I might have died unknown, unmarked, a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as how we do by an accident. now their work is over the immigrants haters of