John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

It was nearly dark. An icy wind blew through the ramshackle clapboard streets. His feet stumbling in the mud of the deep ruts, Mac walked round several blocks looking up at dark windows. He walked all over the town but no sign of a newspaper office. When he found himself passing the same Chink hashjoint for the third time, he slackened his steps and stood irresolutely on the curb. At the end of the street the great jagged shank of a hill hung over the town. Across the street a young man, his head and ears huddled into the collar of a mackinaw, was loafing against the dark window of a hardware store. Mac decided he was a squarelooking stiff and went over to speak to him.

“Say, bo, where’s the office of the Nevada Workman?” “What the hell d’you wanter know for?” Mac and the other man looked at each other. “I want to see Fred Hoff… I came on from San Fran to help in the printin’.” “Got a red card?” Mac pulled out his I.W.W. membership card. “I’ve got my union card, too, if you want to see that.”

“Hell, no… I guess you’re all right, but, as the feller said, suppose I’d been a dick, you’d be in the bullpen now, bo.”

“I told ’em I was a friggin’ bookagent to get into the damn town. Spent my last quarter on a cigar to keep up the burjwa look.”

The other man laughed. “All right, fellowworker. I’ll take you round.”

“What they got here, martial law?” asked Mac as he followed the man down an alley between two overgrown shanties.

“Every sonofabitchin’ yellerleg in the State of Nevada right here in town… Lucky if you don’t get run outa town with a bayonet in yer crotch, as the feller said.”

At the end of the alley was a small house like a shoebox with brightly lit windows. Young fellows in miners’ clothes or overalls filled up the end of the alley and sat three deep on the rickety steps. “What’s this, a poolroom?” asked Mac. “This is the Nevada Workman … Say, my name’s Ben Evans; I’ll introjuce you to the gang… Say, yous guys, this is fellowworker McCreary… he’s come on from Frisco to set up type.” “Put it there, Mac,” said a sixfooter who looked like a Swede lumberman, and gave Mac’s hand a wrench that made the bones crack.

Fred Hoff had on a green eyeshade and sat behind a desk piled with galleys. He got up and shook hands. “Oh, boy, you’re just in time. There’s hell to pay. They got the printer in the bullpen and we’ve got to get this sheet out.” Mac took off his coat and went back to look over the press. He was leaning over the typesetter’s “stone” when Fred Hoff came back and beckoned him into a corner.

“Say, Mac, I want to explain the layout here… It’s kind of a funny situation… The W.F.M.’s goin’ yellow on us… It’s a hell of a scrap. The Saint was here the other day and that bastard Mullany shot him through both arms and he’s in hospital now… They’re sore as a boil because we’re instillin’ ideas of revolutionary solidarity, see? We got the restaurant workers out and we got some of the minin’ stiffs. Now the A.F. of L.’s gettin’ wise and they’ve got a bonehead scab organizer in hobnobbin’ with the mineowners at the Montezuma Club.”

“Hey, Fred, let me take this on gradually,” said Mac.

“Then there was a little shootin’ the other day out in front of a restaurant down the line an’ the stiff that owned the joint got plugged an’ now they’ve got a couple of the boys in jail for that.” “The hell you say.” “And Big Bill Haywood’s comin’ to speak next week… That’s about the way the situation is, Mac. I’ve got to tear off an article… You’re boss printer an’ we’ll pay you seventeen fifty like we all get. Ever written any?”

“No.”

“It’s a time like this a feller regrets he didn’t work harder in school. Gosh, I wish I could write decent.”

“I’ll take a swing at an article if I get a chance.”

“Big Bill’ll write us some stuff. He writes swell.”

They set up a cot for Mac back of the press. It was a week before he could get time to go round to the Eagle to get his suitcase. Over the office and the presses was a long attic, with a stove in it, where most of the boys slept. Those that had blankets rolled up in their blankets, those that hadn’t put their jackets over their heads, those that didn’t have jackets slept as best they could. At the end of the room was a long sheet of paper where someone had printed out the Preamble in shaded block letters. On the plaster wall of the office someone had drawn a cartoon of a workingstiff labelled “I.W.W.” giving a fat man in a stovepipe hat labelled “mineowner” a kick in the seat of the pants. Above it they had started to letter “solidarity” but had only gotten as far as “S O L I D A.”

One November night Big Bill Haywood spoke at the miners’ union. Mac and Fred Hoff went to report the speech for the paper. The town looked lonely as an old trashdump in the huge valley full of shrill wind and driving snow. The hall was hot and steamy with the steam of big bodies and plug tobacco and thick mountaineer clothes that gave off the shanty smell of oil lamps and charred firewood and greasy fryingpans and raw whisky. At the beginning of the meeting men moved round uneasily, shuffling their feet and clearing the phlegm out of their throats. Mac was uncomfortable himself. In his pocket was a letter from Maisie. He knew it by heart:

DEAREST FAINY:

Everything has happened just as I was afraid of. You know what I mean, dearest little husband. It’s two months already and I’m so frightened and there’s nobody I can tell. Darling, you must come right back. I’ll die if you don’t. Honestly I’ll die and I’m so lonely for you anyways and so afraid somebody’ll notice. As it is we’ll have to go away somewheres when we’re married and not come back until plenty of time has elapsed. If I thought I could get work there I’d come to you to Goldfield. I think it would be nice if we went to San Diego. I have friends there and they say it’s lovely and there we could tell people we’d been married a long time. Please come sweetest little husband. I’m so lonely for you and it’s so terrible to stand this all alone. The crosses are kisses. Your loving wife,

MAISIE

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Big Bill talked about solidarity and sticking together in the face of the masterclass and Mac kept wondering what Big Bill would do if he’d got a girl in trouble like that. Big Bill was saying the day had come to start building a new society in the shell of the old and for the workers to get ready to assume control of the industries they’d created out of their sweat and blood. When he said, “We stand for the one big union,” there was a burst of cheering and clapping from all the wobblies in the hall. Fred Hoff nudged Mac as he clapped. “Let’s raise the roof, Mac.” The exploiting classes would be helpless against the solidarity of the whole working class. The militia and the yellowlegs were workingstiffs too. Once they realized the historic mission of solidarity the masterclass couldn’t use them to shoot down their brothers anymore. The workers must realize that every small fight, for higher wages, for free-speech, for decent living conditions, was only significant as part of the big fight for the revolution and the coöperative commonwealth. Mac forgot about Maisie. By the time Big Bill had finished speaking his mind had run ahead of the speech so that he’d forgotten just what he said, but Mac was in a glow all over and was cheering to beat hell. He and Fred Hoff were cheering and the stocky Bohemian miner that smelt so bad next them was clapping and the oneeyed Pole on the other side was clapping and the bunch of Wops were clapping and the little Jap who was waiter at the Montezuma Club was clapping and the sixfoot ranchman who’d come in in hopes of seeing a fight was clapping. “Ain’t the sonofabitch some orator,” he was saying again and again. “I tellyer, Utah’s the state for mansized men. I’m from Ogden myself.”