John Passos - The 42nd Parallel

“I must admit,” said G. H. Barrow with an uneasy laugh, “I never expected to be drinking a highball with a member of the firm of Planet and Wilson.”

The judge slapped his fat thigh. “You mean on account of the Colorado trouble…? You needn’t be afraid. I won’t eat you, Mr. Barrow… But, frankly, Mr. Moorehouse, this doesn’t seem to me to be just the time to launch your little project.”

“This war in Europe…” began G. H. Barrow.

“Is America’s great opportunity… You know the proverb about when thieves fall out… Just at present I admit we find ourselves in a moment of doubt and despair, but as soon as American business recovers from the first shock and begins to pull itself together… Why, gentlemen, I just came back from Europe; my wife and I sailed the day Great Britain declared war… I can tell you it was a narrow squeak… Of one thing I can assure you with comparative certainty, whoever wins, Europe will be economically ruined. This war is America’s great opportunity. The very fact of our neutrality…” “I don’t see who will be benefited outside of the munitionsmakers,” said G. H. Barrow.

Ward talked a long time, and then looked at his watch, that lay on the desk before him, and got to his feet. “Gentlemen, I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me. I have just time to dress for dinner.” Morton was already standing beside the desk with their hats. It had gotten dark in the room. “Lights, please, Morton,” snapped Ward. As they went out Judge Planet said, “Well, it’s been a very pleasant chat, Mr. Moorehouse, but I’m afraid your schemes are a little idealistic.” “I’ve rarely heard a business man speak with such sympathy and understanding of the labor situation,” said G. H. Barrow. “I only voice the sentiments of my clients,” said Ward as he bowed them out.

Next day he spoke at a Rotary Club luncheon on “Labor Troubles: A Way Out.” He sat at a long table in the big hotel banquet hall full of smells of food and cigarettes, and scurrying waiters. He spread the food a little round his plate with a fork, answering when he was spoken to, joking a little with Judge Planet, who sat opposite him, trying to formulate sentences out of the haze of phrases in his mind. At last it was time for him to get to his feet. He stood at the end of the long table with a cigar in his hand, looking at the two rows of heavyjowled faces turned towards him.

“When I was a boy down along the Delaware…” He stopped. A tremendous clatter of dishes was coming from behind the swinging doors through which waiters were still scuttling with trays. The man who had gone to the door to make them keep quiet came stealthily back. You could hear his shoes creak across the parquet floor. Men leaned forward along the table. Ward started off again. He was going on now; he hardly knew what he was saying, but he had raised a laugh out of them. The tension relaxed. “American business has been slow to take advantage of the possibilities of modern publicity… education of the public and of employers and employees, all equally servants of the public… Coöperation… stockownership giving the employee an interest in the industry… avoiding the grave dangers of socialism and demagoguery and worse… It is in such a situation that the public relations counsel can step in in a quiet manly way and say, Look here, men, let’s talk this over eye to eye… But his main importance is in times of industrial peace… when two men are sore and just about to hit one another is no time to preach public service to them… The time for an educational campaign and an oral crusade that will drive home to the rank and file of the mighty colossus of American uptodate industry is right now, today.”

There was a great deal of clapping. He sat down and sought out Judge Planet’s face with his blue-eyed smile. Judge Planet looked impressed.

the Philadelphian had completed the thirteenth lap and was two miles away on the fourteenth. His speed it is thought must have been between a hundred and a hundred and ten miles an hour. His car wavered for a flash and then careered to the left. It struck a slight elevation and jumped. When the car alighted it was on four wheels atop of a high embankment. Its rush apparently was unimpeded. Wishart turned the car off the embankment and attempted to regain the road. The speed would not permit the slight turn necessary, however, and the car plowed through the frontyard of a farmer residing on the course. He escaped one tree but was brought up sideways against another. The legs being impeded by the steering gear they were torn from the trunk as he was thrown through

I want to go

To Mexico

Under the stars and stripes to fight the foe

SNAPS CAMERA; ENDS LIFE

gay little chairs and tables stand forlornly on the sidewalk for there are few people feeling rich enough to take even a small drink

PLUMBER HAS 100 LOVES

BRINGS MONKEYS HOME

missing rector located losses in U S crop report let baby go naked if you want it to be healthy if this mystery is ever solved you will find a woman at the bottom of the mystery said Patrolman E. B. Garfinkle events leading up to the present war run continuously back to the French Revolution

UNIVERSITY EXPELS GUM

they seemed to stagger like drunken men suddenly hit between the eyes after which they made a run for us shouting some outlandish cry we could not make out

And the ladies of the harem

Knew exactly how to wear ’em

In oriental Baghdad long ago.

this friend of mother’s was a very lovely woman with lovely blond hair and she had two lovely daughters the blond one married an oil man who was bald as the palm of your hand and went to live in Sumatra the dark one married a man from Bogota and it was a long trip in a dugout canoe up the Magdalena River and the natives were Indians and slept in hammocks and had such horrible diseases and when the woman had a baby it was the husband who went to bed and used poisoned arrows and if you got a wound in that country it never healed but festered white and maturated and the dugout tipped over so easily into the warm steamy water full of ravenous fish that if you had a scratch on you or an unhealed wound it was the smell of blood attracted them sometimes they tore people to pieces

it was eight weeks up the Magdalena River in dugout canoes and then you got to Bogota

poor Jonas Fenimore came home from Bogota a very sick man and they said it was elephantiasis he was a good fellow and told stories about the steamy jungle and the thunderstorms and the crocodiles and the horrible diseases and the ravenous fish and he drank up all the whisky in the sideboard and when he went in swimming you could see that there were brown thick blotches on his legs like the scale on an apple and he liked to drink whisky and he talked about Colombia becoming one of the richest countries in the world and oil and rare woods for veneering and tropical butterflies

but the trip up the Magdalena River was too long and too hot and too dangerous and he died

they said it was whisky and elephantiasis

and the Magdalena River

When they first arrived in New York, Eleanor, who’d never been East before, had to rely on Eveline for everything. Freddy met them at the train and took them to get rooms at the Brevoort. He said it was a little far from the theater but much more interesting than an uptown hotel, all the artists and radicals and really interesting people stayed there and it was very French. Going down in the taxi he chattered about the lovely magnificent play and his grand part, and what a fool the director Ben Freelby was, and how one of the backers had only put up half the money he’d promised; but that Josephine Gilchrist, the business manager, had the sum virtually lined up now and the Shuberts were interested and they would open out of town at Greenwich exactly a month from today. Eleanor looked out at Fifth Avenue and the chilly Spring wind blowing women’s skirts, a man chasing a derby hat, the green buses, taxicabs, the shine on shopwindows; after all, this wasn’t so very different from Chicago. But at lunch at the Brevoort it was very different, Freddy seemed to know so many people and introduced them to everybody as if he was very proud of them. They were all names she had heard or read of in the book column of The Daily News. Everybody seemed very friendly. Freddy talked French to the waiter and the hollandaise sauce was the most delicious she had ever eaten.