Newsreel XL
CRIMINAL IN PYJAMAS SAWS BARS;
SCALES WALLS; FLEES
Italians! against all and everything remember that the beacon is lighted at Fiume and that all harangues are contained in the words: Fiume or Death.
Criez au quatre vents que je n’accepte aucune transaction. Le reste ici contre tout le monde et je prépare de très mauvais jours.
Criez cela je vous prie a tû-tête
the call for enlistments mentions a chance for gold service stripes, opportunities for big game hunting and thrilling watersports added to the general advantages of travel in foreign countries
Chi va piano
Va sano
Chi va forte
Va ’la morte
Evviva la libertá
EARTHQUAKE IN ITALY DEVASTATES
LIKE WAR
only way Y.M.C.A. girls can travel is on troop ships; part of fleet will go seaward to help Wilson
DEMPSEY KNOCKS OUT WILLARD
IN THIRD ROUND
Ils sont sourds.
Je vous embrasse.
Le cœur de Fiume est à vous.
Joe Hill
A young Swede name Hillstrom went to sea, got himself calloused hands on sailingships and tramps, learned English in the focastle of the steamers that make the run from Stockholm to Hull, dreamed the Swede’s dream of the west;
when he got to America they gave him a job polishing cuspidors in a Bowery saloon.
He moved west to Chicago and worked in a machineshop.
He moved west and followed the harvest, hung around employment agencies, paid out many a dollar for a job in a construction camp, walked out many a mile when the grub was too bum, or the boss too tough, or too many bugs in the bunkhouse;
read Marx and the I.W.W. Preamble and dreamed about forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.
He was in California for the S.P. strike (Casey Jones, two locomotives, Casey Jones), used to play the concertina outside the bunkhouse door, after supper, evenings (Longhaired preachers come out every night), had a knack for setting rebel words to tunes (And the union makes us strong).
Along the coast in cookshacks flophouses jungles wobblies hoboes bindlestiffs began singing Joe Hill’s songs. They sang ’em in the county jails of the State of Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Idaho, in the bullpens in Montana and Arizona, sang ’em in Walla Walla, San Quentin and Leavenworth,
forming the structure of the new society within the jails of the old.
At Bingham, Utah, Joe Hill organized the workers of the Utah Construction Company in the One Big Union, won a new wage-scale, shorter hours, better grub. (The angel Moroni didn’t like labororganizers any better than the Southern Pacific did.)
The angel Moroni moved the hearts of the Mormons to decide it was Joe Hill shot a grocer named Morrison. The Swedish consul and President Wilson tried to get him a new trial but the angel Moroni moved the hearts of the supreme court of the State of Utah to sustain the verdict of guilty. He was in jail a year, went on making up songs. In November 1915 he was stood up against the wall in the jail yard in Salt Lake City.
“Don’t mourn for me organize,” was the last word he sent out to the workingstiffs of the I.W.W. Joe Hill stood up against the wall of the jail yard, looked into the muzzles of the guns and gave the word to fire.
They put him in a black suit, put a stiff collar around his neck and a bow tie, shipped him to Chicago for a bangup funeral, and photographed his handsome stony mask staring into the future.
The first of May they scattered his ashes to the wind.
Ben Compton
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. . . .
The old people were Jews but at school Benny always said no he wasn’t a Jew he was an American because he’d been born in Brooklyn and lived at 2531 25th Avenue in Flatbush and they owned their home. The teacher in the seventh grade said he squinted and sent him home with a note, so Pop took an afternoon off from the jewelry store where he worked with a lens in his eye repairing watches, to take Benny to an optician who put drops in his eyes and made him read little teeny letters on a white card. Pop seemed tickled when the optician said Benny had to wear glasses, “Vatchmaker’s eyes . . . takes after his old man,” he said and patted his cheek. The steel eyeglasses were heavy on Benny’s nose and cut into him behind the ears. It made him feel funny to have Pop telling the optician that a boy with glasses wouldn’t be a bum and a baseball player like Sam and Isidore but would attend to his studies and be a lawyer and a scholar like the men of old. “A rabbi maybe,” said the optician, but Pop said rabbis were loafers and lived on the blood of the poor, he and the old woman still ate kosher and kept the sabbath like their fathers but synagogue and the rabbis . . . he made a spitting sound with his lips. The optician laughed and said as for himself he was a freethinker but religion was good for the commonpeople. When they got home momma said the glasses made Benny look awful old. Sam and Izzy yelled, “Hello, foureyes,” when they came in from selling papers, but at school next day they told the other kids it was a statesprison offence to roughhouse a feller with glasses. Once he had the glasses Benny got to be very good at his lessons.
In highschool he made the debating team. When he was thirteen Pop had a long illness and had to give up work for a year. They lost the house that was almost paid for and went to live in a flat on Myrtle Avenue. Benny got work in a drugstore evenings. Sam and Izzy left home, Sam to work in a furrier’s in Newark; Izzy had gotten to loafing in poolparlors so Pop threw him out. He’d always been a good athlete and palled around with an Irishman named Pug Riley who was going to get him into the ring. Momma cried and Pop forbade any of the kids to mention his name; still they all knew that Gladys, the oldest one, who was working as a stenographer over in Manhattan, sent Izzy a five dollar bill now and then. Benny looked much older than he was and hardly ever thought of anything except making money so the old people could have a house of their own again. When he grew up he’d be a lawyer and a business man and make a pile quick so that Gladys could quit work and get married and the old people could buy a big house and live in the country. Momma used to tell him about how when she was a young maiden in the old country they used to go out in the woods after strawberries and mushrooms and stop by a farmhouse and drink milk all warm and foamy from the cow. Benny was going to get rich and take them all out in the country for a trip to a summer resort.
When Pop was well enough to work again he rented half a two-family house in Flatbush where at least they’d be away from the noise of the elevated. The same year Benny graduated from highschool and won a prize for an essay on The American Government. He’d gotten very tall and thin and had terrible headaches. The old people said he’d outgrown himself and took him to see Dr. Cohen who lived on the same block but had his office downtown near Borough Hall. The doctor said he’d have to give up night work and studying too hard, what he needed was something that would keep him outdoors and develop his body. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” he said, scratching the grizzled beard under his chin. Benny said he had to make some money this summer because he wanted to go to New York University in the fall. Dr. Cohen said he ought to eat plenty of milkdishes and fresh eggs and go somewhere where he could be out in the sun and take it easy all summer. He charged two dollars. Walking home the old man kept striking his forehead with the flat of his hand and saying he was a failure, thirty years he had worked in America and now he was a sick old man all used up and couldn’t provide for his children. Momma cried. Gladys told them not to be silly, Benny was a clever boy and a bright student and what was the use of all his booklearning if he couldn’t think up some way of getting a job in the country. Benny went to bed without saying anything.
A few days later Izzy came home. He rang the doorbell as soon as the old man had gone to work one morning. “You almost met Pop,” said Benny who opened the door. “Nutten doin’. I waited round the c
orner till I seen him go. . . . How’s everybody?” Izzy had on a light grey suit and a green necktie and wore a fedora hat to match the suit. He said he had to get to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to fight a Filipino featherweight on Saturday. “Take me with you,” said Benny. “You ain’t tough enough, kid . . . too much the momma’s boy.” In the end Benny went with him. They rode on the L to Brooklyn Bridge and then walked across New York to the ferry. They bought tickets to Elizabeth. When the train stopped in a freightyard they sneaked forward into the blind baggage. At West Philadelphia they dropped off and got chased by the yard detective. A brewery wagon picked them up and carried them along the road as far as West Chester. They had to walk the rest of the way. A Mennonite farmer let them spend the night in the barn, but in the morning he wouldn’t let them have any breakfast until they’d chopped wood for two hours. By the time they got to Lancaster Benny was all in. He went to sleep in the lockerroom at the Athletic Club and didn’t wake up until the fight was over. Izzy had knocked out the Filipino featherweight in the third round and won a purse of twentyfive dollars. He sent Benny over to a lodginghouse with the shine who took care of the lockerroom and went out with the boys to paint the town red. Next morning he turned up with his face green and got his eyes bloodshot; he’d spent all his money, but he’d gotten Benny a job helping a feller who did a little smalltime fightpromoting and ran a canteen in a construction camp up near Mauch Chunk.
It was a road job. Ben stayed there for two months earning ten dollars a week and his keep. He learned to drive a team and to keep books. The boss of the canteen, Hiram Volle, gypped the construction workers in their accounts, but Benny didn’t think much about it because they were most of ’em wops, until he got to be friends with a young fellow named Nick Gigli who worked with the gang at the gravelpit. Nick used to hang around the canteen before closingtime in the evening; then they’d go out and smoke a cigarette together and talk. Sundays they’d walk out in the country with the Sunday paper and fool around all afternoon lying in the sun and talking about the articles in the magazine section. Nick was from north Italy and all the men in the gang were Sicilians, so he was lonely. His father and elder brothers were anarchists and he was too; he told Benny about Bakunin and Malatesta and said Benny ought to be ashamed of himself for wanting to get to be a rich businessman; sure he ought to study and learn, maybe he ought to get to be a lawyer, but he ought to work for the revolution and the working class, to be a business man was to be a shark and a robber like that son of a bitch Volle. He taught Benny to roll cigarettes and told him about all the girls that were in love with him; that girl in the boxoffice of the movie in Mauch Chunk; he could have her anytime he wanted, but a revolutionist ought to be careful about the girls he went with, women took a classconscious working man’s mind off his aims, they were the main seduction of capitalist society. Ben asked him if he thought he ought to throw up his job with Volle, because Volle was such a crook, but Nick said any other capitalist would be the same, all they could do was wait for the Day. Nick was eighteen with bitter brown eyes and a skin almost as dark as a mulatto’s. Ben thought he was great on account of all he’d done; he’d shined shoes, been a sailor, a miner, a dishwasher and had worked in textile mills, shoefactories and a cement factory and had had all kinds of women and been in jail for three weeks in the Paterson strike. Round the camp if any of the wops saw Ben going anywhere alone he’d yell at him, “Hey, kid, where’s Nick?”
On Friday evening there was an argument in front of the window where the construction boss was paying the men off. That night, when Ben was getting into his bunk in the back of the tarpaper shack the canteen was in, Nick came around and whispered in his ear that the bosses had been gypping the men on time and that they were going on strike tomorrow. Ben said if they went out he’d go out too. Nick called him a brave comrade in Italian and hauled off and kissed him on both cheeks. Next morning only a few of the pick and shovel men turned out when the whistle blew. Ben hung around the door of the cookshack not knowing what to do with himself. Volle noticed him and told him to hitch up the team to go down to the station after a box of tobacco. Ben looked at his feet and said he couldn’t because he was on strike. Volle burst out laughing and told him to quit his kidding, funniest thing he’d ever heard of a kike walking out with a lot of wops. Ben felt himself go cold and stiff all over: “I’m not a kike any more’n you are. . . . I’m an American born . . . and I’m goin’ to stick with my class, you dirty crook.” Volle turned white and stepped up and shook a big fist under Ben’s nose and said he was fired and that if he wasn’t a little f—g shrimp of a foureyed kike he’d knock his goddam block off, anyway his brother sure would give him a whaling when he heard about it.
Ben went to his bunk and rolled his things into a bundle and went off to find Nick. Nick was a little down the road where the bunkhouses were, in the center of a bunch of wops all yelling and waving their arms. The superintendent and the gangbosses all turned out with revolvers in black holsters strapped around their waists and one of them made a speech in English and another one Sicilian saying that this was a squareshooting concern that had always treated laborers square and if they didn’t like it they could get the hell out. They’d never had a strike and didn’t propose to begin now. There was big money involved in this job and the company wasn’t going to work and see it tied up by any goddam foolishness. Any man who wasn’t on his job next time the whistle blew was fired and would have to get a move on and remember that the State of Pennsylvania had vagrancy laws. When the whistle blew again everybody went back to work except Ben and Nick. They walked off down the road with their bundles. Nick had tears in his eyes and was saying, “Too much gentle, too much patient . . . we do not know our strength yet.”
That night they found a brokendown schoolhouse a little off the road on a hill above a river. They’d bought some bread and peanut butter at a store and sat out in front eating it and talking about what they’d do. By the time they’d finished eating it was dark. Ben had never been out in the country alone like that at night. The wind rustled the woods all around and the rapid river seethed down in the valley. It was a chilly August night with a heavy dew. They didn’t have any covering so Nick showed Ben how to take his jacket off and put it over his head and how to sleep against the wall to keep from getting sore lying on the bare boards. He’d hardly gotten to sleep when he woke up icycold and shaking. There was a window broken; he could see the frame and the jagged bits of glass against the cloudy moonlight. He lay back, musta been dreaming. Something banged on the roof and rolled down the shingles over his head and dropped to the ground. “Hay, Ben, for chrissake wassat?” came Nick’s voice in a hoarse whisper. They both got up and stared out through the broken windowframe.
“That was busted before,” said Nick. He walked over and opened the outside door. They both shivered in the chilly wind up the valley that rustled the trees like rain, the river down below made a creaking grinding noise like a string of carts and wagons.
A stone hit the roof above them and rolled off. The next one went between their heads and hit the cracked plaster of the wall behind. Ben heard the click of the blade as Nick opened his pocketknife. He strained his eyes till the tears came but he couldn’t make out anything but the leaves stirring in the wind.
“You come outa there . . . come up here . . . talk . . . you son of a bitch,” yelled Nick.
There was no answer.
“What do you think?” whispered Nick over his shoulder to Ben.
Ben didn’t say anything; he was trying to keep his teeth from chattering. Nick pushed him back in and pulled the door to. They piled the dusty benches against the door and blocked up the lower part of the window with boards out of the floor.
“Break in. I keell one of him anyhow,” said Nick. “You don’t believe in speerits?”
“Naw, no such thing,” said Ben. They sat down side by side on the floor with their backs to the cracked plaster and listened. Nick had put the knife down between them. He took Ben
’s fingers and made him feel the catch that held the blade steady. “Good knife . . . sailor knife,” he whispered. Ben strained his ears. Only the spattering sound of the wind in the trees and the steady grind of the river. No more stones came.
Next morning they left the schoolhouse at first day. Neither of them had had any sleep. Ben’s eyes were stinging. When the sun came up they found a man who was patching up a broken spring on a truck. They helped him jack it up with a block of wood and he gave them a lift into Scranton where they got jobs washing dishes in a hashjoint run by a Greek.
. . . all fixed fastfrozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all newformed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. . . .
Pearldiving wasn’t much to Ben’s taste, so at the end of a couple of weeks, as he’d saved up the price of the ticket, he said he was going back home to see the old people. Nick stayed on because a girl in a candystore had fallen for him. Later he’d go up to Allentown, where a brother of his had a job in a steelmill and was making big money. The last thing he said when he went down and put Ben on the train for New York was, “Benny, you learn and study . . . be great man for workingclass and remember too much girls bad business.”
Ben hated leaving Nick but he had to get home to find a job for the winter that would give him time to study. He took the exams and matriculated at the College of the City of New York. The old man borrowed a hundred dollars from the Morris Plan to get him started and Sam sent him twentyfive from Newark to buy books with. Then he made a little money himself working in Kahn’s drugstore evenings. Sunday afternoons he went to the library and read Marx’s Capital. He joined the Socialist Party and went to lectures at the Rand School whenever he got a chance. He was working to be a wellsharpened instrument.