Main Street (Barnes & Noble Classics Ser - Sinclair Lewis [227]
The story was threshed out in Dave Dyer’s drug store, with Sam Clark, Kennicott, and Carol present.
“That’s the way to treat those fellows—only they ought to have lynched him!” declared Sam, and Kennicott and Dave Dyer joined in a proud “You bet!”
Carol walked out hastily, Kennicott observing her.
Through supper-time she knew that he was bubbling and would soon boil over. When the baby was abed, and they sat composedly in canvas chairs on the porch, he experimented, “I had a hunch you thought Sam was kind of hard on that fellow they kicked out of Wakamin.”
“Wasn’t Sam rather needlessly heroic?”
“All these organizers, yes, and a whole lot of the German and Squarehead farmers themselves, they’re seditious as the devil—disloyal, non-patriotic, pro-German pacifists, that’s what they are!”
“Did this organizer say anything pro-German?”
“Not on your life! They didn’t give him a chance!” His laugh was stagey.
“So the whole thing was illegal—and led by the sheriff? Precisely how do you expect these aliens to obey your law if the officer of the law teaches them to break it? Is it a new kind of logic?”
“Maybe it wasn’t exactly regular, but what’s the odds? They knew this fellow would try to stir up trouble. Whenever it comes right down to a question of defending Americanism and our constitutional rights, it’s justifiable to set aside ordinary procedure.”
“What editorial did he get that from?” she wondered as she protested, “See here, my beloved, why can’t you Tories declare war honestly? You don’t oppose this organizer because you think he’s seditious but because you’re afraid that the farmers he is organizing will deprive you townsmen of the money you make out of mortgages and wheat and shops. Of course, since we’re at war with Germany, anything that anyone of us doesn’t like is ‘pro-German,’ whether it’s business competition or bad music. If we were fighting England, you’d call the radicals ‘pro-English.’ When this war is over, I suppose you’ll be calling them ‘red anarchists.’ What an eternal art it is—such a glittery delightful art—finding hard names for our opponents! How we do sanctify our efforts to keep them from getting the holy dollars we want for ourselves! The churches have always done it, and the political orators—and I suppose I do it when I call Mrs. Bogart a ‘Puritan’ and Mr. Stowbody a ‘capitalist.’ But you business men are going to beat all the rest of us at it, with your simple-hearted, energetic, pompous———”
She got so far only because Kennicott was slow in shaking off respect for her. Now he bayed:
“That’ll be about all from you! I’ve stood for your sneering at this town, and saying how ugly and dull it is. I’ve stood for your refusing to appreciate good fellows like Sam. I’ve even stood for your ridiculing our Watch Gopher Prairie Grow campaign. But one thing I’m not going to stand: I’m not going to stand my own wife being seditious. You can camouflage all you want to, but you know darn well that these radicals, as you call ’em, are opposed to the war, and let me tell you right here and now, and you and all these long-haired men and shorthaired women can beef all you want to, but we’re going to take these fellows, and if they ain’t patriotic, we’re going to make them be patriotic. And—Lord knows I never thought I’d have to say this to my own wife—but if you go defending these fellows, then the same thing applies to you! Next thing, I suppose you’ll be yapping about free speech. Free speech! There’s too much free speech and free gas and free beer and free love and all the rest of your damned mouthy freedom, and if I had my way I’d make you folks live up to the established rules of