The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [438]
TRADE UNION UNITY
LEAGUE
They passed in a steady and confusing flow, men and women, white and black, blond and swarthy, carrying crude signs, slogans written on cardboard and attached to sticks and poles, singing and shouting, a succession of slogans breaking forth clearly, causing Lonigan to knit his brows and shake his head in wonderment.
Down with Imperialist War
Hands Off Nicaragua
We Demand Unemployment Insurance
Down with the Cossack Police Terror
“Comrades, join our ranks,” a plump girl called, passing Lonigan.
File after file strode forward. Poor people. Shabby people. Hunched and underfed men and women. Tall and powerful young men. Hefty, buxom Slavic girls. Lonigan looked idly from face to face, and singled out a tall buck Negro, his face black and surly, his pleated wide-bottomed brown trousers frayed, flopping and dragging at the cuff. Not a nice-looking customer, Lonigan decided. At the outside of the next rank a fat Negress with a red bandana about her head waked flat-footedly, constantly jerking her head about, smiling in a broad, white-toothed grin. She saw two flimsily-dressed, red-lipped, Slavic-faced girls on the curb ogling two corner hoodlums who had stepped out of the corner speak-easy.
“You ain’t too pretty to starve,” the Negress called out loudly in a deep, rich voice, causing laughter to rake the marching ranks.
“Go on back to your washing,” one of the girls flung back, applauded by the loafers.
“Come on, folks,” the Negress shouted with a wave of a beefy arm and flashing a broad smile as she flat-footed by Lonigan.
“Comrades, join our ranks.”
Lonigan’s mouth popped open in surprise. He watched a column of children in light blue uniforms with red armbands swinging behind a large banner.
YOUNG PIONEERS
A silent anger flushed his cheeks. Children shouldn’t be let parade with all this riff-raff, taught socialism and anarchy and atheism and ideas against God and America and the home in their tender years. The children chanted in unison.
We want Hoover,
We want Hoover,
We want Hoover,
With a rope around his neck.
Not right or decent. These youngsters should be taken away from their parents by law and placed in institutions so that they would not be contaminated with all their vile Bolshevism.
NATIONAL STUDENTS
LEAGUE UNIVERSITY
OF CHICAGO
From the University, too, he thought, slowly shaking his bewildered and shocked head, seeing students pass. And many of them were Jews, too. Father Shannon in his missions at St. Patrick’s had told what the A. P. A. professors at the University did.
We Want Scholarships Not Battleships
And this was what the A. P. A. professors did. They ought to be jailed, run out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered. A corpulent policeman with stern features and fattening cheeks smiled cordially at Lonigan. The face seemed very familiar to Lonigan, who returned the cop’s glance, smiling, searching his memory to place who it was. He had an impression of a swarm crowding past him, and from the corner of his eye noticed a group that looked like workingmen, singing with their clenched right fists raised.
Arise, ye prisoners of starvation,
Arise, ye wretched of the earth,
For justice thunders condemnation,
A better world’s in birth.
“Hello, Mr. Lonigan,” the policeman said. Lonigan still struggled to remember who it was. “I’m Jim Doyle.”
“Oh, how are you? I’m glad to see you. And I see that you’re on the force now.”
“Yes, I’m on the force,” Jim said. “This is a surprise to see you here, Mr. Lonigan,” he added as a file of marchers caused Lonigan to flinch by booing him and Jim Doyle.
“I had some business to transact