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“Who are you? What’s your name?”

“Lonigan.”

The cop eyed Lonigan with an apparent and growing indecision.

“Well, I got to keep people back, you know, Mr. Lonigan. No hard feelings. Only try and keep on the curb. These bastards around here are tough to handle, and it’s no soft job for us. This is all extra duty. We got orders to prevent trouble today and I’m only following my orders. But if I had my way,” the cop raised his club slowly, winked, “It isn’t no picnic for us.”

“Have a cigar.’

“Thanks, I will. My name’s Roonan,” the policeman said, inserting the cigar in an inside pocket.

Down with Hoover

“I suppose that makes Hoover afraid,” a young fellow with Semitic features said, and Lonigan turned, noticing that he was well dressed and carried a briefcase.

“Hoover is a tool of the capitalists just like the Czar was,” a well-built, middle-aged Jewish man in a brown suit said with a slight Yiddish accent.

“Yes, but I suppose that makes his knees quake.”

Down with Cermak

“Young fellow,” the older Jewish man said, “in Russia they say I will never see the revolution. So I will never live to see it, hanh? So we couldn’t make the Czar afraid, hanh? Veil, I heard all that before.”

Down with the Bosses Government

“Back in the old country they told me I will never live to see the Czar overthrown and the Ochrana kicked out. And the Cossacks and peasants, they told me, they will murder you, not follow you. That was in 1905. My sainted mother, she cried, ‘They will find you, kill you, send you to Siberia, my darling.’ And they did. They chase us, they beat us because we are Socialist, they hunt us like wild animals.”

We Demand Unemployment Insurance

“Twelve year’s later, I see it all. I see it. We kick the Czar out on his tuchas, the Ochrana, and the Generals, too. Now Cossack and Jew are friends, work together to build Socialism. Tomorrow? Hoover is not afraid?” The older man spit contemptuously and the younger one smirked. “Tomorrow, here we will see. Tomorrow we will throw out broker and banker, and Pershing and Hoover on their tuchases, and white and black, Jew and Gentile, we will build Socialism in America.”

“Well, why don’t you go back home to Russia if it’s like that?” the younger fellow sneered, looking at the older man as if the latter were insane.

“I’ll stay here and we’ll make America like Russia,” the man in the brown suit said. Cheers greeted him as he joined the demonstration.

FREE TOM MOONEY

“Nuts, all right, thinking they can overthrow the government. Wait till Hoover hears of this. It’ll give him apoplexy,” the young fellow with the briefcase remarked to Lonigan.

“I don’t see why the police permit this,” Lonigan said, shaking his head sagely.

“It’s just as well. They got to get off steam some way, and if they do it in the open, they won’t be conspiring.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Lonigan said.

The last column passed, filling the street, singing with raised right fists.

‘Tis the final conflict,

Let each stand in his place,

The International Soviet

Shall be the human race.

He watched the moving backs, turned, walked back slowly to his automobile. Home now, the home the bankers would be getting soon. And Bill? Was he dead? Oh, but Paddy Lonigan was an unhappy man, and those people in the parade, they were happy, happier than he was.

V

Lonigan stepped out of the police station, still cursing. Those goddamn kids. Stealing his spare tire. There wasn’t any chance, hardly, of getting it back, either. The sergeant had said that the neighborhood was full of thieving kids. What was going to become of them when they grew up?

He drove off. Thieving little bastards, stealing a man’s spare tire right off the car! When they grew up, a man’s life and property wouldn’t be safe. What was Chicago coming to, what with the kids like the ones who’d snatched his tire, the Reds and the niggers? He shook his head sadly, thinking of how the shines had already ruined so much of the south side. Had it been so good to free the slaves? Of course, all men