U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [1]
hushed beaches.
It was not in the long walks through jostling
crowds at night that he was less alone, or in the train-ing camp at Al entown, or in the day on the docks at Seattle, or in the empty reek of Washington City hot boyhood summer nights, or in the meal on Market
Street, or in the swim off the red rocks at San Diego, or in the bed ful of fleas in New Orleans, or in the cold razorwind off the lake, or in the gray faces trem-bling in the grind of gears in the street under Michigan Avenue, or in the smokers of limited expresstrains, or walking across country, or riding up the dry mountain canyons, or the night without a sleepingbag among
frozen beartracks in the Yel owstone, or canoeing Sun-days on the Quinnipiac;
-vi-but in his mother's words tel ing about longago, in his father's tel ing about when I was a boy, in the kidding stories of uncles, in the lies the kids told at school, the hired man's yarns, the tal tales the dough-boys told after taps; it was the speech that clung to the ears, the link that tingled in the blood; U. S. A.
U. S. A. is the slice of a continent. U. S. A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stock-quotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a publiclibrary ful of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests
scrawled on the margins in pencil. U. S. A. is the
world's greatest riverval ey fringed with mountains and hil s, U. S. A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts. U. S. A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U. S. A. is the letters at the end of an address when you are away from home. But mostly U. S. A. is the speech of the people.
-vii-THE 42nd PARALLEL
-iii-CONTENTS
NEWSREEL I It was that emancipated race
3
The Camera Eye (1) when you walk along
the street you have to step carefully always
5
MAC
6
The Camera Eye (2) we hurry wallowing
like in a boat
13
MAC
14
NEWSREEL II Come on and hear
23
The Camera Eye (3) O qu'il a des beaux yeux
said the lady
24
LOVER OF MANKIND
26
The Camera Eye (4) riding backwards through
the rain
28
MAC
29
NEWSREEL III "It takes nerve to live in this world" 54
The Camera Eye (5) and we played the battle
of Port Arthur
55
NEWSREEL IV I met my love in the Alamo
56
The Camera Eye (6) Go it go it said Mr.
Linwood
57
NEWSREEL V BUGS DRIVE OUT BIOLOGIST
58
MAC
58
NEWSREEL VI Paris Shocked At Last
80
-v-The Camera Eye (7) skating on the pond next
the silver company's mills
81
THE PLANT WIZARD
82
NEWSREEL VII SAYS THIS IS CENTURY WHERE
BILLIONS AND BRAINS ARE TO RULE
84
The Camera Eye (8) you sat on the bed un-
lacing your shoes
85
MAC
86
The Camera
Eye (9) all
day the
fertilizer-
factories
smelt
something
awful
92
BIG BILL
93
The Camera
Eye (10) the
old major
who
used to take
me to the
Capitol
96
MAC
98
NEWSREEL
VIII Prof
Ferrer,
former
director of
the Modern
10
School
7
The Camera
Eye (11) the
Pennypacker
s went
to the
Presbyterian 10
church
8
NEWSREEL
IX FORFEIT
STARS BY
10
DRINKING
9
MAC
110
The Camera
Eye (12)
when
everybody
went
away for a
12
trip
9
NEWSREEL
X MOON'S
PATENT IS 13
FIZZLE
0
The Camera
Eye (13) he
was a
towboat cap-
tain and he
knew the
13
river
1
JANEY
133
-vi-NEWSREEL XI the government of the United
States must insist
148
JANEY
150
The Camera
Eye (15) in the
mouth of the
Schuylkill
166
NEWSREEL
XII Greeks in
battle flee
before cops
167
THE BOY
ORATOR OF
THE
PLATTE
169
The Camera
Eye (16) it was
hot as a bake-
oven going
through the
canal
173
J. WARD
17
MOOREHOUSE 4
The Camera
Eye (17) the
spring you