U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [114]
was good as gold and tried to make it up to Dad and the boys by baking cakes for them and attending to the house-keeping for having acted so mean and crazy al summer. She met Ada in Dal as and they engaged a section to-gether. She'd been hoping that Joe would come down to the station to see them off, but he was in Oklahoma City on oil business. On her way north she wrote him a long
-269-letter saying she didn't know what had gotten into her that day with the rattler and wouldn't he please forgive her. Daughter worked hard that autumn. She'd gotten her-self admitted to the School of Journalism, in spite of Ed-win's disapproval. He wanted her to study to be a teacher or social worker, but she said journalism offered more op-portunity. They more or less broke off over it; although they saw each other a good deal, they didn't talk so much about being engaged. There was a boy named Webb Cruth-ers studying journalism that Daughter got to be good friends with although Ada said he was no good and
wouldn't let her bring him to the house. He was shorter than she, had dark hair and looked about fifteen although he said he was twentyone. He had a creamy white skin that made people cal him Babyface, and a funny confiden-tial way of talking as if he didn't take what he was saying altogether seriously himself. He said he was an anarchist and talked al the time about politics and the war. He used to take her down to the East Side, too, but it was more fun than going with Edwin. Webb always wanted to go in somewhere to get a drink and talk to people. He took her to saloons and to Roumanian rathskel ers and Arabian res-taurants and more places than she'd ever imagined. He knew everybody everywhere and seemed to manage to
make people trust him for the check, because he hardly ever had any money, and when they'd spent whatever she
-had with her Webb would have to charge the rest. Daugh-ter didn't drink more than an occasional glass of wine, and if he began to get too obstreperous, she'd make him take her to the nearest subway and go on home. Then next day he'd be a little weak and trembly and tel her about his hangover and funny stories about adventures held had when he was tight. He always had pamphlets in his pock-ets about socialism and syndicalism and copies of Mother Earth or The Masses. After Christmas Webb got al wrapped up in a strike of
-270-textile workers that was going on in a town over in New Jersey. One Sunday they went over to see what it was like. They got off the train at a grimy brick station in the middle of the empty business section, a few people standing around in front of lunchcounters, empty stores closed for Sunday; there seemed nothing special about the town until they walked out to the long low square brick buildings of the mil s. There were knots of policemen in blue standing about in the wide muddy roadway outside and inside the wiremesh gates huskylooking young men in khaki. "Those are special deputies, the sons of bitches," muttered Webb between his teeth. They went to Strike Headquarters to see a girl Webb knew who was doing publicity for them. At the head of a grimy stairway crowded with greyfaced for-eign men and women in faded greylooking clothes, they found an office noisy with talk and click of typewriters. The hal way was piled with stacks of handbil s that a tiredlook-ing young man was giving out in packages to boys in ragged sweaters. Webb found Sylvia Dalhart, a longnosed girl with glasses who was typing madly at a desk piled with newspapers and clippings. She waved a hand and said,
"Webb, wait for me outside. I'm going to show some news-paper guys around and you'd better come." ut in the hal they ran into a fel ow Webb knew, Ben Compton, a tal young man with a long thin nose and red-rimmed eyes, who said he was going to speak at the meet-ing and asked Webb if he wouldn't speak. "Jeez, what could I say to those fel ers?
I'm just a bum of a col ege stoodjent, like you, Ben." "Tel 'em the workers have got to win the world, tel 'em this fight is part