U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [140]
and the dynamos sang dol ars and the silence of the transformers was al dol ars, and the publicity department poured oily stories
into the ears of the American public every Sunday and Steinmetz became the little parlor magician,
who made a toy thunderstorm in his laboratory
and made al the toy trains run on time and the meat stay cold in the icebox and the lamp in the parlor and the great lighthouses and the searchlights and the re-volving beams of light that guide airplanes at night
-327-towards Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and they let him be a socialist and believe that
human society could be improved the way you can
improve a dynamo and they let him be pro-German
and write a letter offering his services to Lenin because mathematicians are so impractical who make up for-mulas by which you can build powerplants, factories, subway systems, light, heat, air, sunshine but not
human relations that affect the stockholders' money and the directors' salaries. Steinmetz was a famous magician and he talked to
Edison tapping with the Morse code on Edison's knee because Edison was so very deaf and he went out West
to make speeches that nobody understood
and he talked to Bryan about God on a railroad
train
and al the reporters stood round while he and
Einstein
met face to face,
but they couldn't catch what they said
and Steinmetz was the most valuable piece of ap-paratus General Electric had until he wore out and died.
JANEY
The trip to Mexico and the private car the Mexican
government put at the disposal of J. Ward Moorehouse to go back north in was lovely but a little tiresome, and it was so dusty going across the desert. Janey bought some
-328-very pretty things so cheap, some turquoise jewelry and pink onyx to take home to Alice and her mother and
sisters as presents. Going up in the private car J. Ward kept her busy dictating and there was a big bunch of men always drinking and smoking cigars and laughing at smutty stories in the smokingroom or on the observation platform. One of them was that man c she'd done
some work for in Washington. He always stopped to talk to her now and she didn't like the way his eyes were when he stood over her table talking to her, stil he was an interesting man and quite different from what she'd imag-ined a laborleader would be like, and it amused her to think that she knew about Queenie and how startled he'd be if he knew she knew. She kidded him a good deal and she thought maybe he was getting a crush on her, but he was the sort of man who'd be like that with any woman. They didn't have a private car after Laredo and the trip wasn't so nice. They went straight through to New York. She had a lower in a different car from J. Ward and his friends, and in the upper berth there was a young fel ow she took quite a fancy to. His name was Buck Saunders and he was from the panhandle of Texas and talked with the funniest drawl. He'd punched cows and worked in the Oklahoma oilfields and had saved up some money and was going to see Washington City. He was
tickled to death when she said she was from Washington and she told him al about what he ought to see, the Capitol and the White House and the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument and the Old Soldiers'
Home and Mount Vernon. She said to be sure to go out to Great Fal s and told him about canoeing on the canal and how she'd been caught in a terrible thunderstorm once near Cabin John's Bridge. They ate several meals together in the dining car and he told her she was a dandy girl and awful easy to talk to and how he had a girl in Tulsa, Ok., and how he was going to get a job in Vene--329-zuela, down at Maracaibo in the oilfields because she'd thrown him over to marry a rich dirtfarmer who struck oil in his cowpasture. G. H. Barrow kidded Janey about her fine handsome pickup and she said what about him and the redheaded lady who got off in St. Louis, and they laughed and she felt quite devilish and that G. H. Barrow wasn't so bad after al . When Buck got off the train in Washington he gave her a snapshot of himself