U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [361]
Along the coast in cookshacks flophouses jungles
wobblies hoboes bindlestiffs began singing Joe Hil 's songs. They sang 'em in the county jails of the State of Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Idaho, in the bul pens in Montana and Arizona, sang 'em in
Wal a Wal a, San Quentin and Leavenworth,
forming the structure of the new society within
the jails of the old.
At Bingham, Utah, Joe Hil organized the work-ers of the Utah Construction Company in the One Big Union, won a new wagescale, shorter hours, better
grub. (The angel Moroni didn't like labororganizers any better than the Southern Pacific did.)
-422-The angel Moroni moved the hearts of the Mor-mons to decide it was Joe Hil shot a grocer named Morrison. The Swedish consul and President Wilson
tried to get him a new trial but the angel Moroni moved the hearts of the supreme court of the State of Utah to sustain the verdict of guilty. He was in jail a year, went on making up songs. In November 1915 he was
stood up against the wal in the jail yard in Salt Lake City.
"Don't mourn for me organize," was the last word he sent out to the workingstiffs of the I.W.W. Joe
Hil stood up against the wal of the jail yard, looked into the muzzles of the guns and gave the word to fire. They put him in a black suit, put a stiff col ar around his neck and a bow tie, shipped him to Chicago for a bangup funeral, and photographed his handsome stony mask staring into the future.
The first of May they scattered his ashes to the
wind.
BEN COMPTON
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. . . . The old people were Jews but at school Benny always said no he wasn't a Jew he was an American because he'd been born in Brooklyn and lived at 2531 25th Avenue in Flatbush and they owned their home. The teacher in the seventh grade said he squinted and sent him home with a note, so Pop took an afternoon off from the jewelry store where he worked with a lens in his eye repairing watches, to take Benny to an optician who put drops in his eyes and made him read little teeny letters on a white card. Pop seemed tickled when the optician said Benny had to wear
-423-glasses, "Vatchmaker's eyes . . . takes after his old man," he said and patted his cheek. The steel eyeglasses were heavy on Benny's nose and cut into him behind the ears. It made him feel funny to have Pop tel ing the optician that a boy with glasses wouldn't be a bum and a basebal player like Sam and Isidore but would attend to his stud-ies and be a lawyer and a scholar like the men of old. "A rabbi maybe," said the optician, but Pop said rabbis were loafers and lived on the blood of the poor, he and the old woman stil ate kosher and kept the sabbath like their fathers but synagogue and the rabbis. . . he made a spit-ting sound with his lips. The optician laughed and said as for himself he was a freethinker but religion was good for the commonpeople. When they got home momma said the glasses made Benny look awful old. Sam and Izzy yel ed,
"Hel o, foureyes," when they came in from sel ing papers, but at school next day they told the other kids it was a states-prison offence to roughhouse a fel er with glasses. Once he had the glasses Benny got to be very good at his lessons. In highschool he made the debating team. When he was thirteen Pop had a long il ness and had to give up work for a year. They lost the house that was almost paid for and went to live in a flat on Myrtle Avenue. Benny got work in a drugstore evenings. Sam and Izzy left home, Sam to work in a furrier's in Newark; Izzy had gotten to loafing in poolparlors so Pop threw him out. He'd always been a good athlete and pal ed around with an Irishman named Pug Riley who was going to get him into the ring. Momma cried and Pop forbade any of the kids to mention his name; stil they al knew that Gladys, the oldest one, who was working as a stenographer over in Manhattan, sent Izzy a five dol ar bil now and then. Benny looked