U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [400]
"I'm very much interested in industrial relations . . . it's a wonderful assignment. . . . But, Mr. Healy, aren't conditions pretty bad in the mil s?"
Mr. Healy jumped to his feet and began striding up
and down the office. "I've got al the dope on that. . . . Those damn guineas are making more money than they
ever made in their lives, they buy stocks, they buy wash-ingmachines and silk stockings for their women and they send money back to the old folks. While our boys were risking their lives in the trenches, they held down al the good jobs and most of 'em are enemy aliens at that. Those guineas are wel off, don't you forget it. The one thing they can't buy is brains. That's how those agitators get at
'em. They talk their language and fil 'em up with a lot of notions about how al they need to do is stop working and they can take possession of this country that we've
-133-built up into the greatest country in the world. . . . I don't hold it against the poor devils of guineas, they're just ignoranti but those reds who accept the hospitality of our country and then go around spreading their devilish prop-aganda . . . My god, if they were sincere I could forgive
'em, but they're just in it for the money like anybody else. We have absolute proof that they're paid by Russians reds with money and jewels they've stole over there; and they're not content with that, they go around shaking down those poor ignorant guineas . . . Wel , al I can say is shooting's too good for 'em." Ted Healy was red in the face. A boy in a green eyeshade burst in with a big bunch of flimsy. Mary French got to her feet. "I'l get right after it, Mr. Healy," she said.
She got off the car at the wrong corner and stumbled up the uneven pavement of a steep broad cobbled street of little gimcrack stores poolrooms barbershops and Italian spaghettiparlors. A gusty wind whirled dust and excelsior and old papers. Outside of an unpainted doorway foreign-looking men stood talking in low voices in knots of three or four. Before she could get up her nerve to go up the long steep dirty narrow stairs she looked for a minute into the photographer's window below at the tinted enlarge-ments of babies with toopink cheeks and the family groups and the ramrodstiff bridal couples. Upstairs she paused in the littered hal . From offices on both sides came a sound of typing and arguing voices. In the dark she ran into a young man. "Hel o," he said in a gruff voice she liked,
"are you the lady from New York?"
"Not exactly. I'm from Colorado."
"There was a lady from New York comin' to help us with some publicity. I thought maybe you was her."
"That's just what I came for."
"Come in, I'm just Gus Moscowski. I'm kinder the officeboy." He opened one of the closed doors for her into a smal dusty office piled with stackedup papers and fil ed
-134-up with a large table covered with clippings at which two young men in glasses sat in their shirtsleeves. "Here are the regular guys." Al the time she was talking to the others she couldn't keep her eyes off him. He had blond closecropped hair and very blue eyes and a big bearcub look in his cheap serge suit shiny at the elbows and knees. The young men answered her questions so politely that she couldn't help tel ing them she was trying to do a feature story for the Times-Sentinel. They laughed their heads off. "But Mr. Healy said he wanted a fair wel rounded picture. He just thinks the men are being misled." Mary found herself laughing too. "Gus," said the older man,
"you take this young lady around and show her some of the sights. . . . After al Ted Healy may have lost his mind. First here's what Ted Healy's friends did to Fanny Sel ers." She couldn't look at the photograph that he poked under her nose. "What