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By Root 9089 0

who Ben had said had a smal business, a sweatshop probably, was polite and oily. Only Izzy, the youngest brother, looked anything like a workingman and he was more likely a gangster. He treated her with kidding familiarity, she could see he thought of her as Ben's mol . They al admired Ben, she could see; he was the bright boy, the scholar, but they felt sorry about his radicalism as if it was an unfortunate sickness he had contracted. Stil his name in the paper, the applause in Madison Square Garden, the speeches cal -ing him a workingclass hero had impressed them. After Ben and Mary had left the Comptons and were going into the subwaystation, Ben said bitterly in her ear, "Wel , that's the Jewish family. . . . What do you think of it?

Some straitjacket. . . . It'ud be the same if I kil ed a man or ran a string of whorehouses . .

. even in the movement you can't break away from them.""But, Ben, it's got its good side

. . . they'd do anything in the world

-445-for you . . . my mother and me we real y hate each other."

Ben needed clothes and so did Mary; she never had

any of the money from the job left over from week to week, so for the first time in her life she wrote her mother asking for five hundred dol ars. Her mother sent back a check with a rather nice letter saying that she'd been made Republican State Committeewoman and that she admired Mary's independence because she'd always believed women had just as much iright as men to earn their own living and maybe women in politics would have a better influence than she'd once thought, and certainly Mary was showing grit in carving out a career for herself, but she did hope she'd soon come around to seeing that she could have just as interesting a career if she'd come back to Colorado Springs and occupy the social position her mother's situ-ation entitled her to. Ben was so delighted when he saw the check he didn't ask what Mary had got the money for. "Five hundred bucks is just what I needed," he said.

"I hadn't wanted to tel you but they want me to lead a strike over in Bayonne . . . rayonworkers . . . you know, the old munitionplants made over to make artificial silk.

. . . It's a tough town and the workers are so poor they can't pay their union dues . . . but they've got a fine radical union over there. It's important to get a foothold in the new industries . . . that's where the old sel out organizations of the A. F. of L. are failing. . . . Five hun-dred bucks'l take care of the printing bil ."

"Oh, Ben, you are not rested yet. I'm so afraid they'l arrest you again." He kissed her. "Nothing to worry about."

"But, Ben, I wanted you to get some clothes."

"This is a fine suit. What's the matter with this suit?

Didn't Uncle Sam give me this suit himself? . . . Once we get things going we'l get you over to do publicity for us . . . enlarge your knowledge of the clothing industry.

-446-Oh, Mary, you're a wonderful girl to have raised that money." That fal when Ada came back, Mary moved out and

got herself a couple of smal rooms on West Fourth Street in the Vil age, so that Ben could have some place to go when he came over to New York. That winter she worked tremendously hard, stil handling her old job and at the same time doing publicity for the strikes Ben led in several Jersey towns. "That's nothing to how hard we'l have to work when we have soviets in America," Ben would say when she'd ask him didn't he think they'd do better work if they didn't always try to do so many things at once. She never knew when Ben was going to turn up. Some-times he'd be there every night for a week and sometimes he would be away for a month and she'd only hear from him through newsreleases about meetings, picketlines broken up, injunctions fought in the courts. Once they de-cided they'd get married and have a baby, but the com-rades were cal ing for Ben to come and organize the towns around Passaic and he said it would distract him from his work and that they were young and that there'd be plenty of time for that sort of thing after the revo-lution. Now was the time to fight.