Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [450]
FORWARD FOR A WORKERS’ WORLD Only a Workers’ America can give peace and justice
He crumpled the paper, threw it down.
“How is Studs? I haven’t seen him for a year or so?” Jim asked, noticing a wistful look come into Lonigan’s face.
“Bill’s got pneumonia.”
“Why, I didn’t know that. I’m awfully sorry to hear it. He always was a fine fellow, and so healthy. I’m sure he’ll pull through.”
“He’s pretty sick, and naturally we’re worried. But we’re hoping that he’ll pull through.”
“Gee, Mr. Lonigan, that’s too bad. I’m very sorry to hear that.”
No Work No Rent
“In cases like Bill’s, we got to let Nature take its course. It’s all in the hands of God, and we’re hoping for the best.”
Jim shook his head sadly, and both of them turned back toward the parade, with nothing more to say to one another.
Remember Sacco and Vanzetti
Lonigan watched like a man in a trance. His few words with Jim Doyle had brought his mind back to his son. He shook his head in impotent sadness, compressed his lips. All these troubles coming down on his head at this late date in his life.
And still they were passing. Suddenly, like a man making an intellectual discovery, Lonigan realized that these people were happy. He could see them laugh. He could see how, between their yells and cries, they grinned, and their faces seemed alive. That stiff-legged fellow with the gray mustache, hobbling. He seemed happy. That frail little woman in blue. They were happy. And they didn’t look like dangerous agitators, that is, except the eight-balls. All black boys were dangerous, and they couldn’t be trusted farther than their noses. But the white ones, they looked like men and women, with faces the same as other men and women. He could see that most of them were poor, and many of them, like that fellow in gray dragging his feet, were tired. He wondered how they could be Reds and anarchists, so dangerous and so perverted that they even made innocent little children into atheists. He shook his head in bewilderment, and repeated to himself that these people were happy.
FREE TOM MOONEY
“Say, is that the Mooney they got out on the coast in jail they’re yelling about?” Lonigan asked Doyle.
“I guess it must be.”
“Well, if these Jews and jiggs are yelling about him, he must be guilty, and he belongs in the pen,” Lonigan said.
“I’ll be damned. There’s two of the O’Neill kids,” Jim said.
“Who?”
“Remember Danny O’Neill from the old neighborhood? He used to live on South Park Avenue?”
DEFEND THE SOVIET UNION
“Oh, yes, I think I’ve heard Bill and the girls speak of him.”
“Well, his kid brother and sister just passed.”
“Where?” Lonigan asked, searching the ranks.
“They’re gone now.”
“What a shame! What a crime! And they were taught by the sisters at Saint Patrick’s. Once, you know, they must have been decent kids like my own. And they came to this,” Lonigan said, sighing as he spoke.
The workers’ flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their life-blood dyed its every fold.
“Their brother went to the A. P. A. University, and he’s probably responsible for it,” Jim said.
“Somebody ought to put a stop to them A. P. A. professors, all right.”
“I’d like to see them stand up to a smart priest like Father Shannon.”
“Yes, he was a smart priest. And an even smarter priest is Father Moylan, who speaks over the radio. He gives hell to the Reds, the same as he does to the bankers.”
We Want Bread Not Bullets
Lonigan looked down the street, and it seemed as if there were blocks and blocks of marchers still to come. He placed his weight on his right hip and leg, tired. He wondered