BOOKS
A FACTORY LIVES
THE LAND OF PLENTY,
by Robert Cantwell. Farrar and Rinehart,
$2.50.
One of the particularly shopworn criticisms hurled against pro–
letariall novels is that the characters do not "live", that they are not true
to "lite." Hal Driggs, answering such a criticism by the edti'Jr of
The
Frolltier and Jl1idland,
replied: "It is hard for the dead to recognize the
living." And so it is. This form of snobbishness among critics has a
long tradition behind it. Shakespeare never wrote about a heroic pro–
letarian; his workers are all fools or rogues. Our modern critics are
a bit more liberal, however. Poolroom bums and budding gangsters,
planning "gang shaggings" and yearning after the anatomical projections
and crevices of "bitches" and "pigs," may pass muster as legitimate guinea
pigs for the scalpel of an "artist." But let a writer venture into the
affirmative side of the class struggle, portray a heroic Communist or
worker, try to catch the atmosphere of a. strike or a factory, or the revolt
of the oppressed, and anguished howls immediately arise, briny tears flow
over the violated canons of "art."
Critics who have been cloistered in the library or have learned about
the proletariat in poolrooms and beer joints may decide that the characters
in
The Land of Plenty
lack "life." That is because Robert Cantwell has
pictured a life these gentlemen do not know. Hand the book to any man
who has ever worked in a factory, as I have, and ask him what he thinks
of it. I know Robert Cantwell's factory. I can smell it and see it, and
every character in
The Land of Plenty
will be recognized as an old
friend by anyone who has learned about workers by being one, who has
felt the itch that sweat and sawdust bring, who has hated a high-balling
foreman or thrown a brick at a scab.
The Land of Plenty
is the story of a West Coast factory which manu–
factures doors, window frames, etc. The night shift is working on an
export order, the factory is as hot as the hubs of hell inside. Carl Belcher,
formerly the efficiency expert and now the night foreman, is pounding
the workers on the tail. All of them hate him fervently. The power
fails, the lights go out, and everything is thrown into a state of chaos,
men groping about blindly, Carl hunting for Hagen, the electrician, to
bawl him out. Hagen is an old-timer, and resents Carl's riding him.
In the darkness repressed hates fester, and in the course of the night the
reader is acquainted, one by one, with the most convincing gallery of
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