BOOKS
53
factory workers found in any recent novel. There are Johnny Hagen,
who has had to quit school to help support a host of relatives, driven
back to the old nest by the depression; Walt Connor, who intended to
work only during vacation from <college, but had to stay, and who be–
comes a fink; Winters, the half-breed sawyer-foreman; Ellen, the Polack
girl and her sister, weak and sick from an abortion; and many others.
A whole factory and its workers emerge solidly in the first section of
The Land of Plellty
dealing with the events of olle night. By shifting
from one character to another, Cantwell has blurred and impeded the
flow of his narrative, but the final result is that each character sticks in
the mind like a cockleburr and stays there through the swiftly moving
second section.
Carl, the neurotic foreman, fires Winters and Hagen, but the men
force MaclVlahon, the superintendent, to reinstate them. This givl the
workers " the first sure knowledge of their strength." When they find
during the next day that they have been double<rossed and that Winters
and Hagen are to be fired anyhow, the men spontaneously vote a
f
trike.
The strike is fairly peaceful till the strikers, lashed by a violent rain–
storm, gain entrance to the factory. Then trouble begins, the strikers
barricadep in one part of the factory, the scabs and cops in another. The
strikers decide to stick it out, since the fat's in. the fire . They hope to
bring the factory owner to terms. In the morning, fighting begins on a
grand scale. Johnny and Yin Gar! escape to a secluded spot on the beach
near the foctory. Another striker, "his hair ... matted with blood from
a cut on his scalp, his eyes almost closed from the welts on his swollen
cheeks," makes his way down the beach, to bring Johnny the news that
his father has been shot.
"The rain fell hard, drenching them while they waited, not like rain
but like some new and terrible weapon of their enemies.. Johnny tried
to crowd under the driftwood and Yin Gar! put his hand on his shoulder,
'Come on, son,' he said gently, 'don't cry,' and then they sat there listening
to him, their faces dark with misery and anger, listening and waiting for
the darkness to come like a friend and set them free ."
Here the book ends, its development having justified the title of the
second section·: "The Education of a Worker."
Cantwell has not romanticized his characters, neither has he brutalized
them as some of our "clinical" authors might have done.
The language is full and robust, but never painfully "tough." The
workers in
Th e Lalld of Plmty
don't have their chests festooned with
crepe hair; they don't talk from the corners of their mouths; they are
credible workers.
Without stylistic hijinks, without sacrificing any of the vigor of
his material on one the hand, nor fan-dancing for the patrons of circulating
libraries and snifflers for erotica on the other, Cantwell has written a
book that proletarian writers are going to set as a standard for a long
time.
JACK CONROY.
