AN HONEST WOMAN
43
and the
Consumers' Research Bulletin,
respectively, with looks of
stem concentration; the older of the two, a sallow, thin woman of
about thirty, with a pair of cotton gloves, wore no wedding ring, a
fact which Dottie silently called to Kay's attention. Kay nodded,
thoughtfully. What struck both girls was the perception that the
other two patients came from a stratum of society somewhat lower
than their own, from the depths of the middle class, and this moved
them to an appreciation of "how much good the doctor was doing,"
as Kay whispered to Dottie from behind her hand. Their education
had impressed on them the necessity of social awareness. "Extend
your antennae, girls," was an apothegm often repeated by an out–
standing teacher, and here in this sanctum of change they felt ter–
rifically extended and very much aware. Just because it was so im–
personal, the occasion seemed more significant than losing your
virginity. They let their gaze flicker about the room and return to
rest meaningfully on each other.
Birth control, both girls were thinking, was just one facet, of
course, of a tremendous revolution in American society. John, who
was quite a social thinker, had been holding forth on that very sub–
ject only the night before, when Kay and Dottie, who had gone to
a theater, picked him up backstage at the Music Hall and bore him
off to a speakeasy. Dottie had never seen the new Music Hall before,
and showing off its technical marvels had got John started. The trans–
fer of financial power, he explained, from Threadneedle Street to
Wall Street was an event in world history comparable to the defeat
of the Spanish Armada, which had ushered in the era of capitalism.
When Roosevelt, just now, had gone off the gold standard, it was a
declaration of independence from Europe and an announcement of
a new epoch. The NRA and the eagle were symbols of the arrival
of a new class to power. John had shown the two girls that their
class, the upper middle, was finished politically and economically; it
was being squeezed between the monopoly capitalists and the rising
class of workers and farmers and technicians, of which he as a stage
technician was one. You saw this, he said, in every branch of life;
on the stage, for instance, where the director used to be king in the
days of Belasco, the director today was dependent, above all, on his
master electrician, who could make or break a play by the way he
handled his light-cues-behind every big director there was a genius
