Among the Literati

Albert Halper, thirty-year-old Jew who once had ambitions to be a song writer but found to his surprise that prose was his best medium of expression, has written another novel, “The Foundry,” a logical successor to his earlier work, “Union Square” which dealt with the radicals of New York. For the locale of his latest book, Mr. Halper has moved on to Chicago, the city of his birth which he knows thoroughly. When “Union Square” was published Mr. Halper was greeted as a coming novelist of the American scene. With “The Foundry” he has definitely arrived.

“The Foundry” is the story of the men and women who work in the Fort Deaborn Electrotype Foundry, a typical modern plant populated with typical skilled union laborers. A world in itself, the author traces with accuracy the home and working conditions of these laborers, what they think about, talk about, dream about. Called a “proletarian” writer Mr. Halper has not permitted this appellation to weigh him down. His concern is his characters and not a desire to propagandize his readers into going out and joining the revolutionary movement. Unlike so many of the writers who labor under the proletarian label Mr. Halper is able to be moving and convincing because he is intelligent enough to realize that the bosses are moved not by a pathological desire to be cruel to their employees but are themselves victims of a social and economic system.

Big, heavy eating Max’l who rose from a machine bench to become the dominating and domineering partner of the concern; Duffy, a wise-cracking, unhappily married man whose father founded the plant: old crabby Cranly, ex-bookkeeper who stepped off his high stool to become a partner, are bosses and also men, men who have their own personal problems. They are at once human, weak and strong, kind and cruel to their workers and to each other.

The workers who people Mr. Halper’s book are equally believable. August, the young shipping clerk who wants to be a musician; Slavony who wants a child; Cassius, the old foreman, who lives in fear that his fellow workers will find out that his daughter is a wanton lass; silent Kubec who hates landlords and dreams of a home of his own; big blustering Buckley whose desire is for a buxom widow and the many others. They are interested in one thing— security and, if possible, in getting a little pleasure out of life. They are not reformers or revolutionaries ready to die for the cause of the working man. They love their union because it brings them higher wages. They cannot and do not want to see outside of their own shop. In other words Mr. Halper has set down no idealistic conception of the American workers but has almost reportorially told their story as they actually exist in tens of thousands of American shops and factories today.

The book has a loose pattern and is drawn on a huge canvas. There is some exaggeration but never does the author stray too far from reality. Especially pointed is a description of a “company” outing and a minstrel show. Here the paternalistic efforts of a large company to institutionalize its employees is described in a manner worthy of Dickens. It is a vivid and cruelly amusing piece of writing. There are other high spots in the book well worth your attention. The dialogue is crisp and pungent, the characterizations are pointedly drawn, and the whole Foundry roars through its paces with astounding clarity.