with a terrible power. Officially a man is never dismissed because of his convictions. In America one is free to profess any views, any beliefs. He is a free citizen. However, let him try not to go to church or let him try to praise communism, and something will happen whereby he will stop working in the big little town. He himself will not even notice how it happened. The people who will get rid of him themselves do not believe in God, but they go to church. It is indecent to refrain from going to church. As for communism, that is something for dirty Mexicans, Slavs, and Negroes. It is no business for Americans.
In Schenectady we stopped at a hotel that provided three kinds of. Water – hot, cold, and iced – and went for a walk through the city. It was only about ten o’clock in the evening, yet there were almost no pedestrians. Against the kerbs stood dark automobiles. At the left of the hotel was a deserted field overgrown with grass. It was quite dark there. Beyond the field, on the roof of a six-story building, a sign lit up and went outslowly – G.E. – General Electric Company. It was like the monogram of an emperor. But never did emperors have such might at their disposal as these electrical gentlemen who have conquered Asia, Africa, who have firmly implanted their trade-mark over the Old and the New World, for everything in the world which is in any way connected with electricity is in the end connected with General Electric.
Beyond the hotel on the principal thoroughfare wavered strips of light. There a feverish automobile life was on. But here was an excellent concrete road running around the field, which was dark and deserted. There was not even a sidewalk here. It seemed that the builders of the road thought it improbable that there could be found people in the world who would approach the office of the General Electric on foot instead of driving up in an automobile.
Opposite the office was a glass booth on wheels attached to an ancient trucklike automobile. In it sat an elderly, moustached man. He was selling popcorn, a roasted corn which bursts open in the form of white boutonnieres. On the counter glowed a gasoline flare with three bright wicks. We tried to guess what popcorn was made of.
“This is corn,” the vendor said unexpectedly in Ukrainian Russian. “Can’t you see? It’s ordinary corn. But where are you from that you speak Russian?” “From Moscow.” “No fooling?” “No.”
The popcorn vendor became quite excited and walked out of his booth. “Well, now, let’s see – are you here as delegates from the Soviet government,” he asked, “or did you come here to work, to perfect yourselves?”
We explained that we were merely travelling.
“I see, I see. Just taking a look at how things are going in our United States?”
We stood a long time at the glass booth, eating popcorn and listening to the vendor’s story, which was full of English words.
This man had come to the United States some thirty years ago from a small village in the government ofVolhynia. Now this little village is in Polish territory. At first he worked in mines, digging coal. Then he was a labourer on a farm. Then workers were being hired for the locomotive works in Schenectady, so he went to work in the locomotive works.
“That’s how my life passed, like one day,” he said sadly. But now for six years he had been without work. He sold everything he had. He was evicted from his home.
“I have a Pole as my manager. We sell popcorn together.”
“Do you earn much?”
“Why, no, hardly enough for dinner. I’m starving. My clothes – you can see for yourself what they’re like. I haven’t anything to wear for going out into the street.”
“Why don’t you go back to Volhynia?”
“It is even worse there. People write it’s very bad. But tell me how is it with you, in Russia? People say different things about you. I simply don’t know whom to believe and whom to disbelieve.”
We found out that this man who had left Russia in the dim past attentively follows everything that is said and written in Schenectady about his former homeland.
“Various lecturers come here,” he said, “and speak at the high school. Some are for the Soviet government, others are against it. And whoever speaks for theSoviet government, they write bad things about him, very bad. “For example, Colonel Cooper spoke well about theSoviet government, so they wrote about him that he sold out. Got two million for it. A millionaire farmer returned and praised the Soviet state farms. It was said that they built a special Soviet state farm for him. Not long ago a woman school teacher from Schenectady went to Leningrad,lived there, and then came back and praised Russia. Even about her they said that she left a boy friend there, that she loves him, and that is why she doesn’t want to say anything against the Soviet government.” “But what do you think yourself?”
“What difference does it make what I think – would anybody ask me? I only know one thing – I’m going to the dogs here in Schenectady.”
He looked at the slowly glowing initials of the electric rulers of the world and added:
“They have built machines. Everything is made with machines. The working man hasn’t a chance to live.”
“What do you think – what should be done so that the working man may live an easier life?”
“Break up and destroy all machines!” replied the vendor of popcorn firmly and with conviction.
More than once in America we heard talk of destroying machines. This may seem incredible, but in a land where the building of machines has reached the point of virtuosity, where the national genius has expressed itself in the invention and production of machines which replace completely and improve many times the labour of man – it is precisely in this country that you hear talk that would seem insane even in a madhouse.
Looking at this vendor, we involuntarily remembered a New York cafeteria on Lexington Avenue where we used to go for lunch every day. There at the entrance used to stand a pleasant girl in an orange calico apron, marcelled and rouged (she undoubtedly had to be up at six in the morning in order to have time to arrange her hair), who distributed punch tickets. Six days later, in the very same place, we saw a metal machine doing the work of the girl automatically – and at the same time it gave off pleasant chimes, which, of course, one could not very well expect from the girl We remembered also the story we heard in New York of a certain Negro who worked on a wharf as a controller, counting bales of cotton. The work suggested to him the idea of inventing a machine that would count the bales. He invented such a machine. His boss took advantage of this invention gladly, but dismissed the Negro, who henceforth was jobless.
The next day we visited the factories of the General Electric. We are not specialists; therefore, we cannot describe the factories as they deserve to be described. We don’t want to give the reader an artistic ornament instead of the real thing. We ourselves would read with pleasure a description of these factories made by a Soviet engineer. We did, however, carry away from there an impression of high technical wisdom and organization.
In the laboratories we saw several of the best physicists in the world, who sat at their work with their coats off. They are working for the General Electric Company. The company doesn’t give them very much money – not more than twenty thousand dollars a year. Such salaries are received only by the most prominent scientists. There are few of these people. But there are no limits to the means necessary for experiment and investigation. If a million is needed, they’ll give a million. That is why the company has managed to get the best physicists in the world. No university can give them such opportunities for research as they receive here in a factory laboratory.
But then, everything that these idealists invent remains the property of
