The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-02-23

EOHN DOS PAOGOo AlfWaySi
y Inc" now being presented at the
Grove Street Theatre, is the best
play the New Playwrights Theatre
has produced.
1t is clear, it is direct, it moves
with a life Of It's own, and fer
tunately, very fortunately, its au-
thor doesn't try to lift himself by
his proletarian bootstraps. John
Dos Passos is one of those few in
tellectuals who managed to salvage
his brains after the general debacle
of the American bourgeois ints'lee-
tuals when they discovered with
tears in their voices that there amt
no Sanity Claus; or in other words,
that the late Woodrow Wilson'S
democracy" palavet was so much
hooey. Dos Passos has gone left in
the last few years and is close to
the Communist movement. And
unlike his Broadway colleagues.
from Eugene O'Neill down to the
most picayune hack, he doesn't
write as if the world consisted only
of certain individuals and the
friends and relatives of certain in
dividuals. Dos Passos knows that
capitalist society is q fact and the
class struggle is a fact, and facts
such as these thrust their way i'm
placably into the most sheltered
lives.
"Airways, Inc.," is not play
of the class struggle. 1t is a play
of personal Illustration and tragedy
against the background of the class
struggle. 1t attempts to interre-
late social conflicts with individual
conflicts, but only partly succeeds.
The social conflict in the play, rep
resented by a mill strike, is actually
rather shadowy, too off-stage. AS
chief protagonists we have the
members of a suburban working
class family who reflect completely
the bourgeois ideology of the typi
cal American working class fam
lily. What happens to these peo-
pie, these petty-bourgeois Turner's
when a long drawn-out mill strike
skaters the equilibrium of their
little tight lives? John Dos Passos
tries to tell us. But he doesn't sue
coed. What he actually tells us is
what happens to these people when
an individual named Walter Gold
berg, who happens to be strike
leader and Jew, steps into their
lives by falling in love with the
starved, somewhat elderly sister,
Martha Turner. And the execution
of Goldberg on a framed murder
charge echoes of the Sacco-Van-
zetti casel is presented not as So
oial tragedy-the anger, the bitter
ness, the grief of the workers-but
as personal tragedy, the personal
grief of Martha Turner over the
loss of her lover.
These are the weaknesses of
"Airways, Inc.," as social drama.
It's strength, however, lies not in
its presentation of its them or
themes (the play is rich, perhaps a
little too rich in thematic materially
but in the mordant accuracy OF its
character delineation and its satir-
ical revelation Of certain aspects OF
American life. All these charac-
tiers are real-the doting old faith
er, brooding over his inventions, his
loneliness, the disappointments OF
the past; the gawky, starved, semi
hysterical Cinderella of the FAM
lily, Martha Turner, bewildered and
abashed by the experience Of love;
the $50 a week clerk, Claude Tur-
ner, who outdoes any capitalist ir
his fierce hatred of strikers anc
"Reds"; Elmer, the smiling self
confident son who has made
good; the clustering realtor, iona
than Davis; the kid brother, Eddie
and his flapper sweetheart, Edna
all of them are flesh and blood
Even the mystical, half-mad pro
fessor has reality of his own. AND
over the Turner household hangs
the pail, the meaninglessness, tn
fostering decay of petty-bourgeoi'
life. ......
But all this is not nearly as NOV
ing as it should be. What Air
ways, Inc.," lacks is incisiveness.
think this is due to the attempt t
knit together several themes, non
of which is completely worked Out
The play ends feebly, almost alb
surdly with lyrical peroration b
Martha Turner in grief over tn
execution of her lover. And a.
that Walter Goldberg stood for
And her own future place in SC
ciety? Only short while befor
we have been told that the dividend
from All-American Always, Inc
have made them all rich. So MAJ
tina, grieving Martha, is now