* * * * *

More of the black workers were dismissed every day by Wargate’s and the smaller firms. Every day the Mayo Street corners were more packed, the grumbling less amiable, and so the canny authorities sent in more policemen—and so the policemen were stoned now and then—and so they sent in still more policemen—and so one Negro was shot and four were arrested—and so a two-by-four was dropped from a third story upon a policeman’s head—and so Feathering said, “I told you so; join the Sant Tabac”—and so there were accelerated dismissals of Negroes from Wargate’s, from the Aurora Coke Company, from the Kippery Knitting Works, from the grain-loading gangs at the elevators, from the railroad car-shops—and so the street-corner gangs became more ugly—and so more policemen were sent in per omnia saecula saeculorum.

Among the white labor-union leaders, a third protested, a third said nothing, and a third rejoiced.

And then, with a handsome letter from Duncan Browler about his work, Ash Davis was fired.

There had been no warning. The letter was awaiting him when he came home on a Friday evening. When he had read it, Ash lost, for an hour, his poise as a skeptical man of the world, and became a frightened and belligerent workman out of work.

He wrote to a number of firms in the East which knew his ability. They answered that there were so many white chemists returning from the wars and, besides, maybe their present staff might object to working with a non-Caucasian.

Anyway, chirped he to Martha, he would prefer teaching to working in another commercial house.

He could get no appointment in any white college, including one that had intended to give him an honorary degree. There were a few, an increasing group, of Negroes on university staffs, but Ash did not have that luck. The college presidents lovingly answered—when they answered at all—that while they had no “prejudices,” not one prejudice, all of their present band of hope and light were likely to object to working with a brownskin.

Months later, after he had gone to New York, Ash was sold down the river to a small Negro college in the Deep South, salary $1800 a year and a house, only there wasn’t any house yet.

Then Phil Windeck lost his job at the garage.

Then Drexel Greenshaw lost his job.

Chapter 52

Glenn Tartan called in Drexel Greenshaw, and tittered, “I’ve got some bad news to tell you, old man, and I want you to know that it isn’t in any way my fault. The owners have decided to change our policy and employ only white help in the dining rooms and so I’m afraid–-But we wish you the very best of luck, and I’ve dictated a letter of recommendation that’ll knock your eye out.”

If the oratorical Drexel said anything now, it was not heard.