“Oh, Domenico,” someone else would call out, “you were the first one here and the one who’s been here the longest; tell us again why you settled in this miserable climate. Why didn’t you have the sense to go to California and then have us come over?”

Amid the laughter and catcalls, Domenico would continue his harangues, all his frustrations seething within him as he shouted and pounded his fist on the bar. “That’s easy for you to say now, Signor Smart-Aleck,” he said, “but maybe you don’t remember when you let your bellies decide for you. This is where the work was and this is where you came. Sure! Now that your bellies are full and your heads empty you have time to think about the weather instead of the serious things.”

A few others started singing, “Oh, where do you work-a-John?/On the Delaware-Lackawhan. . . .”

“The D L W,” said another—“Delay, Linger, and Wait.”

“Sure, sure,” Domenico went on, “the railroads, the mills, the quarries—there’s still work wherever you look. But instead of organizing to make the work conditions better and making the Circolo Socialista a weapon against the bosses, you’re sitting back and listening to your bellies and thinking your job is over.”

“What good is socialism?” said Scalise. “You can’t get into politics around here on that ticket, so what good is it?”

“When I first got to this country,” Serafino said, “the padrone told us that when the time came for us to vote we should vote Republican so we’d always be sure of having jobs. The Republicans have the money, he said. And without money to build we wouldn’t have jobs. It seemed right to me, anyway,” Serafino mused, dragging on his old pipe, “because I fought for the great Garibaldi to make a republic in Italy. He was betrayed by the king and Italy still has a king, but here it’s a republic and here I vote Republican.”

“We all vote Republican,” Scalise added dryly. “Who wants to vote Democrat like the Irish?”

“What’s the difference, one way or the other?” Domenico broke in excitedly. “Democrat or Republican, it’s still the padrone who makes the jobs.”

“Not anymore,” said Serafino. “I had the padrone, but my sons don’t.”

“You’re lucky, all right,” Scalise put in, “that you’ve got two sons, at least, who are working.”