Young Man

THE LAND OF PLENTY--Robert Cantwell-- Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).

Hard-shelled old conservatives glare askance at today's young left-wing novelists, grumble that these youths have sold their birthright of dreams for a mess of revolutionary economics. Left-wing critics retort that while the nightmare of the capitalist system persists, no young writer worth his salt can close his eyes to it. Many a "proletarian novel" is rightly thrown out of the literary court as mere advertising for the Communist cause; but the literary sergeants-at-arms will think twice before they begin hustling Robert Cantwell's Land of Plenty. Though diehard right-wingers will call it propaganda, most readers will find it troubling, critics of all stripes will pronounce it a first-rate novel. As social criticism, The Land of Plenty will rouse plenty of disagreement, but as a tragically true story of human beings it will hit home to most men of good will.

The only obvious handle Author Cantwell gives to critics who would call his book propaganda is the title. In the story itself, he never once intrudes, never gives the impression that his class-warriors are aided or struck down from his hidden Olympus. Though the whole narrative is objective, third-person, Author Cantwell shifts the focus to each principal character in turn.

Scene of the story is a door factory in the U. S. Northwest. First part gives the slowly piling-up events of one night. The trouble started when the lights in the factory went out. The men's pay had been cut again & again. They were driven nearly frantic by the yapping inconsistency of the foreman, Carl, a self-styled efficiency expert who understood practically nothing of the factory's detail but who had been recently imported to cut costs, rush orders through. When the lights went out and the machinery stopped, Carl blamed his chief enemy, Hagen, a good workman of 20 years' service in the factory who never hid his contempt of Carl. While Carl sent his yes-men blundering through the darkness on futile errands, Hagen and the old hands quietly handled the emergency.

Instead of telephoning immediately to the power house to find out when the lights would go on again, or shutting down the factory for the night, Carl fretted and fumed, let discontent and darkness bring to a head what might have become a riot. When the men came back to work after the holiday Carl had fired a crowd of the best workers, among them Hagen. A strike followed, feeling grew uglier day by day. Finally the police shot a scab by mistake, thinking he was a picketer. One of the strikers' leaders was arrested for the crime. When Carl and his higher-ups decided that the police were not giving them enough help they armed a posse, drove the picketing strikers from the factory. By well-planned accident Hagen was shot. The story ends with the scattered strikers running for their lives, and Hagen's son cowering on the tideflat, cursing, weeping, cursing.

The Author. Small, shy and blond, Robert Cantwell at 26 inspires more respect than is usual for one so young. Born in Little Falls, Wash., he had one year at the University Of Washington, then went to work in a veneer plant. In the course of his labors all over the U. S. he met and married a girl from Baton Rouge, went to Manhattan, published a novel (Laugh & Lie Down) which impressed critics. He has had seasoned, well-written book reviews in The New Outlook, The New Republic, the New York World-Telegram. Now in Boston, he is working with Lincoln Steffens, famed libertarian and muckraker, on a biography of Merchant Edward A. Filene.

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