The Hanging on Union Square
Page 20
12. A quotation that may be attributable to Linus Price Hayes (1906–1966), editor of the Skipper, a magazine published at Virginia Polytechnic Institute from 1927 until 1934.
13. A cheapskate.
14. In the 1930s, the leftist International Labor Defense worked to overturn the convictions of nine black men who had been accused of raping two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama. Irving Plaza, located at Irving Place and Fifteenth Street in New York City, served as a meeting place for leftists and as a performance space for Tsiang’s plays.
15. An era during which the high valuation of mechanical devices is perceived by some to be directly proportional to the devaluation of people, though Miss Digger uses the term more generically to mean a modern era.
16. A socialist periodical published in New York since 1924 by the American Labor Conference on International Affairs.
17. A reference either to the company that Morgan founded or to Morgan Jr., since John Pierpont Morgan himself—an investment banker with holdings in several industries including railroads, electric companies, and steel manufacturers—died in 1913.
18. Slang for policemen.
ACT II
1. Located on 507 West Street in New York City, this establishment, sponsored by the American Seamen’s Friends Society, offered food and shelter to destitute sailors.
2. The section of Lower Manhattan in New York City that served as the center of the city’s theater life in the 1860s and 1870s. By the 1880s, it had become an economically depressed area.
3. A system in which block chairmen would solicit donations of 10 cents to $1 a week for twenty weeks from residents of a block to assist unemployed people and their families in New York. By April 1932, 7597 blocks were officially organized in the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens (“Block Aid Covers Whole City,” New York Times, April 1, 1932).
4. Sometimes poets would post or read aloud their poetry in a public place such as Union Square or Washington Square, where Tsiang himself posted his work in 1933 (“‘Village’ Pegasus Gallops for Coins of Bourgeoisie,” Washington Post, May 22, 1933).
5. Tammany Hall is another name for the executive committee of the Democratic Party in New York City, which secured its considerable power in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through bribery and other kinds of corruption.
6. Max Eastman (1883–1969), U.S. writer and editor of such radical periodicals as The Masses and The Liberator.
7. The professor’s exclamations reference the titles of two books written by Oswald Spengler and translated from the German by Charles Francis Atkinson: The Decline of the West (1926–1928) and The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution (1934).
8. Al Capone (1899–1947), a leader of organized crime in Chicago, was arrested in 1931 for federal income-tax evasion, eventually serving time at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary as prisoner number 40886 before being transferred to Alcatraz (“Al Capone Loses Identity in Prison,” New York Times, May 6, 1932).
9. Members of Hitler’s Nazi Party came to be known as Brown Shirts for the color of their uniform. Mr. Ratsky imagines that his followers would wear a lighter hue.
10. J. P. Morgan and J. D. Rockefeller.
11. In 1932, the total number of unemployed persons in America was 12,060,000 according to “Employment Status of the Civilian Population, 1929–2002,” Statistical Abstract of the United States (2003), p. 50.
12. According to Cassel’s Dictionary of Slang, “pizzicato” in the 1930s served as an adjective meaning “tipsy.” Miss Digger appears to be using it as a noun here, perhaps as a term of endearment like “silly.”
13. New York City averages 0.5 inches of snow in April.
14. John D. Rockefeller.
15. The Congressional Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor that the United States can bestow upon a member of its armed forces. On May 23, 1932, Amelia Earhart (1897–1937) was recommended for a Congressional Medal for being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
16. The communist organ, The Daily Worker, had its offices at 50 East Thirteenth Street.
17. Communists and labor unions sometimes met and organized at Webster Hall on 119 East Eleventh Street.
18. Implying that the prosperity some Americans enjoyed during the 1920s would continue and even expand, the Republican National Committee used this slogan to promote the presidential candidacy of Herbert Hoover in 1928, though Hoover himself never used it in his own campaign speeches.
19. Prohibition ended in 1933.
20. A song written by W. C. Handy in 1914 featuring blues, ragtime, church music, and habanera rhythms. Directed by Dudley Murphy, singer Bessie Smith starred in a short-film version of the song, which ran before feature films from 1929 until 1932. See Will Friedwald, Stardust Melodies: The Biography of Twelve of America’s Most Popular Songs (New York: Pantheon, 2002), pp. 39–74.
ACT III
1. These slogans were used by Burma-Shave in the 1930s.
2. On March 7, 1932, four demonstrators were killed and more than sixty were injured at a strike at the Ford Motor Company’s plant in Detroit, Michigan.
3. The Acme Theater on the corner of Broadway and Fourth Avenue showed Soviet films from 1921 until it was demolished in 1934.
4. An equestrian statue of George Washington (1732–1799) by Henry Kirke Brown.
5. Mr. Nut imagines Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi’s bronze statue of the Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834) speaking French to him: “Would you like to buy, good sir, my beautiful young woman? Thank you very much, good Nut. Good evening. Good morning.”
6. Mr. Nut imagines the statue of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)—also by Henry Kirke Brown—giving his famous Gettysburg Address (1863).
7. The U.S. Navy used this touristic recruiting slogan, but the Army did not promise “a ball game.” In the 1930s, the Army, like the Navy, advertised travel opportunities, as well as a steady paycheck. See John B. Mitchell, “Army Recruiters and Recruits between the World Wars,” Military Collector and Historian 19.3 (1967), pp. 76–81.
8. According to the New York Times, the Polish American artist Gan Kolski leapt to his death on April 18, 1932.
9. According to the New York Times, the unidentified man leapt from this height on November 13, 1932.
10. Reno, Nevada, was a favorite spot for eager couples who took advantage of the state’s no-waiting period for issuing marriage licenses.
11. A United Front formed in the 1930s when communists allied with other radical groups against common enemies such as fascism.
12. A member of the Soviet state police.
13. Unlike Britain and other countries that abandoned the gold standard in 1931 in favor of imposing foreign exchange controls, France attempted to defend the value of the gold franc until 1936. Hence, France’s share of the world’s gold reserves rose from 7% in 1926 to 27% in 1932.
14. Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), fascist Italian prime minister from 1922–1943.
15. Northeastern region of China, parts of which the Japanese government controlled from 1905 until 1931, and all of which was under Japanese colonial rule from 1932 until 1945.
16. Articulated by U.S. Secretary of State John Hay in 1899, the Open Door Policy stipulated that Chinese ports should be open equally to all nations trading with China.
17. Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870–1924) headed the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party and led the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
18. A federally funded welfare program administered during the Depression.
ACT IV
1. On February 15, 1933, Giuseppe Zangara (1900–1933) attempted to assassinate President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami, Florida.
2. A confusing statement. Perhaps Nut is referring to the fifty-nine U.S. senators of the Democratic Party, FDR’s party, in 1933.
3. The official newspaper of the American Communist Party, published between 1924 and 1957.
4. Dedicated in 1930, this flagpost was meant to honor Tammany president Charles F. Murphy. Public sentiment was against this name, however, so it became known as Independence Flagstaff, one of the largest in New York State at the time.
5. The commonly known name of the prison in Ossining, New York.
6. The popular name for FDR’s group of political advisors.
7. Reference to Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973), the daughter of American missionaries in China, who wrote The Good Earth (1931), a novel about a Chinese farming family.
8. Pearl S. Buck’s novel Sons (1932) features a character named Wang the Tiger, a warlord who conquers one section of a northern province in China.
9. According to the U.S. War Department, 8,528,831 soldiers on both sides of World War I were killed, while 21,189,154 were wounded. Estimates hold that more than 13,000,000 civilians died as a result of the war.
10. The practice of compelling employees to work faster in order to increase profit.
11. Located on 490 Riverside Drive, the church features a 392-foot tall gothic-style steeple.
12. This line is taken from the 1929 song “Happy Days Are Here Again” by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen. It served as the song for FDR’s successful presidential campaign in 1932.
13. The Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice (1600).
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*Since I didn’t attend high school in this country, I read “Pilgrim’s Progress” only after receiving G. H.’s letter.
H.T.
* I employed the method of “Socialistic Realism and Revolutionary Romanticism” when I wrote the novel.—H. T.