The Underground Stream

$2.50

THIS is the proletarian novel 1940 model, written with enough power and authority to demand respect for the author’s ability. It is a picture of the struggle between labor and the bosses in one of the great automobile plants in Detroit, told in terms of personal hopes and despairs. The unions are not parades — they are people. The hiring or firing is not done by adding machines —— it is done by people. Albert Maltz makes these people your intimates for the three and a half days during which the story unfolds. Some of the intimacy is embarrassing, some of the pages are dull, and most of the implications are at least open to challenge. The book moves fast and ruthlessly with the brutal lack of perspective of a cartoon in the Daily Worker. Mr. Moneybags is a sadistic demon and Brother Laborer is mankind on a Marxian cross. Fanatic and single-eyed though the book may be, it says something worth thinking about.