Two from Dos Passos

aren't you coming to the anarchist picnic there's going to be an anarchist picnic sure you've got to come to the anarchist picnic this afternoon it was way out at Garches in a kind of park it took a long time to get out there we were late there were youngsters and young girls with glasses and old men with their whiskers and long white zits and everybody wore black artist ties some had taken off their shoes and stockings and were wandering around in the long grass a young man with a black artist tie was reading a poem. Voila said a voice c'est plutot le geste proletaire it was a nice afternoon we sat on the grass and looked around le geste proletaire

But God damn it they've got all the machineguns in the world all the printingpresses linotypes tickerribbon curling iron plushhorses Ritz and we you I? barehands a few songs not very good songs plutot le geste proletaire

--Nineteen Nineteen (U.S.A. volume two), 1932

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it was the speech that clung to the ears, the link that tingled in the blood; U.S.A.

U.S.A. is the slice of the continent. U.S.A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stockquotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public-library full of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U.S.A. is the world's greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains and hills. U.S.A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts. U.S.A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U.S.A. is the letters at the end of an address when you are away from home. But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people.

--Introduction to the U.S.A. trilogy, 1930

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Happy Labor Day.