e had a girl, and you
know how it is with women. It's got to be a present all the time. You
can't get 'em by a store window without you go in and buy a waist or a
hat or goodness knows what all a girl doesn't manage to want. He went
into detail over his recent gifts. Why was he so generous as all that
to his fair one? Because if he didn't get the things for her he was
afraid some other man would.

Nor could Victor understand how people lived in this country without
playing more. Every night, every single night, he must find some
countryman and play around a little bit before going to bed. "These
fellas who work and work all day, and then eat some dinner, and then
go home and sit around and go to bed." No, Victor preferred death to
such stagnation. If it was only a game of cards and a glass of wine
(prohibition did not seem to exist for Victor and his countrymen) or
just walking around the streets, talking. _Anything_, so long as it
was _something_.

Victor was a union man. Oh, sure. He was glowing with pride and
admiration in the union movement in Italy--there indeed they
accomplished things! But in this country, no, the union movement would
never amount to much here. For two reasons. One was that working
people on the whole were treated too well here to make good unionists.
Pay a man good wages and give him the eight-hour day--what kind of a
union man will he make? The chances are he won't join at all.

But the main reason why unions would never amount to much here was
centered in the race question. Victor told of several cooks' strikes
he had been in. What happens? A man stands up and says something, then
everybody else says, "Don't listen to him; he's only an Irishman."
Some one else says something, and everyone says, "Don't pay any
attention to him; he's only an Italian." The next man--he's only a
Russian, and so on.

Then pretty soon what happens next? Pretty soon a Greek decides he'll
go back to work, and then all the Greeks go back; next an Austrian
goes back--all his countrymen follow. And, anyhow, says my Italian
friend Eusebio, you can't understand nothin' all them foreigners say,
anyhow.

I asked him if Monsieur Le Bon Chef after his start as a strike
breaker had finally joined a union. "Oh, I guess he's civilized now,"
grinned Victor.

Numerous times one person or another about our hotel spoke of the
suddenness with which the workers there would be fired. "Bing, you
go!" just like that. Kelly, who h