Waiting For Lefty

“There’s us comin’ home every night—eight, ten hours on the cab. ‘God,’ the wife says, ‘eighty cents ain’t money—don’t buy beans almost. You’re workin’ for the company,’ she says to me, ‘Joe! You ain’t workin’ for me or the family no more!’” 

Joe’s wife helps him realize that he’s bringing in so little money that he isn’t supporting them anymore. His work is supporting the company, but his family isn’t getting the benefit of his work because they’re starving.

“Don’t yell. I just put the kids to bed so they won’t know they missed a meal. If I don’t have Emmy’s shows soled tomorrow, she can’t go to school. In the meantime let her sleep.”

Edna highlights the desperation of their situation, in which she is attempting to placate her children by using sleep as a substitute for food. Her statement suggests the way poverty is a cycle, since their daughter will be denied schooling, which will impact her future prospects.

“Maybe get your buddies together, maybe go on strike for better money. Poppa did it during the war and they won out. I’m turning into a sour old nag.” 

Edna mentions her father participating in strikes during the war. This refers to the uptick in the labor movement that occurred when the United States entered World War I in 1917. Workers went on strike over 3,000 times during this period. Yet nearly 20 years later, the workers have been beaten down by the Great Depression, so they are afraid to strike.

“I know this—your boss is making suckers outa you boys every minute. Yes, and suckers out of all the wives and the poor innocent kids who’ll grow up with crooked spines and sick bones. Sure, I see it in the papers, how good orange juice is for kids. But damnit our kids get colds one on top of the other. They look like little ghosts. Betty never saw a grapefruit. I took her to the store last week and she pointed to a stack of grapefruits. ‘What’s that!’ she said. My God, Joe—the world is supposed to be for all of us.” 

Edna is emphasizing how their poverty isn’t just affecting them but affecting their kids who have no power or control in their lives. The wealthy don’t care about their wellbeing. Edna makes the point that the world doesn’t belong to one group and the owners are tricking laborers.

“I don’t care, as long as I can maybe wake you up.”

Edna tries multiple tactics to get Joe to wake up and see the reality of their situation. She talks about their children and their hunger. She tells him how the union is hurting him. And she finally tells him that she’ll leave him for her former boyfriend. The last threat is what ultimately spurs Joe to action. She doesn’t care anymore if she upsets him as long as he wakes up.

“This is the subject, the exact subject. Your boss makes this subject. I never saw him in my life, but he’s putting ideas in my head a mile a minute. He’s giving your kids that fancy disease called the rickets. He’s making a jelly-fish outa you and putting wrinkles in my face. This is the subject every inch of the way! He’s throwing me into Bud Haas’s lap.”

Edna says that Joe’s boss doesn’t care, but he controls every aspect of their lives. He is ruining their kids’ health and destroying their marriage. Joe takes several moments, but he eventually gets it and rushes off to find Lefty.

“The world is an armed camp today. One match sets the whole world blazing in forty-eight hours. Uncle Sam won’t be caught napping.”

Fayette points out how the first World War changed everything. It happened on such a large scale, that it created international conflicts and allyships. In a post-World War world, it could happen again, and in 1935, the world is ramping up to World War II. Fayette is looking at war and killing as an industry—one that he can take advantage of by being ready for the next one.

“That’s not our worry. If big business went sentimental over human life there wouldn’t be big business of any sort!”

Fayette personifies the evils of capitalism. He points out the main issue with capitalist structures: profit over people. To Miller, the casualties of the war are personal. To Fayette and any large, profit-motivated business, they’re insignificant. Fayette stands in for the bosses of the cab company that are never seen, demonstrating that none of them care about the human element of their businesses.

“You’re doing something for your country. Assuring the United States that when those goddamn Japs start a ruckus we’ll have offensive weapons to back us up! Don’t you read the newspapers, Miller?”

Fayette is equating participating in war as a capitalist machine with patriotism and doing one’s duty as an American. Throughout history, nationalistic sentiment has frequently been used to coerce citizens into taking part in national initiatives. In Fayette’s case, his claims of patriotism seem especially empty.

“But sneaking—and making poison gas—that’s American?”

Fayette has told Miller that digging ditches is work for foreigners. Miller challenges him by pointing out that the job that he is trying to justify with patriotism is antithetical to any sense of communality or cooperation. The play suggests that honest labor is patriotic, but so is demanding a living wage for honest labor.

“Taxi drivers used to make good money.”

Florence has been engaged to Sid for three years, and undoubtedly hoped that he would eventually be financially stable enough to marry her. But desperation and the Depression have turned a good job into one that doesn’t pay a living wage. Her comment shows how business owners are taking advantage of their employees and getting richer while the workers get poorer.

“Don’t get soft with him. Nowadays is no time to be soft. You gotta be hard as a rock or go under.”

Irv wants Florence to break off her relationship with Sid because Sid doesn’t make enough money. His statement echoes Fayette’s assertion about sentimentality in big business. But in this case, Irv is advocating for the sake of survival.

“But I’m so tired of being a dog, Baby, I could choke. I don’t even have to ask what’s going on in your mind. I know from the word go, ’cause I’m thinking the same things, too.”

Irv prepares Florence to be tough on Sid with the expectation that Sid will fight for her. But Sid feels beaten down and dehumanized. He loves Florence, but he doesn’t see himself as a fit partner. Poverty has taken away his dignity, and he doesn’t want to take Florence down with him.

“Take this gun—kill the slobs like a real hero, he says, a real American. Be a hero! And the guy you’re poking at? A real louse, just like you, ’cause they don’t let him catch more than a pair of tens, too.”

Sid can’t stomach the idea of joining the military like his brother and possibly going to war; he can’t help but see the “enemy” as the same as himself. He knows that he would only consider enlisting because he’s poor and can’t get a lucky break. Although American soldiers are valorized and called patriotic heroes, Sid doesn’t see anything heroic about killing someone who is just unlucky but in another country.

“We got the blues, Babe—the 1935 blues.”

Sid tries to comfort Florence by emphasizing that it isn’t either of their faults that they have to break up. It’s just about surviving the Great Depression, which has been going on for six years at this point and feels as if it will never end.

“I paid dues in this union for four years, that’s who’s me! I gotta right and this pussy-footed rat ain’t coming in here with ideas like that. You know his record.”

The voice in the crowd speaks up because he recognizes “Tom Clayton” as his brother, a man who is hired out to break up union strikes. Fatt tries to silence him, but he points out the truth: that unions are supposed to protect the rights of workers. A union that won’t let a member speak at a meeting is proving their own corruption.

“Doctors don’t run these hospitals. He’s the Senator’s nephew and there he stays.”

When Dr. Benjamin rushes in to ask Dr. Barnes to intervene after his surgery is taken away by a vastly inferior surgeon, Barnes admits that he can’t help. Their conversation highlights the issues with a capitalist medical system. There is no meritocracy when nepotism reigns. And a person without money is seen as disposable.

“Doctors don’t run medicine in this country. The men who know their jobs don’t run anything here, except the motormen on trolley cars. I’ve seen medicine change—plenty—anesthesia, sterilization—but not because of rich men—in spite of them! In a rich man’s country, your true self’s buried deep.”

Barnes echoes Fayette’s point about sentimentality having no place in big business. The advances he mentions only benefit the patient. They cost the hospitals money. The people who control any industry are the people with the money, not the experts in the field.

“The Constitution’s for rich men then and now.”

Barnes asserts that America has never been for everyone. It has been a capitalist nation from the start, and it has always existed to the advantage of the rich.

“Lots of things I wasn’t certain of. Many things these radicals say…you don’t believe theories until they happen to you.”

Benjamin illustrates how oppression becomes embedded in the status quo. Up to this point, he has been a surgeon at the top of his game. He has recognized class inequality in the hospital, but he hasn’t felt strongly enough to speak up. Now that he’s experiencing the oppression firsthand, he recognizes that it’s real, but he’s powerless to do anything.

“You know what happened? That old union button just blushed itself to death! Ashamed! Can you beat it?”

Agate tells the crowd that his union button was so embarrassed by the union that it burst into flames. Their officers are not only failing to protect their interests, but they’re actively hurting them. Fatt and the others in charge are taking advantage of the union to profit when the union was supposed to be a way of empowering the workers.

“Don’t laugh! Nothing’s funny! This is your life and mine! It’s skull and bones every incha the road! Christ, we’re dyin’ by inches! For what? For the debutant-ees to have their sweet comin’ out parties in the Ritz! Poppa’s got a daughter she’s gotta get her picture in the papers. Christ, they make ’em with our blood. Joe said it. Slow death or fight. It’s war.”

The audience laughs when Agate comments about them all becoming a nudist colony because they can’t afford clothes. But Agate stresses that this is a question of life and death. Their bosses are killing them to give themselves and their families silly luxuries. He wants them to recognize that they’re being killed, and the only way to save themselves is to acknowledge the war and fight back.

“These slick slobs stand here telling us about bogeymen. That’s a new one for the kids—the reds is bogeymen! But the man who got me food in 1932, he called me Comrade! The one who picked me up where I bled—he called me Comrade too! What are we waiting for… Don’t wait for Lefty! He might never come.”

With the Red Scare, the general public has become indoctrinated in the belief that the communists are the enemy. But Agate tries to impress upon them that the communists are on the side of the workers. They aren’t the enemy at all. And if there’s one lesson to be learned by the communist idea of workers taking control of the means of production, it’s that they don’t need to wait for a leader to tell them what to do. If they don’t just act, they might be waiting forever.