Stool Pigeons

FERMENT--John T. Mclntyre--Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).

Last year John Thomas Mclntyre won first place as the U. S. contender in the All-Nations Prize Novel Competition with a complex, fast-moving study of the Philadelphia underworld called Steps Going Down. Readers of that book found themselves plunged at once into a teeming, submoral environment that would have seemed strange anywhere, but which seemed specially inappropriate against the background of the quiet City of Friends--a harsh, double-crossing, violent world inhabited by welching gamblers, well-meaning stool pigeons, jealous streetwalkers, petty gangsters on the run, crooked lawyers on the make.

This week Author Mclntyre pictures a still less scrupulous group of thugs and undercover men working hard at their trade of breaking strikes. Similar to Steps Going Down in its neat plot, bitter humor, convincing portrayal of underworld types (as well as in its philosophical asides that delay the story without explaining much), Ferment will strike most readers as a far better book, will arouse more interest in its successful, little-known, 65-year-old author.

This time his central character is a smart, amiable, curly-headed, educated young man named Steve Brown, whose socks and ties always match and who gets along well with everyone except the people from whom he tried to borrow money--a large and growing crowd.

For years Steve had a good job as a spotter on street cars, working for a shoe-string detective agency. When his employer branched out into strikebreaking, Steve went along, told his family he was a traveling salesman. In that game he was up against tough people who started strikes in order to be paid for breaking them. He was slipping without admitting it, but went ahead with his grandiose plans for an expensive wedding trip with his redheaded, impressionable sweetheart Maggie. His quiet, stingy older brother Tom worked hard driving a taxi, became treasurer of the union. For a long time he put up with Steve. But after Steve had stolen Maggie from him, Tom refused to loan his brother any more money. "I always took it for granted she belonged to me," Tom explained. "You know what I mean? I never gave Steve a thought. And then, one night, he just put out his hand and took her."

Once he had Maggie, Steve could only go on pretending that business was fine. He was mixed up with a girl named Frieda, who worked in an employers' association office and who also reported to a labor attorney about people like Steve. He was also mixed up with his hard-drinking employer, Pike, who came of a good Southern family and could not quite compete with less inhibited double-crossers. But when he got mixed up with a onetime radical professor named Dr. Jenns, who needed a lot of money to put across his scheme for solving labor troubles for good, Steve got out of his depth. His plan for raising money for his wedding trip and to keep in with Jenns was so quietly terrible that even the hardened Pike was shocked. Pike was to accuse him of having stolen $1,500, counting on Steve's mother and Tom to put up the money out of union funds. But by the time that the plot had been worked out and Tom was on trial in his union, Maggie had begun to understand Steve. Pike and Steve hated each other too much to go through with the scheme. Steve lost his job, his girl and his brother's $1,500, but went down still believing he was the smartest one of the bunch.

The Author. John Mclntyre's two recent novels reveal an up-to-date knowledge of underworld ways and language that would be unusual in a police report, seems particularly surprising in a Philadelphian of 65 whose past works have been plays and historical novels. Tall, vigorous, unmarried, Mr. Mclntyre was born in Philadelphia, wrote sketches about slum life for the Philadelphia Times when he was 20. His first play, The Wedding Journey, was written in 1910. Produced by Arnold Daly under three different managers, it failed three times, was followed by minor successes produced by George Tyler and George M. Cohan. Meanwhile he wrote a historical novel, Blowing Weather, a nostalgic study of life in the 80s, Shot Towers, a gang story, Slag. The centre of Philadelphia's Camac Street writers' group, Author Mclntyre startled his colleagues four months ago when he was robbed by a paroled convict. Caught, the thief was discovered to have stolen a bottle of rum and the novelist's revolver and blackjack.

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