INDUSTRIAL WARFARE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 34, 8 August 1925, Page 17

INDUSTRIAL WARFARE

"The Needle's Eye." By' Arthur Train. New York: Charles Scribner arid

Sum. (Through Dymock's, Sydney)

Mr. Train introduces this remarkably well written story of industrial warfare in the United States with a text. It describes the failure of the Rich Young Man in the parable to undergo the'lest put upon him by Jesus Christ. That is the test put upon young John Graham, eon of a New York millionaire, . who went through an ordeal by fire—rifles and dynarnite-ryvhen he was shut up in one of the mines belonging to his father's bank, and he and the ■ staff' were besieged by militant strikers. . How John Graham came through the reader will discover as he follows the narrative co graphically described by Mr. Train. In some respects there is a suggestion of Galsworthy's "Forsyte Saga" in this novel. Many of the rich people mentioned .are New York "Forsytes,": but without the family pride of. the originals. Money-making and accumulation was tbei'r main object in life, and they spent freely but not always with wisdom. "The Needle's Eye", is' interesting too as a fine example of character drawing, also as a careful and competent study of mass psychology. The love interest is introduced into the story, but is not made obtrusive. Perhaps the most graphic portion in the book is' that in which the stirring up of coal miners by the American Bolshevik Professor Schinner and his aide-de-camp Lefkowitz to wreck the non-union mine at Bitumen, and the attack on the works and murder of non-union workmen. Mr. Train evidently realises the inflammable nature of the human material in American industrial areas when it is fired by such men as Schinner and Lefkowitz and set to mischief by such blatant, bluffing, self-appointed leaders as Jim Halloran. "The Needle's Eye" has its literary structural weaknesses, but it ii a powerful »tory for all that.