Wishful Worker

CRANBERRY RED--E. Garside--Little, Brown ($2.50).

Wherever workers forgather, you may hear someone relate how he told the boss where to get off. Such wishful yarns are rarely believed but rarely challenged. A number of proletarian romances, realistic enough at first glance, have much the same ring about them. Latest is Cranberry Red, a story laid in a Cape Cod cranberry cannery and the surrounding bogs. The scenery is authentic and picturesque, the language lusty, the story lively. But the author puts too many over on the boss.

Laze Symmes is a giant, hard-driving Yankee, who punches his Portygee workers in the nose, terrorizes even the town banker. But when the hero, a skinny, down-&-out college graduate, goes to work in the factory, terrible Symmes has no chance. Scrawny Keith Bain simply parries his bullying with cool, ironical sass. When Symmes hesitates and fumes about giving Bain five cents more an hour, the puny David says: "Come on, Symmes, make up your mind. . . ." This defiance works so well, in fact, that Symmes invites him to board at his home.

Thus the hero is placed where he has a perfect all-round view of the boss. He gets involved in Symmes's family quarrels, his feuds with vindictive Portygee workmen. Meanwhile, Bain has an affair with a schoolteacher, visits Portygee families, gathers a vast anti-Symmes lore. His complete triumph comes when he saves Symmes's life. By this time Bain has so far got the upper hand that he even has a sneaking affection for the mean old devil.

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