May Day (Illustrated)

The setting of the story is taken from the May Day riots of 1919 in Ohio, which resulted in two deaths and over one hundred arrests. The nature of the riot was political: a dispute arose over the use of the Socialist flag by some protesters. The event was part of the emergence of the fear of Communist infiltration which was to shadow the next few decades of American history.The three individual stories dovetail into each other to present a scene across the city of New York: the story of Sterrett, the story of the newspaper offices, and the story of Key and Rose. Each scene links carefully with the next, showing in the imaginative skill of the author the careful construction of a script writer, who meshes together disparate scenes to make a cohesive whole. We see across the democratic whole of American society, and are shown the lowest of each class at the hands of the great leveler: alcohol.George Sterrett is down on his luck. Sadly, in the circles that he moves, this is a fatal condition. Those around him, who would have supported him in his younger, happier, more prosperous times, are revolted, disgusted or just plain bored with him. Deans cannot bring himself to impinge on his own frivolity to support Sterrett's pathetic demands. It is with irony that he declares Sterrett "morally bankrupt" as he himself is later found disturbing the peace and stealing hotel property.