
Roll the Union On
THOMAS BELL'S Out of This Furnace (1941) is a romantic jewel of Popular Front literature, reminding us that white working-class people were once at the forefront of turning the United States into a more egalitarian country. Bell (born Belejcak) framed his autobiographical novel around three generations of Slovak American men who live and labor in the steel mills of Braddock, Pennsylvania, from the 1880s through the 1930s. Kracha, the oldest, hates working for the imperious company that becomes US Steel. He quits and throws away what little money he has on a small business that eventually fails.