42nd Parallel, The

42nd Parallel, The, novel by Dos Passos, published in 1930. It is the first of the trilogy U.S.A. (collected 1938), including 1919 (1932) and The Big Money (1936). Interspersed in the narrative are brief biographies of Debs, Burbank, Haywood, Bryan, Minor Keith, Carnegie, Edison, Steinmetz, and La Follette. (For critical discussion, see Dos Passos.)

Fainy (“Mac”) McCreary, imbued with social idealism by his uncle Tim O'Hara, works for a book distributing company whose proprietor defrauds him. With a socialist friend he bums across the continent, works for an anarchist printer in San Francisco, edits an I.W.W. paper, marries, deserts his wife and children, and goes to Mexico with a revolutionist.

J. Ward Moorehouse, son of an Ohio station agent, becomes a shrewd, ruthless trader, marries and moves to Paris with Annabelle Strang, divorces her, and enters Pittsburgh journalism and advertising. He marries a steel heiress, Gertrude Stagle, and fosters a plan of “co‐operation” between capital and labor at the outbreak of World War I.

Eleanor Stoddard and Eveline Hutchins become interior decorators in Chicago; Eleanor alone continues the business, decorates the Moorehouse home, and becomes intimate with the capitalist.

Janey Williams, left friendless when her brother Joe enlists in the navy, has an unhappy affair with Jerry Burnham, who becomes a war correspondent, and gets a job with G.H. Barrow, a dishonest labor leader, through whom she meets Moorehouse. Becoming the latter's secretary, she accompanies him to Mexico in a vain attempt to “buy” Mac; again in New York, she quarrels with her brother over U.S. participation in the war, which he denounces as the plot of munitions makers. She becomes intimate with Barrow, when Moorehouse concentrates his ardor on Eleanor. His wife is jealous until she feels her position assured when they go to Washington, where he aids in the impending entrance into the war.

Charley Anderson, a poor North Dakota boy, is attracted to socialism and the I.W.W., travels through the U.S., meets Ben Compton, brother of Janey's roommate Gladys, and learns of Moorehouse's big business propaganda. Disillusioned by the suppression of socialism, and craving action, he and his friend Doc Rogers join a French ambulance corps.