 The Cavalcade of America presented by Dupont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. Sing a New World. Our play is a radio fantasy about Walt Whitman, written for the Cavalcade of America by Robert Talman. Starring in the role of Walt Whitman is John McIntyre of the Cavalcade Players. Our orchestra and original musical score are under the direction of Don Vouris. Dupont, maker of better things for better living through chemistry, presents John McIntyre as Walt Whitman on the Cavalcade of America. The varied carols I hear. Those are the mechanics. Each one singing his as it should be, blithe and strong. The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat. The deckhands singing on the steamboat deck. The woodcutter's song, the plow boys on his way in the morning or at noon into mission or at sundown. The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girls sewing and washing. Each singing what belongs to him or to her, and to no one else. Walt Whitman? I'm Walt Whitman. Well, what are you doing here? I'm drinking beer, which you will join me. Thank you. I've been here for hours listening to them talk. Who? The people. They're excited as I am excited, and I'm one with them in the presence of great knowledge. The future is about to rise out of a holocaust. What, here in America? Very hard of America, friend. Chicago has been destroyed by fire. All right, take Chicago. Make it your symbol. When the end of an era comes, the past is dead, and we best forget it. And the future? You can have it. Where is the simple believing spirit of the American pioneer? Well, his dream has become a nightmare, a vulgar struggle for the booty of the new world. Even the poor man is little better than an animal. I think I could turn and live with animals. I stand and look at them long and long. Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. We have much to learn from it. Well, you're a poet, so I suppose you have to see beauty in everything, even in vulgarity. You call me a poet. I call myself one of the citizens, and they know what I mean. Whatever interests the rest, interests me. This democracy in the present time is my subject matter. Yes, but what we were talking about, what I mean is to come back to the future. That's an idea, to come back to the future. To come back to the people, or the future is people. I sing people. I sing a new world somewhere and in some time. For what is the count of the scores in years? See the many-cylindered steam-printing crests. See the electric telegraph stretching across the continent. See the strong, quick locomotive as it departs, panting, blowing the steam whistle. See plowmen plowing farms. See miners digging mines. See the numberless factories. Oh, a word to clear one's path ahead endlessly. Oh, to haste firm holding, to haste, haste on with me. For ever so many generations hence, just as any one of you is one of a living crowd, I too walked in the streets of Manhattan Island, bathed in the waters around it. I too felt certain abrupt questioning stirring within me. In the day among crowds of people, sometimes they came upon me. What does it get you? Mashed between two lunch baskets and somebody squalling brat? Better than home, Jimmy. And there's us anyway. Yeah, I'm sorry, Sue. I don't want to spoil your day, Growson. Oh, it's all right, Jimmy. Just one thing, though. Please don't call that sweet baby a brat. We might be bringing our own baby along with us sometimes. We wouldn't want anybody to call our baby a brat, would we? On our cash, we wouldn't need to worry. We can't even get married. Things won't be the way they are forever. No. When you get old, you don't mind so much. Look at that old guy over there. The one with a white beard and a crop of hay on his head. He looks happy enough. Yeah. Well, he looks like he knew something, don't he? Some secret. Maybe he's one of their mind readers up on the boardwalk. Say, how are you going to like me when I get that old? Oh, I love you to get old like that, Jimmy. He's like a patriarch or something. Yeah, you sound like Kitty Foil. He's probably just some old wash pot. Passes out leaflets and subway stations announced in the end of the world. Oh, you're just suspicious of everyone. Okay, let's get him over here. You'll see. Hey, Whiskers. Can you please? Yes, young man. What do you want? Come over here a second. We want to settle up that. Thank you. I was hoping I'd meet some young people today. You mustn't mind, Jimmy. He doesn't mean to be rude. You mean calling me Whiskers? Why not? I like nicknames. I see you wondering about me. Well, I've been coming to Coney Island for a long time. It used to be just a dazzling white sandbar without a dwelling or a human being in sight. Nobody came here but me, ever. Gee, it must have been beautiful then. It's more beautiful now. People make a place, whatever it is, about them that might as well not exist. You're in love. Am I right? So what? So that's very nice. I congratulate you both. On what? On our forthcoming not getting married because of no dough? It's a truth. We might as well face it. And even if we did, what then? Two stuffy rooms and a railroad flat, maybe? Maybe we'd raise kids like them there. My daddy's a soda jerk. What's your daddy? That sounds nice, don't it? My daddy cleans the streets. My daddy washes windows. My daddy's a junk man, so what? Your son can say plenty besides that. He can say my daddy is part owner of the Metropolitan Museum. And he has a big chain of schools and colleges where everybody can learn everything there is to know for nothing. My daddy is the ruler of the richest country in the world. He owns more factories and railroads and farms and department stores and symphony orchestras and art collections than anybody. Gosh, you're awfully smart for no... I mean, you're smart. For such a queer looking old guy. Sure, I've had long time to get things straight. Yeah. You've got something there, maybe? Your country is what you want to make it. You're it. I don't strike up the ban for America. I have what I have. Here, Walt Whitman. I hear the workmen singing and the farmers wife singing. I hear in the distance the sounds of children and of animals early in the day. What do you see, Walt Whitman? I see the cities of the earth that make myself but random a part of them. I descend upon all those cities and rise from them again. I see the constructiveness of my race. Hey, Bill, it's our turn. Okay, let's have it. It's over, have a smoke. Get one, come and get it. This makes three, you owe me. Hey, Joe! Why are you cleaning up that girded? Am I seeing things? We are both seeing things. You see an old gent with a long white beard? Listen, we've got to do something. Don't dare. He might get scared and fall. Hey, you good. What's the matter? Need some help? Joe, take the jumper down and tell Murphy there's an old nut up here. They get killed. I'm on my way. Here, pup. Hang on with both hands now. All right, come on. Easy does it. That was quite a climb. Yeah, we don't generally do it that way. There's a heist, you know? Yes, I... I found that out. They wouldn't let me take it. Say, say that's a curious machine over there? What do you call that? That's a riveter. Hey, listen, I feel responsible for you. Sit tight now and I'll bring it over. Can I have a large hot pot? The Pop Dog! If it's a hot pot, you'll sing those whiskers of yours? I'm sorry. You see, I've never seen a skyscraper in construction. It's mighty high, isn't it? Yeah! Hey, listen, I'd feel better if you'd kind of hang on to me. There's a pretty stiff breeze up here. It comes in this kind of... Don't worry, I won't fall. What's the idea of climbing up here anyways? Well, I'm a kind of observer. A prophet, you might say. It's my business to find out about people in all walks of life. You mean like a feature writer for the Sunday papers? Like that, yes. I was a newspaper man one time. I covered Lincoln's inauguration. Ah, say, don't kid me. That was 80 years ago. You'd be at least a hundred. I am old, very old. Yes. Old. Well, that's not gonna be for me. When I start slipping right through the old skull here, a small neat hole. No fuss, no muss. I can see you've never been old. Say, that's a good one. You're not so slow, Pop. But did you ever have your insides shaken up by a ribbon and machine eight hours a day? It gets you unless you're a nox like me. Take it. That's what I mean. It's big work. It's not for everybody. Yeah, it's not for me either. Not for long. Here, I get the itch to move on. You're independent. I like that. Yes, sir. I don't fit into that tight little scheme. Don't play along. Why should I? You think you should, don't you? Maybe. There must be some reason why so many of them fall for it. Maybe I'm getting left out of the picture. How do I know? No, son, you're not getting left out of any picture. You and I, along with presidents and criminals and bathing beauties, we're all in it. The American compact. All together, individually. Whoever you are from the present hour, my words itch at your ears till you understand them. I don't say these things for a dollar or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat. It's you talking just as much as myself. Whoever you are, come and travel with me. So journeying a while in the east, I turn inland for the states tend inland and toward the western sea. Five gallons, kid, and make it snappy. Make it easy, mister. I saw you coming. Quite a kid to be doing work like this. Well, I'm doing it. Any objection? No. No. Just thought it's funny they don't have a guy for out here. You run the hash house inside, too? That'll be a dollar and six cents. Yeah, just got it. You're pretty touchy, aren't you? You've got your gas, mister. You're waiting for anything else. My father lives here, too. He just got a bad cold. And this is not a hash house. Okay, sister. Boy, when did you come in here? I thought I got something in my eye. Would it be, mister? One hamburger, well done. Come far today? From farther than the nearest star. From eternity into nowhere. That's here all right. You're not kidding. See, you talk well. You're a poet. I was once. I write a little, too. Or I did once. You and I were in the same boat, I guess. Out of eternity into nowhere. That was me when I woke up to reality. You talk as if that were a very long time ago. It was two years ago. But it seems like a hundred. You see before you the product of the system of free education, venerable sir. Mustard or onion? Onion, if you please. Yes. Out west here we have the finest schools in the world. You come back from a mass of stately architecture with your head full of poetry and slick ideas for overhauling the universe. And land in a hamburger stand. It has a good view. That makes it worse. You get to look enough into those mountains and daydreaming. And the car hooting for gas wakes you up. That says prettiest statement of the American paradoxes I ever heard. You take the lugs that come in here. They get to talking. Lives, big dream, little fish. But it's fun drawing them out. Americans tell their secrets at the drop of a hat. I can see your education has not been entirely wasted. You're a relief after those others. But why do you say that? I'll tell you why. Because you're not just in a hamburger stand and you never will be. You're in the center of the universe. The world moves past you on this highway. A new wonderful world too. Listen. Listen to what it's saying. It's saying I'll be honest with you. I don't offer the old smooth prizes. I offer rough new prizes. These are the days that must happen to you. It's time to explain myself. Let us stand up. I am an act may of things accomplished. I'm an enclosure of things to be. I don't call one greater and one smaller. That which fills its period and place is equal to any. What is commonest, nearest, cheapest, easiest, is me. Not you to see who cuts the rod next. Okay, that's it. Aw, they yanked that pot last week. Nah, number 22, bugle woogie. That's half, okay. What'll it be, future? A sip of beer, please. Have one on me. I salute your gray beer. I salute your young dancers. You call that dancing? That's jitterbug. It's not unlike some of the square dancers we used to do when I was younger. Oh, this is ringing around the rosy. Wait till it gets warmed up. If it wasn't for the dough, I'd bust that jazz mill into a thousand pieces. But why? You don't know these kids. They drive you crazy. They don't even talk English anymore. Jive, jam, camp, killer. What kind of talk is that? I call it very creative. Listen to that noise. You call that music? You call that anything? All music is what awakes from you when you're reminded by the instruments. Quite a philosopher, ain't you, Pop? Here. Have another one on me. Go on. I like to hear you talk. There's something that comes to one now and perpetually. It's hinted by the nearest, commonest, radius. It's ever provoked by then. That something is the unseen soul of man. You're way ahead of me, Pop. Sounds like devil talk to me. Do I contradict myself? Well, then I contradict myself. I'm Lord. I contain multitudes. Oh, my body and soul, this land, the buried and ample land, the south and the north and the light, Ohio shores and flashing Missouri, and ever the far-spreading prairies covered with grass and corn, and ever the far-spreading prairie. Good evening, mister. Good evening. You were looking for someone? No. Whatever I find, that's what I'm looking for. You from the revival meeting in town? No, I'm a poet, an easterner. My name's Walt Whitman. Whitman. I remember my father talking about a poet named Whitman. But he'd be dead a long time. You wouldn't be the same one. Well, you're a long way from home, aren't you? I'm at home just about anywhere. What's that? Why don't I shut off this separator? Oh, I can hear you better. What were you saying? Wasn't important. I was thinking when I came across this prairie before, it was so silent. They didn't have electric cream separators or telephones or tractors or any of the sounds I've heard out here today. It was like this. Like it is right now. Only silence could encompass it. Silence. Listen, that's the prairie chicken. She moans like that when she settles down to roost. I hear it every evening the same. I used to hate it, it was so mournful. Now it keeps me company. Yes. You're really remarkable, you know? No, you'll find thousands like me out here. There's a breeze coming up. There'll be rain come morning. I can smell it. Tell you, Mr. I got that first, that dead silence out here. And I began to hear things. There's one of the things. That's the 820 coming in Spillville. Tell me, you say you weren't born here? No, I was born in Ohio. My husband hankered for more land. You know, sometimes I think of the hills at home and feel sad still. But in the morning there's the quail and metal arcs and the hired man rattling up the lane in his old fliver. Oh, there's enough. After all, it's my home. Oh, here it is getting dark and I'm still talking. You'll need a flashlight to light you back the highway. I'll get you one. Leave it in the mailbox at the turning, Mr. Whip. It's funny. I'm beside you for a moment only, whoever you are. I depart as air. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love. If you want me again, look for me under your boot soles. You hardly know who I am or what I mean. But I shall be good health to you, nevertheless. And filter and fiber your blood. Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you. America, thanks John McIntyre and the Cavalcade players for their performance of this radiophatasy on the spirit of Walt Whitman in America. I sing a new world. And now DuPont brings you news of chemistry at work in our world. There used to be magicians who guaranteed to find oil for you for a small fee, of course, using a divining rod. Oil pools deep underground are actually located today by means of scientific divining rods called geophones. Holes are drilled and charges are exploded in them. By measuring the time it takes the resulting sound waves to travel through the subsurface rock, engineers actually map the earth formation far underground and locate the domes where pools of oil may lie. This seismic prospecting with dynamite saves millions of dollars in time, money, and energy. America uses roughly 300 million pounds of dynamite a year. Every year construction takes about 100 million pounds. Metal mining uses another 100 million, and quarrying and coal mining take about 100 million pounds between them. Agriculture uses 5 million pounds. Why is so much dynamite used today? A quick comparison gives the answer. In 1835, a railroad digging a tunnel for its tracks established a world's record for tunneling through hard rock. Using hand labor and black powder, the crews dug through at the rate of 20 to 50 feet a month. Today, with dynamite, hard rock tunnels move along at the rate of 1,000 feet a month, 20 times faster. There are hundreds of kinds of dynamite especially made for hundreds of purposes. DuPont Dynamite digs ore in mines. Copper, zinc, lead, gold, and silver. DuPont Dynamite builds roads, drains swamps, digs traffic tubes under rivers, chops the tops off tall trees in the forest, and incidentally sometimes checks forest fires. It digs subways in our great cities. It dredges harbors for deep draft ships. It checks soil erosion. In addition to these routine jobs, it handles many special tasks. A million pounds of dynamite in 800 miles of holes were used just to clear the site for the Grand Coulee Dam. With dynamite, 92 miles of tunnel between the Colorado River and Los Angeles were holed through in six years. Without dynamite's help, engineers estimate the work would have taken 10 centuries. Yet the same dynamite that handles jobs of that size can be controlled so exactly, so delicately, that DuPont experts not long ago crumbled the engine foundations in a building without disturbing delicate electrical machinery running only a few feet away. Approximately 300 million pounds of it have been shipped by railroad every year since 1923 without a single personal injury accident. Here is a paradox of chemistry. A chemical tool so rugged that it can topple a mountain. Yet so delicate that it can lift a rock out of your garden. A tool perfected by the chemist who brings us, in the words of the DuPont pledge, better things for better living through chemistry. And now the star of next week's program, William Johnstone of the Cavalcade Players. For our play next week, we present Down to the Sea, an exciting story of adventure and romance. And the heroic spirit of Herman Melville, whose novel Moby Dick is an American classic. We hope you'll join the Cavalcade of America for this broadcast next week. On the Cavalcade of America, your announcer is Clayton Collier sending best wishes from DuPont. This is the National Broadcasting Company.