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Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview
FORM A
Circumstances of Interview
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
STATE New York
NAME OF WORKER Saul Levitt Herman Partnow
ADDRESS 557 W. 144th Street 557 W. 144th Street
DATE June 1, 1939
SUBJECT Maritime -THE MINIMUM OF PUTS AND THE IMMIX OF POWER
1. Date and time of interview
2. Place of interview Bar on Eleventh Avenue engineer of S.S.
Roosevelt is just after being paid off.,
3. Name and address of informant
4. Name and address of person, if any, who out you in
touch with informant.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
6. Description of /*Dom, house, surroundinL;s, etc.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms,
each bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material
refers.)
FORM C
TEXT OF INTERVIEW (UNEDITED)
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
STATE New York
NAME OF WORKER Saul Levitt Herman Partnaw
ADDRESS 557 W. 144th Street 557 W. 144th Street
DATE June 1, 1939
SUBJECT MARITIME THE MINIMUM OF PARTS AND THE MAXIMUM OF POWER
Three beers. When I go ashore I want to hose em an get drunk.
American girls are the most intelligent and the cleanest out girls in
the world. No girls are like the American and the sweetest girls
in the world are Americans. All the fellas'll tellya that!
Engines is what I like. That's it. I gotta be near machinery
because I know machinery: Pm not satisfied unless I'm around it.
Listen. I can see a guy breaking a chair but if the guy that tried
it came over to any machine of mine he'd find me guarding it.. Say,
do you know anything about machinery? Take a oar for example. I
don't like to see a man punish a car. I've turned my opinion against
a man you know how the teeth don't mesh right when you shift care-
less I can't stand it. And I'll tell you why: because it's the
man that built it that's being destroyed. Do you know what I mean?
A man built that machine.
We're all engineers in my family1 My father was an engineer.
It's all back through the family. I'm the only kid. I got six
uncles that are in different kinds of engineering and one of en
is an engineer at sea like me he's the chief engineer of the Withita.
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I call that heredity. My grandfather and my father went to sea and
my father don't want me to cone back without the officer's gold braid.
The old man was chief engineer of the Norther lay say I wish you
could meet my father and mother! Ain't people grand in the midwest,
the most wonderiul people?
Three beers. I would say I've been at sea twelve oontinuous
years. Now why do I go to sea? Because my father was a sailor.
My wife is dead: tuberculosis. I've gotta little girl twelve years
old out in Ohio. What am I gonna go ashore for. Haw many maohinests
you got making a hundred and twenty a month steady?
I'm gonna have a lotta fun tonight but right now I'm thirsty,
three beers. Here's another opinion: I'm Episcopalian Anglo-Saxon.
But I have a religion of my awn an it's the religion of life. That's
it. It 's the religion of life vital and going on. Life to no is
a process of becoming like your creator. You are doing everything
yourself be in' alive and so forth and continuing. But you are a
process of becoming. Do you get it? The Bible I treat it as if
it was a fantastic literature of past ages. Life is absolutely alive
and living that's certain and positive. You never seen any dead life
hanging around, did ye? That's what I mean, that's my own religion.
If we can knock down real barriers, the real prejudicial barriers
an tariff walls. One universal language, one universal religibn,
one universal money, one universal an instead of building human
armies an navies one police force for the whole world. We wouldn't
have no mars which arise otta the barriers.
If we can build cars better than other countries let us build,
em. Denmark can make cheese better let her make cheese. If the
Chinese can make better firecrackers let 'em make em. Like a machine
with all the parts doing all their work.
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I like machines, I like nice machinery. I have a machine of
my own, my awn engine. It's a rotary Diesel engine that revolves
like a turbine instead of precipitatin it revolves. Only pure
Diesel. There's about thirteen fellers tryin to build the same
thing.
All I need is backing. Somebody that could have money. This
motor is not along the traditional lines; it's against the traditions.
But I've gotta have time to work on it. Ya gotta study it. You gotta
know haw you're gonna get compression. This motor is simplifying
engineering down to the old ages. It's taking engineering back to
the process of stripping her to her essentials an no sixteen cyl-
inders an cogs an millions of parts but a minimum of parts and a
maximum of power instead of a maximum of parts and a minimum of
power.
Say, if you ever have a chanoe, if you meet somebody that's
interested in backing that engine le s= know. You don know it but
if I got backing you might be talking to Edison or Ford aw it's
a hundred to one chance against me like inna horseracel Here I'm
hangin around a joint like this. Drinkin and fartin around.
My father was ohief engineer of the Gulfoil Corporation g
of Toledo an he was sayin he don't believe in any new type of
engine but he's willing for me to go on and do something with it.
You see there's too many mechanical parts in most machines. My
motor piston has one casting. Amr, the old man is the old type of
engineer of the steam engineering type old style but I'm the radioal
professional engineering type. Everything electricity. I believe in
things thist's thought impossible that's what hakes the wheels go
around.
Is everybody thirsty? Three beers. If Henry Ford or Welter
Chrysler were sitting here I bet you dollars to doughnuts they'd
give me ten thousand dollars to spend time on her. Another things
alloys. Chromium steel and aluminum is the best yet. But if I
had the money Id study the stresses and strains on her beoause
she gives more than three thousand revolutions per minute and the
r• p• m• of the radical motors they got in airplanes are around
25001 to 3000 r. p. m. but that's slow! Nine's faster but I gotta
have a chance to study her. No time on ship.
The minimum of parts and the maximum of power! That's what
she is. That's what I see in the whole world. The min, of parts
and the max. of power and we be goin ahead a hundred years. Some
day we're gonna have motors simplified you can exchange them like
money. You oan drop in to a gas station an have it changed for
thirty dollars. I'm just a practical engineer. I went up to
M I T but they wouldn't let me in. They said I'm too old. They
manta kid of eighteen that don't know the difference between a
sorewdriver and a hammer and they're gonna have these kids advanced
an educated. It ain't everything to be a professor. There's some
practical engineers that oould show em. Practical! I learned it
by hard knocks. I got it on my hand.s
What the hell. It's the same on ship. I'm a petty officer
an Ill never wear the gold braid. Cadets, college boys with pull
are comm n aboard. We got am on board all the time.
Tigmmembme Three beers.