Four Freedoms

by John Crowley

While drafting plans for building an aeronautics plant, brothers Henry and Jules Van Damme are unable to justify removing workers from agrarian or armaments assembly support efforts for the War in Europe. A vice president at their company jokingly suggests "making do, with women, the coloreds, the oldsters, the defectives, the handicaps. Realizing that the planes will be completed after the end of the war, the brothers suggest instead of paying employees limited salaries due to the war effort, a city be built, Henryville, to accommodate every need of workers in the factory.

Prosper and Pancho shortly afterwards meet, Pancho deliberately seeking a pacifism in avoiding the draft, and Prosper recently having left the home of his aunts, May and Bea, to seek independence and avoid condescension of the disabled from his employers. Eventually Prosper meets Vi, whom he later unintentionally spurns with his relationship with Connie. The plant temporarily shuts down to commemorate the death of Roosevelt, and shortly after his death the Vice President of Labor announces that in making the transition to non-war industries, the first layoffs at plants like the one at Ponca will be the old, the women, and the disabled. Henryville begins to dissolve, and abandoned when ultimately destroyed by a tornado, resulting in no related casualties. The novel's ending depicts a somewhat prosperous Ponca City near the bulldozed remains of Henryville, with a few rusting B-30 Pax Bombers left in the fields nearby.