The Project Gutenberg EBook of Worrying Won't Win, by Montague Glass
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Title: Worrying Won't Win
Author: Montague Glass
Release Date: August 3, 2010 [EBook #33335]
Language: English
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[Illustration: See p. 173
"And the only kick they've got, Mawruss," Abe said, "is that President
Wilson won't expose his hand, which, if he did, he might just so well
throw the game to Germany and be done with it."]
WORRYING WON'T WIN
BY
MONTAGUE GLASS
ILLUSTRATED
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON
WORRYING WON'T WIN
Copyright, 1918, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published May, 1918
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THE CZAR
BUSINESS 1
II. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON SOAP-BOXERS
AND PEACE FELLERS 10
III. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON FINANCING THE
WAR 20
IV. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON BERNSTORFF'S
EXPENSE ACCOUNT 30
V. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS ON THE
FRONT PAGE AND OFF 40
VI. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON HOOVERIZING
THE OVERHEAD 49
VII. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 58
VIII. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON LORDNORTHCLIFFING
VERSUS COLONELHOUSING 68
IX. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON NATIONAL MUSIC
AND NATIONAL CURRENCY 77
X. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON REVOLUTIONIZING
THE REVOLUTION BUSINESS 86
XI. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THE SUGAR
QUESTION 96
XII. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS HOW TO
PUT THE SPURT IN THE EXPERT 106
XIII. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON BEING AN OPTICIAN
AND LOOKING ON THE BRIGHT SIDE 115
XIV. THE LIQUOR QUESTION--SHALL IT BE DRY
OR EXTRA DRY? 124
XV. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON PEACE WITH
VICTORY AND WITHOUT BROKERS, EITHER 133
XVI. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON KEEPING IT
DARK 142
XVII. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON THE PEACE PROGRAM,
INCLUDING THE ADDED EXTRA FEATURE
AND THE SUPPER TURN 151
XVIII. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON THE NEW NATIONAL
HOLIDAYS 160
XIX. MR. WILSON: THAT'S ALL 169
XX. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THE GRAND-OPERA
BUSINESS 177
XXI. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THE MAGAZINE
IN WAR-TIMES 186
XXII. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON SAVING DAYLIGHT,
COAL, AND BREATH 195
XXIII. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS WHY IS A
PLAY-GOER? 204
XXIV. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS SOCIETY--NEW
YORK, HUMAN, AND AMERICAN 213
XXV. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THIS HERE
INCOME TAX 222
ILLUSTRATIONS
"And the only kick they've got, Mawruss," Abe
said, "is that President Wilson won't expose
his hand, which, if he did, he might
just so well throw the game to Germany
and be done with it." _Frontispiece_
"I bet yer over half a czar's morning mail already
is circulars from casket concerns
alone, Abe." _Facing p._ 2
"'So,' Mrs. Hoover says, 'you had one of them
sixty-cent table-d'hôte lunches to-day again,
and now of course you 'ain't got no appetite.
How many times did I tell you you
shouldn't eat that poison?'" " 50
"Perhaps it's because this here Lord George and
King George is related maybe," Morris suggested.
"I don't think so," Abe replied.
"The name is only a quincidence." " 60
"'Well, if we are such big experts on machine-guns,
we should ought to know a whole lot
more about machine-guns as Colonel Lewis,
and what does that _Schlemiel_ know about
machine-guns, _anyway_?'" " 108
"And five minutes after the jury had returned a
verdict would be on his way up to the Matteawan
Asylum for the Criminal Insane." " 152
"Take, for instance, sopranos, and they come in
two classes. There is the soprano which
hollers murder police and they call her a
dramatic soprano. And then again there is
the soprano which gargles. That is a coloratura
soprano." " 180
"For instance, who is it that says whole-wheat
bread irritates the lining from the elementry
canal? The ignorant man? _Oser!_" " 202
WORRYING WON'T WIN
WORRYING WON'T WIN
I
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THE CZAR BUSINESS
Like the human-hair business and the green-goods business it is not
what it used to be.
"Yes, Abe," Morris Perlmutter said to his partner, Abe Potash, as they
sat in their office one morning in September, "the English language is
practically a brand-new article since the time when I used to went to
night school. In them days when a feller says he is feeling like a king,
it meant that he was feeling like a king, _aber_ to-day yet, if a feller
says he feels like a king it means that he's got stomach and domestic
trouble and that he don't know where the money is coming from to pay his
next week's laundry bill. Czars is the same way, too. Former times when
you called a feller a regular czar you meant he was a regular czar,
_aber_ nowadays if you say somebody is a regular czar it means that the
poor feller couldn't call his soul his own and that he must got to do
what everybody from the shipping-clerk up tells him to do with no back
talk."
"Well, it only goes to show, Mawruss," Abe commented. "There was a czar,
y'understand, which for years was not only making out pretty good as a
czar, y'understand, but had really as you might say been doing something
phenomenal yet. In fact, Mawruss, if three years ago R.G. Dun or
Bradstreet would give it a rating to czars and people in similar lines,
y'understand, compared with the czar already, an old-established house
like Hapsburg's in Vienna would be rated N. to Q., Credit Four, see
foot-note. And to-day, Mawruss, where _is_ he?"
"Say," Morris protested, "any one could have reverses, Abe, because it
don't make no difference if it would be a czar _oder_ a pants
manufacturer, and they both had ratings like John B. Rockafellar even,
along comes two or three bad seasons like the czar had it, y'understand,
and the most you could hope for would be thirty cents on the dollar--ten
cents cash and the balance in notes at three, six, and nine months,
indorsed by a grand duke who has got everything he owns in his wife's
name and 'ain't spent an evening at home with her since way before the
Crimean War already."
"What happened to the Czar, Mawruss," Abe said, "bad seasons didn't done
it. Not reckoning quick assets, like crowns actually in stock,
fixtures, etc., the feller must of owned a couple million _versts_
high-grade real property, to say nothing of his life insurance,
Mawruss."
[Illustration: "I bet yer over half a czar's morning mail already is
circulars from casket concerns alone, Abe."]
"Czars and life insurance ain't in the same dictionary at all, Abe,"
Morris interrupted. "In the insurance business, Abe, czars comes under
the same head as aviators with heart trouble, y'understand. I bet yer
over half a czar's morning mail already is circulars from casket
concerns alone, Abe, so that only goes to show how much you know from
czars."
"Well, I know this much, anyhow," Abe continued. "What put the Czar out
of business, didn't happen this season or last season neither, Mawruss.
It dates back already twenty years ago, which you can take it from me,
Mawruss, it don't make no difference what line a feller would be
in--czars wholesale, czars retail, or czars' supplies and sundries,
including bombproof underwear and the Little Wonder Poison Detector,
y'understand, the moment such a feller marries into the family of his
nearest competitor, Mawruss, he might just as well go down to a lawyer's
office and hand him the names he wants inserted in Schedule A Three of
his petition in bankruptcy."
"Did the Czar marry into such a family?" Morris asked.
"A question!" Abe exclaimed. "Didn't you know that the Czar's wife is
the Kaiser's mother's sister's daughter?"
"Say!" Morris retorted. "I didn't even know that the Kaiser _had_ a
mother. From the heart that feller's got it, you might suppose he was
raised in an incubator and that the only parents he ever knew was a
couple of packages absorbent cotton and an alcohol-lamp."
"Well, that's what I am telling you, Mawruss," Abe said. "With all the
millionaires in Russland which would be tickled to pieces to get a czar
for a son-in-law, y'understand, the feller goes to work and ties up to a
family with somebody like the Kaiser in it, and you know as well as I
do, Mawruss, one crook in your wife's family can stick you worser than
all your poor relations put together."
"Even when your wife's relations are honest, what _is_ it?" Morris
asked.
"_Gewiss!_" Abe agreed. "And can you imagine when such a crook _in_-law
is also your biggest competitor? I bet yer, Mawruss, the poor _nebich_
wasn't home from his honeymoon yet before the Kaiser starts in cutting
prices on him."
"Cutting prices was the least," Morris said. "Take Bulgaria, for
instance, and up to a few years ago that was one of the Czar's best
selling territories. In fact, Abe, whenever the Czar stops off at
Sophia, him and the King of Bulgaria takes coffee together, such good
friends they was."
"Who is Sophia?" Abe asked. "_Also_ a relative of the Kaiser?"
"Sophia is the name of one big town in Bulgaria," Morris replied.
"That's a name for a big town--Sophia," Abe remarked. "Why don't they
call it Lillian Russell and be done with it?"
"They could call it Williamsburg for all the business the Czar done
there after the Kaiser got in his fine work," Morris said.
"And after all, what good did it done him?" Abe added. "Because you know
as well as I do, Mawruss, the Kaiser ain't two jumps ahead of the
sheriff himself. In fact, Mawruss, the king business is to-day like the
human-hair business and the green-goods business. It's practically a
thing of the past."
"Did I say it wasn't?" Morris asked.
"Being a king ain't a business no more, Mawruss. It's just a job," Abe
continued, "and it's a metter of a few months now when the only kings
left will be, so to speak, journeymen kings like the King of England and
the King of Belgium and not boss kings like the King of Austria and the
Kaiser. Why, right now, that Germany is his store, and that the poor
Germans _nebich_ is just salespeople; and he figures that if he wants to
close out his stock and fixtures at a sacrifice and at the same time
work his salespeople to death, what is that _their_ business,
y'understand."
"Well, that's the way the Czar figured," Morris commented. "For, Abe,
the Kaiser has got an idee years already he was running Russland on the
open-shop principle, and before he woke up to the fact that the people
he had been treating right straight along as non-union labor was really
the majority stockholders, y'understand, they had changed the
combination of the safe on him and notified the bank that on and after
said date all checks would be signed by Jacob M. Kerensky as receiver."
"You would think a feller like the Czar would learn something by what
happened to this here Mellen of the New Haven Railroad," Abe said.
"_Yow_ learn!" Morris replied. "Is the Kaiser learning something from
what they done to the Czar?"
"That's a different matter entirely," Abe retorted. "With a relation by
marriage, you naturally figure if he makes a big success that he fell in
soft and that a lucky stiff like him if he gets shot with a gun,
y'understand, the bullet is from gold and it hits him in the pocket yet;
whereas, if he goes broke and 'ain't got a cent left in the world,
y'understand, it's a case of what could you expect from a _Schlemiel_
like that. So instead of learning anything from what happens to the
Czar, I bet yer the Kaiser feels awful sore at him yet. Why, I don't
suppose a day passes without the Kaiser's wife comes to him and says,
'Listen, Popper, Esther (or whatever the Czar's wife's name is) called
me up again this morning; she says Nicholas 'ain't got no work nor
nothing and she was crying something terrible.'
"'Well, if she's going to keep on crying till I find that loafer a job,'
the Kaiser says, 'she's got a long wet spell ahead of her.'
"'She don't want you to find him no job,' the Kaiser's wife tells him.
'All she asks is you should send 'em transportation.'
"'Transportation _nothing_!' the Kaiser says. 'I already sent
transportation to the King of Greece, Ambassador Bernstorff, Doctor
Dernburg, this here boy Ed _und Gott weisst wer nach_. What am I? The
Pennsylvania Railroad or something?'
"'Well, what is he going to do 'way out there in Tobolsk?' she says.
"'If he would only of acted reasonable and killed off a couple million
of them suckers, the way any other king would do, he never would of had
to go to Tobolsk at all,' the Kaiser says.
"'_Aber_ what shall I say to her if she rings up again?' she asks.
"'Say what you please,' the Kaiser answers her, 'but tell Central I
wouldn't pay no reverse charges under no circumstances whatsoever from
nowheres.'"
"And who told _you_ all this, Abe?" Morris asked.
"Nobody," Abe replied. "I figured it out for myself."
"Well, you figured wrong, then," Morris said. "The Kaiser don't act that
way. He ain't human enough, and, furthermore, Abe, the Kaiser don't talk
over the telephone, neither, because if he did, y'understand, it's a
cinch that sooner or later the court physician would be giving out the
cause of death as shock from being connected up with the electric-light
plant by party or parties unknown and Long Live Kaiser Schmooel the
Second--or whatever the Crown Prince's rotten name is."
"Any one who done such a thing in the hopes of making a change for the
better, Mawruss," Abe commented, "would certainly be jumping from the
frying-pan into the soup, because if the Germans got rid of the Kaiser
in favor of the Crown Prince it would be a case of discarding a king and
drawing a deuce."
"Sure I know," Morris said, "but what the Germans need is a new deal all
around. As the game stands now in Germany, Abe, only a limited few sits
in, while the rest of the country hustles the refreshments and pays for
the lights and the cigars, and they're such a poor-spirited bunch,
y'understand, that they 'ain't got nerve enough to suggest a kitty,
even."
"Well, it's too late for them to start a kitty now, Mawruss," Abe said.
"Which you could take it from me, Mawruss, the house is going to be
pulled 'most any day. Several million husky cops is going up the front
stoop right this minute, Mawruss, and while they may have a little
trouble with them--now--ice-box style of doors, it's only a question of
time when they would back up the patrol-wagon, y'understand, because if
the Germans wouldn't close up the game of their own accord, Mawruss, the
Allies must got to do it _for_ them."
"But the Germans don't want us to help 'em," Morris said. "They're
perfectly satisfied as they are."
"I know it," Abe said. "They're a nation of shipping-clerks, Mawruss.
They're in a rut, y'understand. They've all got rotten jobs and they're
scared to death that they're going to lose them. Also the boss works
them like dawgs and makes their lives miserable, y'understand, and yet
they're trembling in their pants for fear he is going to bust up on
them."
"Then I guess it's up to us Allies to show them poor _Chamorrim_ how
they could be bosses for themselves," Morris suggested.
"Sure it is," Abe concluded, "and next year in Tobolsk when the Kaiser
joins his relations by marriage, Mawruss, he's going to pick up the
_Tobolsker Freie Presse_ some morning and see where there has been
incorporated at last the _Deutsche Allgemeine Wohlfahrtfabrik_, with a
capital of a hundred billion marks, to take over the business of the
K.K. Manufacturing Company, and he's going to say the same as everybody
else: 'Well, what do you know about them Heinies? I never thought they
had it in them.'"
II
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON SOAP-BOXERS AND PEACE FELLERS
There is some of them peace fellers which ain't so much scared as
they are contrary.
"People 'ain't begun to realize yet what this war really and truly
means, Mawruss," Abe Potash said as he finished reading an interview
with ex-Ambassador Gerard, in which the ex-ambassador said that people
had not yet begun to realize what the war really meant.
"Maybe they don't," Morris Perlmutter agreed, "but for every feller
which 'ain't begun to realize what this war really and truly means, Abe,
there is a hundred other fellers which 'ain't begun to realize what a
number of people there is which goes round saying that people 'ain't
begun to realize what this war really and truly means, y'understand.
Also, Abe, the same people is going round begging people which is just
as patriotic as they are that they should brace up and be patriotic,
y'understand, and they are pulling pledges to hold up the hands of the
President on other people who has got similar pledges in their breast
pockets and pretty near beats 'em to it, understand me, and that's the
way it goes."
"Well, if one time out of a hundred they strike somebody who really and
truly don't realize what the war means, like you, Mawruss," Abe began,
"why, then, their time ain't entirely wasted, neither."
"I realize just so much as you do what this war means, Abe," Morris
retorted.
"Maybe you do," Abe admitted, "but you don't talk like you did, Mawruss,
otherwise you would know that if out of a hundred Americans only
ninety-nine of 'em pledges themselves to hold up the hands of the
President, y'understand, and the balance of one claims that we are in
this war just to save our investments in Franco-American bonds and that
Mr. Wilson is every bit as bad as the Kaiser except that he's
clean-shaved, y'understand, then them ninety-nine fellers with the
pledges in their breast pockets should ought to convert the balance of
one. Because, Mawruss, a nation which is ninety-nine per cent. patriotic
is like a fish which is ninety-nine per cent. fresh--all you can notice
is the one per cent. which smells bad."
"I am just so much in favor of the country being one hundred per cent.
American as you are, Abe," Morris said, "but what I claim is that we
should go about it _right_."
"If you mean we shouldn't argue with them one-per-centers, but send them
right back to that part of the old country which they come from
originally, Mawruss," Abe continued, "why, I am agreeable that they
should be shipped right away, F.O.B., N.Y., all deliveries subject to
delay and liability being limited to fifty dollars personal baggage in
case they should, please Gawd, fail to arrive in Europe."
"Sure I know," Morris agreed. "But pretty near all them one-per-centers
was born and raised in the United States or in Saint Louis, Wisconsin,
and Cincinnati. You take this here _Burgermeister_ of Chicago, for
instance, and the chances is that all he knows about the old country is
what he learned on a couple of visits to Milwaukee, y'understand. So how
could you export a feller like that?"
"I don't want to export him, Mawruss. All I would like to see is that
they should put an embargo on him," Abe said, "and on his friends, them
peace fellers, too."
"Well, I'll tell you," Morris commented, "about them peace fellers, you
couldn't blame 'em exactly, because you know how it is with some people:
they 'ain't got no control over their feelings, and if they're scared to
death, y'understand, they couldn't help showing it, which my poor
grandmother, _olav hasholom_, wouldn't allow me to keep so much as a
pea-shooter in the house, on account, she says, if the good Lord wills
it, even a broomstick could give fire."
"And yet, Mawruss, if burglars would of broke into her home, I bet you
she would grabbed the nearest flat-iron and went for 'em with it," Abe
said, "so don't insult your grandmother _selig_ by comparing her with
them peace fellers which they _oser_ care how many burglars is johnnying
the front door just so long as they could hide under the bed."
"At the same time, Abe, there is some of them peace fellers which ain't
so much scared as they are contrary, y'understand," Morris said. "Take
this here LaFollette, Abe, and that feller's motto is, 'My country--I
think she's always wrong--but right or wrong--that's my opinion and I
stick to it.' All a United States Senator has got to do is to look like
he is preparing to say something, y'understand, and before he can get
out so much as 'Brother President and fellow-members of this
organization,' LaFollette jumps up and says, 'I'm sorry, but I disagree
with you.'"
"That must make him pretty popular in the Senate," Abe remarked.
"Popular's no name for it," Morris continued. "There ain't a United
States Senator which wouldn't stand willing to dig down and pay for a
set of engrossed resolutions out of his own pocket, just so long as
Senator LaFollette would resign or something."
"But Senator LaFollette ain't one of them peace fellers, Mawruss," Abe
said.
"Sure, I know," Morris replied. "All he wants is to run the war
according to Cushing's _Manual_. If he had his way we wouldn't be able
to give an order for so much as one-twelfth dozen guns, y'understand,
without it come up in the form of a motion that it is regularly moved
and seconded that the Secretary of War be and he is hereby authorized to
order the same and all those in favor will signify the same by saying
aye, y'understand, and even then, Abe, him and Senator Vardaman would
call for a show of hands under Section Twelve, Subsection D, of the
by-laws."
"Then I suppose if a few thousand American soldiers gets killed on
account they 'ain't got the right kind of guns, Mawruss, we could lay it
to Section Twelve, Subsection D, of the by-laws," Abe suggested.
"And you could give some of them Senators credit for an assist, Abe,
because you take a Senator like that, Abe, and when he holds up the
ammunition supply with a two-hour speech, y'understand, he _oser_
worries his head how many American soldiers is going to be killed by the
Germans in France six months later, just so long as his own name is
spelled right by the newspapers in New York City next morning."
"It would help a whole lot, Mawruss," Abe said, "if Senators and
Congressmen was numbered the same like automobiles, y'understand,
because who is going to waste his breath arguing that the Senate should
pass a law which it's a pipe the Senate ain't going to pass, on account
that nobody is in favor of it except himself and a couple of other
Senators temporarily absent on the road, making Fargo, Minneapolis,
Chicago, and points east as traveling peace conventioners,
y'understand, when he knows that next morning the only notice the New
York newspapers will take of his _Geschrei_ will be, Among those who
spoke in the Senate yesterday was:
D 105-666 WIS
1917
2016 PA.
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COMMERCIAL
01-232 N.Y.
1917
"Well, there's plenty of people which thinks when Governor Lauben
wouldn't let them peace fellers run off their convention, y'understand,
that it was unconstitutional," Morris said.
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "They're the same people which thinks that
anything what helps us and hinders Germany is unconstitutional,
including the Constitution. You take them socialist orators, which the
only use they've got for soap is the boxes the soap comes in,
y'understand, and to hear them talk you would think that the Kaiser sunk
the _Lusitania_ pursuant to Article Sixty-one, Section Two, of the
Constitution of the United States, Mawruss, whereas when President
Wilson sends a message to Congress asking them when they are going to
get busy on the war taxes and what do they think this is, anyway--a
_Kaffeklatsch_, y'understand--it is all kinds of violations of Articles
Sixteen, Thirty-two, O.K. and C.O.D. of the Constitution and that the
American people is a lot of weak-livered curs to stand for it, outside
of being weak-livered curs, anyway."
"You mean to say we allow these here fellers to get up on soap-boxes and
say such things like that?" Morris exclaimed.
"We've _got_ to allow them," Abe replied. "The Constitution protects
them."
"What do you mean--the Constitution protects them?" Morris said. "Here a
couple of weeks ago a judge in North Carolina gives out a decision that
the Constitution don't protect little children eleven years old from
being made to work in factories, y'understand, and now you are trying to
tell me that the same Constitution does protect these here loafers! What
kind of a Constitution have we got, anyway?"
"I don't know, Mawruss, but there's this much about it, anyhow--a lawyer
could get more money out of just one board of directors which wants to
go ahead and put through the deal if under the Constitution of the
United States nobody could do 'em nothing, y'understand, than he could
out of all the children which gets injured working in all the
cotton-mills south of Mason and Hamlin's line, understand me. So you
see, Mawruss, the Constitution not only protects these here soap-box
orators, but it also gives 'em something to talk about because when they
want to knock the United States and boost Germany, all they need to say
is that you've got to hand it to the Germans; if they kill little
children, they're, anyhow, foreign children and not German children."
"I suppose a lot of them soap-box orators gets paid by the German
government for boosting the Germans the way you just done it, Abe,"
Morris commented, "which I see that this here Ridder of the _New Yorker
Staats-Zeitung_ gives it out that any one what accuses him that he is
getting paid by the German government for boosting the Kaiser in his
paper would got to stand a suit for liable, because he is too patriotic
an American sitson to print articles boosting the Kaiser except as a
matter of friendship and free of charge--outside of what he can make by
syndicating them to other German newspapers."
"But do them other German newspapers get paid by the German government
for reprinting Mr. Ridder's articles?" Abe asked.
"_That_ Mr. Ridder don't say," Morris replied.
"Well," Abe continued, "_somebody_ should ought to appreciate the way
them German newspapers love the Kaiser, even if it's only a United
States District Attorney, Mawruss, because you take it if the shoe
pinched on the other foot, and a feller by the name Jefferson W. Rider
was running an American newspaper in Berlin, Germany, by the name, we
would say, for example, the _Berlin_, _Germany_, _Star-Gazette_, which
is heart and soul for Germany and at the same time prints articles by
American military experts showing how Germany couldn't win the war, not
in a million years, and the sooner the German soldiers realize it the
quicker they wouldn't get killed for such a hopeless _Geschaft_,
y'understand. Also, nobody has a greater admiration for the Kaiser than
the _Berlin_, _Germany_, _Star-Gazette_, understand me, but that if the
Kaiser thinks President Wilson is a tyrant, y'understand, then all the
_Star-Gazette_ has got to say is, some day when the Kaiser is fixing the
ends of his mustache in front of the glass mit candlegrease or whatever
such _Chamorrim_ uses on their mustaches to make themselves look like
kaisers, y'understand, that the Kaiser should take another look in the
mirror and he would see there such a cutthroat tyrant which President
Wilson never dreamed of being in Princeton University to the
shipping-clerk, even. Also this here _Berlin_, _Germany_, _Star-Gazette_
says that Germany is the land of bluff and that--"
"One moment," Morris Perlmutter interrupted. "What are you trying to
tell me--that such a newspaper would be allowed to exist in Berlin,
Germany?"
"I am only giving you a hypo-critical case, Mawruss," Abe continued,
"where I am trying to explain to you that if this was Germany it
wouldn't be necessary for Mr. Ridder to sue anybody for liable. All he
would have to do when they ask him if he's got anything to say why
sentence should not be passed, y'understand, is to tell the judge what
was his trade before he became an editor, understand me, and they would
put him to work at it for the remainder of the war."
"He wouldn't get off so easy as that, even," Morris commented. "Why,
what do you suppose they would do to the editor of this here, for
example, _Star-Gazette_ if he was to just so much as hint that the Crown
Prince couldn't be such a terrible good judge of French château
furniture, y'understand, on account he had slipped over on the Berlin
antique dealers a lot of reproductions which they had every right to
believe was genwine old stuff, as it had been rescued from the flames,
packed, and shipped under the Crown Prince's personal supervision? I bet
you, Abe, if the paper was on the streets at three-thirty and the sun
rose at three-thirty-five, y'understand, the authorities wouldn't wait
that long. They'd shoot him at three-thirty-two."
"I know it," Abe agreed. "You see, Mawruss, an editor, a soap-boxer, a
cotton-mill owner, or a stock-waterer might get away with it in this
country under the Constitution, but over on the other side they wouldn't
know what he was talking about at all, because in Germany, Mawruss, a
constitution means only one thing. It's something that can be ruined by
drinking too much beer, and you don't have to hire no lawyer for
_that_."
III
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON FINANCING THE WAR
On everything which a feller buys, from pinochle decks to headache
medicine, he will have to put a stamp.
"I see where this here Chump Clark says that incomes from over ten
thousand dollars should ought to be confiscated," Abe Potash observed to
his partner, Morris Perlmutter, one morning in September.
"Sure, I know," Morris replied, "and if this here Chump Clark has a good
year next year and cleans up for a net profit of ten thousand two
hundred and twenty-six dollars and thirty-five cents, then he'll claim
that all incomes over ten thousand two hundred and twenty-six dollars
and thirty-five cents should ought to be confiscated, Abe, and that's
the way it goes. I am the same way, Abe. Any one what makes more money
as I do, Abe, I 'ain't got no sympathy for at all."
"I bet yer Vincent Astor thinks that John B. Rockafellar should ought to
be satisfied mit the reasonable income which a feller could make it by
working hard at the real-estate business the way Vincent Astor does,"
Abe commented.
"John B. Rockafellar _oser_ worries his head over the ravings of a
protelariat," Morris said. "But, anyhow, Abe, there's a whole lot to
what this here Chump Clark says at that. If we compel men to give up
their lives for their country, why shouldn't we compel them fellers
which has got incomes of over ten thousand dollars to give up their
property for their country also?"
"Well, I'll tell you, Mawruss," Abe replied. "This here Chump Clark is a
Congressman, and the way I feel about it is, that when a Congressman
wants to say something in Congress, y'understand, he should ought to be
compelled to first submit it in writing to a certified public accountant
or, anyhow, a bookkeeper, y'understand, because the average Congressman
'ain't got no head for figures. Take Mr. Clark, for example, and when he
reckons that everybody which gets drafted is going to give up his life
for his country, y'understand, you don't got to be the head actuary of
the Equitable exactly in order to figure it out that he's made a
tremendous overestimate. So when the same feller talks about
confiscating incomes over ten thousand, it ain't necessary to ask how he
come to fix on ten thousand instead of five thousand or fifteen
thousand, because whether he tossed for it or dealt himself three cold
hands, and the hand representing ten thousand dollars won out with treys
full of deuces, y'understand, the information ain't going to help us
finance the war to any extent."
"Why not?" Morris asked.
"Because you take yourself, for instance, and we would say for the sake
of argument that in nineteen seventeen you turned over a new leaf and
worked so hard that you made fifteen thousand five hundred dollars."
"Listen, Abe," Morris interrupted, "if there is a new leaf coming to any
one around here, Abe, I wouldn't mention no names for the sake of an
argument or otherwise."
"All right," Abe said, "then we'll say you didn't work no harder, but
just the same, Mawruss, if you was to make fifteen thousand five hundred
dollars in nineteen seventeen, and this here Chump Clark gets the
government to confiscate fifty-five hundred dollars on you, how much
would they confiscate on you in nineteen eighteen?"
Morris shrugged his shoulders. "What is the use of talking pipe dreams?"
he said.
"I ain't talking pipe dreams," Abe retorted. "This is something which
not only Chump Clark suggested it, but Senator LaFollette also as a good
scheme for financing the war."
"Evidently they don't expect the war to last long," Morris commented,
"which the most the government could hope to collect is the excess
income for nineteen seventeen, because if the government confiscates
five thousand five hundred dollars on me in nineteen seventeen, am I
going to go around in the summer of nineteen eighteen beefing about
business being rotten because here it is the first of July, nineteen
eighteen, and so far all the government could confiscate on me is two
thousand two hundred and sixty-seven dollars and thirty-eight cents,
whereas on July first, nineteen seventeen, I had already got confiscated
on me two thousand four hundred and thirty-one dollars and fifty cents?
_Oser a Stück!_ If I have made ten thousand dollars as early as April
first, nineteen eighteen, and I know that all further profits for
nineteen eighteen is going to be confiscated by the government,
y'understand, right then and there I am going to shut up shop and paste
a notice on the door:
GONE TO LUNCH
WILL RETURN
JANUARY 2, 1919
and anybody else would do the same, Abe, I don't care if he would be as
patriotic as Senator LaFollette himself even."
"But that ain't the only idees for financing the war which Congress has
got it, Mawruss," Abe said. "On everything which a feller buys, from
pinochle decks to headache medicine, he will have to put a stamp. There
will be extra stamps on all kinds of checks from bank checks and poker
checks to bar checks and hat checks. There will be red stamps, blue
stamps, and stamps in all pastel shades, and when they run out of colors
they'll print 'em in black and white and issue them to the public in
flavors like wintergreen, peppermint, spearmint, and clove for bar-check
stamps and strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate nut Sunday for
theayter-ticket stamps."
"For my part they could flavor 'em with _gefullte Miltz mit Knockerl_,
because I got through buying orchestra seats when they begun to tax you
two dollars and fifty cents for them, Abe, which if the government
really and truly wants to raise money by taxing the public, why do they
fool away their time asking suggestions from such new beginners like
LaFollette and Chump Clark, when right here in New York there is fellers
in the restaurant business, the theayter business, and running hat-check
stands which has made taxing the public a life study already. For
instance, if I would be the government and I wanted to tax theayter
tickets, instead of monkeying around with stamps for twenty or thirty
cents, y'understand, I would put a head waiter by the box-office window,
and when the public is through paying for their tickets he gives them
one look, y'understand, and they just naturally hand him a dollar."
"What I couldn't understand is why should the government pick on people
which goes to theayter for amusement," Abe said. "Ain't it enough that
in order to hold my trade I've got to sit for three hours listening to a
lot of nonsense when I could hardly keep my eyes open, but I must also
get writer's cramp in my tongue from licking stamps yet just to oblige
the United States government and a customer from the Middle West, which
it's a gamble whether he wouldn't return the goods on me even if he does
give me the order."
"That's what it is to have fellers working as Congressmen which 'ain't
had no other business experience," Morris declared. "If LaFollette and
this here Clark knew what they was about, Abe, they would make it a law
that the _customer_ should buy the stamps, and not alone for theayters,
but for meals also. You take some of these out-of-town buyers which
you've practically got to ruin their digestions before they would so
much as look at your line, y'understand, and if they would got to paste
a fifty-cent stamp on every broiled lobster they order up on you it
would go a long way toward taking care of the uniform bills for the
first draft."
"And they should also got to stand for the tax on gasolene also," Abe
added. "If you treat one of them grafters to so much as a two-quart
automobile ride, you've already sacrificed half your profit on a couple
of garments, even if he does pay for the stamps."
"Cigars is another thing the government could of got a lot of money out
of," Morris said.
"What do you mean--_could_ of got?" Abe exclaimed. "They _do_ get a lot
of money out of cigars. You take the average cigar to-day which costs
sixty dollars a thousand to put on the market, Mawruss, and each cigar
stands the manufacturer in as follows:
Advertising $.01
Printing and lithographing .0015
Manufacturing and boxing .01
Swiss chard .005
War tax .02
-----
Total $.06"
"Sure I know," Morris agreed, "but the art about taxing cigars ain't so
much to sting the feller that manufactures them and the feller that buys
them as the fellers which accepts them free for nothing. There is a
whole lot of women's-wear retailers in the Middle West which has got
quite a reputation for hospitality, because whenever they have a poker
game up to the house they hand out cigars which cost you and me and
other garment manufacturers here in New York as much as ninety dollars a
thousand wholesale. So what I say is that the government should tax
anybody which accepts a cigar to smoke on the spot ten cents, and for
every one of them put-it-in-your-pocket-and-smoke-it-after-a-while
cigars, such a feller should be taxed ten dollars or ten days."
"Well, they'll get a whole lot of money raising postage from two to
three cents," Abe suggested.
"But not so much as they could get if they was to go about it right,"
Morris said. "For sending letters which says, 'Inclosed please find
check in payment of your last month's bill and oblige,' three cents is
enough for any business man to pay, Abe, and in fact the feller which
received such a letter shouldn't ought to kick if the Post Office
Department makes him pay also three cents postage, but there is some
letters which it should ought to be the law that when a merchant
received one of them he should right away report the sender to the Post
Office Department for a special war-tax stamp of from one to a hundred
dollars. For instance, two dollars extra wouldn't be too much postage
for a letter where it says, 'Your favor received and contents noted, and
in reply would say you should be so kind and wait a couple days and I
would see what I could do toward sending you a check for your March
bill, as my wife has been sick ever since May fifteenth, and oblige,
yours truly, The Reliance Store, M. Doober, proprietor.'"
"If all them overdue retailers which is all the time pulling a sick wife
on their creditors was to be taxed two dollars apiece, Mawruss," Abe
said, "how much postage do you figure a storekeeper should pay when he
writes to claim a shortage in delivery before he starts to unpack the
goods, even. Then there is the feller which, when it don't get below
zero promptly on the first of November, writes to tell you that he must
say he is surprised, as the winter-weight garments which you shipped him
ain't nowheres up to sample and is holding same at your disposal and
remain, which if the government would come down on him for a hundred
dollars, he is practically getting off with a warning. And I could think
of a lot of other excess-postage cases, too, but, as I understand it,
we are only trying to raise forty billion dollars, Mawruss."
"Don't let that stop you, Abe," Morris said, "because there's going to
be plenty of extras over and above the original estimate, which I see
that a lot of South American countries is coming into the war and it's
only a question of a month or so when we would have calling on us a
commission from Peru, a commission from Chile, a commission from
Bolivia, a commission from Paraguay, and all of them with the same
hard-luck story, that if they only had a couple of billion dollars they
could put an army of five hundred thousand soldiers into the field, if
they only had five hundred thousand soldiers."
"Just the same, Mawruss," Abe said, "them countries is going to be a lot
of help."
"And when we get through paying the help, y'understand, we've still got
to raise money for the family to live on," Morris said, "so go ahead
with your suggestion, Abe. Maybe there's some taxes which Congress
'ain't thought of yet."
"Well, there's this here free speech, which, instead of being free,
Mawruss, if it was subject to a tax of one dollar per soap-box hour,
payable strictly in advance, y'understand, so far as the pacifists is
concerned, you would be able to hear a pin drop. Even Congressmen would
soon get tired of paying from twenty to twenty-four dollars a day,
especially if the government made it a stamp tax."
"LaFollette would be covered mit stamps from head to foot," Morris
remarked.
"That would suit me all right," Abe said, "particularly if the collector
of internal revenue was to run him with stamps affixed through a
cancellation-machine and cancel him good and proper."
IV
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON BERNSTORFF'S EXPENSE ACCOUNT
Here he is coming back from his trip after losing his whole territory
to his firm's competitors, and naturally he tries to make a good
showing with his expense account.
"I see where the government puts a limit on the price which coal-dealers
could charge for coal," Abe Potash said to his partner, Morris
Perlmutter.
"Sure, I know," Morris said, "but did the coal-dealers see it, because I
met Felix Geigermann on the Subway this morning, and from the way he
talked about what the coal-dealers was asking for coal up in Sand
Plains, where he lives, Abe, I gathered it was somewheres around twenty
dollars a caret unset."
"_Gott sei dank_ I am living in an apartment mit steam heat and my lease
has still got two years to run at the same rent," Abe said.
"Well, I hope it's written on good thick paper, and then it'll come in
handy to wear under your overcoat when you sit home evenings next
winter, Abe, because by the first of next February janitors will be
giving coal to the furnace like it would be asperin--from five to ten
grains every three hours," Morris predicted, "which I will admit that I
ain't a good enough judge of anthracite coal to tell whether it's
fireproof, of slow-burning construction, or just the ordinary sprinkled
risk, y'understand, but I do know coal-dealers, Abe, and if the
government says they must got to sell coal at seven dollars a ton,
y'understand, it'll be like buying one of them high-grade automobiles
where the list price includes only the engine and the two front wheels,
F.O.B. Detroit. In other words, Abe, if you would buy coal to-day at
seven dollars a ton you would get a bill something like this:
To coal $7.00
To loading coal 1.00
To unloading coal 1.00
To weighing coal 1.00
To delivering coal 1.00
To dusting off coal 1.00
and you would be playing in luck if you didn't get charged a dollar each
for tasting coal, smelling coal, feeling coal, and doing anything else
to coal that a coal-dealer would have the nerve to charge one dollar
for."
"Well, if I would be the United States government," Abe commented, "and
had got a practical coal-man like this here Garfield to set a limit of
seven dollars I wouldn't let them robbers pull no last rounds of
rang-doodles on me, Mawruss. I'd take away their chips from 'em and put
'em right out of the game."
"Sure I know, Abe," Morris said, "_aber_ this here Garfield ain't a
practical coal-man, Abe, and maybe that's the trouble. Mr. Garfield is
president of Williams College, so you couldn't blame these here
coal-dealers, because you know as well as I do, Abe, the garment trade
will certainly put up an awful holler if when it comes to appoint a
cloak-and-suit administrator Mr. Wilson is going to wish on us some such
expert as Nicholas Murray Butler _oder_ the president of the Union
Theological Cemetery."
"At that," Abe said, "I think they'd know more about the price of
garments than Bernstorff did about the price of Congressmen. I always
give that feller credit for more sense than that he should try to
explain an item in his expense account by claiming that
April 3, 1917, To sundries $50,000
was what he paid for bribing the United States Congress."
"Well, say!" Morris exclaimed. "The poor feller had to tell 'em
something, didn't he? Here he is coming back from his trip after losing
his whole territory to his firm's competitors, and naturally he tries to
make a good showing with his expense account, which, believe me, Abe, if
I was a rotten salesman like that, before I would face my employer--and
_such_ an employer, because that _Rosher_ 'ain't got them spike-end
mustaches for nothing, Abe--I would first jump in the river, even if my
expense account showed that I had been staying in a-dollar-and-a-half-a-day
American-plan hotels and had sat up nights in the smoker for big jumps
like from Terre Haute to Paducah."
"Can you imagine the way the Kaiser feels?" Abe said. "I suppose at the
start he was keeping so calm that he bit the end off his fountain pen
and started to light the cap, and probably took one or two puffs before
he noticed anything strange about the flavor, because you could easy
make a mistake like that with a German cigar.
"'_Nu_, Bernstorff,' he says, at last, as he looks at the expense
account, 'before we take up the matter of this here eight-foot shelf of
the world's greatest fiction I would like to hear what you got to say
for yourself, so go ahead mit your lies and make it short.'
"'I suppose you got my letters,' Bernstorff begins, 'the ones I sent you
through the Swede.'
"'What Swede?' the Kaiser says.
"'Yon Yonson, the second assistant ambassador,' Bernstorff answers. 'I
told him if he got them letters through for me that you would give him
an order on the Chancellor for a first-class red eagle, but I guess he'd
be satisfied with one of them old-rose eagles, Class Four B, that we
used to have piled up there in the corner of the shipping-room.'
"'I wouldn't even give him an order on Mike, the Popular Berlin Hatter,
for a two-dollar derby, even,' the Kaiser says. '_Chutzpah!_ Writes me
letter after letter with nothing but weather reports in 'em, and he
wants me I should give this here Yonson a red eagle yet which costs me
thirty-two fifty a dozen wholesale. Seemingly to you, Bernstorff, money
is nothing.'
"Here the old man grabs ahold of the expense account again.
"'Honestly, Bernstorff,' he says, 'I don't see how you had the heart to
spend all that money when you know how things are here in Berlin. If me
and my Gussie sits down once a week to such a piece of meat as
_gedampfte Brustdeckel mit Kartoffelpfannkuchen_, y'understand, that's
already a feast for us, and as for chicken, I assure you we 'ain't had
so much as a soup fowl in the house since my birthday a year ago, and
you got the nerve to send me in an expense account like this. Aint it a
shame and a disgrace?
1916, May 1. Bolo $4.00
5. Bolo 6.00
9. Bolo 3.25
and every other day for week after week you spent on Bolo anywheres from
one to fifteen dollars. Tell me, Bernstorff, how could a man make such a
god out of his stomach?'
"'Why, what do you think Bolo is?' Bernstorff asks.
"'I don't _think_ what Bolo is; I _know_ what Bolo is,' the Kaiser tells
him, and a dreamy look comes into his eyes. 'Many a time I seen my poor
_Grossmutter olav hasholom_ make it. She used to chop up ten onions,
five cents' worth parsley, and a big piece _Knoblauch_, add six eggs and
a half a pound melted butter, and let simmer slowly. Now take your
chicken and--'
"'All right, Boss, I wouldn't argue with you,' Bernstorff says, 'because
them amounts represent only the preliminary lunches which I give this
here Bolo. Further down you would see where he gets the real big money,
and then I'll explain.'
"'Well, explain this,' the old man says. 'Here under date July second,
nineteen sixteen, it stand an item:
To blowing up munitions plant $10,000
Who did you get to do it? Caruso?'
"'You couldn't blow up a munitions plant and make a first-class job of
it under ten thousand dollars, Boss,' Bernstorff says.
"'Is _that_ so?' the Kaiser tells him. 'Well, let me tell you something,
Bernstorff. I've got a pretty good line on what them munitions
explosions ought to cost. My eldest boy has been blowing up buildings in
France for over three years now, and for what it costs to blow up a
factory he could blow up two cathedrals and a château.'
"'Have it your own way, Boss,' Bernstorff says, 'but them château
buildings is so old that they're pretty near falling down, anyway.'
"'Don't give me no arguments,' the Kaiser says. 'I suppose you're going
to tell me these here
8 5-12 doz asstd bombs $3,200
was some Saturday specials you picked up in a bargain basement. What was
they filled with, rubies?'
"'Bombs is awful high, Boss,' Bernstorff says. 'Ask Dernburg what he
used to pay for bombs; ask Von Papen; ask this here judge of the New
York Supreme Court--I forget his name; ask anybody; they would tell you
the same.'
"'Should I also ask 'em if spies gets paid in America the same like
stomach specialists in Germany? Look at this:
To one week's salary 12,235 spies $1,223,500
What have you been doing, Bernstorff? Keeping a steam-yacht on me and
charging it up as spies?'
"'Listen, Boss,' Bernstorff says. 'If you would know what an awful
strong organization spies has got in the United States, instead you
would be talking to me this way you would be thanking your lucky stars
that I didn't let 'em run the wage scale up on me no higher than they
did. Why, before I left Washington a deputation from Local Number One
Amalgamated Spies of North America comes to see me and--'
"'What the devil you are talking nonsense?' the Kaiser shouts. '_Moost_
you got to employ union spies? Couldn't you find thousands and thousands
of non-union spies to work for you?'
"'That only goes to show what you know about America,' Bernstorff says.
'There's a whole lot of people in America which would stand for blowing
up factories, sinking passenger-steamers, shooting up hospitals, and
dropping bombs on kindergartens, y'understand, but when it comes to
people employing scab labor, they draw the line. And then again, Boss,
spies is very highly thought of in America. Respectable people, like
lawyers and doctors, gets arrested every day over there, and even once
in a while a minister, y'understand, but a spy--_never_!'
"At this point when it looks like plain sailing for Bernstorff, the
Kaiser picks out that fifty-thousand-dollar item, and right there
Bernstorff makes his big mistake, for as soon as he starts that
Congressmen story the old man begins to figure that if Congressmen are
so cheap and spies so dear, y'understand, the only thing to do is to
call up the _Polizeiprasidium_ and tell 'em to send around a
plain-clothes man right away to number Twenty-six A Schloss Platz, ring
Hohenzollern's bell."
"Then you really think that Bernstorff and Von Papen and all them crooks
didn't spend the money over here that they claimed they spent," Morris
said.
"They probably spent it, all right," Abe replied, "but whether or not
they spent it for what they claimed they spent it _for_, Mawruss, _that_
I don't know, because if them fellers didn't stop at arson, dynamiting,
and murder, why should they hesitate at petty larceny?"
"But what them boys did in the way of blowing up munitions plants and
sinking passenger-steamers was because they loved the Kaiser so much,
and instead of arresting Bernstorff for the money he spent, Abe, I bet
yer the Kaiser made him a thirty-second degree passed assistant
_Geheimrat_ or something," Morris declared.
"Well, there's no accounting for tastes, Mawruss," Abe said, "and if
these here Germans is willing to slaughter, rob, and burn because they
are in love with a feller which to me has a personality as attractive as
the framed insides of the entrance to a safe deposit vault,
y'understand, all I can say is that I don't give them no more credit for
it than I would to a bookkeeper who committed forgery because he was in
love with the third lady from the end in the second row of the original
Bowery Burlesquers."
"The wonder to me is that the Kaiser don't see it that way, too," Morris
commented.
"That's because when it comes right down _to_ it, Mawruss, the third
lady from the end ain't no more stuck on herself than the Kaiser is on
_him_self," Abe said. "Them third ladies from the end figure that the
poor suckers always _did_ like 'em, and that therefore they are always
_going_ to like 'em, so they go ahead and treat their admirers like
dawgs and take everything they give 'em, y'understand, and the end of it
is that either a third lady becomes so careless that from a perfect
thirty-six she comes to be an imperfect fifty-four and has to work for a
living, or else she gets pinched for receiving the property which them
poor buffaloed admirers of hers handed over to her, and that'll be the
end of the Kaiser, too."
"And how soon do you think _that_ will happen?" Morris asked.
"That depends on how soon the Kaiser's admirers gets through with him,"
Abe said.
"Maybe the Kaiser will quit first," Morris concluded, "because you take
them third ladies from the end, Abe, and sooner or later they grow
terrible tired of this here--now--fast life."
V
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS ON THE FRONT PAGE AND OFF
What war done ain't a marker on what peace is going to do to a great
many of these here front-page propositions which is nowadays
accustomed to being continued on page two, column five, y'understand.
"Yes, Mawruss," Abe said, as he thrust aside the sporting section one
Sunday in October, "a people at war is like a man with a sick wife.
Nothing else interests him, which here it stands an account from how
them loafers out in Chicago plays baseball for the world's record yet,
and for all the effect it has on me, Mawruss, it might just so well be
something which catches my eye for the first time in the old newspaper
padding which my wife pulls out from under the carpet when she is
house-cleaning in the spring of nineteen twenty."
"Well," Morris said, "I must got to confess that when I seen it
yesterday how this here Fleisch shoots a home run there in the fifth
innings, I--"
"What are you talking nonsense--a home run in the fifth innings!" Abe
exclaimed. "The home run was made in the fourth innings. The White Sox
didn't make no score in the fifth innings. It was the Giants which made
their only run in the fifth. McCarty knocked a three-bagger and Sallee
singled and brought him home. _You_ tell _me_ what innings Fleisch shot
a home run in!"
"All right, Abe," Morris said, "I wouldn't argue with you, but all I got
to say is you're lucky that on account of the war you ain't interested
in auction pinochle the way you ain't interested in baseball, otherwise
you might get quite a reputation as a gambler."
"I am just so much worried about this war as you are, Mawruss," Abe
protested, "but if I couldn't take my mind off of it long enough to find
out which ball team is winning the world series I would be a whole lot
more worried about myself as I would be about the war, which it don't
make no difference how much a man loves his wife, y'understand, if she's
only sick on him long enough, Mawruss, he's going to get sufficiently
used to it to take in now and then a good show occasionally. In fact,
Mawruss, it's a relief to read once in a while in the newspapers
something which ain't about the war, like a murder, y'understand, the
only drawback being that along about the third day after the discovery
of the body, and just when you are getting interested in the thing,
General Haig advances another mile on a couple of thousand kilowatt
front, y'understand, and for all you can find anything in the newspaper
about your murder, y'understand me, the feller needn't have troubled
himself to commit it at all."
"Murderers ain't the only people which got swamped by the war," Morris
said. "Take William J. Bryan, for example, and up to within a year or
so, Abe, the newspaper publicity which William J. Bryan got free,
y'understand, William J. Douglas would of paid a quarter of a million
dollars for. Take also this here Hobson which sunk the _Merrimac_ and
Lindsey M. Garrison, who by resigning from the War Department come
within an ace and a couple of pinochle decks thrown in of ruining Mr.
Wilson's future prospects, Abe, and there was two fellers which used to
get into the newspapers as regularly as Harry K. Thaw and Peruna, and
yet, Abe, if any time during the past six months William J. Bryan,
Lindsey M. Garrison, and this here Hobson would of been out riding
together, and the automobile was to run over a cliff a hundred feet high
onto a railroad track and be struck by the cannon-ball express,
understand me, the most they could expect to see about it in the papers
would be:
NEWS IN BRIEF
An automobile rolled over an embankment at Van Benschoten Avenue and
456th Street, the Bronx, landing in a railroad cut. Its four
occupants are in Lincoln Hospital. One of them, George K. Smith, a
chauffeur, suffered a fracture of the skull.
More than fifty pawn tickets were found on Peter Krasnick, who was
caught in Brooklyn after a chase over a rear fire-escape. He is
charged with burglary.
* * * * *
World Wants Work Wonders
And if at the last moment before the reporters goes home for the night
word comes that the Germans made another strong attack on Hill
Six-sixty-six B, y'understand, they strike out everything except 'World
Wants Work Wonders' and let it go at that."
"Referendum and Recall is something else which you used to see a whole
lot about in the papers," Abe said, "and while I always ducked 'em
myself, at the same time there must be a whole lot of people which is
wondering what ever become of 'em since the war started."
"The chances is," Morris declared, "if they was to come across the names
Referendum and Recall in the papers to-day, Abe, they would say it's a
miracle they escaped as long as they did, because they've got a hazy
impression they read it somewheres that the Recollection, the
Resurrection, and the Reproduction of the same line was sunk by U-boats
about the time they torpedoed the Minnieboska, the Minnietoba, and all
them other Minnies."
"Prize-fighting is also got a black eye in the way of newspaper
publicity since we went into the war, Mawruss," Abe continued, "and it
ain't remarkable, neither, when you look back and think of the pages and
pages the newspapers used to print about a couple of loafers trying to
hurt each other with gloves on their hands, which, believe me, Mawruss,
a green shipping-clerk could give himself worse _Makkas_ nailing up one
case of goods than them boys could do to each other in a whole season
already."
"I bet yer," Morris said, "and for such a picnic Jeff Willard used to
get over a hundred thousand dollars yet."
"Can you imagine how much money one of them aviators over in the old
country ought to draw under such a wage scale?" Abe asked. "I read an
account of what an aviator has got to do when he goes up in an
airyoplane, Mawruss, and at one and the same time while he is balancing
himself five thousand feet in the air he takes photographs, shoots off
guns, drops bombs, sends wireless telegraphs, and also runs and steers
an engine which is so powerful, y'understand, that if you would be
running it on dry land, Mawruss, you wouldn't be able to take your mind
off of it long enough to think about the high cost of camera supplies,
let alone taking pictures yet."
"I wonder if such a young feller has got also a knowledge of bookkeeping
and stenography," Morris speculated.
"What difference does that make?" Abe asked.
"Because, Abe, if after the war we could get him to come to work in our
place it would pay us to give him a hundred dollars a week even," Morris
replied, "on account it would be a cinch, after what he's been used to
in his last position, for such a young feller to operate an electric
rotary cutting-machine with his left hand and press garments with his
right, and he has still got both legs and his head left to keep the
books, answer the telephone, run a typewriter and an adding-machine,
and fix up a new card index for our credit system."
"At that he would probably throw up the job on account he didn't have
enough to do to keep him busy, Mawruss," Abe commented, "and also it's
going to be pretty hard for them fellers to settle down after the war
gets through, considering all the excitement they've had with their
names in the papers and everything."
"Say!" Morris exclaimed. "The fact that a feller like Hindenberg is now
getting his name in the paper the way it used to was a few years ago
with Hannah Elias and Cassie Chadwick ain't no criterion to judge by,
Abe, because what war done to make the newspapers forget their old
friends Bryan and Evelyn Nesbut ain't a marker on what peace is going to
do to a great many of these here front-page propositions which is
nowadays accustomed to being continued on page two, column five,
y'understand. Why, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if in about five or six
years from now, Abe, you are going to take up the paper some morning and
read an item like this:
OBITUARY NOTES
Max K. Hindenberg, 83 years old, a clothing merchant, member of the
firm of Hindenberg & Levy, and recording secretary of Sigmund Meyer
Post No. 97 Veterans of the War of 1914-1918, died early yesterday at
his home, 2076 East 8th Street, Potsdam, Germany, yesterday. Deceased
was a native of East Prussia.
And the chances is that ninety-nine out of a hundred people ain't even
going to say to themselves, 'Where did I hear that name before?'"
"That's where you make a big mistake, Mawruss," Abe said. "Hindenberg is
a very popular feller in Germany, and I bet yer that on every map filed
in the county clerks' offices of Prussian real-estate developments
during the past three years there's a Hindenberg Street or a Hindenberg
Avenue, to say nothing of the babies which has been born over there and
named Max Hindenberg Goldsticker or Max Hindenberg Schwartz."
"Sure I know," Morris said, "and you can take my word for it, Abe, along
about nineteen hundred and thirty-five there's going to be a whole lot
of lawyers over in Deutschland making from twenty-five to fifty marks a
throw for putting through motions in the Court of Common Pleas for the
City and County of Berlin that the name of the said applicant, Max H.
Goldsticker or Max H. Schwartz, as the case may or may not be, be and
the same hereby is changed to Frank Pershing Goldsticker or Woodrow W.
Schwartz. Also, Abe, if ever they open up Charlottenberg Heights
overlooking beautiful Lake Hundekehlen as per plat filed in the office
of the register of Brandenburg County, y'understand, there'll be a
Helfferich Place, a Liebknecht Avenue, and even a Bebel Terrace maybe,
but in twenty years from now a German real-estater wouldn't be able even
to give away lots free for nothing on any Hindenberg Street or
Hindenberg Avenue, not if he was to throw in a two-family house with
portable garage complete."
"Well, you could say the same thing about this country, too," Abe
declared, "which twenty years from now, people wouldn't know whether the
word _viereck_ was a fish or a cheese; and as for all them college
professors which got fired recently because they made the mistake of
thinking that a college professor gets paid to fool away his time making
speeches against the government the same like a United States Senator,
y'understand, I couldn't even remember their names to-day yet, so you
can imagine how they're going to go down in history, Mawruss: compared
to them fellers, there are a few thousand notary publics whose names
will be household words already."
"Any man who thinks he is going to make a name for himself by talking or
writing against his country is due to get badly fooled, I don't care if
he would be a college professor, a United States Senator, or an editor,
Abe," Morris said, "because the most he could hope for is the thing what
usually happens him. He gets fired, Abe, and the only reputation a
feller gets by getting fired is the reputation for getting fired, and
that ain't much of a recommendation when he comes to look for another
job."
"The people I am sorry for is the wives of these here professors," Abe
said, "which even when a college professor has got steady work his wife
'ain't got no bed of roses to make both ends meet, neither, and I bet
yer more than one of them ladies will got to do a little plain sewing
for a living on account her husband became so hot-headed over this here
pacifism."
"That's the trouble with them pacifists," Morris concluded. "If they
would only take some of the heat out of their heads and put it into
their feet, Abe, they could hold onto their jobs and their wives
wouldn't got to go to work at all. Am I right or wrong?"
VI
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON HOOVERIZING THE OVERHEAD
When a feller reckons the overhead on the goods he manufactures he
figures in one-twelfth of his telephone number, one-twelfth of the
year he was born, and one-twelfth of every other number he can
remember from his automobile to his street number.
"Of course, Mawruss, I don't claim that Mr. Hoover don't know his
business nor nothing like that," Abe Potash said as he finished reading
a circular mailed to him by the Food Conservation Director, "but at the
same time if I would be permitted to make a suggestion, Mawruss, I would
suggest that in addition to following out all the DON'TS in this here
food-conservation circular--and also in the interests of being strictly
economical, y'understand--the women of the country should learn it
genwine Southern cooking, the kind they've got it in two-dollars-a-day
American-plan Southern hotels, Mawruss, and not only would people eat
much less than they eat at present, but the chances is it would fix some
people so they wouldn't eat at all."
"Why _Southern_ cooking?" Morris Perlmutter asked. "For that matter,
two-dollar-a-day American-plan Eastern cooking wouldn't make you eat
yourself red in the face, neither, which the last time I was in New
Bedford they gave me for lunch some fried schrod, and I give you my
word, Abe, I'd as lieve eat a pair of feet-proof socks, including the
guarantee and the price ticket. But that ain't neither here or there,
Abe. Nobody could pin medals on himself for being a small eater in a
hotel, Abe, _aber_ the test comes when you arrive home from the store at
half past seven and your wife sets before you a plate of _gedampfte
Kalbfleisch_ which if a chef in Delmonico's would cook such a thing like
that, Abe, the Ritz-Carlton would pay John G. Stanchfield a retainer of
one hundred thousand dollars to advise them how the fellow's contract
could be broken with Delmonico's so they could get him to come to work
for them. And that's why I am telling you, Abe, when you get such a
plate of _gedampfte Kalbfleisch_ in front of you, which the steam comes
up from it like roses, y'understand, and when you put a piece of it in
your mouth it's like--"
"Say, listen," Abe protested, "let me alone, will you? It's only eleven
o'clock, and I couldn't go out to lunch for another hour yet."
"That only goes to show what for a stomach patriot you are, Abe," Morris
commented. "Even when we are only _talking_ about food you couldn't
restrain yourself, so what must it be like when you've got the food
actually on the table? I bet yer you don't remember that such a
feller as Hoover ever existed at all, let alone what he says about
eating reasonable."
[Illustration: "'So,' Mrs. Hoover says, 'you had one of them sixty-cent
table-d'hôte lunches to-day again, and now of course you 'ain't got no
appetite. How many times did I tell you you shouldn't eat that
poison?'"]
"That's all right, Mawruss," Abe said. "Mr. Hoover could talk that way,
because maybe his wife ain't such a crank about her cooking like my
Rosie is, y'understand, _aber_ if Mr. Hoover would be me, Mawruss, and
there comes on the table some _gestoffte Miltz_ which Mrs. Hoover has
been breaking her back standing over the stove all the afternoon seeing
that it don't stick to the bottom of the kettle, y'understand, and Mr.
Hoover takes only a couple slices of it on account of the war,
y'understand, what is going to happen then?
"'So,' Mrs. Hoover says, 'you had one of them sixty-cent table-d'hôte
lunches to-day again, and now of course you 'ain't got no appetite. How
many times did I tell you you shouldn't eat that poison?'
"'So sure as I am sitting here, mommer,' Hoover says, 'all I had for my
lunch was a Swiss-cheese rye-bread sandwich and a cup coffee.'
"'Then what's the matter you ain't eating?' Mrs. Hoover says. 'Ain't it
cooked right?'
"'Certainly it's cooked right,' Hoover says. 'But two pieces is a plenty
on account of the war.'
"'On account of the war! I could work my fingers to the bone fixing good
food for that man, and he wouldn't eat it on account of the war, _sagt
er_,' says Mrs. Hoover.
"'But, listen, mommer--' Hoover tries to tell her.
"'Never mind, any excuse is better than none,' Mrs. Hoover says. 'Turns
up his nose at my cooking yet! _Gestoffte Miltz_ ain't good _enough_ for
him. I suppose you would like me to give you every day roast duck on
twenty dollars a week housekeeping money. Did you ever hear the like?
Couldn't eat _gestoffte Miltz_ no more, so tony he gets all of a
sudden!'
"'_Aber_ mommer, listen to me for a moment,' Hoover says, but it ain't a
bit of use because Mrs. Hoover goes into the bedroom and locks the door
on him, and by the time he has got her to be on speaking terms again he
has violated the don't-eat-no-sugar DON'T to the extent of four dollars
and fifty cents for a five-pound box of mixed chocolates and bum-bums,
understand me. Also just to show that she forgives him they take in a
show mit afterward a supper in which Mr. Hoover violates not only all
the other DON'TS in the food-conservation circulars, but also makes
himself liable to go to jail for giving a couple of dollars to a German
head waiter under the Trading with the Enemy law."
"At that, the way some of our best hotels conservates food nowadays is
setting a good example to the women of the country," Morris declared.
"What do you mean--nowadays?" Abe retorted. "They always conservated
food, the only difference being, Mawruss, that in former times, when
them crooks used to get ten portions of chicken _à la_ King out of a
two-pound cold-storage chicken and charged you a dollar and a quarter a
portion for it, y'understand, they was a bunch of crooks--ain't
it?--whereas nowadays when them crooks get eleven portions out of the
same chicken and charge you a dollar and a half a portion for it,
y'understand, they're a bunch of patriots, understand me, which if the
coal-dealer and the retail grocer and butcher would short-weight you and
overcharge you the way some of them patriotic New York hotel proprietors
does, it would be hard to find many patriots in New York City outside of
Blackwells Island _oder_ the Tombs prison."
"And yet, Abe, if you would go to work and figure out the overhead on a
chicken which is used for eleven portions of chicken _à la_ King,"
Morris said, "you would find that the hotel-keeper gets his profit only
from the neck which he uses for chicken consommé."
"Well, say!" Abe exclaimed. "A profit of six cups of chicken consommé at
forty cents a cup ain't to be sneezed at, neither, and even then you are
taking the hotel-keeper's word for the overhead, which I don't care if a
feller would be ordinarily a regular George Washington, y'understand,
and wouldn't even lie to his wife about how he come out in his weekly
Saturday-night pinochle game, understand me, but when such a feller
reckons the overhead on the goods he manufactures it don't make no
difference if it would be locomotive engines or pants, in addition to
the legitimate cost of every one-twelfth dozen articles, he figures in
as overhead one-twelfth of his telephone number, one-twelfth of the
year he was born, one-twelfth of how old his grandfather _olav hasholom_
was when he married for the fourth time, and one-twelfth of every other
number he can remember, from his automobile number to his street number,
and usually such a crook lives in the last house from the city limits."
"I tell yer, Abe," Morris said, "the feller which invented poison gas
was some _Rosher_, and the feller which invented T.M.T. also, but the
feller which invented the overhead is in a class by himself just behind
the Kaiser. I don't know what his name is, but he is the feller what
fixed things so that a ten-cent loaf of bread has not only got into it
the air-holes which is caused by the yeast, but also the air-holes which
is caused by the lawyer's bill that the baking company paid at the time
they issued their five-million-dollar consolidated and refunding
four-per-cent. first-mortgage bonds, y'understand, and there's just as
much nourishment in that kind of air-hole for a truck-driver's family of
growing children as there is in any other kind of air-hole."
"Well, the bakers 'ain't got nothing on the farmers when it comes to
cost bookkeeping, Mawruss," Abe said. "I was reading where the
milk-raisers' _Verein_ claims the price of feed is so high that they've
got to sell milk at ten cents a quart wholesale, but for all them
farmers figure that the same feed goes to fatten the cow for the market,
Mawruss, you might suppose that there was a big institution somewheres
up state called the Ezra B. Cornell Home for Aged and Indignant Cows,
y'understand, and that so soon as a cow gets through giving milk,
y'understand, instead of slaughtering it the farmer takes it to the home
in his automobile and contributes five dollars a week toward its support
until it dies of hardening of the arteries at the age of eighty-two."
"Take it from me, Abe," Morris said, "them farmers ain't such farmers as
people think they are. It's going to be so, pretty soon, that people
will be paying two dollars and a half for an orchestra seat and pretty
near break their hearts while the poor old second-mortgage shark is
being turned out of his little home by the farmer."
"And on the opening night, Mawruss, the front rows will be filled with
milk agents," Abe said, "and after the show you will see them sitting
around Rector's and Churchill's and getting terrible noisy over a magnum
of Sheffield Farms nineteen sixteen."
"Of course nobody is going to be the worser for making a joke about such
things, Abe," Morris interrupted, "but last winter when these fellers
which gets off mommerlogs in vaudeville shows was talking about somebody
being immensely wealthy on account his breath smelt from onions,
y'understand, there wasn't many people raising a family on less than
twenty-five dollars a week whose breath smelt from onions at that."
"Did I say they did?" Abe asked.
"And it is the same way with potatoes and fruit, not to say fish and
poultry and all the other foods which Mr. Hoover says we should eat in
order to save beef, sugar, and flour for the soldiers," Morris
continued. "When a woman buys nowadays flounder at twenty-five cents a
pound, she is paying ten cents for fish and fifteen cents toward the
fish-dealer's wife's diamonds or his six-cylinder automobile, so if I
would be Mr. Hoover, before I issued bread and meat cards to the
consumer I would hand out automobile and diamond cards to the
fish-dealer and the vegetable-dealer and maybe it would help to stop
them fellers from loading their prices with what it costs 'em to keep up
their expensive habits."
"A fish-dealer is entitled to expensive habits the same like anybody
else," Abe said, "which if Mr. Hoover stops him from buying his wife
once in a while diamonds, sooner or later Mr. Hoover will stop him from
buying his wife furs and it will work down right along the line till Mr.
Hoover hits the garment business, Mawruss, which, while I ain't got no
particular sympathy for a fish-dealer, y'understand, his money is just
so good as the next one's, so I ask you, as a garment-manufacturer, what
are you going to do about it?"
"Let him buy Liberty Bonds."
"But in that case, how many Liberty Bonds could the diamond merchant,
the automobile-manufacturer, or the furrier buy?"
"Say, looky here," Morris said, "let me alone, will you? This is
something which is up to Mr. Hoover, not me."
"I know it is," Abe concluded, "and I've got a great deal of sympathy
for him, too, because before Mr. Hoover gets through he would not only
make a bunch of enemies, Mawruss, but he is going to use up a whole lot
of headache medicine, and don't you forget it."
VII
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The hopeless part of it is that there's no way of putting a nation of
ninety million people in a lunatic asylum, even if there was an
asylum big enough to hold them, which there ain't.
"I see where the French President is going to lose his Prime Minister
again," Abe Potash said, "which the way that feller is always changing
Prime Ministers, Mawruss, he must be a terrible hard man to work for."
"Say," Morris Perlmutter replied, "I've got enough to think about
keeping track of what happens here in this country without I should
worry my head over political _Meises_ in France."
"Well, you are the same like a whole lot of Americans," Abe said, "which
for all they read about what is going on over in Europe the Edison
Manufacturing Company might just so well never have invented the
telegraph at all."
"I don't _got_ to read it with such a statesman like you around here,"
Morris retorted, "so go ahead and tell me: what did the French Prime
Minister done _now_ that he gets fired for it?"
"That only goes to show what you know from Prime Ministers!" Abe
declared. "A Prime Minister never gets fired, Mawruss--he resigns, and
while I admit that nine times out of ten when the French President has
had a Prime Minister resign on him, it's probably been a case of the
stenographer tipping the Prime Minister off that before the boss went to
lunch he said, 'If that grafter's still here when I come back there'll
be another Prime Minister going around on crutches,' y'understand, yet
at the same time this here last Prime Minister has been right on the
job, and the French President has been quite worried for fear he's going
to quit."
"Well, let him get along _without_ a Prime Minister for a while," Morris
said. "With the money the French people is spending for war supplies it
won't do him no harm to cut down his pay-roll, and, besides, what does
he want a Prime Minister for, _anyway_? Has President Wilson got a Prime
Minister? Them people come over here a couple of months ago and cashed
in a hard-luck story for a matter of a few hundred million dollars,
y'understand, and like a lot of come-ons that we are, understand me, it
never even occurred to us but what them boys was living right up close
to the cushion."
"How much do you think a Prime Minister draws, Mawruss--a million a
week?" Abe asked.
"It ain't how much he draws," Morris said. "It's the idea of the thing
which I don't care if he only gets five dollars a day and commissions,
Abe, if President Wilson would got a Prime Minister working for him
instead of attending to the business himself, which is what President
Wilson gets paid for, y'understand, there's many a time when the
President has been out late at the theayter or when he is feeling under
the weather, understand me, where he would say: 'Why should I kill
myself slaving day in, day out, like a slave, y'understand. What have I
got a Prime Minister for, anyway?' And that's how I bet yer the French
President has passed over to the Prime Minister a whole lot of important
stuff which the poor _nebich_ was bound to slip up on, because, after
all, a Prime Minister is only a Prime Minister."
"Maybe you're right," Abe admitted, "but at the same time there's some
pretty smart Prime Ministers, too, which you take this here Prime
Minister Lord George, over in England, and that feller practically runs
the country. In fact, as I understand it, King George leaves the entire
management to him, so much confidence he's got in the feller."
"Perhaps it's because this here Lord George and King George is related
maybe," Morris suggested.
"I don't think so," Abe replied. "The names is only a quincidence, which
even before Lord George was ever heard of at all the Prime Minister
always run things in England while the King put in his whole time
opening charity bazars and laying corner-stones. First and last I
suppose that feller has laid more corner-stones than all the heads of
all the fraternal orders in the United States put together, and if
there's such a disease as grand master's thumb, like smoker's heart and
housemaid's knee, Mawruss, I'll bet that King George has got it."
[Illustration: "Perhaps it's because this here Lord George and King
George is related maybe," Morris suggested. "I don't think so," Abe
replied. "The name is only a quincidence."]
"Well an English king can afford to spend his time that way," Morris
said, "because them English Prime Ministers is really prime,
y'understand, whereas you take the Prime Ministers which the Czar
_nebich_, the King of Greece, and even the King of Sweden had it, and
instead of them Prime Ministers being prime, understand me, they ranged
all the way from sirloin to chuck, as they would say in the meat
business."
"Some of the English Prime Ministers wasn't so awful prime, neither,"
Abe said. "Take the feller which was holding down the job of Prime
Minister around July fourth, seventeen seventy-six, and the way that boy
let half a continent slip through his fingers was enough to make King
Schmooel the Second, or whatever the English king's name was in them
days, swear off laying corner-stones for the rest of his life. Also the
English Prime Minister which engineered the real-estate deal where
Germany got ahold of the island of Heligoland wasn't what Mr. P.B.
Armour would call first cut exactly, which, if England would now own
Heligoland instead of Germany, Mawruss, such a serial number as U
Fifty-three for a German submarine would never have been heard of. They
would have stopped short at U Two or U Two B."
"Well, anybody's liable to get stuck in a swap with vacant lots, Abe,"
Morris said, "and the chances is the poor feller figured that with this
here Heligoland, the only person who would have the nerve to call such
real estate _real estate_, y'understand, would be a real-estater with a
first-class imagination when the tide was out."
"That's what Germany figured, too," Abe said, "and the consequence is
she went to work and improved them vacant lots with fortifications which
lay so low in the water, Mawruss, that from two miles out at sea no one
would dream of such things--least of all an admiral."
"So how could you blame a Prime Minister if he didn't suspect what
Germany was up to when she bought that sand-bank?" Morris asked.
"Of course that was a long time before the war, Mawruss," Abe said.
"Nowadays the dumbest Prime Minister knows enough to know that coming
from a German diplomat a simple remark like, 'Good morning, ain't it an
elegant weather we are having?' is subject to one of several
constructions, none of which is exactly what you could call _kosher_,
y'understand."
"And supposing he finds such a remark in a letter from a German diplomat
to the Kaiser, Abe?" Morris asked. "What does it mean then?"
"That depends on where it is written from," Abe said, "which if the
Minister of Foreign Affairs down in Paraguay or Peru finds out that a
German ambassador has written home to the effect that he is feeling
quite well again and hopes this letter finds you the same,
y'understand, the Foreign Minister hustles over to the War Department
and wants to know if they are going to allow him to be insulted in that
way by a dirty crook like that. On the other hand, if the chief of the
United States Secret Service gets ahold of a letter from any one of them
honorary German diplomats who is practically holding down the job of
Imperial German Consul to the Bronx while drawing the salary of--we
would say, for example--a New York Supreme Court justice, Mawruss, and
if the letter says, 'Accept my best wishes for a prosperous and happy
new year in which my wife joins and remain,' y'understand, that means
the copper was shipped in pasteboard containers marked:
PRUNES
USE NO HOOKS."
"The German Secret Service certainly fixes up some wonderful cipher
codes, Abe," Morris said. "Sometimes as much as two hours and a quarter
passes before a United States Secret Service man gets the right dope on
one of them code letters."
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But most times he don't have no more trouble
over it than the average business man would with a baseball column,
which the way every government secret service knows every other
government's secret service's secrets, Mawruss, it's a wonder to me that
they don't call the whole thing off by mutual consent, because the only
difference between government secret services is that some secret
services is louder than others. Take, for instance, the German Secret
Service, and there was months and months when this here Dr. Heinrich
Albert, Captain von Papen and his boy Ed got as much newspaper publicity
as one of them rotten shows which received such a good notice from the
cricket of the _Cloak and Suit Gazette_ that the manager thinks it may
have a chance, y'understand. Why, there wasn't a district messenger-boy
which couldn't direct you to number Eleven Broadway, where that secret
service had its head offices, and I would be very much surprised if they
didn't ship their bombs from number Eleven Broadway, to the steamboat
docks in covered automobile delivery-wagons with signs painted on 'em:
Telephone Battery 2222
GERMAN SECRET SERVICE
'WE LEAD--OTHERS FOLLOW'
11 Broadway
Ask about our Special Service plan
for furnishing explosives by the month
AT LOW RATES."
"At the same time, Abe," Morris remarked, "the Germans make things
pretty secret when they want to, otherwise how could the Kaiser have
kept that mutiny under his chest for over a couple of months?"
"And you could take it from me, Mawruss," Abe said, "before Michaelis
let it out in the Reichstag, he might just so well have stopped in at
the _Lokal Anzeiger_ office on his way down-town and inserted a couple
of lines or so under the head of 'Situations Wanted Males.'"
"Why, I thought you said a Prime Minister never gets fired," Morris
said.
"Prime Ministers is one thing and Chancellors another, Mawruss," Abe
told him.
"Then I imagine this here Michaelis must be putting in a lot of time
nowadays going over his contract to see if he's got any come-back
against the party of the first part in case that crook fires him,"
Morris said.
"Well, he can keep on looking till he finds another job," Abe replied,
"because the Kaiser is like a lot of other highwaymen in the cutting-up
trade, Mawruss. To them fellers the first and most important thing about
a contract is the loopholes, y'understand, and after that's fixed they
don't care what goes into it, which you take that contract of
Michaelis's and I bet yer that a police-court lawyer could drive an
armored tank through them paragraphs which is supposed to hold the
Kaiser, y'understand, whereas if _Michaelis_ wanted to get out of it,
Mawruss, he could go to work and hire Messrs. Hughes, Brandeis,
Stanchfield, Hughes & Stanchfield, supposing there was _Gott soll huten_
such a firm of lawyers, and they wouldn't be able to find so much as a
comma out of place for him."
"And as a good German, Abe, Michaelis would be awful disappointed if
they did," Morris said, "because that's the way the Germans feel toward
the Kaiser. He robs 'em, he murders 'em, and he starves their wives and
children to death, just so him and his family could run the country, and
them poor Heinies says to one another: 'That's the kind of a kaiser to
have! A big strong man which he don't give a nickel for nobody! He's a
wonder, all right, and if we didn't have a feller like that at the head
of the country I don't know how we would be able to stand all the
trouble that cutthroat and his crook family is causing us--Heaven bless
them.'"
"The hopeless part of it is," Abe commented, "that there's no way of
putting a nation of ninety million people in a lunatic asylum, even if
there was an asylum big enough to hold them, which there ain't,
Mawruss."
"And as much as you sympathize with a lunatic, you can't have him going
around loose, Abe," Morris said, "so what are we going to do about it?"
"Well, we're trying hard to shut 'em up in Germany again," Abe declared,
"and after we've got them there, Mawruss, I am willing to stand my share
of the expense that the war should go on long enough to give them
lunatics a little home treatment, y'understand, and by home treatment,
Mawruss, I mean not only treating the lunatics themselves, but also
treating their homes," Abe continued, growing red in the face at the
thought of it, "which I only hope that I live long enough to see a
moving picture of German homes the same like I seen moving pictures of
French homes and Belgian homes, and if that don't sweat the Kaiser-mania
out of their systems they are crazy for keeps."
VIII
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON LORDNORTHCLIFFING VERSUS COLONELHOUSING
While Lord Northcliff is colonelhousing over here, Colonel House is
lordnorthcliffing over in England, and the main point about their
being where they are is that they ain't where the people are which
sent them there.
"Well, I see where President Wilson says that women should have the
right to vote the same like shipping-clerks and bartenders, Mawruss,"
Abe said, "which it's a funny thing to me the way some people claims
they never could see that two and two make four till the war comes along
and gives them a brand-new point of view."
"At that, you've got to give President Wilson credit that it only took a
war like this here European war to bring him to his senses," Morris
Perlmutter said, "whereas with Eli U. Root, Abe, it's got to happen yet
another war twice as big as this one, three more revolutions in
Russland, and a couple of earthquakes _doch_; before he is even going to
say, 'Maybe you're right, but that's my opinion and I stick _to_ it.'"
"In a way, Mawruss, Eli U. Root ain't as unreasonable as he looks," Abe
said. "He says that if the women gets the vote, y'understand, they
would--"
"Listen, Abe," Morris interrupted, "I don't want to hear what this here
Root has got to say about _if_ women voted in America, y'understand,
because over four million women does vote in America, and some of them
has been voting for years already, and when it comes to talking about
_ifs_, Abe, _if_ Eli U. Root 'ain't noticed that four million women vote
in this country where Eli U. Root is supposed to understand the language
as well as speak it, understand me, what did Mr. Root notice over in
Russland, where he neither spoke Russian nor understood it, neither?"
"Don't kid yourself, Mawruss," Abe said. "That feller knows just so good
as you do that there's four million women voting in America; also he
knows that the women of Colorado, where women vote, don't act no
different from the women of Pennsylvania, where women don't vote, but
that's an argument in favor of women voting, whereas Root is arguing
against it."
"That ain't an argument," Morris protested; "it's a fact."
Abe shrugged his shoulders despairingly.
"What does a first-class A-number-one lawyer like Root care about facts
if they ain't in his favor?" he asked. "Also, Mawruss, if Mr. Root now
comes out in favor of women voting, y'understand, that would be a case
of changing his mind, and you know as well as I do, Mawruss, the real
brainy fellers of the world never changes their mind."
"Not even when the facts is against them?" Morris asked.
"They don't pay no attention to the facts," Abe said. "You take this
here Morris Hillkowitz or Hillquit which he is running for mayor of New
York on the Socialistic ticket, and for years already that feller went
around saying that it was the people which lived in the
two-thousand-a-year apartments and owned expensive automobiles which was
squashing the protelariat, y'understand, and now when it comes out in
the papers that he is living in a thousand-dollar-a-year apartment and
running an expensive automobile, Mawruss, does he turn around and say
that it's all a mistake and that in reality it's the protelariat which
is squashing the feller with the two-thousand-dollar-a-year apartment
and expensive automobile? _Oser a Stück!_"
"Well, it only goes to show that a feller can even make money by being a
Socialist if he only sticks to it long enough," Morris said.
"At that, he's probably got more sympathy mit the protelariat than he
ever did, Mawruss, because before he owned an automobile he only
_suspected_ what them fellers was missing by being poor. Now he
_knows_."
"And I suppose by the time he is running for President on the
Socialistic ticket," Morris said, "he'll be owning a steam-yacht and the
wrongs of the working classes will be pretty near breaking his heart."
"Even so, Mawruss, he won't be changing his mind, and I don't know but
what he'll be acting wise, too," Abe said, "because when a politician
gets a reputation for carrying a certain line of stable opinions his
customers naturally expects that he is going to continue to carry 'em,
and when he drops that line and lays in a stock of new stuff in the way
of political ideas, y'understand, his customers leave him and he's got
to build up his trade over again; and that's no way for a feller to get
into the steam-yacht class--I don't care if he would be a politician or
a garment-manufacturer."
"Well, of course, if a feller's opinions is his living, you couldn't
blame him for not changing 'em," Morris said, "_aber_ this here Root is
already retired from business, and the chances is that, the way he's got
his money invested, it wouldn't make no difference _how_ liberal-minded
he was, the corporations would have to pay the coupons, anyway."
"I know they would," Abe agreed, "but you take some of these Senators
and Congressmen which they started out before we was at war with Germany
to show an attractive line of pro-German ideas--that is to say,
attractive to their regular customers out in Wisconsin and Saint Louis,
understand me, and people don't figure that them poor fellers has got
mortgages falling due on 'em next year and boys to put through college.
For all people knows, Mawruss, this here McLemon which used to make a
speciality of speeches warning Americans off of ocean steamships was
supporting half his wife's family and widowed sister that way. The chances
is that he sees now what a rotten line of argument that was, and he would
like to switch over and display some snappy nineteen-seventeen-model
speeches about the freedom of the seas for American sitsons, understand me,
but you know yourself how it is when your wife has got a large family,
Mawruss: if one of her sisters ain't having an emergency operation on you,
it's a case of doing something quick to keep her youngest brother out of
jail, and either way you are stuck a couple of hundred dollars, so you
couldn't blame a Congressman who refuses to change his mind and risk
losing his territory, even if all the rest of the country _is_ calling
him a regular Benedictine Arnold, y'understand."
"Well, sooner or later some of these big _Machers_ has got to change
their minds, otherwise the war will never be over," Morris said. "The
Kaiser has said over and over again that, once having put on her shiny
armor, y'understand, the Fatherland would never let the sword out of its
hand till England was finally crushed and _Gott mit uns_, and Lord
George and Lord Northcliff has said the same thing about Germany
excepting _Gott mit uns_. Also France in this great hour would never lay
down the sword, and _we_ would never lay down the sword. Furthermore to
hear Austria talk, and Kerensky, Venizelos, and the King of Rumania,
there would be such a continuous demand for swords that it would pay
Charles N. Schwab and this here Judge Gary to organize the Consolidated
Sword Company or the United States Sword Corporation with a plant
covering sixteen acres and an issue of one hundred million dollars
preferred stock and two hundred and fifty million dollars common stock
and let the cannon and torpedo business go."
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But when the Kaiser says that Germany would
never stop fighting till her enemies is in the dust, speaking of Germany
as a she-Fatherland, or till its enemies is in the dust, speaking of
Germany as an it-Fatherland, Mawruss, if you was a mind-reader, Mawruss,
you would see 'way back in the rear of his brain one of them railroad
time-table signs: _(GG) Will stop daily after January first,
nineteen-nineteen_."
"I hope you are right, Abe," Morris commented, "but I see where this
here Lord Northcliff says that the war is really just beginning, and so
far as I can discover that goes without foot-notes or notices that care
is taken to have same correct, but the company will not be responsible
for delays or for errors in the printing, y'understand."
"Well, I'll tell you," Abe said, "I don't know nothing about this here
Lord Northcliff. I admit also that I don't know what his standing as a
lord is or when he joined. In fact, I don't even know what a lord has to
pay for initiation fees and annual dues, let alone what sick benefit he
draws and what they pay to the widow in case a lord dies, understand me,
but I don't care if this here Northcliff, instead of a lord, was an Elk
or an Odd Fellow, y'understand, he can't tell when this war is going to
end no more than I can."
"But I understand this here Northcliff is an awful smart feller, Abe,"
Morris said. "He owns already a couple dozen newspapers in the old
country, and if he wouldn't have the right dope on this here war, I
don't know who would."
"Say!" Abe protested. "Nobody could get the right dope about this war
out of any newspaper, even if he owned it, Mawruss, because you know as
well as I do, Mawruss, if the City Edition says the Germans is starving,
y'understand, and couldn't last through the winter, understand me, that
ain't no guarantee that they wouldn't be getting plenty of food in the
Home Edition and starving again in the Five-star Final Sporting Extra
with Complete Wall Street, Mawruss, so the way I figure it is that this
here Northcliff has got the idea that if he tells us the war is only
beginning we are going to brace up, and if he says the chances is the
war would last twenty years yet and that half the world would be down
and out with starvation and sickness before it is finished up,
y'understand, we are going to say: 'This is _great_. We must get in on
this.'"
"Maybe that's the way they get results in the newspaper business, Abe,"
Morris remarked, "but in the garment business, if I am trying to turn
out a big order, y'understand, I tell the operators that the quicker
they get through the sooner they will be finished, y'understand, and I
make a point of saying that they are practically on the home stretcher
even if they are just beginning."
"That ain't such a bad plan, neither," Abe admitted, "but there should
ought to be some way to strike an average between your ideas for hurrying
up and this you-would-be-all-right-if-blood-poisoning-don't-set-in
encouragement of Lord Northcliff's, Mawruss, so that we wouldn't think
we'd got too easy a job, but at the same time we wouldn't feel like
throwing away the sponge, neither."
"I think he means well, _anyhow_," Morris said, "which he is trying to
tell us that we shouldn't think we've got such a cinch as all that;
because you know it used to was before this war started, Abe. Every once
in a while at a lodge meeting some Grand Army man, who was also, we
would say, for example, in the pants business, would get up and make a
speech that if this great and glorious land of ours was to be threatened
with an invasion by any foreign king or potentate, y'understand, an army
of a million soldiers would spring up overnight, and all his lodge
brothers would say ain't it wonderful how an old man like that stays as
bright as a dollar, y'understand. _But_, just let the same feller get up
and make a speech that if the pants business was to be threatened with a
strike by any foreign or domestic walking-delegate, understand me, an
army of a million pants-operators would spring up overnight,
y'understand, and before he had a chance to sit down even them same
lodge brothers would have rung for a Bellevue ambulance and passed
resolutions of sympathy for his family. And yet, Abe, a learner on pants
becomes an expert in six days, whereas it takes six months at the very
least to train a soldier."
"That's why Lord Northcliff is making all them discouraging speeches,"
Abe said. "He's a business man, Mawruss, and he appreciates that we are
up against a tough business proposition."
"But what I don't understand is: where does Lord Northcliff come in to
be neglecting his newspapers the way he does?" Morris said. "Is he an
ambassador or something?"
"Well, for that matter," Abe retorted, "where does Colonel House come in
to be neglecting the cloth-sponging business or whatever business the
Colonel is in? It's a stand-off, Mawruss. While Lord Northcliff is
colonelhousing over here, Colonel House is lordnorthcliffing over in
England, and just exactly what that _is_, Mawruss, I don't know, but I
got a strong suspicion that the main point about their being where they
are is that they ain't where the people are which sent them there, if
you understand what I mean."
"And I bet they both feel flattered at that," Morris concluded.
IX
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON NATIONAL MUSIC AND NATIONAL CURRENCY
Some people wouldn't care what they said, just so long as they could
give the impression that they was regular sharks when it come to
music, but what kind of impression they gave when it come to
patriotism and common sense, such people don't give a nickel.
"It seems that this here Doctor Muck wouldn't play the national anthem,
Mawruss, because he found it was inartistic," Abe Potash said as he
turned to the editorial page of his daily paper.
"Well, how did he find the national currency, Abe?" Morris Perlmutter
inquired. "Also inartistic?"
"He didn't say," Abe replied. "But a statement was given out by Major
Higginson that--"
"Who's Major Higginson?" Morris asked.
"He's the feller that owns the Boston Symphony Orchestra which this here
Doctor Muck is the conductor of it," Abe replied.
"That must be an elegant orchestra, Abe," Morris commented. "A major is
running it and a doctor is conducting it. I suppose they've got working
for them as fiddlers a lot of attorneys and counselors at law, and the
chances is that if a feller was to come there looking for a job
operating a trombone on account he had had experience as a practical
tromboner with the New York Philharmonics, y'understand, they would
probably turn him down unless he could show a diploma from a recognized
school of pharmacy."
"For all I know, they might insist on having a certified public
accountant, Mawruss," Abe said, "but he would have to be a shark on the
trombone, anyway, because I understand this here Doctor Muck and Major
Higginson run a high-class orchestra."
"Well, it only goes to show that you don't got to got a whole lot of
common sense to run a high-grade orchestra, Abe," Morris retorted,
"which if I would be a German doctor stranded in Boston, y'understand,
and I had to _Gott soll huten_ conduct an orchestra for a living, I
would consider to myself that there ain't many Americans in or out of
the medical profession conducting orchestras over in Germany just now
which is refusing to play '_Die Wacht am Rhein_' or '_Heil im der
Siegerkranz_' on artistic grounds and getting away with it. Furthermore,
Abe, Doctor Muck should ought to figure that no matter if he was running
the highest-grade orchestra in existence or anyhow in the state of
Massachusetts, y'understand, and if nobody pays for a ticket to hear it,
what _is_ it? Am I right or wrong?"
"He probably thought there was enough Americans crazy about music to
make his orchestra pay even if he did insult them, Mawruss," Abe said,
"because you know as well as I do, Mawruss, there was a lot of sympathy
shown by Americans to them German singers which got fired at the
Metropolitan Opera House for insulting Americans or being pro-German. It
seems that one of them made up a funny song about the sinking of the
_Lusitania_, and some of the Americans which heard him sing it said that
the tone production was wonderful, and that such a really remarkable
breath control, y'understand, they hadn't heard it since Adelina Patti
in her palmiest days, and I bet yer if Doctor Muck was to take that song
and set it to music so as the Boston Symphony Orchestra could play it
them same people and plenty like them would say that the wood wind was
this, the strings was that, and something about the coda and the
obbligato, y'understand. In fact, Mawruss, they wouldn't care what they
said, just so long as they could give the impression that they was
regular sharks when it come to music, but what kind of impression they
gave when it come to patriotism and common sense, such people seemingly
don't give a nickel.
"Why, you take this here lady singer at the Metropolitan Opera House,"
Abe continued, "which her husband was agent for the Krupp Manufacturing
Company, and when she got fired, y'understand, it looked like some of
these here breath-control and tone-production experts was going to hold
a meeting and regularly move and second that a copy of the said
resolutions suitably engrossed be transmitted to her, care of Krupp
Manufacturing Company, Twenty forty-two, four six, and eight Buelow
Boulevard, Essen, on account she had been working for the Metropolitan
Opera House for pretty near twenty years, which the way some of them
singers goes on singing year after year at the Metropolitan Opera House,
Mawruss, sometimes you couldn't tell whether the Metropolitan Opera
House was an opera-house or a home, y'understand."
"That's neither here nor there, Abe," Morris said. "There ain't no
reason to my mind why the Metropolitan Opera House shouldn't ought to
hire ladies whose husbands is working for American concerns or is out of
a job, y'understand, and also it wouldn't be a bad idea to see that some
of them barytones and bassos which was formerly sending home every week
from two to five hundred dollars apiece to the old folks in
Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf, y'understand, give up their places to a
few native-born fellers who contributed to the first and second Liberty
Loans, understand me, and ain't supporting a relation in the world."
"But the point which them coda and obbligato fans make is that if a
feller like this here Captain Kreisler of the Austrian army is the best
fiddler in existence, y'understand, it's up to us Americans to pay two
dollars and fifty cents a throw, not including war tax, to hear him
fiddle, and that we shouldn't ought to got no _Rishus_ against him even
if he would be only over here on a leave of absence dating from January
first, nineteen fifteen, up to and including seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars," Abe said, "because it is claimed that the best
fiddlers in the world and the best conductors in the world don't belong
to any country. They are international."
"Maybe they are, Abe," Morris agreed, "but the money which they earn
belongs to the country in which they spend it, understand me, which my
idea is that these are war-times, and if the ordinary people is willing
to take their wheat bread with a little potato flour in it, them
big-league music fans should ought to be willing to take their
fiddle-playing with a few sour notes in it, so if the best fiddler in
the world is an Austrian who spends his money at home, y'understand,
they should ought to be contented with the next best one, and if he is
also an Austrian or a German let them work on right straight down the
line till they find one who ain't, because trading with the enemy is
trading with the enemy, whether you are trading with a German fiddler or
a German fish-dealer, and if you are going to hand over money to Germany
it don't make much difference if you do it in the name of art or in the
name of fish."
"Well, you couldn't exactly feel the same way about an artist with his
art as you could about a fish-dealer with his fish," Abe protested.
"I didn't say you could," Morris said. "I've got every respect for this
here Kreisler as a feller which plays something elegant on the fiddle,
but at the same time he has had himself extensively advertised with
pictures the same like King C. Gillette and William L. Douglas, and
that's probably what made him, Abe, because it's pretty safe to say that
if you could by any possibility induce and persuade them people which is
hollering about art being international and Kreisler being the best
fiddler in existence, y'understand, to go and hear Kreisler at a concert
where under the name of Harris Fine and wearing false whiskers he was
playing a program consisting principally of Rabinowitz's Concerto in G,
Opus number Two fifty-six B, y'understand, they would come away saying
it was awful rotten even for an amateur and that you should ought to
hear Kreisler play Rabinowitz's Concerto in G, Opus number Two fifty-six
B, and then you would know how that feller Harris Fine murdered it. So
that's why I say, Abe, that advertised art comes under the head of
merchandise, and I ain't so sure that the artist who advertises ain't
just as much of a business man as we would say, for example, a
fish-dealer."
"Well, there's one thing about this here trouble with the Boston
Symphony Orchestra, Mawruss," Abe said: "it has put Boston on the map
for a few days, which the way New York people is acting about electing a
mayor in New York City, y'understand, you would think that New York,
England, France, and Italy was fighting Germany and Austria, and that if
the mayor of New York said so, the war would go on or stop, as the case
might be, and otherwise not."
"You couldn't blame New York at that," Morris said. "People out in
Seattle which has never been no nearer New York as Fall City, Wash., or
Snoqualmie, goes round singing 'Take Me Back to New York Town' _oder_
'Give My Regards to Broadway,' and young ladies living in Saint Louis,
which is a good-sized city, y'understand, reads in a magazine printed in
Chicago--_also_ a good-sized city--story after story which has got to do
with a wealthy New York clubman, or a poor New York working-girl, or a
beautiful New York actress, while the advertising section has got
pictures by the hundreds of automobiles, ready-made clothing, vacuum
cleaners, beds and bedding, health underwear, and cash-registers, and
all of them are fixed up with the Grand Central Depot across the street
or the Public Library showing through a window or, anyhow, the Flatiron
Building and Madison Square Garden not half a column away, y'understand.
Also there is a New York store in every village and a New York letter in
every newspaper, and one way or another you would think that the whole
United States was trying to prove to New York that it was as important
as New York has for a long time already suspected."
"Well, ain't it?" Abe asked.
"It couldn't be," Morris replied. "Take, for instance, this here
election for mayor, and the way the New York papers talked about it you
would think the Kaiser says to Hindenberg: 'Listen, Max, don't ship no
more soldiers nowheres till we hear how things are breaking for
Hillkowitz in New York,' or maybe he said Mitchel or Hylan--you couldn't
tell, and Hindenberg says, 'But I understand Mitchel is pretty strong up
in the Twenty-third Assembly District in certain parts of the Bronix, so
I think, Chief, it might be a good idea to have a couple of dozen
divisions of artillery sent to Dvinsk and Riga.' But the Kaiser says:
'Now do as I tell you, Max. I got a wireless from Mexico that Hillkowitz
will carry three hundred and nine out of four hundred and thirteen
election districts in the Borough of Richmond alone.' And Hindenberg
says: 'Where did they get _that_ dope? I tell you they don't know
nothing but Hylan down on Staten Island, and if you take _my_ advice,
Chief, you'll 'phone Ludendorff to hold the Siegfried line, the
Lohengrin line, the Trovatore line, the Travvyayter line, the Bohemian
Girl line, and all the other lines from Aïda to Zampa, because in my
opinion Mitchel has a walk-over.'"
"That's where they both made a mistake," Abe commented, "because it was
a landslide for Hylan."
"_Yow_ they was mistaken," Morris said. "Do you suppose for one moment
that the Kaiser had got so much as an inkling that they were going to
elect a mayor in New York? _Oser!_ And with this here Hindenberg, you
could tell from the feller's face that for all he understands about the
English language, Abe, the word _mayor_ don't exist at all. As for the
way they choose a mayor in America, that _grobe Kerl_ couldn't tell you
whether they _elect_ a mayor, _appoint_ a mayor, or _cut_ for a
mayor--aces low. And that's the way it goes in New York, Abe. They think
that the whole of Europe is watching with palpitations of the heart to
see who is going to be elected mayor of New York, and they never stop to
figure that there ain't six persons out of the six millions in New York
which could tell you the name of the mayor of London, Paris, Berlin,
Vienna, St. Petersburg, or, for that matter, Yonkers or Jersey City."
"From the mayor which they finally chose in New York, Mawruss," Abe
commented, "a feller needn't got to be so terribly ignorant as all that
to suppose that not only did the people of New York, instead of voting
for mayor, _cut_ for him, aces low, y'understand, but that they also
turned up the ace."
"They turned up what they wanted to turn up, Abe," Morris said, "which
the way the people of New York City elects Tammany Hall every few years,
Abe, it makes you think that everybody should have a vote, except
convicts, idiots, minors, Indians not taxed, and people that live in New
York City."
X
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON REVOLUTIONIZING THE REVOLUTION BUSINESS
If Kerensky would have had experience as a traveling salesman it
wouldn't hurt him to be spending his entire time commuting between
Moscow and Petersburg.
"What they want to do in Russland," Abe Potash declared, one morning in
November, "is to have one last revolution, and stick _to_ it."
"It ain't Russia which is having them revolutions," Morris Perlmutter
observed. "It's the Russian revolutionists. Them boys have been standing
around doing nothing for years, Abe, in fact ever since nineteen five,
and now that they got a job they figure that why should they finish it
up, because revolutionists' work is piece-work, and just so soon as a
revolution is over, as a general thing, the revolutionists gets laid
off--up against a wall at sunrise."
"Well, them boys is certainly nursing their job this time, Mawruss," Abe
continued. "The way them fellers is acting up over there it wouldn't
surprise me a bit if most of the Russian merchants would move to
Mexico, so as they could carry on their business in peace and quietness,
y'understand. What the idea of all these here revolutions is I don't
know. They've got the Czar living in a cold-water walk-up, and you could
go the length and breadth of Russia with a ballet-dancer as a decoy
without running across so much as one grand duke peeking through the
window-blinds, y'understand. So what more do them Russians want?"
"For one thing," Morris explained, "the peasants insists that all the
land in Russland should be divided up between them."
"What for?" Abe asked.
"They probably see a chance to get a little real estate free of charge,"
Morris replied.
"_Aber_ what good would that do them?" Abe said. "Because in a country
where revolutions is liable to happen every day in the week except
Saturdays from nine to twelve-thirty, y'understand, there ain't much
market for real estate, and, besides, Mawruss, if them poor peasants
only knew what a dawg's life it is in the real-estate business,
understand me, even when times is good, they would of got such
_Rachmonos_ for the Czar with his twenty-two million five hundred and
forty-three thousand two hundred and twenty-nine versts of unimproved
property, that instead of getting up a revolution, they would of got up
a meeting and passed resolutions of sympathy."
"The chances is they would of done it, anyway, if it wouldn't been for
this here Kerensky," Morris declared. "What that feller don't know
about running a revolution, Abe, if Carranza, Villa, and Huerta would
have known it, they would have had two years ago already a chain of
five-and-ten-cent revolutions doing a good business all the way from the
Rio Grande to Cape Horn. Yes, Abe, compared with a boss revolutionist
like Kerensky, y'understand, these here Mexican revolutionists is just,
so to speak, _learners_ on revolutionists."
"Then if that's the case, Mawruss, how does it come that one after
another, Korniloff, Lenine, and Trotzky, practically puts this here
Kerensky out of business as a revolutionist?" Abe asked.
"Well, I'll tell you," Morris said. "A feller which is running a
revolution in Russland has not only got to got nerve, y'understand, but
he's also got to be able to stand very long hours. Also it is necessary
for him to do a whole lot of traveling, because no sooner does such a
feller set up his government in Petersburg, y'understand, than the
Petersburg Local Number One of the Amalgamated Workingmen's and
Soldiers' Union is liable to chase him and his government all the way to
Moscow, y'understand, and hardly does he get busy in Moscow, understand
me, than he gets in bad with the Moscow Local Number One of the same
union, and so on vice versa. In fact, in a couple of weeks he's liable
to be vice-versad that way a half a dozen times, which if Kerensky would
have had experience as a traveling salesman, Abe, it wouldn't hurt him
to be practically spending his entire time commuting between Moscow and
Petersburg, but before this here Kerensky became a revolutionist he used
to was in the law business, and besides he enjoys very poor health and
is liable to die any moment."
"What's the matter with him?" Abe asked.
"I understand he's got kidney trouble," Morris replied.
"Well, if that feller would get an opportunity to die of kidney trouble,
Mawruss, he should ought to take advantage of it," Abe commented,
"because if you was to look up in the files of the Petersburg Department
of Health what is the figures on the cause of death in the case of
revolutionists, Mawruss, you would probably find something like this:
Explosions 91.31416%
Gun-shot wounds, including revolvers,
air-rifles, machine-guns, cannons,
armored tanks, torpedoes, and
unclassified 8.99999
Knife wounds, including razors, cold
chisels, pickaxes, and cloth and grass
cutting apparatus 0.563
Natural causes, including hardening of
the arteries a trace."
"What do you mean--natural causes?" Morris said. "When a revolutionist
dies a natural death, it's a pure accident."
"Did I say it wasn't?" Abe said. "But at the same time some Russian
revolutionists lives longer than others, because being a Russian
revolutionist is more or less a matter of training. Take this here
feller which is now conducting the Russian revolution under the name of
Trotzky, and used to was conducting a New York trolley-car under the
name of Braunstein, y'understand, and when the time comes--which it
_will_ come--when his offices will be surrounded by a mob of a hundred
thousand Russian working-men and soldiers, understand me, all that this
here Trotzky _alias_ Braunstein will do is to shout '_Fares, please_,'
and he'll go through that crowd of working-men like a--well, like a New
York trolley-car conductor going through a crowd of working-men."
"From what is happening in Mexico and Russia," Morris observed, "it
seems that when a country gets a revolution on its hands it's like a
feller with a boil on his neck. He's going to keep on having them until
he gets 'em entirely out of his system."
"Well, Russia has had such an awful siege of them," Abe said, "that you
would think she was immune by this time."
"It's the freedom breaking out on her," Morris said.
"It seems, however," said Abe, "that in Russia there are as many kinds
of freedom as there are fellers that want a job running a revolution.
There was the Kerensky brand of freedom which was quite popular for a
while; then Korniloff tried to market another brand of freedom and made
a failure of it, and now Trotzky and Lenine are putting out the T. and
L. Brand of Self-rising Freedom in red packages, and seem to be doing
quite a good business, too."
"Sure I know," Morris agreed. "But you would think that freedom was
freedom and that there could be no arguments about it, so why the devil
do them poor Russian working-men go on fighting each other, Abe?"
"They want an immediate peace with Germany," Abe said, "and the way it
looks now, they would still be fighting each other for an immediate
peace with Germany ten years after the war is over, because if them
Russian working-men was to get an immediate peace _immediately_,
Mawruss, they would have to go to work again, and you know as well as I
do, Mawruss, the very last thing that a Russian working-man thinks of,
y'understand, is working."
"Well in a way, you couldn't blame the Russians for what is going on in
Russland, Abe," Morris said. "For years already the Socialists has been
telling them poor _Nebiches_ what a rotten time the working-men had
_before_ the social revolution, y'understand, and what a good time the
working-man is going to have _after_ the social revolution, understand
me, but what kind of a time the working-man would have _during_ the
social revolution, THAT the Socialists left for them poor Russians to
find out for themselves, and when those working-men who come through it
alive begin to figure the profit and loss on the transaction, Abe, the
whole past life of one of those Socialist leaders is going to flash
before his eyes just before the drop falls, y'understand, and one of
his pleasantest recollections--if you can call recollections pleasant on
such an occasion--will be the happy days he spent knocking down fares on
the Third and Amsterdam Avenue cars."
"Then I take it you 'ain't got a whole lot of sympathy for the
Socialists, Mawruss," Abe said.
"Not since when I was a greenhorn I used to work at buttonhole-making,
and I heard a Socialist feller on East Houston Street hollering that
under a socialistic system the laborer would get the whole fruits of his
labor," Morris said. "Pretty near all that night I lay awake figuring to
myself that if I could make twelve buttonholes every ten minutes, which
would be seventy-two buttonholes an hour or seven hundred and twenty
buttonholes a day, Abe, how many buttonholes would I have in a year
under a socialistic system, and after I had them, what would I do with
them? The consequence was, I overslept myself and came down late to the
shop next morning, and it was more than two days before I found another
job."
"Well, that ain't much of an argument against socialism," Abe remarked.
"Not to most people it wouldn't be, but it was an awful good argument to
me, and I really think it saved me from becoming a Socialist," Morris
said.
"You a Socialist!" Abe exclaimed. "How could a feller like you become a
Socialist? I belong to the same lodge with you now for ten years, and in
all that time you've never had nerve enough to get up and say even so
much as '_I second the motion_.'"
"But there are two classes of Socialists, Abe--talkers and the
listeners, and while I admit the talkers are in the big majority, the
work of the listeners is just so important. They are the fellers which
try out the ideas of the talkers, the only difference being that while
such talkers as Herr Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg gets a lot of
publicity out of going to jail for handing out socialistic ideas,
y'understand, the funerals which the listeners get for trying such ideas
out are very, very private."
"At that, them talking Socialists which is taking shifts with each other
in running the Russian government must be putting in a pretty busy time,
Mawruss, because there's a whole lot of detail to such a job, and while
past experience as a street-car conductor may give the necessary
endurance, it don't help out much when it comes to systematizing the
day's work of a Russian dictator. For instance, we would say that he
goes into office at nine o'clock with the help of the One Hundred and
First Kazan Regiment, six companies of Cossacks, and the Tenth Poltava
Separate Company of Machine-Gunners. After making a socialistic address
to the survivors he washes off the blood and puts on a clean collar, or,
in the case of a Bolsheviki dictator, he only washes off the blood.
"The next thing on the program is to ring up a few flag and bunting
concerns and ask for representatives to call about taking an order for a
few national flags. They arrive half an hour later, and after making a
socialistic address, y'understand, he picks out a design for immediate
delivery, because even a few hours' delay will make a design for a
Russian national flag as big a sticker as a nineteen-ten-model runabout.
"When he's got the flag off his mind he next interviews the Russian
composers, Glazounow, Borodine, Arensky, and Scriabine, and after making
a socialistic address he invites them they should submit a new national
anthem, the only requirements being that it should contain a reference
to the fact that under the old competitive system the working-man did
not receive the whole fruits of his labor, and that delivery should be
made not later than twelve-thirty P.M. He then goes over to the mint to
decide upon models for a new gold coinage and to confiscate as much of
the old one as they have on hand. After making a socialistic address to
the director of the mint and his staff, y'understand, he agrees that the
old, clean-shaven Kerensky designs shall be altered by adding whiskers,
because you know as well as I do, Mawruss, when it comes to the portrait
on a gold coin, nobody is going to take it so particular about the
likeness not being so good as long as it ain't plugged.
"He then goes back to his office and prepares a socialistic address to
be delivered to the duma, a socialistic address to be delivered to the
army, and three or four more socialistic addresses with the names in
blank for use in case of emergency," Abe continued, "and so one way or
another he is kept busy right up to the time when word comes that his
successor has just left Tsarskoe-Seloe with the Thirty-second
Nijni-Novgorod Infantry and a regiment composed of contingents from the
Ladies' Aid Society of the First Universalist Church of Minsk, Daughters
of the Revolution of Nineteen five, the Y.W.H.A., and the Women's City
Club of Odessa. Twenty minutes later he is on board a boat bound for
Sweden, and after looking up the _Ganeves_ in his state-room he comes up
on deck and spends the rest of the trip making socialistic addresses to
the crew, the passengers, and the cargo."
"Having to go and live in Sweden ain't such a pleasant fate, neither,"
Morris observed.
"Say!" Abe exclaimed. "There's only one thing that a Russian
revolutionary dictator really and truly worries about."
"What is that?" Morris said.
"Losing his voice," Abe said.
XI
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THE SUGAR QUESTION
One lump, or two, please?
"Ain't it terrible the way you couldn't buy no sugar in New York,
nowadays, Mawruss?" Abe Potash said, one morning in November.
"Let the people _not_ eat sugar," Morris Perlmutter declared. "These are
war-times, Abe."
"Suppose they are war-times," Abe retorted, "must everybody act like
they had diabetes? Sugar is just so much a food as butter and milk and
_gefullte Rinderbrust_."
"I know it is," Morris agreed, "but most people eat it because it's
sweet, and they like it."
"Then it's your idea that on account of the war people should eat only
them foods which they don't like?" Abe inquired.
"That ain't _my_ idea, Abe," Morris protested; "I got it from reading
letters to the editors written by Pro Bono Publicos and other fellers
which is taking advantage of the only opportunity they will ever have to
figure in the newspapers outside of the births, marriages, and deaths,
y'understand. Them fellers all insist that until the war is over
everything in the way of sweetening should be left out of American life,
and some of 'em even go so far as to claim that we should ought to swear
off pepper and salt also. Their idea is that until we lick the Germans
the American people should leave off going to the theayter, riding in
automobiles, playing golluf, baseball, and auction pinochle, and reading
magazines and story-books, y'understand. In fact, they say that the
American people should devote themselves to their business, but what
business the fellers which is in the show business, the automobile
business, and the magazine-publishing business should devote themselves
to don't seem to of occurred to these here Pro Bono Publicos at all."
"I guess them newspaper-letter writers which is trying to beat out their
own funeral notices must of got their dope from this here Frank J.
Vanderlip," Abe commented, "which I read it somewheres that he comes out
with a brogan that a dollar spent for unnecessary things is an
unpatriotic dollar."
"Sure, I know," Morris said, "but he left it to the spender's judgment
as to what was necessary and what was unnecessary, Abe, which even
President Wilson himself finds it necessary once in a while to go to a
theayter in order to forget the way them Pro Bono Publicos is nagging at
him, morning, noon, and night."
"But the country must got to get very busy if we expect to win,
Mawruss," Abe said, "and them Pro Bonos thinks it's up to them to make
the people realize what a serious proposition we've got on our hands."
"That's all right, too," Morris agreed, "but it would be a whole lot
more serious if the people become _Meshuggah_ from melancholia before we
got half-way through with the war. Even when times is prosperous only a
very few of the _Leute_ takes more amusement than is necessary for 'em,
Abe, and that's why I say that this here Frank J. Vanderlip knew what he
was talking about when he didn't say what things was unnecessary. For
instance, Abe, if a Pro Bono Publico, on account of the war, cuts out
taking a summer vacation for a couple of hundred dollars, and in
consequence gets a breakdown from overwork and has to spend five hundred
dollars for doctor bills, all you've got to do is to strike a balance
and you can see for yourself that he has spent three hundred unnecessary
unpatriotic dollars."
"Well, doctors has got to have money to buy Liberty Bonds with the same
like anybody else, Mawruss," Abe commented.
"I know they have," Morris agreed, "and that's why I say the great
mistake which these here Pro Bonos makes is that the war is going to be
fought only with the money which is saved, whereas if them boys had any
experience collecting for an orphan asylum or a hospital, Abe, they
would know that it ain't the tight-wads which come across. Yes, Abe, you
could take it from me, the very people which is cutting out theayters,
automobile rides, and auction pinochle for the duration of the war would
think twice before they invest the money they save that way in anything
which don't bear interest at the rate of six per cent. per annum."
"You may be right, Mawruss," Abe said, "but arguments about how to
finance the war is like double-faced twelve-inch phonograph records.
There's a good deal to be said on both sides, which it looks like a dead
open-and-shut proposition to me that people couldn't buy no Liberty
Bonds with the money they spend for theayter tickets."
"But the feller which runs the theayter could, and he must also got to
pay the government a tax on the money which he gets that way," Morris
retorted.
"But how about the money which the theayter-owner must got to pay in
wages to actors, play-writers, ushers, and the _Rosher_ which sells
tickets in the box-office?" Abe argued.
"Well, how are all them loafers going to buy Liberty Bonds if they
wouldn't get their money that way?" Morris asked. "So you see how it is,
Abe: the feller which saves all his money for the duration of the war
ain't such a big _Tzaddik_ as you would think, because even if he
invests the whole thing in Liberty Bonds, which he ain't likely to do,
all he gets for his money is Liberty Bonds, and at the same time he is
helping to ruin a lot of business men and throw their employees out of
their jobs, and incidentally he is also doing the best he knows how to
make the whole country sick and tired of the war. _Aber_ you take one of
them fellers which goes once in a while to the theayter for the duration
of the war, y'understand, and indirectly he is handing the government
just so much money as the tight-wad, the only difference being that the
government ain't paying him no interest on it, and he is also helping to
keep the show business going and to pay the wages of the actors and all
them other low-lives which makes a living out of the show business."
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But how is the government going to get men
for the ammunition-factories if they are busy making automobiles for
joy-riding _oder_ fooling away their time as actors, Mawruss?"
"That is up to the government and not to the Pro Bono Publicos," Morris
declared, "which if the theayters has got to be closed, Abe, I would a
whole lot sooner have it done by the government as by a bunch of Pro
Bono Publicos, which not only never goes to the theayter _anyway_, but
also gets more pleasure from seeing their foolishness printed in the
newspaper than you or I would from seeing the Follies of nineteen
seventeen to nineteen fifty inclusive."
"Well, I'll tell you, Mawruss," Abe said, "admitting that all which you
say is true, y'understand, I seen a whole lot of fellers which is
working as actors during the past few years, Mawruss, and with the
exception of six, may be, it would _oser_ do the show business any harm
_if_ them fellers was to become operators on pants, let alone
ammunition. It's the same way with the automobile business also. If
seventy-five per cent. of the people which runs automobiles was
compelled to give them up to-morrow, Mawruss, the thing they would miss
most of all would be the bills from the repair-shop robbers. So that's
the way it goes, Mawruss. It don't make no difference what a Pro Bono
Publico writes to the newspaper, y'understand, he couldn't do a
hundredth part as much to make people cut out going to the theayter for
the duration of the war as the feller in the show business does when he
puts on a rotten show. Also Mr. Vanderlip has got a good line of talk
about Americans acting economical, y'understand, but he's practically
encouraging the people that they should throw away their money left and
right on automobiles, compared to some of them automobile-manufacturers
which depends upon their repair departments for their profits."
"I understand that right now, Abe, the automobile business is falling
off something terrible," Morris continued, "and the show business also."
"Sure it is," Abe said, "because so soon as the government put taxes on
theayter tickets and automobiles, Mawruss, the people was bound to
figure it out that it was bad enough they should got to pay taxes on
their assets without being soaked ten per cent. on their liabilities
also. And if I would be a Pro Bono Publico which, _Gott sei dank_, I
couldn't write good enough English to break into the newspapers,
Mawruss, the argument I would make is that people should leave off being
suckers for the duration of the war, and the whole matter of spending
money foolishly on theayter tickets and automobiles would adjust itself
without any assistance from the government, y'understand."
"Well, everything else failing, them automobile-dealers and
theayter-owners could get up a war bazaar for themselves," Morris
suggested, "which I seen it the other day in the papers where they run
off a war bazaar in New York and raised over seventy thousand dollars
for some fellers in the advertising business."
"Has the advertising business also been affected by the war?" Abe asked.
"The business of _some_ advertising agents has," replied Morris, "which
it seems that the standard rates for advertising agents who solicited
advertisements for war-bazaar programs was any sum realized by the
bazaar over and above one-tenth of one per cent. of the net proceeds,
which the advertising men agreed should be devoted to wounded American
soldiers or starving Belgiums, according to the name of the bazaar."
"Maybe them advertising agents earned their money at that, Mawruss," Abe
said, "which the average advertising solicitor would need to do a whole
lot of talking before he could convince me that an advertisement in a
war-bazaar program has got any draught to speak about, because you take
a feller in the pants business, y'understand, and if he would get an
order for one-twelfth dozen pants out of all the advertisements which he
would stick in war-bazaar programs from the beginning of the war up to
the time when running a war bazaar first offense is going to be the
equivalence of not less than from five to ten years, understand me, it
would be big already."
"At the same time," Morris protested, "if people is foolish enough to
blow in their money advertising by war-bazaar programs, Abe, it don't
seem unreasonable to me that the advertising agents and the starving
Belgiums should go fifty-fifty on the proceeds, and the way it looks
now, Abe, the New York grand jury is going to agree with me after they
get through investigating the bills for advertising in connection with
the army and navy bazaars."
"Sure, I know," Abe agreed. "But why should the grand jury investigate
only the advertising? Why don't a grand-juryman for once in his life do
a little something to earn his salary and investigate what becomes of
the articles which young ladies sells chances on at war bazaars? It
would also be a slight satisfaction for them easy marks which
contributes merchandise to a war bazaar if the grand jury could send out
tracers after the goods which remained in stock when the bazaar was
officially declared closed by the parties named in the indictment."
"What do you think--a New York grand jury has got nothing else to
investigate for the rest of the twentieth century except one war
bazaar?" Morris inquired. "The way you talk you would think that they
had nothing better to do with their time than the people which goes to
war bazaars, which the reason why them advertising men went wrong was
that they were practically encouraged to run crooked war bazaars by the
hundreds of thousands of people who wouldn't loosen up for charity
unless they could get something for their money besides the good they
are doing."
"Well, that only goes to show how one minute you argue one way, and the
next you say something entirely different again," Abe said.
"Is that so?" Morris exclaimed. "Well, so far as I could see, Abe, you
ain't on a strict diet, neither, when it comes to eating your own
words."
"Maybe I ain't," Abe admitted, "but it seems to me that people might
just so well pass on their money to the Red Cross through war bazaars as
pass it on to the government through buying theayter tickets the way you
argued a few minutes since."
"The Red Cross is one thing and the government another," Morris
retorted. "If people spend money at a war bazaar maybe one per cent. of
it reaches the Red Cross and maybe it don't, whereas if they spend at a
theayter, the government gets ten per cent. net, and the transaction
'ain't got to be audited by the grand jury, neither."
"Then you ain't in favor that people should give their money to the Red
Cross?" Abe said.
"_Gott soll huten!_" Morris cried. "People should give all they could to
the Red Cross and the government also, but while they are doing it,
Abe, it ain't no more necessary that they should encourage a crooked
advertising agent as that they should ruin a hard-working feller in the
show business. Am I right or wrong?"
XII
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS HOW TO PUT THE SPURT IN THE EXPERT
"When does the Shipping Commission expect to begin shipments on those
ships?" Abe Potash asked, as he laid down the morning paper a few days
after Thanksgiving.
"I don't know," Morris Perlmutter replied. "The way the newspapers was
talking last April, Abe, it looked like by the first of September our
production would be so far ahead of our orders for ships that President
Wilson would have to organize a special department to handle the
cancellations, y'understand, but from what I could see now, Abe, by next
spring the nearest them Shipping Commission fellers will have come to
deliveries on ships is that this here Hurley will be getting writer's
cramp from signing letters to the attorneys for the people which ordered
ships that in reply to your favor of the tenth inst. would say that we
expect to ship the ships not later than July first at the latest, and
oblige."
"But I thought that even before we went to war with Germany, Mawruss, a
couple of inventors made it an invention of a ship which could be built
of yellow pine in ninety days net."
"Sure, I know," Morris said. "But the Shipping Commission couldn't make
up their minds whether them yellow-pine ships would be any good even
after they _were_ built, on account some professional experts claimed
that yellow pine shrinks in water to the extent of .00031416 milliegrams
to the kilowatt-hour, or .000000001 per cent., and other professional
experts said, '_Yow_ .00031416 milliegrams!' and that .00000031416 would
be big already, and that also what them first experts didn't know from
the shrinkage of yellow pine, understand me."
"Well, why didn't the Shipping Commission build a sample ship from
yellow pine?" Abe suggested. "It's already nine months since the war
started, and by this time such a ship could have been in the water long
enough for them Shipping Commission fellers to judge which experts was
right."
"And suppose she did shrink a little," Morris said, "she could have been
anyhow disposed of '_as is_' to somebody who didn't take it so
particular to the fraction of an inch how much yellow pine he gets in a
yellow-pine ship."
"I give you right, Mawruss," Abe agreed, "but then, you see, an idee
like that would never occur to a professional expert, Mawruss, because
it has the one big objection that it might prove the other experts was
right when they didn't agree with him, which that is the trouble with
professional experts. The important thing to them ain't so much the
articles on which they experts, as what big experts they are on such
articles.
"Take this here Lewis machine-gun, Mawruss," Abe continued, "and when
Colonel Lewis puts it up to the army experts, y'understand, naturally
them experts says, 'Well, if we are such big experts on machine-guns, we
should ought to know a whole lot more about machine-guns as Colonel
Lewis, and what does that _Schlemiel_ know about machine-guns,
_anyway_?' so they sent Colonel Lewis a notice that they would not be
responsible for goods left over thirty days, and the consequence was
Colonel Lewis sold his machine-gun to the English army."
"And he didn't have to be such a cracker-jack high-grade A-number-one
salesman to do that, neither," Morris commented, "because if his only
talking point to the English experts was that the American experts had
turned down his gun, y'understand, the English experts would give him a
big order without even asking him to unpack his samples."
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But if Colonel Lewis would of had the
interests of America at heart, Mawruss, he should ought to have offered
his machine-gun to the English experts first, understand me, and after
he had got out of the observation ward, which the English experts would
just naturally send him to as a dangerous American crank with a foolish
idea for a machine-gun, y'understand, the American experts would have
taken his entire output at his own terms."
[Illustration: "'Well, if we are such big experts on machine-guns, we
should ought to know a whole lot more about machine-guns as Colonel
Lewis, and what does that _Schlemiel_ know about machine-guns,
_anyway_?'"]
"After all, you can't kick about such mistakes being made, because
that's the trouble about being a new beginner in any business," Morris
said. "It don't make no difference whether it would be war or pants,
Abe, you start out with one big liability, and that is the advice
proposition. Twice as many new beginners goes under from accepting what
they thought was good advice as from accepting what they thought was
good accounts, Abe, and them fellers on the Shipping Commission deserves
a great deal of credit that they already made such fine progress. You
can just imagine what this here Hurley which he used to was in the
railroad business must be up against from his friends which has been in
the ship-building business for years already. The chance is that every
time Mr. Hurley goes out on the street one of them old ship-building
friends comes up to him with that good-advice expression on his face and
says: '_Nu_, Hurley. How are they coming?' which it don't make a bit of
difference to such a feller whether Mr. Hurley would say, '_So, so_,'
'_Pretty good_,' or '_Rotten_,' y'understand, he might just as well save
his breath, on account the good-advice feller is going to get it off his
chest, anyhow.
"'You're lucky at that,' the good-advice feller says, 'because I just
met your assistant designer, Jake Rashkin, and he tells me you are
getting out a line of whalebacks in pastel shades.'
"'Well, why not?' Hurley says.
"'Why not!' the friend exclaims. 'You mean to tell me that you don't
know even that much about the ship-building business, that you would
actually go to work and make up for the fall trade a line of whalebacks
in pastel shades? Honestly, Hurley, I must say I am surprised at you.'
And for the next twenty minutes he gives Hurley the names and dates of
six voluntary bankrupts, all of whom started in the ship-building
business by making up a line of whalebacks in pastel shades, together
with the details of just what them fellers is doing for a living to-day
from selling cigars on commission downwards.
"Naturally, Hurley hustles right back to the shop and tells the foreman
that if they 'ain't already started on that last batch of whalebacks in
pastel shades, not to mind, and he spends the rest of the afternoon
getting his operators busy on a couple of hundred oil-burning boats in
solid colors, like reds, greens, and blues. The consequence is that the
next day at lunch another old friend comes up to him, which used to was
in the ship-building business when the record from New York to Liverpool
was nineteen days ten hours and forty-five minutes, y'understand, and
says: '_Nu_, Hurley. How is the busy little ship-builder to-day?'
"'Pretty good,' Hurley says. 'I'm just getting to work on a big line of
oil-burners in solid colors, like reds, greens, and blues.'
"'No!' the old ship-builder says.
"'Sure!' Hurley tells him, and after they have said 'No!' and 'Sure!' a
couple of dozen times it appears that if a new beginner in the
ship-building business lays in a stock of plain-colored oil-burning
boats he might just so well kiss himself good-by with his ship-building
business and be done with it. Also it seems that the only line of goods
for a new beginner in the ship-building business to specialize in is
whalebacks in pastel shades, Abe, and that's the way it goes."
"At that we're a whole lot better off as England was when she started in
as a new beginner in the war business," Abe commented. "Mr. Hurley was,
anyhow, in the railroad business when he took over the ship-building
job, and we've got other men which were high-grade dry-goods and
hardware men before they threw up their business to help the government
branch out into the war business, y'understand, but if we would got to
depend on somebody who was trying to run a shipyard with the experience
he had got from being national lawn-tennis champion for the years
nineteen hundred to nineteen sixteen inclusive, or if President Wilson
had the idee that for a man to be the right man in the right place,
y'understand, he should ought to have the gumption and business ability
which a feller naturally picks up in the course of being an earl or a
duke, understand me, the best we could hope for would be a fleet of six
rebuilt tugboats by the fall of nineteen fifty."
"It wasn't England's fault that she made such a mistake, Abe," Morris
said. "Up to the time Germany started this war it used to was considered
that if nations did got to go to war, y'understand, the best way to go
about it was to put it in charge of a good sport like a tennis champion
would naturally have to be, and as for the earls and the dukes, the
theory on which them fellers fooled away their time was that they was
just resting up between wars, Abe, because they was, anyhow, gentlemen,
and it was England's idea that all a soldier had to be was a gentleman.
But nowadays that's already a thing of the past. The way Germany fixed
things with her long-distance cannons, her liquid fire, gas, and
Zeppelins, a soldier don't have to be so much of a gentleman as an
inventor, a chemist, an engineer, and a general all-around hustler."
"In fact, Mawruss," Abe said, "a German soldier don't need to be a
gentleman at all, because when it comes to stealing château furniture,
destroying cathedrals, burning houses, and chopping down fruit-trees,
any experience as a gentleman wouldn't be much of a help to a German
soldier."
"That's what I am telling you, Abe," Morris declared. "Germany has made
war a business, y'understand, and she figures that a gentleman in the
war business is like a gentleman in the pants business. He ain't going
to make any more or better pants by being a gentleman, y'understand, and
if we are going to win this war, Abe, we should ought to stop beefing
about German soldiers not being gentlemen, and take into consideration
the fact that while German engineers, chemists, inventors, and
submarine-builders may not know whether you play lawn tennis with a cue,
mallet, or a full deck of fifty-two cards including the joker, Abe, you
can bet your life that they know an awful lot about engineering,
chemistry, and building submarines, and they don't need no so-called
experts to help them, neither."
"And you can also bet your life, Mawruss, that no German would have
turned down Colonel Lewis's machine-guns," Abe said, "the way them
experts of ours did."
"Well, what is an expert to do, Abe?" Morris asked. "If he goes to work
and recommends the government to give an inventor an order for his
invention, he's taking a big chance that the invention wouldn't work,
and you know as well as I do, Abe, most American experts play in
terrible hard luck. You take these here military experts which gives
expert opinions in the newspapers about what is going to happen next on
the Balkan front, y'understand, and a feller could make quite a
reputation as a military expert by simply coppering their predictions."
"Well, them military experts which writes in the newspapers ain't really
experts at all, Mawruss," Abe said. "They're just crickets, like them
musical crickets which knows everything there is to know about, we would
say, for example, playing on the fiddle excepting how to play on the
fiddle."
"_Aber_ what is the difference between a professional expert and a
professional cricket, _anyway_?" Morris asked.
"A professional expert is a feller which thinks he knows all about a
business because he tried for years and he never could make a success of
it," Abe replied, "whereas a professional cricket is a feller which
thinks he knows all about a business because he tried for years and he
could never even break into it."
"And how could you expect to get from people like that an opinion which
ain't on the bias?" Morris concluded.
XIII
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON BEING AN OPTICIAN AND LOOKING ON THE BRIGHT
SIDE
"Yes, Mawruss," Abe Potash said as he laid down the morning paper after
glancing over the alarming head-lines, "a feller which has got stomach
trouble or the toothache nowadays is playing in luck, because when
you've got stomach trouble you couldn't think about nothing else, and
what is a little thing like stomach trouble to worry over with all the
_tzuris_ which is happening in the world nowadays?"
"Well, then _have_ stomach trouble," Morris Perlmutter advised.
"What do you mean--_have_ stomach trouble?" Abe said. "A man couldn't
get stomach trouble the same way he could get drunk, Mawruss. It is
something which is just so much beyond your control as red hair or a
good tenor voice."
"Sure, I know," Morris agreed. "But what is happening in Russia and
Italy is also beyond your control, Abe, so if them Bolsheviki is getting
on your nerves, and you hate to pick up the paper for fear of finding
that the Germans would have captured Venice, understand me, console
yourself with the idee that there's a lot of brainy fellers in this
country which is doing all they know how to handle the situation over in
the old country, and then if you want something near at home to worry
about like stomach trouble, y'understand, there's plenty of misfortunate
people in orphan asylums and hospitals right here in New York City which
will be very glad to have you worry over them in a practical way out of
what you've got left when you're through paying income and excise profit
taxes, Abe."
"Maybe there is some people which would get so upset over having to give
twenty dollars or so to an orphan asylum or a hospital, Mawruss, that
for the time being they could forget how General Crozier 'ain't ordered
the machine-guns yet," Abe said, "but me I ain't built that way. When it
says in the papers where the Germans is sending all their soldiers away
from the Russian front to the Italian front, y'understand, it may be
that some people could read it and try not to worry by sending five
dollars to them Highwaymen for Improving the Condition of the Poor,
Mawruss, but when _I_ read it, Mawruss, I think how it's all up to them
Bolsheviki in Russia, and I get awful sore at the poor--in especially
the Russian poor."
"What are you worrying your head about what they put in the papers?"
Morris asked. "Seventy-five per cent. of the bridge-heads which the
Germans capture in the New York morning papers might just so well be
French villages, except that the reporters would have to look up the
names of the villages on the map, because some editors are very
particular that way; they insist that the reporter should use the name
of a real village, whereas if he puts down that the Germans has captured
a bridge-head on the Piave River he could go right out to lunch, and he
never even stops to think that if somebody would check up the number of
bridge-heads which the Germans has captured that way in the New York
morning papers, Abe, the Piave River would got to be covered solid with
bridges from end to end."
"But I am just so bad as a reporter, Mawruss--I never stop to think
that, neither," Abe admitted. "It's my nature that I couldn't help
believing the foolishness which I read in the papers, and if the Germans
capture a bridge-head on me in the Sporting Edition with Final Wall
Street Complete they might just so well capture it in Italy and be done
with it, because if I play cards afterward I couldn't keep my mind on
the game, anyhow. Only last Sunday I had a three-hundred-and-fifty hand
in spades, with an extra ace and king, understand me, when I happened to
think about reading in the paper where the Germans is going to build for
next spring submarines in extra sized six hundred feet long,
y'understand, and the consequence was I forget to meld a twenty in clubs
and lost the hand by eighteen points. Before I fell asleep that night I
thought it over that Germany couldn't build such a big submarine as the
papers claimed, but by that time I was out three dollars on the hand,
_anyway_, and that's the way war affects _me_, Mawruss."
"Well, that's where you are making a big mistake, Abe," Morris
commented, "because even when the articles which they print in the
newspaper is true, y'understand, if you only stop to figure them out
right, Abe, you could get a whole lot of encouragement that way. Take,
for instance, when you read _via_ Amsterdam that General Hindenberg is
now commanding the western front, Abe, and with some people that would
throw a big scare into 'em, y'understand, but with me not, Abe, because
the way I look at it is from experience. I've known lots of fellers from
seventy to seventy-five years old, Abe, and in particular my wife's
mother's a brother Old Man Baum in the cotton-converting business.
There's a feller which he actually went to work and married his
stenographer when he was seventy-two, Abe, and, compared to an
undertaking like that, running the western front would be child's play,
Abe, and yet when all was said and done, if he went to theayter Saturday
night and eats afterward a little chicken _à la_ King, y'understand, it
was a case of ringing up a doctor at three o'clock Sunday morning while
his wife's relations sat around his flat figuring the inheritance tax.
Now, take Hindenberg which he is six months older as Old Man Baum, Abe,
and what that feller has went through in the last three years two
lifetimes in the cotton-converting business wouldn't be a marker to it,
understand me, and still there are people which is worried that when he
begins to run things on the western front, it is going to be a serious
matter for the Allies, instead of the Germans.
"Yes, Abe," Morris continued, "with all the things them Germans has got
to attend to on the western front, it's no cinch to have on their hands
an old man seventy-two years of age, which, if anything should happen to
the old _Rosher_, like acute indigestion from eating too much gruel or
lumbago, y'understand, then real generals on the western front would
never hear the end of it."
"Ain't Hindenberg also a real general?" Abe asked.
"Not an old man like that, Abe," Morris replied. "He used to was a real
general, but now he is just a mascot for the Germans and a bogey man for
us, which I bet yer the most that feller does to help along the war is
to wear warm woolen underwear, keep out of draughts, and not get his
feet wet under any circumstances at his age. Furthermore, Abe, I ain't
so sure that the Germans is withdrawing so many soldiers as they claim
from the Russian frontier, neither, y'understand, because the way them
Bolsheviki has swung around to Germany must sound to the Kaiser almost
too good to be true, and I bet yer also he figures that maybe it isn't
because nobody knows better as the Kaiser how much reliance you could
place on a deal between one country and another, even when it's in
writing and signed by the party to be charged, which, for all any one
could tell, whether Russia is now a government, a co-partnership, a
corporation, or only so to speak a voluntary association, Abe, the
Kaiser might just as well sign his peace treaty with Pavlowa and Nordkin
as with Lenine and Trotzky, so far as binding the Russian people is
concerned."
"It ain't a peace treaty which them fellers wants to sign, Mawruss," Abe
said. "It's a bill of sale, which I see that Lenine and Trotzky agrees
Germany should import goods into Russia free of duty and that she should
take Russian Poland and Courland and a lot of other territory, and if
that's what is called making peace, Mawruss, then you might just as well
say that a lawsuit is compromised by allowing the feller which sues to
get a judgment and have the sheriff collect on it."
"And at that, Abe," Morris said, "there ain't a German merchant which
wouldn't be only too delighted to swap his rights to import goods into
Russia free of duty _after the war_ for three-quarters of a pound of
porterhouse steak and a ten-cent loaf of white bread right now, which
the way food is so scarce nowadays in Germany, Abe, when a Berlin
business man's family gets through with the Sunday dinner, and the
servant-girl clears off the table, there's no use asking should she give
the bones to the dog, because the chances is they _are_ the dog,
understand me. As for sugar, we think we've got a kick coming when we
could only get two teaspoonfuls to a cup of coffee for five cents,
y'understand, whereas in Germany they would consider themselves lucky if
they could get two teaspoonfuls to a gallon of coffee if they had a
gallon of coffee in the entire country, understand me. So that's the way
it goes in Germany, Abe; the people ask for bread and they give 'em a
report on Norwegian steamers sunk by U-boats during the current week,
and if one of the steamers was loaded with sugar, y'understand, that
ain't going to be much satisfaction to a German which has got a sweet
tooth and has been trying to make out with one two-grain saccharin
tablet every forty-eight hours, neither."
"But the Germans seems to be making a lot of progress everywheres," Abe
said.
"Except at home," Morris declared. "Maybe the German people still feels
encouraged when the German army gets ahold of more territory, Abe, but
it's a question of a short time now when the German people is going to
realize that they don't need no more room to starve in than they've got
at present, and that a nation can go broke just as comfortably in nine
hundred thousand square miles as it can in nine million square miles."
"Sure, I know," Abe agreed, "but one thing Germany has fixed already,
Mawruss, and that is that she is going to get a whole lot of customers
in Russia."
"Well, if she does," Morris commented, "she'll have to provide the
capital to set them customers up in business, and after she has done
that, Abe, she will have to hustle around to drum up trade for them
Russian customers, because when the Bolsheviki get through with their
fine work in Russia, Abe, the Russian people won't have enough
purchasing power to make it a fair territory for a salesman with a line
of five-and-ten-cent store supplies. So if Germany started this here war
to get more trade, she's already licked."
"Then what does she go on fighting for?" Abe asked. "It seems to me that
if we saw we couldn't accomplish nothing by going on fighting, Mawruss,
we'd stop, ain't it?"
"Sure we would," Morris agreed. "But then, Abe, we 'ain't got nothing to
stop us from stopping, because we ain't fighting for the sake of
fighting, the way Von Tirpitz, Mackensen, and Ludendorff are doing.
Take, for instance, Von Tirpitz, and that _Rosher_ insists that the
U-boats is going to win the war, so it don't make no difference to him
how many German sailors goes down in U-boats, he's going to keep on
sending out U-boats right up to the time the German people shoots him,
and his last words will be that the reason why the U-boats didn't win
the war was because they didn't have a fair trial. Then there's
Mackensen and Ludendorff which they've got _their_ idees about how the
war should be won, and they mean to see that their idees continue to
have a fair trial till there ain't enough German soldiers alive to give
them idees a fair trial, and that's the way it goes, Abe. All the idees
that we want to give a fair trial is that we are going to keep on
fighting till we've proved to the German people that it don't pay to
back up the Von Tirpitz, Ludendorff, and Mackensen idees."
"And how long is this going to take?" Abe inquired.
"Not so long as you think, Abe," Morris replied, "because Germany may
have made peace with Russia, but she has still got fighting against her
England, France, Italy, America, Starvation, Bad Business, Conceit,
Lies, and Stubbornness."
"And in the mean time, Mawruss," Abe said, "what's going to happen to
us?"
"Don't worry about us," Morris said. "All America has got to do is to
try to be an optician and look on the bright side of things, and she's
bound to win out in the end."
XIV
THE LIQUOR QUESTION--SHALL IT BE DRY OR EXTRA DRY?
Light wines don't harm an awful lot of people, for the same reason
that there ain't much pneumonia caused by people getting damp from
using finger-bowls.
"Yes, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, the day after the prohibition amendment
was adopted by the House of Representatives, "there's a lot of people
going around taking credit for this here prohibition which in reality is
living examples of the terrible effects not drinking schnapps has on the
human race--suppose any one wanted to argue that way--whereas if you was
to put the people wise which is actually responsible for the country
going dry, y'understand, they would be too indignant to call you a liar
before they could hit you with anything that lay most handy behind the
bar from an ice-pick to an empty bottle, understand me."
"I always had an idea myself that what was responsible for prohibition,
Abe, was that the people is sore at booze," Morris Perlmutter retorted.
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But the people would be just so sore at
candy if the fellers which runs candy-stores acted the way
saloon-keepers does, which you take a feller like this here Huyler, or
one of the Smiths in the cough-drop business, and we would say his name
is Harris Fine, y'understand, and instead of attending to the store and
poisining people mit candy, he goes to work to get up the Harris Fine
Association and gives all the eighteen-dollar-a-week policemen in the
neighborhood to understand that it's equivalent to ten dollars in their
pockets if they wouldn't take it so particular when members of the
Harris Fine Association commits a little thing like murder or something,
_verstehst du mich_, why the people in the same block which wasn't
members of the Harris Fine Association would begin to think that candy
was getting to have a bad influence on the neighborhood, y'understand.
Then if Harris Fine was to run for alderman and all the loafers of the
eighth ward or whatever ward he was alderman of was to meet in the back
room of his candy-store, Mawruss, the respectable _Leute_ which couldn't
go past Harris Fine's candy-store without hearing somebody talking
rotten language would go home and say that it was a shame and a disgrace
that the eighth ward should got to have candy-stores in it. Afterward
when he has been an alderman for some time, Mawruss, and Harris Fine
begins to make a fortune out of the garbage-removal contracts by not
removing garbage, y'understand, and also as a side line to candy and
ice-cream soda, does an elegant business in asphalt-paving which
contains one-tenth of one per cent. asphalt, y'understand, the bad
reputation which candy has got it in the eighth ward is going to spread
throughout the city, Mawruss, and finally, when the candy feller starts
in to make contracts for state roads, candy gets a black eye in the
state also, and it's only a question of time before the candy-dealer
would go to Washington and put over a rotten deal on the national
government, understand me, and then people like you and me which never
touches so much as a little piece of peanut-brittle, Mawruss, starts
right in and hollers for the national prohibition of all kinds of candy
from gum-drops to mixed chocolates and bum-bums at a dollar and a half a
pound."
"You may be right, Abe," Morris said, "but when it comes right down to
Bright's disease and charoses of the liver, y'understand, politics
'ain't got nothing to do with it, because it doesn't make no difference
to whisky whether a feller voted for Wilson _oder_ Hughes. It would just
as lieve ruin the health and prospects of a Republican as a Democrat."
"Whisky might," Abe admitted, "but how about beer and light wines,
Mawruss, which you know as well as I do, Mawruss, a loafer must got to
drink an awful lot of beer before he gets drunk."
"Well, that's what makes the brewery business good, Abe," Morris said.
"But don't you think in a great number of cases, Mawruss, beer is drunk
to squench thirst?" Abe asked.
"That's the way it's drunk in a great number of cases--twenty-four
bottles to the case," Morris said; "but if the same people was to drink
water the way they drink beer, Abe, instead of thirst you would think it
was goldfish that troubled them, which I can get as thirsty as the next
one, Abe, but I can usually manage to squench it without making an
aquarium out of myself exactly."
"_Aber_ what about light wines?" Abe inquired. "They don't harm an awful
lot of people, Mawruss."
"They don't harm an awful lot of people for the same reason that there
ain't much pneumonia caused by people getting damp from using
finger-bowls, Abe," Morris said, "because so far as I could see the
American people feels the same way about light wines as they do about
finger-bowls. They could use 'em and they could let 'em alone, and they
feel a whole lot more comfortable when they're letting 'em alone than
when they're using 'em."
"Well, I'll tell you, Mawruss," Abe said, "I think a great many people
which is prejudiced against light wines on account of heartburn is
laying it to the wine instead of the seventy-five-cent Italian
table-d'hôte dinner which goes with it."
"Yes, and it's just as likely to be the cocktail which went before it as
the glass of brandy which came after it, and that's the trouble with
beer and light wine, Abe," Morris declared. "They usually ain't the only
numbers on the program, and the feller which starts in on beer and
light wines, Abe, soon gets such a big repertoire of drinks that he's
performing on the bottle day and night, y'understand, which
saloon-keepers knows better than anybody else, Abe, because if you would
ask a saloon-keeper _oder_ a bartender to have something, y'understand,
it's a hundred-to-one proposition that he takes a cigar and not a glass
beer."
"Sure, I know," Abe agreed. "But once a bartender draws a glass beer,
before he could use it again, he's got to mark off so much for
deteriorating that it's practically a total loss, whereas he could
always put a cigar back in the case and sell it to somebody else for
full price in the usual course of business."
"Well, that's what makes the saloon business a swindle and not a
business, Abe," Morris said. "Just imagine, Abe, if you and me, as
women's outer-garment manufacturers, was to lay in a line of ready-made
men's overcoats in the expectation that after a customer has bought from
us a big order he is going to blow me to a forty regular and you to a
forty-four stout which we would put right back in stock as soon as his
back is turned."
"But even if the liquor business would be a dirty business, Mawruss,"
Abe said, "you've got to consider that there's a whole lot of people
which is making a living out of it, like bartenders and fellers working
in distilleries, and if they get thrown out of work, y'understand, their
wives and children is going to be just as hungry as if the fellers lost
their jobs in a respectable business like pants or plumbers' supplies."
"Say," Morris exclaimed, "if you're going to have sympathy for people
which would get thrown out of jobs by prohibition, Abe, don't use it all
up on bartenders and fellers working in distilleries, because there's a
whole lot of other crooks whose families are going to be short of
spending-money when liquor-selling stops. Take them boys which is
running poker-rooms, faro-games, and roulette-wheels, and alcohol is
just as necessary to their operation as ether is to a stomach
specialist's, because the human bank-roll is the same as the human
appendix, Abe: the success of removing it entirely depends on the giving
of the anesthetic. Then there is the lawyers--criminal, accident, and
divorce--and it don't make no difference how their clients fell or what
they fell from--positions in banks, moving street-cars, or as nice a
little woman as any one could wish for, y'understand--schnapps done it,
Abe, and when schnapps goes, Abe, the practice of them lawyers goes with
it."
"Well, they still got their diplomas, Mawruss," Abe said. "And even
though schnapps is prohibited, Mawruss, there will be enough people left
with the real-estate habit to give them shysters a living, anyhow, but
you take them fellers which has got millions of dollars invested in
machinery for the manufacture of headache medicine, Mawruss, and before
they will be able to figure out how they can use their plants for the
manufacture of war supplies they're going to be their own best
customers, which little did them fellers think when they put on their
bottles,
* * * KEEP IN A DRY PLACE WELL CORKED * * *
that people was going to take them so seriously as to put 'em right out
of business, y'understand."
"But there's also a large number of people which is going to lose their
jobs on account of this here prohibition, Abe, and if they get the
sympathy of these American sitsons which is laying awake nights worrying
about how the Czar is getting along, Abe, it would be big already. I am
talking about the temperance lecturers," Morris declared, "which if it
wouldn't be for them fellers pretty near convincing everybody that no
one could be happy and sober at the same time, Abe, it's my idee that we
would of had this here prohibition _sohon_ long since ago already,
because those temperance lecturers got their arguments against drinking
schnapps so mixed up with Sunday baseball, playing billiards, and going
to theayters, picture-galleries, and libraries on Sunday, Abe, that some
people which visits New York from small towns in the Middle West still
hesitates about going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for fear of
getting a hobnailed liver or something."
"At that, Mawruss, this here prohibition is going to hurt some
businesses like the jewelry business," Abe said, "which not counting the
millions of carats that fellers has bought to square themselves for
coming home at all hours of the night, y'understand, there's many a bar
pin which would still be in stock if the customer hadn't nerved himself
to buying it with a couple of cocktails, understand me. Automobiles is
the same way, Mawruss, and if the engineering department of the big
automobile concerns is now busy on the problem of making alcohol a
substitute for gasolene, Mawruss, you can bet your life that the sales
department is just as busy trying to find out something which will be a
substitute for alcohol, because when a feller has made up his mind to
buy a five-passenger touring-car, Mawruss, there ain't many automobile
salesmen which could wish a seven-passenger limousine on him by working
him with a couple of cups coffee, y'understand."
"Then there is the show business," Morris observed, "and while I don't
mean to say that this here prohibition is going to have any effect on
them miserable plays where the girl saves the family at eight-forty-five
by marrying the millionaire and discovers at ten-forty-five that she
loves him just as much as if he hadn't any rating, so that the show can
get out at eleven-five, y'understand, but when enough states has adopted
the prohibition amendment to pull it into effect, Abe, the Midnight
Follies as a business proposition will be in a class with bar fixtures
and mass-kerseno cherries."
"Well, so far as I'm concerned, any show that starts in at twelve
o'clock would always have to get along without _my_ trade, prohibition
or no prohibition," Abe commented, "even though I could enjoy it on
nothing stronger than malted milk."
"Which you couldn't," Morris added, "and there's why the Midnight
Follies wouldn't last, because not only is this here prohibition going
to kill schnapps, Abe, but it is also going to drive off the market for
all articles the demand for which contains more than one per cent.
alcohol."
"And believe me, Mawruss," Abe concluded, "no decent, respectable man is
going to miss such articles, neither."
XV
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON PEACE WITH VICTORY AND WITHOUT BROKERS, EITHER
"An offer is anyhow an offer, even if it is turned down, Mawruss," Abe
Potash said, the day after Germany proposed terms of peace, "which that
time I sold Harris Immerglick them lots in Brownsville, Mawruss, the
first proposition he made me I pretty near threw him down the
freight-elevator shaft, and when we finally closed the deal I couldn't
tell exactly how much I made on them lots--figuring what I paid in taxes
and assessments while I owned 'em, but it must have been, anyhow, five
hundred dollars, Mawruss, from the way Immerglick gives me such a
cutthroat looks whenever he sees me nowadays."
"Everybody ain't so easy as Harris Immerglick," Morris Perlmutter
commented.
"Maybe not," Abe admitted. "But Harris Immerglick didn't want them lots
not nearly as bad as the Kaiser wants peace, Mawruss, so while the
parties to the proposed contract seems to be at present too wide apart
to make a deal likely, Mawruss, at the same time I look to see the
Kaiser offer a few concessions."
"Perhaps you're right, Abe," Morris said, "but while the Kaiser may have
control of enough property so as to throw in a little here and a little
there, y'understand, in the end it will be the boot money which will
count, Abe, and before this deal is closed, Abe, you could bet your life
that not only would the parties of the first part got to give up
Belgium, Servia, Rumania, Poland, and Alsace-Lorraine, but they would
also got to pay billions and billions of dollars in cash or certified
check upon the delivery of the deed and passing of title under the said
contract, and don't you forget it. So if some of them railroad
presidents which is now drawing a hundred thousand a year salary, Abe,
has got any hopes that President Wilson would hold up taking over the
railroads pending negotiations for peace, y'understand, they must be
blessed with sanguinary dispositions, Abe, because it's going to take a
long time yet the Kaiser would concede enough to justify the Allies in
so much as hesitating on even a single pair of soldiers' pants."
"Say, if anybody thinks the government would let go the railroads when
we make peace with Germany, Mawruss, he don't know no more about
railroads as he does about governments," Abe declared, "because this war
which the government has got with the railroads, meat-packers, oil
trusts, and coal-mine owners wouldn't end when we've licked Germany any
more than it begun when Von Tirpitz started his submarine campaign. Yes,
Mawruss, if we wouldn't leave off fighting Germany till it's agreed
that no fellers like Von Tirpitz, Von Buelow, Von Bethmann-Hollweg, and
all them other Vons can use German subjects and German property for
their own personal purposes, why it's a hundred-to-one proposition that
we ain't going to leave off fighting the railroads till it's agreed that
them Von Tirpitzes, Von Buelows, and Von Hindenbergs of the American
railroads couldn't use the transportation business of this country for
stock-gambling purpose as though the railroads was gold and silver
mining prospects somewhere out in Nevada and didn't have a thing to do
with the food and coal supply of the nation."
"Wait a moment," Morris said, "and I'll ask Jake, the shipping-clerk, to
bring you in a button-box. We 'ain't got no soap-boxes."
"That ain't no soap-box stuff, Mawruss," Abe retorted. "If the
government should do the same thing to the meat-packers as they did to
the railroads, Mawruss, the arguments of them soap-box orators wouldn't
have a soap-box to stand on."
"Well, if the government thinks it is necessary in order to carry on the
war, Abe," Morris said, "it will grab the meat business like it has
taken over the railroads, but we've got enough to do to supply our
soldiers with ammunition without we would spend any time stopping the
ammunition of them soap-box fellers."
"Of course I may be wrong, Mawruss," Abe admitted, "but the way I look
at it, the war ain't an excuse for not cleaning up at home. On the
contrary, Mawruss, I think it is an opportunity for cleaning up, and
when I see in the papers where people writes to the editors that the
prohibitionists, the women suffragists, and the union laborers should
ought to be ashamed of themselves for putting up arguments when the
country is so busy over the war, I couldn't help thinking that there
must be people over in Germany which is writing to the _Tageszeitung_
and the _Freie Presse_ that the German Social Democrats and Liberals
should ought to be ashamed of themselves for putting up arguments about
the Kaiser giving them popular government when Germany is so busy over
the war. In other words, it's a stand-off, Mawruss, with the exception
that the Kaiser 'ain't made no speeches so far that Germany would never
make peace with America till the millions of American women which 'ain't
got the vote has some say as to how the war should be carried on and
what the terms of peace should be."
"Do you mean to say that women not having the vote puts our government
in the same class with Germany?" Morris demanded.
"I mean to say that the proposition of German men having the vote sounds
just so foolish to the Kaiser as the proposition of American women
having the vote does to this here Eli U. Root," Abe retorted, "and while
there is only one Kaiser in Germany, Mawruss, we've got an awful lot of
Roots in America, so until Congress gives women the vote, Mawruss, the
Kaiser will continue to have an elegant come-back at President Wilson
for that proclamation of his."
"Well, I'll tell you, Abe," Morris said, "I read this here proclamation
of Mr. Wilson's when it was published in the papers, and while I admit
that it didn't leave so big an impression on me as if it would of been a
murder or a divorce case, y'understand, yet as I recollect it, Abe,
there was enough room in it, so that if the German terms of peace was
sufficiently liberal, y'understand, the German popular government
needn't got to be so awful popular but what it could get by, understand
me."
"That's my idee, too," Abe declared, "and while I ain't so keen like
this here Lord Handsdown or Landsdown, or whatever the feller's name is,
that we should jump right in and ask the Kaiser if that's the best he
could do and how long would he give us to think it over, y'understand,
yet you've got to remember that we've all had experiences with fellers
like Harris Immerglick, Mawruss, and if the Allies would go at this
thing in a business-like way, y'understand, it might be a case of going
ahead with our business, which is war, and at the same time keeping an
eye on the brokers in the transaction."
"I don't want to wake you up when you've got such pleasant dreams, Abe,"
Morris interrupted, "but the Allies is going to need all the eyes
they've got during the next year or so, and a few binoculars and
periscopes wouldn't go so bad, neither."
"All right," Abe said, "then don't keep an eye on the brokers, but just
the same we could afford to let the matter rest, because you know what
brokers are, Mawruss: when it comes to putting through a swap, the
principals could be a couple of hard-boiled eggs that would sooner make
a present of their properties to the first-mortgagees than accept the
original terms offered, y'understand, but the brokers never give up
hope."
"What are you talking about--brokers?" Morris exclaimed. "There ain't no
brokers in a peace transaction."
"Ain't there?" Abe retorted. "Well, if this here Czernin ain't the
broker representing Austria and Germany, what is he? I can see the
feller right now, the way he walks into Trotzky & Lenine's office with
one of them real-estater smiles that looks as genwine as a twenty-dollar
fur-lined overcoat.
"'_Wie gehts_, Mr. Trotzky!' he says, like it's some one he used to
every afternoon drink coffee together ten years ago and has been
wondering ever since what's become of him that he 'ain't seen him so
long. Only in this case it happens to be Lenine he's talking to.
"'Mr. Trotzky ain't in. This is his partner, Mr. Lenine,' Lenine says.
"'Not Barnett Lenine used to was November & Lenine in the neckwear
business?' Czernin says.
"'No,' Lenine says, and although Czernin tries to look like he expected
as much, it kind of takes the zip out of him, anyhow.
"'Let's see,' he says, 'this must be Chatskel Lenine, married a daughter
of old man Josephthal and has got a sister living in Toledo, Ohio, by
the name Rifkin. The husband runs a clothing-store corner of Tenth and
Main, ain't it?'
"This time he's got him cornered, and Lenine has to admit it, so Czernin
shakes hands with him and gives him the I.O.M.A. grip, with just a
suggestion of the Knights of Phthias and Free Sons of Courland.
"'My name is Czernin--Sig Czernin,' he says. 'I see you don't remember
me. I met you at the house of a party by the name Linkheimer or Linkman,
I forget which, but the brother, Harris Linkheimer--I remember now, it
_was_ Linkheimer--went to the Saint Louis Exposition and was never heard
of afterward.'
"'My _tzuris_!' Lenine says, but this don't feaze Czernin.
"'You see,' he says, 'I never forget a face.'
"'And you 'ain't got such a bad memory for names, neither,' Lenine tells
him.
"'That ain't neither here nor there,' Czernin says, 'because if your
name would be O'Brien or something Swedish, even, I got here a
proposition, Mr. Lenine, which it's a pleasure to me that I got the
opportunity of offering it to you, and even if I do say so myself,
y'understand, such a gilt-edged proposition like this here ain't in the
market every day.'
"And that's the way Czernin sprung them peace propositions on Lenine &
Trotzky, and it don't make no difference that in this particular
instance it's practically a case of Lenine & Trotzky accepting whatever
proposition the Kaiser wants to put to them, y'understand, when it comes
to dickering with the Allies which can afford to act so independent to
the Kaiser that if Czernin is lucky he won't get thrown down-stairs more
than a couple of times, y'understand. He will come right back with the
names and family histories of a few more common acquaintances and a
couple of more concessions on the part of Germany, time after time,
until it'll begin to look like peace is in sight."
"I wish you was right, Abe," Morris said, "but I think you will find
that this here peace contract will be in charge of the diplomats and not
the real-estaters."
"Well, what's the difference?" Abe asked.
"Probably there ain't any," Morris admitted, "because their methods is
practically the same, which when countries goes to war on account of
treaties they claim the other country broke, y'understand, it's usually
just so much the fault of the diplomats which got 'em to sign the
treaties originally, as when business men get into a lawsuit over a
real-estate contract, it is the fault of the real-estate brokers in the
transaction. So therefore, Abe, unless we want to make a peace treaty
with Germany which would sooner or later end up in another war,
y'understand, the best thing for America to do is to depend for peace
not on brokers _oder_ diplomats, but on airyoplanes and guns with the
right kind of soldiers to work 'em. Furthermore, after we've got the
Germans back of the Rhine will be plenty of time to talk about entering
into peace contracts with the Kaiser, because then there will be nothing
left for the _Rosher_ to dicker about, and all we will have to do in the
way of diplomacy will be to say, 'Sign here,' and he'll sign there."
XVI
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON KEEPING IT DARK
"I got a circular letter from this here Garfield where he says we should
keep the temperature of our rooms down to sixty-eight degrees," Abe
Potash remarked during the recent below-zero spell in New York.
"What do you mean--down to sixty-eight degrees?" Morris Perlmutter said.
"If a feller which lives in a New York City apartment-house nowadays
could get the temperature of his rooms as high as down to forty-eight
degrees, y'understand, it's only because some of the tenants 'ain't come
across with the janitor's present yet and he still has hopes. Yes, Abe,
a circular like that might do some good in Pasadena _oder_ Pallum Beach,
y'understand, but it's wasted here in New York."
"There's bound to be a whole lot of waste in them don't-waste-nothing
circulars," Abe commented, "because plenty of people is getting letters
from the Food Conservation Commission to go slow on sugar which 'ain't
risked taking even a two-grain saccharin tablet in years already, and
the chances is that there has been tons and tons of circulars sent out
to other people which on account of their livers _oder_ religions
wouldn't on any account eat the articles of food which the circulars
begs them on no account to eat, y'understand."
"And next year them circulars will be still less necessary because
enough people is going to get rheumatism from living in cold rooms to
cut down the consumption of red meats over fifty per cent.," Morris
observed.
"Well, something has got to be done to make people go slow on using up
coal, Mawruss," Abe said, "which the way it is now, Mawruss, twice as
much coal is burned in one night to manufacture electricity for a sky
sign saying that 'Toasted Sawdust Is the Perfect Breakfast Food' on
account it is made only from the best grades of Tennessee yellow pine,
y'understand, as would run an airyoplane-factory for a week, understand
me, and children is fooling away their time in the streets because if
coal is used to heat the school buildings, y'understand, there wouldn't
be enough left for the really important things like lighting up the
fronts of vaudeville theayters with the names of actors or telling lies
about the mileage of automobile tires by means of a couple of million
electric lights every night from sunset to sunrise, understand me."
"Still there's a good deal to be said on the other side, Abe," Morris
retorted, "which if the new coal regulations is going to make an end of
the sky signs, it will cut off practically all the reading that most
New-Yorkers do outside of the newspapers, y'understand. Then again
there's a whole lot of people aside from stockholders in
electric-lighting companies which used to make a good living out of them
sky signs. For instance, what's going to become of the fellers that
manufactured them and the firm of certified public accountants _nebich_
which lost the job of adding up the figures on the meters, because while
any _Schlemiel_ with a good imagination would be trusted to read the
ordinary meter, Abe, the job of figuring the damages on a sky sign which
is eating up a couple of million kilowatt-years every twenty minutes is
something else again."
"And yet, Mawruss, while I 'ain't got such a soft heart that I could
even have sympathy for an electric-lighting company, understand me,
still I am sorry to see them sky signs go," Abe said, "because lots of
fellers from the small towns, members of rotary clubs and the like, used
to get a great deal of pleasure from seeing a kitten made out of three
hundred thousand electric bulbs playing with a spool of silk made out of
five hundred and fifty thousand bulbs, and there was something very
fascinating about watching that automobile tire which used to light up
and go out every once in a while somewheres around the upper end of
Times Square."
"Sure, I know," Morris said. "But if you was spending your good money
for such an advertised tire, Abe, it wouldn't be very fascinating to
watch it blow out every once in a while on account the manufacturer had
to skimp the rubber in order to pay the electric-light bills, Abe, and
if any of them members of rotary clubs is in the dry-goods business and
has to pay fancy prices for spool silk, Abe, they are _oser_ going to
thank the salesmen for the good time they put in while in New York
rubbering at his firm's sky sign, because you know as well as I do, Abe,
when it comes right down to it, nothing costs a customer so much as free
entertainment."
"Of course, Mawruss," Abe said, "the idee of them electric sky signs is
not to entertain, but to advertise, and as an advertising man told me
the other day, Mawruss, the advertised article is just as low in price
as the same article would be if unadvertised, the reason being that the
advertised article's output is greater and that he wanted me to
advertise in the _Daily Cloak and Suit Record_."
"Well, certainly, if the output is greater the cost of production is or
should ought to be less," Morris observed, "so I think the feller was
right at that, Abe."
"That's what I told him," Abe continued, "but I also said that if I
would put for fifty cents a day an advertisement in the paper,
y'understand, my partner would never let me hear the end of it."
"Is _that_ so!" Morris exclaimed. "Since when did I kick that we
shouldn't do no advertising?"
"Never mind," Abe retorted. "I heard you speak often about advertising
the same like you done just now about sky signs, which it is already a
back-number idee that advertising raised the price of goods to the
customer and--"
"Listen!" Morris interrupted. "If I would got it such a back-number
idees like you, Abe, I would put myself into a home for chronic
Freemasons or something, which I always was in favor of advertising,
except that I believe there is advertising and _advertising_, Abe, and
when an advertisement only makes you think of what it costs, instead of
what it advertises, like sky signs, y'understand, to me it ain't an
advertisement at all. It's just a warning."
"Did I say it wasn't?" Abe asked. "The way you talk, Mawruss, you would
think I was in favor of electric signs, whereas I believe that in times
like these a very little publicity goes an awful long ways, Mawruss,
which if them Congressmen down in Washington was requested by the Coal
Commission to keep it a trifle dark and not use up so much candle-power
in advertising the mistakes that has been made by some fellers now
working for the government which 'ain't had as much experience in
covering up their tracks as, we would say, for example, a Congressman,
Mawruss, that wouldn't do no harm, neither."
"It ain't a question of covering tracks, Abe," Morris declared, "because
them business men which is now working for the government are perfectly
honest, although they do make mistakes in their jobs and get rattled
easy on the witness-stand, which if such fellers _was_ dishonest, Abe,
even a Congressman would know enough not to advertise it."
"As a matter of fact, Mawruss," Abe declared, "them Congressmen ain't
calculating to advertise anybody or anything but themselves. Yes,
Mawruss, the way some United States Senators acts you would think they
was trying to get a national reputation as first-class, cracker-jack,
A-number-one police-court lawyers, and the expert manner in which they
can confuse and worry a high-grade Diston who is sacrificing his time
and money to help out the government and make him appear a crook,
y'understand, must be a source of great satisfaction to the folks back
home--in Germany.
"And it certainly ain't helping to win the war any, Mawruss, which most
people would get the idee from reading the accounts of it in the
newspapers that Mr. Hoover was tried by the United States Senate and
found guilty of boosting the price of sugar in the first degree."
"Well, in that case, Abe," Morris suggested, "even if we are a little
short of fuel it would of been better for the sugar situation, and maybe
also the wool uniforms also, if, instead of getting publicity through
investigations, y'understand, the United States Senate would fix up an
electric sign for the front of the Capitol at Washington and make
Senator Reed the top-liner in big letters like Eva Tanguay or Mr. Louis
Mann, because here in America we've got incandescent bulbs to burn,
Abe, but we have only one Hoover, and we should ought to take care of
him."
"Understand me, Mawruss," Abe declared, emphatically, "it ain't that I
object to a certain amount of light being thrown on the mistakes that is
made in running the war, if it wasn't that they keep everything so dark
about the progress that is also made--the submarines we are sinking, the
number of soldiers we've got it in France, and what them boys is doing
over there, and while I know there's good reasons for it, maybe it's
like this here Broadway proposition--it pays to keep it dark, but it
might pay better to keep it light, which I understand that all the
lighting company saves in coal by cutting out the sky signs is less than
thirty tons a night."
"Thirty tons a night would warm a whole lot of people, Abe," Morris
said.
"Sure, I know," Abe agreed. "But even at ten dollars a ton, Mawruss, it
would be only a saving of three hundred dollars, which I bet yer some
restaurants on Broadway has lost that much money apiece since the
lighting orders went into effect."
"That may be," Morris admitted, "but what the Coal Commission is trying
to save ain't money, Abe. It's coal. And that is one of the points about
this war that people 'ain't exactly realized yet. Money ain't what it
once used to was before this war, Abe. You can still make it, lose it,
spend it, and save it, but you couldn't sweeten your coffee with it or
heat your house with it till there's sugar and coal enough to go
around. Also it's only a question of time when money won't get you to
Pallum Beach in the winter or Maine in the summer unless the government
official in charge of the railroads thinks it is necessary, and also if
this war only goes on long enough and wool gets any scarcer, Abe, money
won't buy you a new pair of pants even until you can put up a good
enough argument with it to convince a government pants inspector that
it's a case of either buying a new pair of pants or a frock-coat to make
the old ones decent, understand me."
"But the papers has said right straight along that money would win this
war, Mawruss," Abe said.
"Yes, and it could lose it, too, according to the way it is spent,"
Morris continued, "and particularly right now when money can still buy
things which the government needs for the soldiers, y'understand, money
is a dangerous article in the hands of some people who think that the
feller which don't feel the high price of sugar is more privileged to
eat it than the feller which could barely afford it."
"Even so," Abe remarked, "it seems to me that not spending money must be
an easy way to be patriotic."
"And some fellers is just natural-born patriots that way," Morris added,
"and if they ain't, y'understand, the war is going to make them. It's
going to give the rich man the same chance to be a good sitson as the
poor man, and it's made a fine start by taking the lights off of
Broadway so that you couldn't tell it from a respectable street, like
Lexington Avenue."
"Couldn't a street be lighted up and still be respectable?" Abe asked.
"Yes, and a rich man could spend his money foolishly and also be
respectable," Morris agreed, "but not in war-times."
XVII
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON THE PEACE PROGRAM, INCLUDING THE ADDED EXTRA
FEATURE AND THE SUPPER TURN
"It seems that this here Luxberg, the German representative in Argentine
which sent them _spurlos versenkt_ letters, has been crazy for years,
Mawruss," Abe Potash said, one morning in January.
"Yes?" Morris Perlmutter said. "And when did they find _that_ out, Abe?"
"It's an old story, Mawruss," Abe replied. "Everybody knew it in Berlin,
only they never happened to think of it until we discovered those
letters in the private mail of the Swedish minister."
"And what do they lay the Swedish minister's behavior to, Abe?" Morris
inquired. "Stomach trouble?"
"_That_ they didn't say," Abe continued. "But I guess they figure that
Sweden should think up her own alibis."
"Well, it's a hopeful sign when the Germans realize that them Luxberg
letters sound like the idees of a crazy man, Abe," Morris said,
"although compared to Zimmermann's break about handing Mexico a couple
of our Southern states if she went to war with us, y'understand,
Luxberg's letters ain't so _meshuggah_, neither. So it seems to me, Abe,
that Germany would be doing well to say that Luxberg was drunk when he
wrote them letters, because later when it comes to explaining the
hundreds of rotten acts that Germans has done in this war, Abe, Germany
is going to have to think up a lot of excuses, and she may as well keep
the insanity defense for somebody who would really need it, like the
Kaiser."
"Don't worry about the Kaiser, Mawruss," Abe said. "For years already
that feller has been getting up such strong evidence for an insanity
defense, in the way of speeches to soldiers, y'understand, that he could
feel absolutely safe in not only doing what he _has_ been doing, but
also what Doctor Waite and Harry Thaw did, too, because all that the
counsel for the defense would got to do is to read the Kaiser's remarks
at Koenigsburg, for instance, and five minutes after the jury had
returned a verdict without leaving their seats, y'understand, the Kaiser
would be on his way up to the Matteawan Asylum for the Criminal Insane."
"There ain't much danger of that, anyway," Morris declared, "because I
read them fourteen propositions of Mr. Wilson's peace program, and so
far as any mention is made of punishing the guilty parties, Abe, you
might suppose the _Lusitania_ had never been sunk at all, which it may
be dumbness on my part, Abe, but the way it looks to me is that if
them fourteen propositions is fourteen net, and not ten, five, and two
and one-half off for cash, understand me, we have got to give Germany
such a big licking before she accepts them that we might just so well
give her a bigger one and add propositions from fifteen to twenty
inclusive, of which proposition sixteen would contain the same demands
as proposition fifteen, except that the person upon whom the sentence
was to be carried out would be the Crown Prince instead of the Kaiser,
but no flowers in either case, understand me, and if twenty propositions
wasn't enough to take care of all the responsible parties we could add
as many more propositions as necessary."
[Illustration: "And five minutes after the jury had returned a verdict
would be on his way up to the Matteawan Asylum for the Criminal
Insane."]
"What you are trying to fix up, Mawruss, ain't a program, but a
catalogue, Mawruss," Abe commented, "which if we want to get a
performance of Mr. Wilson's program, y'understand, and they're going to
have a lot of trouble putting that number over with a satisfactory sea,
on account they would either have to paint a sea, dig a sea, or have
some sort of a sea effect, because Poland is like Iowa, Mawruss--the
only time you could get a glimpse of the sea there is when they run off
one of them Annette Kellermann filums in a moving-picture theayter."
"That only goes to show what you know from Poland," Morris retorted,
"because in seventeen ninety-three a lot of the sea-front of Prussia
belonged to Poland."
"Yes, and in seventeen ninety-three a lot of the sea-front of Texas
belonged to Mexico," Abe continued. "So I guess Mr. Wilson must have
some sea in mind which ain't barred by the statute of limitations; but
that ain't here nor there, because getting a sea to Poland ain't the
biggest difficulty in carrying out the peace program. Take, for
instance, number six on the program, which is a proposed turn or act by
all the Allies, entitled, 'Welcoming Russia into the Society of Free
Nations.' The directions is that the performers should give Russland all
sorts of assistance of every kind that she may need, and also to behave
kindly to her, y'understand, and no sooner does Mr. Wilson come out with
this, so to speak sob scenario, understand me, than Trotzky & Lenine get
right back at him with a counter-proposition, so I guess that the
present number six will be taken out of the program, and another number
substituted for it, like this:
VI
Extra Added Feature, the Popular Russian Dramatic Stars
in Rôles that Suit Them to Perfection
LEON TROTZKY & LENINE BARNEY
In 'Nix on the Bonds,' a Playlet with a Punch.
Suspense, Surprise, Finish, and All the Fixings that Make a
Snappy Dramatic Entertainment in Tabloid Form."
"The mistake that Mr. Wilson made in number six on the program was that
he took it for granted when the Allies welcomed Russland into the
Society of Free Nations, Russia would behave like a new member should
ought to behave, instead of which Russia started right in by giving a
bad check for her initiation fees and first annual dues," Morris said.
"She has also got out of the United States railroad supplies, munitions,
and food, y'understand, and after giving bonds in payment, Abe, she
turns right round and refuses to make good on 'em and at the same time
practically says, 'What are you going to do about it?' and all this is
right on top of Mr. Wilson saying, 'The treatment accorded to Russia by
her sister nations,' y'understand, 'in the months to come,' _verstehst
du mich_, 'will be the acid test of their good-will,' understand me,
'and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.'"
"Well, I'll tell you," Abe remarked, "the English which I learned it at
night school, Mawruss, was more or less a popular-price line of
language, and when Mr. Wilson comes across every once in a while with
one of them exclusive models in the way of speeches, using principally
high-grade words in imported designs, understand me, I ain't no more
equipped to handle his stuff than a manufacturer of fly-papers is to
make flying-machines, _but_ as an ignorant business man, Mawruss, which
you would be the last person to admit that I ain't, Mawruss, it seems to
me that the acid test of our good-will is not going to be the way we
treat Russland, but the way Russia treats us; and, in fact, Mawruss,
Russia already poured a little acid on us long before this. But now when
she renigs on her bonds and practically gives us a whole bathful of
acid, Mawruss, for my part the treatment needn't go on for months to
come. I am satisfied with the acid test so far as it's gone _this_
month, Mawruss, because it don't make no difference what kind of acid
you use, Mawruss, a dead beat is a dead beat, understand me, and for a
dead beat nobody has got any sympathy--either intelligent or unselfish,
or unintelligent and selfish. Am I right or wrong, Mawruss?"
"I wouldn't worry my head over that if I was you, Abe," Morris said,
"because, as you said just now, Russland will attend to that number on
the program for herself. But what is troubling me is number one, which
provides that peace shall be made openly, and at the same time does away
with the possibility that some afternoon when you and me gets out of
here, after making up our minds that the war would last for ten years
yet, we would buy a Sporting Extra with Final Wall Street Complete, and
see the whole front page filled up mit the word PEACE in letters a foot
high, understand me, which it has always been in the back of my head
that the next time Colonel House would slip off to Europe no one would
know anything about till the treaty of peace comes back signed 'Woodrow
Wilson, per E.M.H.' But if the first number on the program goes through
as planned, Abe, and we have open covenants of peace openly arrived at,
y'understand, why, then, that will be something else again."
"You bet your life it would be something else again," Abe agreed,
fervently, "and what is more, Mawruss, not only would them covenants of
peace be open, but they would remain open for a long time, because
there's a whole lot of Senators, Congressmen, ex-Senators,
ex-Congressmen, and ex-Presidents which is laying for the opportunity
when peace is proposed, so that they can discuss the peace terms with
one another, openly, frankly, and in the public view, as Mr. Wilson
would say. Yes, Mawruss, there's several political orators in and out of
Congress which has got the word 'traitor' in their system and has got to
get it out again in reference to somebody--preferably a member of the
Cabinet--before peace negotiations is closed, and there is also such
indigestible words like 'pusillanimous,' which gives certain
ex-Presidents a feeling of fullness around the throat, and a couple of
Senators will need time to find out just what the other Senators wants
to do about them peace terms so that they can differ with them; and
looking at it one way and another, Mawruss, if Senator Wadsworth and
Senator McKellar thinks it is taking a long time to get ready for war,
they should wait till we get ready for peace, Mawruss, and if they don't
want to be afterward holding investigations as to why the throat
specialists wasn't mobilized on time, Mawruss, they should start right
in and mobilize the throat specialists, and also it wouldn't do any harm
to find out the available stock of cough-drops is in the hands of the
dealers, so that the lung power of the nation can go forth to holler
for peace equipped to the last menthol lozenge."
"In a way, that ain't no joke, neither, Abe," Morris said. "There is
people that Mr. Wilson didn't include in his war program which is going
to do their utmost to horn in on his peace program at the very best spot
in the bill. Take Mr. Roosevelt, and his friends will no doubt insist
that Mr. Wilson does a supper turn while Mr. Roosevelt goes on
somewheres around nine forty-five, because to-day yet they're talking
about making the Presidency of the United States a coalition affair, in
which Wilson, Roosevelt, and Taft would be equal partners with the same
drawing account and everything."
"And where does Mr. Wilson get off in this coalition business?" Abe
inquired. "Ain't two undivided one-thirds of the Presidency of the
United States for the unexpired portion of his term worth nothing to Mr.
Wilson, even at short rates, Mawruss?"
"Well," Morris replied, "I suppose Roosevelt and Taft would throw in
their experience as Presidents."
"Say!" Abe exclaimed. "There ain't a week goes by nowadays but what Mr.
Wilson gets more experience as President than Taft and Roosevelt did in
both their terms put together, so I don't think you need waste no more
breath about it, Mawruss. When the people last time elected a President
of the United States they chose Mr. Wilson as an individual, not as a
co-partner, and you could take it from me, Mawruss, it don't make no
difference whether it would be a peace program or a war program which
Mr. Wilson is fixing up, the name of the chief performer on it was
settled by the people a year ago last November!"
XVIII
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON THE NEW NATIONAL HOLIDAYS
"Yes, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, after Mr. Garfield had announced the
five-day shut-down, "one of the hardest things that a patriotic sitson
is called on to do nowadays is to have faith in those fellers which is
running the Fuel Commission, the Food Commission, and all the other
commissions that they ain't such big fools as you would think for."
"Well, you don't think this here Garfield would close up the country for
five days unless it would be necessary, ain't it?" Morris Perlmutter
retorted.
"Certainly I don't," Abe agreed. "But what is troubling me is that he
ain't said as yet for why it is necessary, Mawruss."
"Maybe he 'ain't figured it out yet," Morris suggested. "And even if he
didn't, Abe, it stands to reason that if the country don't burn no coal
for five days, at the end of five days they would still got the coal
they didn't burn, provided they had got any coal at all to start with."
"But as I understand it, Mawruss," Abe said, "not burning coal 'ain't
got nothing at all to do mit Mr. Garfield's order that we shouldn't burn
no coal. It seems from what ex-President Taft says and also from what a
professor by the name of Jinks _oder_ Jenks says, Mawruss, Mr. Garfield
done it because the people 'ain't begun to realize that we are at war,
Mawruss."
"You mean to say that _again_ the people don't begin to realize we are
at war?" Morris exclaimed. "It couldn't be possible, Abe. Here we have
had two Liberty Loan campaigns, a military draft which took in every
little cross-road village in the country, a war-tax bill that hits
everybody and everything, and people like Mr. Taft and Professor Jinks
saying day in and day out that the people 'ain't begun to realize we are
at war, y'understand, and yet you try to tell me that the people has
slipped right back into not beginning to realize we are at war, Abe."
"I don't try to tell you nothing," Abe said. "For my part I think it's
time that somebody put them wise, Mawruss."
"What do you mean--put them wise?" Morris demanded. "The people knows
that--"
"Who is saying anything about the people?" Abe interrupted. "I am
talking about Mr. Taft and this here Professor Jinks, Mawruss. Them
fellers has got ideas from spring and summer designs of nineteen
seventeen. What we are looking for from the big men of the country is
new ideas for the late summer of nineteen eighteen and fall and winter
seasons of nineteen eighteen, nineteen nineteen, and this here
people-'ain't-begun-to-realize talk was already a back-number line of
conversation in June, nineteen seventeen."
"But what them fellers is driving into, Abe," Morris observed, "is that
it's going to help the war along if the people of America should be made
to suffer along with the people of France and England. They figure that
it ain't going to do us Americans a bit of harm to know how them
Frenchers feel, _nebich_, with the Germans holding on to their
coal-supply, Abe."
"Well, we could get the same effect by going round in athaletic
underwear and no overcoats, Mawruss," Abe retorted, "so if that's what
Mr. Taft claims Mr. Garfield shut off the coal for, Mawruss, he is
beating around the wrong bushes."
"And he ain't the only one, neither, Abe," Morris said. "From the way
other people is talking, Abe, you would think that in order to get into
this war _right_, y'understand, we should ought to go to work and blow
up a few dozen American cathedrals, send up airyoplanes over New York,
and drop a couple gross bombs on the business section of the town,
poison the water-supply, cut off the milk for the babies, and do
everything else that them miserable Germans did to France and England,
not to say also Russia, y'understand. This will cause us to become so
sore, understand me, that everybody of fighting age will want to fight,
and the rest of us will be willing to work in the munition-factories and
spend all our time and money to end a war where American cathedrals is
being blown up, airyoplanes is bombing New York, and babies is suffering
for want of milk, Abe."
"You mean that Professor Jinks is willing to have us believe that Mr.
Garfield is shutting off the coal, not because it's necessary, but
because it's the equivalence of us bombing our own cities and making
ourselves feel sore?" Abe asked. "Mr. Garfield?"
"Ordinary people which ain't professors and ex-Presidents might figure
that way," Morris continued, "but it seems that the theory is we are
going to feel sore at Germany, Abe."
"Well," Abe commented, "I am perfectly willing to feel sore at Germany
for the things she has done in this war, Mawruss, and I am so sore at
Germany, anyway, that I am also willing to feel sore at her for the
things which she 'ain't done also, Mawruss, but so far as Mr. Garfield
is concerned, y'understand, I prefer to think that he's a hard-working
feller which could once in a while make a mistake, understand me, and
that if he cuts off the coal, it's on account he thinks it's necessary
to save the coal. Because if I thought the way Professor Jinks thinks,
Mawruss, and I should meet Mr. Garfield face to face somewheres,
understand me, the least they could send me up for would be using rotten
language tending to cause a breach of the peace, y'understand."
"Sure I know, Abe," Morris agreed. "But the chances is that Mr. Taft and
Professor Jinks may have a private idee that when Mr. Garfield shut
down on the coal he could of saved coal in some other way, and so in
order that he shouldn't get stumped for explanations afterward,
y'understand, they are taking this way of giving him what they think is
a good pointer in that line, understand me, because if you read the
papers this morning, Abe, there must be thousands of prominent sitsons
which claims to be patriotic, y'understand, and from what them fellers
said about Mr. Garfield, Abe, it was plain to me that the stuff they was
holding back from saying about him was pretty near giving them apoplexy,
y'understand."
"Well, when it comes to cussing out the Fuel Administrator, Mawruss,"
Abe said, "them prominent sitsons wouldn't have nothing on the
unprominent sitsons which is going to lose five days' pay now and one
day's pay a week for ten weeks later. Yes, Mawruss, what them poor
people is going to call Mr. Garfield during the five days they will lay
off is going to pretty near warm up their cold homes even if it ain't
going to provide food for their families, Mawruss. Furthermore, Mawruss,
five continuous days is going to give them an opportunity to do a lot
more real, hard thinking than they could do if they would have, we would
say, for example, only one hour a day lay-off every other day over a
period of a hundred days, Mawruss, and if at the end of them five days,
Mawruss, they are going to take as much interest in the problems of this
war as they are in the problem of how they are going to catch up with
what they owe for five days' food and rent, Mawruss, I miss my guess,
because Mr. Taft and Professor Jinks may think that them fellers is
going to spend their five days' lockout in looking up war maps and
sticking little colored flags in the positions now held by the French
and German troops or in reading up the life of General Pershing and _My
Three Years in Germany_ by Ambassador Gerard, Mawruss, _but I don't_."
"And yet, Abe, admitting all you say is true, y'understand, what reason
do you got for supposing that before Mr. Garfield shut off the coal he
didn't also consider all these things, when they even occurred to a
feller like you?" Morris asked.
"What do you mean--a feller like me?" Abe demanded. "Thousands of people
the country over is saying the selfsame thing."
"I know they are," Morris said. "And why you and they should think that
what occurred to thousands of people the country over shouldn't also
occur to Mr. Garfield, Abe, is beyond me. Now I don't know no more about
this coal proposition than you do, Abe, but I am willing to take a
chance that when a big man like Garfield, backed up by President Wilson,
does a crazy thing like this, y'understand, he must have had an awful
good reason for it, no matter how good the reasons were against it."
"Did I say he didn't?" Abe said.
"Then why knock the feller?" Morris asked.
"Say, looky here, Mawruss," Abe retorted, "are we living in Germany or
America? An idee! On twenty-four hours' notice the government shuts off
the coal-supply of the country and you expect that all that the people
would say is, '_Omane! Solo!_' ('Amen! Selah!')."
"Well, that's the way a government does business--on short notice, Abe,
which if Mr. Garfield would be one of them take-it-on-the-other-hand
fellers who considers the matter from every angle before he decides,
y'understand, while he would have still got a couple of thousand angles
to consider the matter from, Abe, the country would have been tied up
into such knots over the coal-and-freight situation that it would have
required not five days, but five hundred days, to untangle it,
y'understand," Morris said.
"But it seems to me, Mawruss, that Mr. Garfield could have spent, say,
twenty-five minutes longer on that order of his, so that a manufacturer
could tell from reading it over a few dozen times, with the assistance
of a first-class, cracker-jack, A-number-one criminal lawyer, just what
it was he couldn't do without making himself liable to a fine of five
thousand dollars and one year imprisonment, y'understand," Abe said. "In
fact, Mawruss, if the average manufacturer is going to try to understand
that order before he does anything about it he'll have to shut down for
five days while he is working to puzzle it out, and then he will keep
his place closed down for five days longer while he is resting up from
brain fag, understand me. Take, for instance, a department store which
sells liquors and groceries, has a doctor in charge of the rest-room,
and runs a public lunch-room in the basement, y'understand, and if the
proprietor decided to make a test case of it by hiring John B.
Stanchfield and keeping open on Monday, Mawruss, once Mr. Garfield got
on the witness-stand and started to explain just what the exemptions
exempted, y'understand, it would be years and years before he ever had a
chance to see the old college again."
"But Mr. Garfield wrote that order to save coal, not arguments, Abe,"
Morris said. "He expected that the business men of the country would do
the sensible thing next Monday by staying home and playing pinochle or
poker, and those fellers which don't know enough about cards to even
_kibbitze_ the game, y'understand, could go into another room and start
in on their income-tax blanks, which, when it comes to figuring out what
is capital and what is income in the excess-profits returns, Abe, there
is many a business man which would not only put in all his Mondays
between now and the first of March trying to straighten it out,
y'understand, but would also be asking for further extensions of time to
finish it up along about the fifteenth of April."
"And that's the way it goes, Mawruss," Abe commented, with a sigh. "It
use to was in the old days that all a feller had to know to go into the
clothing business was clothing, y'understand, but nowadays a
manufacturer of clothing or any other merchandise must also got to be a
certified public accountant, an expert of high-grade words from the
English language, a liar, a detective, and should also be able to take
the stand on his own behalf in such a level-head way that the assistant
district attorney couldn't get him rattled on cross-examination."
"Well, my advice to these test-case fellers, Abe," Morris concluded, "is
this: Be patriotic now. Don't wait till you're indicted."
XIX
MR. WILSON: THAT'S ALL
Potash and Perlmutter discuss the Chamberlain suggestion.
"You know how it is yourself, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, one morning in
January. "If you would see somebody nailing up something your first idee
is to say: 'Here, give me that hammer. Is that a way to nail up a
packing-case?' And then, if you went to work and showed him how, the
chances is that before you get through the packing-case would look like
it had been nailed up with a charge of shrapnel, and for six months
people would be asking you what's the matter with your sore thumb.
Painting is the same way. There's mighty few people which could see
anybody else doing a home job of enameling without they would want to
grab ahold of the brush and get themselves covered with enamel from head
to foot, y'understand. So can you imagine the way Mr. Roosevelt is
feeling about this war, Mawruss?"
"Well, you've got to hand it to Mr. Roosevelt," Morris Perlmutter said.
"He has had some small experience in that line, although, at that,
you've got to take his statements of what ain't being done to run the
war right with a grain of salt, Abe, whereas with Senator Chamberlain,
y'understand, when he says that the President ain't running the war
right according to the idees of a man which used to was a practising
lawyer and politician out in the state of Oregon, y'understand, and,
therefore, Abe, his speeches should ought to be barred by the Food
Conservation Commission as being contrary to the Save the Salt
movement."
"But even Mr. Roosevelt, which he may or may not know anything about
running a modern army, as the case may be and probably ain't, Mawruss,
because lots of changes has come about in the running of armies since
Mr. Roosevelt went out of the business, Mawruss," Abe said, "but as I
was saying, Mawruss, even Mr. Roosevelt, as big a patriot as _he_ is,
y'understand, ain't above spoiling a perfectly good job half done by Mr.
Wilson, because he just couldn't resist saying: 'Here, give me hold of
them soldiers. Is that a way to run an army?"
"And besides, Abe," Morris said, "there's a great many people in this
country, including Mr. Roosevelt, which believes that the only man which
has got any license to say how the army should ought to be run is Mr.
Roosevelt, y'understand, and ever since we got into this war, Abe, them
fellers has been hanging around looking at Mr. Wilson like a crowd
watching a feller gilding the ball on the top of the Metropolitan
Tower, not wishing the feller any harm, y'understand, and hoping that he
will either get away with it unhurt or make the drop while they are
still standing there."
"They ain't so patient like all that, Mawruss," Abe said. "Them fellers
has got so tired waiting for Mr. Wilson to fall down on his job that
they now want to drag him down or, anyhow, trip him up."
"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that," Morris declared, "but it
looks to me that when Mr. Roosevelt read the results of the Senate
investigations, y'understand, he wasn't as much shocked and surprised as
he would have liked to have been, although to hear Senator Chamberlain
talk you might think that what them investigations showed was bad enough
to satisfy not only Mr. Roosevelt, but the Kaiser and his friends, also,
when, as a matter of fact, the worst that any good American can say
about Mr. Wilson as a result of them investigations is that instead of
hiring angels who performed miracles, y'understand, he hired human
beings who made mistakes."
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But the worst thing of all that Mr. Wilson
did was to say that Senator Chamberlain was talking wild when he made a
speech about how every department of the government had practically gone
to pieces, which Senator Chamberlain says that no matter how wild he may
have talked before, nobody ever accused him that he talked wild in all
the twenty-four years he has held public office."
"Well, that only goes to show how wild some people talk, Abe," Morris
said, "because when a man has held office for twenty-four years, talking
wild is the very least people accuse him of."
"But as a matter of fact, Mawruss, a feller from Oregon was telling me
that Senator Chamberlain has held public office ever since eighteen
eighty," Abe said. "He has run for everything from Assemblyman to
Governor, and if he ain't able to remember by fourteen years how long he
has held public office, Mawruss, how could he blame Mr. Wilson for
accusing him that he is talking wild, in especially as he now admits
that when he said all the departments of the government had broken down,
y'understand, what he really meant was that the War Department had
broken down. His word should not be questioned, or, in effect, that when
a Senator presents a statement, the terms he is entitled to are
seventy-five per cent. discount for facts."
"Some of 'em needs a hundred per cent.," Morris said, "but that ain't
here nor there, Abe. This war is bigger than Mr. Chamberlain's
reputation, even as big as Mr. Chamberlain thinks it is, and it don't
make no difference to us how many speeches Mr. Roosevelt makes or what
Senator Stone calls him or he calls Senator Stone. Furthermore, Senator
Penrose, Senator McKellar, and this here Hitchcock can also volunteer to
police the game, Abe, but when it comes right _to_ it, y'understand,
every one of them fellers is just a _Kibbitzer_, the same like these
nuisances that sit around a Second Avenue coffee-house and give free
advice to the pinochle-players--all they can see is the cards which has
been played, and as for the cards which is still remaining in Mr.
Wilson's hand, they don't know no more about it than you or I do."
"And the only kick they've got, after all," Abe said, "is that President
Wilson won't expose his hand, which if he did, Mawruss, he might just so
well throw the game to Germany and be done with it."
"So you see, Abe, them fellers, including Mr. Roosevelt, is willing to
let no personal modesty stand in the way of a plain patriotic duty, at
least so far as thirty-three and a third per cent. of his answer was
concerned. But at that, it wouldn't do him no good, Abe, because, owing
to what Mr. Roosevelt maintains is an oversight at the time the
Constitution of the United States was fixed up 'way back in the year
seventeen seventy-six, y'understand, the President of the United States
was appointed the Commander-in-chief to run the United States army and
navy, and also the President was otherwise mentioned several other
times, but you could read the Constitution backward and forward, from
end to end, and the word ex-President ain't so much as hinted at,
y'understand."
"Evidencely they thought that an ex-President would be willing to stay
ex," Abe suggested.
"But Mr. Roosevelt ain't," Morris said. "All that he wanted from Mr.
Wilson was a little encouragement to take some small, insignificant part
in this war, Abe, and it would only have been a matter of a short time
when it would have required an expert to tell which was the President
and which was the ex, y'understand."
"I don't agree with you, Mawruss," Abe said. "Where Mr. Wilson has made
his big mistake is that he is conducting this war on the theory of the
old whisky brogan, 'Wilson! That's All.' If he would only of understood
that you couldn't run a restaurant, a garment business, or even a war
without stopping once in a while to jolly the knockers, Mawruss, all
this investigation stuff would never of happened. Why, if I would have
been Mr. Wilson and had a proposition like Mr. Roosevelt on my hands it
wouldn't make no difference how rushed I was, every afternoon him and me
would drink coffee together, and after I had made up my mind what I was
going to do I would put it up to him in such a way that he would think
the suggestion came from him, y'understand. Then I would find out what
it was that Senator Chamberlain preferred, _gefullte Rinderbrust_ or
_Tzimmas_, and whenever we had it for dinner, y'understand, I would have
Senator Chamberlain up to the house and after he had got so full of
_Tzimmas_ that he couldn't argue no more I would tell him what me and
Mr. Roosevelt had agreed upon, and it wouldn't make no difference if I
said to him, 'Am I right or wrong?' or 'Ain't that the sensible view to
take of it?' he would say, 'Sure!' in either case."
"You may be right, Abe," Morris agreed, "but if he was to begin that way
with Roosevelt and Chamberlain, the first thing you know, William
Randolph Hearst would be looking to be invited up for a
five-course-luncheon consultation, and the least Senator Wadsworth and
Senator McKellar would expect would be an occasional Welsh rabbit up at
the White House, which even if Mr. Wilson's conduct of the war didn't
suffer by it, his digestion might, and the end would be, Abe, that every
Senator who couldn't get the ear of the President with, anyhow, a Dutch
lunch, would pull an investigation on him as bad as anything that
Chamberlain ever started."
"It's too bad them fellers couldn't act the way Mr. Taft is behaving,"
Abe said. "There is an ex-President which is really and truly ex,
y'understand, and seemingly don't want to be nothing else, neither."
"Well, Mr. Taft has got a whole lot of sympathy for Mr. Wilson, Abe,"
Morris said. "He knows how it is himself, because when he was President,
y'understand, he also had experience with Mr. Roosevelt trying to police
his administration."
"There's only one remedy, so far as I could see, Morris," Abe said, "if
we're ever going to have Mr. Wilson make any progress with the war."
"You don't mean we should put through that law for the three brightest
men in the country to run it?" Morris inquired.
"No, sir," Abe replied. "Put through a law that after anybody has held
the office of ex-President for two administrations, Mawruss, he should
become a private sitson--and mind his own business."
XX
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THE GRAND-OPERA BUSINESS
"Where grand opera gets its big boost, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, the
morning after Madame Galli-Curci made her sensational first appearance
in New York, "is that practically everybody with a rating higher than J
to L, credit fair, hates to admit that it don't interest them at all."
"And even if it did interest them, Abe," Morris Perlmutter said, "they
would got to have at least that rating before they could afford it to
buy a decent seat."
"Most of them don't begrudge the money spent this way, Mawruss, because
it comes under the head of advertising and not amusement," Abe said.
"Next to driving a four-horse coach down Fifth Avenue in the afternoon
rush hour with a feller playing a New-Year's-eve horn on the back of the
roof, Mawruss, owning a box at the Metropolitan Opera House is the
highest-grade form of publicity which exists, and the consequence is
that other people which believes in that kind of advertising medium,
but couldn't afford to take so much space per week, sits in the cheaper
ten-and six-dollar seats. And that's how the Metropolitan Opera House
makes its money, Mawruss. It gets a thousand times better rates as any
of the big five-cent weeklies, and it don't have to worry about the
second-class-postage zones."
"But you don't mean to tell me that the people which stands up
down-stairs and buys seats in the gallery is also looking for
publicity?" Morris said.
"Them people is something else, again," Abe replied. "They are as
different from the rest of the audience as magazine-readers is from
magazine-advertisers. Take the box-holders in the Metropolitan Opera
House and they _oser_ give a nickel what happens to Caruso. He could get
burned in 'Trovatore,' stabbed in 'Pagliacci,' go to the devil in
'Faust,' and have his intended die on him in 'Bohème,' and just so long
as their names is spelled right on the programs it don't affect them
millionaires no more than if, instead of being the greatest tenor in the
world, he would be an Interstate Commerce Commissioner. On the other
hand, them top-gallery fellers treats him like a little god,
y'understand, which if Caruso hands them opera fans a high C, Mawruss,
it's the equivalence of Dun or Bradstreet giving one of them box-holders
an A-a."
"Maybe you're right, Abe," Morris said, "but how do you account for
people paying forty dollars for an orchestra seat at the Lexington
Opera House just to hear this singer Galli-Curci in one performance
only, which I admit I ain't no advertising expert, Abe, but it seems to
me that if anybody is going to get benefit from publicity like that he
might just so well circulate a picture of himself drinking champanyer
wine out of a lady's satin slipper and be done with it, for all the good
it is going to do him with the National Association of Credit Men."
"That is another angle of the grand-opera proposition, Mawruss," Abe
said. "Paying forty dollars for an orchestra seat to hear this lady with
the Lloyd-George name is the same like an operation for appendicitis to
some people, Mawruss. It not only makes them feel superior to their
friends which 'ain't had the experience, but it gives 'em a tropic of
conversation which is never going to be barred by the statue of
limitations, and for months to come such a feller is going to go round
saying, 'Well, I heard Galli-Curci the other night,' and it won't make
no difference if it's a pinochle game, a lodge funeral, or a real-estate
transaction, he's going to hold it up for from fifteen minutes to half
an hour while he talks about her upper register, her middle register,
and her lower register to a bunch of people who don't know whether a
coloratura soprano can travel on a sleeper south to Washington, D.C., or
has to use the Jim Crow cars."
"All right, if it's such a crime not to know what a coloratura soprano
is, Abe," Morris commented, "I'm guilty in the first degree. So go
ahead, Abe. I'm willing to take my punishment. Tell me, what _is_ a
coloratura soprano?"
"I suppose you think I don't know," Abe said.
"I don't think you don't know," Morris replied, "but I do think that the
only reason you _do_ know, Abe, is that you 'ain't looked it up long
enough since to have forgotten it."
"Is _that_ so!" Abe exclaimed. "Well, that's where you make a big
mistake. I am already an experienced hand at going on the opera. When I
was by Old Man Baum we had a customer by the name Harris Feinsilver,
which if you only get him started on how he heard Jenny Lind at what is
now the Aquarium in Battery Park somewheres around eighteen hundred and
fifty-two, y'understand, you could sell him every sticker in the place,
and him and me went often on the opera together. In fact I got so that I
didn't mind it at all, and that's how I become acquainted with the
different grades of singers which works by grand opera. Take, for
instance, sopranos, and they come in two classes. There is the soprano
which hollers murder police and they call her a dramatic soprano. And
then again there is the soprano which gargles. That is a coloratura
soprano."
"And people is paying forty dollars an orchestra seat to hear a woman
gargle?" Morris exclaimed.
"Of course I don't say she actually gargles, y'understand," Abe
explained, "anyhow not all the time, Mawruss. Once in a while she sings
a song which has got quite a tune in it pretty near up to the end, and
then she carries on something terrible anywheres from two to eight
minutes till the feller that runs the orchestra couldn't stand it no
longer and he gives them the signal they should drown her out."
[Illustration: "Take, for instance, sopranos, and they come in two
classes. There is the soprano which hollers murder police and they call
her a dramatic soprano. And then again there is the soprano which
gargles. That is a coloratura soprano."]
"I should think he would get to know when it is coming on her and drown
her out before she starts," Morris said.
"What do you mean--drown her out before she starts?" Abe continued.
"That's what she gets paid for--carrying on in such a manner, and them
people up in the top gallery goes crazy over it."
"Then why don't the feller which runs the orchestra let her keep it up?"
Morris asked.
"A question!" Abe said. "There is from forty to fifty men working in the
orchestra, and if the feller which runs it let them top-gallery people
have their way it would cost him a fortune for overtime for them fellers
that plays the fiddles alone."
"He should arrange a wage scale accordingly," Morris said, "because it
don't make no difference if it's the garment business or the grand-opera
business, Abe, the customer should ought to come first."
"_I_ always felt that I got _my_ money's worth, Mawruss," Abe said. "In
particular when it comes to one of them operas with a coloratura soprano
in it, y'understand, it seemed to me they could of cut down on the
working time without hurting the quality of the goods in the slightest.
There's always a good fifteen minutes wasted in such operas where a
feller in the orchestra plays a little something on the flute and the
coloratura soprano sings the same music on the stage, the idee being to
show that you couldn't tell the difference between the feller playing
the flute and the coloratura soprano except the feller playing the flute
has all his clothes on. Then, again, during the death-bed scene in the
last act they kill a whole lot of time also."
"Do you mean to say there's a death-bed scene in every one of them
operas?" Morris inquired.
"Practically," Abe replied. "There ain't many grand operas where both
the tenor and the soprano sticks it out alive till the end of the last
act, Mawruss. Tenors, in particular, is awful risks, Mawruss, which I
bet yer that eighty per cent. of the times I seen Caruso he either
passed away along about quarter past eleven after an awful hard spell of
singing, or give you the impression that he wasn't going to survive the
soprano more than a couple of days at the outside."
"And yet some people couldn't understand why everybody takes in the
Winter Garden or Ziegfeld's Follies," Morris commented.
"Of course I don't say that the audience suffers as much as if it was in
the English language, but even when a lady dies in French or Italian I
couldn't enjoy it, neither," Abe said.
"It seems to me, Abe, that a feller which goes often on grand opera is
lucky if he understands only English," Morris observed.
"That's what you would naturally think, Mawruss," Abe agreed, "and yet
there is people which is so anxious that they shouldn't miss none of
the tenor's last words that they actually go to work and buy for
twenty-five cents in the lobby a translation of the Italian operas,
which I got stung that way only once, because to follow from the English
translation what the singers is saying on the stage in Italian, Mawruss,
a feller could be a combination of a bloodhound and a mind-reader,
y'understand, and even then he would get twisted. For instance, Caruso
comes out with a couple hundred assorted tenors and bassos, and so far
as any human being could tell which don't understand Italian, Mawruss,
he begs them that they shouldn't go out on strike right in the middle of
the busy season, in particular when times is so hard and everything, and
from the way he puts his hand on his heart it looks like he is also
telling them that he is speaking to them as a friend, y'understand, and
to consider their wives and children, understand me. All the effect this
seems to have on them is that they yell, 'Down with the bosses!' and
they insist on a closed shop and that the terms of the protocol should
be lived up to. This gets Caruso crazy. He grabs his vest with both
hands and makes one last big appeal, y'understand, in which he tells
them that the delegates is stalling and that they are being made suckers
of, and that if it would be the last word he would ever speak, the
sensible thing is for them to go right back to work and leave it to
arbitration by a joint board consisting of the president of the
Manufacturers' Association, the chairman of the Garment Workers' Union,
and Jacob H. Schiff, y'understand, but do you think they would listen to
him? _Oser a Stück!_ They laugh in his face, and it don't make no
difference that he repeats it an octave higher accompanied by the
fiddles, and gives them one last chance, ending on a high C,
y'understand, they refuse to reconsider the matter, and when the curtain
goes down it looks like the strike was on for fair. However, when the
lights are turned on and you look it up in the English translation, what
do you find? The entire thing was a false alarm, Mawruss. It seems that
for twenty minutes Caruso has been singing over and over again, 'Come,
my friends, let us go,' and the whole time them people was acting like
they wanted to tear him to pieces, they have been saying, 'Yes, yes, let
us go' a thousand times over, and that's all there was _to_ it."
"Well, after all, with a grand opera, it ain't so much the words as the
music," Morris commented.
"Even the music they don't take it so particular about nowadays," Abe
continued. "In fact, the up-to-date thing in grand opera is not to have
any music, Mawruss, only samples, which some of them newest grand
operas, Mawruss, if it wouldn't be that the people on the stage is
making such a racket instead of the people in the audience you would
think that the orchestra was continuing to tune up during the entire
evening."
"Seemingly you didn't get a whole lot out of your visits to the opera,
Abe," Morris said.
"Oh yes, I did," Abe replied. "I got some wonderful idees for
dinner-dress designs and evening gowns. I 'ain't got no kick coming
against the opera, Mawruss. A garment-manufacturer can put in a very
profitable evening there any night if he can only stand the music."
XXI
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THE MAGAZINE IN WAR-TIMES
"I am just now reading an article by a feller which his name I couldn't
remember, but he used to was a baseball-writer for the New York _Moon,"_
Abe Potash said, as he laid down one of the several weeklies that have
the largest circulation in the United States.
"Is this a time to read about baseball?" Morris Perlmutter asked.
"What do you mean--baseball?" Abe demanded. "I said that the feller
_used_ to was a baseball-writer, but he is now a dramatic cricket."
"With me and dramatic crickets, Abe," Morris said, "it is always
showless Tuesday, which when it comes to knocking plays, Abe, believe
me, I don't need no assistance from nobody."
"Who said he is knocking plays, Mawruss?" Abe protested. "This here
dramatic cricket has just returned from the western front, and he says
that the way it looks now the war would last until--"
"Excuse me for interrupting you, Abe," Morris said, "but is there an
article in that paper by a soldier which used to was a certified public
accountant telling what is going to happen in the show business,
because, if so, it might interest me, y'understand, but what a dramatic
cricket who is also an ex-baseball-writer has got to say about the war,
Abe, would only make me mad, Abe, because there is people writing about
this war which really knows something about it, whereas as a general
proposition it don't make no difference who writes about the show
business, he usually don't know no more about it as, for example, a
baseball-writer."
"That's where you make a big mistake, Mawruss," Abe said. "I have read
articles about the war ever since the war started, and so far as I could
see, Mawruss, the fellers which wrote them might just so well of stayed
at home and got their dope from actors and baseball-players, because you
take, for instance, the fellers which has written about conditions in
Russland, Mawruss, and claims to have their information right on the
spot from the Russian working-men and soldiers, y'understand, and from
the way them fellers is all the time springing _Nitchyvo!_ and _Da!_ in
their articles, Mawruss, it's a hundred-to-one proposition that them two
words was all the Russian they was equipped with to carry on their
conversations with them moujiks."
"For that matter, the fellers which writes the articles about the French
end of the war don't seem to have had a nervous breakdown from studying
French, neither," Morris observed. "All the French which them fellers
puts into their writings is _O.U.I., m'sieu_, which don't look to me to
be any more efficient as _C.O.D., m'sieu_, when it comes to finding out
from a feller which speaks only French what he thinks about the war."
"Sure, I know," Abe agreed. "But a feller which writes such an article
ain't aiming to tell what the French people thinks about the war. He is
only writing what _he_ thinks French people is thinking about the war;
in fact, Mawruss, I've yet got to see the war article which contains as
much information about the war and the people fighting in the war as
about the feller which is writing the article, and the consequence is
that after you put in a whole evening reading such an article you find
that you've learned a lot of facts which might be of interest to the war
correspondent's family provided he has sent them home money regularly
every week and otherwise behaved to them in the past in such a manner
that they give a nickel whether he comes back dead or alive."
"Of course there is exceptions, Abe," Morris said. "There is them
articles which gives an account of the big battle where if the Allies
would of only gone on fighting for one hour longer, Abe, they would of
busted through the German line and the war would of been, so to speak,
over."
"What big battle was that, Mawruss?" Abe asked.
"Practically every big battle which a war correspondent has written an
article about since the war started," Morris replied, "and also while
the article don't exactly say so, y'understand, it leads you to believe
that if the feller which wrote it would of been running the battle, Abe,
things would of been very different. Then again there is them articles
which contains an account of just to prove how cool the English soldiers
is, Abe, the war correspondent which wrote it heard about a private
which had the hiccoughs during the heavy gunfire and asks some one to
scare him so that he can cure his hiccoughs, which to me it don't prove
so much how cool the English soldiers is as how some editors of
magazines seemingly never go to moving-picture vaudeville shows."
"Editors 'ain't got no time for such nonsense, Mawruss," Abe said. "They
got _enough_ to keep 'em busy busheling the jobs them war correspondents
turns in on them. Also, Mawruss, running a magazine in war-times ain't
such a cinch, neither. Take in the old times before the war, and if a
trunk railroad got wrecked, y'understand, people stayed interested long
enough so that even if the article about how the head of the guilty
banking concern worked his way up didn't appear till three months
afterward, it was still good, but you take it to-day, Mawruss, and the
chances is that a dozen articles about how Leon Trotzky used to was a
feller by the name Braustein which are now slated to be put into the May
edition of the magazine is going to be killed along with Trotzky
somewheres about the middle of next month. In fact, Mawruss, things
happen so thick and fast in this war that three months from now the only
thing that people is going to remember about Brest-Litovsk and
Galli-Curci will be the hyphens, and they won't be able to say offhand
whether or not it was Brest-Litovsk that had the soprano voice or the
peace conference."
"Well, if a magazine editor gets stumped for something to take the place
of an article which went sour on him, Abe," Morris suggested, "he could
always print a story about a beautiful lady spy, and usually does,
y'understand, which the way them amateur spy-hunters gets their dope
from reading magazines nowadays, Abe, if the magazines prints any more
of them beautiful lady-spy stories, y'understand, a beautiful face on a
lady is soon going to be as suspicious-looking as Heidelberg dueling
scars on a man, and it's bound to have quite an adverse effect on the
complexion-cream business."
"But you've got to hand it to these magazine editors, Mawruss," Abe
said. "They ain't afraid to print articles which coppers the
advertisements in the back pages. I am reading only this morning an
article which it says on page twenty-eight of the magazine that people
in Berlin is getting made _Geheimeraths_ and having eagles hung on them
by the Kaiser in all shades from red to Copenhagen blue for helping out
Germany in this war by doing things that ain't one, two, six compared
with what a feller in New York does when he buys a fifteen-hundred-dollar
automobile, y'understand, and yet on pages thirty, thirty-two,
thirty-eight, forty, and all the other pages from forty-one to fifty
inclusive, the same magazine prints advertisements of automobiles costing
from ten thousand dollars downwards, F.O.B. a freight-car in Detroit which
should ought to be filled with ship-building material F.O.B. Newark, N.J."
"That ain't the magazine's fault, Abe," Morris said. "If it wasn't kept
going by the money the advertisers pays for such advertisements it
wouldn't be able to print them articles telling people it is unpatriotic
to buy the automobiles which the advertisement says they should ought to
buy."
"Maybe you're right," Abe said, "but in that case when a magazine prints
an advertisement by the Charoses Motor Car Company that the new Charoses
inclosed models in designs and luxury of appointment surpass the finest
motor-carriages of this country and Europe, Mawruss, the editor should
add in small letters, 'But see page twenty-eight of this magazine,' and
then when the reader turns to page twenty-eight and finds out what the
article says about pleasure cars in war-times, y'understand, he would
think twice, ain't it?"
"Sure, I know," Morris said. "But there's always the danger that the
advertiser would also turn to page twenty-eight, so as a business
proposition for the magazine, it would be better if the editors stick
to them _nitchyvo_ articles, which if the advertisers turn to page
twenty-eight and see one of those articles the only thing that would
worry them, y'understand, is whether or not the reader is going to get
so disgusted that he would throw away the magazine before he reached the
advertising section."
"That ain't how __I look at it, Mawruss," Abe protested. "The way a
manufacturer has to figure costs so close nowadays, Mawruss, anything
like these here war articles which gives you an example of how to turn
out the finished product with the least amount of labor and material in
it, Mawruss, should ought to be of great interest to the business man.
For instance, you ask one of them live, up-to-date young fellers which
is now writing about the war with such a good imitation of being right
next to all the big diplomatic secrets that no one would ever suspect
how before the war he used to think when he saw the word Gavour in the
papers that it wasn't spelled right and cost a dollar fifty a portion
with hard-boiled egg and chopped onions on the side, y'understand, and
we'll say that such a feller is ordered by the magazine _nebich_ which
he works for to go and see Mr. Lloyd George and fill up pages twelve,
thirteen, and fourteen of the April, nineteen seventeen, edition with
what Lloyd George tells him about political conditions in Europe. Well,
the first time he goes to Mr. Lloyd George's house we will say he gets
kicked down the front stoop, on account when he says he represents the
_Interborough Magazine_, the butler thinks he comes from the
subscription department instead of the editorial department and didn't
pay no attention to the sign 'No Canvassers Allowed on These Premises.'
Do you suppose that feazes the young feller? _Oser a Stück!_ He goes
straight back home, paints the place where he landed with iodine,
y'understand, and writes enough to fill up the whole of page twelve
about how, unlike President Wilson, Mr. Lloyd George believes in
surrounding himself with strong men. The next time he calls there he
gets into the front parlor while he sends up his card, and before the
butler could return with the message that Mr. Lloyd George says he
wouldn't be back for some days, y'understand, Mrs. Lloyd George happens
in and wants to know who let him in there and he should go and wait
outside in the vestibule, which is good for half a page of how Mr. Lloyd
George's success in politics is due in great measure to the tact and
diplomacy of his charming wife.
"However, he has still got half of page thirteen and all of page
fourteen to fill up, and the next day he lays for Mr. Lloyd George at
the corner of the street and walks along beside him while he tells him
he represents the _Interborough Magazine_, which on account of the young
feller's American accent Mr. Lloyd George gets the idee at first that he
is being asked for the price of a night's lodging, y'understand. So he
tells the young feller that he should ought to be ashamed not to be
fighting for his country. This brings them to the front door, and when
Mr. Lloyd George at last finds out what the young feller really wants,
understand me, he says, 'I 'ain't got no time to talk to you now,' which
is practically everything the young feller needs to finish up his
article.
"He sits up all night and writes a full account, as nearly as he could
remember it, not having taken no notes at the time, of just what Mr.
Lloyd George said about the 'Youth of the country and universal military
service,' y'understand, and also how Mr. Lloyd George spoke at some
length of the Cabinet Minister's life in war-times and what little
opportunity it gave for meeting and conversing with friends, quoting Mr.
Lloyd George's very words, which were, as the young feller distinctly
recalled, 'Much as I would like to do so, I find myself quite unable to
speak even to you at any greater length,' and that's the way them
articles is written, Mawruss."
"I wonder how big the article would of been, supposing the young feller
had really and truly talked to Mr. Lloyd George for, say, three to five
minutes, Abe," Morris said.
"Then the article wouldn't have been an article no more, Mawruss," Abe
concluded. "It would of been a book of four hundred pages by the name:
_Lloyd George, The Cabinet Minister and the Man_. Price, two dollars
net."
XXII
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON SAVING DAYLIGHT, COAL, AND BREATH
"It ain't a bad scheme at that, Mawruss," Abe Potash said as he laid
down the paper which contained an editorial on daylight-saving. "The
idee is to get a law passed by the legislature setting the clock ahead
one hour in summer-time and get the advantage of the sun rising earlier
and setting later so that you don't have to use so much electric light
and gas, y'understand, because it's an old saying and a true one,
Mawruss, that the sunshine's free for everybody."
"Except the feller in the raincoat business," Morris Perlmutter added.
"Also, Mawruss," Abe continued, evading the interruption, "there's a
whole lot of people which 'ain't got enough will power to get up until
their folks knock at the door and say it is half past seven and are they
going to lay in bed all day, y'understand, which in reality when the
clocks are set ahead, Mawruss, it would be only half past six."
"But don't you suppose that lazy people read the newspapers the same
like anybody else, Abe?" Morris asked. "Them fellers would know just as
good as the people which is trying to wake them up that it is only half
past six under Section Two A of Chapter Five Fourteen of the Laws of
Nineteen Eighteen entitled 'An Act to Save Daylight in the State of New
York for Cities of the First, Second, and Third Classes,' y'understand,
and they will turn right over and go on sleeping until eight o'clock,
old style, which is two hours after the sun is scheduled to rise in the
almanacs published by Kidney Remedy companies from information furnished
by the United States government in Washington."
"Of course, Mawruss, I ain't such a big philosopher like you,
y'understand," Abe said, "but so far as I could see it ain't going to do
a bit of harm if you could get down-town one hour earlier in the
summer-time, even though it is going to take an act of the legislature
to do it."
"And it would also be a good thing if the legislature would pass an act
making a half an hour for lunch thirty minutes long instead of ninety
minutes, the way some people has got into the habit of figuring it,
Abe," Morris retorted, "but, anyhow, that ain't here nor there. This is
a republic, Abe, and if the people wants to kid themselves by putting
the clock ahead instead of getting up earlier, Mawruss, the government
could easy oblige them, y'understand, but not even the Kaiser and all
his generals could make a law that would change the sun from being right
straight overhead at twelve o'clock noon, Abe."
"Don't worry about the sun, Mawruss," Abe said. "The sun would stay on
the job, war-times or no war-times. Nobody is trying to make laws to kid
the sun into getting to work any earlier, Mawruss, but even with this
war as an argument, there's a whole lot of people which would be foolish
enough to claim pay for a time and a half for the first hour they worked
if you was to alter your office hours so that they had to come down-town
at seven instead of eight, although you did let them go home an hour
earlier in the afternoon."
"Maybe they would," Morris said, "but it seems to me, Abe, that a great
deal of time and money is wasted by legislatures making laws for
unreasonable people. For instance, if you change the clocks to save time
where are you going to stop? The next thing you know the legislature
would be trying to save coal by changing the thermometer in winter so
that the freezing-point from December first to March first would be
forty-five degrees Fahrenheit, and then when people living in houses
situated in cities of the first, second, and third classes kept their
houses up to a sixty-eight-degree new style, which was fifty-five
degrees old style, they would be feeling perfectly comfortable under the
statue in such case made and provided. Also legislatures would be making
laws for the period of the sugar shortage, changing the dials on spring
scales by bringing the pounds closer together, so that a pound of sugar
would contain sixteen ounces new style, being equivalent to twelve
ounces old style."
"It ain't a bad idea at that, Mawruss," Abe said.
"It wouldn't be if the same law provided for changing the size of
teaspoons and cups, Abe," Morris said, "and even then there is no way of
trusting a bowl of sugar to a sugar hog in the hopes that he wouldn't
help himself to four or five spoonfuls, new style, being the equivalent
of the three spoonfuls such a _Chozzer_ used to be put into his coffee
before the passage of the sugar-spoon law, supposing there was such a
law."
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But daylight is different from sugar. The
idea is that people should use more of it, Mawruss."
"I am willing," Morris said; "but so far as I could see, there ain't
going to be no more daylight after the law goes into effect than there
was before, and as for setting the clock one hour ahead, anybody could
do that for himself without the legislature passing a law about it."
"Say!" Abe protested. "Legislators don't get paid piece-work. They draw
an annual salary, Mawruss; so if they went to pass a law about it, let
them do a little something to earn their wages, Mawruss."
"Don't worry about them fellers not earning their wages, Abe," Morris
said. "Legislators is like actors, so long as they got their names in
the papers they don't care how hard they work, which if you was to allow
them fellers to regulate the hours of daylight by legislation, Abe, so
as to encourage lazy people to get up earlier, Abe, the first thing you
know, so as to encourage aviators to fly higher, they would be passing
an act suspending the laws of gravity for the period of the war."
"Well, I believe in that, too, Mawruss," Abe said. "Time enough we
should have laws of gravity when we need them, but what is the use going
round with a long face before we actually have something to pull a long
face over? Am I right or wrong, Mawruss?"
"Tell me, Abe," Morris asked, "what do you think the laws of gravity is,
anyhow? No Sunday baseball or something?"
"Well, ain't it?" Abe demanded.
"So that's your idee of the laws of gravity," Morris exclaimed.
"Say!" Abe retorted. "When I got a partner which is a combination of
John G. Stanchfield, Judge Brandeis, and the feller what wrote
_Hamafteach_, I should worry if I don't know every law in the law-books;
so go ahead, Mawruss, I'm listening. What _is_ the laws of gravity?"
"The laws of gravity is this," Morris explained. "If you would throw a
ball up in the air, why does it come down?"
"Because I couldn't perform miracles exactly," Abe replied, promptly.
"Neither could the legislature and also President Wilson," Morris said,
"because even though you would understand the laws of gravity, which you
don't, the baseball comes down according to the laws of gravity, and
even though Mr. Wilson does understand the laws of supply and demand,
y'understand, if he gets busy and sets a low price on coal, potatoes,
wheat, or anything else that people is working to produce for a living
and not for the exercise there is in it, y'understand, such people would
leave off producing it and go into some other line where the prices
ain't regulated."
"They would be suckers if they didn't," Abe commented.
"And the consequence would be that sooner or later, on account of such
low prices, y'understand, everybody would have the price, but nobody
would have the coal," Morris said, "and that is what is called the law
of supply and demand. It ain't a law which was passed by any
legislature, Abe. It's a law which made itself, like the law that if you
eat too much you'll get stomach trouble, and if you spend too much
you'll go broke, and you couldn't sidestep any of them self-made laws by
consulting those high-grade crooks which used to specialize in getting
million-dollar fees out of finding loopholes in the Interstate Commerce
law and the Anti-trust laws, because there's no loopholes in the law of
supply and demand."
"Might there ain't no loopholes in the law of supply and demand, maybe,"
Abe said; "but when Mr. Wilson gave the order to his Coal Administrator
to lower the price of coal it's my idee that he was trying to punch a
few loopholes in the law of The Public Be Damned, which while it was
never passed by no legislature, Mawruss, it ain't self-made, neither,
y'understand, but was made by the producer to do away with this here law
of gravity, because under the law of The Public Be Damned prices goes up
and they never come down, but they keep on going up and up according to
that other law, the law of the Sky's the Limit, which no doubt a big
philosopher like you, Mawruss, has heard about already."
"In the company of igneramuses, Abe," Morris said, "a feller could easy
get a reputation for being a big philosopher, and not know such an awful
lot at that."
"I give you right, Mawruss," Abe agreed, heartily; "but even admitting
that you don't know an awful lot, Mawruss, there's something in what you
say about this here law of supply and demand."
"Well, now that you indorse it, Abe, that makes it, anyhow, an
argument," Morris commented.
"But it looks to me like one of them arguments that is pulled by the
supply end to put something over on the demand end," Abe continued,
"because President Wilson knows just so much about the law of supply and
demand as the coal operators does, Mawruss, and when he fixed the price
of coal you could bet your life, Mawruss, he made it an even break for
the supply people as well as for the demand people."
"And what has all this got to do with setting the clock ahead one hour
in summer, Abe, which was what you was talking about in the first
place?" Morris demanded.
"Nothing, except that setting the clock ahead so as to save bills for
gas and electric light and limiting the price of coal so as the public
couldn't be gouged by the coal operators, so far as I could see, is two
dead open and shut propositions, Mawruss," Abe said, "which of course I
admit that I'm an ignorant man and don't know no more laws than a
police-court lawyer, y'understand, but at the same time, Mawruss, I must
got to say the way it looks to me it ain't the ignorant men which is
blocking the speed of this war. For instance, who is it when Mr. Hoover
wants to have millions of bushels wheat by using whole-wheat bread that
says whole-wheat bread irritates the lining from the elementry canal?
The ignorant man? _Oser!_ He don't know the elementry canal from the
Panama Canal, and if he did he couldn't tell you whether elementry
canals came lined with Skinner's satin or mohair or just plain unlined
with the seams felled. Then, again, who is it that when _any_ order is
made by the government which is meant to help along the war takes it
like a personal insult direct from Mr. Wilson? The ignorant man? No,
Mawruss, it's the feller which thinks that what's the use of having an
education if you couldn't seize every opportunity of putting up an
argument and using all the long words you've got in your system."
"All right, Abe," Morris said. "I'm converted. Rather as sit here and
waste the whole morning I'm content that you should pass a law saving
daylight if you want to."
[Illustration: "For instance, who is it that says whole-wheat bread
irritates the lining from the elementry canal? The ignorant man?
_Oser!_"]
"Don't do me no favors, Mawruss," Abe commented.
"And while you're about it, Abe," Morris concluded, "if you couldn't
save it otherwise, have the legislature pass another law that people
should save something else for the duration of the war which they
ordinarily couldn't live without."
"What's that?" Abe asked.
"Breath," Morris said.
XXIII
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS WHY IS A PLAY-GOER?
"Did you see on the front page of all the newspapers this morning where
Klaw & Erlanger has had another split with the Shuberts, Mawruss?" Abe
Potash asked, one morning in February.
"Say," Morris Perlmutter replied, "I didn't even know they had ever made
up since the time they split before, and, furthermore, Abe, I think that
even if the most important news a feller in the newspaper business could
get ahold of to print on his front page was an I.O.M.A. convention,
instead of the greatest war in history, y'understand, he would be giving
his readers a great big jolt compared with the thrill they get when they
read about the troubles people has got in the show business."
"Maybe _you_ think so, Mawruss," Abe said, "but Klaw & Erlanger and the
Shuberts don't think so, and when you consider that them two concerns
control all the theayters in the United States and spends millions of
dollars for advertising, Mawruss, a feller in the newspaper business
don't show such poor judgment to give them boys a little space on the
front page whenever they have their semi-annual split."
"Probably you're right, Abe," Morris said; "but if it was you and me
that had a big fight on with our nearest competitors, Abe, advertising
it in the newspapers would be the last thing we would be looking for."
"The garment business ain't the theayter business, Mawruss," Abe said.
"For instance, being a defendant in a divorce suit don't get any one
nowheres in the garment trade, because if a garment-manufacturer would
have such a person working for him practically the only effect it would
have on his business would be that he would be obliged to neglect it two
or three times a day answering telephone inquiries from his wife as to
just how he was putting in his time, y'understand, and so far as
bringing customers into your place who want to see the lady you got
working for you which all the scandal was printed about in the papers,
Mawruss, it wouldn't make any difference _what_ the evidence was, you
couldn't get your trade interested to the extent even of their coming in
to snoop with no intentions to buy, y'understand. But you take it in the
theayter business and big fortunes has been made out of rotten plays
simply because the theayter-going public wanted to see if the leading
lady looked like the pictures which was printed of her in the papers at
the time the court denied her the custody of the child, understand me."
"Then you think that there's going to be a big rush on the theayters
controlled by Klaw & Erlanger and the Shuberts on account people has
been reading in the papers about their scrapping again, Abe?" Morris
inquired.
Abe shrugged his shoulders. "I don't think nothing of the kind,
Mawruss," Abe said; "but there's a whole lot of fellers in the theayter
business which have stories printed about themselves in the Sunday
papers where it tells how they used to was in business and finally
worked their way into the theayter business and what is their favorite
luncheon dish, y'understand, till you would think that the reason people
went to see plays was because the manager formerly run a clothing-store
in Milwaukee, Wis., and is crazy about liver and bacon, Southern style."
"That would be, anyhow, as good a reason as because the leading lady's
home life didn't come up to her husband's expectations," Morris
commented.
"Well, no matter for what reason people do it, Mawruss," Abe concluded,
"buying tickets for a show is as big a gamble as a home-cooked Welsh
rabbit, in especially if you try to go by the advertisements. For
instance, in to-day's paper there is three shows advertised as the
biggest hit in town, four of them says they got more laughs in them than
any other show in town, and there are a lot of assorted 'Biggest Hits in
Years,' 'Biggest Hits Since the "Music Master,"' and 'Biggest Hits in
New York,' so what chance does an outsider stand of knowing which
advertisements is O.K. and which is just pushing the stickers?"
"The plan that I got is never to go on a theayter till the show has been
running for at least three months, Abe," Morris advised.
"But if everybody else followed the same plan, Mawruss," Abe commented,
"what show is going to run three months?"
"Say!" Morris exclaimed. "There would always be plenty of nosy people in
New York City which 'ain't got no more to do with their money than to
find out if what the crickets has got to say in the newspapers about the
new plays is the truth or just kindness of heart, y'understand."
"From what I know of newspaper crickets, Mawruss," Abe said, "when they
praise a show they may be mistaken, but they're never kind-hearted."
"If a play runs three months, Abe, it don't make no difference to me
whether the newspaper crickets praised it because they had kind hearts
or knocked it because they had stomach trouble," Morris said, "I am
willing to risk my two dollars, _anyhow_."
"Maybe it would be better all around, Mawruss, if the newspaper crickets
printed what they think about a play the day after it closes instead of
the day after it opens," Abe observed, "and then they might have
something to go by. As it is, a whole lot of newspaper crickets is like
doctors which says there is absolutely nothing the matter with the
patient only ten days before the automobile cortège leaves his late
residence."
"But there is more of them like doctors which says that the patient may
live two days and he may live two weeks, y'understand, and four weeks
later he is put in Class One and leaves for Camp Upton with the next
contingent," Morris said. "Take even 'Hamlet,' Abe, which I can remember
since 'way before the Spanish war already, and I bet yer when that show
was put on there was some crickets which said that John Drew or whoever
it was which first took 'Hamlet' did the best he could with a rotten
part and headed the article, 'John Drew scores in dull play at
Fifty-first Street Theater.'"
"Even so, Mawruss," Abe said, "that wouldn't feaze J.H. Woods or whoever
the manager was which first put on 'Hamlet,' because we would say, for
example, that the cricket of the New York _Star-Gazette_ said, 'Hamlet'
would be an A-number-one play if it had been written by a pants-presser
in his off moments, but as the serious work of a professional
play-designer it ain't worth a moment's consideration; also the cricket
of the New York _Record_ says, From the liberal applause at the end of
the third act 'Hamlet' might have been the most brilliant drama since
'The Easiest Way' instead of a play full of clack-trap scenes and which
will positively meet the _capora_ it deserves, y'understand.
Furthermore, Mawruss, we would say that every other paper says the same
thing and also roasts the play, y'understand, so what does this here
Woods do? Does he lay right down and notify the operators that under the
by-laws of the Actors' Union they should please consider that they have
received the usual two weeks' notice that the show will close the next
night? _Oser a Stück!_ The next day he puts in every paper for two
hundred and twenty-five dollars an advertisement:
FIFTY-FIRST STREET THEATER
J.H. WOODS ..... LESSEE
J.H. WOODS
PRESENTS
'HAMLET'
THE SEASON'S SENSATION!
An A-number-one play.--_New York Star-Gazette._
Most brilliant drama since 'The Easiest Way.'--_New York Record._
John Drew scores heavily.--_New York Evening Moon._"
"Well, I'll tell you," Morris said; "while I admit that the theayter
crickets is smart fellers and knows all about the rules and regulations
for writing plays, y'understand, so that they can tell at a glance
during the first performance if the audience is laughing in violation of
what is considered good play construction or crying because the show is
sad in a spot where a play shouldn't ought to be sad if the man who
wrote it had known his business, y'understand, still at the same time
theayter crickets is to me in the same class with these here diet
experts. Take a dinner which one of them diet experts approves of, Abe,
and the food is O.K., the kitchen is clean, the cooking is just right as
to time and temperature of the oven, there's the proper proportions of
water and solids, and in fact it's a first-class A-number-one meal from
the standpoint of every person which has got anything to do with it,
excepting the feller which eats it, and the only objection _he's_ got to
it is that it tastes rotten."
"And that would be quite enough to put a restaurant out of business if
it served only good meals according to the opinion of diet experts,
Mawruss, because diet experts don't buy meals, Mawruss, they only
inspect them," Abe commented.
"And even if theayter crickets did pay for their tickets, Abe," Morris
continued, "there ain't enough of them to support one of these here
little theayters which has got such a small seating-capacity that
neither the exits nor the kind of plays they put on has to comply with
the fire laws, y'understand. But that ain't here or there, Abe. A
theayter cricket is a cricket and not an appraiser, y'understand. He
goes to a play to judge the play and not the prospective box-office
receipts, Abe, and if on account of his knocking a play which would
otherwise make money for the manager and do a lot of harm to the people
which goes to the theayter, such a show is put out of business, Abe,
then the theayter cricket has done a good job."
"Sure, I know, Mawruss," Abe said. "But it's just as likely to be the
other way about, which you take these here shows the crickets gets all
worked up over because they are written by foreigners from Sweden,
Mawruss, where a married woman gets to feeling that her husband, her
home, and her children ain't exciting enough, y'understand, so she
either elopes or commits suicide, understand me, and many a business man
has come to breakfast without shaving himself on the day after taking
his wife to see such a show and caught her looking at him in an awful
peculiar way, y'understand. Then there is other shows which crickets
thinks a whole lot of, where a young feller which couldn't get down to
business and earn a decent living puts it all over the man who has been
financially successful, y'understand, and plenty of young fellers which
gets home all hours of the night and couldn't hold a job long enough to
remember the telephone number of the firm they work for, comes away from
the show feeling that they ain't getting a square deal from their father
who has never done a thing to help them in all this life except to feed,
clothe, and educate them for twenty-odd years."
"Well, such plays anyhow make you think, Abe," Morris said. "Whereas,
when you come away from one of them musical pieces, what do you have to
show for it, Abe?"
"A good night's rest, Mawruss," Abe said, "which no one never laid awake
all night wondering if his wife or his son has got peculiar notions
about not being appreciated from seeing this here Frank Tinney talking
to the feller that runs the orchestra in the Winter Garden, Mawruss."
"Then what is your idee of a good show, anyway?" Morris inquired.
"Well, I'll tell you, Mawruss, a good show is a show which you got to
pay so much money to a speculator for a decent seat, y'understand, that
you couldn't enjoy it after you get there," Abe concluded. "And that is
a good show."
XXIV
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS SOCIETY--NEW YORK, HUMAN, AND AMERICAN
"I seen Max Feinrubin in the Subway this morning," Abe Potash said to
his partner, Morris Perlmutter. "He broke two fingers on his left hand
last week."
"Why don't he let the shipping-clerk do up the packing-cases?" Morris
commented.
"He didn't break his hand on no packing-case," Abe said.
"Well, what _did_ he break it on, then?" Morris asked.
"The shipping-clerk," Abe replied, "which the feller said that this war
is a war over property, and every nation that is in it is just as bad as
Germany, so Feinrubin asked him did he claim that the United States was
just as bad as Germany and he said 'Yes,' and afterward he said that
Feinrubin would hear from him later through a lawyer."
"And that is how Feinrubin broke his two fingers," Morris said.
"Well, as a matter of fact, up to that point Feinrubin had only broke
one finger, Mawruss," Abe said, "but just before the shipping-clerk went
out of the door he said that President Wilson was an enemy to Society,
so Feinrubin broke the other finger."
"Serves Feinrubin right," Morris said. "There he was in his own
shipping-room with hammers and screw-drivers laying around, and he has
to break his fingers yet."
"You probably would've done the same thing," Abe retorted, "if we would
got for a shipping-clerk a Socialist who puts up such arguments."
"Well, I don't know," Morris said. "A Socialist would naturally say that
this is a war over property because it don't make no difference if it
would be a war, an earthquake, a cyclone, or a blizzard, to a Socialist
all such troubles is property troubles, just as to a stomach specialist
every pain is appendicitis, so if our shipping-clerk would give me a
line of argument like that, Abe, instead I would break my fingers on
him, y'understand, I would simply dock him fifty cents as an argument
that if he wants to talk socialism, he should talk it in his own time
and not mine."
"But the feller had no business to tell Feinrubin that President Wilson
was an enemy to Society," Abe protested.
"Say!" Morris exclaimed. "For that matter I am an enemy to Society,
too."
"Never mind," Abe declared. "Lots of Society fellers which never done a
day's work in their lives has gone down to Washington to give the
country the benefit of their experience, Mawruss, and it's surprising
how many Society ladies is also turning right in and giving up their
time to the Red Cross and so forth."
"Sure, I know," Morris said. "But there is lots of them which don't,
Abe, and you take it on a cold Sunday in February when the
superintendent of the apartment-house where you live is keeping the
temperature of your flat below sixty-eight degrees by not letting it get
up to fifty, y'understand, and it would make a Bolshevik out of the
president of a first national bank to see Mrs. J. Van Rensselaer-This
and Mrs. H. Twombley-The Other on the front page of the illustrated
Sunday supplement, photographed at Pallum Beach on Lincoln's Birthday in
practically a pair of stockings apiece, y'understand, which if them
people want to wear clothes in Florida that if any one wore them around
New York if they didn't get arrested they would anyhow get pneumonia,
y'understand, that's _their_ business, Abe, but what I don't understand
is, why should they want to advertise it?"
"Well, what is the use of being in Society if you couldn't rub it in on
people who ain't?" Abe asked.
"But this is a democracy, Abe," Morris said, "so who cares if he is in
Society or not?"
"Don't fool yourself, Mawruss," Abe said. "There wouldn't be no object
for Society ladies to advertise that they are in Society if they didn't
know that reading such an advertisement would make a whole lot of
people feel sore which wants to get into Society, but couldn't."
"And such people calls themselves Americans?" Morris said.
"They not only calls themselves Americans, but they _are_ Americans,"
Abe said. "Which the main talking points of any one who advertises that
they are in Society, whether they do it through publicity in the
newspapers, by marrying or dying, y'understand, is that the bride or the
deceased, as the case may be, was a descendant of Txvee van Rensselaer
Ten Eyck who came in America in sixteen fifty-three and that another
great-great-grandfather opened the first ready-to-wear-clothing factory
on the American continent in sixteen sixty-six."
"Of course, Abe, you may be right," Morris said, "but it seems to me I
read it somewheres how a whole lot of people which is now in Society
qualified by settling in Pittsburg along about the time Judge Gary first
met Andrew Carnegie."
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But millionaires can get into Society on a
cash basis, _nunc pro tunc_, as of May first, sixteen twenty, as the
lawyers say, Mawruss, which if a lady is trying to butt into Society on
the grounds that her great-great-grandfather, Hyman de Peyster van
Rensselaer, _olav hasholom_, came over on the _Mayflower_ and bought all
the land on which the town of Hockbridge, Mass., now stands from the
Indians in sixteen sixty-six for two hundred dollars, y'understand, it
wouldn't do her chances a bit of harm if her husband came over on the
White Star Line, third class, just so long as he bought U.S. Steel when
it was down to thirty and a quarter in nineteen five and held on to it
till it touched one hundred and twenty, y'understand."
"Then what used to was the 'four hundred' must have added a whole lot of
ciphers to it in the last few years, Abe," Morris commented.
"Ciphers is right," Abe said. "But that four-hundred figure is a thing
of the past along with the population of Detroit before the invention of
the automobile, Mawruss, and I guess, nowadays, Society must be running
the Knights of Pythias and the Royal Arcanum pretty close on the size of
its membership, Mawruss."
"For my part, Abe," Morris said, "I would just as lieve join either of
them societies in preference to Society. Take, for instance, these here
Vanderbilts which they have been in Society for years already, and what
benefit do they get from it? It isn't like as if one of them would be in
the wholesale clothing business, for instance, and could get a friend to
use his influence with a retailer by saying: 'Mr. Goldman, this is my
friend, Mr. Vanderbilt. Him and me was in Society for years, already,
and anything in his line you could use would be a personal favor to me,'
because any connection with the clothing business, wholesale or retail,
bars you out of Society unless the Statue of Limitations has run against
it for at least four generations."
"Still, it's a big help to be in Society for certain businesses,
Mawruss," Abe said. "Take it in our line, Mawruss, and a feller which
was in Society could make a fortune duplicating for the popular-price
trade an expensive line of garments such as you would be apt to see at
an affair which was run off by somebody 'way up in Society."
"That ain't a bad idee, neither, Abe," Morris said; "and then, Abe,
instead of people asking what is the big idee when they see a picture of
Mrs. Yosel van Rensselaer Lydig in the illustrated Sunday supplement
they could read on it, 'Our Leader--the Mrs. Yosel van Rensselaer Lydig
gown; regular sizes, nine fifty; stouts, ten dollars,' which there is no
use letting all that good publicity going to waste, Abe, so if a
garment-manufacturer couldn't utilize it, a cigar wholesaler could vary
his line of cigars called after actresses by naming one of them 'The
Mrs. Yosel van Rensselaer Lydig, a mild and aromatic three-for-a-quarter
smoke for five cents.'"
"I'm afraid Society people wouldn't be willing to stand for such a thing
even in war-times, Mawruss," Abe said.
"Well, I only make the suggestion, Abe, because some states has already
passed laws compelling everybody to find a job for the duration of the
war, y'understand," Morris said, "and if the courts should hold that
sitting on the sand at Pallum Beach and having a photograph taken ain't
holding a job within the meaning of the statue in such cases made and
provided, Abe, maybe the addition of a little advertising matter to the
picture would be enough to keep some Society lady out of jail on the
ground that she is working as a model for advertising pictures,
y'understand, although, for my part, Abe, I am willing to see anybody
who tries to get publicity as a Society person go to jail whether they
work or not."
"Why so?" Abe asked.
"Because such publicity is only the start, Abe," Morris said. "It is the
first stages of what is the trouble in Germany to-day yet. For years
already the Society fellers of Germany, headed by the chief Society
feller of Germany, the Kaiser, has been getting their pictures into the
paper dressed in soldiers' uniforms till it got to be firmly fixed in
the minds of people which wasn't Society fellers that the latest
up-to-the-minute idee was wearing a soldier's uniform. Also, Abe, along
with such publicity goes the idee that anything Society fellers does is
O.K., and it is this just-watch-our-smoke advice of the German Society
fellers to the poor German people, _nebich_, which has changed the motto
of Germany from '_Hei-lie! Hei-lio! Hei-lie! Hei-lio! Bei uns, geht's
immer so!_' to '_Deutschland, Deutschland ueber Alles_,' and that is
what brought on the war, Abe."
"You mean to say that when Mrs. Mosha van Rensselaer has her picture
taken at Pallum Beach the intention is the same as when the Kaiser used
to got printed a photograph of himself as colonel of the One Hundred and
First Pomeranian Regiment."
"Toy Pomeranian or regular size, Abe," Morris said, "it don't make no
difference, the intention in both cases was to get publicity for the
fact that the sitter was a leader of Society, Abe, and so far as the
Kaiser was concerned, he soon got the idee that just as the Kaiser was
the leader of Society of Germans, y'understand, so Germany was the
leader of the Society of Nations, and therefore that Germany should have
the biggest army, the biggest navy, the biggest colonies, and the
biggest territory."
"And she's going to get the biggest licking, Mawruss," Abe interrupted.
"She's got it coming to her," Morris said, "and then when we've showed
Germany that she ain't such an international Society leader like she
thought she was, y'understand, the Germans which was rank outsiders in
Germany Society is going to look up a lot of old illustrated Sunday
supplements, and when the trial comes off before the Berlin County Court
of General Sessions the district attorney is going to offer in evidence
that well-known picture of the Kaiser and his six sons, and, without
leaving the box, the jury will find a verdict of guilty of being German
Society leaders in the first degree. Also, Abe, pictures will turn up of
one of the Kaiser's hunting parties, and only the people which couldn't
be identified on account of being at the edge of the photograph will
escape."
"But you don't think anything like that would happen to our Society
fellers, Mawruss?" Abe said.
"I think they're perfectly safe for the next hundred years or so, Abe,"
Morris said, "but, just the same, they should take example by the
Society leaders over in Russland, and learn to drink coffee from the
saucer and eat with the knife while there is still time."
XXV
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THIS HERE INCOME TAX
"Didn't I beg you that you shouldn't give to a lawyer that claim against
Immerglick which we had for the money we loaned him five years ago?" Abe
Potash said to his partner, Morris Perlmutter, as he pored over form
1040, revised January, 1918, which bore in large black letters the
heading, "INDIVIDUAL INCOME-TAX RETURN FOR CALENDAR YEAR 1917."
"Ten hundred and fifty dollars he paid us, and now I don't know should I
stick it under A, B, C, D, E, or F."
"I suppose you would rather see Immerglick get away with the whole sum
as pay eight per cent. of it to the government," Morris commented.
"I would give the government not only eight per cent., but eighteen per
cent., Mawruss, if they would only send round their representative and
fill out this here paper themselves, and leave me in peace," Abe said.
"I 'ain't done nothing for a month now but write down figures on this
rotten blank and scratch them out again, and what is going to be the
end of it I don't know."
"All the government asks of you, Abe, is to be honest," Morris said.
"Sure, I know," Abe replied. "But to be honest about fixing up this here
income-tax return, Mawruss, you've got to be a lawyer, a certified
public accountant, a mind-reader, and one of these here handwriting
experts who knows how to write the whole of the Constitution of the
United States on the back of a two-cent stamp, which take, for instance,
'N. CONTRIBUTIONS TO CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS, &C. (Enter below name and
address of each organization and amount paid to each),' and while I
'ain't given away a million dollars to charity in nineteen seventeen
exactly, I can see where next year when somebody comes round to
_schnoor_ from me five dollars for the Bella Hirshkind Home for Aged and
Indignant Females in the Borough of the Bronx, City of New York,
y'understand, he's going to get turned down on the grounds that Mr.
McAdoo only provided three lines for all charitable contributions and
I'm saving them up for the Red Cross, the S.P.C.A., and one orphan
asylum with an awful short name."
"Did it occur to you that you could give the Bella Hirshkind Home four
dollars and sixty cents and leave it out of your income-tax return
altogether?" Morris suggested.
"Listen!" Abe said. "I ain't trying to invent ways of getting around
what looks like the only good feature of this here income-tax return,
Mawruss. If Mr. McAdoo or President Wilson or whoever it was that fixed
up this here paper thought that the average man didn't need more as
three lines to put down his charities in, Mawruss, who am I that I
should set my opinion up against theirs? Am I right or wrong?"
"Well, for that matter, Abe," Morris said, "if you are up against it for
space to fill in about the Bella Hirshkind Home, how many lines did Mr.
McAdoo leave me to write in about you and Feigenbaum?"
"Me and Feigenbaum?" Abe repeated.
"Sure!" Morris said. "The time you and him had the argument should it be
pronounced Bol_shev_iki or Bolshe_vee_ki."
"Well, I was right, wasn't I?" Abe demanded.
"Certainly you were right," Morris replied. "But the question is, do I
put in the fifteen-hundred-dollar order he canceled on us under
'EXPLANATION OF LOSSES OF BUSINESS PROPERTY' or under 'J. GENERAL
DEDUCTIONS NOT REPORTED ON PAGE THREE'?"
"Put it in the same place where I would put the money which I lost from
having got it a partner which wastes dollars' and dollars' worth of time
on me every day by arguing about things which arguing couldn't help,"
Abe advised. "Because with this here income-tax proposition, Mawruss, if
you are going to waste so much time arguing about what you have lost
that you couldn't be able to remember by April first what you made,
y'understand, you would lose in addition a thousand dollars more and
fifty per cent. of the amount of the tax due, and you couldn't have the
consolation of blaming it on your partner, neither."
"It seems to me, Abe," Morris commented, "that the government makes a
big mistake limiting you to April first, because I already figured my
income tax out six times and it comes to a hundred dollars more every
time, which if they would only give me till, say, the first of August,
y'understand, I might be able to figure it out a couple dozen times more
and pay the government some real big money."
"With me, Mawruss," Abe said with a sigh, "sometimes it's more and
sometimes it's less, but it only goes to show how if a business man is
going to have such a big difference of opinion with himself, Mawruss,
what kind of a difference of opinion is he going to have with the
collector of internal revenue? So I guess the only thing for me to do is
to start all over again and this time I'll multiply the result by two,
because if I've got to pay anything extra to the government,
y'understand, I'd just as lieve do it without getting indicted first."
"Say!" Morris exclaimed. "If they started in to indict everybody which
is going to figure up their income tax wrong this year, Abe, the
government would got to draft a couple of million grand-jurymen, and
then lay off the workers on cantonments and put them to building
jails."
"And labor is scarce enough as it is, Mawruss, when you figure the
hundreds of thousands of sitsons of this country which has been taken
out of active business life during the past sixty days while they were
engaged in making up their income-tax returns," Abe said.
"Well, that will simplify things a whole lot next year, Abe," Morris
declared, "particularly in the excessive-profits department, because
owing to the time they spent in doping out what excessive profits they
had last year, the business men of the country won't have any profits
this year, excessive or otherwise."
"I should only make enough this year to pay a certified public
accountant for fixing up my income-tax return next year, Mawruss, and I
shall be satisfied," Abe said, "because who could tell, maybe next year,
Mawruss, the government wouldn't stop at wanting to know what your
income is and how you made it, but would also insist on knowing how you
spent it after it was made, which if business is so bad next year on
account of the war, Mawruss, it may be that the government, finding that
they couldn't raise enough money with an income tax and an
excessive-profits tax, will pass a law calling for a personal-extravagance
tax."
"They could get a lot of revenue that way," Morris admitted.
"Yes, and they could get it coming and going," Abe said. "Take, for
instance, the hotel and restaurant hat-check business, which I seen it
in the papers that a partnership of hat-checkers got into a dissolution
lawsuit the other day, and it come out that they made a quarter of a
million dollars profit in less than five years, y'understand. Now in a
case like that, Mawruss, the government couldn't tax them robbers an
additional eight per cent., because hat-checking ain't a profession
under 'A. INCOME FROM PROFESSIONS,' any more than burglary is. Neither
could the government soak them highwaymen for an excessive-profits tax,
because hat-checking ain't a business with an invested capital, not
unless you count as capital, _Chutzpah_, gall and a nerve like a
rhinoceros. So the only way the government could collect on tips to
hat-checkers would be to tax the tipper fifty per cent. and put it up to
the hat-checker to collect it at the source from the feller who is
foolish enough to give up his money that way."
"Sure, I know," Morris said. "But that wouldn't be a
personal-extravagance tax, Abe. That's what I would call a tax on
personal cowardice. It's the kind of a tax the government could soak a
feller which 'ain't got enough backbone to say 'No' when a head waiter
suggests celery and olives at seventy-five cents a throw."
"Whatever it is, I'm in favor of it, Mawruss," Abe said. "Also it should
ought to be collected from the feller who lets the barber get away with
ten cents extra for a teaspoonful of hair tonic, and as for face
massages, there should be a flat rate of five dollars for each
offense."
"_Aber_ don't you think that a face massage is its own punishment, Abe?"
Morris asked.
"So is attempting suicide," Abe said. "But people go to jail for it,
Mawruss."
"Well, anyhow, before the government goes to work and taxes people for
that part of their income which they spend foolishly, Abe," Morris said,
"they should get busy under the present income-tax law and prevent
anybody from getting away with anything under 'J. GENERAL DEDUCTIONS' by
claiming a drawback or bad debts arising out of personal loans, which
the government is losing thousands and thousands of dollars on many a
week-kneed business man who knew when he loaned the money to his wife's
relations that he would never even have the nerve enough to ask them to
renew their notes even. Then there is other business men which has got a
lot of customers on their books who couldn't get credit except by paying
such a high price for their goods that if they bust up there would still
be a profit, even if they settled for thirty cents on the dollar, and
when them business men start to make up their income-tax returns they
don't hesitate for a moment to charge off the balance under 'B. BAD
DEBTS ARISING FROM SALES (See instructions).'"
"I suppose such business men clears their consciences with the thought
that if they had lost the money legitimately playing pinochle, Mawruss,
the government wouldn't let them deduct a cent," Abe suggested. "And in
a way, Mawruss, they are right, because while you couldn't charge off
pinochle losses, I understand Mr. McAdoo holds that you've got to pay
income tax on pinochle profits."
"That only goes to show how much Mr. McAdoo knows about pinochle, Abe,"
Morris said, "because unless, _Gott soll huten_, a feller should drop
dead immediately after he cashes in his chips, y'understand, money which
you win at pinochle ain't an asset, Abe, it's a loan, and sooner or
later you are going to pay it back with interest."
"_You_ argue with Mr. McAdoo!" Abe advised him. "Why, as I understand
it, if you are having the game up at your own house, Mawruss, and you
happen to draw out ahead you ain't even allowed to deduct nothing for
electric light and the delicatessen supper, so strict the government
is."
"But do you mean to say that if you have a regular Saturday-night
pinochle game and you make a few dollars one Saturday night and drop it
the next and so forth, Abe, that the government wouldn't allow you to
deduct your losings from your winnings?" Morris asked.
"That's the idee," Abe said. "When you cash in at the end of each game,
Mawruss, that constitutes a separate transaction under 'H. OTHER INCOME
(including income from partnerships, fiduciaries, except that reported
under E, F, and G),' and you don't get no allowances for nothing."
"Well, that settles it," Morris said. "For the fiscal year January
first, nineteen eighteen, to December thirty-first, nineteen eighteen, I
play pinochle two-handed with my wife, Abe, and then I've always got
the come-back that I answered 'No' to question eight, 'Did your wife (or
husband) or dependent children derive income from sources independent of
your own?'"
"I don't think that Mr. McAdoo would hold that you've got to report
money which you win from your wife," Abe said.
"Why not?" Morris asked.
"Because Mr. McAdoo is a married man himself, Mawruss, and he knows that
such moneys ain't income," Abe concluded. "They're paper profits, and
you never collect on them."
THE END
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