LETTER IV
IN WHICH I GUESS A RIDDLE
Dear Mom:
Well the Elks is come to town and they own it just like I said they would. My it is wonderful to see so many fine redblooded gentlemen on the streets all looking like their pockets couldn’t hold their money. For the manicure business it is heaven there just ain’t enough lady operators to go round a couple of gents is waiting their turn at each chair and a girl can have all the dinners and other dates she can take care of. But I have turned them all down their compliments don’t go with me at all because of this work that I have got to do with Mr. Edgerton that is so very important as you will understand. It seems hard to believe that such a chanced could happen to a girl out of the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey but it really is true, and Mr. Edgerton says I can do just as much guiding the destinies of the American people as I want to.
I suppose you read the great address which the Spokesman delivered to the Elks’ convention and you seen every word I had said to Mr. Edgerton for the Spokesman to say. Of course Mr. Edgerton fixed it up again so that it sounded fine and Elkoquent—he keeps calling it that, it is a sort of joke on account of having been said to the Elks. It sure did thrill me to read it and I was more prouder than ever to live in such a rich country with so much wonderful prosperity all around me.
I must say there is times when I wish I could have just a little more of it for myself. It is kind of hard on a girl that has been brought up right and is trying to earn everything not just her clothes. Right now I have got to put another darn in my best pair of skin-colored stockings and it will be very disfiguring right where the gentlemen look at them most. But I could not keep my landlady waiting no longer, and I have cut down on my meals all I dare I can’t afford to be too starved when I go out with Mr. Edgerton because it ain’t refined to hog your dinner.
Well Mom this noon going out for my lunch I run into what I think is his wife—anyhow I hope it is because I would be sorry to think there was a third lady in this case. She was in a car with him, one of these kind that is called coops like glass show cases rolling round on big rubber tires. They had just drawed up by the curb and she was getting out.
I have told him that I will play the game so of course I didn’t give no sign that I had ever saw him before. But I got a good look at her and she is sure something elegant you can bet there ain’t any holes in her silk stockings nor in the squirrel-skin coat that she had on. She is a large soft lady and they went into an office building so I guess he was taking her to another of them fancy-priced specialists to see if they can find that angina pectoris. I went off thinking what would of happened to me if I would of took the notion that I had the angina pectoris. Would all them specialists be hunting it or would I just come home and get Pop to show me the trap-door where you crawl into the gas-tank? But I realize that I can’t have everything in this world—I can’t have electric coops and squirrel-skin coats and at the same time know the great heart of the plain people and be able to teach the Spokesman how to talk to them.
P. S. Well I had another call from Mr. Edgerton and we went out to dinner again and it is his wife like I guessed and he says the corn specialists says it is not angina pectoris of the toe, but only her tight slippers. And he started to apologize because he didn’t speak to me but I told him to quit his kidding and let us talk about international affairs. So we went to another restaurant it was a cheap hash-house this time where you get a coarse dinner for sixty cents and Mr. Edgerton apologized for it but it was the only kind of a place where he would be sure not to meet no friends. We had a little booth where we could sit and talk and Mr. Edgerton tipped the waiter some and we sat there a couple of hours and he brought us some coffee a couple of times and something else that was supposed to be coffee because it was in coffee-cups but seeing ain’t always believing.
Well the international situation is like this just now. All them Dago nations over in Europe wanted a lot of money from us so they could buy the guns and things while they was canning Kayser Bill. They come over here and borrowed billions and billions of dollars and now of course the Kayser is chopping firewood in Holland and we got thejob of collecting the money and we don’t know how to start. They are an unprincipled lot these fellers in Europe says Mr. Edgerton.
“Yes, I know,” I says. “I read all about them. The papers call them Bolshivikis.”
“No,” says Mr. Edgerton, “I don’t mean that crowd they are revolutionists and they say they won’t pay. What I mean are the French and Eyetalians and Poles and all them—they say they’re willing to pay of course but then they don’t.”
“But then,” says I, “what is the difference whether you say you will or say you won’t if you don’t?”
“Oh, there’s a lot of difference,” he explains. “If you say you will then you’re recognized.”
“What difference does that make?” I says.
“If you are recognized,” says he, “then you can borrow as much more as you want.”
“My God,” I says, “I wished somebody would recognize me!” And then I felt kind of mean, for fear he’d think I meant about him not recognizing me on the street!
He goes on to tell me that the Spokesman is worried all the time about these debts He lies awake at night and thinks about them it’s the only question He can’t seem to leave alone to settle itself. The reason for that is because He was born and raised in that cold and rocky state—by the way I made a mistake because I said the name of that state was Florida but I was a dumb-bell because Florida is another place. I know now because today there was a feller come in to try to sell us some lots there it seems there is a boom and he had some extra-fine land-front lots that could be had this week only; he explained that they are called land-front lots because they are in the bay but they front on the land and they will be on the land when the bottom of the bay has been moved underneath them.
But the Spokesman was raised in a state that is rocky and cold, I have forget it again but I think maybe it is North Carolina because it is far up North. And you see the worst a man can do in that state is not to pay his debts and collecting debts is the one thing that the Spokesman can be sure of knowing how, He has done it all His life. But He never had so big a debt to collect in his home state in fact Mr. Edgerton says there has never been such a big debt in the world. He says that the Statesman has nightmares about it and imagines that the debt has broke loose and is rolling down over Him like it was one of them mountains ofNorth Carolina. He wakes up all in a sweat and He sends for Mr. Edgerton in a hurry and insists He has got to know how He can collect more money than there is in the world.
That sounds like a joke but it’s really so because it is supposed to be paid in gold and it is twiced as much gold as there is. Mr. Edgerton says there is a professor in Germany that is trying to find out how to make more but he has not got it paying yet and besides they couldn’t get it away from the professor without another war and that would mean we would have to lend more money again. But something has got to be done, else the Spokesman won’t ever be able to get a good night’s sleep, and it is undermining His health something fierce.
So you see Mom there was another job loaded onto my poor shoulders that was never trained to carry such loads. But I told you I was going to see it through and I sat there and thought real hard and I says, “Them Dagoes got goods from us with that money, didn’t they?” And he says they did, so I says, “Then the way to pay the debts is for them to send us back some goods, whatever kind they can make that we need.”
But he says, “No, Miss Riggs that would never do at all,” he says, “and the reason is that we have got factories over here to make all the goods for ourselves.”
“Well,” says I, “but we can have twiced as many goods.”
“No,” he says, “our people haven’t got the money to buy so much, and so it would shut our factories down, and all our people that works in the factories would starve.”
Well Mom it shows you how dumb and ignorant us poor working people is. I would never of thought of that would you? But it is plain as day—why we have even got what is called tariff laws to tax the things that is brought into the country so as to keep them Dagoes from dumping their cheap goods off on us and putting all our working people out of their jobs.
I seen then why the Spokesman was so unhappy because if we couldn’t take money and we couldn’t take goods what could we do about the debts? If they wasn’t paid at all you can see what a bad example it would be for nobody would want to play the business game at all if they would never get paid their money if they made too much.
Well I must say I was scared because if all these greatest minds in the world hadn’t been able to guess the answer what chanced was there for poor little Mamie Riggs of the Elite Beauty Parlors? But I thought and thought and Mr.Edgerton set and watched me with an anxious look knowing how much there was at stake. And at last—will you believe it Mom?—I got it! Yes I did and all the world is going to know it in a day or two. That is, of course they aint going to know that I got it but they will be told the answer by the Spokesman in the big white house where He lives and tells them answers.
Says I, “Mr. Edgerton, them Dagoes has got a lot of pictures and cathedrals and things over there ain’t they?”
“Yes,” he says, “they have that.”
“And people travel over there to see them all the time dont they?”
“Oh yes.”
“And it’s what they call culture?”
“Yes of course the very fanciest there is.”
“Well,” I says, “there’s nothing in the world too good for us so let’s us go over there and get their culture in exchange for the debts. We can build a lot of fine steamships, and send a million or two of our people over, and the Dagoes can put them up at good hotels and feed them and wait on them and show them round and explain things to them. And for them that don’t care for art and high-brow things, there’ll be girl-shows and stuff that will surely be better than paying bootleggers for what they give us in these here coffee-cups.”
Well Mom that broke up our party. Mr. Edgerton was so excited that he got up and rushed right off to tell the Spokesman. He left me to walk home alone in the cold and it was only then that I begun to think about one thing I had forgot and that is who is to get the chanced to collect them debts in Europe? I would sure like a trip to Paris myself and I know my folks could stand a lot more culture than they’ll ever pick up in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey. But I guess Mom we had better not be greedy I’ve a notion it will be with the trips to Europe like it is with the electric coops and the squirrel-skin coats—the people that gets them will be them that has already got more than they can use.
Your dutiful
Mame.