LETTER V
IN WHICH I LISTEN TO GOSSIP
Dear Mom:
Well, I have had my first failure in my new job of telling the Spokesman what to say to the American people. I wentout to-day and bought the afternoon paper and He hadn’t said a word of what I had told Mr. Edgerton to tell Him to say. He had talked about the money them Dago nations owes us but all He said was that the debts was a sacred obligation and the American people would exact a settlement. But Mom you can see that aint saying nothing when there aint enough money in the whole world to pay them and we couldn’t let them send us goods without ruining all our industries. How can they pay except like I said by our sending over tourists for them to feed? I am greatly disappointed in the Spokesman.
Tell Pop I got his letter and I thank him for all the ideas on politics he has sent. Some of them seems to me very good and I shall be pleased to make use of them. Mr. Edgerton says it is the opinions of the plain people that he wants, and I am sure Pop is plain enough to suit anybody. Tell him that I don’t wonder he can’t hardly believe this good fortune that is come to me. But it is God’s truth just as I have wrote it.
And you can tell Pop he dont need to worry about his baby girl, because I am taking the best of care of myself. Mr. Edgerton aint tried to get fresh and I dont think he is that sort at all. He never says nothing about how I have such nice long brown lashes over my china-blue eyes. I dont think he even saw that darn I had put in my stocking though I forgot and put my foot up on a chair right where he could see. The truth is I think he loves his wife: only he dont know quite what to make of her just now and he’s lonesome for a little female cheerfulness. If he buys me a dinner it aint going to break him and he’s getting his money’s worth and more being educated about how the plain people feels about politics and international affairs. And besides, Mom, dont forget that I have got a feller by the name of Walter that I am someday going to marry even if he is only a poor shipping-clerk in Camden and that ought to be enough for my Pop to fret over.
P. S. Well, I have just got home from another dinner and Mr. Edgerton has told me how I come to lose out with the Spokesman. He wouldnt have nothing to do with my ideas for the debt settlement because He says it aint a way to collect the money but only to spend it and the Spokesman dont believe in spending no money that you dont have to. He says most of the plain people dont care nothing about art and they wouldnt approve of people gadding aboutEurope and as for drinking their wines the Spokesman jumps a yard any time anybody tries to get him to say anything about prohibition one way or the other excepting only that laws is laws and all good Americans should obey them.
Mr. Edgerton says that if I am going to be useful to him I have got to learn the rules of this game and one of them is that the Spokesman will never take sides in no dispute. It is His business to be popular and you can never get Him to say nothing that is going to get a lot of people down on Him. Ever since He has been in politics which is since he was a boy He has spent all his time dodging the tricks of people that was trying to get Him to put His foot into something and He has got to be the most cautious Side-stepper they have ever had in the game.
Well Mom we got to gossiping about how things is there in the great white house where the Spokesman lives and gee it is comical it is so much like the Elite Beauty Parlors with everybody watching everybody else and pulling and hauling and intreeging against them. The Spokesman you see is just like a King; and all of the courtiers wants to keep his favor and if He gives three minutes more of His time to one of them the other one retires into the corner and has a fit of the weeps or else he goes off and tries to find something bad about the first one, that he can have his great aunt whisper to the Spokesman’s second cousin.
Mr. Edgerton says that this great man got into office by a fluke because he wasnt never meant to get in but only to be Vice-Spokesman to keep him on the shelf. The Vice-Spokesman it seems dont have nothing to say or if he does nobody listens to him. But now He’s got in, and He’s brought a little bunch of people along that used to be his angels back in the State of North Carolina or wherever it is up in the icy North where he comes from. These are rich men that used to pay the fare of this Spokesman when he was a little Feller, and was a sort of Office-boy for them in politics, to run the state like they wanted it.
But now He is got to be the greatest Man in the whole world and gee they cant quite bring themselves to believe it and they dont know quite how to take it. They cant get used to the idea of taking orders from what used to be their Office-boy and the Spokesman He cant get used to giving no orders because of course He always feels respectful to these gentlemen because they have got so much money and always have paid His way. And at the same time they are scared to death for fear He might get thebig head and take the notion to be the Boss. And each of them hates all the others like poison because each of them is trying to shove the others away from the Spokesman’s elbow.
So that is how it goes, and Mr. Edgerton says I am not to get discouraged if I dont always have my way about what the Spokesman says. I can be sure that I will win out in the end because I represent the plain people and they have got the votes and everybody knows they are the real boss. And Mr. Edgerton says that just now what the Spokesman is worried about is what to do about the Reds that seem to be making an awful lot of fuss and what would I think he had ought to tell the world about it?
And gee Mom you can imagine how fine that was because it was one of the things that Pop has wrote to me about. So I says, “Them fellers had everyone ought to be sent to jail.”
“Yes,” says Mr. Edgerton, “but the trouble is that dont seem to work out right because then they have a trial and it puts their ideas on the front page of the papers instead of the ideas of the Spokesman. It’s kind of provoking but it works just the opposite of how it had ought to.”
“Well,” says I, “This much is plain if them fellers dont like the way this country is run they had ought to get out of it.”
“Yes,” says Mr. Edgerton, “I have said that and we sent a couple of hundred of them off to Roossia a few years ago. But you see there is an awful lot of them and you’ve no idea what it costs or how it hurts the Spokesman to have to pay travelling expenses for a lot of Bolshivikis.”
“Well,” says I, “if I had my way I’d cut their journey short they should be sent to sea in ships of stone with sails of lead.”
Mom you must tell Pop not to send me no old ones because that sounded fine to me but it seems that it is a wheeze in fact Mr. Edgerton was the man that had wrote it several years back he explained. “You see,” he said, “before I come to the Spokesman I was shirt-stuffer for a big admiral and that was the sentence that made his reputation.”
“A shirt-stuffer?” says I.
Says he, “That is what we call ourselves us fellows that make the big stuffed shirts that the public admires.” It didnt seem to me that was a very respectful way to talk about an admiral but I didnt say nothing because I was trying to remember the rest of what Pop had wrote.
“Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “I wish you would tell me how anybody that has got sense enough to make a speech can be such a fool as to believe in dividing up because can’t they see that if you was to do it it wouldnt be a week before the smart ones like you and me would have it all again?”
“Well,” he says, “the fact is that a lot of these Reds dont want to divide up their idea is just the opposite they want to concentrate the ownership and have the government run things.”
“Yes,” I says, “and wouldnt that be great?” I says. “Imagine the Elite Beauty Parlors being run by the government and all us girls setting with our feet up on the top of the tables instead of doing our work!”
“Well,” says he, “as a matter of fact wouldnt there be a lot of customers come in to see that sight?”
But the subject is too serious for kidding so I says, “How much liberty would us girls have left, if we all had to be government help? And who would give us our jobs would we have to go to some politician from North Carolina that has got the Spokesman’s ear? No, Mr. Edgerton, the prosperity of this country is based on individual effort and freedom of everybody to make his own way in the world. Just compare our wealth with what they have got over in them bureaucratic and Socialistic lands overseas.”
Mom, that was an awful mouthful, but I had learned it word for word out of Pop’s letter, I got it off without a slip and Mr. Edgerton was very much impressed he stopped joking and sat and thought it over and he says, “Yes, Miss Riggs, I am inclined to think that is sound doctrine and a good illustration. I think that will serve admirably for the talk which the Spokesman is to give to the reporters in the morning. They have asked Him several embarrassing questions about the big banker in his cabinet who has been let off a lot of his income taxes, and these ideas of yours I am sure He will consider much more suitable for public discussion. I think I had better run over and see Him at once and make the suggestion.”
So then we gets up to go and then oh Mom a most dreadful embarrassing thing happens. Mr. Edgerton goes for to pay the bill for our dinner and the coffee and the other things in coffee cups that we has had and he takes out his leather wallet and finds that the least he has is a hundred dollar bill. He takes it out and gee it most burns my eyesight it is more money than I ever seen all at once in my whole life before—just a little bit more than I earn in amonth only I get it by the week and it has started to go before it comes. Well the waiter looks at it and says somethink about not thinking they’d have change for that at the desk and Mr. Edgerton says to me, “Do you happen to have a smaller bill with you Miss Riggs?”
And gee there I am knowing that I have got just exactly seventeen cents in my purse! So I have to think quick and I says that I dont think I have anything smaller than a ten-spot myself. And then the boob waiter busts in and says they wont have no trouble in changing that at the desk! So then I have to open my purse and play the game of being very much surprised that I have left my ten-spot at home and of course I am turned red all the way down into my blouse because how will Mr. Edgerton have any respect for my opinions about world finance if he knows that I have to go round the day before payday with only a few coppers to buy my lunch with?
Your worried
Mame.