Potash and Perlmutter discuss the Chamberlain suggestion.
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 smallexperience 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 asheis, 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 theball 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 everaccused 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 righttoit,y'understand, every one of them fellers is just aKibbitzer, 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 RinderbrustorTzimmas, 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 ofTzimmasthat 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'tthat 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."
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 advertisingmedium, 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 theyosergive 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 OperaHouse 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, whatisa 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 youdoknow, Abe, is that you 'ain't looked it up long enough since to have forgotten it."
"Isthatso!" 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 somethingterrible 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."
sopranos"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."
"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."
"Ialways felt that I gotmymoney'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 coloraturasoprano 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 whichis 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 theGarment 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 wastoit."
"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."
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 YorkMoon,"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 fellerusedto 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," Morrissaid, "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 springingNitchyvo!andDa!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 fromstudying French, neither," Morris observed. "All the French which them fellers puts into their writings isO.U.I., m'sieu, which don't look to me to be any more efficient asC.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 whathethinks 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 warcorrespondent 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 gotenoughto 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 nextmonth. 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 madeGeheimerathsand 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 whenhe 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 theeditors stick to themnitchyvoarticles, 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 howIlook 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 magazinenebichwhich 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 theInterborough 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 theInterborough 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 frontdoor, 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."
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 aChozzerused 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 wroteHamafteach,I should worry if I don't know every law in the law-books; so go ahead, Mawruss, I'm listening. Whatisthe 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. Wilsondoes 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, whichwhile 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, whichwas 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 whenanyorder 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 morningI'm content that you should pass a law saving daylight if you want to."