Chapter III: Part 3

"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 Aida 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."

"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 chateau 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."