John Kendrick Bangs

“ Alice scratched her chin in perplexity, but the Hatter never stopped.
"I got an idea from that ballad," he rattled on. "If you want trains fast you've got to build 'em fast."
"Yes, but if they don't go—how does anybody get anywhere?" asked Alice.
"They can get off and walk," said the Hatter. "And it's a great deal less dangerous getting off a train that doesn't move than off one that does."
"I can see that," said Alice. "That weasel, for instance, would have been badly hurt if he had been thrown through the window of a moving car." ”

“ Meanwhile Alice had been turned over to the Chief of Police to be cared for, and was charmed to discover that that individual was none other than her old friend the Dormouse whom she had met in her trip through Wonderland at the Hatter's tea-party.
"I'M THE SOUNDEST SLEEPER IN TOWN"
"How did you ever come to be Chief of Police?" she cried delightedly, as she recognised him.
"I'm the soundest sleeper in town," he replied with a yawn, "so they made me head of the force. You see, young lady, the great trouble with the average police man is that he's too wide-awake, and that leads to graft. ”

“ I caught one of the boys reading an Arithmetic in bed last night, wholly neglecting his Jack Harkaway books that I had commanded him to read, and leaving his 'Bim, the Broncho Buster of Buffalo,' absolutely uncut."
"Fine!" chuckled the Hatter. "And now, my dear Duchess, will you oblige me by taking charge of Miss Alice? She has expressed a desire to go home and so I have brought her here."
"Certainly," said the Duchess. "I'll look after her."
"WHEN THEY THINK NOBODY'S LOOKING"
"You'll excuse us, Alice," said the Hatter, politely. ”

“ It is only another evidence of the very great value of Municipal Ownership. It is uncertainty in political times that upsets business, but with the Municipality in control of all these Departments from Gas to Poetry there is no uncertainty about who will win, so that business is not unsettled by it."
"Wonderful," said Alice.
"By the way, Mr. Commissioner, you'd better start the Rhyming Bureau on the search for rhymes to Hatter at once," said the Mayor. "We don't want to be caught unprepared at the last minute." ”

“ And then once in a while somebody's baby will wake up at three o'clock in the morning and demand the moon, and we go up and attend to it."
"What?" cried Alice in amazement. "You don't mean to say you give it the moon?"
"Not exactly," said the Dormouse. "We just promise to give it. That's one of the strong points about Municipal Ownership. It's the easiest system to make promises under you ever knew. You can promise anything, and later on if you don't make good you can promise something better, and so on. It works very well in a great many places. ”

“ Every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon we make 'em go to a matinee, rain or shine, whether they want to or not, and really it's pathetic to see how some of the little dears pine for a half-holiday with a hoople, and since I forbade the youngsters to even look at the back of a geography, or a spelling book, it is most amusing to see how they sneak into the library and devour the contents of those two books when they think nobody's looking. ”

“ Being circular there'd always be room enough to go around, and there'd be no front or back platform for the people to stand on or get thrown off of going round the curves. The expenses of keeping up the roadbed would be nothing, because, being motionless, the car wouldn't jolt even if it ran over a thank-you-marm a mile high, and best of all, a circular car has no ends to collide with other ends, which makes it absolutely safe. I never heard of a car colliding with itself, did you?"
"No, I never did," replied Alice. ”

“ It's too important to fool with."
"Thank you," replied the Hatter. "My mind is on higher things than mere words. However, as I was saying, there is no cobfuscation about it. We don't take a man's teeth away from him without compensation. We pay him what the teeth are worth and place them at the service of the whole community."
"Where do you get the money to pay him?" asked Alice.
"We give him a Municipal Bond," explained the Hatter. "It's a ten per cent. bond costing two cents to print. When he cracks a hickory nut for the public, the man he cracks it for pays him a cent. ”

“ Burbank showed that he preferred fooling with such futile things as pineapples and hollyhocks, to the really up lifting work of providing the people with gas that was redolent of the spices of Araby, I resolved to do the thing myself."
"He is a man of real inventive genius," said the March Hare, anxious, apparently, to square himself with the Hatter again.
"Thank you, Alderman," said the Hatter. "It is a real pleasure to find myself strictly in accord with your views once more. But to resume, Miss Alice—as I say I resolved to tackle the problem myself." ”

“ Some people, mostly capitalists who were rich enough to have libraries of their own, complained that they couldn't read nights because the gas wouldn't light. I replied that if they wanted to read they could go to the Public Library, where there were oil lamps, and electric lights. Besides reading at night is bad for the eyes. ”

“ Come along, Miss Alice, and we'll show you our City Poets at work."
"I don't think I understand," said Alice. "What is a city poet?"
"He bears the same relation to Municipal Poetry that a White Wing bears to the Street Cleaning Department," explained the Hatter. "Two years ago the City took over all the Verse-making enterprises of Blunderland, appointed a Municipalaureat, otherwise a Commissioner of Public Verse, and started him along with a Department. He employs 16,743 poets who provide all the poetry that is consumed by our people. It has resulted in great good for everybody. ”

“ Instead of the huge ugly retorts rising up out of the ground, surrounded by a quality of air that one could not breathe with comfort, was as beautiful a garden as anyone could wish to wander through, and at its centre there stood a retort, but not one that looked like a great iron skull cap painted red. ”

“ It ain't for the benefit of their families—it's for the benefit of the City. A City like this can use benefits to great advantages most all the time. But you see the results of Municipalising all sorts of crime from straight burglary up to life insurance resulted in the Police having nothing to do. There wasn't anybody to arrest, or to quell, or to club, and so they turned us into a social organisation and that's where Tea Drinking comes in strong. Every afternoon at five o'clock, tea is served on every corner in Blunderland by the Policeman on beat. ”

“ Consuls may be dipsomaniacs, but a Diplomat is a man worthy of Ambassadorial honours."
"Oh—I see," said the March Hare. "Well—he's a Diplomat all right, all right."
"How are things going to-day, Duchess?" asked the Hatter. "Children happy?"
"They will be in time," said the Duchess. "So many of them have been brought up so far on the Ladies' Home Journal system that it is hard to introduce the new Blunderland method without friction."
"I was afraid of that," said the Hatter. "How does the compulsory soda-water regulation work?" ”

“ You see we found that some people had teeth and other people hadn't, which is hardly a fair condition under a Republican form of Government. It gave one class of citizens a distinct advantage over other people and the Declaration of Independence demands absolute equality for all. One man owning his own teeth could eat all the hickory nuts he wanted just because he had teeth to crack 'em with, while another man not having teeth had either to swallow 'em whole, which ruined his digestion, or go without, which wasn't fair."
"I see," said Alice. ”

“ Burbank and thank him for inventing the coreless apple——"
"You don't means the Corliss Engine, do you?" asked the White Knight.
"Well, I'm sorry," said the Hatter, "but Mr. Burbank wouldn't come unless we'd pay him real money, which, although we don't publish the fact broadcast, is not in strict accord with the highest principles of Municipal Ownership. We contend that when people work for the common weal they ought to be satisfied to receive their pay in the common wealth, and under the M. O. system the most common kind of wealth is represented by Bonds. ”

“ The Hatter nodded his appreciation of the March Hare's compliment, and admitted him once more to his good graces.
"NOBODY COULD BE GAS-FIXIURATED""And nobody could commit suicide with it the way they used to do with the old kind of gas, because, you see, it was, after all, only hot air, which is good for the lungs whichever way it's going, in or out. We use hot air all the time in our Administration and it is wonderful what results you can get from it," he went on. ”

“ Poetry is cheaper by eight cents a line than it used to be, and, as you may have guessed from what the March Hare has just said, we give larger measure than was the custom under the private ownership of Pegasus. ”

“ The Hatter gave the order to Central and in a minute Alice stood transfixed at the phone listening intently. She recognised the voice of the Duchess immediately.
"THE BIGGEST JACKASS FROM DAN TO BEERSHEBA"
"As for that old fool of a Hatter," she was saying, "he is the biggest jackass from Dan to Beersheba."
"Well?" said the Hatter. "Can you hear her?"
"Yes," giggled Alice. "Very plainly."
"What does she say?" asked the Hatter, simpering.
"Why," said Alice reddening, "she—she's talking about you."
"The dear Duchess," ejaculated the Hatter, with a foolish smirk. ”

“ Capital isn't at all necessary to the success of our schemes. My watchword is Bonds, and as long as I have a printing press to print 'em, and a fountain pen to sign 'em I'm not going to be influenced one way or another by a feeling of subserviency to the capitalist class. ”

“ It is one of the laws of Blunderland that all girls are born free and equal in the pursuit of life, liberty and german favours, and when any of the Terpsichorean Force finds a girl with red hair and snub nose with freckles on it decorating the wall and being neglected at a cotillion, it is his duty to plunge in and either dance with her himself, or put some Willieboy under arrest until he calls her out and gives her the time of her life. ”

“ Since I started in in January to make the children drink five glasses of Vanilla Cream soda every day as a matter of routine and duty, sixty per cent. of them have come to hate it. I think that by the end of the year we shall have stamped out the love of soda almost entirely. The same way with caramels and other candies in place of beef. We have caramels for breakfast, gum-drops for dinner and marshmallows for tea, regularly, and last night seventeen of the children presented a petition asking for beef steak, mutton chops and boiled rice. ”

“ Every ossifer who has been convicted of petty larceny in the past, the records show, has been a fellow who stayed awake most of the time, and no ossifer has ever yet been known to go in for graft or get a record for clubbing innocent highwaymen over the head while he was asleep either on a Park Bench, or in an alleyway. Consequently, says they, Mr. Dormouse who wakes up only on every fifth Thursday in February will make the best Police ossifer in the bunch, and being the best had ought to be chose chief. ”

“ O'Flaherty would have to suffer in order that the great principle involved in Polite Speech for all Classes might prevail. The strict enforcement of our anti-Gosh legislation has resulted almost in the complete elimination of profane speech in Blunderland—so much so in fact that in the new Dictionary we are compiling such words as Golramit, Dodgastit, and Goshallhemlocks are being left out altogether."
"It is a great moral agency," said the White Knight. ”

“ Beauty can be applied to the lines of a gas-tank just as readily as to the lines of a hippopotamus, and as for the odours, they are due to the fact that gas as it is now made does not smell pleasantly, but there is no reason why it should not be so manufactured that people would be willing to use it on their handkerchiefs. ”

“ Long-continued possession has seemed so to convince people that they have inherent rights to the things they have enjoyed that they put up a fight and appeal to the Constitution and all that, and even when you mention the fact, as I did in a case that came up the other day (when a man refused to bite off another chap's cigar for him) , that the Constitution doesn't mention teeth anywhere in all its classes, they are not easy to convince. ”

“ Then when this is done it is sent to the rhyming room where the lines are made to end in rhymes, and finally it goes to the Polishing room where the poem is made ready for publication."
"It's a wonderful system," said the Hatter. "It not only improves the quality of our poetry, but in campaign times it is a great help, since we control absolutely all the campaign poetry. When I run for mayor next fall to succeed myself there won't be a single poem written on the other side." ”

“ Economy in real money is our watchword. We never spend a cent where a bond will serve the purpose."
By this time Alice and her hosts had reached the building occupied by the Department of Public Verse, and upon entering its spacious doorway the party were greeted by the Commissioner, the Haberdasher, to whom Alice was promptly introduced. ”

“ The ends being the venerable spot, abolish them."
"A very careful and conscientious
"THE CHIEF ENGINEER"public servant," whispered the March Hare aside to Alice. "When we have Municipal Ownership of the Federal Government we're going to put him on the Supreme Court Bench. He means vulnerable when he says venerable, but you mustn't mind that. When we have Municipal Ownership of the English Language we'll make the words mean what we want 'em to."
"Then of course the question arose as to how we could do this," said the Hatter. ”