Montague Glass

“ 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." ”

“ A Socialist would naturally say that this is a war over property because it don't make no difference if it would be a war, an earthquake, a cyclone, or a blizzard, to a Socialist all such troubles is property troubles, just as to a stomach specialist every pain is appendicitis, so if our shipping-clerk would give me a line of argument like that, Abe, instead I would break my fingers on him, y'understand, I would simply dock him fifty cents as an argument that if he wants to talk socialism, he should talk it in his own time and not mine. ”

“ A big strong man which he don't give a nickel for nobody! He's a wonder, all right, and if we didn't have a feller like that at the head of the country I don't know how we would be able to stand all the trouble that cutthroat and his crook family is causing us—Heaven bless them.'"
"The hopeless part of it is," Abe commented, "that there's no way of putting a nation of ninety million people in a lunatic asylum, even if there was an asylum big enough to hold them, which there ain't, Mawruss." ”

“ 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." ”

“ Abe said, "because when a politician gets a reputation for carrying a certain line of stable opinions his customers naturally expects that he is going to continue to carry 'em, and when he drops that line and lays in a stock of new stuff in the way of political ideas, y'understand, his customers leave him and he's got to build up his trade over again; and that's no way for a feller to get into the steam-yacht class—I don't care if he would be a politician or a garment-manufacturer." ”

“ There is a whole lot of women's-wear retailers in the Middle West which has got quite a reputation for hospitality, because whenever they have a poker game up to the house they hand out cigars which cost you and me and other garment manufacturers here in New York as much as ninety dollars a thousand wholesale. So what I say is that the government should tax anybody which accepts a cigar to smoke on the spot ten cents, and for every one of them put-it-in-your-pocket-and-smoke-it-after-a-while cigars, such a feller should be taxed ten dollars or ten days. ”

“ Take a dinner which one of them diet experts approves of, Abe, and the food is O.K., the kitchen is clean, the cooking is just right as to time and temperature of the oven, there's the proper proportions of water and solids, and in fact it's a first-class A-number-one meal from the standpoint of every person which has got anything to do with it, excepting the feller which eats it, and the only objection he's got to it is that it tastes rotten. ”

“ 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 [Pg 100] the best he knows how to make the whole country sick and tired of the war. ”

“ Morris said.
"They not only calls themselves Americans, but they are Americans," Abe said. "Which the main talking points of any one who advertises that they are in Society, whether they do it through publicity in the newspapers, by marrying or dying, y'understand, is that the bride or the deceased, as the case may be, was a descendant of Txvee van Rensselaer Ten Eyck who came in America in sixteen fifty-three and that another great-great-grandfather opened the first ready-to-wear-clothing factory on the American continent in sixteen sixty-six." ”

“ 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 the [Pg 171] ball 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ I read an account of what an aviator has got to do when he goes up in an airyoplane, Mawruss, and at one and the same time while he is balancing himself five thousand feet in the air he takes photographs, shoots off guns, drops bombs, sends wireless telegraphs, and also runs and steers an engine which is so powerful, y'understand, that if you would be running it on dry land, Mawruss, you wouldn't be able to take your mind off of it long enough to think about the high cost of camera supplies, let alone taking pictures yet. ”

“ Morris said. "Take this here LaFollette, Abe, and that feller's motto is, 'My country—I think she's always wrong—but right or wrong—that's my opinion and I stick to it.' All a United States Senator has got to do is to look like he is preparing to say something, y'understand, and before he can get out so much as 'Brother President and fellow-members of this organization,' LaFollette jumps up and says, 'I'm sorry, but I disagree with you.'"
"That must make him pretty popular in the Senate," Abe remarked.
"Popular's no name for it," Morris continued. ”

“ Automobiles is the same way, Mawruss, and if the engineering department of the big automobile concerns is now busy on the problem of making alcohol a substitute for gasolene, Mawruss, you can bet your life that the sales department is just as busy trying to find out something which will be a substitute for alcohol, because when a feller has made up his mind to buy a five-passenger touring-car, Mawruss, there ain't many automobile salesmen which could wish a seven-passenger limousine on him by working him with a couple of cups coffee, y'understand. ”

“ Morris asked.
"Being a king ain't a business no more, Mawruss. It's just a job," Abe continued, "and it's a metter of a few months now when the only kings left will be, so to speak, journeymen kings like the King of England and the King of Belgium and not boss kings like the King of Austria and the Kaiser. Why, right now, that Germany is his store, and that the poor Germans nebich is just salespeople; and he figures that if he wants to close out his stock and fixtures at a sacrifice and at the same time work his salespeople to death, what is that their business, y'understand." ”

“ Morris said, "there ain't a German merchant which wouldn't be only too delighted to swap his rights to import goods into Russia free of duty after the war for three-quarters of a pound of porterhouse steak and a ten-cent loaf of white bread right now, which the way food is so scarce nowadays in Germany, Abe, when a Berlin business man's family gets through with the Sunday dinner, and the servant-girl clears off the table, there's no use asking should she give the bones to the dog, because the chances is they are the dog, understand me. ”

“ 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. Wilson [Pg 200] does 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. ”

“ Abe inquired. "They don't harm an awful lot of people, Mawruss."
"They don't harm an awful lot of people for the same reason that there ain't much pneumonia caused by people getting damp from using finger-bowls, Abe," Morris said, "because so far as I could see the American people feels the same way about light wines as they do about finger-bowls. They could use 'em and they could let 'em alone, and they feel a whole lot more comfortable when they're letting 'em alone than when they're using 'em." ”

“ Wilson is every bit as bad as the Kaiser except that he's clean-shaved, y'understand, then them ninety-nine fellers with the pledges in their breast pockets should ought to convert the balance of one. Because, Mawruss, a nation which is ninety-nine per cent. patriotic is like a fish which is ninety-nine per cent. fresh—all you can notice is the one per cent. which smells bad."
"I am just so much in favor of the country being one hundred per cent. American as you are, Abe," Morris said, "but what I claim is that we should go about it right." ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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." ”

“ Morris continued, "and particularly right now when money can still buy things which the government needs for the soldiers, y'understand, money is a dangerous article in the hands of some people who think that the feller which don't feel the high price of sugar is more privileged to eat it than the feller which could barely afford it." ”

“ Abe remarked, "it seems to me that not spending money must be an easy way to be patriotic."
"And some fellers is just natural-born patriots that way," Morris added, "and if they ain't, y'understand, the war is going to make them. It's going to give the rich man the same chance to be a good sitson as the poor man, and it's made [Pg 150] a fine start by taking the lights off of Broadway so that you couldn't tell it from a respectable street, like Lexington Avenue." ”

“ Morris exclaimed. "There would always be plenty of nosy people in New York City which 'ain't got no more to do with their money than to find out if what the crickets has got to say in the newspapers about the new plays is the truth or just kindness of heart, y'understand."
"From what I know of newspaper crickets, Mawruss," Abe said, "when they praise a show they may be mistaken, but they're never kind-hearted." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Maybe the German people still feels encouraged when the German army gets ahold of more territory, Abe, but it's a question of a short time now when the German people is going to realize that they don't need no more room to starve in than they've got at present, and that a nation can go broke just as comfortably in nine hundred thousand square miles as it can in nine million square miles. ”

“ Now in a case like that, Mawruss, the government couldn't tax them robbers an additional eight per cent., because hat-checking ain't a profession under 'A. Income from Professions,' any more than burglary is. Neither could the government soak them highwaymen for an excessive-profits tax, because hat-checking ain't a business with an invested capital, not unless you count as capital, Chutzpah, gall and a nerve like a rhinoceros. So the only way the government could collect on tips to hat-checkers would be to tax the tipper fifty per cent. ”

“ Morris Perlmutter said to his partner, Abe Potash, as they sat in their office one morning in September, "the English language is practically a brand-new article since the time when I used to went to night school. In them days when a feller says he is feeling like a king, it meant that he was feeling like a king, aber to-day yet, if a feller says he feels like a king it means that he's got stomach and domestic trouble and that he don't know where the money is coming from to pay his next week's laundry bill. ”

“ Morris Perlmutter said. "If a feller which lives in a New York City apartment-house nowadays could get the temperature of his rooms as high as down to forty-eight degrees, y'understand, it's only because some of the tenants 'ain't come across with the janitor's present yet and he still has hopes. Yes, Abe, a circular like that might do some good in Pasadena oder Pallum Beach, y'understand, but it's wasted here in New York." ”

“ Morris said, "because the most he could hope for is the thing what usually happens him. He gets fired, Abe, and the only reputation a feller gets by getting fired is the reputation for getting fired, and that ain't much of a recommendation when he comes to look for another job." ”

“ Morris said, "so who cares if he is in Society or not?"
"Don't fool yourself, Mawruss," Abe said. "There wouldn't be no object for Society ladies to advertise that they are in Society if they didn't know that reading such an advertisement would [Pg 216] make a whole lot of people feel sore which wants to get into Society, but couldn't." ”