"Sure I know," Morris agreed, "but the art about taxing cigars ain't so
much to sting the feller that manufactures them and the feller that buys
them as the fellers which accepts them free for nothing. 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."
"Well, they'll get a whole lot of money raising postage from two to
three cents," Abe suggested.
"But not so much as they could get if they was to go about it right,"
Morris said. "For sending letters which says, 'Inclosed please find
check in payment of your last month's bill and oblige,' three cents is
enough for any business man to pay, Abe, and in fact the feller which
received such a letter shouldn't ought to kick if the Post Office
Department makes him pay also three cents postage, but there is some
letters which it should ought to be the law that when a merchant
received one of them he should right away report the sender to the Post
Office Department for a special war-tax stamp of from one to a hundred
dollars. For instance, two dollars extra wouldn't be too much postage
for a letter where it says, 'Your favor received and contents noted, and
in reply would say you should be so kind and wait a couple days and I
would see what I could do toward sending you a check for your March
bill, as my wife has been sick ever since May fifteenth, and oblige,
yours truly, The Reliance Store, M. Doober, proprietor.'"
"If all them overdue retailers which is all the time pulling a sick wife
on their creditors was to be taxed two dollars apiece, Mawruss," Abe
said, "how much postage do you figure a storekeeper should pay when he
writes to claim a shortage in delivery before he starts to unpack the
goods, even. Then there is the feller which, when it don't get below
zero promptly on the first of November, writes to tell you that he must
say he is surprised, as the winter-weight garments which you shipped him
ain't nowheres up to sample and is holding same at your disposal and
remain, which if the government would come down on him for a hundred
dollars, he is practically getting off with a warning. And I could think
of a lot of other excess-postage cases, too, but, as I understand it,
we are only trying to raise forty billion dollars, Mawruss."
"Don't let that stop you, Abe," Morris said, "because there's going to
be plenty of extras over and above the original estimate, which I see
that a lot of South American countries is coming into the war and it's
only a question of a month or so when we would have calling on us a
commission from Peru, a commission from Chile, a commission from
Bolivia, a commission from Paraguay, and all of them with the same
hard-luck story, that if they only had a couple of billion dollars they
could put an army of five hundred thousand soldiers into the field, if
they only had five hundred thousand soldiers."
"Just the same, Mawruss," Abe said, "them countries is going to be a lot
of help."
"And when we get through paying the help, y'understand, we've still got
to raise money for the family to live on," Morris said, "so go ahead
with your suggestion, Abe. Maybe there's some taxes which Congress
'ain't thought of yet."
"Well, there's this here free speech, which, instead of being free,
Mawruss, if it was subject to a tax of one dollar per soap-box hour,
payable strictly in advance, y'understand, so far as the pacifists is
concerned, you would be able to hear a pin drop. Even Congressmen would
soon get tired of paying from twenty to twenty-four dollars a day,
especially if the government made it a stamp tax."
"LaFollette would be covered mit stamps from head to foot," Morris
remarked.
"That would suit me all right," Abe said, "particularly if the collector
of internal revenue was to run him with stamps affixed through a
cancellation-machine and cancel him good and proper."