When a feller reckons the overhead on the goods he manufactures he
figures in one-twelfth of his telephone number, one-twelfth of the
year he was born, and one-twelfth of every other number he can
remember from his automobile to his street number.
"Of course, Mawruss, I don't claim that Mr. Hoover don't know his
business nor nothing like that," Abe Potash said as he finished reading
a circular mailed to him by the Food Conservation Director, "but at the
same time if I would be permitted to make a suggestion, Mawruss, I would
suggest that in addition to following out all the DON'TS in this here
food-conservation circular--and also in the interests of being strictly
economical, y'understand--the women of the country should learn it
genwine Southern cooking, the kind they've got it in two-dollars-a-day
American-plan Southern hotels, Mawruss, and not only would people eat
much less than they eat at present, but the chances is it would fix some
people so they wouldn't eat at all."
"Why _Southern_ cooking?" Morris Perlmutter asked. "For that matter,
two-dollar-a-day American-plan Eastern cooking wouldn't make you eat
yourself red in the face, neither, which the last time I was in New
Bedford they gave me for lunch some fried schrod, and I give you my
word, Abe, I'd as lieve eat a pair of feet-proof socks, including the
guarantee and the price ticket. But that ain't neither here or there,
Abe. Nobody could pin medals on himself for being a small eater in a
hotel, Abe, _aber_ the test comes when you arrive home from the store at
half past seven and your wife sets before you a plate of _gedampfte
Kalbfleisch_ which if a chef in Delmonico's would cook such a thing like
that, Abe, the Ritz-Carlton would pay John G. Stanchfield a retainer of
one hundred thousand dollars to advise them how the fellow's contract
could be broken with Delmonico's so they could get him to come to work
for them. And that's why I am telling you, Abe, when you get such a
plate of _gedampfte Kalbfleisch_ in front of you, which the steam comes
up from it like roses, y'understand, and when you put a piece of it in
your mouth it's like--"
"Say, listen," Abe protested, "let me alone, will you? It's only eleven
o'clock, and I couldn't go out to lunch for another hour yet."
"That only goes to show what for a stomach patriot you are, Abe," Morris
commented. "Even when we are only _talking_ about food you couldn't
restrain yourself, so what must it be like when you've got the food
actually on the table? I bet yer you don't remember that such a
feller as Hoover ever existed at all, let alone what he says about
eating reasonable."
[Illustration: "'So,' Mrs. Hoover says, 'you had one of them sixty-cent
table-d'hote lunches to-day again, and now of course you 'ain't got no
appetite. How many times did I tell you you shouldn't eat that
poison?'"]
"That's all right, Mawruss," Abe said. "Mr. Hoover could talk that way,
because maybe his wife ain't such a crank about her cooking like my
Rosie is, y'understand, _aber_ if Mr. Hoover would be me, Mawruss, and
there comes on the table some _gestoffte Miltz_ which Mrs. Hoover has
been breaking her back standing over the stove all the afternoon seeing
that it don't stick to the bottom of the kettle, y'understand, and Mr.
Hoover takes only a couple slices of it on account of the war,
y'understand, what is going to happen then?
"'So,' Mrs. Hoover says, 'you had one of them sixty-cent table-d'hote
lunches to-day again, and now of course you 'ain't got no appetite. How
many times did I tell you you shouldn't eat that poison?'
"'So sure as I am sitting here, mommer,' Hoover says, 'all I had for my
lunch was a Swiss-cheese rye-bread sandwich and a cup coffee.'
"'Then what's the matter you ain't eating?' Mrs. Hoover says. 'Ain't it
cooked right?'
"'Certainly it's cooked right,' Hoover says. 'But two pieces is a plenty
on account of the war.'
"'On account of the war! I could work my fingers to the bone fixing good
food for that man, and he wouldn't eat it on account of the war, _sagt
er_,' says Mrs. Hoover.
"'But, listen, mommer--' Hoover tries to tell her.
"'Never mind, any excuse is better than none,' Mrs. Hoover says. 'Turns
up his nose at my cooking yet! _Gestoffte Miltz_ ain't good _enough_ for
him. I suppose you would like me to give you every day roast duck on
twenty dollars a week housekeeping money. Did you ever hear the like?
Couldn't eat _gestoffte Miltz_ no more, so tony he gets all of a
sudden!'
"'_Aber_ mommer, listen to me for a moment,' Hoover says, but it ain't a
bit of use because Mrs. Hoover goes into the bedroom and locks the door
on him, and by the time he has got her to be on speaking terms again he
has violated the don't-eat-no-sugar DON'T to the extent of four dollars
and fifty cents for a five-pound box of mixed chocolates and bum-bums,
understand me. Also just to show that she forgives him they take in a
show mit afterward a supper in which Mr. Hoover violates not only all
the other DON'TS in the food-conservation circulars, but also makes
himself liable to go to jail for giving a couple of dollars to a German
head waiter under the Trading with the Enemy law."
"At that, the way some of our best hotels conservates food nowadays is
setting a good example to the women of the country," Morris declared.
"What do you mean--nowadays?" Abe retorted. "They always conservated
food, the only difference being, Mawruss, that in former times, when
them crooks used to get ten portions of chicken _a la_ King out of a
two-pound cold-storage chicken and charged you a dollar and a quarter a
portion for it, y'understand, they was a bunch of crooks--ain't
it?--whereas nowadays when them crooks get eleven portions out of the
same chicken and charge you a dollar and a half a portion for it,
y'understand, they're a bunch of patriots, understand me, which if the
coal-dealer and the retail grocer and butcher would short-weight you and
overcharge you the way some of them patriotic New York hotel proprietors
does, it would be hard to find many patriots in New York City outside of
Blackwells Island _oder_ the Tombs prison."
"And yet, Abe, if you would go to work and figure out the overhead on a
chicken which is used for eleven portions of chicken _a la_ King,"
Morris said, "you would find that the hotel-keeper gets his profit only
from the neck which he uses for chicken consomme."
"Well, say!" Abe exclaimed. "A profit of six cups of chicken consomme at
forty cents a cup ain't to be sneezed at, neither, and even then you are
taking the hotel-keeper's word for the overhead, which I don't care if a
feller would be ordinarily a regular George Washington, y'understand,
and wouldn't even lie to his wife about how he come out in his weekly
Saturday-night pinochle game, understand me, but when such a feller
reckons the overhead on the goods he manufactures it don't make no
difference if it would be locomotive engines or pants, in addition to
the legitimate cost of every one-twelfth dozen articles, he figures in
as overhead one-twelfth of his telephone number, one-twelfth of the
year he was born, one-twelfth of how old his grandfather _olav hasholom_
was when he married for the fourth time, and one-twelfth of every other
number he can remember, from his automobile number to his street number,
and usually such a crook lives in the last house from the city limits."
"I tell yer, Abe," Morris said, "the feller which invented poison gas
was some _Rosher_, and the feller which invented T.M.T. also, but the
feller which invented the overhead is in a class by himself just behind
the Kaiser. I don't know what his name is, but he is the feller what
fixed things so that a ten-cent loaf of bread has not only got into it
the air-holes which is caused by the yeast, but also the air-holes which
is caused by the lawyer's bill that the baking company paid at the time
they issued their five-million-dollar consolidated and refunding
four-per-cent. first-mortgage bonds, y'understand, and there's just as
much nourishment in that kind of air-hole for a truck-driver's family of
growing children as there is in any other kind of air-hole."
"Well, the bakers 'ain't got nothing on the farmers when it comes to
cost bookkeeping, Mawruss," Abe said. "I was reading where the
milk-raisers' _Verein_ claims the price of feed is so high that they've
got to sell milk at ten cents a quart wholesale, but for all them
farmers figure that the same feed goes to fatten the cow for the market,
Mawruss, you might suppose that there was a big institution somewheres
up state called the Ezra B. Cornell Home for Aged and Indignant Cows,
y'understand, and that so soon as a cow gets through giving milk,
y'understand, instead of slaughtering it the farmer takes it to the home
in his automobile and contributes five dollars a week toward its support
until it dies of hardening of the arteries at the age of eighty-two."
"Take it from me, Abe," Morris said, "them farmers ain't such farmers as
people think they are. It's going to be so, pretty soon, that people
will be paying two dollars and a half for an orchestra seat and pretty
near break their hearts while the poor old second-mortgage shark is
being turned out of his little home by the farmer."
"And on the opening night, Mawruss, the front rows will be filled with
milk agents," Abe said, "and after the show you will see them sitting
around Rector's and Churchill's and getting terrible noisy over a magnum
of Sheffield Farms nineteen sixteen."
"Of course nobody is going to be the worser for making a joke about such
things, Abe," Morris interrupted, "but last winter when these fellers
which gets off mommerlogs in vaudeville shows was talking about somebody
being immensely wealthy on account his breath smelt from onions,
y'understand, there wasn't many people raising a family on less than
twenty-five dollars a week whose breath smelt from onions at that."
"Did I say they did?" Abe asked.
"And it is the same way with potatoes and fruit, not to say fish and
poultry and all the other foods which Mr. Hoover says we should eat in
order to save beef, sugar, and flour for the soldiers," Morris
continued. "When a woman buys nowadays flounder at twenty-five cents a
pound, she is paying ten cents for fish and fifteen cents toward the
fish-dealer's wife's diamonds or his six-cylinder automobile, so if I
would be Mr. Hoover, before I issued bread and meat cards to the
consumer I would hand out automobile and diamond cards to the
fish-dealer and the vegetable-dealer and maybe it would help to stop
them fellers from loading their prices with what it costs 'em to keep up
their expensive habits."
"A fish-dealer is entitled to expensive habits the same like anybody
else," Abe said, "which if Mr. Hoover stops him from buying his wife
once in a while diamonds, sooner or later Mr. Hoover will stop him from
buying his wife furs and it will work down right along the line till Mr.
Hoover hits the garment business, Mawruss, which, while I ain't got no
particular sympathy for a fish-dealer, y'understand, his money is just
so good as the next one's, so I ask you, as a garment-manufacturer, what
are you going to do about it?"
"Let him buy Liberty Bonds."
"But in that case, how many Liberty Bonds could the diamond merchant,
the automobile-manufacturer, or the furrier buy?"
"Say, looky here," Morris said, "let me alone, will you? This is
something which is up to Mr. Hoover, not me."
"I know it is," Abe concluded, "and I've got a great deal of sympathy
for him, too, because before Mr. Hoover gets through he would not only
make a bunch of enemies, Mawruss, but he is going to use up a whole lot
of headache medicine, and don't you forget it."