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.