"Yes, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, after Mr. Garfield had announced the
five-day shut-down, "one of the hardest things that a patriotic sitson
is called on to do nowadays is to have faith in those fellers which is
running the Fuel Commission, the Food Commission, and all the other
commissions that they ain't such big fools as you would think for."
"Well, you don't think this here Garfield would close up the country for
five days unless it would be necessary, ain't it?" Morris Perlmutter
retorted.
"Certainly I don't," Abe agreed. "But what is troubling me is that he
ain't said as yet for why it is necessary, Mawruss."
"Maybe he 'ain't figured it out yet," Morris suggested. "And even if he
didn't, Abe, it stands to reason that if the country don't burn no coal
for five days, at the end of five days they would still got the coal
they didn't burn, provided they had got any coal at all to start with."
"But as I understand it, Mawruss," Abe said, "not burning coal 'ain't
got nothing at all to do mit Mr. Garfield's order that we shouldn't burn
no coal. It seems from what ex-President Taft says and also from what a
professor by the name of Jinks _oder_ Jenks says, Mawruss, Mr. Garfield
done it because the people 'ain't begun to realize that we are at war,
Mawruss."
"You mean to say that _again_ the people don't begin to realize we are
at war?" Morris exclaimed. "It couldn't be possible, Abe. Here we have
had two Liberty Loan campaigns, a military draft which took in every
little cross-road village in the country, a war-tax bill that hits
everybody and everything, and people like Mr. Taft and Professor Jinks
saying day in and day out that the people 'ain't begun to realize we are
at war, y'understand, and yet you try to tell me that the people has
slipped right back into not beginning to realize we are at war, Abe."
"I don't try to tell you nothing," Abe said. "For my part I think it's
time that somebody put them wise, Mawruss."
"What do you mean--put them wise?" Morris demanded. "The people knows
that--"
"Who is saying anything about the people?" Abe interrupted. "I am
talking about Mr. Taft and this here Professor Jinks, Mawruss. Them
fellers has got ideas from spring and summer designs of nineteen
seventeen. What we are looking for from the big men of the country is
new ideas for the late summer of nineteen eighteen and fall and winter
seasons of nineteen eighteen, nineteen nineteen, and this here
people-'ain't-begun-to-realize talk was already a back-number line of
conversation in June, nineteen seventeen."
"But what them fellers is driving into, Abe," Morris observed, "is that
it's going to help the war along if the people of America should be made
to suffer along with the people of France and England. They figure that
it ain't going to do us Americans a bit of harm to know how them
Frenchers feel, _nebich_, with the Germans holding on to their
coal-supply, Abe."
"Well, we could get the same effect by going round in athaletic
underwear and no overcoats, Mawruss," Abe retorted, "so if that's what
Mr. Taft claims Mr. Garfield shut off the coal for, Mawruss, he is
beating around the wrong bushes."
"And he ain't the only one, neither, Abe," Morris said. "From the way
other people is talking, Abe, you would think that in order to get into
this war _right_, y'understand, we should ought to go to work and blow
up a few dozen American cathedrals, send up airyoplanes over New York,
and drop a couple gross bombs on the business section of the town,
poison the water-supply, cut off the milk for the babies, and do
everything else that them miserable Germans did to France and England,
not to say also Russia, y'understand. This will cause us to become so
sore, understand me, that everybody of fighting age will want to fight,
and the rest of us will be willing to work in the munition-factories and
spend all our time and money to end a war where American cathedrals is
being blown up, airyoplanes is bombing New York, and babies is suffering
for want of milk, Abe."
"You mean that Professor Jinks is willing to have us believe that Mr.
Garfield is shutting off the coal, not because it's necessary, but
because it's the equivalence of us bombing our own cities and making
ourselves feel sore?" Abe asked. "Mr. Garfield?"
"Ordinary people which ain't professors and ex-Presidents might figure
that way," Morris continued, "but it seems that the theory is we are
going to feel sore at Germany, Abe."
"Well," Abe commented, "I am perfectly willing to feel sore at Germany
for the things she has done in this war, Mawruss, and I am so sore at
Germany, anyway, that I am also willing to feel sore at her for the
things which she 'ain't done also, Mawruss, but so far as Mr. Garfield
is concerned, y'understand, I prefer to think that he's a hard-working
feller which could once in a while make a mistake, understand me, and
that if he cuts off the coal, it's on account he thinks it's necessary
to save the coal. Because if I thought the way Professor Jinks thinks,
Mawruss, and I should meet Mr. Garfield face to face somewheres,
understand me, the least they could send me up for would be using rotten
language tending to cause a breach of the peace, y'understand."
"Sure I know, Abe," Morris agreed. "But the chances is that Mr. Taft and
Professor Jinks may have a private idee that when Mr. Garfield shut
down on the coal he could of saved coal in some other way, and so in
order that he shouldn't get stumped for explanations afterward,
y'understand, they are taking this way of giving him what they think is
a good pointer in that line, understand me, because if you read the
papers this morning, Abe, there must be thousands of prominent sitsons
which claims to be patriotic, y'understand, and from what them fellers
said about Mr. Garfield, Abe, it was plain to me that the stuff they was
holding back from saying about him was pretty near giving them apoplexy,
y'understand."
"Well, when it comes to cussing out the Fuel Administrator, Mawruss,"
Abe said, "them prominent sitsons wouldn't have nothing on the
unprominent sitsons which is going to lose five days' pay now and one
day's pay a week for ten weeks later. Yes, Mawruss, what them poor
people is going to call Mr. Garfield during the five days they will lay
off is going to pretty near warm up their cold homes even if it ain't
going to provide food for their families, Mawruss. Furthermore, Mawruss,
five continuous days is going to give them an opportunity to do a lot
more real, hard thinking than they could do if they would have, we would
say, for example, only one hour a day lay-off every other day over a
period of a hundred days, Mawruss, and if at the end of them five days,
Mawruss, they are going to take as much interest in the problems of this
war as they are in the problem of how they are going to catch up with
what they owe for five days' food and rent, Mawruss, I miss my guess,
because Mr. Taft and Professor Jinks may think that them fellers is
going to spend their five days' lockout in looking up war maps and
sticking little colored flags in the positions now held by the French
and German troops or in reading up the life of General Pershing and _My
Three Years in Germany_ by Ambassador Gerard, Mawruss, _but I don't_."
"And yet, Abe, admitting all you say is true, y'understand, what reason
do you got for supposing that before Mr. Garfield shut off the coal he
didn't also consider all these things, when they even occurred to a
feller like you?" Morris asked.
"What do you mean--a feller like me?" Abe demanded. "Thousands of people
the country over is saying the selfsame thing."
"I know they are," Morris said. "And why you and they should think that
what occurred to thousands of people the country over shouldn't also
occur to Mr. Garfield, Abe, is beyond me. Now I don't know no more about
this coal proposition than you do, Abe, but I am willing to take a
chance that when a big man like Garfield, backed up by President Wilson,
does a crazy thing like this, y'understand, he must have had an awful
good reason for it, no matter how good the reasons were against it."
"Did I say he didn't?" Abe said.
"Then why knock the feller?" Morris asked.
"Say, looky here, Mawruss," Abe retorted, "are we living in Germany or
America? An idee! On twenty-four hours' notice the government shuts off
the coal-supply of the country and you expect that all that the people
would say is, '_Omane! Solo!_' ('Amen! Selah!')."
"Well, that's the way a government does business--on short notice, Abe,
which if Mr. Garfield would be one of them take-it-on-the-other-hand
fellers who considers the matter from every angle before he decides,
y'understand, while he would have still got a couple of thousand angles
to consider the matter from, Abe, the country would have been tied up
into such knots over the coal-and-freight situation that it would have
required not five days, but five hundred days, to untangle it,
y'understand," Morris said.
"But it seems to me, Mawruss, that Mr. Garfield could have spent, say,
twenty-five minutes longer on that order of his, so that a manufacturer
could tell from reading it over a few dozen times, with the assistance
of a first-class, cracker-jack, A-number-one criminal lawyer, just what
it was he couldn't do without making himself liable to a fine of five
thousand dollars and one year imprisonment, y'understand," Abe said. "In
fact, Mawruss, if the average manufacturer is going to try to understand
that order before he does anything about it he'll have to shut down for
five days while he is working to puzzle it out, and then he will keep
his place closed down for five days longer while he is resting up from
brain fag, understand me. Take, for instance, a department store which
sells liquors and groceries, has a doctor in charge of the rest-room,
and runs a public lunch-room in the basement, y'understand, and if the
proprietor decided to make a test case of it by hiring John B.
Stanchfield and keeping open on Monday, Mawruss, once Mr. Garfield got
on the witness-stand and started to explain just what the exemptions
exempted, y'understand, it would be years and years before he ever had a
chance to see the old college again."
"But Mr. Garfield wrote that order to save coal, not arguments, Abe,"
Morris said. "He expected that the business men of the country would do
the sensible thing next Monday by staying home and playing pinochle or
poker, and those fellers which don't know enough about cards to even
_kibbitze_ the game, y'understand, could go into another room and start
in on their income-tax blanks, which, when it comes to figuring out what
is capital and what is income in the excess-profits returns, Abe, there
is many a business man which would not only put in all his Mondays
between now and the first of March trying to straighten it out,
y'understand, but would also be asking for further extensions of time to
finish it up along about the fifteenth of April."
"And that's the way it goes, Mawruss," Abe commented, with a sigh. "It
use to was in the old days that all a feller had to know to go into the
clothing business was clothing, y'understand, but nowadays a
manufacturer of clothing or any other merchandise must also got to be a
certified public accountant, an expert of high-grade words from the
English language, a liar, a detective, and should also be able to take
the stand on his own behalf in such a level-head way that the assistant
district attorney couldn't get him rattled on cross-examination."
"Well, my advice to these test-case fellers, Abe," Morris concluded, "is
this: Be patriotic now. Don't wait till you're indicted."