"I seen Max Feinrubin in the Subway this morning," Abe Potash said to
his partner, Morris Perlmutter. "He broke two fingers on his left hand
last week."
"Why don't he let the shipping-clerk do up the packing-cases?" Morris
commented.
"He didn't break his hand on no packing-case," Abe said.
"Well, what _did_ he break it on, then?" Morris asked.
"The shipping-clerk," Abe replied, "which the feller said that this war
is a war over property, and every nation that is in it is just as bad as
Germany, so Feinrubin asked him did he claim that the United States was
just as bad as Germany and he said 'Yes,' and afterward he said that
Feinrubin would hear from him later through a lawyer."
"And that is how Feinrubin broke his two fingers," Morris said.
"Well, as a matter of fact, up to that point Feinrubin had only broke
one finger, Mawruss," Abe said, "but just before the shipping-clerk went
out of the door he said that President Wilson was an enemy to Society,
so Feinrubin broke the other finger."
"Serves Feinrubin right," Morris said. "There he was in his own
shipping-room with hammers and screw-drivers laying around, and he has
to break his fingers yet."
"You probably would've done the same thing," Abe retorted, "if we would
got for a shipping-clerk a Socialist who puts up such arguments."
"Well, I don't know," Morris said. "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."
"But the feller had no business to tell Feinrubin that President Wilson
was an enemy to Society," Abe protested.
"Say!" Morris exclaimed. "For that matter I am an enemy to Society,
too."
"Never mind," Abe declared. "Lots of Society fellers which never done a
day's work in their lives has gone down to Washington to give the
country the benefit of their experience, Mawruss, and it's surprising
how many Society ladies is also turning right in and giving up their
time to the Red Cross and so forth."
"Sure, I know," Morris said. "But there is lots of them which don't,
Abe, and you take it on a cold Sunday in February when the
superintendent of the apartment-house where you live is keeping the
temperature of your flat below sixty-eight degrees by not letting it get
up to fifty, y'understand, and it would make a Bolshevik out of the
president of a first national bank to see Mrs. J. Van Rensselaer-This
and Mrs. H. Twombley-The Other on the front page of the illustrated
Sunday supplement, photographed at Pallum Beach on Lincoln's Birthday in
practically a pair of stockings apiece, y'understand, which if them
people want to wear clothes in Florida that if any one wore them around
New York if they didn't get arrested they would anyhow get pneumonia,
y'understand, that's _their_ business, Abe, but what I don't understand
is, why should they want to advertise it?"
"Well, what is the use of being in Society if you couldn't rub it in on
people who ain't?" Abe asked.
"But this is a democracy, Abe," 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 make a whole lot of
people feel sore which wants to get into Society, but couldn't."
"And such people calls themselves Americans?" 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."
"Of course, Abe, you may be right," Morris said, "but it seems to me I
read it somewheres how a whole lot of people which is now in Society
qualified by settling in Pittsburg along about the time Judge Gary first
met Andrew Carnegie."
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But millionaires can get into Society on a
cash basis, _nunc pro tunc_, as of May first, sixteen twenty, as the
lawyers say, Mawruss, which if a lady is trying to butt into Society on
the grounds that her great-great-grandfather, Hyman de Peyster van
Rensselaer, _olav hasholom_, came over on the _Mayflower_ and bought all
the land on which the town of Hockbridge, Mass., now stands from the
Indians in sixteen sixty-six for two hundred dollars, y'understand, it
wouldn't do her chances a bit of harm if her husband came over on the
White Star Line, third class, just so long as he bought U.S. Steel when
it was down to thirty and a quarter in nineteen five and held on to it
till it touched one hundred and twenty, y'understand."
"Then what used to was the 'four hundred' must have added a whole lot of
ciphers to it in the last few years, Abe," Morris commented.
"Ciphers is right," Abe said. "But that four-hundred figure is a thing
of the past along with the population of Detroit before the invention of
the automobile, Mawruss, and I guess, nowadays, Society must be running
the Knights of Pythias and the Royal Arcanum pretty close on the size of
its membership, Mawruss."
"For my part, Abe," Morris said, "I would just as lieve join either of
them societies in preference to Society. Take, for instance, these here
Vanderbilts which they have been in Society for years already, and what
benefit do they get from it? It isn't like as if one of them would be in
the wholesale clothing business, for instance, and could get a friend to
use his influence with a retailer by saying: 'Mr. Goldman, this is my
friend, Mr. Vanderbilt. Him and me was in Society for years, already,
and anything in his line you could use would be a personal favor to me,'
because any connection with the clothing business, wholesale or retail,
bars you out of Society unless the Statue of Limitations has run against
it for at least four generations."
"Still, it's a big help to be in Society for certain businesses,
Mawruss," Abe said. "Take it in our line, Mawruss, and a feller which
was in Society could make a fortune duplicating for the popular-price
trade an expensive line of garments such as you would be apt to see at
an affair which was run off by somebody 'way up in Society."
"That ain't a bad idee, neither, Abe," Morris said; "and then, Abe,
instead of people asking what is the big idee when they see a picture of
Mrs. Yosel van Rensselaer Lydig in the illustrated Sunday supplement
they could read on it, 'Our Leader--the Mrs. Yosel van Rensselaer Lydig
gown; regular sizes, nine fifty; stouts, ten dollars,' which there is no
use letting all that good publicity going to waste, Abe, so if a
garment-manufacturer couldn't utilize it, a cigar wholesaler could vary
his line of cigars called after actresses by naming one of them 'The
Mrs. Yosel van Rensselaer Lydig, a mild and aromatic three-for-a-quarter
smoke for five cents.'"
"I'm afraid Society people wouldn't be willing to stand for such a thing
even in war-times, Mawruss," Abe said.
"Well, I only make the suggestion, Abe, because some states has already
passed laws compelling everybody to find a job for the duration of the
war, y'understand," Morris said, "and if the courts should hold that
sitting on the sand at Pallum Beach and having a photograph taken ain't
holding a job within the meaning of the statue in such cases made and
provided, Abe, maybe the addition of a little advertising matter to the
picture would be enough to keep some Society lady out of jail on the
ground that she is working as a model for advertising pictures,
y'understand, although, for my part, Abe, I am willing to see anybody
who tries to get publicity as a Society person go to jail whether they
work or not."
"Why so?" Abe asked.
"Because such publicity is only the start, Abe," Morris said. "It is the
first stages of what is the trouble in Germany to-day yet. For years
already the Society fellers of Germany, headed by the chief Society
feller of Germany, the Kaiser, has been getting their pictures into the
paper dressed in soldiers' uniforms till it got to be firmly fixed in
the minds of people which wasn't Society fellers that the latest
up-to-the-minute idee was wearing a soldier's uniform. Also, Abe, along
with such publicity goes the idee that anything Society fellers does is
O.K., and it is this just-watch-our-smoke advice of the German Society
fellers to the poor German people, _nebich_, which has changed the motto
of Germany from '_Hei-lie! Hei-lio! Hei-lie! Hei-lio! Bei uns, geht's
immer so!_' to '_Deutschland, Deutschland ueber Alles_,' and that is
what brought on the war, Abe."
"You mean to say that when Mrs. Mosha van Rensselaer has her picture
taken at Pallum Beach the intention is the same as when the Kaiser used
to got printed a photograph of himself as colonel of the One Hundred and
First Pomeranian Regiment."
"Toy Pomeranian or regular size, Abe," Morris said, "it don't make no
difference, the intention in both cases was to get publicity for the
fact that the sitter was a leader of Society, Abe, and so far as the
Kaiser was concerned, he soon got the idee that just as the Kaiser was
the leader of Society of Germans, y'understand, so Germany was the
leader of the Society of Nations, and therefore that Germany should have
the biggest army, the biggest navy, the biggest colonies, and the
biggest territory."
"And she's going to get the biggest licking, Mawruss," Abe interrupted.
"She's got it coming to her," Morris said, "and then when we've showed
Germany that she ain't such an international Society leader like she
thought she was, y'understand, the Germans which was rank outsiders in
Germany Society is going to look up a lot of old illustrated Sunday
supplements, and when the trial comes off before the Berlin County Court
of General Sessions the district attorney is going to offer in evidence
that well-known picture of the Kaiser and his six sons, and, without
leaving the box, the jury will find a verdict of guilty of being German
Society leaders in the first degree. Also, Abe, pictures will turn up of
one of the Kaiser's hunting parties, and only the people which couldn't
be identified on account of being at the edge of the photograph will
escape."
"But you don't think anything like that would happen to our Society
fellers, Mawruss?" Abe said.
"I think they're perfectly safe for the next hundred years or so, Abe,"
Morris said, "but, just the same, they should take example by the
Society leaders over in Russland, and learn to drink coffee from the
saucer and eat with the knife while there is still time."