got sense enough to make a speech can be such a fool as to believe in
dividing up because can’t they see that if you was to do it it wouldnt
be a week before the smart ones like you and me would have it all
again?”
“Well,” he says, “the fact is that a lot of these Reds dont want to
divide up their idea is just the opposite they want to concentrate the
ownership and have the government run things.”
“Yes,” I says, “and wouldnt that be great?” I says. “Imagine the Elite
Beauty Parlors being run by the government and all us girls setting
with our feet up on the top of the tables instead of doing our work!”
“Well,” says he, “as a matter of fact wouldnt there be a lot of
customers come in to see that sight?”
But the subject is too serious for kidding so I says, “How much liberty
would us girls have left, if we all had to be government help? And who
would give us our jobs would we have to go to some politician from
North Carolina that has got the Spokesman’s ear? No, Mr. Edgerton, the
prosperity of this country is based on individual effort and freedom
of everybody to make his own way in the world. Just compare our wealth
with what they have got over in them bureaucratic and Socialistic lands
overseas.”
Mom, that was an awful mouthful, but I had learned it word for word out
of Pop’s letter, I got it off without a slip and Mr. Edgerton was very
much impressed he stopped joking and sat and thought it over and he
says, “Yes, Miss Riggs, I am inclined to think that is sound doctrine
and a good illustration. I think that will serve admirably for the talk
which the Spokesman is to give to the reporters in the morning. They
have asked Him several embarrassing questions about the big banker in
his cabinet who has been let off a lot of his income taxes, and these
ideas of yours I am sure He will consider much more suitable for public
discussion. I think I had better run over and see Him at once and make
the suggestion.”
So then we gets up to go and then oh Mom a most dreadful embarrassing
thing happens. Mr. Edgerton goes for to pay the bill for our dinner
and the coffee and the other things in coffee cups that we has had
and he takes out his leather wallet and finds that the least he has
is a hundred dollar bill. He takes it out and gee it most burns my
eyesight it is more money than I ever seen all at once in my whole life
before--just a little bit more than I earn in a month only I get it
by the week and it has started to go before it comes. Well the waiter
looks at it and says somethink about not thinking they’d have change
for that at the desk and Mr. Edgerton says to me, “Do you happen to
have a smaller bill with you Miss Riggs?”
And gee there I am knowing that I have got just exactly seventeen cents
in my purse! So I have to think quick and I says that I dont think I
have anything smaller than a ten-spot myself. And then the boob waiter
busts in and says they wont have no trouble in changing that at the
desk! So then I have to open my purse and play the game of being very
much surprised that I have left my ten-spot at home and of course I
am turned red all the way down into my blouse because how will Mr.
Edgerton have any respect for my opinions about world finance if he
knows that I have to go round the day before payday with only a few
coppers to buy my lunch with?
Your worried
MAME.
LETTER VI
IN WHICH I PUT ON THE GLAD RAGS
DEAR MOM:
Well I am glad the family finds my letters interesting these things
is sure different from anything that ever happened to me before and I
guess to any girl from Camden New Jersey.
Well, I am having a funny time right now in the Elite Beauty Parlors.
The girls is just ate up with curiosity they know I have got some big
fellow on my string somebody seen me with him somewhere and they cant
make out why I wont tell. They say I’m a boob to think I can hide him
they will sure track him down but I just laugh at them. There is an
extension phone in Madame Lafferty’s private office and whenever I am
asked to the phone she is always listening in but all she hears is that
a gentleman named Mr. Brown says for me to meet him at the usual place
and that dont tell her much. Sometimes I write these little notes to
you in between customers, and of course that intreegs the girls a lot
too and Ada Huggins--her that has changed her name to Adaire the silly
fool--she says, “What is it Mame are you writing your mamewars?” That
is supposed to be smart but it aint so very.
Well just now the phone rung and it was Mr. Edgerton, and he asked me
if I could get off at five this afternoon and meet him and of course
that wasnt easy because it is our busiest hour but he said it was a
very urgent matter so I said I would try my best to be there. And
then I went to ask the Madame and gee she was sour she says, “What is
this that I am running a beauty parlor or a date ranch?” You see she
pretends the girls aint supposed to meet the customers outside but gee
what a howl there would be if I was to ask for enough wages to buy my
own dinners! And we all know she goes out herself and meets a gent with
a glass in one eye and his hair plastered over his bald head, he calls
himself Count Skrimsky but I’m telling you he’s no count in any way you
mean it. Well I says she can dock my pay or I’ll stay two hours of my
afternoon off and then she tries to find out who is the gentleman and
I tell her it is a government matter and I have been forbid to say and
you can imagine how much pleased that makes her!
* * * * *
P. S. Oh Mom I have just had the most wonderful adventure that ever
happened to a girl. Mr. Edgerton knew just what he had in mind when he
got me to meet him at five o’clock it was to get to some store before
it shut up! Oh Mom he must of saw that my purse was empty the last time
we went out and he must of got sorry about it. Anyhow we strolled down
the street and there was the Bon Ton Store with all the lovely things
in the windows and he kind of led me over to look and he says, “They
make lots of pretty things now-a-days dont they.” And I says, “Yes,
they do,” but kind of feeble because I wouldnt have him think I was
thinking I would ever like to own such things. But he says, “Let’s us
go in and have a look at them.”
So we went in and he went to the suit department and he says to the
clerk, “My daughter finds the winters in Washington more severe than
she expected and she wants to get something nice and warm,” he says,
just like that and gee I nearly faints at the nerve of him. But of
course I have got to go through with it so I says, “Oh, no, Papa, not
now!” but he says, “Yes, right now, I insist.”
So the girl takes one look at him and starts to bringing out the
expensive things and I gasps, “Oh, that will cost too much!” But he
says, “You let me tend to this daughter,” and so of course all I can
do is to stand there. And so he gets me a tailored suit brown like I
had on but oh what a difference there can be in clothes! It is soft and
fuzzy and warm like it was an overcoat and yet it is lighter than my
old suit!
And then he says, “We shall have to have a hat and things to match
this suit,” and then I starts to argue that my old hat will do but he
says it wont and before I get through he takes me round to the shoe
department and the glove counter--it is after the hours and the place
is closed and the clerks is tired and looking cross but he cheers them
up with a tip and so we finish the rounds. And I keep them all on and
when I am going out you would not know it is the same girl that come
in. The clerk wants to know where they shall send the old things and
I don’t dare to give the address because you see it had ought to be
the name of some swell hotel so I says I am moving and I will send for
them; and of course I will send myself tomorrow.
Well, Mom, I am so rattled I can hardly talk and I says, “Mr. Edgerton,
this aint right I hadnt ought to of let you do it.” But he says real
serious that the ideas I have give him is worth what he has paid and
there wasnt no other way he could of got them. “But I didnt expect to
be paid for them,” I says and he says, “Well I am paid for them myself
and why should you work for nothing?” he says. “I have got to keep
close to the great heart of the plain people,” he says, “and to know
how they feel and talk and how else am I to do it? The only thing you
got to be sure is that getting fixed up swell dont spoil you so that
you forget how the plain people feel.”
But I says, “No you dont need to worry about that,” I says, “because I
got my mother and father and my kid brothers and sisters back in the
gas-house district of Camden New Jersey and how could I forget how they
feel?”
“Well then,” says he, “it’s all right and you can go on telling me and
I will tell it to the Spokesman and He will tell it to the newspaper
reporters and they will tell it to the papers and the papers will tell
it to the gas house district of Camden New Jersey.”
“But,” says I, “What will the missus think about it your spending so
much money on a manicure girl?”
“She aint going to know about it,” he says. “I have paid cash and I
dont suppose you will tell her.”
“Trust me!” I says. “But some of your friends--”
“If my friends was to see me with you now it would be easier for me
to get away with it I could say you was the daughter of some famous
diplomat or of a senator at the very least.” And of course that made me
feel happy and just then we come to a movie parlor and he says, “We
have got to learn how to wear our good clothes,” he says, “so let’s go
in and see the latest thing in Hollywood manners.”
So in we go and there is a picture oh Mom the loveliest story about a
poor miners’ daughter in the hills that is kidnapped by a moonshiner
that is an old-fashioned name for a boot-legger and she is rescued by
the handsome young son of the mine-owner that happens to be visiting
the mine and he comes to love her in the end and they get married in
the loveliest palace all white with sunshine and roses. And if I had of
saw that yesterday I would of said it was too good to be true but now
it all seemed like it was me and I felt such thrills running over me
and I felt so warm and I whispered to Mr. Edgerton to thank him several
times and I felt just like he really was my father like he said.
But then I got scared because of course he aint my father but he’s a
man that aint happy with his wife and I am a girl that is promised to
be married some day a long ways off to a poor but honest shipping-clerk
in Camden New Jersey. And so I have got to keep telling myself that
my job with Mr. Edgerton is to educate him so that he can educate the
Spokesman that is the greatest Man in the whole world and has the job
of educating the greatest people in the whole world.
But oh Mom it is hard to be a girl and to be young and to love pretty
things and never to be able to have none unless you go without your
lunch every day for a month or two. I go up to that little box of a
room that I live in, and fry myself a frankfurter or some hamburger
on a tiny oil stove and gee I get sorry for myself and I get sorry
for poor Walter that thinks I am going to marry him some day and I am
of course but oh Mom us plain people do have to pay a lot for what we
learn!
Well we went into a restaurant and as soon as Mr Edgerton had ordered
some dinner I says real determined, “We have got to get down to
business now because I will not feel happy unless I give you some real
good ideas to pay for all this money you have spent.” So he says that
the Spokesman likes my ideas about the Reds and how to hold them down,
but He thinks that just now it would be better not to hammer them too
hard because this country has got a lot of machinery and things that it
has got to sell and them Bolshivikis has got a lot of gold and crown
jewels that they want to exchange for ten thousand tractors that is
made by a friend of the Spokesman that helped him a lot to get elected.
“Gee,” I says, “I thought them Roossian fellers had got all them gold
and jewels by stealing them!”
And Mr. Edgerton says that is so and perhaps we hadnt ought to take it
but the trouble is if we dont sell the tractors the tractor factory
will have to shut down and that will leave a lot of good honest
American working people to starve in the middle of the winter. “And so
you see,” says he, “how complicated these here international affairs
is.”
And I says, “My God I hardly know how to think my way around in such
a mix-up. That is almost worse than the problem about getting the
debts paid,” I says, “for I was going to say that to make up with them
Bolshivikis would be like shaking hands with murder.” And Mr. Edgerton
says, “Yes, it was Lord George that said that a few years ago over in
England.” And gee Mom you have sure got to keep Pop from sending me old
ones else I’ll have to stop using his ideas and think them all up for
myself.
Well I done the best I could in a hurry. He said the Spokesman was very
unhappy because of the way the prohibitionists was fussing because the
boot-leggers wasnt stopped the dries didnt like it because the job of
enforcing the law was left to that banker that is in the cabinet--I
never can remember his name but I keep thinking of Cantelope though
that dont sound right. Well anyhow this Mr. Cantelope is the biggest
manufacturer of whiskey in the country and the prohibitionists dont
seem to think that he is the best one to catch the bootleggers and I
says, “Well, you have heard the old saying about setting a thief to
catch a thief.” And Mr. Edgerton thought that was clever but he didnt
think it was just the way the Spokesman would want to defend His friend
the great banker in the cabinet.
And so there it was Mom I couldnt think of nothing else so I have
fell down complete and Mr. Edgerton will think that getting these
new clothes has made me stop being able to feel with the plain
people. So please ask Pop to see if he can think of any reason why
a great whisky-maker should be hired by the government to stop the
whisky-business, and if he can, to write it to me quick. But please
dont let him send nothing that he has read in the papers about it
because Mr. Edgerton is sure to say that is old stuff.
* * * * *
P. S. Again I been thinking it over and this idea has hit me that maybe
Pop aint really got any ideas at all except what he gets out of the
papers and if so I have got to do this job all alone. I am going to
talk it over with the girls in the beauty parlor because I am sure they
dont read nothing in the papers except the divorces and the crimes and
the beauty hints the same as what I done before I was invited to help
the Spokesman with his speeches.
Your anxious
MAME.
LETTER VII
IN WHICH I AM PAID COMPLIMENTS
DEAR MOM:
You should of been in the Elite Beauty Parlors this a. m. to see what
happened when I walked in with my new costume. I have got to wear it
to work you see because I never know when Mr. Edgerton will give me a
ring on the phone. You would of thought the girls had never seen no
real swell clothes in their lives before they just let out one yell,
and then of course they wanted the whole story when and where and how
and especially how much. And when I wouldnt tell them I was a cat and
Hattie Schoenstein--she has had a mad on me ever since I told her that
the French way of her name would be Hotaire--well she says, “How much
did you pay the gentleman for that?”
I says, “I paid him some valuable ideas,” and of course they all
thought that was the funniest joke they ever heard for how could the
poor sillies imagine that I was being consulted about what the greatest
Man in the whole world was to say twiced a week to the newspaper
reporters of the whole world? If I had of told them that they would of
busted with laughing.
But say Mom it is sure wonderful to be dressed right up to the minute
you may say what you please but there aint any feeling like it. Already
today three gentlemen have asked me will I go out to dinner with them
and I have had to tell them that I have a steady which is the easiest
way of getting out of it as I have to be here whenever Mr. Edgerton
needs me.
Well I have got the afternoon paper, and I see the Spokesman has not
said what I advised Him to say about the Reds. What He did say was so
much wiser I could never of thought of it myself and it made me have a
great reverence for Him. He says that the Roossians should be allowed
to buy our tractors because we have got to preserve freedom of trade
because that is the great principle upon which American prosperity is
based. And of course I can see that for if I had of went into that Bon
Ton Store with Mr. Edgerton and the clerk had of told me that they
wouldnt sell me no suit because maybe they didnt like the looks of me
or something why where would I of been then? And so the Spokesman said
we would not stop the people that come over here from Roossia to buy
things but only them that had come to teach us ideas that was dangerous.
I will tell you something funny that will show you what a wonderful
thing it is that the Spokesman is doing in educating all the people
in ideas that is safe. I got some of the girls to talking about
international affairs this morning because you see I want to find out
what it is that the plain people think so that I can tell Mr. Edgerton
and he can tell the Spokesman. I asked them about this business about
letting the Roossians come over here to buy things and they all got mad
and they says no we don’t want none of them dirty Bolshivikis over here
they has went and nationalized all the women in Roossia and we dont
want none of that in America.
“Then you dont believe in freedom of trade?” I says and Florabelle
McGinnis she flares up, “I believe in every girl having a right to
choose her own feller,” she says, “and if that aint freedom of trade
then what is?”
Well when I come home from lunch I had the paper with that interview
that the Spokesman had give and I hands it to Florabelle and I says,
“See here, the Spokesman has been talking about what you said.” And so
she read it and a little later I hears her talking with Ada Huggins and
she says, “Well if them Roossians has got the money and its good money
why let them come in I say and buy what they want because after all
freedom of trade is the great principle upon which American prosperity
is based.” Just like that she said it Mom as if it was her own idea
but she had just took it up because she seen it in the paper the poor
silly. But you can see how very important it is that I should study
these questions and get them right so that I can know what to tell Mr.
Edgerton to tell the Spokesman to tell the Floradumbelles.
Another idea was in that interview and a very important and wise idea
as I can see. The Spokesman says there is another great principle upon
which American prosperity is based and that is freedom of opinion;
everybody has got the right to say what they think and so we will have
a chance to find out what ideas is the best. I read that to some of
the girls so as to see what they would say and Hotaire--she is always
looking to say something different from me, so as to put me into a
hole--she says, “Well, if he thinks that, why is he scared to let them
Roossians come in and say their ideas?”
And did you ever hear anything so silly as that letting them
Bolshivikis come in and shoot off their faces! “Well but why not?” she
says persistent like.
I says, “Why you poor simp dont you know them fellers brings in a lot
of money to try to tear down our government?”
“Well,” she says, “and can they do it?”
And I says, “No of course they cant do it.”
And then says she, “Then why do we have to be so scared of them?”
“Scared?” I says. “Who’s talking about being scared?”
“Well then,” she keeps on, “why not let them shoot their faces off?”
“But you simp,” I says, “them fellers would come in here and buy
printing presses and stir up our foreign labor.”
And she says, “Well if their money is good to buy tractors why shouldnt
it be good to buy presses?”
And so I gets hot under the collar and I says, “You talk like you was
one of them Bolshivikis yourself,” I says, “and you had ought to be
shut up and not allowed to talk no such rotten ideas.”
“Oh so that’s all you believe in free speech!” she says.
And just then the Madame comes along and she sees we are having a row
and she gives a “Shush!” and looks a few daggers at us as she goes to
welcome a customer. And that is the way it goes with we girls we are
just supposed to sit here and shine people’s fingers and never open
our mouths at all. We have got no more rights than if we was so many
polishing machines and I tell you Mom I sometimes think it is more than
I can stand. Some day when the Madame gets off one of her shushes at me
I’m going to bust loose and tell her what I think of her and her ideas
that she can dictate to free Americans the way we talk and the way we
dress and the way we do our hair.
If that ever happens I’m telling you that Lafferty lady will get the
jolt of her sweet life because I have been talking to the other girls
and they all feel like I do and I’ll bet if I was to give a little
time to it I could get them all to stand together and win some rights
for ourselves. Gee Mom if I could only get a few dollars ahead some
time so that I could have a little nerve! But it’s the same with all
of we girls our last nickle is gone before the end of the week. We had
ought to have somebody to stake us so that we could afford to strike
and not be starved into giving up! But of course there aint anybody
interested in helping poor working girls to get their rights.
* * * * *
P. S. Well I have just come back from having dinner with Mr. Edgerton.
We went to a pretty swell place because he says I am looking so nice
now that no other sort of place would do for me. And he says I dont
never need to worry about what it costs because my ideas is worth it
to him he has never saw the Spokesman so pleased as with the ideas I
have give to Him lately; he says the Spokesman almost smiled He was so
pleased and once He made a remark that He didnt have to make and that
is something that does not happen once in a month.
Of course I wanted to know so I says, “What was the remark?”
And he says, “Why, he says, ‘I went to church yesterday.’” And Mr.
Edgerton of course wanted to be polite so he says, “Who preached?” And
the Spokesman says, “Dr. Wringum.” And Mr. Edgerton says, “Was it a
good sermon?” And the Spokesman says, “Yes.” And Mr. Edgerton says,
“What did he preach about?” And the Spokesman says, “Sin.” And Mr.
Edgerton says, “What did he say about it?” And the Spokesman says, “He
didnt approve of it.” And Mr. Edgerton says to me, “That was the end of
the conversation.”
Mr. Edgerton laughed like he thought there was something funny about
that but I didnt see nothing funny and I says, “Well, but that is right
ain’t it? You wouldnt of expected a preacher would of approved of sin?”
And then Mr. Edgerton looks at me like he was studying my face and he
says, “It is wonderful how exactly your mind is like the Spokesman’s.”
And of course that was a tremendous compliment and I felt all flustered
and says, “Just how is that?” and he says, “You have a serious mind,”
he says. “You have never wasted your time on foolishness.”
“No,” I says, “that aint quite so but when it comes to serious things
like teaching the whole American people about sin,” I says, “nobody
would want to make a joke about that.”
And he says, “There is some evil people that might, but you wouldn’t,
and that is why you understand the mind of the Spokesman and He almost
always likes your ideas when I tell them to Him.” So Mom you can
imagine how near to Heaven I felt.
Well then we talked about what the Spokesman had said about freedom of
trade and of speech and Mr. Edgerton says that one of them Bolshiviki
fellers has just sent the Spokesman a telegram saying that since He
has come to believe in free speech wont He please let out some of the
fellers that is in jail for practicing it. So there it is you see just
like I said to Hotaire, how dangerous them fellers is. I says something
that Pop had wrote me, “Liberty dont mean license.” But Mr. Edgerton
says that is an old one too it seems that all Pop’s ideas is old.
So I says right out of my own ideas I says, “Well I’ll say this that
if a government aint got the right to protect itself, then what is it
for?” And Mr. Edgerton went up into the air again and he says that
is one of the proofs that I have got a mind just like the Spokesman,
I would sure see that in His answer to the Bolshiviki feller only of
course He wont answer the feller.