Part 7

"_Gott soll huten!_" Morris cried. "People should give all they could to the Red Cross and the government also, but while they are doing it, Abe, it ain't no more necessary that they should encourage a crooked advertising agent as that they should ruin a hard-working feller in the show business. Am I right or wrong?"

XII

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS HOW TO PUT THE SPURT IN THE EXPERT

"When does the Shipping Commission expect to begin shipments on those ships?" Abe Potash asked, as he laid down the morning paper a few days after Thanksgiving.

"I don't know," Morris Perlmutter replied. "The way the newspapers was talking last April, Abe, it looked like by the first of September our production would be so far ahead of our orders for ships that President Wilson would have to organize a special department to handle the cancellations, y'understand, but from what I could see now, Abe, by next spring the nearest them Shipping Commission fellers will have come to deliveries on ships is that this here Hurley will be getting writer's cramp from signing letters to the attorneys for the people which ordered ships that in reply to your favor of the tenth inst. would say that we expect to ship the ships not later than July first at the latest, and oblige."

"But I thought that even before we went to war with Germany, Mawruss, a couple of inventors made it an invention of a ship which could be built of yellow pine in ninety days net."

"Sure, I know," Morris said. "But the Shipping Commission couldn't make up their minds whether them yellow-pine ships would be any good even after they _were_ built, on account some professional experts claimed that yellow pine shrinks in water to the extent of .00031416 milliegrams to the kilowatt-hour, or .000000001 per cent., and other professional experts said, '_Yow_ .00031416 milliegrams!' and that .00000031416 would be big already, and that also what them first experts didn't know from the shrinkage of yellow pine, understand me."

"Well, why didn't the Shipping Commission build a sample ship from yellow pine?" Abe suggested. "It's already nine months since the war started, and by this time such a ship could have been in the water long enough for them Shipping Commission fellers to judge which experts was right."

"And suppose she did shrink a little," Morris said, "she could have been anyhow disposed of '_as is_' to somebody who didn't take it so particular to the fraction of an inch how much yellow pine he gets in a yellow-pine ship."

"I give you right, Mawruss," Abe agreed, "but then, you see, an idee like that would never occur to a professional expert, Mawruss, because it has the one big objection that it might prove the other experts was right when they didn't agree with him, which that is the trouble with professional experts. The important thing to them ain't so much the articles on which they experts, as what big experts they are on such articles.

"Take this here Lewis machine-gun, Mawruss," Abe continued, "and when Colonel Lewis puts it up to the army experts, y'understand, naturally them experts says, 'Well, if we are such big experts on machine-guns, we should ought to know a whole lot more about machine-guns as Colonel Lewis, and what does that _Schlemiel_ know about machine-guns, _anyway_?' so they sent Colonel Lewis a notice that they would not be responsible for goods left over thirty days, and the consequence was Colonel Lewis sold his machine-gun to the English army."

"And he didn't have to be such a cracker-jack high-grade A-number-one salesman to do that, neither," Morris commented, "because if his only talking point to the English experts was that the American experts had turned down his gun, y'understand, the English experts would give him a big order without even asking him to unpack his samples."

"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But if Colonel Lewis would of had the interests of America at heart, Mawruss, he should ought to have offered his machine-gun to the English experts first, understand me, and after he had got out of the observation ward, which the English experts would just naturally send him to as a dangerous American crank with a foolish idea for a machine-gun, y'understand, the American experts would have taken his entire output at his own terms."

"After all, you can't kick about such mistakes being made, because that's the trouble about being a new beginner in any business," Morris said. "It don't make no difference whether it would be war or pants, Abe, you start out with one big liability, and that is the advice proposition. Twice as many new beginners goes under from accepting what they thought was good advice as from accepting what they thought was good accounts, Abe, and them fellers on the Shipping Commission deserves a great deal of credit that they already made such fine progress. You can just imagine what this here Hurley which he used to was in the railroad business must be up against from his friends which has been in the ship-building business for years already. The chance is that every time Mr. Hurley goes out on the street one of them old ship-building friends comes up to him with that good-advice expression on his face and says: '_Nu_, Hurley. How are they coming?' which it don't make a bit of difference to such a feller whether Mr. Hurley would say, '_So, so_,' '_Pretty good_,' or '_Rotten_,' y'understand, he might just as well save his breath, on account the good-advice feller is going to get it off his chest, anyhow.

"'You're lucky at that,' the good-advice feller says, 'because I just met your assistant designer, Jake Rashkin, and he tells me you are getting out a line of whalebacks in pastel shades.'

"'Well, why not?' Hurley says.

"'Why not!' the friend exclaims. 'You mean to tell me that you don't know even that much about the ship-building business, that you would actually go to work and make up for the fall trade a line of whalebacks in pastel shades? Honestly, Hurley, I must say I am surprised at you.' And for the next twenty minutes he gives Hurley the names and dates of six voluntary bankrupts, all of whom started in the ship-building business by making up a line of whalebacks in pastel shades, together with the details of just what them fellers is doing for a living to-day from selling cigars on commission downwards.

"Naturally, Hurley hustles right back to the shop and tells the foreman that if they 'ain't already started on that last batch of whalebacks in pastel shades, not to mind, and he spends the rest of the afternoon getting his operators busy on a couple of hundred oil-burning boats in solid colors, like reds, greens, and blues. The consequence is that the next day at lunch another old friend comes up to him, which used to was in the ship-building business when the record from New York to Liverpool was nineteen days ten hours and forty-five minutes, y'understand, and says: '_Nu_, Hurley. How is the busy little ship-builder to-day?'

"'Pretty good,' Hurley says. 'I'm just getting to work on a big line of oil-burners in solid colors, like reds, greens, and blues.'

"'No!' the old ship-builder says.

"'Sure!' Hurley tells him, and after they have said 'No!' and 'Sure!' a couple of dozen times it appears that if a new beginner in the ship-building business lays in a stock of plain-colored oil-burning boats he might just so well kiss himself good-by with his ship-building business and be done with it. Also it seems that the only line of goods for a new beginner in the ship-building business to specialize in is whalebacks in pastel shades, Abe, and that's the way it goes."

"At that we're a whole lot better off as England was when she started in as a new beginner in the war business," Abe commented. "Mr. Hurley was, anyhow, in the railroad business when he took over the ship-building job, and we've got other men which were high-grade dry-goods and hardware men before they threw up their business to help the government branch out into the war business, y'understand, but if we would got to depend on somebody who was trying to run a shipyard with the experience he had got from being national lawn-tennis champion for the years nineteen hundred to nineteen sixteen inclusive, or if President Wilson had the idee that for a man to be the right man in the right place, y'understand, he should ought to have the gumption and business ability which a feller naturally picks up in the course of being an earl or a duke, understand me, the best we could hope for would be a fleet of six rebuilt tugboats by the fall of nineteen fifty."

"It wasn't England's fault that she made such a mistake, Abe," Morris said. "Up to the time Germany started this war it used to was considered that if nations did got to go to war, y'understand, the best way to go about it was to put it in charge of a good sport like a tennis champion would naturally have to be, and as for the earls and the dukes, the theory on which them fellers fooled away their time was that they was just resting up between wars, Abe, because they was, anyhow, gentlemen, and it was England's idea that all a soldier had to be was a gentleman. But nowadays that's already a thing of the past. The way Germany fixed things with her long-distance cannons, her liquid fire, gas, and Zeppelins, a soldier don't have to be so much of a gentleman as an inventor, a chemist, an engineer, and a general all-around hustler."

"In fact, Mawruss," Abe said, "a German soldier don't need to be a gentleman at all, because when it comes to stealing chateau furniture, destroying cathedrals, burning houses, and chopping down fruit-trees, any experience as a gentleman wouldn't be much of a help to a German soldier."

"That's what I am telling you, Abe," Morris declared. "Germany has made war a business, y'understand, and she figures that a gentleman in the war business is like a gentleman in the pants business. He ain't going to make any more or better pants by being a gentleman, y'understand, and if we are going to win this war, Abe, we should ought to stop beefing about German soldiers not being gentlemen, and take into consideration the fact that while German engineers, chemists, inventors, and submarine-builders may not know whether you play lawn tennis with a cue, mallet, or a full deck of fifty-two cards including the joker, Abe, you can bet your life that they know an awful lot about engineering, chemistry, and building submarines, and they don't need no so-called experts to help them, neither."

"And you can also bet your life, Mawruss, that no German would have turned down Colonel Lewis's machine-guns," Abe said, "the way them experts of ours did."

"Well, what is an expert to do, Abe?" Morris asked. "If he goes to work and recommends the government to give an inventor an order for his invention, he's taking a big chance that the invention wouldn't work, and you know as well as I do, Abe, most American experts play in terrible hard luck. You take these here military experts which gives expert opinions in the newspapers about what is going to happen next on the Balkan front, y'understand, and a feller could make quite a reputation as a military expert by simply coppering their predictions."

"Well, them military experts which writes in the newspapers ain't really experts at all, Mawruss," Abe said. "They're just crickets, like them musical crickets which knows everything there is to know about, we would say, for example, playing on the fiddle excepting how to play on the fiddle."

"_Aber_ what is the difference between a professional expert and a professional cricket, _anyway_?" Morris asked.

"A professional expert is a feller which thinks he knows all about a business because he tried for years and he never could make a success of it," Abe replied, "whereas a professional cricket is a feller which thinks he knows all about a business because he tried for years and he could never even break into it."

"And how could you expect to get from people like that an opinion which ain't on the bias?" Morris concluded.

XIII

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON BEING AN OPTICIAN AND LOOKING ON THE BRIGHT SIDE

"Yes, Mawruss," Abe Potash said as he laid down the morning paper after glancing over the alarming head-lines, "a feller which has got stomach trouble or the toothache nowadays is playing in luck, because when you've got stomach trouble you couldn't think about nothing else, and what is a little thing like stomach trouble to worry over with all the _tzuris_ which is happening in the world nowadays?"

"Well, then _have_ stomach trouble," Morris Perlmutter advised.

"What do you mean--_have_ stomach trouble?" Abe said. "A man couldn't get stomach trouble the same way he could get drunk, Mawruss. It is something which is just so much beyond your control as red hair or a good tenor voice."

"Sure, I know," Morris agreed. "But what is happening in Russia and Italy is also beyond your control, Abe, so if them Bolsheviki is getting on your nerves, and you hate to pick up the paper for fear of finding that the Germans would have captured Venice, understand me, console yourself with the idee that there's a lot of brainy fellers in this country which is doing all they know how to handle the situation over in the old country, and then if you want something near at home to worry about like stomach trouble, y'understand, there's plenty of misfortunate people in orphan asylums and hospitals right here in New York City which will be very glad to have you worry over them in a practical way out of what you've got left when you're through paying income and excise profit taxes, Abe."

"Maybe there is some people which would get so upset over having to give twenty dollars or so to an orphan asylum or a hospital, Mawruss, that for the time being they could forget how General Crozier 'ain't ordered the machine-guns yet," Abe said, "but me I ain't built that way. When it says in the papers where the Germans is sending all their soldiers away from the Russian front to the Italian front, y'understand, it may be that some people could read it and try not to worry by sending five dollars to them Highwaymen for Improving the Condition of the Poor, Mawruss, but when _I_ read it, Mawruss, I think how it's all up to them Bolsheviki in Russia, and I get awful sore at the poor--in especially the Russian poor."

"What are you worrying your head about what they put in the papers?" Morris asked. "Seventy-five per cent. of the bridge-heads which the Germans capture in the New York morning papers might just so well be French villages, except that the reporters would have to look up the names of the villages on the map, because some editors are very particular that way; they insist that the reporter should use the name of a real village, whereas if he puts down that the Germans has captured a bridge-head on the Piave River he could go right out to lunch, and he never even stops to think that if somebody would check up the number of bridge-heads which the Germans has captured that way in the New York morning papers, Abe, the Piave River would got to be covered solid with bridges from end to end."

"But I am just so bad as a reporter, Mawruss--I never stop to think that, neither," Abe admitted. "It's my nature that I couldn't help believing the foolishness which I read in the papers, and if the Germans capture a bridge-head on me in the Sporting Edition with Final Wall Street Complete they might just so well capture it in Italy and be done with it, because if I play cards afterward I couldn't keep my mind on the game, anyhow. Only last Sunday I had a three-hundred-and-fifty hand in spades, with an extra ace and king, understand me, when I happened to think about reading in the paper where the Germans is going to build for next spring submarines in extra sized six hundred feet long, y'understand, and the consequence was I forget to meld a twenty in clubs and lost the hand by eighteen points. Before I fell asleep that night I thought it over that Germany couldn't build such a big submarine as the papers claimed, but by that time I was out three dollars on the hand, _anyway_, and that's the way war affects _me_, Mawruss."

"Well, that's where you are making a big mistake, Abe," Morris commented, "because even when the articles which they print in the newspaper is true, y'understand, if you only stop to figure them out right, Abe, you could get a whole lot of encouragement that way. Take, for instance, when you read _via_ Amsterdam that General Hindenberg is now commanding the western front, Abe, and with some people that would throw a big scare into 'em, y'understand, but with me not, Abe, because the way I look at it is from experience. I've known lots of fellers from seventy to seventy-five years old, Abe, and in particular my wife's mother's a brother Old Man Baum in the cotton-converting business. There's a feller which he actually went to work and married his stenographer when he was seventy-two, Abe, and, compared to an undertaking like that, running the western front would be child's play, Abe, and yet when all was said and done, if he went to theayter Saturday night and eats afterward a little chicken _a la_ King, y'understand, it was a case of ringing up a doctor at three o'clock Sunday morning while his wife's relations sat around his flat figuring the inheritance tax. Now, take Hindenberg which he is six months older as Old Man Baum, Abe, and what that feller has went through in the last three years two lifetimes in the cotton-converting business wouldn't be a marker to it, understand me, and still there are people which is worried that when he begins to run things on the western front, it is going to be a serious matter for the Allies, instead of the Germans.

"Yes, Abe," Morris continued, "with all the things them Germans has got to attend to on the western front, it's no cinch to have on their hands an old man seventy-two years of age, which, if anything should happen to the old _Rosher_, like acute indigestion from eating too much gruel or lumbago, y'understand, then real generals on the western front would never hear the end of it."

"Ain't Hindenberg also a real general?" Abe asked.

"Not an old man like that, Abe," Morris replied. "He used to was a real general, but now he is just a mascot for the Germans and a bogey man for us, which I bet yer the most that feller does to help along the war is to wear warm woolen underwear, keep out of draughts, and not get his feet wet under any circumstances at his age. Furthermore, Abe, I ain't so sure that the Germans is withdrawing so many soldiers as they claim from the Russian frontier, neither, y'understand, because the way them Bolsheviki has swung around to Germany must sound to the Kaiser almost too good to be true, and I bet yer also he figures that maybe it isn't because nobody knows better as the Kaiser how much reliance you could place on a deal between one country and another, even when it's in writing and signed by the party to be charged, which, for all any one could tell, whether Russia is now a government, a co-partnership, a corporation, or only so to speak a voluntary association, Abe, the Kaiser might just as well sign his peace treaty with Pavlowa and Nordkin as with Lenine and Trotzky, so far as binding the Russian people is concerned."

"It ain't a peace treaty which them fellers wants to sign, Mawruss," Abe said. "It's a bill of sale, which I see that Lenine and Trotzky agrees Germany should import goods into Russia free of duty and that she should take Russian Poland and Courland and a lot of other territory, and if that's what is called making peace, Mawruss, then you might just as well say that a lawsuit is compromised by allowing the feller which sues to get a judgment and have the sheriff collect on it."

"And at that, Abe," Morris said, "there ain't a German merchant which wouldn't be only too delighted to swap his rights to import goods into Russia free of duty _after the war_ for three-quarters of a pound of porterhouse steak and a ten-cent loaf of white bread right now, which the way food is so scarce nowadays in Germany, Abe, when a Berlin business man's family gets through with the Sunday dinner, and the servant-girl clears off the table, there's no use asking should she give the bones to the dog, because the chances is they _are_ the dog, understand me. As for sugar, we think we've got a kick coming when we could only get two teaspoonfuls to a cup of coffee for five cents, y'understand, whereas in Germany they would consider themselves lucky if they could get two teaspoonfuls to a gallon of coffee if they had a gallon of coffee in the entire country, understand me. So that's the way it goes in Germany, Abe; the people ask for bread and they give 'em a report on Norwegian steamers sunk by U-boats during the current week, and if one of the steamers was loaded with sugar, y'understand, that ain't going to be much satisfaction to a German which has got a sweet tooth and has been trying to make out with one two-grain saccharin tablet every forty-eight hours, neither."

"But the Germans seems to be making a lot of progress everywheres," Abe said.

"Except at home," Morris declared. "Maybe the German people still feels encouraged when the German army gets ahold of more territory, Abe, but it's a question of a short time now when the German people is going to realize that they don't need no more room to starve in than they've got at present, and that a nation can go broke just as comfortably in nine hundred thousand square miles as it can in nine million square miles."

"Sure, I know," Abe agreed, "but one thing Germany has fixed already, Mawruss, and that is that she is going to get a whole lot of customers in Russia."

"Well, if she does," Morris commented, "she'll have to provide the capital to set them customers up in business, and after she has done that, Abe, she will have to hustle around to drum up trade for them Russian customers, because when the Bolsheviki get through with their fine work in Russia, Abe, the Russian people won't have enough purchasing power to make it a fair territory for a salesman with a line of five-and-ten-cent store supplies. So if Germany started this here war to get more trade, she's already licked."

"Then what does she go on fighting for?" Abe asked. "It seems to me that if we saw we couldn't accomplish nothing by going on fighting, Mawruss, we'd stop, ain't it?"

"Sure we would," Morris agreed. "But then, Abe, we 'ain't got nothing to stop us from stopping, because we ain't fighting for the sake of fighting, the way Von Tirpitz, Mackensen, and Ludendorff are doing. Take, for instance, Von Tirpitz, and that _Rosher_ insists that the U-boats is going to win the war, so it don't make no difference to him how many German sailors goes down in U-boats, he's going to keep on sending out U-boats right up to the time the German people shoots him, and his last words will be that the reason why the U-boats didn't win the war was because they didn't have a fair trial. Then there's Mackensen and Ludendorff which they've got _their_ idees about how the war should be won, and they mean to see that their idees continue to have a fair trial till there ain't enough German soldiers alive to give them idees a fair trial, and that's the way it goes, Abe. All the idees that we want to give a fair trial is that we are going to keep on fighting till we've proved to the German people that it don't pay to back up the Von Tirpitz, Ludendorff, and Mackensen idees."

"And how long is this going to take?" Abe inquired.