Part 8

"Not so long as you think, Abe," Morris replied, "because Germany may have made peace with Russia, but she has still got fighting against her England, France, Italy, America, Starvation, Bad Business, Conceit, Lies, and Stubbornness."

"And in the mean time, Mawruss," Abe said, "what's going to happen to us?"

"Don't worry about us," Morris said. "All America has got to do is to try to be an optician and look on the bright side of things, and she's bound to win out in the end."

XIV

THE LIQUOR QUESTION--SHALL IT BE DRY OR EXTRA DRY?

Light wines don't harm an awful lot of people, for the same reason that there ain't much pneumonia caused by people getting damp from using finger-bowls.

"Yes, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, the day after the prohibition amendment was adopted by the House of Representatives, "there's a lot of people going around taking credit for this here prohibition which in reality is living examples of the terrible effects not drinking schnapps has on the human race--suppose any one wanted to argue that way--whereas if you was to put the people wise which is actually responsible for the country going dry, y'understand, they would be too indignant to call you a liar before they could hit you with anything that lay most handy behind the bar from an ice-pick to an empty bottle, understand me."

"I always had an idea myself that what was responsible for prohibition, Abe, was that the people is sore at booze," Morris Perlmutter retorted.

"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But the people would be just so sore at candy if the fellers which runs candy-stores acted the way saloon-keepers does, which you take a feller like this here Huyler, or one of the Smiths in the cough-drop business, and we would say his name is Harris Fine, y'understand, and instead of attending to the store and poisining people mit candy, he goes to work to get up the Harris Fine Association and gives all the eighteen-dollar-a-week policemen in the neighborhood to understand that it's equivalent to ten dollars in their pockets if they wouldn't take it so particular when members of the Harris Fine Association commits a little thing like murder or something, _verstehst du mich_, why the people in the same block which wasn't members of the Harris Fine Association would begin to think that candy was getting to have a bad influence on the neighborhood, y'understand. Then if Harris Fine was to run for alderman and all the loafers of the eighth ward or whatever ward he was alderman of was to meet in the back room of his candy-store, Mawruss, the respectable _Leute_ which couldn't go past Harris Fine's candy-store without hearing somebody talking rotten language would go home and say that it was a shame and a disgrace that the eighth ward should got to have candy-stores in it. Afterward when he has been an alderman for some time, Mawruss, and Harris Fine begins to make a fortune out of the garbage-removal contracts by not removing garbage, y'understand, and also as a side line to candy and ice-cream soda, does an elegant business in asphalt-paving which contains one-tenth of one per cent. asphalt, y'understand, the bad reputation which candy has got it in the eighth ward is going to spread throughout the city, Mawruss, and finally, when the candy feller starts in to make contracts for state roads, candy gets a black eye in the state also, and it's only a question of time before the candy-dealer would go to Washington and put over a rotten deal on the national government, understand me, and then people like you and me which never touches so much as a little piece of peanut-brittle, Mawruss, starts right in and hollers for the national prohibition of all kinds of candy from gum-drops to mixed chocolates and bum-bums at a dollar and a half a pound."

"You may be right, Abe," Morris said, "but when it comes right down to Bright's disease and charoses of the liver, y'understand, politics 'ain't got nothing to do with it, because it doesn't make no difference to whisky whether a feller voted for Wilson _oder_ Hughes. It would just as lieve ruin the health and prospects of a Republican as a Democrat."

"Whisky might," Abe admitted, "but how about beer and light wines, Mawruss, which you know as well as I do, Mawruss, a loafer must got to drink an awful lot of beer before he gets drunk."

"Well, that's what makes the brewery business good, Abe," Morris said.

"But don't you think in a great number of cases, Mawruss, beer is drunk to squench thirst?" Abe asked.

"That's the way it's drunk in a great number of cases--twenty-four bottles to the case," Morris said; "but if the same people was to drink water the way they drink beer, Abe, instead of thirst you would think it was goldfish that troubled them, which I can get as thirsty as the next one, Abe, but I can usually manage to squench it without making an aquarium out of myself exactly."

"_Aber_ what about light wines?" Abe inquired. "They don't harm an awful lot of people, Mawruss."

"They don't harm an awful lot of people for the same reason that there ain't much pneumonia caused by people getting damp from using finger-bowls, Abe," Morris said, "because so far as I could see the American people feels the same way about light wines as they do about finger-bowls. They could use 'em and they could let 'em alone, and they feel a whole lot more comfortable when they're letting 'em alone than when they're using 'em."

"Well, I'll tell you, Mawruss," Abe said, "I think a great many people which is prejudiced against light wines on account of heartburn is laying it to the wine instead of the seventy-five-cent Italian table-d'hote dinner which goes with it."

"Yes, and it's just as likely to be the cocktail which went before it as the glass of brandy which came after it, and that's the trouble with beer and light wine, Abe," Morris declared. "They usually ain't the only numbers on the program, and the feller which starts in on beer and light wines, Abe, soon gets such a big repertoire of drinks that he's performing on the bottle day and night, y'understand, which saloon-keepers knows better than anybody else, Abe, because if you would ask a saloon-keeper _oder_ a bartender to have something, y'understand, it's a hundred-to-one proposition that he takes a cigar and not a glass beer."

"Sure, I know," Abe agreed. "But once a bartender draws a glass beer, before he could use it again, he's got to mark off so much for deteriorating that it's practically a total loss, whereas he could always put a cigar back in the case and sell it to somebody else for full price in the usual course of business."

"Well, that's what makes the saloon business a swindle and not a business, Abe," Morris said. "Just imagine, Abe, if you and me, as women's outer-garment manufacturers, was to lay in a line of ready-made men's overcoats in the expectation that after a customer has bought from us a big order he is going to blow me to a forty regular and you to a forty-four stout which we would put right back in stock as soon as his back is turned."

"But even if the liquor business would be a dirty business, Mawruss," Abe said, "you've got to consider that there's a whole lot of people which is making a living out of it, like bartenders and fellers working in distilleries, and if they get thrown out of work, y'understand, their wives and children is going to be just as hungry as if the fellers lost their jobs in a respectable business like pants or plumbers' supplies."

"Say," Morris exclaimed, "if you're going to have sympathy for people which would get thrown out of jobs by prohibition, Abe, don't use it all up on bartenders and fellers working in distilleries, because there's a whole lot of other crooks whose families are going to be short of spending-money when liquor-selling stops. Take them boys which is running poker-rooms, faro-games, and roulette-wheels, and alcohol is just as necessary to their operation as ether is to a stomach specialist's, because the human bank-roll is the same as the human appendix, Abe: the success of removing it entirely depends on the giving of the anesthetic. Then there is the lawyers--criminal, accident, and divorce--and it don't make no difference how their clients fell or what they fell from--positions in banks, moving street-cars, or as nice a little woman as any one could wish for, y'understand--schnapps done it, Abe, and when schnapps goes, Abe, the practice of them lawyers goes with it."

"Well, they still got their diplomas, Mawruss," Abe said. "And even though schnapps is prohibited, Mawruss, there will be enough people left with the real-estate habit to give them shysters a living, anyhow, but you take them fellers which has got millions of dollars invested in machinery for the manufacture of headache medicine, Mawruss, and before they will be able to figure out how they can use their plants for the manufacture of war supplies they're going to be their own best customers, which little did them fellers think when they put on their bottles,

* * * KEEP IN A DRY PLACE WELL CORKED * * *

that people was going to take them so seriously as to put 'em right out of business, y'understand."

"But there's also a large number of people which is going to lose their jobs on account of this here prohibition, Abe, and if they get the sympathy of these American sitsons which is laying awake nights worrying about how the Czar is getting along, Abe, it would be big already. I am talking about the temperance lecturers," Morris declared, "which if it wouldn't be for them fellers pretty near convincing everybody that no one could be happy and sober at the same time, Abe, it's my idee that we would of had this here prohibition _sohon_ long since ago already, because those temperance lecturers got their arguments against drinking schnapps so mixed up with Sunday baseball, playing billiards, and going to theayters, picture-galleries, and libraries on Sunday, Abe, that some people which visits New York from small towns in the Middle West still hesitates about going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for fear of getting a hobnailed liver or something."

"At that, Mawruss, this here prohibition is going to hurt some businesses like the jewelry business," Abe said, "which not counting the millions of carats that fellers has bought to square themselves for coming home at all hours of the night, y'understand, there's many a bar pin which would still be in stock if the customer hadn't nerved himself to buying it with a couple of cocktails, understand me. Automobiles is the same way, Mawruss, and if the engineering department of the big automobile concerns is now busy on the problem of making alcohol a substitute for gasolene, Mawruss, you can bet your life that the sales department is just as busy trying to find out something which will be a substitute for alcohol, because when a feller has made up his mind to buy a five-passenger touring-car, Mawruss, there ain't many automobile salesmen which could wish a seven-passenger limousine on him by working him with a couple of cups coffee, y'understand."

"Then there is the show business," Morris observed, "and while I don't mean to say that this here prohibition is going to have any effect on them miserable plays where the girl saves the family at eight-forty-five by marrying the millionaire and discovers at ten-forty-five that she loves him just as much as if he hadn't any rating, so that the show can get out at eleven-five, y'understand, but when enough states has adopted the prohibition amendment to pull it into effect, Abe, the Midnight Follies as a business proposition will be in a class with bar fixtures and mass-kerseno cherries."

"Well, so far as I'm concerned, any show that starts in at twelve o'clock would always have to get along without _my_ trade, prohibition or no prohibition," Abe commented, "even though I could enjoy it on nothing stronger than malted milk."

"Which you couldn't," Morris added, "and there's why the Midnight Follies wouldn't last, because not only is this here prohibition going to kill schnapps, Abe, but it is also going to drive off the market for all articles the demand for which contains more than one per cent. alcohol."

"And believe me, Mawruss," Abe concluded, "no decent, respectable man is going to miss such articles, neither."

XV

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON PEACE WITH VICTORY AND WITHOUT BROKERS, EITHER

"An offer is anyhow an offer, even if it is turned down, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, the day after Germany proposed terms of peace, "which that time I sold Harris Immerglick them lots in Brownsville, Mawruss, the first proposition he made me I pretty near threw him down the freight-elevator shaft, and when we finally closed the deal I couldn't tell exactly how much I made on them lots--figuring what I paid in taxes and assessments while I owned 'em, but it must have been, anyhow, five hundred dollars, Mawruss, from the way Immerglick gives me such a cutthroat looks whenever he sees me nowadays."

"Everybody ain't so easy as Harris Immerglick," Morris Perlmutter commented.

"Maybe not," Abe admitted. "But Harris Immerglick didn't want them lots not nearly as bad as the Kaiser wants peace, Mawruss, so while the parties to the proposed contract seems to be at present too wide apart to make a deal likely, Mawruss, at the same time I look to see the Kaiser offer a few concessions."

"Perhaps you're right, Abe," Morris said, "but while the Kaiser may have control of enough property so as to throw in a little here and a little there, y'understand, in the end it will be the boot money which will count, Abe, and before this deal is closed, Abe, you could bet your life that not only would the parties of the first part got to give up Belgium, Servia, Rumania, Poland, and Alsace-Lorraine, but they would also got to pay billions and billions of dollars in cash or certified check upon the delivery of the deed and passing of title under the said contract, and don't you forget it. So if some of them railroad presidents which is now drawing a hundred thousand a year salary, Abe, has got any hopes that President Wilson would hold up taking over the railroads pending negotiations for peace, y'understand, they must be blessed with sanguinary dispositions, Abe, because it's going to take a long time yet the Kaiser would concede enough to justify the Allies in so much as hesitating on even a single pair of soldiers' pants."

"Say, if anybody thinks the government would let go the railroads when we make peace with Germany, Mawruss, he don't know no more about railroads as he does about governments," Abe declared, "because this war which the government has got with the railroads, meat-packers, oil trusts, and coal-mine owners wouldn't end when we've licked Germany any more than it begun when Von Tirpitz started his submarine campaign. Yes, Mawruss, if we wouldn't leave off fighting Germany till it's agreed that no fellers like Von Tirpitz, Von Buelow, Von Bethmann-Hollweg, and all them other Vons can use German subjects and German property for their own personal purposes, why it's a hundred-to-one proposition that we ain't going to leave off fighting the railroads till it's agreed that them Von Tirpitzes, Von Buelows, and Von Hindenbergs of the American railroads couldn't use the transportation business of this country for stock-gambling purpose as though the railroads was gold and silver mining prospects somewhere out in Nevada and didn't have a thing to do with the food and coal supply of the nation."

"Wait a moment," Morris said, "and I'll ask Jake, the shipping-clerk, to bring you in a button-box. We 'ain't got no soap-boxes."

"That ain't no soap-box stuff, Mawruss," Abe retorted. "If the government should do the same thing to the meat-packers as they did to the railroads, Mawruss, the arguments of them soap-box orators wouldn't have a soap-box to stand on."

"Well, if the government thinks it is necessary in order to carry on the war, Abe," Morris said, "it will grab the meat business like it has taken over the railroads, but we've got enough to do to supply our soldiers with ammunition without we would spend any time stopping the ammunition of them soap-box fellers."

"Of course I may be wrong, Mawruss," Abe admitted, "but the way I look at it, the war ain't an excuse for not cleaning up at home. On the contrary, Mawruss, I think it is an opportunity for cleaning up, and when I see in the papers where people writes to the editors that the prohibitionists, the women suffragists, and the union laborers should ought to be ashamed of themselves for putting up arguments when the country is so busy over the war, I couldn't help thinking that there must be people over in Germany which is writing to the _Tageszeitung_ and the _Freie Presse_ that the German Social Democrats and Liberals should ought to be ashamed of themselves for putting up arguments about the Kaiser giving them popular government when Germany is so busy over the war. In other words, it's a stand-off, Mawruss, with the exception that the Kaiser 'ain't made no speeches so far that Germany would never make peace with America till the millions of American women which 'ain't got the vote has some say as to how the war should be carried on and what the terms of peace should be."

"Do you mean to say that women not having the vote puts our government in the same class with Germany?" Morris demanded.

"I mean to say that the proposition of German men having the vote sounds just so foolish to the Kaiser as the proposition of American women having the vote does to this here Eli U. Root," Abe retorted, "and while there is only one Kaiser in Germany, Mawruss, we've got an awful lot of Roots in America, so until Congress gives women the vote, Mawruss, the Kaiser will continue to have an elegant come-back at President Wilson for that proclamation of his."

"Well, I'll tell you, Abe," Morris said, "I read this here proclamation of Mr. Wilson's when it was published in the papers, and while I admit that it didn't leave so big an impression on me as if it would of been a murder or a divorce case, y'understand, yet as I recollect it, Abe, there was enough room in it, so that if the German terms of peace was sufficiently liberal, y'understand, the German popular government needn't got to be so awful popular but what it could get by, understand me."

"That's my idee, too," Abe declared, "and while I ain't so keen like this here Lord Handsdown or Landsdown, or whatever the feller's name is, that we should jump right in and ask the Kaiser if that's the best he could do and how long would he give us to think it over, y'understand, yet you've got to remember that we've all had experiences with fellers like Harris Immerglick, Mawruss, and if the Allies would go at this thing in a business-like way, y'understand, it might be a case of going ahead with our business, which is war, and at the same time keeping an eye on the brokers in the transaction."

"I don't want to wake you up when you've got such pleasant dreams, Abe," Morris interrupted, "but the Allies is going to need all the eyes they've got during the next year or so, and a few binoculars and periscopes wouldn't go so bad, neither."

"All right," Abe said, "then don't keep an eye on the brokers, but just the same we could afford to let the matter rest, because you know what brokers are, Mawruss: when it comes to putting through a swap, the principals could be a couple of hard-boiled eggs that would sooner make a present of their properties to the first-mortgagees than accept the original terms offered, y'understand, but the brokers never give up hope."

"What are you talking about--brokers?" Morris exclaimed. "There ain't no brokers in a peace transaction."

"Ain't there?" Abe retorted. "Well, if this here Czernin ain't the broker representing Austria and Germany, what is he? I can see the feller right now, the way he walks into Trotzky & Lenine's office with one of them real-estater smiles that looks as genwine as a twenty-dollar fur-lined overcoat.

"'_Wie gehts_, Mr. Trotzky!' he says, like it's some one he used to every afternoon drink coffee together ten years ago and has been wondering ever since what's become of him that he 'ain't seen him so long. Only in this case it happens to be Lenine he's talking to.

"'Mr. Trotzky ain't in. This is his partner, Mr. Lenine,' Lenine says.

"'Not Barnett Lenine used to was November & Lenine in the neckwear business?' Czernin says.

"'No,' Lenine says, and although Czernin tries to look like he expected as much, it kind of takes the zip out of him, anyhow.

"'Let's see,' he says, 'this must be Chatskel Lenine, married a daughter of old man Josephthal and has got a sister living in Toledo, Ohio, by the name Rifkin. The husband runs a clothing-store corner of Tenth and Main, ain't it?'

"This time he's got him cornered, and Lenine has to admit it, so Czernin shakes hands with him and gives him the I.O.M.A. grip, with just a suggestion of the Knights of Phthias and Free Sons of Courland.

"'My name is Czernin--Sig Czernin,' he says. 'I see you don't remember me. I met you at the house of a party by the name Linkheimer or Linkman, I forget which, but the brother, Harris Linkheimer--I remember now, it _was_ Linkheimer--went to the Saint Louis Exposition and was never heard of afterward.'

"'My _tzuris_!' Lenine says, but this don't feaze Czernin.

"'You see,' he says, 'I never forget a face.'

"'And you 'ain't got such a bad memory for names, neither,' Lenine tells him.

"'That ain't neither here nor there,' Czernin says, 'because if your name would be O'Brien or something Swedish, even, I got here a proposition, Mr. Lenine, which it's a pleasure to me that I got the opportunity of offering it to you, and even if I do say so myself, y'understand, such a gilt-edged proposition like this here ain't in the market every day.'

"And that's the way Czernin sprung them peace propositions on Lenine & Trotzky, and it don't make no difference that in this particular instance it's practically a case of Lenine & Trotzky accepting whatever proposition the Kaiser wants to put to them, y'understand, when it comes to dickering with the Allies which can afford to act so independent to the Kaiser that if Czernin is lucky he won't get thrown down-stairs more than a couple of times, y'understand. He will come right back with the names and family histories of a few more common acquaintances and a couple of more concessions on the part of Germany, time after time, until it'll begin to look like peace is in sight."

"I wish you was right, Abe," Morris said, "but I think you will find that this here peace contract will be in charge of the diplomats and not the real-estaters."

"Well, what's the difference?" Abe asked.

"Probably there ain't any," Morris admitted, "because their methods is practically the same, which when countries goes to war on account of treaties they claim the other country broke, y'understand, it's usually just so much the fault of the diplomats which got 'em to sign the treaties originally, as when business men get into a lawsuit over a real-estate contract, it is the fault of the real-estate brokers in the transaction. So therefore, Abe, unless we want to make a peace treaty with Germany which would sooner or later end up in another war, y'understand, the best thing for America to do is to depend for peace not on brokers _oder_ diplomats, but on airyoplanes and guns with the right kind of soldiers to work 'em. Furthermore, after we've got the Germans back of the Rhine will be plenty of time to talk about entering into peace contracts with the Kaiser, because then there will be nothing left for the _Rosher_ to dicker about, and all we will have to do in the way of diplomacy will be to say, 'Sign here,' and he'll sign there."

XVI

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON KEEPING IT DARK