Worrying Won't Win

"And that would be quite enough to put a restaurant out of business if it served only good meals according to the opinion of diet experts, Mawruss, because diet experts don't buy meals, Mawruss, they only inspect them," Abe commented.

"And even if theayter crickets did pay for their tickets, Abe," Morris continued, "there ain't enough of them to support one of these here little theayters which has got such a small seating-capacity that neither the exits nor the kind of plays they put on has to comply with the fire laws, y'understand. But that ain't here or there, Abe. A theayter cricket is a cricket and not an appraiser, y'understand. He goes to a play to judge the play and not the prospective box-office receipts, Abe, and if on account of his knocking a play which would otherwise make money for the manager and do a lot of harm to the people which goes to the theayter, such a show is put out of business, Abe, then the theayter cricket has done a good job."

"Sure, I know, Mawruss," Abe said. "But it's just as likely to be the other way about, which you take these here shows the crickets gets all worked up over because they are written by foreigners from Sweden, Mawruss, where a married woman gets to feeling that her husband, her home, and her children ain't exciting enough, y'understand, so she either elopes or commits suicide, understand me, and many a business man has come to breakfast without shaving himself on the day after taking his wife to see such a show and caught her looking at him in an awful peculiar way, y'understand. Then there is other shows which crickets thinks a whole lot of, where a young feller which couldn't get down to business and earn a decent living puts it all over the man who has been financially successful, y'understand, and plenty of young fellers which gets home all hours of the night and couldn't hold a job long enough to remember the telephone number of the firm they work for, comes away from the show feeling that they ain't getting a square deal from their father who has never done a thing to help them in all this life except to feed, clothe, and educate them for twenty-odd years."

"Well, such plays anyhow make you think, Abe," Morris said. "Whereas, when you come away from one of them musical pieces, what do you have to show for it, Abe?"

"A good night's rest, Mawruss," Abe said, "which no one never laid awake all night wondering if his wife or his son has got peculiar notions about not being appreciated from seeing this here Frank Tinney talking to the feller that runs the orchestra in the Winter Garden, Mawruss."

"Then what is your idee of a good show, anyway?" Morris inquired.

"Well, I'll tell you, Mawruss, a good show is a show which you got to pay so much money to a speculator for a decent seat, y'understand, that you couldn't enjoy it after you get there," Abe concluded. "And that is a good show."

XXIV

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS SOCIETY – NEW YORK, HUMAN, AND AMERICAN

"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."

XXV

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER DISCUSS THIS HERE INCOME TAX

"Didn't I beg you that you shouldn't give to a lawyer that claim against Immerglick which we had for the money we loaned him five years ago?" Abe Potash said to his partner, Morris Perlmutter, as he pored over form 1040, revised January, 1918, which bore in large black letters the heading, "Individual Income-tax Return for Calendar Year 1917."

"Ten hundred and fifty dollars he paid us, and now I don't know should I stick it under A, B, C, D, E, or F."

"I suppose you would rather see Immerglick get away with the whole sum as pay eight per cent. of it to the government," Morris commented.

"I would give the government not only eight per cent., but eighteen per cent., Mawruss, if they would only send round their representative and fill out this here paper themselves, and leave me in peace," Abe said. "I 'ain't done nothing for a month now but write down figures on this rotten blank and scratch them out again, and what is going to be the end of it I don't know."

"All the government asks of you, Abe, is to be honest," Morris said.

"Sure, I know," Abe replied. "But to be honest about fixing up this here income-tax return, Mawruss, you've got to be a lawyer, a certified public accountant, a mind-reader, and one of these here handwriting experts who knows how to write the whole of the Constitution of the United States on the back of a two-cent stamp, which take, for instance, 'N. Contributions to Charitable Organizations, &c. (Enter below name and address of each organization and amount paid to each),' and while I 'ain't given away a million dollars to charity in nineteen seventeen exactly, I can see where next year when somebody comes round to schnoor from me five dollars for the Bella Hirshkind Home for Aged and Indignant Females in the Borough of the Bronx, City of New York, y'understand, he's going to get turned down on the grounds that Mr. McAdoo only provided three lines for all charitable contributions and I'm saving them up for the Red Cross, the S.P.C.A., and one orphan asylum with an awful short name."

"Did it occur to you that you could give the Bella Hirshkind Home four dollars and sixty cents and leave it out of your income-tax return altogether?" Morris suggested.

"Listen!" Abe said. "I ain't trying to invent ways of getting around what looks like the only good feature of this here income-tax return, Mawruss. If Mr. McAdoo or President Wilson or whoever it was that fixed up this here paper thought that the average man didn't need more as three lines to put down his charities in, Mawruss, who am I that I should set my opinion up against theirs? Am I right or wrong?"

"Well, for that matter, Abe," Morris said, "if you are up against it for space to fill in about the Bella Hirshkind Home, how many lines did Mr. McAdoo leave me to write in about you and Feigenbaum?"

"Me and Feigenbaum?" Abe repeated.

"Sure!" Morris said. "The time you and him had the argument should it be pronounced Bolsheviki or Bolsheveeki."

"Well, I was right, wasn't I?" Abe demanded.

"Certainly you were right," Morris replied. "But the question is, do I put in the fifteen-hundred-dollar order he canceled on us under 'Explanation of Losses of Business Property' or under 'J. General Deductions Not Reported on Page Three'?"

"Put it in the same place where I would put the money which I lost from having got it a partner which wastes dollars' and dollars' worth of time on me every day by arguing about things which arguing couldn't help," Abe advised. "Because with this here income-tax proposition, Mawruss, if you are going to waste so much time arguing about what you have lost that you couldn't be able to remember by April first what you made, y'understand, you would lose in addition a thousand dollars more and fifty per cent. of the amount of the tax due, and you couldn't have the consolation of blaming it on your partner, neither."

"It seems to me, Abe," Morris commented, "that the government makes a big mistake limiting you to April first, because I already figured my income tax out six times and it comes to a hundred dollars more every time, which if they would only give me till, say, the first of August, y'understand, I might be able to figure it out a couple dozen times more and pay the government some real big money."

"With me, Mawruss," Abe said with a sigh, "sometimes it's more and sometimes it's less, but it only goes to show how if a business man is going to have such a big difference of opinion with himself, Mawruss, what kind of a difference of opinion is he going to have with the collector of internal revenue? So I guess the only thing for me to do is to start all over again and this time I'll multiply the result by two, because if I've got to pay anything extra to the government, y'understand, I'd just as lieve do it without getting indicted first."

"Say!" Morris exclaimed. "If they started in to indict everybody which is going to figure up their income tax wrong this year, Abe, the government would got to draft a couple of million grand-jurymen, and then lay off the workers on cantonments and put them to building jails."

"And labor is scarce enough as it is, Mawruss, when you figure the hundreds of thousands of sitsons of this country which has been taken out of active business life during the past sixty days while they were engaged in making up their income-tax returns," Abe said.

"Well, that will simplify things a whole lot next year, Abe," Morris declared, "particularly in the excessive-profits department, because owing to the time they spent in doping out what excessive profits they had last year, the business men of the country won't have any profits this year, excessive or otherwise."

"I should only make enough this year to pay a certified public accountant for fixing up my income-tax return next year, Mawruss, and I shall be satisfied," Abe said, "because who could tell, maybe next year, Mawruss, the government wouldn't stop at wanting to know what your income is and how you made it, but would also insist on knowing how you spent it after it was made, which if business is so bad next year on account of the war, Mawruss, it may be that the government, finding that they couldn't raise enough money with an income tax and an excessive-profits tax, will pass a law calling for a personal-extravagance tax."

"They could get a lot of revenue that way," Morris admitted.

"Yes, and they could get it coming and going," Abe said. "Take, for instance, the hotel and restaurant hat-check business, which I seen it in the papers that a partnership of hat-checkers got into a dissolution lawsuit the other day, and it come out that they made a quarter of a million dollars profit in less than five years, y'understand. Now in a case like that, Mawruss, the government couldn't tax them robbers an additional eight per cent., because hat-checking ain't a profession under 'A. Income from Professions,' any more than burglary is. Neither could the government soak them highwaymen for an excessive-profits tax, because hat-checking ain't a business with an invested capital, not unless you count as capital, Chutzpah, gall and a nerve like a rhinoceros. So the only way the government could collect on tips to hat-checkers would be to tax the tipper fifty per cent. and put it up to the hat-checker to collect it at the source from the feller who is foolish enough to give up his money that way."

"Sure, I know," Morris said. "But that wouldn't be a personal-extravagance tax, Abe. That's what I would call a tax on personal cowardice. It's the kind of a tax the government could soak a feller which 'ain't got enough backbone to say 'No' when a head waiter suggests celery and olives at seventy-five cents a throw."

"Whatever it is, I'm in favor of it, Mawruss," Abe said. "Also it should ought to be collected from the feller who lets the barber get away with ten cents extra for a teaspoonful of hair tonic, and as for face massages, there should be a flat rate of five dollars for each offense."

"Aber don't you think that a face massage is its own punishment, Abe?" Morris asked.

"So is attempting suicide," Abe said. "But people go to jail for it, Mawruss."

"Well, anyhow, before the government goes to work and taxes people for that part of their income which they spend foolishly, Abe," Morris said, "they should get busy under the present income-tax law and prevent anybody from getting away with anything under 'J. General Deductions' by claiming a drawback or bad debts arising out of personal loans, which the government is losing thousands and thousands of dollars on many a week-kneed business man who knew when he loaned the money to his wife's relations that he would never even have the nerve enough to ask them to renew their notes even. Then there is other business men which has got a lot of customers on their books who couldn't get credit except by paying such a high price for their goods that if they bust up there would still be a profit, even if they settled for thirty cents on the dollar, and when them business men start to make up their income-tax returns they don't hesitate for a moment to charge off the balance under 'B. Bad Debts Arising from Sales (See instructions).'"

"I suppose such business men clears their consciences with the thought that if they had lost the money legitimately playing pinochle, Mawruss, the government wouldn't let them deduct a cent," Abe suggested. "And in a way, Mawruss, they are right, because while you couldn't charge off pinochle losses, I understand Mr. McAdoo holds that you've got to pay income tax on pinochle profits."

"That only goes to show how much Mr. McAdoo knows about pinochle, Abe," Morris said, "because unless, Gott soll huten, a feller should drop dead immediately after he cashes in his chips, y'understand, money which you win at pinochle ain't an asset, Abe, it's a loan, and sooner or later you are going to pay it back with interest."

"You argue with Mr. McAdoo!" Abe advised him. "Why, as I understand it, if you are having the game up at your own house, Mawruss, and you happen to draw out ahead you ain't even allowed to deduct nothing for electric light and the delicatessen supper, so strict the government is."