"What do you mean--down to sixty-eight degrees?" Morris Perlmutter said.

"If a feller which lives in a New York City apartment-house nowadays could get the temperature of his rooms as high as down to forty-eight degrees, y'understand, it's only because some of the tenants 'ain't come across with the janitor's present yet and he still has hopes. Yes, Abe, a circular like that might do some good in Pasadena _oder_ Pallum Beach, y'understand, but it's wasted here in New York."

"There's bound to be a whole lot of waste in them don't-waste-nothing circulars," Abe commented, "because plenty of people is getting letters from the Food Conservation Commission to go slow on sugar which 'ain't risked taking even a two-grain saccharin tablet in years already, and the chances is that there has been tons and tons of circulars sent out to other people which on account of their livers _oder_ religions wouldn't on any account eat the articles of food which the circulars begs them on no account to eat, y'understand."

"And next year them circulars will be still less necessary because enough people is going to get rheumatism from living in cold rooms to cut down the consumption of red meats over fifty per cent.," Morris observed.

"Well, something has got to be done to make people go slow on using up coal, Mawruss," Abe said, "which the way it is now, Mawruss, twice as much coal is burned in one night to manufacture electricity for a sky sign saying that 'Toasted Sawdust Is the Perfect Breakfast Food' on account it is made only from the best grades of Tennessee yellow pine, y'understand, as would run an airyoplane-factory for a week, understand me, and children is fooling away their time in the streets because if coal is used to heat the school buildings, y'understand, there wouldn't be enough left for the really important things like lighting up the fronts of vaudeville theayters with the names of actors or telling lies about the mileage of automobile tires by means of a couple of million electric lights every night from sunset to sunrise, understand me."

"Still there's a good deal to be said on the other side, Abe," Morris retorted, "which if the new coal regulations is going to make an end of the sky signs, it will cut off practically all the reading that most New-Yorkers do outside of the newspapers, y'understand. Then again there's a whole lot of people aside from stockholders in electric-lighting companies which used to make a good living out of them sky signs. For instance, what's going to become of the fellers that manufactured them and the firm of certified public accountants _nebich_ which lost the job of adding up the figures on the meters, because while any _Schlemiel_ with a good imagination would be trusted to read the ordinary meter, Abe, the job of figuring the damages on a sky sign which is eating up a couple of million kilowatt-years every twenty minutes is something else again."

"And yet, Mawruss, while I 'ain't got such a soft heart that I could even have sympathy for an electric-lighting company, understand me, still I am sorry to see them sky signs go," Abe said, "because lots of fellers from the small towns, members of rotary clubs and the like, used to get a great deal of pleasure from seeing a kitten made out of three hundred thousand electric bulbs playing with a spool of silk made out of five hundred and fifty thousand bulbs, and there was something very fascinating about watching that automobile tire which used to light up and go out every once in a while somewheres around the upper end of Times Square."

"Sure, I know," Morris said. "But if you was spending your good money for such an advertised tire, Abe, it wouldn't be very fascinating to watch it blow out every once in a while on account the manufacturer had to skimp the rubber in order to pay the electric-light bills, Abe, and if any of them members of rotary clubs is in the dry-goods business and has to pay fancy prices for spool silk, Abe, they are _oser_ going to thank the salesmen for the good time they put in while in New York rubbering at his firm's sky sign, because you know as well as I do, Abe, when it comes right down to it, nothing costs a customer so much as free entertainment."

"Of course, Mawruss," Abe said, "the idee of them electric sky signs is not to entertain, but to advertise, and as an advertising man told me the other day, Mawruss, the advertised article is just as low in price as the same article would be if unadvertised, the reason being that the advertised article's output is greater and that he wanted me to advertise in the _Daily Cloak and Suit Record_."

"Well, certainly, if the output is greater the cost of production is or should ought to be less," Morris observed, "so I think the feller was right at that, Abe."

"That's what I told him," Abe continued, "but I also said that if I would put for fifty cents a day an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the paper, y'understand, my partner would never let me hear the end of it."

"Is _that_ so!" Morris exclaimed. "Since when did I kick that we shouldn't do no advertising?"

"Never mind," Abe retorted. "I heard you speak often about advertising the same like you done just now about sky signs, which it is already a back-number idee that advertising raised the price of goods to the customer and--"

"Listen!" Morris interrupted. "If I would got it such a back-number idees like you, Abe, I would put myself into a home for chronic Freemasons or something, which I always was in favor of advertising, except that I believe there is advertising and _advertising_, Abe, and when an advertis.e.m.e.nt only makes you think of what it costs, instead of what it advertises, like sky signs, y'understand, to me it ain't an advertis.e.m.e.nt at all. It's just a warning."

"Did I say it wasn't?" Abe asked. "The way you talk, Mawruss, you would think I was in favor of electric signs, whereas I believe that in times like these a very little publicity goes an awful long ways, Mawruss, which if them Congressmen down in Washington was requested by the Coal Commission to keep it a trifle dark and not use up so much candle-power in advertising the mistakes that has been made by some fellers now working for the government which 'ain't had as much experience in covering up their tracks as, we would say, for example, a Congressman, Mawruss, that wouldn't do no harm, neither."

"It ain't a question of covering tracks, Abe," Morris declared, "because them business men which is now working for the government are perfectly honest, although they do make mistakes in their jobs and get rattled easy on the witness-stand, which if such fellers _was_ dishonest, Abe, even a Congressman would know enough not to advertise it."

"As a matter of fact, Mawruss," Abe declared, "them Congressmen ain't calculating to advertise anybody or anything but themselves. Yes, Mawruss, the way some United States Senators acts you would think they was trying to get a national reputation as first-cla.s.s, cracker-jack, A-number-one police-court lawyers, and the expert manner in which they can confuse and worry a high-grade Diston who is sacrificing his time and money to help out the government and make him appear a crook, y'understand, must be a source of great satisfaction to the folks back home--in Germany.

"And it certainly ain't helping to win the war any, Mawruss, which most people would get the idee from reading the accounts of it in the newspapers that Mr. Hoover was tried by the United States Senate and found guilty of boosting the price of sugar in the first degree."

"Well, in that case, Abe," Morris suggested, "even if we are a little short of fuel it would of been better for the sugar situation, and maybe also the wool uniforms also, if, instead of getting publicity through investigations, y'understand, the United States Senate would fix up an electric sign for the front of the Capitol at Washington and make Senator Reed the top-liner in big letters like Eva Tanguay or Mr. Louis Mann, because here in America we've got incandescent bulbs to burn, Abe, but we have only one Hoover, and we should ought to take care of him."

"Understand me, Mawruss," Abe declared, emphatically, "it ain't that I object to a certain amount of light being thrown on the mistakes that is made in running the war, if it wasn't that they keep everything so dark about the progress that is also made--the submarines we are sinking, the number of soldiers we've got it in France, and what them boys is doing over there, and while I know there's good reasons for it, maybe it's like this here Broadway proposition--it pays to keep it dark, but it might pay better to keep it light, which I understand that all the lighting company saves in coal by cutting out the sky signs is less than thirty tons a night."

"Thirty tons a night would warm a whole lot of people, Abe," Morris said.

"Sure, I know," Abe agreed. "But even at ten dollars a ton, Mawruss, it would be only a saving of three hundred dollars, which I bet yer some restaurants on Broadway has lost that much money apiece since the lighting orders went into effect."

"That may be," Morris admitted, "but what the Coal Commission is trying to save ain't money, Abe. It's coal. And that is one of the points about this war that people 'ain't exactly realized yet. Money ain't what it once used to was before this war, Abe. You can still make it, lose it, spend it, and save it, but you couldn't sweeten your coffee with it or heat your house with it till there's sugar and coal enough to go around. Also it's only a question of time when money won't get you to Pallum Beach in the winter or Maine in the summer unless the government official in charge of the railroads thinks it is necessary, and also if this war only goes on long enough and wool gets any scarcer, Abe, money won't buy you a new pair of pants even until you can put up a good enough argument with it to convince a government pants inspector that it's a case of either buying a new pair of pants or a frock-coat to make the old ones decent, understand me."

"But the papers has said right straight along that money would win this war, Mawruss," Abe said.

"Yes, and it could lose it, too, according to the way it is spent,"

Morris continued, "and particularly right now when money can still buy things which the government needs for the soldiers, y'understand, money is a dangerous article in the hands of some people who think that the feller which don't feel the high price of sugar is more privileged to eat it than the feller which could barely afford it."

"Even so," Abe remarked, "it seems to me that not spending money must be an easy way to be patriotic."

"And some fellers is just natural-born patriots that way," Morris added, "and if they ain't, y'understand, the war is going to make them. It's going to give the rich man the same chance to be a good sitson as the poor man, and it's made a fine start by taking the lights off of Broadway so that you couldn't tell it from a respectable street, like Lexington Avenue."

"Couldn't a street be lighted up and still be respectable?" Abe asked.

"Yes, and a rich man could spend his money foolishly and also be respectable," Morris agreed, "but not in war-times."

XVII

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON THE PEACE PROGRAM, INCLUDING THE ADDED EXTRA FEATURE AND THE SUPPER TURN

"It seems that this here Luxberg, the German representative in Argentine which sent them _spurlos versenkt_ letters, has been crazy for years, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, one morning in January.

"Yes?" Morris Perlmutter said. "And when did they find _that_ out, Abe?"

"It's an old story, Mawruss," Abe replied. "Everybody knew it in Berlin, only they never happened to think of it until we discovered those letters in the private mail of the Swedish minister."

"And what do they lay the Swedish minister's behavior to, Abe?" Morris inquired. "Stomach trouble?"

"_That_ they didn't say," Abe continued. "But I guess they figure that Sweden should think up her own alibis."

"Well, it's a hopeful sign when the Germans realize that them Luxberg letters sound like the idees of a crazy man, Abe," Morris said, "although compared to Zimmermann's break about handing Mexico a couple of our Southern states if she went to war with us, y'understand, Luxberg's letters ain't so _meshuggah_, neither. So it seems to me, Abe, that Germany would be doing well to say that Luxberg was drunk when he wrote them letters, because later when it comes to explaining the hundreds of rotten acts that Germans has done in this war, Abe, Germany is going to have to think up a lot of excuses, and she may as well keep the insanity defense for somebody who would really need it, like the Kaiser."

"Don't worry about the Kaiser, Mawruss," Abe said. "For years already that feller has been getting up such strong evidence for an insanity defense, in the way of speeches to soldiers, y'understand, that he could feel absolutely safe in not only doing what he _has_ been doing, but also what Doctor Waite and Harry Thaw did, too, because all that the counsel for the defense would got to do is to read the Kaiser's remarks at Koenigsburg, for instance, and five minutes after the jury had returned a verdict without leaving their seats, y'understand, the Kaiser would be on his way up to the Matteawan Asylum for the Criminal Insane."

"There ain't much danger of that, anyway," Morris declared, "because I read them fourteen propositions of Mr. Wilson's peace program, and so far as any mention is made of punishing the guilty parties, Abe, you might suppose the _Lusitania_ had never been sunk at all, which it may be dumbness on my part, Abe, but the way it looks to me is that if them fourteen propositions is fourteen net, and not ten, five, and two and one-half off for cash, understand me, we have got to give Germany such a big licking before she accepts them that we might just so well give her a bigger one and add propositions from fifteen to twenty inclusive, of which proposition sixteen would contain the same demands as proposition fifteen, except that the person upon whom the sentence was to be carried out would be the Crown Prince instead of the Kaiser, but no flowers in either case, understand me, and if twenty propositions wasn't enough to take care of all the responsible parties we could add as many more propositions as necessary."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "And five minutes after the jury had returned a verdict would be on his way up to the Matteawan Asylum for the Criminal Insane."]

"What you are trying to fix up, Mawruss, ain't a program, but a catalogue, Mawruss," Abe commented, "which if we want to get a performance of Mr. Wilson's program, y'understand, and they're going to have a lot of trouble putting that number over with a satisfactory sea, on account they would either have to paint a sea, dig a sea, or have some sort of a sea effect, because Poland is like Iowa, Mawruss--the only time you could get a glimpse of the sea there is when they run off one of them Annette Kellermann filums in a moving-picture theayter."

"That only goes to show what you know from Poland," Morris retorted, "because in seventeen ninety-three a lot of the sea-front of Prussia belonged to Poland."

"Yes, and in seventeen ninety-three a lot of the sea-front of Texas belonged to Mexico," Abe continued. "So I guess Mr. Wilson must have some sea in mind which ain't barred by the statute of limitations; but that ain't here nor there, because getting a sea to Poland ain't the biggest difficulty in carrying out the peace program. Take, for instance, number six on the program, which is a proposed turn or act by all the Allies, ent.i.tled, 'Welcoming Russia into the Society of Free Nations.' The directions is that the performers should give Russland all sorts of a.s.sistance of every kind that she may need, and also to behave kindly to her, y'understand, and no sooner does Mr. Wilson come out with this, so to speak sob scenario, understand me, than Trotzky & Lenine get right back at him with a counter-proposition, so I guess that the present number six will be taken out of the program, and another number subst.i.tuted for it, like this:

VI

Extra Added Feature, the Popular Russian Dramatic Stars in Roles that Suit Them to Perfection

LEON TROTZKY & LENINE BARNEY

In 'Nix on the Bonds,' a Playlet with a Punch.

Suspense, Surprise, Finish, and All the Fixings that Make a Snappy Dramatic Entertainment in Tabloid Form."