Worrying Won't Win

"That's the trouble with them pacifists," Morris concluded. "If they would only take some of the heat out of their heads and put it into their feet, Abe, they could hold onto their jobs and their wives wouldn't got to go to work at all. Am I right or wrong?"

VI

POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON HOOVERIZING THE OVERHEAD

When a feller reckons the overhead on the goods he manufactures he figures in one-twelfth of his telephone number, one-twelfth of the year he was born, and one-twelfth of every other number he can remember from his automobile to his street number.

"Of course, Mawruss, I don't claim that Mr. Hoover don't know his business nor nothing like that," Abe Potash said as he finished reading a circular mailed to him by the Food Conservation Director, "but at the same time if I would be permitted to make a suggestion, Mawruss, I would suggest that in addition to following out all the DON'TS in this here food-conservation circular – and also in the interests of being strictly economical, y'understand – the women of the country should learn it genwine Southern cooking, the kind they've got it in two-dollars-a-day American-plan Southern hotels, Mawruss, and not only would people eat much less than they eat at present, but the chances is it would fix some people so they wouldn't eat at all."

"Why Southern cooking?" Morris Perlmutter asked. "For that matter, two-dollar-a-day American-plan Eastern cooking wouldn't make you eat yourself red in the face, neither, which the last time I was in New Bedford they gave me for lunch some fried schrod, and I give you my word, Abe, I'd as lieve eat a pair of feet-proof socks, including the guarantee and the price ticket. But that ain't neither here or there, Abe. Nobody could pin medals on himself for being a small eater in a hotel, Abe, aber the test comes when you arrive home from the store at half past seven and your wife sets before you a plate of gedampfte Kalbfleisch which if a chef in Delmonico's would cook such a thing like that, Abe, the Ritz-Carlton would pay John G. Stanchfield a retainer of one hundred thousand dollars to advise them how the fellow's contract could be broken with Delmonico's so they could get him to come to work for them. And that's why I am telling you, Abe, when you get such a plate of gedampfte Kalbfleisch in front of you, which the steam comes up from it like roses, y'understand, and when you put a piece of it in your mouth it's like – "

"Say, listen," Abe protested, "let me alone, will you? It's only eleven o'clock, and I couldn't go out to lunch for another hour yet."

"That only goes to show what for a stomach patriot you are, Abe," Morris commented. "Even when we are only talking about food you couldn't restrain yourself, so what must it be like when you've got the food actually on the table? I bet yer you don't remember that such a feller as Hoover ever existed at all, let alone what he says about eating reasonable."

"That's all right, Mawruss," Abe said. "Mr. Hoover could talk that way, because maybe his wife ain't such a crank about her cooking like my Rosie is, y'understand, aber if Mr. Hoover would be me, Mawruss, and there comes on the table some gestoffte Miltz which Mrs. Hoover has been breaking her back standing over the stove all the afternoon seeing that it don't stick to the bottom of the kettle, y'understand, and Mr. Hoover takes only a couple slices of it on account of the war, y'understand, what is going to happen then?

"'So,' Mrs. Hoover says, 'you had one of them sixty-cent table-d'hôte lunches to-day again, and now of course you 'ain't got no appetite. How many times did I tell you you shouldn't eat that poison?'

"'So sure as I am sitting here, mommer,' Hoover says, 'all I had for my lunch was a Swiss-cheese rye-bread sandwich and a cup coffee.'

"'Then what's the matter you ain't eating?' Mrs. Hoover says. 'Ain't it cooked right?'

"'Certainly it's cooked right,' Hoover says. 'But two pieces is a plenty on account of the war.'

"'On account of the war! I could work my fingers to the bone fixing good food for that man, and he wouldn't eat it on account of the war, sagt er,' says Mrs. Hoover.

"'But, listen, mommer – ' Hoover tries to tell her.

"'Never mind, any excuse is better than none,' Mrs. Hoover says. 'Turns up his nose at my cooking yet! Gestoffte Miltz ain't good enough for him. I suppose you would like me to give you every day roast duck on twenty dollars a week housekeeping money. Did you ever hear the like? Couldn't eat gestoffte Miltz no more, so tony he gets all of a sudden!'

"'Aber mommer, listen to me for a moment,' Hoover says, but it ain't a bit of use because Mrs. Hoover goes into the bedroom and locks the door on him, and by the time he has got her to be on speaking terms again he has violated the don't-eat-no-sugar DON'T to the extent of four dollars and fifty cents for a five-pound box of mixed chocolates and bum-bums, understand me. Also just to show that she forgives him they take in a show mit afterward a supper in which Mr. Hoover violates not only all the other DON'Ts in the food-conservation circulars, but also makes himself liable to go to jail for giving a couple of dollars to a German head waiter under the Trading with the Enemy law."

"At that, the way some of our best hotels conservates food nowadays is setting a good example to the women of the country," Morris declared.

"What do you mean – nowadays?" Abe retorted. "They always conservated food, the only difference being, Mawruss, that in former times, when them crooks used to get ten portions of chicken à la King out of a two-pound cold-storage chicken and charged you a dollar and a quarter a portion for it, y'understand, they was a bunch of crooks – ain't it? – whereas nowadays when them crooks get eleven portions out of the same chicken and charge you a dollar and a half a portion for it, y'understand, they're a bunch of patriots, understand me, which if the coal-dealer and the retail grocer and butcher would short-weight you and overcharge you the way some of them patriotic New York hotel proprietors does, it would be hard to find many patriots in New York City outside of Blackwells Island oder the Tombs prison."

"And yet, Abe, if you would go to work and figure out the overhead on a chicken which is used for eleven portions of chicken à la King," Morris said, "you would find that the hotel-keeper gets his profit only from the neck which he uses for chicken consommé."

"Well, say!" Abe exclaimed. "A profit of six cups of chicken consommé at forty cents a cup ain't to be sneezed at, neither, and even then you are taking the hotel-keeper's word for the overhead, which I don't care if a feller would be ordinarily a regular George Washington, y'understand, and wouldn't even lie to his wife about how he come out in his weekly Saturday-night pinochle game, understand me, but when such a feller reckons the overhead on the goods he manufactures it don't make no difference if it would be locomotive engines or pants, in addition to the legitimate cost of every one-twelfth dozen articles, he figures in as overhead one-twelfth of his telephone number, one-twelfth of the year he was born, one-twelfth of how old his grandfather olav hasholom was when he married for the fourth time, and one-twelfth of every other number he can remember, from his automobile number to his street number, and usually such a crook lives in the last house from the city limits."

"I tell yer, Abe," Morris said, "the feller which invented poison gas was some Rosher, and the feller which invented T.M.T. also, but the feller which invented the overhead is in a class by himself just behind the Kaiser. I don't know what his name is, but he is the feller what fixed things so that a ten-cent loaf of bread has not only got into it the air-holes which is caused by the yeast, but also the air-holes which is caused by the lawyer's bill that the baking company paid at the time they issued their five-million-dollar consolidated and refunding four-per-cent. first-mortgage bonds, y'understand, and there's just as much nourishment in that kind of air-hole for a truck-driver's family of growing children as there is in any other kind of air-hole."

"Well, the bakers 'ain't got nothing on the farmers when it comes to cost bookkeeping, Mawruss," Abe said. "I was reading where the milk-raisers' Verein claims the price of feed is so high that they've got to sell milk at ten cents a quart wholesale, but for all them farmers figure that the same feed goes to fatten the cow for the market, Mawruss, you might suppose that there was a big institution somewheres up state called the Ezra B. Cornell Home for Aged and Indignant Cows, y'understand, and that so soon as a cow gets through giving milk, y'understand, instead of slaughtering it the farmer takes it to the home in his automobile and contributes five dollars a week toward its support until it dies of hardening of the arteries at the age of eighty-two."

"Take it from me, Abe," Morris said, "them farmers ain't such farmers as people think they are. It's going to be so, pretty soon, that people will be paying two dollars and a half for an orchestra seat and pretty near break their hearts while the poor old second-mortgage shark is being turned out of his little home by the farmer."

"And on the opening night, Mawruss, the front rows will be filled with milk agents," Abe said, "and after the show you will see them sitting around Rector's and Churchill's and getting terrible noisy over a magnum of Sheffield Farms nineteen sixteen."

"Of course nobody is going to be the worser for making a joke about such things, Abe," Morris interrupted, "but last winter when these fellers which gets off mommerlogs in vaudeville shows was talking about somebody being immensely wealthy on account his breath smelt from onions, y'understand, there wasn't many people raising a family on less than twenty-five dollars a week whose breath smelt from onions at that."

"Did I say they did?" Abe asked.

"And it is the same way with potatoes and fruit, not to say fish and poultry and all the other foods which Mr. Hoover says we should eat in order to save beef, sugar, and flour for the soldiers," Morris continued. "When a woman buys nowadays flounder at twenty-five cents a pound, she is paying ten cents for fish and fifteen cents toward the fish-dealer's wife's diamonds or his six-cylinder automobile, so if I would be Mr. Hoover, before I issued bread and meat cards to the consumer I would hand out automobile and diamond cards to the fish-dealer and the vegetable-dealer and maybe it would help to stop them fellers from loading their prices with what it costs 'em to keep up their expensive habits."

"A fish-dealer is entitled to expensive habits the same like anybody else," Abe said, "which if Mr. Hoover stops him from buying his wife once in a while diamonds, sooner or later Mr. Hoover will stop him from buying his wife furs and it will work down right along the line till Mr. Hoover hits the garment business, Mawruss, which, while I ain't got no particular sympathy for a fish-dealer, y'understand, his money is just so good as the next one's, so I ask you, as a garment-manufacturer, what are you going to do about it?"