think that they
had nothing better to do with their time than the people which goes to
war bazaars, which the reason why them advertising men went wrong was
that they were practically encouraged to run crooked war bazaars by the
hundreds of thousands of people who wouldn't loosen up for charity
unless they could get something for their money besides the good they
are doing."

"Well, that only goes to show how one minute you argue one way, and the
next you say something entirely different again," Abe said.

"Is that so?" Morris exclaimed. "Well, so far as I could see, Abe, you
ain't on a strict diet, neither, when it comes to eating your own
words."

"Maybe I ain't," Abe admitted, "but it seems to me that people might
just so well pass on their money to the Red Cross through war bazaars as
pass it on to the government through buying theayter tickets the way you
argued a few minutes since."

"The Red Cross is one thing and the government another," Morris
retorted. "If people spend money at a war bazaar maybe one per cent. of
it reaches the Red Cross and maybe it don't, whereas if they spend at a
theayter, the government gets ten per cent. net, and the transaction
'ain't got to be audited by the grand jury, neither."

"Then you ain't in favor that people should give their money to the Red
Cross?" Abe said.

"_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 ordere