be, 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 the