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