es,
wheat, or anything else that people is working to produce for a living
and not for the exercise there is in it, y'understand, such people would
leave off producing it and go into some other line where the prices
ain't regulated."

"They would be suckers if they didn't," Abe commented.

"And the consequence would be that sooner or later, on account of such
low prices, y'understand, everybody would have the price, but nobody
would have the coal," Morris said, "and that is what is called the law
of supply and demand. It ain't a law which was passed by any
legislature, Abe. It's a law which made itself, like the law that if you
eat too much you'll get stomach trouble, and if you spend too much
you'll go broke, and you couldn't sidestep any of them self-made laws by
consulting those high-grade crooks which used to specialize in getting
million-dollar fees out of finding loopholes in the Interstate Commerce
law and the Anti-trust laws, because there's no loopholes in the law of
supply and demand."

"Might there ain't no loopholes in the law of supply and demand, maybe,"
Abe said; "but when Mr. Wilson gave the order to his Coal Administrator
to lower the price of coal it's my idee that he was trying to punch a
few loopholes in the law of The Public Be Damned, which while it was
never passed by no legislature, Mawruss, it ain't self-made, neither,
y'understand, but was made by the producer to do away with this here law
of gravity, because under the law of The Public Be Damned prices goes up
and they never come down, but they keep on going up and up according to
that other law, the law of the Sky's the Limit, which no doubt a big
philosopher like you, Mawruss, has heard about already."

"In the company of igneramuses, Abe," Morris said, "a feller could easy
get a reputation for being a big philosopher, and not know such an awful
lot at that."

"I give you right, Mawruss," Abe agreed, heartily; "but even admitting
that you don't know an awful lot, Mawruss, there's something in what you
say about this here law of supply and demand."

"Well, now that you indorse it, Abe, that makes it, anyhow, an
argument," Morris commented.

"But it looks to me like one of them arguments that is pulled by the
supply end to put something over on the demand end," Abe continued,
"because President Wilson knows just so much about the law of supply and
demand as the coal operators does, Mawruss, and when he fixed the price
of coal you coul