So how about 80.
Well, that was $125. per man. This was doing something pretty good by
eighty men that would very likely need it, but it seemed sort of unfair
not to take in more of the boys. So I split it again and had one hundred
and sixty boys with $62.50 in their pockets.

Well, I felt kind of good over this idea and there was only two real
troubles with it which is to say that $31.25 for three hundred and
twenty boys looked nicer if there was only some way to handle it right.
But how?

I put in another hard think and then I got it. The way to make that
$31.25 a real present was to make it a payment on something and then
with the other hand pass out a job at the same time, which would not
alone keep the soldier but allow him to cover the difference.

And to get away with this all I needed now was a popular investment and
320 perfectly good steady jobs.

Well, with the Victory Loan the first part was easy enough, and I
concluded to pay twenty-five dollars on each of three hundred and twenty
one hundred dollar victory notes, making myself responsible for the lot
the same as if I was a bank and getting a job for each note and having
the giver of the job hold the note on the soldier and pay me the
instalments and I would pay myself back, or if not nobody would be stung
outside of me, supposing any one of them failed to come across. I was
going to take a big lot for myself and another ten didn't much matter.

And then with the remaining $6.25 each, well, I would pool that for
leaflets enough to go around the whole division and on the leaflet I
would have printed the facts and a list of the jobs and just what they
was, with how much kale per week went with them, and see that the boys
got them while the parade was forming and then it would be up to them,
because the home folks can only do so much and then it's up to the army
their own selves just as with munitions and sugar and red X work while
the big show was on. They did the work but we gave them the job--we and
the Germans. And now all we could do again was to give them a job--and
it's enough, judging from how they went after the first one.

And then, just as I come smack up against the awful fact of where would
I get them jobs Ma come in and says the hot-dogs and liberty-cabbage
which it's the truth we always translate them into American at our
table, was getting cold and as long as I was paying for them I'd better
eat them while they was fit. So I says all righ