“First they fan me for maintaining prices and then for cutting prices. They lower freight rates so I can compete in a certain market, and then just when I’ve gone to the expense of advertising and traveling it, the State and Interstate Commissions get into a dog-fight and they shoot the freight rates up again.
“They charge me an Income Tax on what I make, and an Income Tax on what I lose. They compel me to fill out long, winding webbed-up Forms that they don’t understand themselves, and that would be sufficient to dam any Office Boy in the land for business incompetence.
“Out of the taxes that I and my impotent kind are soaked with, they send a lot of clerks over the globe to write high-school tracts on the Old Stuff about our Great Trade Chances Abroad, and then spring a Seaman’s Law joker that tosses American Shipping into the Discard and puts our goods at the mercy of ships of Nations that are out to stick tacks in the tire of American Trade.
“For twenty years sane men have been struggling to pull the Tariff out of the toils of Party Pilferers and give Industry a chance to tell where it’s at, and yet to this muggy day it is made the mule on which Boneheads in black fedoras ride in and out of Congress.
“I maintain that the backbone, brains and belly of this Nation is BUSINESS, and yet when it comes to enacting legislation, Business hasn’t the voice of a pink-eyed chigger. It is forced to operate under laws made by men that couldn’t hold a bill clerk’s job in a Brooklyn kiosk, and I for one am getting good and dam sick of the whole frowsy, fiddling farce.”
With this perorational explosion, Comrade Manufacturer slapped down the corrugated cover of his Roll Top, jammed his hat on a bent ear, and soled off home to take it out on The Folks.
Monday morning came around, according to cosmic custom. The much admired face of the office clock smiled out the hour of ten, and the last story of the week-end’s mush had been passed along Bookkeeper’s Row.
A neatly harnessed young man with a well-groomed superstructure appeared at the General Office Door.