"Listen, Abe," Morris protested, "if you are trying to invent this schmooes about corporations just so you could knock Mr. Wilson, y'understand, such a scheme wouldn't deceive a child even."
"I wouldn't knock President Wilson for anything, Mawruss," Abe retorted. "I couldn't knock him, because when I think of Mr. Wilson I see before my eyes a good-looking gentleman with a pleasant smile on his face, y'understand, and not very far away stands Mrs. Wilson, which, if Mr. Wilson didn't put over even one fourteenth of his fourteen points, Mawruss, his visit to Europe with Mrs. Wilson wouldn't be wasted, Mawruss, because it would have given them people over in the old country a chance to see what an American lady is and should ought to be, y'understand. But on the other hand, Mawruss, if the Democrats had elected the Algonquin Trust Company as President of the United States at the last election, y'understand, whenever I would think of the President of the United States I would see before my eyes a twenty-five-story fire-proof building with all the rents raised one hundred and fifty per cent. since last January, understand me, and I could go to work and knock with a clear conscience."
"But why should you want to knock the President of the United States?" Morris demanded.
"Ain't I telling you that I don't want to knock him?" Abe declared. "All I am saying is that, if such a thing was possible, it would be a whole lot better to have a corporation as President of the United States instead of an individual, Mawruss, because corporations don't get sick, corporations don't get insulted, a corporation oser cares whether it gets cheered or hooted, and finally, Mawruss, a corporation couldn't ride around Italy in an open carriage with the King of Italy and give the Italian people the impression that all they had to do was to ask for Fiume and it was theirs."
"And another thing about a corporation, Abe, is that it ain't a copartnership where one partner could get every day a headache from listening to the other partner talking a lot of nonsense, Abe," Morris declared, "which you must got to remember that, beginning the first of May, if you would go to a soda-fountain and say, 'Give me something for a headache,' they would give you a United States Internal Revenue stamp for which you would got to pay two cents before they would even take the cork out of the bromo-asperin bottle."
"What's the difference whether they tax a headache coming or going, Mawruss?" Abe commented.
"A whole lot of difference," Morris said. "In the first place, the taxes which the country used to collect in one week from people when they were catching headaches would be more than equivalence to the taxes which the country is going to the taxes which the country is going to collect from people curing headaches during the next ten years. Also, Abe, nobody thought it was a hardship to pay taxes on a coming headache, whereas there will be a terrible howl go up over the tax on the same article in the opposite direction."
"At that, I think these here May 1st taxes is going to have a good effect on the American people, Mawruss," Abe said, "because there's nothing like taxes to make a man wake up and take an interest in the way the government is being run."
"A man would got to be an awful sound sleeper in that respect if he wasn't roused up a little by the income tax which he has been paying for the past four or five years, Abe," Morris said.
"That's only once a year, Mawruss," Abe said, "but these here May 1st taxes is going to keep him awake three hundred and sixty-five days out of the year. People which thought you was a tightwad if you happened to mention that six hundred million dollars of the country's money was used up in experimenting with aeroplanes, is now going to shriek in agony every time they buy a three-dollar-and-a-quarter shirt that it's a shame and a disgrace the way every little secretary in the President's Cabinet is gallivanting half over Europe on the people's money, and they'd probably be just as hard if the shirt only cost two dollars and a quarter, excepting that the luxury tax of ten per cent. is only collected from the purchasers of men's shirts of the value of three dollars and upwards on amounts in excess of three dollars each. Also, Mawruss, people which has just paid eight dollars for a bathrobe on which the tax would be ten per cent. of fifty cents, or five cents cash, y'understand, is going to say: 'Couldn't that feller travel to and from Europe in one state-room the same like anybody else? Must he got to have a whole steamboat?' and they will start right in to estimate that the cost of keeping a steamboat the size of the George Washington in commission is forty-five thousand six hundred and twenty-two dollars and thirty-eight cents per diem, and is it any wonder you've got to pay a one-cent tax on every orange phosphate, understand me."