"Not even when the facts is against them?" Morris asked.
"They don't pay no attention to the facts," Abe said. "You take this here Morris Hillkowitz or Hillquit which he is running for mayor of New York on the Socialistic ticket, and for years already that feller went around saying that it was the people which lived in the two-thousand-a-year apartments and owned expensive automobiles which was squashing the protelariat, y'understand, and now when it comes out in the papers that he is living in a thousand-dollar-a-year apartment and running an expensive automobile, Mawruss, does he turn around and say that it's all a mistake and that in reality it's the protelariat which is squashing the feller with the two-thousand-dollar-a-year apartment and expensive automobile? Oser a Stück!"
"Well, it only goes to show that a feller can even make money by being a Socialist if he only sticks to it long enough," Morris said.
"At that, he's probably got more sympathy mit the protelariat than he ever did, Mawruss, because before he owned an automobile he only suspected what them fellers was missing by being poor. Now he knows."
"And I suppose by the time he is running for President on the Socialistic ticket," Morris said, "he'll be owning a steam-yacht and the wrongs of the working classes will be pretty near breaking his heart."
"Even so, Mawruss, he won't be changing his mind, and I don't know but what he'll be acting wise, too," Abe said, "because when a politician gets a reputation for carrying a certain line of stable opinions his customers naturally expects that he is going to continue to carry 'em, and when he drops that line and lays in a stock of new stuff in the way of political ideas, y'understand, his customers leave him and he's got to build up his trade over again; and that's no way for a feller to get into the steam-yacht class—I don't care if he would be a politician or a garment-manufacturer."
"Well, of course, if a feller's opinions is his living, you couldn't blame him for not changing 'em," Morris said, "aber this here Root is already retired from business, and the chances is that, the way he's got his money invested, it wouldn't make no difference how liberal-minded he was, the corporations would have to pay the coupons, anyway."
"I know they would," Abe agreed, "but you take some of these Senators and Congressmen which they started out before we was at war with Germany to show an attractive line of pro-German ideas—that is to say, attractive to their regular customers out in Wisconsin and Saint Louis, understand me, and people don't figure that them poor fellers has got mortgages falling due on 'em next year and boys to put through college. For all people knows, Mawruss, this here McLemon which used to make a speciality of speeches warning Americans off of ocean steamships was supporting half his wife's family and widowed sister that way. The chances is that he sees now what a rotten line of argument that was, and he would like to switch over and display some snappy nineteen-seventeen-model speeches about the freedom of the seas for American sitsons, understand me, but you know yourself how it is when your wife has got a large family, Mawruss: if one of her sisters ain't having an emergency operation on you, it's a case of doing something quick to keep her youngest brother out of jail, and either way you are stuck a couple of hundred dollars, so you couldn't blame a Congressman who refuses to change his mind and risk losing his territory, even if all the rest of the country is calling him a regular Benedictine Arnold, y'understand."
"Well, sooner or later some of these big Machers has got to change their minds, otherwise the war will never be over," Morris said. "The Kaiser has said over and over again that, once having put on her shiny armor, y'understand, the Fatherland would never let the sword out of its hand till England was finally crushed and Gott mit uns, and Lord George and Lord Northcliff has said the same thing about Germany excepting Gott mit uns. Also France in this great hour would never lay down the sword, and we would never lay down the sword. Furthermore to hear Austria talk, and Kerensky, Venizelos, and the King of Rumania, there would be such a continuous demand for swords that it would pay Charles N. Schwab and this here Judge Gary to organize the Consolidated Sword Company or the United States Sword Corporation with a plant covering sixteen acres and an issue of one hundred million dollars preferred stock and two hundred and fifty million dollars common stock and let the cannon and torpedo business go."
"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But when the Kaiser says that Germany would never stop fighting till her enemies is in the dust, speaking of Germany as a she-Fatherland, or till its enemies is in the dust, speaking of Germany as an it-Fatherland, Mawruss, if you was a mind-reader, Mawruss, you would see 'way back in the rear of his brain one of them railroad time-table signs: (GG) Will stop daily after January first, nineteen-nineteen."