"But there's also a large number of people which is going to lose their jobs on account of this here prohibition, Abe, and if they get the sympathy of these American sitsons which is laying awake nights worrying about how the Czar is getting along, Abe, it would be big already. I am talking about the temperance lecturers," Morris declared, "which if it wouldn't be for them fellers pretty near convincing everybody that no one could be happy and sober at the same time, Abe, it's my idee that we would of had this here prohibition sohon long since ago already, because those temperance lecturers got their arguments against drinking schnapps so mixed up with Sunday baseball, playing billiards, and going to theayters, picture-galleries, and libraries on Sunday, Abe, that some people which visits New York from small towns in the Middle West still hesitates about going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for fear of getting a hobnailed liver or something."
"At that, Mawruss, this here prohibition is going to hurt some businesses like the jewelry business," Abe said, "which not counting the millions of carats that fellers has bought to square themselves for coming home at all hours of the night, y'understand, there's many a bar pin which would still be in stock if the customer hadn't nerved himself to buying it with a couple of cocktails, understand me. Automobiles is the same way, Mawruss, and if the engineering department of the big automobile concerns is now busy on the problem of making alcohol a substitute for gasolene, Mawruss, you can bet your life that the sales department is just as busy trying to find out something which will be a substitute for alcohol, because when a feller has made up his mind to buy a five-passenger touring-car, Mawruss, there ain't many automobile salesmen which could wish a seven-passenger limousine on him by working him with a couple of cups coffee, y'understand."
"Then there is the show business," Morris observed, "and while I don't mean to say that this here prohibition is going to have any effect on them miserable plays where the girl saves the family at eight-forty-five by marrying the millionaire and discovers at ten-forty-five that she loves him just as much as if he hadn't any rating, so that the show can get out at eleven-five, y'understand, but when enough states has adopted the prohibition amendment to pull it into effect, Abe, the Midnight Follies as a business proposition will be in a class with bar fixtures and mass-kerseno cherries."
"Well, so far as I'm concerned, any show that starts in at twelve o'clock would always have to get along without my trade, prohibition or no prohibition," Abe commented, "even though I could enjoy it on nothing stronger than malted milk."
"Which you couldn't," Morris added, "and there's why the Midnight Follies wouldn't last, because not only is this here prohibition going to kill schnapps, Abe, but it is also going to drive off the market for all articles the demand for which contains more than one per cent. alcohol."
"And believe me, Mawruss," Abe concluded, "no decent, respectable man is going to miss such articles, neither."
XV
POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON PEACE WITH VICTORY AND WITHOUT BROKERS, EITHER
"An offer is anyhow an offer, even if it is turned down, Mawruss," Abe Potash said, the day after Germany proposed terms of peace, "which that time I sold Harris Immerglick them lots in Brownsville, Mawruss, the first proposition he made me I pretty near threw him down the freight-elevator shaft, and when we finally closed the deal I couldn't tell exactly how much I made on them lots—figuring what I paid in taxes and assessments while I owned 'em, but it must have been, anyhow, five hundred dollars, Mawruss, from the way Immerglick gives me such a cutthroat looks whenever he sees me nowadays."