"Your Excellency should realize," they wrote me in an open letter, published in both the Blare and the Screamer, "that the profits of business and consequently the prosperity of the nation depend upon a scarcity of the vital commodities. So long as there is scarcity, people will pay high prices and stockholders will reap huge dividends; but as soon as abundance occurs, prices will sink and dividends will correspondingly wane. This is, you will agree, an intolerable condition, and should be avoided by every means at our disposal. Accordingly, we recommend that you repeal the law forbidding us to burn surplus products."
Naturally, I paid no heed to this appeal; but I knew that I was treading on dangerous ground. From the First and Second Classes came renewed groans and rumblings of discontent, which, despite all the efforts of the police, I could not suppress; while, to my despair, I learned that hundreds of tons of food and clothing were still feeding the flames each "wake," regardless of all my vigilance. Worst of all, the Third Class—to whom I distributed vast amounts of commodities—were unsatisfied with what I gave them and clamored for more in such a grumbling, discontented chorus that I had almost more to fear from them than from the other classes.
Yes, hard and bitter, hard and bitter is the path of a Dictator! Before a few months were over, I began to wish I had not launched forth on my new career.
To make matters still more serious, resentment at my other reform measures was almost equally heated. Thus, there was the order against adulteration of the air-supply, which brought down on me the wrath of my old employer, the Ventilation Company; there was the rule raising the military age of children from six to eight, which sent legions of patriots fuming to my palace in protest; there was the law that spies must receive a trial before being executed—which provoked widespread denunciation on the ground of its "sentimental weakness"; and there was the enactment taxing the First and Second Classes no less than the Third—which almost led to armed rebellion before, in self-defense, I withdrew it and restored the good old conditions, in which only the Third Class paid taxes.
Yes, hard and bitter was my path as Dictator! And, after the first half year, it was to grow harder and bitterer still.
But before I tell of my further public difficulties, let me mention one private vexation. This was in connection with my good old friends, Professor Tan Trum and his daughter Loa.
For a long while, I had been out of touch with this estimable pair, and I had hoped that, in my new rôle as "Luma the Illustrious," I would be able to elude them entirely. But such was not to be. One day, when delivering a public address in my throne-room, I chanced to notice two familiar faces among the front ranks of spectators, and I saw how a certain fat and bewrinkled lady was nudging an elderly man, while pointing at me in excited recognition. Alas!—even my amber spectacles and whitened face had not saved me!
It was only a few "wakes" later when Tan Trum, accompanied by his daughter, paid me a visit. In view of their many past kindnesses, I could not refuse them an audience, as I would have liked to do; but I foresaw that I was to have a difficult time. And, indeed, they were to make things more than difficult!
After congratulating me on my rise, which they ascribed to the training I had had at their hands, the Professor approached a delicate subject. Judging from the ogling glances which Loa cast me, and the admiring light in her little salmon eyes, it was all too evident that she, magnanimous creature, was willing to forgive me for past rebuffs!