“Oh, he has rights enough,” Oliver assented; “but the poor man’s club has passed into the hands of a receiver—a mighty capable one. The poor man’s club is now in the hands of his wife. She is in charge now of the Saturday afternoons and evenings. Do you think, when her vote is as good as his, she will let him pour his wages into the sink? Rather not. She has spent them, spent them in advance, for a generation to come.”
“Yes,” said Cornelia. “Isn’t it a pity! Workwomen are the most wasteful creatures. Why, when Margaret—”
“You don’t quite get the idea, my dear,” Oliver resumed. “As I was saying—in war time, while her old man was sober, with money bulging his pockets and nowhere to go, she made him buy her a house and a Ford and a Victrola and savings stamps and baby bonds. Now she’s buying a municipal playground along the line of the old grog-shops and a new schoolhouse and a hospital and a couple of movie theatres and a municipal stadium and a municipal swimming-pool and God Himself alone knows how many hundred thousand miles of the finest and most expensive roads in the world.”
“Why, Oliver dear,” cried Cornelia, “what do you mean?” I don’t know anything more painful than to report the occasional fatuity of a woman whom one almost unreservedly admires. But dear Cornelia has not meditated very deeply on the problems of the working classes. And returning to her point, she insisted: “I’m sure Margaret hasn’t bought any swimming pools or hospitals.”
“No, my dear,” said Oliver calmly, “I doubt if she has. But as I was saying, she has her own ideas of a club—that woman. She is a Progressive. As a big employer in Pittsburgh said to me yesterday, ‘She has tasted blood.’ She has dug in, and is going to extend her works. Wages won’t go down; they’ll be higher to-morrow morning. Why? Do you suppose that new outfit of hers is paid for? Rather not. Do you suppose that the business men are going to continue in business and collect their bills? Do you suppose they know what kind of plain people pay their bills and have money to spend? I fancy they do. Well! The Big Brother is still in the wooden horse. Maximum production and high wages till the Judgment Day. And Prohibition! The only ticket on which any party will hold office. That’s my forecast—as a servant of the government and a friend of the workingman.”
“Heaven help the poor workingman,” cried Willys, “and spare us a few noble specimens of the idle rich. But now, Excellency, you must cheer our fainting spirits by explaining your point of view as the master of your private life.”
“As the master of my private life,” said Oliver promptly, “I deny that I am any such Janus as the Professor here tries to make me out. As a private citizen, I still believe that prohibition cannot be repealed. Within this belief I merely include, as a private citizen, my philosophic certainty that it will never be enforced, except where it is economically necessary. In my case it is not necessary; therefore, it will not be enforced. Its enforcement helps the business of the plain people; it would hinder mine. It adds, on the whole, very greatly to the comfort of their lives. It would detract from mine. The whole case against liquor grew out of the plain people’s abuse of it. The whole case of liquor will be improved by my right use of it. There is no ‘rasping injustice,’ but a beautiful poetic justice in their losing theirs and in my keeping mine. That doesn’t express adequately my generosity in lending my hand to riveting the workingman’s benefits firmly upon him. Many of the most decorative and not the least substantial pillars of prohibition are men of excellent and experienced palate. The most sincere and the most competent advocates of the cause are the nonconforming prohibitionists. I simply cannot understand the Senator who refers to the Volstead Act as an idiotic measure and a failure. It was absolutely necessary: nothing which is necessary is idiotic. And every economist will tell you that it has been a marvelous economic success. It wonderfully accomplishes what had to be done, and it leaves undone what it ought not to do. And there you are.”
“And there you are!” retorted Willys, “you and your economic argument. But where are the rest of us? I’m sorry to say that, for economic reasons, I can’t follow you. My bootlegger is devouring my royalties. Therefore, as you would say, I have strong conscientious objections to illicit liquor.”
“I had rather overlooked that possibility,” said Oliver. “But lean on me—at least till you have finished Senator Jones.”
“Thank you,” said Willys, “I’ll do so. But seriously speaking—”