During the next session of the Congress, Jerry's crack lobbyists raised a great howl about the shameful congestion in the Patent Office, not mentioning, of course, that they were employed by the man who had created the congestion, by offering a million dollars for a device he knew no Earthman could build.
Another dummy organization, dubbed the Inventors Protective League, sponsored a bill to amend the act relating to perpetual motion machines. It passed, with an emergency clause, and, thereafter, devices purporting to reposit matter were not entitled to letters of patent.
This just about clinched the deal, for the vast majority of people, who had never watched laws enacted, assumed that if something was in the law, there must be a good reason for it, unless, of course, it was anything like prohibition.
A name band revived "The Thing," leaving the drumbeats out of the vocal refrain, and substituting, "Get out of here with that Matter Repositor, before I call a cop!" Within six months, radio and TV comedians had worn out the joke. Even Goofy, My Friend Irma, Mrs. Ace, and Gracie Allen were too sophisticated to believe in Matter Repositors. Gags about them dropped to the same low level as those about Brooklyn and joke-stealing comics.
Although his appearance in public was liable to start boos and catcalls, the Ambassador from Outer Space was duly grateful. He was spared the painful necessity of reporting his disastrous slip of the tongue to his government, for Earth economy was again on the upward spiral. Everybody was spending the money he'd been saving up for a Matter Repositor.
The Ambassador cheerfully paid the million-a-month retainer and the whopping space bills, but Jerry's greatest gain in the transaction was his agreement allowing him to run advertising in the Federated Planets information bulletins. The space didn't cost him a nickel. Yet he knew how to sell his exclusive rights to it for more money than any one Earth company had in its promotional budget.
By the time the campaign debunking the Matter Repositor was ready to die a natural death, Jerry had started an organization of Earth businessmen, spearheaded by the Restaurant and Hotel Associations, and the transportation interests, to promote Earth as a primitive planet. The primitive aspects of Earth, Jerry predicted, would exert a powerful appeal on the citizens of the Federated Planets, who must be pretty bored with civilization, and badly in need of a vacation from too much perfection.
This organization was not composed of dummies, by any means, but the businessmen joined up with a vague idea that their hostelries were to be way-stations, that they were going to promote sightseeing tours to places they themselves would call primitive, that the human exhibits would consist of blanketed Navajos, Chinese coolies, hula girls, Voodoo dancers, and Eskimos.
Jerry filled the biggest convention hall in Chicago, and, at the climax of the proceedings, dramatically drew back a velvet curtain, unveiling a huge painting of the symbol of the campaign—a masked bandit, wearing a slouch hat, clutching in a greedy hand a fat bag marked with a dollar sign. Below was blazoned the tasteful slogan, "Let the People of Earth Gyp You!"