The Illiterate Digest

by Will Rogers

If Jack Dempsey had left Washington and undertaken this same strain, when he got back Uncle Joe Cannon could have licked him.

Any of you who have slept, or tried to, on a Train at Night and got into a Town early in the morning, you know you don’t feel like speaking or Parading. You want to go to a Hotel and go to bed. Now can you imagine the President’s case? Every morning at 6 A. M. to be awakened by a Band (it wouldn’t be so bad if it was a good Band) and you look out and there is the Town’s best Citizens in Antique Hats, ready to show you the Fire House, the new Aqueduct, the High School, and City Hall. The smell of the Moth Balls from the long tail Coats of the Committee morning after morning, would give a man some kind of disease.

Now, every man on that Committee was nearly tired out at night and took a vacation the next day, but the President must go right on the same thing the next day, only worse, for every Town was trying to outdo the other. It’s not only a hardship on the People you are entertaining but hard on everybody participating.

One Town will have a Flag composed of 5 thousand children, assembled and standing in the Hot sun for hours, not only spoiling their whole day but subjecting them to every known contagious disease. The next Town to be original will get 10 thousand Children to make up their Flag, and Make Their Parade 10 Miles as the Last One Only Paraded 5, even if they have to exhaust their Guest to do it.

Then, of course, he is always asked to speak out in the open. They have 60 acre Fields and put seats around them and call ’em Stadiums, and expect a man to talk in them. Anyone who has ever spoken outdoors knows what outdoor speaking does to your voice. The Town with the cheapest land and most Concrete can have the largest Stadium.

I have always claimed that Parades should be classed as a Nuisance and participants should be subject to a term in prison. They stop more work, inconvenience more People, stop more traffic, cause more accidents, entail more expense, and commit and cause I don’t remember the other hundred misdemeanors. And what good are they? Half of them going along you don’t know who they are, or what they are for. Even the People in them hate ’em. The most popular joke I had after the War in New York when the Boys were coming back and parading every day was, “If we really wanted to honor our Boys, why didn’t we let them sit on the reviewing stands and make the people march those 15 miles?” They didn’t want to parade, they wanted to go home and rest. But they wouldn’t discharge a Soldier as long as they could find a new Street in a Town that he hadn’t marched down, yet.

Of course, keep Circus Parades, for they really give enjoyment not only to kids but us old ones, too. As a remedy for this parading I would suggest that each Town set aside one Street, away out where there is nothing to interfere and give them that as Parade Street; then when some fellow or gang wants to try out a new Uniform or honor somebody, why let them parade up and down there just as long as they want to. If you think Parading is popular just see how many would go over there to see it. Parades nowadays think they are drawing a crowd when it’s only people trying to get across the street to their business, not to see you Parade at all. So just set them aside a Street—that will stop it. The minute a Parader sees that no one is watching him he will stop and in that way you will eliminate all Parades.

I was on the Reception Committee of the Movie Industry that was to have met the President here in Los Angeles. Well, just as an example of what I said about the others, they decided that it might be showing partiality if they took him to any one Studio, so they decided to take him to all of them. In that way they could take up his entire time. Now, no one knew whether he wanted to go to any of them or not; we were deciding for him. Can you imagine being a Guest of the City of Carnegie, Pa., and the Committee showing you through all the Steel mills in Town?

Now, President Harding was quite an admirer of the Movies so I imagine he liked sausage, too. But Chicago didn’t rush him off to the Packing Houses the minute he got there, to see it made.

According to his itinerary here, he was allowed 15 minutes to call on an Aunt whom he hadn’t seen in years that lived here. That was to be his only relaxation while here. We were waiting to see how long Frisco’s Parade would run so we could run ours longer.