The Illiterate Digest

by Will Rogers

Now, I bet a lot of you thought after the Company had got the land leased, that the next thing to do was to hire a Driller to put the Well down. But you are wrong again. You go out and get another Lawyer. You have to have another Lawyer to draw up the contract with the driller.

THEY NOT ONLY HAVE TO BE LAWYERS, BUT POLITICAL LAWYERS.

Then I bet that you think the next step is to wait until you see whether you have Oil or not. Say, don’t make me laugh out loud again. You don’t wait for anything of the kind: you engage another Lawyer to draw up some pretty Oil Stock Paper with nice flowered edges. Looks like a marriage license—only worse. Then you start selling the stock, claiming that the BoHunk Oil Company are putting down a Well on Smith 29, North East 40 of South West 80. Then if they do strike something, they shut it up and claim it was a Duster.

Then they get another Local Lawyer who knows everybody around that neck of the Woods, to go out and buy up or lease all the adjoining land. Then, when they get it all leased, they go back and pick the stopper out of this. Well, double the Capitalization of Stock under the direction of still another Lawyer, and then they are in a position to hire more Lawyers to investigate getting a Lease from Persia, or Jugo-Slavia. This just kinder gives you a rough idea of what all these Lawyers do and why we can’t get any to help prosecute this Oil Scream.

The Illiterate Digest will have to take Editorial attention of the resignation of Sectry Denby. Mr. Denby was requested by the Senate to resign. Now that in itself is a mighty good Omen that he is an unusually able man. Of course, where I think he got in bad was in saying, if he had the same thing to do over again he would do it. It is always bad for any one on trial to say he would do the same thing over again. American People like to have you repent; then they are generous.

But you see lots of times a man gets in wrong just by an ill timed remark. Look at Mr. Doheny’s reported remark that he would “make 100 million out of the Elk Hills lease.” That will go down in History as the highest priced Gag ever pulled. That’s why Mr. Coolidge never gets in bad. If a man will just stay hushed he is hard to find out.

Personally and Editorially, I don’t think Mr. Denby is guilty at all of any wrong-doing that he knew of. But somebody has got to go in this thing, and before it’s all over you are mighty apt to find a few innocent along with all the guilty strewn along by the Pipe Line.

By the way, sometime this Country, just by accident, is going to get some man Sectry of the Navy who has at least received a Picture Post Card of Annapolis, sometime during his career. Josephus Daniels had never been in anything bigger than a Row Boat up to the time he was made Sectry of the Navy. The first Battleship he got on he kept looking for the Paddle Wheels on the side that made it go. He found the Officers in those days had Cocktail and Cordial Glasses with their Table wear. He made them throw them all overboard. He thought they would sink the Ship. What he lacked in seamanship, he made up in morality.

Then came Mr. Denby who had received his Maritime Education by looking at the Detroit River (which is so thick with Booze Boats that you can’t see the Water) naturally his Aquatic viewpoint is rather warped.