Delphi complete works of.., p.411
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 411
Now what happens? Paper money, and bank credits and checks are all the same thing: all reflect the increasing mechanism of purchase that is bound to shoot up prices if goods run short and people scramble for them. Hence each increase of paper wages means more and more buyers for the same quantity of goods or even for a less quantity as available labour falls. It looks inevitable, doesn’t it? ... And then if prices go up, wages and salaries must go up after them to let people have, as seems only fair, the same goods as they had before. That’s what happened in the last war. Prices rose from one to three, even in countries (United States, Britain, Canada) where the currency didn’t blow up: in France about five to one.
But the trouble was they didn’t fight inflation from the right end. If you attack inflation only by trying to fix prices by law, it blows up as certainly as high explosive will explode: the more you confine it the bigger the burst. When you check prices, you must also check consumption — less and less for everybody — eat what there is and then go without. The old war-time high prices meant a scramble to pay more and more for each article. The rich got it: the poor lost out.
Hence the wizards are now handling the high voltage by refusing to let the current leap into the heap of goods, driving the lions from cage to cage and not letting them taste blood. In plain language, inflation can be beaten out by drastic control of consumption — leaving the people with nothing to buy. Carrying it to an extreme of argument, this “consumption check” against inflation could conceivably go on till the last man died of starvation — in his oldest clothes.
Hence much of our seeming inflation, our first slips into danger, are really illusory. The man with the paper wages has nothing to buy. “Look at that, and that!” he says, as a miser idiot shows dead leaves as his money.
It gets deep, doesn’t it? Can we hang on — in the United States, in Canada, in Britain, holding down prices and holding down wages, as best we may? Can we hold it! It’s like holding back a team with a heavy-loaded wagon on a steep hill — hard, but it can be done — I’ve seen good teamsters do it — but let the team lose their footing for one moment, and it’s all over.
That’s the hill we’re going down now — steady! steady! But don’t be afraid.
V
AMONG HIS MANY ACHIEVEMENTS, STEPHEN LEACOCK HAD GAINED THE POSITION OF UNOFFICIAL AMBASSADOR OF GOOD WILL BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. IN HIS OWN WORDS, IN THE PREFACE TO “ALL RIGHT, MR. ROOSEVELT,” HE PLEADS AS HIS RIGHT TO SPEAK HIS “THIRTY-FIVE YEARS ON THE STAFF OF MCGILL UNIVERSITY OF WHICH HE IS NOW A PROFESSOR EMERITUS; HIS YEARS AS A STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, FROM WHICH HE HOLDS A DOCTOR’S DEGREE; HIS HONORARY DEGREES FROM BOSTON AND DARTMOUTH UNIVERSITIES; THE INDULGENT RECEPTION BY THE AMERICAN PUBLIC OF THE FIFTY VOLUMES HE HAS WRITTEN; AND THE ACQUAINTANCESHIP HE HAS BEEN PRIVILEGED TO MAKE IN TWENTY YEARS OF PUBLIC LECTURING BEFORE AMERICAN COLLEGES AND AMERICAN AUDIENCES.”
Uncle Sam, Good Neighbour
An Allegory
I WONDER HOW the United States came to be the United States? I mean, how it came to take on its peculiar national character, as a sort of “neighbour” to all the world. As the years and the decades, and now even the centuries have gone past, we can begin to see this peculiar aspect of the United States, unknown anywhere else in history.
It is not imperial dominion, in fact it’s not dominion or domination at all, but just a peculiar result of mingled merit, destiny and good fortune. People all over the world — Chinese in Chow Chow and Patagonians in Pat Pat— “look to the United States,” as a sort of neighbour to appeal to, and to borrow from, just as among the earlier settlers in this country.
Ah! That’s it! I see it now — the early settlers. That’s where they got it from.
I think there must have been, I mean way back in early settlement times, a country store at a crossroads — you know the kind of place. I mean, store and post office and a farm combined, and this one called Sam’s place. And the man who kept it they came to call Uncle Sam. They called him that when he was a long, slouching young man, and then when he was a long, slouching middle-aged man, and finally as a long, slouching old man — old or oldish — I don’t think he ever really looked old. But they always called him Uncle Sam.
There were always one or two loafers in the store, sitting on nail kegs and whittling sticks. Uncle Sam sold pretty well everything, but, as a matter of fact, the neighbours seemed to do far more borrowing than buying.
In would come a little girl. “Please, Mr. Sam, ma would like the loan of one of your teakettles.”
“Now, which are you?” says Uncle Sam. “You’re little Nicaragua, aren’t you? Well, tell your ma she hasn’t sent back that iron pot yet.”
Or they came and bought things and just “charged” them.
In flounces a big, dark girl, all colour and style.
“Uncle Sam,” she says, “let me have another yard of that red calico.”
Uncle Sam takes his scissors.
“Are you paying for it, Miss Mexico?”
“No, charging it.”
“Well, I suppose you’ve got to have it, and tell your pa that I paid him for the coal oil and he hasn’t delivered it yet.”
Yet Uncle Sam prospered — oh, ever so much! You see, the farm was a wonderful bit of land, and he owned a tannery and a sawmill — oh, he had everything! Money just seemed to come without trying. “It is a good location,” he said.
So, of course, all the neighbours seemed poor as beside Uncle Sam, and it was just natural that they borrowed his things and charged things and didn’t pay, and ate candy (“conversation lozenges”) out of the open barrel. He took it easily enough. They were, after all, his neighbours. He treated them all the same way; except that there was one special lot that used to come now and again, who were evidently favourites. These were settled up North and would come down in summer. “They’re folk of my own,” says Uncle Sam, “they settled back North but mebbe they’ll come home again some day.”
To this good neighbourship there was just, perhaps, one exception — or at least not exactly an exception — call it a special case. The reference, of course, is to old Squire Bull, who lived on a fine, big place at quite a little distance, because it was separated from Uncle Sam’s corners by the whole extent of a big millpond, so big it was like a lake. From Sam’s place you could just see the tops of Squire Bull’s grand house and stables.
John Bull was his name, and he liked to call himself “plain John Bull,” but all the neighbours knew that was just nonsense, for everybody saw that he was “stuck up” and couldn’t be “plain” if he tried. Uncle Sam just couldn’t get on to him; and that was a funny thing because they were cousins, their folks having originally come from the same part of the country. Sam always used to deny this — at least when he was young. “He’s no cousin of mine,” he said. Later, as he got older, he said, “Mebbe he is,” and later still, “Oh, I shouldn’t wonder.” But he said it grudgingly.
For one thing Squire Bull irritated Uncle Sam by always referring to him as if he were just a boy— “that young man,” or “young Sam,” and yet here they were both old men, or getting close to it. And Squire Bull didn’t like to admit that, in point of money and consideration and standing, Uncle Sam was just as good as he was.
That’s the way they lived, anyway, till a reconciliation came about in the queerest way. It happened there came a gang of bandits to the settlement, or at any rate, the rumour of them. They were reported as robbing here and plundering there. People began to lock up the doors at night — a thing never done before — and you couldn’t be sure of travelling the roads in safety. Quite a few had been robbed, and one or two killed.
Some people wanted to organize and get together and hunt the bandits down. But Squire Bull wouldn’t believe in the stories about bandits. “All nonsense,” he said, “and if any of the fellows come around my place they’ll get a dose of cold lead.”
Uncle Sam didn’t do anything either. He was a peaceable fellow, never liking to interfere. “Keep out of quarrels” was his maxim. Yet he had a musket and a powder horn hanging in the store, and they said that when it came to shooting he was the best shot in the section. He never talked of it, but really he had been in the Indian War as a young man.
Well, one day, late in the afternoon, toward dusk, some of the children came rushing breathless into the store. “Mr. Sam, Mr. Sam!” they called. “Mr. Sam, the bandits have come, the gang of bandits; they’re over at Squire Bull’s place.”
“What’s that? What’s that?” said Uncle Sam, all confused.
“The bandits, they’re over at Squire Bull’s. We saw them smashing in the gates of the yard. We heard the shots. Oh, Mr. Sam, will they kill Mr. Bull?”
“Eh, what?” says Uncle Sam. “Smashing in the gates?” — he seemed hesitating— “hold on! What’s that? By gosh, that’s gunshots. I heard them plain.”
In ran another child, wide-eyed with fright.
“Mr. Sam, come quick, they’re over at Mr. Bull’s and they’ve shot some of the help!”
“Is Squire Bull killed?”
“No, he ain’t killed. He’s in the yard with his back to the wall ... his head’s all cut ... but he’s fighting back something awful.”
“He is, is he?” said Uncle Sam, and now he didn’t hesitate at all. “Hand me down that powder horn, sis.” He took the musket off the wall, and he took out of a drawer a six-shooter derringer that no one knew he had.
The children watched him stride away across the field faster than another man would run. Presently they heard shouting and more shots, and then there was silence.
It was just about dark when Uncle Sam came back, grim and dusty, his hands blackened with powder. The children stood around while he was hanging up his musket and his powder horn.
“Did you get the thieves?” they ventured timidly.
“The gol-darned scoundrels,” the old man muttered, “there’s some of them won’t steal again, and the rest will be safe in jail for years to come. Too bad,” he added, “some of them came of decent folks, too.”
“And how’s Squire Bull, is he killed?” the frightened children asked.
“Killed? No, sir!” laughed Uncle Sam, “he’s too tough a piece of hickory for that. His head’s tied up in vinegar but he’s all right. We had a good laugh over it. He allowed I needn’t have come, but I allowed I won the whole fight. We had quite an argument. But here, don’t you get in my way, children. Hand me that clothesbrush and reach me down that blue coat off the peg, the one with the long tail — now, that hat.”
“But you ain’t never going out again, Mr. Sam, are you?”
“Sure, I am. I’m going back over to Squire Bull’s. He’s giving a party. Now hand me down those cans off that shelf.”
And with that Uncle Sam began pulling canned salmon and canned peaches off the store shelves. “I thought I’d bring ’em along,” he said. “That darned old fool — why didn’t he say he was getting hard up? I don’t believe the folks in his house have been fed right for months.... Pride, I suppose! ... Still he’s a fine man, is Squire Bull. My own cousin, you know, children.”
All Right, Mr. Roosevelt
Canada and the United States
IT’S ALL RIGHT, Mr. Roosevelt, about this business of arms and embargo and the shipment of war material to us over here in Canada. I mean, if you can send us over a lot of first-class machine guns, that’s fine! We know just where to use them. But if not, send us some shotguns. They’ll do. And if you can’t, perhaps you could ship us over some of those old muskets that we used against one another in the battle of New Orleans, and that have been hanging up on the wall for over a hundred years of peace. Send us them. But if you can’t, that’s all right, because all these Canadian boys are going over to the war, anyway, even if they have nothing to shoot with but Fly-Tox.
But if you can’t send anything, it’s all right! Don’t let that or anything else interfere for a moment with the wonderful association in friendship that has grown up between our country and yours. Let’s keep that, anyway. Whatever happens, don’t let this continent go the way of Central Europe: let nothing and nobody betray us into that. I am sure you grasp just what I mean. Don’t let us let — no, that’s a poor phrase — I mean, let no one let — that is to say, it’s taken a hundred years of good will to place our northern continent where it stands, and we mean to keep it there.
I remember a while ago hearing my friend Bob Benchley, speaking at a Canadian-American luncheon in New York, ask where else in the world could you find another case like ours — three thousand miles of forts and not a single frontier? And none of us could think of any. Somebody suggested China and Japan. But it doesn’t seem the same.
It took a hundred years, more than that, a century and a quarter, to make that frontier as it is — with long care and effort, most of it unconscious and working by an instinct of good will, and without a plan till it was laid down, till the rugged wilderness of nature and of animosity that once separated us was laid down as flat and even as a bowling green.
A bowling green — that reminds me! I remember, years ago up in my part of the country, an old fellow who kept a summer hotel and laid down a bowling green for his guests in front of it. And he had it rolled, beautifully rolled down into such gentle slopes and inclines, with little hollows that you couldn’t see, that the bowls would go rolling exactly to the right spot, mistakes corrected themselves, and every one found himself a fine player. And the old man would stand and watch the opponents play and would call to one of them, “Well done!” and then, “Well done!” to the other, and then, “Well done, both of yous!” ... Well, that’s our frontier, and on it and across it we carry on our friendly and unending game. Don’t let’s spoil it. You can’t get turf like that in a day.
So it’s all right, Mr. Roosevelt. For, you see, we are not asking anything — we have never taken our relations with you in that way. If we had, we’d long since have been a mere puppet, a shadow. But we are not Manchukuo! No, sir.... Just where it is I don’t know, but we’re not it anyway, and it sounds just the kind of thing not to be.
You see, we have never taken the Monroe Doctrine that way — it never meant to us that in case of danger we were to throw our arms around your neck and shout, “Save us!” No, sir, don’t be afraid: there isn’t a farmer in Alberta or a lumberman in the shanties who will throw himself around your neck ... Perhaps the girls may later on, if you’re good, but that’s different.
And it’s all right, too, about the other aspects of the situation; I mean, things like the enlistment of soldiers from your country into ours.... If any of the boys are coming over to enlist, and you allow it, there’s a welcome and a place for any of them. If any of the McGruders of Mississippi — they were Highlanders, weren’t they originally? — want to come over and join the Royal Highlanders in Toronto, we’ve a tartan and sporran and a jorum (one forgets these Highland terms) for each of them. Let them all come. Perhaps they can bring the Virginia Robinsons and Randolphs with them, or “round-heads” from Connecticut, still stamped with the image of the Ironsides, or the Lowells or the Cabots from Boston — but no, I forgot, they don’t talk to anybody — or to nobody that they’d meet in Europe. But if the boys can’t come, it’s too bad, but we’ll understand it. They would if they could, and if not, let them string out along the border and sit and listen to the skirl of the bagpipes and the march of the battalions, all in threes, as the new army of our Dominion goes by.
The marching feet — tramp! tramp! tramp! — in every city of Canada, and soon in every village and hamlet and on every roadside — the tramp, tramp of the marching feet of those who go to war. Tramp, tramp, till the sound of it, the beat of it, stamps into the mind of all the rest of us the sense of duty for each and all of us, whether young or old, whether rich or poor, that tells us to do something, if not in arms, then with pick, or pen, or shovel in the cause for which they go.
So, in such a cause, and with such an aim, I want to set down here how this, our unwritten American alliance, came about, and what is the background that enables it to stand as it does. It needs no guarantees or scraps of paper or pacts. We leave pacts to Judas Iscariot who first trafficked in one. Our alliance has no more “axis” than the axles of our lumber wagons. But it holds as deep in the soil as a New England elm. Tear it out with the stump-extractor of evil tongues and angered quarrels, and you can never set it back.
Let us first turn back the pages of our history. You remember your American Revolution, do you not, that ended with the surrender of — well, never mind, that’s just a little painful; say, it ended with the Peace of 1783. And then it turned out, and has been turning out more and more as kindlier eyes looked at it, in the colours of the sunset, that it wasn’t a revolution at all. No, sir, nothing of the sort! — just another triumph of British freedom on the soil of America. You see, the quarrel was really a family quarrel, as between cousins, a sort of civil war, with all kinds of people, good and bad, on each side, and ever so many people, the wiser people, on both sides. Because when a war is unjust and brutal and evil, the wise man takes a side in it once and for all and never leaves it. But in a friendly family quarrel like the American Revolution, the wise man is prepared to say, “Well done, both of yous!” And so it was.
The British themselves saw it first. They discovered after the Revolution, as I say, that it was a great triumph for British freedom, and that George Washington was a typical English country gentleman. In fact, they annexed the whole thing, made it part of British school history, called it “manifest destiny,” and recommended it to all other quieter colonies: just as a mother, don’t you know, always likes best the bad boy of the family.
And the Loyalists, the refugees who left the States so as to stay under the old flag? Well, that was queerer still. You see, some of them left because of the old flag and some because of other reasons — in fact they had to leave, but we won’t talk of it. Anyway, they left and a lot of them went to the Maritime Colonies and the greater bulk of them, perhaps ten thousand, went past the maritime settlements on up the St. Lawrence — their pilgrimage, would you believe it, took the best of a year. They wintered in the snows of Sorel, and in the spring they went on up the river to Lake Ontario. Some of them settled on the river and some all along the lake, and as ever so many of them were from New York State, they had really come back home again. You see, they didn’t exactly know where they were going — geography was pretty thin then — and all they knew was that they were striking out to make a home in the wilderness, and it turned out that the wilderness was home.
