_ CHAPTER X. POTASH AND PERLMUTTER ON REVOLUTIONIZING THE REVOLUTION BUSINESS
If Kerensky would have had experience as a traveling salesman it wouldn't hurt him to be spending his entire time commuting between Moscow and Petersburg.
"What they want to do in Russland," Abe Potash declared, one morning in November, "is to have one last revolution, and stick
to it."
"It ain't Russia which is having them revolutions," Morris Perlmutter observed. "It's the Russian revolutionists. Them boys have been standing around doing nothing for years, Abe, in fact ever since nineteen five, and now that they got a job they figure that why should they finish it up, because revolutionists' work is piece-work, and just so soon as a revolution is over, as a general thing, the revolutionists gets laid off--up against a wall at sunrise."
"Well, them boys is certainly nursing their job this time, Mawruss," Abe continued. "The way them fellers is acting up over there it wouldn't surprise me a bit if most of the Russian merchants would move to Mexico, so as they could carry on their business in peace and quietness, y'understand. What the idea of all these here revolutions is I don't know. They've got the Czar living in a cold-water walk-up, and you could go the length and breadth of Russia with a ballet-dancer as a decoy without running across so much as one grand duke peeking through the window-blinds, y'understand. So what more do them Russians want?"
"For one thing," Morris explained, "the peasants insists that all the land in Russland should be divided up between them."
"What for?" Abe asked.
"They probably see a chance to get a little real estate free of charge," Morris replied.
"
Aber what good would that do them?" Abe said. "Because in a country where revolutions is liable to happen every day in the week except Saturdays from nine to twelve-thirty, y'understand, there ain't much market for real estate, and, besides, Mawruss, if them poor peasants only knew what a dawg's life it is in the real-estate business, understand me, even when times is good, they would of got such
Rachmonos for the Czar with his twenty-two million five hundred and forty-three thousand two hundred and twenty-nine versts of unimproved property, that instead of getting up a revolution, they would of got up a meeting and passed resolutions of sympathy."
"The chances is they would of done it, anyway, if it wouldn't been for this here Kerensky," Morris declared. "What that feller don't know about running a revolution, Abe, if Carranza, Villa, and Huerta would have known it, they would have had two years ago already a chain of five-and-ten-cent revolutions doing a good business all the way from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn. Yes, Abe, compared with a boss revolutionist like Kerensky, y'understand, these here Mexican revolutionists is just, so to speak,
learners on revolutionists."
"Then if that's the case, Mawruss, how does it come that one after another, Korniloff, Lenine, and Trotzky, practically puts this here Kerensky out of business as a revolutionist?" Abe asked.
"Well, I'll tell you," Morris said. "A feller which is running a revolution in Russland has not only got to got nerve, y'understand, but he's also got to be able to stand very long hours. Also it is necessary for him to do a whole lot of traveling, because no sooner does such a feller set up his government in Petersburg, y'understand, than the Petersburg Local Number One of the Amalgamated Workingmen's and Soldiers' Union is liable to chase him and his government all the way to Moscow, y'understand, and hardly does he get busy in Moscow, understand me, than he gets in bad with the Moscow Local Number One of the same union, and so on vice versa. In fact, in a couple of weeks he's liable to be vice-versad that way a half a dozen times, which if Kerensky would have had experience as a traveling salesman, Abe, it wouldn't hurt him to be practically spending his entire time commuting between Moscow and Petersburg, but before this here Kerensky became a revolutionist he used to was in the law business, and besides he enjoys very poor health and is liable to die any moment."
"What's the matter with him?" Abe asked.
"I understand he's got kidney trouble," Morris replied.
"Well, if that feller would get an opportunity to die of kidney trouble, Mawruss, he should ought to take advantage of it," Abe commented, "because if you was to look up in the files of the Petersburg Department of Health what is the figures on the cause of death in the case of revolutionists, Mawruss, you would probably find something like this:
Explosions 91.31416%
Gun-shot wounds, including revolvers,
air-rifles, machine-guns, cannons,
armored tanks, torpedoes, and
unclassified 8.99999
Knife wounds, including razors, cold
chisels, pickaxes, and cloth and grass
cutting apparatus 0.563
Natural causes, including hardening of
the arteries a trace."
"What do you mean--natural causes?" Morris said. "When a revolutionist dies a natural death, it's a pure accident."
"Did I say it wasn't?" Abe said. "But at the same time some Russian revolutionists lives longer than others, because being a Russian revolutionist is more or less a matter of training. Take this here feller which is now conducting the Russian revolution under the name of Trotzky, and used to was conducting a New York trolley-car under the name of Braunstein, y'understand, and when the time comes--which it
will come--when his offices will be surrounded by a mob of a hundred thousand Russian working-men and soldiers, understand me, all that this here Trotzky
alias Braunstein will do is to shout '
Fares, please,' and he'll go through that crowd of working-men like a--well, like a New York trolley-car conductor going through a crowd of working-men."
"From what is happening in Mexico and Russia," Morris observed, "it seems that when a country gets a revolution on its hands it's like a feller with a boil on his neck. He's going to keep on having them until he gets 'em entirely out of his system."
"Well, Russia has had such an awful siege of them," Abe said, "that you would think she was immune by this time."
"It's the freedom breaking out on her," Morris said.
"It seems, however," said Abe, "that in Russia there are as many kinds of freedom as there are fellers that want a job running a revolution. There was the Kerensky brand of freedom which was quite popular for a while; then Korniloff tried to market another brand of freedom and made a failure of it, and now Trotzky and Lenine are putting out the T. and L. Brand of Self-rising Freedom in red packages, and seem to be doing quite a good business, too."
"Sure I know," Morris agreed. "But you would think that freedom was freedom and that there could be no arguments about it, so why the devil do them poor Russian working-men go on fighting each other, Abe?"
"They want an immediate peace with Germany," Abe said, "and the way it looks now, they would still be fighting each other for an immediate peace with Germany ten years after the war is over, because if them Russian working-men was to get an immediate peace
immediately, Mawruss, they would have to go to work again, and you know as well as I do, Mawruss, the very last thing that a Russian working-man thinks of, y'understand, is working."
"Well in a way, you couldn't blame the Russians for what is going on in Russland, Abe," Morris said. "For years already the Socialists has been telling them poor
Nebiches what a rotten time the working-men had
before the social revolution, y'understand, and what a good time the working-man is going to have
after the social revolution, understand me, but what kind of a time the working-man would have
during the social revolution, THAT the Socialists left for them poor Russians to find out for themselves, and when those working-men who come through it alive begin to figure the profit and loss on the transaction, Abe, the whole past life of one of those Socialist leaders is going to flash before his eyes just before the drop falls, y'understand, and one of his pleasantest recollections--if you can call recollections pleasant on such an occasion--will be the happy days he spent knocking down fares on the Third and Amsterdam Avenue cars."
"Then I take it you 'ain't got a whole lot of sympathy for the Socialists, Mawruss," Abe said.
"Not since when I was a greenhorn I used to work at buttonhole-making, and I heard a Socialist feller on East Houston Street hollering that under a socialistic system the laborer would get the whole fruits of his labor," Morris said. "Pretty near all that night I lay awake figuring to myself that if I could make twelve buttonholes every ten minutes, which would be seventy-two buttonholes an hour or seven hundred and twenty buttonholes a day, Abe, how many buttonholes would I have in a year under a socialistic system, and after I had them, what would I do with them? The consequence was, I overslept myself and came down late to the shop next morning, and it was more than two days before I found another job."
"Well, that ain't much of an argument against socialism," Abe remarked.
"Not to most people it wouldn't be, but it was an awful good argument to me, and I really think it saved me from becoming a Socialist," Morris said.
"You a Socialist!" Abe exclaimed. "How could a feller like you become a Socialist? I belong to the same lodge with you now for ten years, and in all that time you've never had nerve enough to get up and say even so much as '
I second the motion.'"
"But there are two classes of Socialists, Abe--talkers and the listeners, and while I admit the talkers are in the big majority, the work of the listeners is just so important. They are the fellers which try out the ideas of the talkers, the only difference being that while such talkers as Herr Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg gets a lot of publicity out of going to jail for handing out socialistic ideas, y'understand, the funerals which the listeners get for trying such ideas out are very, very private."
"At that, them talking Socialists which is taking shifts with each other in running the Russian government must be putting in a pretty busy time, Mawruss, because there's a whole lot of detail to such a job, and while past experience as a street-car conductor may give the necessary endurance, it don't help out much when it comes to systematizing the day's work of a Russian dictator. For instance, we would say that he goes into office at nine o'clock with the help of the One Hundred and First Kazan Regiment, six companies of Cossacks, and the Tenth Poltava Separate Company of Machine-Gunners. After making a socialistic address to the survivors he washes off the blood and puts on a clean collar, or, in the case of a Bolsheviki dictator, he only washes off the blood.
"The next thing on the program is to ring up a few flag and bunting concerns and ask for representatives to call about taking an order for a few national flags. They arrive half an hour later, and after making a socialistic address, y'understand, he picks out a design for immediate delivery, because even a few hours' delay will make a design for a Russian national flag as big a sticker as a nineteen-ten-model runabout.
"When he's got the flag off his mind he next interviews the Russian composers, Glazounow, Borodine, Arensky, and Scriabine, and after making a socialistic address he invites them they should submit a new national anthem, the only requirements being that it should contain a reference to the fact that under the old competitive system the working-man did not receive the whole fruits of his labor, and that delivery should be made not later than twelve-thirty P.M. He then goes over to the mint to decide upon models for a new gold coinage and to confiscate as much of the old one as they have on hand. After making a socialistic address to the director of the mint and his staff, y'understand, he agrees that the old, clean-shaven Kerensky designs shall be altered by adding whiskers, because you know as well as I do, Mawruss, when it comes to the portrait on a gold coin, nobody is going to take it so particular about the likeness not being so good as long as it ain't plugged.
"He then goes back to his office and prepares a socialistic address to be delivered to the duma, a socialistic address to be delivered to the army, and three or four more socialistic addresses with the names in blank for use in case of emergency," Abe continued, "and so one way or another he is kept busy right up to the time when word comes that his successor has just left Tsarskoe-Seloe with the Thirty-second Nijni-Novgorod Infantry and a regiment composed of contingents from the Ladies' Aid Society of the First Universalist Church of Minsk, Daughters of the Revolution of Nineteen five, the Y.W.H.A., and the Women's City Club of Odessa. Twenty minutes later he is on board a boat bound for Sweden, and after looking up the
Ganeves in his state-room he comes up on deck and spends the rest of the trip making socialistic addresses to the crew, the passengers, and the cargo."
"Having to go and live in Sweden ain't such a pleasant fate, neither," Morris observed.
"Say!" Abe exclaimed. "There's only one thing that a Russian revolutionary dictator really and truly worries about."
"What is that?" Morris said.
"Losing his voice," Abe said. _