MARCH, 1925
rogatives, which enticed a perpetual
scramble for his job, with mobs of eager
applicants, and a restless waiting-list.
After having made the grand tour of
foreign courts in the good old days, even
Bill Grouch might confess .that public
morals seem to be growing less flagrant.
Certain it is that modern nations have got
comparatively rid of an evil from which
the United States has never suffered
— the whims of rulers’ mistresses,
the recognized Pompadours and du
Barrys and Nell Gwynnes, holding .their
royal levees, making war and peace and
history.
Seeing is believing, and though Bill
Grouch may be convinced against his
will on the moral proposition, he stoutly
maintains that we now have in America
what is known a«s “practical polities,” a
modem invention without patriotism, or
sentiment, or prejudice. Sure. A practi
cal politician goes after the votes, and
gets them; your vote and mine. But he
is no gimerack of to-day. The dema
gogue was already a graybeard, and
reeking with trickery, when Coriolanus
displayed his wounds in the Forum.
Alluding to this classical episode, an
American orator once said, “When Marc
Antony trice offered the imperial crown
to Caesar, I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts
that Mare had a deal with Julius for the
post-office.”
Politicians of those times could give
cards and spades to Tammany, and make
our party leaders sit like children at the
feet of the master. With no Australian
ballot to hamper the boss, he did pretty
much as he pleased. And how beautifully
simple was .their procedure. What a mess
of .bother they saved. All of the nerve-
racking suspense and frenzied jockeying
of our National Conventions might be
avoided by the straightforward Roman
method. We could cut out a fighting
Democratic Convention in New York,
eliminate a cut-and-dried Republican
assembly at Cleveland, and the Third
Party’s meeting. Under management of
a Roman -boss, sueh talkfests would be
come as futile as a Presidential Primary
that serves the same purpose as a gladia
torial game — to divert the populace.
Instead of this tomfoolery, we might
hark back with Bill to the good old
Roman way. Let the Democratic .Boss,
the Republican Boss and the Third Party
Boss advise together, privately, and
parcel out -these United States. Demo
crats takes the South, Republicanus
rules the North, and Triparbus reserves
what’s left. That’s fine, and consumes
no valuable time of the citizen by drag
ging him to the polls. Business goes
on as usual, without disturbance. Yet
there were bolters and insurgents, even
in those happy days. So the three
bosses considered that to prevent this
arrangement from being upset, certain
malcontents must be 'hushed. Each of
the three submits a list of enemies,
each naming -the fathers, mothers,
brothers and dearest friends of 'his two
colleagues. Now here’s where Bill Grouch
might point a moral: Did these noble
Romans object? Did they set their
private feelings above the welfare of
THE UNITED AMERICAN
the State? Not they. Such paltry
selfishness belongs to our degenerate
times. Democratus consents to the death
of his father; Republicanus makes no
protest against the assassination of his
mother, and Tripartus gives utterance to
the patriotic exclamation, “Let my whole
family perish in order that Rome may
live!” Off went the insurgent heads,
and the Triumvirate lived happily for
a while.
* ♦ *
When Bill Grouch has gone a little
deeper into the past, he may convince’
himself that demagoguery did not reach
this planet on the same birthday as
radio and relativity. The ancient art
was epidemic in Athens, where the digni
fied Acropolis resounded with their
wranglings. To squelch such noisy noises,
the Athenians had enacted a law pre
scribing .that when rival politicians grew
so rabid as to threaten public harmony,
the people would take a vote of ostra
cism, and elect one of the disputants to
leave town. Which smothered a lot Of
jowling. At that -period Aristides the
Just was a very celebrated lawgiver,
while the slick-tongued Themistocles has
left behind him the reputation of being
a smooth talker. A man of adroit
abilities, Themistocles practised every
craft of the spellbinder against the more
honest but far less showy Aristides. No
•up-to-date demagogue has excelled his
brilliancy in appealing to the dear people.
By instinct he knew how to stir up a
rabble, and play upon their prejudices
as on a flute. He gave bribes and re
ceived bigger ones, finally closing his
glorious career in exile and infamy.- It
soon became notoriously impossible for
■two such rivals to dwell at peace in one
small town. Their followers locked
horns. And when Greek locks horns
with Greek, there is a merry tussle.
Lively times were -had by all. Up and
down those B. C. streets they squabbled
until the Athenian, who loves his siesta,
called “A plague on both your bosses”'
and ordered an election of ostracism.
Voting machines had not yet come into
commercial use. The voter cast his
ballot by writing -on a shell the name
of the objectionable person who ought
to be exported, and depositing -that shell
in an urn. A country yap presented
himself -at the Acropolis Precinct, a
yokel so densely ignorant that he did
not even know Aristides by sight.
“Friend,” said the yokel to the law
giver, “I am a man of no learning. Will
you scribe the name on my shell?”
“Certainly.” Aristides took out his
stylus. What name?”
“Write ‘Aristides,’ ” said the yokel,
and the upright judge assisted to vote
for -his own outlawry.
“Now my friend,” he inquired, “what
wrong has Aristides done to you, or to
his native city, that you desire to banish
■him?”
“He ain’t done nothin’ to me,” the
yokel answered. “Only I’m gettin’ darn
tired of 'bearin’ everybody call him ‘The
Just.’ ”
* * *
This happened twenty-five hundred
Page Fifteen
years ago in the golden age of Greece —
midway between their heroic victories at
Marathon and Sea-girt Salamis — and
indicates ¡that practical politics were
little different from now, while the same
sort of prejudice influenced ignorant
voters.
Another muddleheaded mess that Bill
declaims against is the labor situation.
What he stands for is not clear. Bill is
against. Whether on the side of em
ployee or employer, Bill always cusses
when he discusses labor.
“I love to cuss the Octopus, the Plutocrats
condemn;
But if I could, you bet, I would love to
to be one of them.”
Bill contends that in olden times they
had a far simpler -recipe for handling
labor. Of course they did; f-or instance:
A Certain Great Personage desires to
build a palace, .and needs men. Does
he advertise for carpenters and brick
layers ? Does he entice men from the
cotton fields? Oh dear no, he merely
orders the men to come, conscripts them
for his service. And the labor 'arrives,
not a minute late. They leave the
factories and desert the crops, to erect
that Palace for the Personage. Is any
hullabaloo raised about 'the wages ? Or
•the hours ? Or whether it be open shop ?
Not a whimper. Everything moves right
■along, serenely as Bill Grouch says it
used to do in the good old days. Laborers
swarm to their task, thousands of them,
fetching their own. tools and their own
provisions. They house themselves, they
feed themselves, and nobody suggests
an arbitration. If -any kicker should
even Whisper the word “arbitration,” the
Personage saw to it that he never made
another whisper. Laborers had no choice
about their coming. And -they, toiled for
the Personage until the Personage chose
to let them go. No strikes, no rioting;
the system was beautifully simple, and
many men are now alive -Who worked
under it.
* * *
The very reddest rag to Bill’s bull is
these pestiferous police, poking their
noses into his affairs, until no citizen
has any privacy. Sometimes -Bill con
templates moving out of the country,
just -to get away from their meddling.
Maybe the American police are waking
up a bit. And yet, suppose we had
dropped Bill, not in Turkey or Siberia,
but in law-abiding England, and within
the memory of living men. Then sup
pose again that Bill had blundered into
this adventure:
Near a certain midnight, Bilious Q.
Grouch, Esq.', on a strictly personal mis
sion, gallops like mad to a little tavern
fronting the seashore, springs' from his
■horse and after a hurried supper is
shown -to a room. There are two beds,
one of which he finds already occupied
by a snoring stranger. Next morning,
while it is yet dark, B. Grouch Esq.,
bolts his breakfast, throws a shilling to
the hostier, mounts and rides as if the
fiend were pursuing.
Two days later Bill is arrested and
brought back, charged with murdering
tlSS®