Warning: This story uses a derogatory term in describing a maid. It is being left in as it is not being used in a hurtful manner.
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, September 30, 1933.
“This country,” said Jimmie Frise, “needs a Brain Trust.1“
“Well then,” I said.
“I’m ready to offer myself any time, if you are,” went on Jimmie.
“What could we offer?” I asked scornfully.
“We could offer them everything,” said Jim. “Our brains have practically never been used. The trouble these days is worn-out brains. The people running the world are exhausted.”
“What would be your program, Mr. Frise?” I asked, just like Mr. Knowles interviewing the Duke of Pawtucket.
“My program,” said Jimmie, “would be to order all the unemployed to go back to work where they worked last. On Monday morning next, every living man would report at his last place of employment.”
“And,” I said.
“And the employers would be obliged by law, under pain of death, to take those men back to work.”
“It sounds simple,” I said.
“And everybody who didn’t report back to work, would be shot at sunrise,” said Jim.
“You have a Bloodthirsty brain,” I said. “But how would you pay all these extra workers?”
“That is a problem I wouldn’t have to work out until the Friday following,” said Jim. “The main thing is to get everybody back to work.”
“What good would that be?” I asked. “They tell me the trouble with the world is that we are producing too much. If you put everybody to work, you’d flood the world with goods inside a month and then we’d all be out.”
“My plan,” said Jimmie, “which will be known to posterity as the Frise Plan, or F. P. for short, is not to have a few people working too much, the way it is now, but to have everybody working too little.”
“Oh, boy,” I breathed.
“Yes, sir,” said Jimmie, warming up, “under the Frise Plan, it will be a break of the by-laws not to work. But it will be a criminal offence to work too hard. What the world is yearning for is the happy man.”
“It’s revolutionary, Jim,” I exclaimed.
“It’s common sense,” retorted Jimmie. “The mass of mankind is a nice, stupid, easy going class of people like you and me. But we are imposed upon by a small group of clever, hard-working, ambitious and high-minded people. They set us a pace nobody can follow. The thing to do is to eliminate those clever, hard-working people.”
“How?” I asked weakly.
“By jailing them,” said Jim, “unless they can control themselves, and just be average.”
“You are, reversing the principles that have prevailed since the dawn of history,” I protested.
“It’s time they were reversed,” said Jim. “Mankind is sick and tired of trying to keep up with the smart boys. It’s time we called a halt and put the smart boys where they belong. I don’t mind a smart fellow like a Henry Ford or a John D. Rockefeller being as smart as he likes so long as he doesn’t try to improve the human race. That’s where all the damage comes in. Under the Frise Plan, all inventors will be chloroformed.”
“Jimmie!” I cried, shocked.
“Yes, sir,” said Jim, “I’m going to launch it. The Frise Plan. Everybody working. Nobody working hard. And jail for the man that produces too much.”
“You can’t defeat human nature,” I argued.
“Human nature is defeated,” cried Jimmie. “That’s the trouble. Human nature is lazy, easy-going, happy and unselfish, and it has all but been destroyed by a little gang of bullies who have led mankind into the Sahara desert following a few shining banners of ideals. Look at us. Today only a few selected workers are left in action. Just the smartest, keenest, foxiest, greediest. The rest of us are strewn along the desert where we fell. The Frise Plan, my boy, will elevate human nature to its true grandeur. Death to all reformers! Down with progress! Let’s stand still and rest for a change. We’ve had a century of progress. Now for a century of rest.”
“How will you launch it?” I asked.
“We’ll offer our services to Ottawa,” said Jim.
“I think Canada as a whole is much too broad a field,” I protested. “The greatest movements in history all had a modest and local beginning.”
“Ontario then,” said Jim.
“Much too large,” I said. “And it is lousy with parties.”
“Toronto then,” said Jim.
“I suggest you try it out in your home first. If you can pass yourself off as a Brain Trust in your own home, you can pass yourself off anywhere.”
“Will you come in on this with me?” asked Jimmie. “It will be the makings of you. Your name will go down to posterity as Frise’s right-hand man.”
“Sure, I’ll come in with you,” I said, “only I don’t want to steal any of your glory. You start it. I’ll stand by for the first day or so. How will you start?”
“I’ll go around to-night and explain the Frise Plan to all the local business men – Mr. Robertson the butcher, and all three grocery stores, the two drug stores, and so on. I’ll just get their co-operation in a small way, by having them take back any helpers they have laid off. And explain how they have all got to slow down and work less, as each man rejoins their organization.”
“I don’t think you will get much sympathy at first,” I suggested.
“You wait.”
Launching the Frise Plan
About eight o’clock, Mr. Robertson, the butcher, called me on the telephone. “Have ye seen Maister Frise lately?” asked Mr. Robertson.
“I saw him before supper,” I said.
“Did he look well to ye?” asked Mr. Robertson. “He wasna actin’ a bit daft?”
“He seemed all right to me, Mr. Robertson.”
“Weel, he’s just walked oot o’ here to see the plumber across the way, and I’m thinkin’ puir Maister Frise has gone fooey,” said Mr. Robertson.
“I’ll come right over and see you,” I said.
Mr. Robertson quoted word for word the Frise Plan. Mr. Frise had stood right there, in the butcher shop, and had said thus and so.
“What do you think of the scheme?” I asked.
“I think the mon’s daft,” said Mr. Robertson. “Clean daft.”
I argued for the Frise Plan as well as I could, and then Mr. Robertson and I had a bright idea.
It took a little working out. We had to telephone several of Jimmie’s friends, and we had to do a lot of work in the city directory to get the names we wanted.
But by ten p.m. we had the Frise Plan in operation. We got in touch by telephone with the last three Frise housemaids, all of whom were free to go back to work. I knew two of Jimmie’s former gardeners or grass cutters, and I got them. They would report at 8 a.m. The plumber, the painter and decorator, the roof repair man with three helpers, the man that white-washes cellars, all were located and all promised to be on hand sharp at 8 the next morning. The hardest to find were the cooks. Cooks are seldom out of a job. But it so happened that two former cooks were available, one a colored lady and the other an Irish lady, to whom we explained the Frise Plan and who thought it was beautiful beyond words.
Jimmie was late getting home from visiting all the business men of our district, so that his family were all in bed and he had no opportunity to explain the Frise Plan to them.
I was parked in front of Jim’s house by a quarter to 8 the next morning, when the Irish cook, with two large telescope valises, arrived. There was a commotion in which I could see Jimmie taking a noble part, and during which the roofing crew with their truck and trailer arrived, and the crew swarmed on to the lawn with their ladders, rolls, ropes and pails.
One gardener, two maids, the white-washer of cellars, and the other cook arrived in a heap and some took the front steps and others manoeuvred around the side entrance to the back door.
The plumber with two assistants was blocking the side drive with his truck when the painter and decorator arrived with his stepladders and planks.
Spreading Like Wildfire
I drove down a couple of houses to make room for the gathering clans.
On the steps I could see Jimmie making a speech and I assumed he was explaining the Frise Plan to the former workers of the Frise establishment. So I got out of the car and joined the multitude.
“Fellow citizens,” Jimmie was saying. “I exhort you not to work too hard. But let all of us work just a little bit, so as to allow room for our fellow man.”
There were heart-felt murmurs of approbatjon.
And then the throng surged into the house, with bags, ladders, planks, pails.
“Well, Jimmie, she’s launched,” I said. Jim was flushed with excitement.
“I had no idea it would take on so swiftly,” he cried, dragging me into the house by the elbow. “I just spoke to about a dozen people last night. But it must have spread like wildfire. It must be all over town. Look at these people. They’ve all heard of it, and have come back to work.”
“You don’t need any plumbing done, do you?”
“No,” said Jim, “I had it all overhauled in the summer.”
“Too many cooks spoil the broth,” I pointed out, seeing the Irish lady and the colored lady both marching ready and resolute toward the kitchen.
“We will all do a little,” said Jim. “There is work for all.”
“How about coming to work yourself,” I asked. “It’s 8.30.”
“This is so sudden,” said Jimmie. “I think I’ll stick around a while until the family gets used to it.”
The plumber was banging in the basement, the painters were erecting their ladders and spreading their canvases, the roof repair men were scaling the outside of the house, three gardeners were peeling off their sweater coats to start digging. Two of them were arguing loudly over the lawn mower. A tremendous clatter of pans was coming from the kitchen. Maids were already punching cushions and shaking drapes and curtains, the way maids do.
“Where’s your family?” I asked.
“Hidden themselves in the attic,” said Jim. “They always do when my ideas start working.”
“How long are you going to keep all these people here?” I inquired.
“I’ll figure that out,” said Jim. “Each step in a problem you take as you come to it. The main thing is, the Frise Plan is under way.”
“Mr. Frise,” said the Irish lady, appearing at the kitchen door, “if we’re feedin’ all this mob, you’d better get some groceries.”
“What do we need, Molly?”
“Tin loaves av bread, five pounds av butter, say a tin-pound roast av bafe, about a crate av eggs, a couple sides av bacon.”
“And,” said the colored lady, appearing alongside Molly, “a bag of corn meal, and a ham for boiling, and some pork chops and some young chickens for fryin’, Mist’ Frise, you remember I’se good at fryin’ chickens.”
“We can leave the orders in as we go by,” I said to Jimmie. “We’ve got to go to work.”
“I shouldn’t leave,” said Jim. “Who’s going to tell them what to do?”
“Under the Frise Plan,” I said, “you’d think they wouldn’t need to have anybody to tell them what to do. It’s twenty to nine. Let’s get going or we’ll have the editor on our necks.”
As Jimmie’s car was entirely walled in by trunks and trailers, I drove him down. He was in a daze. He kept watching for signs of the Frise Plan in action as we drove through the streets. In every store, around every corner, he could see evidences of a great and renewed activity, Prophets and leaders of new movements are like that.
“The world,” said Jimmie, “has been waiting for this! Did you ever see such beautiful activity?”
We were bowling along Bloor St., and there was the usual bustle of fruit stores laying forth their brilliant wares, merchants sweeping the pavement, boys getting out their bicycles, delivery trucks getting ready for the day. Nine o’clock is always a happy hour on a business street. But to Jimmie all this was new, he had never seen it before.
I delivered him to his studio.
At ten-thirty, he telephoned me in my room to ask if he could borrow my car.
At 2 p.m. I borrowed the editor’s car and drove home.
All sign of life had vanished around Jim’s house. There were ruts on the lawns, windows were open, and a general air of something having recently happened pervaded the scene.
“Jimmie,” I called anxiously in the front door.
“Is that you?” came a hollow voice from somewhere within.
“What has happened?” I cried, entering boldly.
“It was a matter of wages,” said Jim, appearing from under the chesterfield. “They had nothing to do after about ten o’clock, so they got sitting around the house, so I am told, arguing about the Frise Plan and asking who was going to pay them. And how much. They would not wait until Friday. And I distinctly told them that I would not have that part of the plan solved until Friday.”
“I remember that,” I said.
“By the time I got home,” went on Jimmie, blowing his nose violently, “they had it figured out that I would have to work twenty-one days a week, night and day, without sleep or time off for lunch, to earn enough to pay them their wages.”
“Impossible,” I said.
“In fact,” said Jimmie, “Molly, the Irish cook, had it figured out that there would have to be three of me to make it a going concern. Naturally, Molly being a cook, she knows my income.”
“So?”
“So I paid them all off,” said Jim. “It took one and a half week’s salary.”
“It was a good plan,” I said indignantly. “All it needed was a larger application.”
“Well,” said Jim, “that’s what I thought in the first place, but now we’ll wait. We’ll wait until Canada is all of one mind. Until the Maritimes and the West and B.C. and Quebec all agree with Ontario that a national plan is needed. Then I’ll produce the Frise Plan.”
Which, of course, gives Jim and me plenty of time.
Editor’s Notes:
- A Brain Trust was a term that originally described a group of close advisers to a political candidate. The term is most associated with the group of advisers of Franklin D. Roosevelt during his presidential administration. ↩︎
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