By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 6, 1943.
“How about a movie?” suggested Jimmie Frise.
“That’s rationed, too,” I stated. “At the least, it’s as good as rationed. All the shows in town are war pictures. And that makes them rationed, doesn’t it?”
“There’s a dandy murder mystery at one of the neighborhood theatres up in the north end,” said Jim, studying the ads in the newspaper.
“Well, that’s rationed, too,” I insisted, “because we haven’t any gas to drive away up to the north end. And I’m certainly not going to spend two-and-a-half hours in street cars to go look at a murder mystery.”
“It’s funny how rationing rations far more than the item under control,” admitted Jimmie. “Now, I was going to suggest we spend tonight tying up a few trout flies. The season is only eight weeks away. Yet we would both feel ridiculous tying trout flies.”
“When they rationed gasoline,” I submitted, “they rationed a thousand other things besides. Trout flies are one of them. Because we certainly aren’t going to get any trout fishing this spring. We can’t drive. We can’t go by bus. And it would be sinful to take up space on trains…”
“Besides,” said Jim, “there are no hooks to be bought for trout flies.”
“And since nobody can get any shotgun shells,” I added, “there aren’t any duck feathers to be had for trout flies. Yes, sir. With a little skill in rationing, you can pretty near cut off all the normal activities of the human race.”
“Well, it’s a total war,” explained Jim.
“But they don’t have to make all the movies war movies,” I protested. “I think the moviemakers are a pretty dumb lot. Here is the biggest chance in their history to establish themselves as a great literary force. Now, more than ever in history, is the time to produce great literary masterpieces that not only will help the public escape from the woes of war, but will remind mankind of the greater, more eternal values of life. But what do the moviemakers do? They produce newsreels with a little story mixed up in them. Every movie producer seems bent on producing artificially a more realistic newsreel of war than the newsreels themselves. They don’t realize how hungry humanity is, right now, for a spiritual and emotional experience that will remind them of the depth of beauty and meaning of human life, and help them, escape from the idea that humanity is a pretty hopeless and helpless muddle.”
“The producers are all working hard,” Jim said, “at propaganda.”
All This Rationing
“Well, I sighed, “if they can all be lined up for propaganda as easily as they are now, we are going to see some fun when the war ends, and half of them are propaganding for the great social changes that are foretold, while the other half are propaganding for the old order.”
“Pshaw,” said Jim, “the social changes are as good as in already. What do you think all this rationing and control is but the training we are getting for the socialism to come?”
“Unless,” I submitted, “we get a good strong party that presents as its platform the getting rid of all the controls and rationings. They’d get a pretty terrific following.”
“Listen: “This rationing,” said Jim, “will have effects that never can be eradicated. When you put both the rich and the poor on one patty of butter per meal, do you imagine that will ever be forgotten?”
“Who by?” I inquired.
“The poor,” said Jim.
“My dear sir,” I cried. “I don’t know much about socialism, but I know enough about it to know you’ve got it entirely backside foremost. The idea of socialism isn’t to make everybody do with one patty of butter. It is to give everybody all the butter they need. It is not to give everybody the same. It is to make sure that a few don’t get all they want, while the many have to lead lives of quiet desperation in order to get what little they can.”
“You have to have some incentive…” began Jimmie.
“Don’t say it!” I cried. “Don’t say it, Jim. It is the worst blasphemy ever uttered against humanity. If the incentive of gain were the only thing that kept mankind alive, we would all have passed off the face of the earth 5,000 years ago. Any one of the hundreds of times in human history when no gain was possible would have wiped us out. No, sir; men work for the sheer love of work. And the greatest proof of it are those rich men who are among the most ardent preachers of that incentive stuff.”
“But we wouldn’t work so hard…” began Jim.
“Why should we?” I demanded. “That’s the whole question in a nut shell. Who says we have to work hard? Only the guys who, for no practical reason on earth, want to bully mankind into giving them a million times more than anyone else, and a million times more than they deserve, for all their brains, ingenuity and willingness to work themselves. Just because a guy is no unnatural and inhuman that he wants to collect a billion dollars, why should we let him make boobies and coolies out of all the rest of us?”
“Without leaders, in industry, finance, and…” tried Jimmie.
“Utter hooey,” I assured him. “Take those same guys and cut their salaries to $2,500 not $25,0001, and they would still want to be boss, they’d still work like horses, they’d still use their brains, and energies exactly as they do now. They’ve been kidding us. We’ve let them get away with murder. They can’t help working. They can’t help being clever and ingenious. It’s the way they are born.”
“Do you mean to say,” scoffed Jimmie, “that if we cut the head men down to the same wages as us, they would continue to work as they do, while we go fishing…”
“Certainly,” I replied. They couldn’t be loafers if they tried. You are a loafer because that is your born nature. Or you are a working, scheming fool because that is your nature. If all the money in the world won’t change you and me from being loafers at heart, why do you imagine all the money in the world would change the boss from being the boss.”
“Then?” cried Jim, amazed.
“Take the money away from him, and watch him be himself anyway,” I triumphed.
“I don’t believe it,” muttered Jim incredulously.
“The real enemies of the big social reforms coming,” I submitted, “are not going to be the rich men. Not even the sons of rich men. The real body of public opinion which is going to fight the reform are going to be the gamblers. The guys who live moderately by their wits. All of us you see jammed into the Gardens to watch hockey games, and at the races. The hundreds of thousands among us who believe that winning is a matter of brute strength, skill and smartness. The worshippers of sport. Those are the guys who are afraid of social justice, not the rich industrialists. Every measly little bird you see in our city, with crafty bloodshot eye and a cunning shut mouth – he’s the enemy of reform. He’s the bird who doesn’t want to work. He wants to live by his wits. Very few of them are rich. Countless thousands of them, however, will fight with all the genius of foxes and weasels against any system that prescribes honest work as the basis of their livelihood.”
“You’re pretty tough on sport,” protested Jim.
“I just used sport,” I explained, “to make a quick picture for you men in the mass. You could say the same about the movies or a political rally. The next time you hear anybody talking about incentive and private enterprise, make immediate inquiries about him. And ten to one you’ll find he is a promoter, whose only work is chiselling a few dimes off the man who makes something and a few nickels off the man who buys it.”
“This is tough stuff,” complained Jimmie.
“Listen,” I said loudly, “a man likes to work if for no better reason than to escape, for a few hours a day, from his wife and kids.”
“Put that in a movie,” scorned Jimmie.
“How about a movie?” I demanded. “There is nothing else to do.”
“Will you even go to a war picture?” asked Jim.
“Yes,” I said bitterly. “And first will be a newsreel full of battle. Next will come a Canada’s War Effort short about making torpedoes2. And then the feature, an unsinkable sergeant who shoots Japs out of every coconut tree and marries an heiress in the W.A.A.C.’s.”
“Aw,” said Jim.
But we went.
Behind Big Hats
And the theatre was jammed. And we went all the way down to the front, with an usher, and found no seats. And then we hunted for ourselves, and off to one side, we got two seats together, climbing all over twelve people’s feet at the very moment the hero of the feature was clutching the W.A.A.C.3 to his many medalled bosom.
And when we got seated, we found that two ladies sitting directly in front of us had those big pie-shaped hats that curve upwards in front.
“Madam,” I whispered between them, “would you mind taking off your hats, please?”
Both ladies turned sharply, sat forward so as to bring a sufficient hauteur into the gesture, and then slowly relaxed back, without touching their hats.
I bundled my coat up for a cushion and sat on it.
But still I couldn’t see past those two hats.
“Can you see, Jim?” I inquired loudly.
“If they’d sit still, I could catch glimpses,” confessed Jim.
The ladies had the habit of leaning together and then drawing apart, a habit not uncommon among those who, while not wanting to discuss the picture play by play, still wish to communicate to each other their appreciation of the finer points of the film.
“Usher,” I called modestly, to an usher, hustling up the aisle twelve seats away.
“Sssshhhh,” said six people. I looked around.
“Can you folks see?” I asked those directly behind me.
“We can see but we can’t hear,” replied a sour lady.
Suddenly, I had an inspiration. I took my hat from under the seat and put it on my head.
Jimmie looked at me with delight, and promptly put his on.
“Hey, there, hey, cut that out,” came several voices back of us.
“If these ladies,” I announced resolutely “can wear their hats, so can we.”
As I turned around, someone from behind swiped my hat off my head, and it bounced off Jimmie and went into the darkness three or four seats to the west.
Meanwhile, the two ladies had leaned forward slowly in their seats and turned equally slowly, and were surveying the disturbance with high disdain.
“Pass me my hat, please,” I requested.
Jim’s was still on his head. After a few scuffles, my hat came back to me and I placed it at once on my head.
Now fifteen or twenty people were standing up behind us and among the angry outcries were calls for “usher, usher.”
We sat grimly, holding our hats to our heads.
Deep-Rooted Customs
A social revolution is a sudden thing. At first, just a few angry outcries, lost amid a widening mutter and murmur of discussion. Then all of a sudden, everything explodes.
My hat was jerked from my head and I didn’t even see it depart. Jim’s I saw go sailing ahead fifteen rows. Ladies began screaming. One of the proud ladies in front, with the offending hats, rose to her feet and shouted into the darkness:
“George, where are you. Come quick!” And from three rows behind, two gentlemen, apparently the husbands of the offenders, came hurdling and grunting, and all was great confusion of shoves and hoists and bunts with knees, until I found two ushers helping me to escape, Right behind me, two more ushers were helping Jimmie along.
And without any delay whatever, we were hurried out the doors where the large elderly commissionaire at the ticket escorted us rapidly down the slanting parquet.
“Our hats, our hats,” I protested hotly.
“Inquire for them,” said the commissionaire, “at the box-office after hours.”
And he dusted us out on to the sidewalk.
This being a neighborhood theatre, we did not wish to attract the attention of any people who might know us by standing on our rights or even our dignity. So we pretended we were just leaving the theatre anyway, and we hurried a few doors east and went into the ice cream parlor and got a sheltered booth in which to recover our composure.
“Well, anyway,” I stated, “my hat was an old one, and I was thinking it was time I got a new one.”
“The same here,” said Jim. “But that just goes to show you. You can’t try innovations. You can’t easily upset old, established customs.”
“I’ll bet those ladies have got their hats off now,” I argued. “It takes a few revolutionaries like us to bring about social justice.”
“I bet they still have their hats on,” retorted Jim, “and I bet not only do they feel like social heroines, but half the people around them are looking admiringly at them.”
“If their husbands hadn’t been sitting back of us,” I stated, “I bet we would have won the argument.”
“Naw,” said Jim, “it is you that doesn’t understand human society. Things are too deep-rooted even for justice. It is an old, deep-rooted custom for ladies to wear their hats in movies, even if they constitute a public nuisance. But it is unheard-of for men to wear their hats in theatres.”
“But how about justice?” I demanded heatedly.
“Okay,” smiled Jimmie, smoothing his ruffled hair, “how about it?”
Editor’s Notes:
- $2,500 in 1943 would be $44,800 in 2025. So $25,000 would be $448,000. ↩︎
- Not the same thing, but if you want to watch Canadian Army Newsreels, they are on Youtube. ↩︎
- W.A.A.C. was short for Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, a term used in various wars and countries for women who volunteered to help free up men for combat roles. It became a catch-all term for women in the military, though there were other acronyms. In Canada in World War 2, they were the Canadian Women’s Army Corps (CWAC). ↩︎
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