This political cartoon is about the Temperance referendum concerning a ban on the importation of alcoholic beverages into the province. It was supposed to be held in 1920, but was delayed until 1921 because of concerns about the voter list. This followed the 1919 Ontario prohibition referendum. Prohibition was a very contentious issue at the time, and the Toronto Star, where Jim worked, was editorially in favour of it. The stereotype was that men would keep their illegal booze in the cellar so as not to be seen drinking in public.
The major pointed his stick at us. “You!” he said. “You! You did it! It was you!”
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, April 13, 1940.
“The crows,” stated Jimmie Frise, “are nesting.”
“What of it?” I retorted dismally.
“I know a bush,” declared Jim, “where there will be seven or eight nests right now. That means 14 excited and noisy crows. Those 14, if disturbed, will set up a hue and cry that will attract 200 crows from the surrounding township.”
“So what?” I insisted.
“Let’s take an afternoon off,” said Jimmie, “and blast a few crows off the face of the map.”
“It isn’t crows we should be interested in blowing off the map,” I pointed out. “Jimmie, you should have better taste than to suggest crow shooting at a time like this.”
“It would cheer us up,” submitted Jim. “Here you sit, all day, all week, full of mental depression.”
“I am not depressed,” I informed him. “I am merely conforming to the nation-wide sense of the gravity of the times.”
“If everybody gets gloomy,” said Jim, “there is no telling what may happen to us. Gloomy people are always easily defeated. It’s the high heart that can’t be beat.”
“Do you think crow shooting would give me the high heart?” I scorned.
“I don’t care what you do,” informed Jim, “so long as you do something. Something usual, something normal. It is this sitting about glooming that is bad for all of us. The whole country.”
“The only war work I have done so far,” I said bitterly, “is hold wool while my wife winds it into balls.”
“The women are lucky,” sighed Jim. “In wartime the young ones can join organizations to work and drive cars and collect stuff and make stuff. And when they get old, they can still knit socks. There is no war age limit on women. A woman can sit quietly knitting, in her own home, putting patriotism and love and devotion into every stitch. She can sit there, in peace and quiet, making a pair of socks that she knows some day will be faring far over the bloody earth. She can feel she is in touch with the great reality. Who knows what man, what hero, will wear these very socks? Who can say what historic battle, what Waterloo or Thermopylae these very socks growing in her hands will one day share in? Even a very old lady, with knitting is needles in her hands, can feel in tunes with the ages.”
“Old soldiers never die,” I commented. “They just grouse away. We’re too old to enlist. Our collars are too white for us to make shells. And if we join any of these clubs for the entertainment of the troops and other patriotic purposes, we end up in a fight with the committee inside of a week.”
“Come crow shooting,” pleaded Jimmie. “Don’t you see? If there is nothing you can do, by way of helping, then at least take steps to keep cheerful. The worst thing those of us can do, who are unable to find any real war work, is to grow crabby and gloomy and sour. In the old war, don’t you remember, there was a slogan – ‘Business as usual’? There was another one – ‘Keep the home fires burning.” In that old war we all understood the importance of keeping cheerful and busy. The best way to give aid and comfort to the enemy is by being depressed and gloomy.”
“We should all go around shouting hurraw,” I sneered.
“Much better,” declared Jim, “than if we all went around groaning.”
“That is Sheer Hypocrisy”
“Who’s groaning?” I demanded.
“You don’t realize you’re groaning,” said Jim. “That’s the heck of it. The worst thing about people suffering from depression is that they don’t even hear their own groans.”
“Do you mean to say…” I gritted.
“Look,” said Jim. “This bush I speak of is only 15 miles from where we sit in this office. In it are, I bet you, seven or maybe 10 crows’ nests. Each nest has four or five eggs in it. That means, next summer, probably 60 or 70 crows set loose upon the harmless wild world. That means hundreds of baby songbirds killed in their nests by the parent crows to feed those black brats.”
“Blackshirts,” I hissed.
“Exactly,” said Jim, encouraged. “Crows are the cruel Nazis of the wild world. They go about the innocent world of the woods, silently, listening, peering, prying. They are killers. Nothing counts but them. They have no mercy, no heart. As far as they are concerned, the whole world could belong to the crows.”
“I once saw a crow struggling in a low bush,” I related. “When I got there and drove it off, I found it had pecked and killed the five nestlings of a beautiful rose-breasted grosbeak. One of the most colorful and one of the loveliest singing birds in the world.”
“Yet,” said Jim, “you decline to come crow shooting because you think it is unbecoming?”
“I wouldn’t want any of my sarcastic friends to find out I had been out amusing myself,” I assured, “while Rome burns.”
“Then,” cried Jimmie, “don’t go to amuse yourself. Go for some fine, honest purpose. Just sit down and think and think, for a little while. Convince yourself that some high, holy purpose is to be served by going crow shooting. You are going crow shooting in order to save the farmer’s crops. You are going crow shooting because, in time of war, all the young men who ordinarily keep the crows down are away, and somebody must do their job or else the country is going to be overrun and ruined by crows.”
“Jim,” I said, shocked, “that is sheer hypocrisy!”
“Hypocrisy?” retorted Jim. “Do you call it hypocrisy when a professional politician, whose real job is to keep in the limelight and get himself power, persuades himself that he should attack the government in wartime? My dear boy, it is human nature. Not hypocrisy. A man can persuade himself that the best course for him is the right course. All men do. All over the world, in every nation, in every village, in every lonely shack in prairie and forest, men are persuading themselves that the course they want to take or must take is the right course.”
“How horrible, Jim,” I protested.
“Please use your head,” pleaded Jim. “You know it is true as well as I do. Those men who happen to choose a course that is good are reputed to be good men. Those who happen to choose the bad course are said to be hypocrites. But no man knows, until it is too late, which is the good or the bad. Because if he did, the world would have been heaven 2,000 years ago.”
“We must struggle,” I cried, “against the evil course. That is the whole of morality.”
“Do you mean to say,” accused Jim, leaning forward, “that no good purpose would be served by shooting 20 crows?”
“Of course some good purpose would be served,” I agreed, “but would it be as good a purpose as refraining from idle amusements in a time of national peril?”
“Ah,” sighed Jim, “who are we to decide between the greater or the lesser good? When we see good to be done, however small, let us be up and doing.”
“You’ve got a queer kind of morality,” I declared.
“How’s yours?” retorted Jimmie.
When Sky Rains Crows
So of course we went crow shooting. There is a time of year, just about now, that belongs to the crows. If we were people of any imagination about our own much beloved land, we would long ago have adopted into everyday speech some phrase such as “crow time” or “crow fortnight” or something of the kind to indicate those few days in April when the woods and the moving skies are loud with crows. Crows pairing, nesting, mating, with all the tumult and the stealth that go with such activities. The road was very good out to this bush Jimmie had in mind. Even the sideroad was a good one, well beaten, as though much traffic had recently gone along it. We parked the car quietly at the corner of the bushlot.
“See,” said Jim in a low voice. “There’s two nests abuilding right within sight. And look at the country round about. A dozen large woodlots. All of them full of crows.”
We took our shotguns and boxes of No. 7½ shells and the crow-call and entered the bush very stealthily, so as not to advertise our purpose any more than necessary. Crows are wary beasts. Even as we walked, warning caws were sounding and suspicious birds were winging out over the dark fields, expressing their suspicions to the wide-flung world.
We hunted about until we found a little gully in the woods and there, amidst some bushes already standing, we built a hide with boughs and brush, cedar and pine to give it a thicketty and harmless air
Room for the two of us we built, so that back to back, Jim and I could scan the open space amidst the bare tree tops, where the crows would come crying and wheeling and darting madly in response to Jim’s crow-call.
Jim is an artist in two dimensions. He can cartoon mankind. But he can also cartoon a crow. He uses a little wooden tube with a horn-like vibrator in it. From this small instrument he can coax such sounds as drive a sentimental crow mad with excitement. He can imitate a young lady crow caught by the foot in barbwire. He can shout like a brave gentleman crow who has suddenly found a great horned owl in a cedar tree. He can emit the harsh wails and yelps of a baby crow. And even though all crows, both male and female, should know that no eggs are hatched yet, still the love-distracted creatures will respond to those anguished cries of a baby crow.
When you call crows, you do not shoot at the very first ones that come. The ones from your immediate surrounding woodlot are likely to arrive first. Jimmie always uses the loud excited “wolf, wolf” cry of the male crow to start with. This excited shouting sound means that a crow has found an owl. It brings the nearby crows in a few seconds. Silently they come, circling suspiciously but excitedly. They alight on tree tops unsteadily and, carried by their fears, soon join in the racket. This starts the crows in the adjoining woodlots to setting up the alarm, too. As they start for the scene of action, they let out the war-whoop. And that travels from woodlot to woodlot, far and wide across the township, until, if you are an artist with the call, you can have 100 or 200 crows all furiously heading for you. The sky will fairly rain crows. And then you start shooting.
The Bush Explodes
When we got our hide well and snugly built and our field of fire clearly defined, we set our shell boxes open and ready and crouched down and Jimmie started to call.
A sudden sharp caw. As though a startled crow had almost stepped on an owl hidden deep in a cedar tree.
Another sharp caw or two; and a startled, rattled cry, as though emitted by a crow leaping suddenly in flight. Then, a series of frenzied caws, as though the crow was perched on a nearby elm, almost falling off in his excitement.
Hardly had the first of these started before we heard the welcome sound of an answering caw at the far end of the woodlot we were in.
“Keep down,” hissed Jimmie.
From the distance we heard sudden series of caws, as other birds took up the alarm. Jim let go challenging barks on the crow-call and in the open space overhead a crow wheeled and landed all flustered on a tree top. It sat there only an instant before it began cawing madly, teetering on the bough.
Suddenly the whole woods and across the fields around became loud with crow-calls, as they shouted encouragement to the clever scout who had found the enemy. And presently, wheeling and diving excitedly all about us overhead, were a dozen, two dozen, crows.
Motionless in our blind, we crouched, while Jim continued his inciting tunes, more frantic every minute. And a regular din grew in the woods all about.
“Now,” hissed Jim.
We grasped our guns. We braced our backs against each other and rose. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Our four shots, deliberate and aimed, smashed out in the noisy wood.
Silent as death, the startled crows vanished as though melted. All save two which fell to Jimmie’s gun. I am always too excited to get my first crows. I get a few later.
But hardly had the two toppled crows touched the earth before we heard an incredible sound. The whole woodlot was thrashing and crashing as though a herd of buffalo were loose. We stood petrified.
The bush exploded with a mortal smashing and banging. Shots rang out. Three, ten. Then 40, 70. And into our staggered view, in the little clearing in which we stood, 100 soldiers leaped, bayonets fixed, eyes glaring, faces flushed and triumphant, firing their rifles as they ran.
“You Bet You’ll Be Sorry”
Behind them another 100, all through the bush. The whole place seethed with soldiers, who charged in all directions, some passing us close by and not giving us even a sideways look. All leaping and chasing madly onward, as though the devil were after them or they were after the devil.
And while Jimmie and I stood dazed and unable even to speak to each other, there came at the tail end of this whirlwind of soldiers a major on a horse, plunging it furiously through the underbrush. He drove straight at us and reared his horse back and pointed his little stick speechlessly at us.
“You!” he strangled. “You! You did it! It was you!”
“Sir,” said Jimmie, “what is this…”
“You’ve ruined the manoeuvres,” roared the major. “Ruined them! The enemy has got us. We’re given away. They’ll surround us now. Oh, oh, oh.”
He whirled himself down out of the saddle and stood glaring speechlessly at us.
“But, sir,” I said. “We are a couple of innocent crow shooters…”
“Bah!” said the major, jerking his horse’s bridle in sheer rage.
“We’re extremely sorry,” said Jim.
“Sorry?” said the major. “You bet you’ll be sorry. My whole regiment wiped out. By a Western battalion at that. I’ll never hear the end of it.”
He stopped and stared at us shrewdly.
“Just a minute,” he said softly. “Maybe you’re members of that battalion, dressed up as civilians. How did you know four shots was the signal to advance?”
“We fired at crows,” I said.
“I’ll have my revenge,” said the major. “I’ll have you shot as spies. In civilian clothes. Firing the signal so my regiment would charge and give away our position to the enemy!”
Jim looked at me so bewildered I had to explain.
“It’s a sham battle, Jim,” I said. “Tactical manoeuvres. Two regiments out stalking each other. It’s quite all right. Don’t be alarmed.”
“You’ll hear about this,” gritted the major. “Stay right here, you two, until I come back. If I had any men left I’d put a guard on you. But don’t you leave here, at peril of your life. I want to get to the bottom of this.”
In the distance we could hear cheers.
“That’s the Westerners,” groaned the major. “They’ve surrounded the bush.”
He whirled up on his horse and dashed off into the thickets.
“Okay, let’s go, Jim,” I said, gathering my shell boxes.
“He said to wait,” protested Jim.
“We’ve got live ammunition, Jim,” I said pushing out of the blind. “They’ve only got blanks.”
So we crouched Indian fashion and got into our car and gave her the gas and went out the sideroad lickety split.
Suddenly something fluttered out from the planks. “A bat!” I shouted. “Where?” demanded Jim.
“If anything makes me sick,” declared Jimmie Frise, “it’s spring house-cleaning.”
“The law ought to be,” I agreed, “that spring house-cleaning had to be done on and not before May first. Then it would coincide with the opening of the trout season.”
“Perfect, perfect,” cried Jim. “Then the men could all go trout fishing for three or four days and leave the women to their frenzy.”
“Personally,” I submitted, “I can’t see the use of spring cleaning. It makes no difference. They’re always sweeping and dusting and using the vacuum anyway. They never rest. I think it is a kind of a spring disease in women, like trout fishing or gardening with men.”
“I wouldn’t doubt that at all,” said Jim. “They go kind of nuts, don’t they? They get all flushed and a wild look in their eyes?”
“It’s a form of spring fever,” I assured Jim. “Nature gives us all these deep instincts, like falling in love in June and feeling very industrious and saving in September, in order to keep us alive and going. This spring cleaning business probably dates away back to the cave man. I bet the caves were in a mess by the time spring came.”
“Old gnawed bones, and ashes and everything,” agreed Jim.
“So all the females of the cave man species,” I followed, “were suddenly filled with a furious fever of energy, and they got to work and held a kind of bone flinging and ash chucking orgy, to clean out the cave. It’s the same thing as in a wren, when she returns to the bird house in our gardens. She goes mad flinging out all the old sticks and debris of last year’s nests. If nature sends a lady wren nutty, there is no reason why it shouldn’t work with women.”
“Yet, the pity of it is,” said Jim, “that this fever isn’t necessary any more. Women keep homes clean all the year around, every day, sometimes twice a day. All this rumpus is sheer nuisance.”
“You can’t reason with them,” I warned.
“Naturally,” said Jim. “You can’t reason with a man in fever delirium. That’s what it is, spring delirium.”
“Do you think,” I asked, “we could talk it over with them and get them to put off until May first?”
“So we could go fishing until it’s over?” mused Jim.
“It’s a perfect arrangement,” I submitted.
“Yeah,” muttered Jim, “but there’s one little difficulty. My family has got me in a corner. They have it all arranged that I am to clean up the attic.”
“Do that in advance,” I cried. “Get it over with.”
“I might do that,” admitted Jim.
“It isn’t the work that upsets men,” I explained. “It’s the way the whole house is thrown into a wreck for nearly a week. That’s what gets a man’s goat. I don’t mind a little work.”
Antipathy To a Broom
“Would you help me with my attic?” inquired Jim.
“Why not?” I retorted. “What’s the trick about your attic?”
“Well, in a way,” said Jim, “the attic is mine, you see? All my stuff is up there. Guns, fishing tackle, decoys, work bench. I’ve got that old work bench up there. I’ve been tinkering at making decoys and things and there’s a lot of shavings and sawdust.”
“Aaaaah,” I said.
“That’s. why the women insist on me cleaning it up,” explained Jim. “I promised I’d clean it up last year. And the year before, I agreed to, and I did clean it up in a kind of a way. But they say it is my job and this year they’re kind of ganged up on me.”
“Of course, what you could do,” I offered, “is let it go to the bitter end and then one day you’ll come home and find they’ve done it in desperation.”
“They can’t,” said Jim. “I’ve got the key. I keep the attic locked ever since the days the kids were small. I didn’t want them going up and messing around my tackle and guns and stuff.”
“And you don’t want them messing around there now?” I added.
“Certainly not,” said Jim. “Even downstairs, where things are organized, I can never find anything I want after spring cleaning. It takes me about six weeks to get the house reorganized after spring cleaning. But if they ever got up into my attic, good heavens, I might never find anything again, ever,”
“I guess it’s up to you,” I sighed.
“I’m afraid it is,” said Jim. “The sawdust and shavings and things sometimes drift down through the cracks under the door. They are even saying that the sawdust is seeping through the ceilings. A man by rights ought to have a little cabin down at the foot of his yard, shouldn’t he?”
“After his kids start to grow up,” I agreed, “a man’s house is no longer his castle. It becomes only a sort of checker-board on which he plays a steadily losing game.”
“It was good of you offer to come and help me with the attic,” felt out Jim.
“Not at all,” I said, providing it’s not some night I can’t get away.”
“Oh, I’ll let you pick the night,” said Jim; which is a pretty low trick.
“I’m not particularly good at domestic work,” I submitted. “In fact, I have been told I am more a nuisance than a help.”
“Don’t you believe it,” cried Jim, heartily. “You’re a tidy little fellow. You can sweep while I shift the bigger stuff around.”
“Hm,” said I, neither positive nor negative; because there is some deep antipathy in my nature to a broom. Maybe some of my ancestors were stable boys.
To Clean Up the Attic
At any rate, Jim referred in a casual way to the cleaning of his attic from day to day, and finally, he tricked me.
“Did you hear about that short newsreel picture about bird dogs?” Jim inquired sweetly.
“No, where is it?” I asked.
“It’s at some theatre on Bloor St.,” said Jim. “I’ll look it up. It shows bird dogs pointing quail, and the gunners walking up to the point and flushing the birds and making lefts and rights. Boy, they say it is one of the most wonderful sport pictures ever produced.”
“Let’s go tonight,” I said promptly.
“Can you get off tonight?” asked Jim, pointedly.
“This is the first night I’ve got to myself in a week,” I assured him.
So Jim got up and pretended to hunt through the theatre ads for the picture and couldn’t find it. Then he telephoned one of the movie exchanges, and they said the picture wouldn’t be showing in the local theatres for another month.
“I must,” said Jim, innocently, “have seen the ad somewhere else. But say, look here, if you’re free tonight, how about coming over and giving me a hand with that attic of mine.”
“Er,” I said.
“Let’s get it over and done with. It’s only a month to the fishing season. You wouldn’t want me tied up with a lot of house-cleaning on May the first?” demanded Jim.
And since I couldn’t think of any graceful excuse, I was roped.
“It’s a perfect night for it,” continued Jim. “The family is all going to be out. We can have the house to ourselves. If we find any short cuts, we can use them, with nobody around.”
“Like chucking shavings, et cetera, out the attic window,” I instanced.
So waiting until around 8 o’clock to allow Jim’s family to leave the house and also to allow my supper to settle, I strolled around to Jim’s and he led me without delay upstairs and via the little stairway into the attic, which is just one big unfinished room, perfectly suited to a man’s needs.
It was a mess. No wonder Jim kept the attic door locked and the key in his pocket. One corner was full of decoy ducks, like coal heaped in a coal bin. Another corner had an enormous heap of what appeared to be old magazines, hunting coats, rubber boots and fish baskets. In the midst stood a small carpenter’s work bench, and a foot deep all around it lay a drift of shavings, sawdust, hunks of wood, and all the ingredients of a fine life devoted to making things of no particular value or success.
“Well, Jimmie,” I said, “quite an evening’s work.”
“Now,” said Jim, very energetic. “I’ve got it figured out. I’ll start shifting everything to a new place, like, and you follow me with the broom.”
“If your wife,” I said, “ever saw this place.”
“I’ve been scared stiff this last few months,” admitted Jim. “Haunted, by day and by night.”
I peeled off my coat and hung it on a nail. Jim handed me the broom.
“I’ll start here, with these decoys,” suggested Jim. “I’ll shift them all over to that corner, and you sweep. Then when you catch up to me, I’ll shift the decoys and what will be under them to another corner, and so on. We’ll keep going around and around, see, until it is all cleaned up.”
“That’s the way the women do,” I admitted. “Shift everything around.”
So Jim started picking up big armfuls of decoys and carting them to the next corner, and to fill in the time, I started batting with the broom at the dusty rough, unfinished planking and rafters of the attic wall and ceiling.
Suddenly, in the garish light of the naked electric light bulb, something fluttered out from the planks.
“A bat,” I shouted.
Jim dropped an armful of ducks and peered into the already dusty glare of light.
“Where?” he demanded.
We stood perfectly still, and heard a small scratching sound.
“Here,” I said, swinging the broom.
The bat leaped heavily into space and wobbled sleepily around, narrowly missing our heads.
“Swing it,” roared Jim, snatching up a long piece of scantling that lay in the debris on the floor.
I swung. The bat ducked. I ducked; the bat swung.
“Look out,” shouted Jim, charging for the narrow stairway. “It’ll get downstairs.”
But he was too late. The bat, attracted perhaps by the warm current of air coming up the attic stairway, followed down, and we were just in time to see it wobble on half-wakened wings, into the glow of light at the foot of the attic stairs.
“After it,” commanded Jimmie, fiercely. “The women would go crazy if they saw that bat in the house.”
Riot and Confusion
Down the stairs we thundered, and commenced a cautious search, in room after room, listening, holding our breath, waiting to hear the faint scratching of the bat hiding behind some picture or mirror.
“Prod around,” said Jim.
So we prodded around, shoving at pictures on the wall, shifting dressers and keeping a wary eye.
“Turn on the bright lights,” I commanded, “blind the beast.”
Suddenly, soundlessly, the little bat came staggering and wobbling along the hallway ceiling and darted into the room.
Jim swung. The chandelier crashed terribly and splintered glass flew in all directions. The bat darted out.
“After it!” shouted Jim, colliding his hunk of scantling along walls and doors.
I heard another violent crash. Jim had swung at the bat in the front bedroom and swiped all the ornaments off the top of a chest of drawers.
“Downstairs,” cried Jim, leading the chase.
“Be careful,” I begged. “Don’t wreck the house.”
“Better wreck the house than have that bat, in it when the folks get home,” gasped Jimmie, crouched and searching like a gangster in a movie.
We found the bat after we had disarranged all the pictures in the living room and shifted all the furniture and upset everything on the buffet. It was up in the chandelier.
“Poke with your broom,” whispered Jim. “Poke it out towards me.”
Jim poised like a baseball player, gripping the scantling mightily.
I poked with the broom at the poor little beastie. fluttered out towards Jim.
Jim swung. The chandelier swayed madly, tinkled into a thousand splinters of glass and then, slowly losing its wiry grip of the ceiling, came down with about a square foot of plaster.
“I missed,” moaned Jim.
“Like heck you did,” I said, from my shelter under the dining-room table.
The house was full of dust, riot and confusion.
“Where did it go?” I begged.
“I saw it go upstairs again,” said Jim wearily.
So we followed. After 10 minutes, we found under the bathtub. It eluded us again, and to our joy, it turned up the attic stairs again.
“Good,” said Jim. “Now we’ve got it on our own territory.”
So we went after it, and got into Jim’s private attic just in time to see the bewildered little creature alight flat against the rough beams of the ceiling and tuck itself cleverly and quickly in behind some great two-inch stringers of the roof.
“Aaaaah,” sighed Jim. “Leave him there. Leave him right there, still in his winter sleep, the little devil, and some nice spring evening, I’ll open the window and let him fly out.”
“It’s best to leave a bat alone,” I agreed. “Just let him fly away.”
“He sure has wasted the evening,” said Jim.
“We’d better quit this job,” I offered, “and go down and straighten things up the best way we can before the folks get back.”
So we turned the light off, carefully locked the door, went down and telephoned the drug store for a couple of dozen new light bulbs, and straightened all the pictures and dusted everything, and did the best we could with the fallen chandelier.
“There’ll be the dickens to pay,” I said, after we had worked for an hour and still everything looked disturbed, somehow.
“It’ll give them a taste,” said Jim, “of what we men have to suffer when they’re spring cleaning.”
This editorial cartoon by Jim shows Col. Sam Hughes, Minister of Militia, Boer War veteran, and a bit of a nut. As noted in Wikipedia “His penchant for colourful and flamboyant statements made him a media favourite, and journalists were always asking the defence minister for his opinions on any subject, secure in the knowledge that Hughes was likely to say something outrageous that would help to sell newspapers.”
A young woman sprinted towards us, her arms outstretched.
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 30, 1946.
“Aw, the poor little tyke!” exclaimed Jimmie Frise.
As we promenaded along the neighborhood shopping street, we were halted by the screaming outcries of a baby in a perambulator parked outside a store.
The busy afternoon traffic, consisting of women mostly, went happily by, arms full of parcels.
And not one of them so much as cast a glance at the roaring baby.
“You’d think some of these women,” I said indignantly, “would at least take a look to see if a safety-pin is sticking into it.”
We went over and looked down at the child.
It was a boy child. You could tell that by the wide mouth and the general snubbiness and chubbiness of it. Its mouth was stretched wide enough to swallow an orange, its eyes were tight shut, tears flowed over its cheeks. And it screamed.
“Hey, hey, hey,” I leaned down soothingly “Hey.”
The baby seemed to shut off its wind. Opened its eyes wide. Took one agonized look at me and then seemed to have a convulsion. It turned a maroon color. Shut its eyes. Opened its mouth. Bent itself back deeper in the pram and–roared!
Jimmie and I moved on. We stopped a couple of doors farther along and looked back.
“Just look at those women passing by,” I gritted. “Not one of them paying the slightest…”
“Women,” explained Jim. “aren’t so sensitive to a baby screaming as men. They’re used to it They know it doesn’t mean anything. They realize it’s just a baby’s way of taking exercise.”
“Exercise?” I snorted. “That baby’s dying. That baby’s suffering. I bet a safety-pin is sticking two inches into it.”
“Pawff,” said Jim. “It’s just scared. Maybe it was asleep when its mother left it there to go into the store for a minute. The pram stops and the baby wakes up. It looks around and starts to roar for its mamma. Probably it is one of those bad-tempered babies.”
We paused and glanced back.
“Just look at those heartless dames,” I pointed out.
Right beside the baby, three middle-aged women, their arms full of parcels, had stopped to chatter gaily. They didn’t even so much as glance at the baby. They leaned forward towards each other and got off witticisms that must have been killing, the way they leaned away from each other and laughed. We could hear their voices from where we stood. They had to talk loudly to hear, each other above the howling of the infant. Yet not one of these kindly housewives gave the child so much as a sideways glance.
“You see?” said Jim. “Women don’t get all overheated over a child bawling. They know it’s just routine. It’s part of the scene. Perfectly natural.”
“Darn it,” I said, the piercing screams penetrating my nerves. “Let’s go on.”
So we wandered along the block, in the pleasant sunshine, locking at the shopping crowd and in the windows, and gradually getting out of earshot. In front of nearly all the stores, babies were parked in prams Some of them were asleep. Some were awake, looking solemnly at the moving figures of the traffic. Some looked scared and self-conscious, even at two years of age.
“I think a mother, Jim,” I enunciated, “takes an awful chance leaving a baby alone in a pram like this out in front of stores. I don’t mean for fear of having it stolen, nor even having something knock the pram over and injure the baby. What I mean is, a little baby can get a scare or a fright that might affect it psychologically all the rest of its life.”
“Not At Six Inches”
“Pawff,” scoffed Jimmie. “These women have to do their shopping, don’t they? Should they leave the baby alone at home? Should they burden themselves in the store with a big, wriggling, fat armful of baby?”
“Nobody knows,” I asserted, “at what age a human being begins to learn. We used to think that the age of seven was the beginning of the power of reasoning in a child. But lately, the psychologists are doubting this. They think a child starts to observe and learn from the hour of its birth.”
“So what?” said Jim, as we strolled.
“A baby,” I exampled, “is left sitting out here alone in front of a store. He is a little alarmed at being left. He sees his mother vanish. He observes all manner of queer strangers swarming by. He notes the rumble of motor traffic and the growing roar of a street car passing. All this excites him and makes him tense. Suddenly, a playful dog comes along, jumps up and puts his front paws on the edge of the pram and looks, with laughing tongue hanging out, into the baby’s face. At a distance of six inches.”
“So?” said Jim.
“Now, that baby,” I said, “has never seen a dog close up before. The glittering eyes, the lolling tongue, the white sharp teeth! Why, that baby is likely to get such a scare his whole future life will be altered, misshapen. possibly ruined.”
“What nonsense!” cried Jim. “Why, every child loves doggies…”
“But not suddenly,” I countered, “close up, at six inches, at a time the baby is already keyed up. I assure you, Mr. Frise, courage is largely a matter of never having been scared before until now. If we could get all children to the age of 10 without ever having known what fright is, we would have a noble race indeed.”
“I believe in treating ’em rough,” replied Jim. “Pampering is what softens us. Get a baby used to the rough and tumble of life, and he’ll grow up a useful citizen.”
“I don’t know,” I mused. “I’ve been reading all this stuff in the papers about tragic fires and children left by their parents alone in the house…”
“There I agree with you,” said Jim. “Little children should never be left alone…”
“How about all these kids being left alone along the street, right here?” I demanded quickly. “It’s exactly the same thing. Convenience. The convenience of the parents is what makes them leave small children alone in the house. It is convenience that leaves these babies out in front of the stores.”
“It’s a far different thing,” protested Jimmie.
“Nothing is different,” I explained, “when it is the same at the root. What we’ve got to get after, these days, is that whole business of the convenience of the parents It is not merely at the root of these fire tragedies. It is at the root of the juvenile delinquency problem1. The convenience of the parents is the reason why a child has time or inclination to get into serious mischief.”
“Maybe not the convenience of the parents,” corrected Jim. “How about the convenience of the parents’ boss? Or the convenience of our present form of society, which permits parents of young children to work long hours in order merely to live and keep their children alive. What would you think of a law that forbade the mothers of children between infancy and 14 years of age working at any job that took them from their homes?”
“But thousands would starve!” I protested.
“Not if we paid a proper mother’s allowance,” triumphed Jim. “If a woman can prove she can earn $30 a week and has a baby, she would automatically get a pension of $30 a week until the child was 14.”
“No, that’s a proper and rational system of pension,” stated Jim firmly. “We’ve got to have children. We’ve got to have good children. Okay, we pay the mothers what they have demonstrated they can earn, in order to free them for their proper job of motherhood.”
Educate the Parents
“You’ve got something there, Jim,” I ad mitted. “Only, it will come high on the taxpayer.”
“Things are going to come a lot higher on the taxpayer,” agreed Jim, “before the world is through with its present difficulties. We are all so busy trying to escape taxes that our taxes are rising all the time due to our stinginess. If we want good men and women, we’ve got to have good babies and good boys and girls.”
“What’s your solution,” I inquired, “of the juvenile delinquency problem?”
“It is not juvenile delinquency at all, it’s adult delinquency,” replied Jim. “If a child is brought up on a delinquency charge, it is the parents who should be tried. And if any punishment is meted out, it should be the parents who are punished.”
“Aw, an awful lot of parents of juvenile delinquents,” I protested, “are poor, weak, worried, helpless little women…”
“Okay, then,” corrected Jimmie. “If the parents are not punishable, for neglect, then they are fit subjects for education. The court should sentence such parents to a six months course in child care and child psychology. There should be a large school maintained, just the way we maintain jails and prisons. It would be a ‘corrective institution’ in the best sense of the word. An all-year-round school, night and day, for the correction of the parents of juvenile delinquents.”
“Jim,” I admired, pausing, “you’re in great form today. It must be the spring sunshine. Let’s turn and walk back now.”
We had come to the end of the interesting blocks of the neighborhood shopping district. Every neighborhood shopping district has an interesting stretch. But it dwindles off, at both ends, into dull and uninteresting blocks.
“I hope that kid,” I said, “has stopped screaming by now.”
“Nobody’d let it yell,” said Jim, “for five or 10 minutes on end.”
But, when we reached the first block again, above the racket of traffic, I thought I could hear faint piercing shrieks. We quickened our pace. And sure enough, ever louder grew the screams, and we came in sight of the cake shop, in front of which the same pram stood and the same ear-splitting uproar continued.
“Jim,” I cried, starting to double, “we’ve got to do something. This is unbearable!”
When we arrived, the same crowd of nice local housewives was hurrying smilingly along or stopping to chatter, in complete indifference to the riot right under their feet.
A small boy with a dog was standing looking into, the pram with an expression of quiet interest and enjoyment. He was watching the twisting and yowling of the blue-clad baby with considerable satisfaction. He was making his own mouth go in imitation of the contortions of the baby’s.
“Here,” I said, pushing the little boy aside, “let me have him.”
And I scooped the baby up in my arms. Now, it is 20 years since I last changed a diaper. But I remembered enough to make the necessary exploration to satisfy myself that there was no safety-pin sticking into him.
“What do we do?” demanded Jim, taking hold of the pram handles.
“I’ll hold it up,” I suggested, “to the cake store window.”
And I went and held the infant up high before the cake store windows and let it screech and yowl and wrestle and twist. There were six ladies shopping in the cake store. I elevated my eyebrows anxiously at all of them, one after the other, through the window: but they all shook their heads and shrugged.
The baby by this time was really having a fit, and quite a number of people began to slow down and start a small crowd of spectators.
“Where on earth,” I demanded, “can the woman be?”
I moved over to the windows of the self-serve grocery store next to the cake shop and held the child up at both its windows. Large numbers of customers came and looked, but none of them showed any maternal interest.
“Call inside,” suggested Jimmie.
So I went in to the turnstile inside the grocery and held the screaming baby aloft. This attracted silence.
“Is the mother of this child,” I bellowed above the baby’s clamor, “in this store?”
Several ladies came running from the back of the store, but none of them was the mother.
I went outside and joined Jimmie in front of the cake store, where he was hanging on to the pram.
“Put it back,” hissed Jim. “Stick it back in the pram and let’s get the heck out of here.”
“Jim,” I stated angrily, “this is a matter of public concern. This is something that has to be dealt with. This may be an ABANDONED CHILD!”
“That’s what suddenly occurred to me,” gritted Jim, “so let’s get the heck…”
“JIM!” I said very shocked, from behind the squalling brat’s bonnet.
“Let ‘Em Holler!”
At which moment, a shrill scream from up the street brought the attention of us all, including the crowd of loitering shoppers and the little boy with the dog, to a young woman sprinting towards us, her arms outstretched, emitting a short, high yelp at every jump.
She grabbed the baby from me and almost bowled me over.
“You brutes!” she choked.
“You brutes!” echoed two ladies in the rapidly growing crowd.
An elderly man with spectacles took a short jujutsu hold on Jimmie’s arm from behind and pinned him.
A lady stepped to my flank, drew a quart bottle of milk from a paper bag and assumed a threatening attitude.
“Don’t you move!” she warned, laying the bottle back to throw.
And at that exact instant, Constable Angus McLeod, a good friend of Jim’s and mine – we go jack-rabbit hunting – loomed from the back of the crowd, saying:
“Here, here, here, what goes on!”
“These brutes,” sobbed the mother, “stole my baby…”
Angus looked at us sternly.
“Angus,” I said, “for Pete’s sake…”
The little boy with the dog piped up:
“I saw two little girls,” he said, “wheel the baby from away up the street. They left it
here.”
“Good for you, boy…” I began.
“Just a second,” said Angus. “Now, boy, what was this?”
“I saw two little girls, their names is Minnie and Lana,” he said, “wheel the baby from up at the other end of the block. And they left it here.”
“And how did you get mixed up?” inquired Angus, turning to us.
“The child,” I stated hotly, “was having a conniption fit. It was screeching. I simply picked it up to see if a pin was sticking into it…”
“Uzzy mussies wuzzy,” cried the mother, clutching the child.
“Uzzy muzzy nothing,” said Angus to her. “It serves you right. Leaving a baby loose out on the public highway. It’s a mercy worse didn’t happen.”
“I was only in the store a minute…” protested the young woman.
“We’ve been listening to this baby yell,” I interrupted, “for 15 minutes…”
“I met a friend I haven’t seen for YEARS…” faltered the young mother. “It didn’t seem only a minute or two…”
“Let it be a lesson to you,” propounded Angus to her and with his arms brushed all and sundry on their way.
“Boys,” he said, as we sauntered back along the street, “let me give you a piece of advice from a professional policeman. Never interfere in a domestic situation, under any circumstances. Whether it be man or woman, old maid, mother-in-law or baby, never, never interfere in a domestic situation.”
“You mean.” I said, “let ’em holler?”
“Let ’em holler,” said Angus.
Editor’s Notes:
During and after the war there was an increase in youth crime that caused a lot of hand-wringing. ↩︎
I’m not entirely sure what this exclamation means. At the time was the discussion over social security, old-age pensions, and family allowances. I think the idea was that these programs were new and “futuristic” and therefore bringing closer the new millennium where things would be better. It might also have been a derogatory term against those who were in favour of it. ↩︎
