"Greg and Jim"

What chance has a heckler now? Half the audience are ex-hecklers who know all the tricks

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 21, 1942.

“With the way business is going,” said Jimmie Frise, “it is about time we began looking around for some nice juicy government job.”

“Why so?” I inquired. “There will always be newspapers, won’t there?”

“Maybe so,” countered Jim, “but will newspapers be bothered with the kind of stuff we can do? That’s the problem we’ve got to face. The world is getting more serious all the time. Everything is being rationed. Step by step, government is taking over everything. One of these days they’ll take over the newspapers.”

“Oh, yeah?” I demanded. “How about the freedom of the press?”

“Well, is that any more precious than the freedom,” retorted Jim, “of a man to buy what he likes and sell what he likes? Is it any more precious than freedom of speech? And there are a lot of guys locked up in concentration camps¹, right in this province, who speeched too freely. Ah, no, my boy. one of these days, they will ration newspapers and some chartered accountant will come in as administrator of our newspapers. And the first two guys he will throw out will be us. We’re only frills.”

“Frills!” I snorted.

“Sure,” said Jim. “We’re just a luxury, like ripe olives. What the newspapers will print, under government control, will be the facts. A newspaper will read like a Canadian National time table. You will get the weather forecast and the speech in full of the minister of justice. With applause after each paragraph.”

“How long would the people put up with such nonsense?” I scoffed.

“Quite as long.” submitted Jim, “as they would put up with gas rationing and wage and price ceilings, and rationing of sugar and tires and clothes and all else. In the name of war, my dear sir, we will put up with anything. There is only one good job to have nowadays; and that’s a government job.”

“Well, I never expected to live to see the day,” I heaved.

“Who do you know up at Ottawa?” asked Jim. “We ought to have some pull. Couldn’t you get the job of collector of customs or something for the Port of Toronto? Think of all the fishing tackle that would pass through your hands as collector of customs.”

“Those days are gone forever, Jim,” I sighed. “There was a day when a man with pull could wangle himself into a job regardless of what his qualifications were. But government is no longer merely political. It is becoming industrial, financial, social and everything else. It is becoming expert. There are no better bankers in the banking business than the government has working for it now. And no better industrialists working on their own than are working for the government. In the old days, a smart financial man or a smart manufacturer could make a million dollars as easily as rolling over in bed. But the day came when the government took it all off him in taxes and super taxes. Why should a man worry about his own business and the government’s as well? So all the smart guys are working for the government, making just as much as they had left over after the government was through with them in the old days; and having a lot of fun as well.”

The True Art of Heckling

“I guess,” admitted Jim ruefully, “we haven’t got anything the government wants.”

“We could do propaganda,” I suggested.

“Propaganda won’t be necessary any more,” explained Jim, “when the government controls everything. There won’t be any opposition to propaganda.”

“We could take an active part in politics,” I offered.

“Too late,” said Jim hollowly. “There are about 20,000 guys ahead of us.”

“I attended quite a number of political meetings this last two or three years, Jim,” I said earnestly. “I could get witnesses to prove it,”

“Did you heckle?” demanded Jimmie.

“Heckle?” I inquired.

“You don’t take an active interest in politics unless you heckle,” stated Jim. “When I was a young kid, I loved to go to political meetings to help heckle. Down in Birdseye Center, we had a School of Heckling. It was run by a bad old guy who owned the harness shop in the village. Whenever a meeting was scheduled for our community, old Sam, the harness maker, would start his school for hecklers and we would all gather in the harness shop and learn our parts.”

“You must have been very young,” I suggested.

“Ah, you think of heckling,” said Jim, “as merely asking questions. The true art of heckling is the art of putting a meeting on the bum whether with questions or marbles or chair legs…”

“Marbles?” I protested.

“Look,” said Jim. “The meeting is called to order and proceeds. All is quiet and orderly. The chairman makes his speech. The business of the meeting is disposed of. Then the speakers begin, warming up the audience for the main speaker of the evening who is not yet arrived, but who is momentarily. He, of course, is a prominent politician, making speeches in half a dozen parts of the riding in the one night.”

“It’s the same today,” I confessed.

“Now,” said Jim, “old Sam, the master heckler, is in the audience. And we, his pupils of all ages, from boys of 15 up to old gentlemen of eighty, are discreetly scattered over the hall in little groups. The best way to seat hecklers is this: put the main heckler of the group in the middle, with a guard on either side of him. In the row in front of him, two men, sitting directly in front. And in the row directly behind, three more, to keep people from beaning him.”

“That makes eight hecklers to a squad,” I calculated.

“Correct,” said Jim. “Now, when the candidate arrives, the applause and cheers break out and the hecklers let go a few boos.”

“Correct,” I remembered.

“He has no time to waste,” said Jim. “And as soon as he reaches the platform, the chairman introduces him and he gets going. The first thing that happens, right up near the front row, an elderly gentleman in the audience gets his foot caught in the rungs of his chair.”

“How do you mean?” I inquired.

“It’s very simple,” explained Jim. “As soon as the speaker gets nicely started, you see this old bird up near the front starting to squirm and struggle. Everybody around him tries to help him. He has got his foot twisted around in the side rungs of the chair he is sitting on. The more he struggles, the more excited he gets, and the chair starts banging and people stand up to help him and before they get his foot free, there has been a dandy disturbance. Everybody at the back is shouting ‘sit down’ and the speaker has had to stop his speech, and is looking embarrassed, the way all politicians in a hurry look.”

“Oh, boy,” I gloated.

“When quiet is restored,” went on Jim, “and the speaker gets nicely going again, the marbles start. From three or four different parts of the hall, you hear marbles starting to roll. You hear them fall ticking on the floor and then quietly rolling. At a little distance, you can’t hear them at all. But nearby you can hear them and you can’t help but look down at them and twist around to try and stop them with your foot. If you have four or five fellows with marbles scattered over the hall, and they all start at the one time, you have got people squirming and twisting all over the place.

“Gee, Jim,” I breathed.

“Oh, then there are the questions, asked by the squads,” said Jim, “and the lady who takes ill and jumps up, holding her hands to her mouth and running for the door. That’s usually reserved until right at the place the speaker starts his real oratory. Then there is the late comer. He should be a farmer. He comes in, right at the peak of the speech, and walks up the aisle, to the front, looking for a seat, stopping and looking up each row as he starts back from the front. He should even attempt to walk in two or three of the rows of seats, even when there isn’t a seat. That always creates a swell confusion.”

“Jim,” I interrupted. “You’ve got it. We will found a heckling school. Right here in Toronto. We can get hundreds of students enrolled. We can wreck any meeting in the country. The government would have to reward us with jobs. Maybe they would make us senators.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Jim, “I was noticing just the other day that they are having some sort of reorganization of the council up in George township. The reeve and half the council have gone to war and they are having trouble appointing substitutes.”

“Not a township meeting,” I protested.

“We’ve got to get some practice,” declared Jim. “There is no use starting anything without knowing a little about it. Maybe this heckling school idea is only another hare-brained enterprise. We ought to do a little experimenting, in a small way. before we launch out.”

So we found out that they were having a big meeting in George township on Thursday night. We got 25 cents worth of marbles. I borrowed an old press camera from Tom Wilson, our cameraman. It had no lens, which is the valuable part of a camera anyway; but it did have the flash bulb attachment which was what we wanted. And I loaded my pockets, in true press cameraman style, with the little flash bulbs they use.

The meeting was crowded for a fact. We got there at half-past seven in order to look the ground over, and even so, the hall was almost filled already. Jim got a seat in the second row. And I, identified as a newspaperman by the camera I carried open and ready in my hands, was permitted to sit at the edge of the platform.

By eight o’clock, the hall was full and all the space at the back taken up with standing room only.

The meeting was called to order at 8.05 sharp and the chairman, a very masterful looking gentleman in a blue suit, outlined the situation. He pointed out that two factions existed in the township. These factions had an equal right to be heard. He was going to see they received a hearing. And at this point of his speech, a very large policeman walked slowly down the aisle and wheeled and walked slowly back.

The first speaker was indignant looking gentleman. He was one of those people who was born with an indignant expression on his face. His manner of speech was indignant. He would utter a quick sentence. Then pause and glare around. Then utter another quick sentence. And a long pause, to let it sink in.

This was pie for Jimmie. He got his foot caught in the rung of his chair. He started to squirm. He started to struggle. He began to fight. The chair rattled and banged finally Jim and the chair and everything fell over, causing a great excitement. Fifteen people got to their feet in the first two rows to help him, and the whole hall got to its feet to see what the trouble was. The indignant man was now very indignant, because the pause was all of two minutes and he forgot what he had been saying.

Jimmie kept stirring and fidgetting and rubbing his ankle, which irritated the speaker terribly. Finally, Jim got up and hobbled out to the aisle.

“Is there a doctor in the house?” he inquired, in a hoarse whisper.

Ten rows back, he almost collapsed on his poor ankle, and a young lad of about 15 gave Jim his aisle seat. Jim sank into it.

The speaker had now wound up and was really pounding his fist into his palm. I stealthily slid down off the platform edge and crept along with my camera raised. I huddled there a few minutes, aiming my camera at him. Then I let fly. The flash bulb caused everybody in the place to rise half in their seats. The speaker forgot his argument. I crept back to my place and hoisted myself up on the edge of the platform again.

“Now,” rasped the indignant man, “in the first place…”

Up around Jimmie, in the tenth row, I saw people stirring and twisting in their seats. The marbles had started. Balloons at a hockey game are nothing to marbles. Everybody wants to kick a marble.

“Order, order,” warned the chairman, quietly.

The speaker had ceased speaking and was glaring redly at the meeting. People on the sides were standing up to see what was going on in the middle. I slid off the platform edge and began creeping, bent over, towards speaker again. I aimed the empty camera at him. Bang went the flash bulb.

“He’s a Fake”

“Order!” bellowed the chairman, hammering on the table.

When I turned away from dazzling the speaker, I saw Jim was surrounded by a struggling group of citizens.

All over the hall, people were standing and jumping on their chairs to see the excitement. I started to shove and fight my way up the aisle, my camera held high, as if to try to get a picture of the melee around Jim.

“Hey,” I heard a voice yell, “this bird has no lens in his camera! I know something about cameras..! He’s a fake.”

Hands gripped my shoulders. All was hubbub and riot. Strange angry faces swept around me and I was yanked this way and that. The policeman got me, and after one look at my camera, seeing the big gaping hole where the lens should be, hoisted me aloft and carried me out.

Jim was gripped by two large citizens who happened to find a pocket full of marbles on him.

We went out the door about the same time. And down the steps.

The policeman followed us down and out to our car, professionally.

“None of them tricks around here,” he said, not unkindly. “The minute you pulled that old trick with your foot in the rungs of the chair, there was at least fifty old-timers in that meeting who knew what was up.”

“Well, they didn’t need to get so rough,” declared Jim. “One of those big birds nearly twisted my arm off.”

“Who do you represent?” inquired the cop. “Henderson or Billings?”

“Never heard of them,” said Jim. “We were just out for some fun.”

“Well, times have changed,” said the cop. “People are taking an interest in public affairs now. It isn’t politics they’re interested in, any more. It’s themselves they’re interested in. And when people get interested in themselves, woe betide any monkey business from politicians or anybody else.”

“Have you any kids?” asked Jim. “Here’s some marbles for them.”

---

Editor’s Note:

1. Note that at the time, concentration camp would be a generic term for an internment camp of some type. Now the term is more associated with the Nazi interment and death camps of World War 2. ↩︎

By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, March 14, 1936.

“March,” said Jimmie Frise, “is the most miserable month of the year.”

“Especially,” I contributed, “the middle of March. Because by the end of March you can smell April.”

“March,” went on Jim, “is like three o’clock of the morning of the year.”

“All my friends who are bums,” I stated, “tell me March is a terribly hard month for them. They can’t make a touch. Not a touch. It is as if, in March, people have come to the end of their kindness.”

“It’s like that hour,” continued Jim, “before the beginning of the dawn.”

“Well, I know that hour,” I cried. “For two years in the war I saw every dawn. Winter, summer, storm, or fine. I saw the dawn. In the trenches we stood to arms, every man jack, cook, bugler and all, at one hour before the dawn. And there we stood, millions of us, all nations, friend and foe, in league-long lines, hushed, waiting, watching, tense.”

“It was the hour of attack,” said Jim.

“Like some queer, pagan, ghastly worshippers, we stood,” I recited, “in those foul ditches looking up at the black and dreadful sky. Little winds moaned. It was cold, with a ghostly cold. It was the hour before the first cock crew. The hour when bones rise out of the ground in a danse macabre. And all around us were bones. Bones of our comrades, our companions, of only yesterday.”

“You know dawns,” admitted Jim.

“Aye,” I said. “I have no love for the hour before the dawn nor for the month of March.”

“The ancients said,” declared Jimmie, “that March was the season of disasters.”

“So it would be,” I explained, “because the blood in us is running cold and thin after the long winter. Our hearts are colder, our emotions checked and sluggish. Wars might start in March, massacres, pogroms. The best instincts of humanity are mere stubble by March.”

“And in September, at their full flower and fruit,” said Jim. “Ah, how I love September.”

“I love June,” I admitted. “June, about the sixth.”

“Let us watch our step this month,” said Jim, who was at the steering wheel, and we were nearly home. “Let us tip off our friends to be watchful. Let us try to be kind and friendly. Let us try consciously to inject a little warmth of heart into life in this exhausted and embittered season.”

“Maybe we could see a bum any minute,” I agreed. “I’ve got a dime¹. It would be nice to just pull up beside the curb and open the door and suddenly toss a bum a dime.”

“You’ve got the idea,” said Jim.

We drove along. How dirty the streets, with their foul shoals of ice and snow in the shelter of the houses all along the south side of the streets. The old tin cans, papers gummed into the slush and ice of a whole winter. The untidiness of March, the usedness, the second-handness.

The Little Brown Dog

A lady in her house dress was standing out on the sidewalk and as we passed her I saw she was weeping. Her face was screwed up and she was huddling her arms about her, clutching her elbows in her palms.

“Whoa, Jim,” I commanded. “What’s the matter here?”

Jim backed the car. I leaped out and hurried to the lady.

“My little dog,” she wept. “She’s gone. I can’t find her anywhere. I’ve been in all the yards. Not a sign.”

And she stopped speaking because her voice had gone up into only a squeak.

“Ma’am,” I said, “we’ll help you find your dog. What kind of a dog was it?”

“A little brown dog,” wept the lady.

“What breed, ma’am?” I asked.

“I forget,” said the lady, biting her lips. “A little brown dog. A dear little one.”

“Pekingese?” I inquired. “Pomeranian?”

“No, no,” wept the lady. “A little brown one, about like that. O-ho! I have had her six years and she never disappeared before.”

“A lady dog, ma’am?” I inquired.

“Yes, her name is Dollie.”

“We’ll drive around the block,” I comforted her. “We’ll find her. She hasn’t been gone long?”

“About half an hour,” the lady squeaked, wiping her nose in a small ball of hanky.

“We’ll get her in no time,” I assured her, starting for the car.

“What is it?” asked Jim eagerly.

“She’s lost her dog.” I explained, “so I said we’d drive around a block or two and find it for her.”

“Well,” said Jim, starting the car, “it isn’t exactly a disaster or a massacre. But after all it is the month of March.”

“It’s a small brown dog,” I informed Jim.

So we drove around a block, slowly, looking in all the side drives and stopping at each turn to look up and down all vistas. There were plenty of dogs. But no little brown ones. When we came past the lady again, she was still standing hugging her arms around her and looking down side drives and calling, “Dollie, Dollie,” in a high, anxious voice.

I waved reassuringly to her and called out the window:

“We’ll do a couple more blocks.”

And she said “Thank you” heart brokenly.

“Curious,” I said, as we turned to circle another block, “the way some women love a dog. Almost like a child.”

“Lots of men go kind of crazy over a dog, too,” said Jim.

We saw wirehairs and spaniels, police dogs and Bostons, but no little brown dogs. Then we saw a small brown spaniel, and slowed up, but it was named Joe, as a little boy told us. He hadn’t seen any dog you would call Dollie around.

In the distance we saw a flock of dogs romping on the street, so we drove away up and studied them. But there were no little brown dogs there either. Just to be sure I called “Dollie” out the window, but none of them looked at us. They were busy.

“Aw, let’s go home,” said Jim.

“There you go,” I said. “March has got you, too. We can do a couple more blocks without doing ourselves any harm, and think of the decent thing we would do if we could restore that lady her dog.”

“All right,” said Jim, and we turned another way and made a circle of two more blocks. We saw setters and terriers and Scotties; we saw a great big black Newfoundland and a dachshund, but no little brown lady dog.

Seized By the Collar

“Listen,” said Jim, “a dog always turns up. Let’s go on home, rather than go back and tell the poor woman we saw no sign of her pup. It will be kinder to leave her thinking we are still chasing all over creation looking for it than to turn up and say we haven’t seen it in ten blocks.”

“I suppose,” I confessed. “But it is a pretty Marchy trick just the same. I bet if this was June we’d keep on looking.”

“Forget it,” said Jim, and steered for home.

But hardly had we got into our stride before there, trotting down the sidewalk on little twinkling feet, with a plume of a tail curled back over her back, was the cutest little brown you ever did see.

“Dollie,” I hailed merrily.

And the little creature halted, wheeled, set its head on one side and looked up at us brightly. “Hello, Dollie.” I said warmly.

“Pick her up,” said Jim.

So I got out and went to Dollie. But Dollie, with large bug eyes pointing in two opposite directions and with a look of constitutional alarm in both of them, started to waddle off on her mincing tiny feet. I followed, coaxingly.

“H’yuh, h’yuh,” I wheedled, “Pfft, sktch, sktch, h’yuh, Dollie.”

Jim coasted slowly alongside of us.

“Jim,” I said quietly, “park and come and help me. She is naturally timid. She’s lost and nervous. We’ll have to corner her.”

So Jim, with a loud sigh, parked the car, got out and joined me. Dollie had halted at a side drive and was looking back suspiciously at us.

We walked casually closer. I turned in the side drive just as she did. I ran and got ahead of her and, spreading my arms wide, cut off her retreat while Jim, dashing from behind, swept Dollie up in his arms, and we walked out the drive.

“Nice Dollie,” I soothed, patting the head of the little gold-fishy looking dog, who wriggled and yapped in a silly little voice.

We tossed her in the back seat and got aboard. As Jim drove off, I thought I heard a shout, and looked back, and saw a man looking out the front door of the house we had been alongside. I naturally supposed that he was perhaps curious at what we had been doing in his side drive. But there was no use stopping and going back, just to satisfy idle curiosity.

We drove five blocks back to where the lady lived. But she was not in sight when we slowed up.

“Toot your horn a few times,” I said, “and I’ll try this house here, where she was in front of.”

Another lady answered the door. No, she said, there was no dog lost there. So I tried the houses next door, both sides.

“Would you know of a lady, a neighbor,” I asked at these houses, when they said they had no dog lost, “who would have lost a little brown dog?”

They thought, and looked up at the sky and put their fingers on their teeth, but couldn’t think of any such lady.

“Maybe,” called Jim, above Dollie’s loud and angry yapping, “she lives across the road. Try a couple of houses on this other side.”

So I was just asking at the third house when a car came up with a rush, pulled in just ahead of Jim’s car, and a man in his shirt sleeves leaped out and tore around at Jimmie. I heard loud shouting between them and hurried across. The stout, dark, shirt-sleeved man had Dollie in his arms and was standing with one foot inside Jim’s car, shaking his huge fist under Jim’s nose.

“Sir.” I protested, coming up.

“You,” he yelled. “You little dog-thief. I’ve got you both, eh?”

With his free hand, his fist hand, he seized me roughly by the overcoat collar and gave me a shake.

“Pardon me,” I said. “Pardon me, my man.”

“I’ll my man you,” he yelled. He was one of those stout dark men with black, sort of bloodshot eyes, who are usually retired around fifty years of age, and like to be in shirtsleeves, and mostly you see them working around their houses, putting up pergolas or making stone terraces.

Looking For a Lady

So I just let him hold my collar. I have found that if you just let a man hold your collar, he gets tired of it in a minute.

“No fines for you,” continued the man, and people were coming to their front doors, and home-goers were pausing on the sidewalk. “I’ve been watching out for you for weeks. This is three times you have stolen my dog.”

I heard an ominous mutter from the gathering spectators, and two or three men walked nearer.

“Dog thieves,” announced the coatless-man, giving me another swing by the collar and taking kick at Jim’s shins in the car. “You know the racket? Steal a dog and then collect the reward. Look at them! Well dressed, with a car, even if it is an old junk heap.”

“Just a moment,” shouted Jim. “We were helping a lady find her dog.”

“Oho,” roared our captor. “Listen to that for a tale.”

“I was just looking for the lady when you came along,” I informed him.

“Looking for the lady,” yelled he. “You were in the very act of trying to snatch another dog here when I came along.”

“I was calling from door to door to try to find the lady,” I declared.

“From door to door?” screamed the man. “Looking for a lady? You were helping her find a dog?”

“We saw her standing on the street, right along here,” I protested anxiously; “she was crying, and we said we’d help her find her dog. From her description…”

“Haw, haw,” bellowed the man, smiling fiercely around at the half a dozen spectators now closing rather tightly around us. “Haw, haw, they saw a lady crying on the street! Haw, haw! Gentlemen, what will we do with them? I see you are all dog lovers. Do we wait here and hand them over to the police, who will let them off on suspended sentence or something? Or…?”

And he grinned fiendishly around the circle of faces.

“Or,” he roared, “will we all take a kick at them that will be a lesson to these kind of birds never to show their ugly mugs in this neighborhood again? Hey?”

“A good idea,” muttered everybody, “that’s the stuff, deal with it, community spirit, that’s the stuff.”

Strange how a crowd – even a crowd of your own good neighbors – is always on the side of the accuser in a case like this. Around us, not a friendly eye showed. As far as these seven or eight gentlemen and ladies were concerned, every word our accuser had to say was true. Any dogs I have ever talked to have told me the greatest fear a dog has is to be down. A dog must keep his feet. For the instant it down, in a fight, every dog is against it. It is the same with humans. Accuse, and every eye narrows against the accused.

“Jim,” I said, quietly, “say something amusing and friendly. Don’t argue. Be witty. Attract a smile.”

But inch by inch and step by step, the kindly home-going citizens were edging closer, forming a ring around us, closing in for the kill.

And just as I felt fresh hands take hold of my collar, I heard Jim yell:

“There she is!”

And along the street, with a little brown dog in her arms, came our lady, weeping no more, but with her face radiant and her head up.

“That’s the woman,” I shouted. “Ask her, ask her!”

The lady came up and, on seeing us, announced gladly that we were two gentlemen who had offered to help her find her dog.

“I found her,” she added. “I found her playing along at the corner. The darling.”

And she kissed it.

Hands fell away from us. But faces did not relax. In fact, the man in the shirt-sleeves still scowled suspiciously at us.

“Well,” he grunted through his nose. “Maybe so. Maybe so. But I still don’t like your looks. I still think it was just a frame-up. If any more dogs are lost in this neighborhood…”

And h shoved out his jaw at us, menacingly. And mutters and mumbles from the rest of the neighbors accompanied me as I got back into the car.

“Thank you, all the same,” called the lady with the little brown dog.

“Don’t mention it, ma’am,” I assured her.

So we continued our way home.

“March,” said Jim, snapping his teeth. “I guess the less you do in March, the better.”

---

Editor’s Notes: This story was repeated on March 18, 1944 as “No Love for March”.

1. Ten cents in 1936 would be $2.20 in 2025. ↩︎

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?”

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Editor’s Notes:

1. $2,500 in 1943 would be $44,800 in 2025. So $25,000 would be $448,000. ↩︎
2. Not the same thing, but if you want to watch Canadian Army Newsreels, they are on Youtube. ↩︎
3. 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). ↩︎