It Can't Happen Here (9 page)

Each moment the brassy importunities of the radio seemed to Doremus
the more offensive, while the hillside slept in the heavy summer
night, and he thought about the mazurka of the fireflies, the
rhythm of crickets like the rhythm of the revolving earth itself,
the voluptuous breezes that bore away the
stink of cigars and sweat
and whisky breaths and mint chewing-gum that seemed to come to them
from the convention over the sound waves, along with the oratory.

It was after dawn, and Father Perefixe (unclerically stripped to
shirt-sleeves and slippers) had just brought them in a grateful
tray of onion soup, with a gob of Hamburg steak for Foolish, when
the opposition to Buzz collapsed and hastily,
on the next ballot,
Senator Berzelius Windrip was nominated as Democratic Candidate for
President of the United States.

Doremus, Buck Titus, Perefixe, and Falck were for a time too gloomy
for speech—so possibly was the dog Foolish, as well, for at the
turning off of the radio he tail-thumped in only the most tentative
way.

R. C. Crowley gloated, “Well, all my life I’ve voted Republican,
but
here’s a man that—Well, I’m going to vote for Windrip!”

Father Perefixe said tartly, “And I’ve voted Democratic ever since
I came from Canada and got naturalized, but this time I’m going to
vote Republican. What about you fellows?”

Rotenstern was silent. He did not like Windrip’s reference to
Jews. The ones he knew best—no, they were Americans! Lincoln was
his tribal god too, he vowed.

“Me? I’ll vote for Walt Trowbridge, of course,” growled Buck.

“So will I,” said Doremus. “No! I won’t either! Trowbridge won’t
have a chance. I think I’ll indulge in the luxury of being
independent, for once, and vote Prohibition or the Battle-Creek
bran-and-spinach ticket, or anything that makes some sense!”

It was after seven that morning when Doremus came home, and,
remarkably enough,
Shad Ledue, who was supposed to go to work at
seven, was at work at seven. Normally he never left his bachelor
shack in Lower Town till ten to eight, but this morning he was on
the job, chopping kindling. (Oh yes, reflected Doremus—that
probably explained it. Kindling-chopping, if practised early
enough, would wake up everyone in the house.)

Shad was tall and hulking; his shirt was sweat-stained;
and as
usual he needed a shave. Foolish growled at him. Doremus
suspected that at some time he had been kicking Foolish. He wanted
to honor Shad for the sweaty shirt, the honest toil, and all the
rugged virtues, but even as a Liberal American Humanitarian,
Doremus found it hard always to keep up the Longfellow’s-Village-Blacksmith-cum-Marx attitude consistently and not sometimes
backslide into
a belief that there must be
some
crooks and swine
among the toilers as, notoriously, there were so shockingly many
among persons with more than $3500 a year.

“Well—been sitting up listening to the radio,” purred Doremus.
“Did you know the Democrats have nominated Senator Windrip?”

“That so?” Shad growled.

“Yes. Just now. How you planning to vote?”

“Well now, I’ll tell you, Mr. Jessup.”
Shad struck an attitude,
leaning on his ax. Sometimes he could be quite pleasant and
condescending, even to this little man who was so ignorant about
coon-hunting and the games of craps and poker.

“I’m going to vote for Buzz Windrip. He’s going to fix it so
everybody will get four thousand bucks, immediate, and I’m going to
start a chicken farm. I can make a bunch of money out of chickens!
I’ll show some of these guys that think they’re so rich!”

“But, Shad, you didn’t have so much luck with chickens when you
tried to raise ‘em in the shed back there. You, uh, I’m afraid you
sort of let their water freeze up on ‘em in winter, and they all
died, you remember.”

“Oh, them? So what! Heck! There was too few of ‘em. I’m not
going to waste
my
time foolin’ with just a couple dozen
chickens!
When I get five-six thousand of ‘em to make it worth my while,
then
I’ll show you! You bet.” And, most patronizingly: “Buzz Windrip
is O.K.”

“I’m glad he has your imprimatur.”

“Huh?” said Shad, and scowled.

But as Doremus plodded up on the back porch he heard from Shad a
faint derisive:

“O.K., Chief!”

I don’t pretend to be a very educated man, except maybe educated in
the heart, and in being able to feel for the sorrows and fear of
every ornery fellow human being. Still and all, I’ve read the
Bible through, from kiver to kiver, like my wife’s folks say down
in Arkansas, some eleven times; I’ve read all the law books they’ve
printed; and as to contemporaries, I don’t guess I’ve missed much
of all the grand literature produced by Bruce Barton, Edgar Guest,
Arthur Brisbane, Elizabeth Dilling, Walter Pitkin, and William
Dudley Pelley.

This last gentleman I honor not only for his rattling good yarns,
and his serious work in investigating life beyond the grave and
absolutely proving that only a blind fool could fail to believe in
Personal Immortality, but, finally, for his public-spirited
and
self-sacrificing work in founding the Silver Shirts. These true
knights, even if they did not attain quite all the success they
deserved, were one of our most noble and Galahad-like attempts to
combat the sneaking, snaky, sinister, surreptitious, seditious
plots of the Red Radicals and other sour brands of Bolsheviks that
incessantly threaten the American standards of Liberty, High Wages,
and Universal Security.

These fellows have Messages, and we haven’t got time for anything
in literature except a straight, hard-hitting, heart-throbbing
Message!

Zero Hour
, Berzelius Windrip.

During the very first week of his campaign, Senator Windrip
clarified his philosophy by issuing his distinguished proclamation:
“The Fifteen Points of Victory for the Forgotten Men.” The fifteen
planks,
in his own words (or maybe in Lee Sarason’s words, or Dewey
Haik’s words), were these:

(1) All finance in the country, including banking, insurance,
stocks and bonds and mortgages, shall be under the absolute control
of a Federal Central Bank, owned by the government and conducted by
a Board appointed by the President, which Board shall, without need
of recourse to Congress for legislative authorization,
be empowered
to make all regulations governing finance. Thereafter, as soon
as may be practicable, this said Board shall consider the
nationalization and government-ownership, for the Profit of the
Whole People, of all mines, oilfields, water power, public
utilities, transportation, and communication.

(2) The President shall appoint a commission, equally divided
between manual workers, employers,
and representatives of the
Public, to determine which Labor Unions are qualified to represent
the Workers; and report to the Executive, for legal action, all
pretended labor organizations, whether “Company Unions,” or “Red
Unions,” controlled by Communists and the so-called “Third
International.” The duly recognized Unions shall be constituted
Bureaus of the Government, with power of decision
in all labor
disputes. Later, the same investigation and official recognition
shall be extended to farm organizations. In this elevation of the
position of the Worker, it shall be emphasized that the League of
Forgotten Men is the chief bulwark against the menace of
destructive and un-American Radicalism.

(3) In contradistinction to the doctrines of Red Radicals, with
their felonious expropriation
of the arduously acquired possessions
which insure to aged persons their security, this League and Party
will guarantee Private Initiative and the Right to Private Property
for all time.

(4) Believing that only under God Almighty, to Whom we render all
homage, do we Americans hold our vast Power, we shall guarantee to
all persons absolute freedom of religious worship, provided,
however, that
no atheist, agnostic, believer in Black Magic, nor
any Jew who shall refuse to swear allegiance to the New Testament,
nor any person of any faith who refuses to take the Pledge to the
Flag, shall be permitted to hold any public office or to practice
as a teacher, professor, lawyer, judge, or as a physician, except
in the category of Obstetrics.

(5) Annual net income per person shall be limited
to $500,000. No
accumulated fortune may at any one time exceed $3,000,000 per
person. No one person shall, during his entire lifetime, be
permitted to retain an inheritance or various inheritances in total
exceeding $2,000,000. All incomes or estates in excess of the sums
named shall be seized by the Federal Government for use in Relief
and in Administrative expenses.

(6) Profit shall be taken
out of War by seizing all dividends over
and above 6 per cent that shall be received from the manufacture,
distribution, or sale, during Wartime, of all arms, munitions,
aircraft, ships, tanks, and all other things directly applicable to
warfare, as well as from food, textiles, and all other supplies
furnished to the American or to any allied army.

(7) Our armaments and the size of our military
and naval
establishments shall be consistently enlarged until they shall
equal, but—since this country has no desire for foreign conquest
of any kind—not surpass, in every branch of the forces of defense,
the martial strength of any other single country or empire in the
world. Upon inauguration, this League and Party shall make this
its first obligation, together with the issuance of a firm
proclamation
to all nations of the world that our armed forces are
to be maintained solely for the purpose of insuring world peace and
amity.

(8) Congress shall have the sole right to issue money and
immediately upon our inauguration it shall at least double the
present supply of money, in order to facilitate the fluidity of
credit.

(9) We cannot too strongly condemn the un-Christian attitude of
certain
otherwise progressive nations in their discriminations
against the Jews, who have been among the strongest supporters of
the League, and who will continue to prosper and to be recognized
as fully Americanized, though only so long as they continue to
support our ideals.

(10) All Negroes shall be prohibited from voting, holding public
office, practicing law, medicine, or teaching in any class above
the grade of grammar school, and they shall be taxed 100 per cent
of all sums in excess of $10,000 per family per year which they may
earn or in any other manner receive. In order, however, to give
the most sympathetic aid possible to all Negroes who comprehend
their proper and valuable place in society, all such colored
persons, male or female, as can prove that they have devoted not
less than
forty-five years to such suitable tasks as domestic
service, agricultural labor, and common labor in industries, shall
at the age of sixty-five be permitted to appear before a special
Board, composed entirely of white persons, and upon proof that
while employed they have never been idle except through sickness,
they shall be recommended for pensions not to exceed the sum of
$500.00 per person
per year, nor to exceed $700.00 per family.
Negroes shall, by definition, be persons with at least one
sixteenth colored blood.

(11) Far from opposing such high-minded and economically sound
methods of the relief of poverty, unemployment, and old age as the
epic
plan of the Hon. Upton Sinclair, the “Share the Wealth” and
“Every Man a King” proposals of the late Hon. Huey Long to assure
every
family $5000 a year, the Townsend plan, the Utopian plan,
Technocracy, and all competent schemes of unemployment insurance, a
Commission shall immediately be appointed by the New Administration
to study, reconcile, and recommend for immediate adoption the best
features in these several plans for Social Security, and the Hon.
Messrs. Sinclair, Townsend, Eugene Reed, and Howard Scott are
herewith invited
to in every way advise and collaborate with that
Commission.

(12) All women now employed shall, as rapidly as possible, except
in such peculiarly feminine spheres of activity as nursing and
beauty parlors, be assisted to return to their incomparably sacred
duties as home-makers and as mothers of strong, honorable future
Citizens of the Commonwealth.

(13) Any person advocating Communism, Socialism,
or Anarchism,
advocating refusal to enlist in case of war, or advocating alliance
with Russia in any war whatsoever, shall be subject to trial for
high treason, with a minimum penalty of twenty years at hard labor
in prison, and a maximum of death on the gallows, or other form of
execution which the judges may find convenient.

(14) All bonuses promised to former soldiers of any war in which
America
has ever engaged shall be immediately paid in full, in
cash, and in all cases of veterans with incomes of less than
$5,000.00 a year, the formerly promised sums shall be doubled.

(15) Congress shall, immediately upon our inauguration, initiate
amendments to the Constitution providing (a), that the President
shall have the authority to institute and execute all necessary
measures for the conduct
of the government during this critical
epoch; (b), that Congress shall serve only in an advisory capacity,
calling to the attention of the President and his aides and Cabinet
any needed legislation, but not acting upon same until authorized
by the President so to act; and (c), that the Supreme Court shall
immediately have removed from its jurisdiction the power to negate,
by ruling them to be unconstitutional
or by any other judicial
action, any or all acts of the President, his duly appointed aides,
or Congress.

Addendum: It shall be strictly understood that, as the League of
Forgotten Men and the Democratic Party, as now constituted, have no
purpose nor desire to carry out any measure that shall not
unqualifiedly meet with the desire of the majority of voters in
these United States, the League
and Party regard none of the above
fifteen points as obligatory and unmodifiable except No. 15, and
upon the others they will act or refrain from acting in accordance
with the general desire of the Public, who shall under the new
régime be again granted an individual freedom of which they have
been deprived by the harsh and restrictive economic measures of
former administrations, both Republican and
Democratic.