Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 320
The Prairie Hawk still watching o’er the plain.
“Old Bill,” they said, “got kind o’ lazy too.”
They looked at the clenched hands,
But never knew.
HAPPY JIM, THE CONSUMER
IN MY HOME Town, when the autumn evenings close in, the Salvation Army, round a naphtha lamp in the street, lift up the confession of their sins. On such occasions queer local characters, broken by fate, such as the Happy Jim of the poem which follows, leap and dance in a sort of religious ecstasy. The “Happy Jim” of Economics, rejoicing in his own suffering, is the consumer. I am, and have been, a Protectionist. I was brought up to understand that a free-trader wasn’t quite a gentleman. In spite of this, I think that in our unhappy world the tariff business has been overdone and threatens to drive us crazy HAPPY, Happy, Happy Jim
With his Tambourine and its Rattling Rim
What’s the Matter, the Matter with him?
Jimmy, the Consumer.
Happy Jim with his foolish Face,
But all lit up with Heaven’s Grace
By a naphtha Lamp in the Market Place, —
Crazy, that’s the Rumor!
Very often a Passer-by
Asks, “Who’s the queer half clerical Guy?”
And the raggedy Boys around him cry
“He’s Jimmy the Consumer.”
Happy, Happy, Happy Jim,-
Look now, he’s going to start a Hymn,
Just wait, keep still,
He thinks it’s a Prayer Book he’s got in his Hand,
It isn’t really, you understand,
It’s a tattered Text Book, at second hand
By Mill, Stuart Mill.
[JIMMY SINGS]
Now join and sing the Words of Mill,
The Words of Stuart Mill,
And if you have a Soul to save,
Then he can save it still.
For read with me in Mill’s Book Three,
Admittedly his best,
And what says Mill? All Saving will
Result in Interest.
Result in Nit — Result in Nit, — Result in Interest.
This is his Fundamental Proposition number One;
O! Do not stop to look on Top
Till Fundaments are done.
For what says Mill? The Bottom will
Support the whole Extent
Of Proofs that go to help him show,
To show his Fundament.
To show his Fun, to show his Fun, to show his
Fundament.
Now these are just the Elements,
The Elements of Mill,
And in Book Four are things in store
More Complicated still,
These are just El, — These are just El, — just
Elements at will.
So join and yell, and yell like Hell, the Elements of Mill.
How old would Jimmy be, anyway?
Why that would be very hard to say;
From his face you couldn’t tell.
He talks of Ricardo and Adam Smith
And Macaulay and Bright and Cobden as if
He knew the whole of them well.
“Why don’t they send him Home and to Bed?”
He has no Home and he sleeps in a Shed,
And all that was Home for Jimmy lies dead
In the grave yard under the Hill.
Jimmy went crazy with taxes and debt
Long years ago and he’s crazy yet.
Look as he lifts his Hands in the Air
Where under his Sleeves his Arms are bare,
Shrunken and grey with dirt;
Look at his pitiful Overcoat,
Pinned and fastened about his Throat,
Jimmy has got no Shirt.
They taxed it off him, Shred by Shred,
Taxed it down to the latest Thread
To the very, very end.
Each time that Industry needed a Spurt
They tore off a Section of Jimmy’s Shirt
For a textile Dividend.
They taxed his Boots, they taxed his Coat,
They snatched the Muffler from off his Throat,
They smashed his Hat.
Like an old time Martyr dragged through the Town,
Beaten and buffeted, hounded down, —
He was like that.
You see for yourself the State he’s in;
He’s crazy: he thinks he’s rebuked for Sin;
He shouts with a Martyr’s ecstatic Pain,
“Tax me again, Lord, tax me again.”
“Lord, I was sinful: I’m sinful still.
I wouldn’t listen to John Stuart Mill.
Tax me some more!
Open my Eyes, Lord, and let me see
All Taxes finally rest on me!
Mill is quite sure.
O! Lord, I hadn’t read Seligman
Forgive me, Lord, I will if I can,
But in thee, O Lord, I will put my trust,
All Incidence falls on me, as it must Hit me again,
Amen.”
He leaps in the Air as he ends his Prayer
And he smashes his Tambourine,
Leaps and dashes And yells and smashes
And in between the Music crashes
And the raggedy Urchins scream.
Come, come away; it’s too sad to stay
But we must do something for Jimmy some Day.
But what can we do? Every Government plan
Finds Jimmy a quite superfluous man.
Thus it happens that every now and then
The Government send to our Town some Men
To stay at the best Hotel,
To hold a “Hearing” with Ink and Pen
And to gather up Evidence why and when
The Nation is going to Hell;
And they listen to all the World but Jim;
But why should ever they think of him?
What Government ever went looking for
Light By a naphtha Lamp in the Street at Night?
But the Bankers come in two by two,
The Embezzlers three by three,
And the Plutocrat with the silken Hat,
And the Motor Promoter all Oil and Fat,
And here comes Linoleum over the Mat,
Now what shall the Tariff be?
Here come Men with abdominal
Paunches phenomenal,
Holding companies, Gee!
And Iron and Steel walk Heel to Heel,
Heavy and hard and short of Breath,
Twin cousins of War and Allies of Death.
And they show their Figures of Cost and Price
Their Figures of Price and Cost,
The Ledgers that show what a terrible Slice
Their public Spirit has lost.
And a Textile Company sobs aloud
Too feeble almost to knit,
And a Paper Man falls down in the Crowd
And is carried out in a Fit.
And Carpets and Linoleum
Moan and there’s no consolin”em,
Till a Manufacturer makes Grand Slam
With a paid Economist’s Diagram, —
And up goes the Tariff, — that’s it.
Then the Industries come out one by one,
And the Bankers two by two,
But alas for you, poor Jim, my son,
This is never the place for you.
For what would you do but babble and rave —
(An Ophelia with Flowers from Cobden’s grave) —
Of Nations and brotherly Love,
Of the Ties that bind and join Mankind
In a world-wide trade where the World may find
The Blessings that fall from Above, —
You’re mistaking a Tract For a Tariff Act.
Go back to your Lamp and your street, Poor Jim,
Go dance in your naphtha Flame,
Sing your Universal Brotherhood Hymn
With your raggedy Boys and your Shame.
So a while ago, some of us, knowing Jim
Felt the Time had come to look after him.
We got him admitted, with perfect Good Will,
To the Big, Big House just over the Hill
Where the Bug-House People lie.
The wind-swept House, all Gardens and Flowers
With zig-zag Flower-beds red with Flowers,
And with crooked Paths for the idle Hours
Of the People who cannot die.
For the People far better dead, Ah me,
Till God had laid His Hand on their Head
And set them fancy-free.
And they talk and laugh,
On the crooked Path,
In the zig-zag Allée of Flowers,
No Rhyme, no Reason,
No Time, no Season,
To vex the Flight of the Hours,
In a world all bright as Bubbles of Soap,
And smashed to a coloured Kaleidoscope,
All meaningless and absurd,
With splinters of sunlight off the Trees,
And flickered Shadow that jumps and flees
As fast as a Humming Bird, —
Where the Mind that has cast the Burden of Sense
Recovers its first Inconsequence.
But Jimmy, of course, knows nothing of that,
Oh nothing, nothing at all.
He thinks it’s a sort of College he’s at;
He calls it Consumer’s Hall.
And fancies that every Guest on the List
Is some bye-gone famous Economist.
So there sits Jimmy as proud as Punch
With the Bug-House People seated at lunch.
“Good-morning, Bentham,”
“How are you, Mill?”
“Where’s Macaulay, boys? Is he writing still?”
“Ricardo, I want you to meet Lord Brougham,”
“Sit right here, Rousseau, next David Hume.”
As proud and as pleased as Punch is Jim
And the Bug-House People are proud of him.
For with Bug-House People everything goes,
They live in a make-believe World, God knows,
Where each Man sees what he wishes to see
God touched their Heads and he made them free.
OH! MR. MALTHUS!
THE HICKONOMICS OF Hearth and Heart
The Reverend Thos. Robert Malthus, a clergyman of the Church of England and a professor of Political Economy, in his famous Essay on Population of 1798, taught the doctrine that the numbers of mankind are always pressing on the means of subsistence. This easy theory explained poverty and want in the comfortable terms of inevitable economic law. The complacent rich could shake their heads at the improvident poor. The doctrine darkened human life for over a hundred years. Only the oncoming of the age of abundance shows that the source of poverty is elsewhere. Our food increases faster than we do. Wordsworth’s We Are Seven, with its comforting explanation of the death of cottage children, appeared in the same year as the Essay.
MOTHER, Mother, here comes Malthus,
Mother, hold me tight!
Look! It’s Mr. Malthus, Mother!
Hide me out of sight.”
This was the cry of little Jane
In bed she moaning lay,
Delirious with Stomach Pain,
That would not go away.
All because her small Existence
Over-pressed upon Subsistence;
Human Numbers didn’t need her;
Human Effort couldn’t feed her.
Little Janie didn’t know The Geometric Ratio.
Poor Wee Janie had never done
Course Economics No. I;
Never reached in Education
Theories of Population, —
Theories which tend to show
Just how far our Food will go,
Mathematically found
Just enough to go around.
This, my little Jane, is why
Pauper Children have to die.
Pauper Children underfed
Die delirious in Bed;
Thus at Malthus’s Command
Match Supply with true Demand.
Jane who should have gently died
Started up and wildly cried, —
“Look, mother, look, he’s there again
I see him at the Window Pane,
Father, — don’t let him, — he’s behind
That shadow on the window blind,”
In vain the anxious parents soothe, —
What can avail their useless Love?”
Darling, lie down again; don’t mind;
Branches are moving in the Wind.”
With panting Breath, with Eyes that stare,
Again she cries, “He’s there, he’s there!”
The frightened Parents look, aghast,
Is it that something really passed?
What is it that they seem to scan,
Ghost or Abstraction, Dream or Man? —
That long drawn Face, the cloven Lip,
The crooked Fingers all a-grip,
The sunken Face, cadaverous,
The dress, Ah, God deliver us!
What awful Sacrilege is that?
The Choker and the Shovel Hat,
The Costume black and sinister,
The dress of God’s own Minister!
What fiend could ever urge a Man
To personate a Clergyman!
The Father strides with angry fist
“Out, out! you damned Economist!”
His wife restrains his threatening Paw, —
“William, it’s economic Law!”
She shrieks, “Oh William! don’t you know
The Geometric Ratio? —
William, God means it for the best
Our Darling’s taken! we’ve transgressed—”
And crying, “Two times two makes four,”
She crashes swooning to the Floor.
And when her Senses come again
Janie had passed from mortal Pain
And scowling Malthus had moved on
Murm’ring, “That’s one more Infant gone,”
To other Windows, one by one; —
Later he came and took their Son.
With Jane and John gone, out of seven,
They kept at five and just broke even.
“Mary,” the chastened Father said,
“I feel God’s wisdom; two are dead
The world has only food for five,
Quintuplets are the thing that thrive.”
She sobbed, “We’ll do it if we can!
But, oh that awful Malthus Man.”
Such is the tale, we have it straight from Wordsworth’s pious Pen He happened to be out, not late, just after sunset, when He met a little cottage Girl, she was eight years old, (she said), Her Hair was thick, he saw, with Curls that clustered on her Head; And he recalls in pious Verse the Interview she gave While sitting eating Porridge on her Sister Janie’s Grave, Reciting with her Baby Voice and placid Infant’s Breath The orthodox complacent Thought on pauper Children’s death; And thus the plump and happy Child, her Belly full of food, Drowsy with Sunset Porridge smiled, — the World was pretty good.
With her little Belly fully
Satisfied, her Mind got woolly;
She was just like all the rest
Couldn’t stand an acid Test,
Took her thoughts too near the Place
Where Digestion had its Base.
What the Child mistook for Knowledge
Just fresh air and lots of Porridge, —
Here is where Biology Moves into Ontology.
But Willie, Willie Wordsworth, if again you walk the Street Just meet a little College Girl, and get the thing complete. You’ll find her just as charming as a Child upon a Grave, And her Hair in Curl is permanent with what she calls a Wave.
She needs no babbling Innocence, no baby Words to show, The danger spots of little Tots in moving Ratio.
That population is a Thing that all the world must shun, She’ll show you as a Theorem in Economics One, —
At least until four years ago, when all the World went crack And all the world got overfed, and all the World got slack.
And by the Bump we call the Slump, Production’s Force was torn
And Coffee Beans went up in Flames beside ungathered Corn
And Melons floated out to Sea and Hogs were left unborn,
And Beer rolled down the Tennessee and California Wine
Was used as Blood for Hollywood, and Rye thrown in the Rhine
And Super-Products in a Stack, —
But stop, a bit, we must turn back.
Turn back to Mai thus as he walked o’er English Fields and Downs
And walked at night the crooked Streets of crooked English Towns,
Lifeless, undying, Shade or Man, as one that could not die
A hundred years his Shadow fell, a hundred Years to lie,
The Shadow on the Window Pane when Malthus’ Ghost went by.
He chuckled as he passed at night God’s Acre filled with Dead;
The little Graves were packed as tight as Paupers in a Bed.
But he never heard the little wings that rustled overhead,
Or heard the Voices in the Air Of unborn Souls lamenting there.
He wandered in the Summer Lanes when all the World was green, And he never heard the Wedding Bells of Brides that might have been,
Tall English Flowers that drooped and fell and withered on the stem, Victims of Malthus’ evil Spell, — what should he know of them?
In rustled Silk and Lavender the Garden Path they trod
And listened where the Hollyhocks and tall Delphiniums nod,
And whisper to the blushing Face behind the Bonnet hid,
Of Wedding Bells that were to ring, — that were, but never did.
And he never knew the empty Homes with angry Quarrels rent,
He never knew the blighted Souls, out of their Nature bent,
The blighted life of Man and Wife where Children are not sent,
And Love’s Illusion wears away And Single Self comes back to stay.
He scowled to see the Working Class were disobedient still,
The teaching that the Gentry grasped was lost on Jane and Bill,
And round the Slum
The Children come,
As Children ever will.
In vain upon the Brain of Jane and Bill was cast the Thought
That Hope of Social Gain was nil and Poverty their lot,
That social Betterment could not
Permit a Baby in the Cot.
“All right,” says Bill, “we’ll have them still,”
And Jane she said, “Whoi not?”
“I likes to see ’em, reverend sir,
