THE ONE-BUCK SHAVE
Mayer, Milton
The One-Buck Shave By Milton Mayer EGGS are a dollar. Coffee's a dollar. Butter's a dollar. Stew meat's a dollar. You get enough change to buy a postage stamp, but the mail, which used to be...
...Organdie Remnants, the yard 8c (Livingston Bros...
...Our moral advantage over our ancestors, in escaping the immorality of the conditions under which their Patent Leathers were made, more than offsets the moral loss we have sustained in Florida, in producing an American counterpart of the European class which owns without working...
...Their revolution has raised the price of coffee and reduced, or at least replaced, the swillers at the Baden of Europe, and so, through no morality of our own, we are in a better moral position for having to pay for a slave revolution...
...But—," said my barber...
...You can't go on as you are, you know, with only one overcoat and pretending to be half starved and telling everybody your troubles...
...My trouble is that I live 99% by my wits and 1% by my morals, and my morals are just strong enough to addle my wits without getting me any of the blessings that are supposed to accrue to morality...
...I was there, too, having dropped in for breakfast, which consisted of a teacup of gruel which the President of the College had taken by force from his baby daughter, and I went to hear Sigmund lead the students in the old, old songs...
...I voted for the Prohibition candidate, and he didn't get in...
...Forces in Successful Withdrawal") and turn on one another in the ultimate reduction to the state of na,-ture—every man for himself and each against all...
...I don't remember the hams, but I remember loving that translucent Jap Rose Soap so much that I tried to eat it and my mother said we could afford to eat it better than we could afford to wash with it...
...But we must acknowledge the advantages of our situation over Pa's and Grandpa's...
...We are losing our ideals and our money both...
...You are an artist, like me...
...Do you think that man lives by bread alone...
...The Indo-Chinese then," he said, "what difference does it make...
...Give me my change," I said...
...But the__then Mayers had steaks and roasts three or four times a week, and eggs without bacon at breakfast were as unthinkable as eggs fried in anything but butter...
...Calvin Coolidge promised that the state would wither away under capitalism, but it is the people who are doing the withering...
...26c, and Jap Rose Toilet Soap, Large Bar, was the bar 9c...
...They tell me the Tibetans are threatened with Red aggression...
...II Now 1905 was not a high-price year, but 1919 was the memorable year of the H.C.L., or High Cost of Living...
...III There is one other class, which is now on the bottom...
...You must be crazy...
...and Best Eastern Ham, the lb...
...White Top Patent Leathers, the pair 75c (Philadelphia Shoe Co...
...War," said Georges Clemenceau, "is not the worst of evils, but it is the cause of all the others...
...But nothing," I said...
...I said...
...My barber fades out and my plumber fades in...
...I was wrong...
...they broke into tumult...
...If I were 100% witty, I would tie myself to the cost of living and laugh at the rest of you, who live by your unorganized labor...
...It is hard, O my friends, to come down in the world, as the young man of many riches concluded long ago...
...The H.C.L...
...85c, and Old Crow Bottled in Bond, the 1/5 gal...
...A billion dollars isn't enough...
...the colonial revolutions in Asia and the peasant revolutions in Europe, including Russia, have really enriched the very poor to a small extent, only to reduce most of them, through war, to a condition worse than the one they started from...
...Nottingham Curtains, the pair 28c (Kra-gen's...
...We thought we could take in another roomer if we put a radiator in it and then rigged up some plumbing or found someone who didn't need any...
...Don't be crazy...
...Nobody like you," he said...
...I had 10 minutes to make an appointment, and I hadn't shaved for two days, so I got ready to shave...
...He brought his son with him, and they spent the morning putting it in and sent us a bill for $62.45...
...Beaten by prices and taxes, scared stiff of the immediate future, scared still stiffer of the eternal future, loaded with guilt for Hiroshima, Potsdam, and Nuremberg, hopeless about our elected representatives, and convinced that if Truman doesn't get us Stalin will, we gush great gouts of double talk ("U.N...
...You say I live by my wits, and you add that you can understand why, that being the case, I am only half alive...
...We try to cut and trim, and make soup out of hash, and hash out of soup, but nothing is enough...
...No, there are worse evils than mass murder—pride and terror and hate and greed, and the hardening of the human heart...
...But the sweated serfs who pick today's coffee, at the lb...
...I threw the hot towel over his face, he shaved me in five minutes, and I gave him a dollar and held out my hand...
...If I died today, I would leave Baby, besides my blessing, a mortgage (overdue), a tax bill, and no capital, no reserves, no diamond stickpin, no pearl studs, no nothing...
...And the last time we had what you might call meat was when the editor of The Progressive visited us- and I could deduct it as a business expense on my income tax...
...We never clubbed together for a raise, or clubbed the boss, and we never got one...
...The can-opener man fades out, and my barber fades in...
...I am going to buy it for $5,000, and sit on it for six months until the machinery scarcity is desperate, and then sell it to the Government for $50,000...
...3%c, Best Java and Mocha Coffee, the 3 lbs...
...A few weeks ago, Sigmund Spaeth, the music lover, turned up at Haverford College bent, of all things, upon revising his alma mater's song book...
...Everybody else has worse troubles, and nobody listens to anybody any more...
...A man in my profession told me the other day that he was borrowing $5,000 to buy half of a plant that had gone broke making, if I remember right, a patented can opener that didn't work...
...Besides, I have no Senator...
...As I remember, you got a haircut that night, too...
...What are you going to do with half a bankrupt patented can-opener plant...
...Nothing is enough...
...he'll fix you up...
...You spend half your money for atom bombs, and the other half for an atom bomb shelter, and you take what's left and buy a quart of milk or a pair of tickets for South Pacific...
...As to 1874, a low-price year, to be sure, all I know is in song and story...
...You, too, can do this...
...Before me, as I contemplate this dismal prospect, are three documents issued within the memory of living men, one in 1905, one in 1919, and one in 1874...
...Your country needs men like you...
...had pushed Empire Picnic Hams up to the lb...
...Does anybody buy a shave any more...
...When the students got to the lines At eight o'clock can you stay awake...
...On June 25, 1905, the San Francisco Examiner, in addition to anMILTON MAYER, a regular contributor to The Progressive, lectures throughout the country for the American Friends Service Committee, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Jewish Peace Foundation, and the Great Books Foundation...
...85c, while they themselves do not yet have coffee of their own or schools for their kids or a doc for the old woman, are in revolution—be it only from economic slavery to political slavery, what do they care...
...You get enough change to buy a postage stamp, but the mail, which used to be delivered three times a day, has nothing in it but bills...
...We are all fading out, and the long, long night is fading in...
...Telephone calls go up to a dime this month, and the quality of the conversation is declining...
...But the men who machine-make today's Patent Leathers, the pair $10 to $20, have shoes of their own and schools for their kids and a doc for the old woman when she's sick...
...Of course Pa didn't own a car, or "machine" as he called it, but neither do I. When he died he left Ma his blessing and enough money to keep her the rest of her life...
...And General Motors squealed like a stuck pig when its newest price rise was stopped...
...So we called our—get the "our"-— plumber and asked him about a radiator, and he said he happened to have an old one on hand and would put it in for us...
...That's Mayer, worse off, far, than the former very poor, who, though they can not now afford chops and steaks, never could, while I was brought up on them...
...The American Standard of Living is gone...
...Their purpose was the rugged individual rights of a free press for newspapermen and academic freedom for schoolma'rms...
...Now, many years later, they are just unions, organized, like all other economic associations, against the whole community, and I am the unorganized, disorganized, middle-aged middle class, too proud to fight and too weak to...
...What if it does double the price of bread...
...1. Those White Top Patent Leathers, the pair 75c, were handmade by men who were sweated by millionaires who, however, themselves ran their own factories instead of swilling the winter away in Florida...
...The Chinese have outliberated us on the Koreans," I said, "and the Koreans are all dead...
...I said...
...I want a shave," I said, "in five minutes...
...9 of that year, the Pig-gly Wiggly Stores ("All Over the World") offered Franklin Mac-Veagh's Bond Coffee, the lb...
...War," says the World Council of Churches, "is mass murder...
...21c and Good Toilet Paper, Large Roll, the roll 4c...
...I ran across the street to the barber, who said, "You're not due here for another month...
...21c, was grown by chattel slaves whose millionaire masters did swill away the winters at the Baden of Holland, Germany, England, France, and Portugal...
...The quality of everything is declining, and there is less of it for more money...
...Can you shave me in five minutes...
...The advantages are two...
...Mind you, 1874, when the students at Haverford worked their way, and nobody had a convertible, and nobody had an allowance, and Haverford was then, as now, a center of Christian asceticism...
...Sigmund, who claims not to have been born then, says that his grandfather told him that the chops and steak followed eggs and fish and oatmeal, and were garnished with potatoes, onions, bacon, and corn-meal muffins...
...2. The Franklin MacVeagh's Bond Coffee, the lb...
...A platter of chops and steak—for breakfast...
...the really rich are gone (Fot^ was the last, in America, and tne< newly established Ford Foundation, which will be the last of its kind,, though it is the biggest ever, is much smaller, in purchasing power, than the Rockefeller or Carnegie Foundations were...
...The two unions I joined—the Newspaper Guild and the Federation of Teachers—were, when I joined them, above such sordid concerns as money...
...On balance, the very poor in America have become very much richer, in real as well as in nominal earnings...
...And their souls are withering faster than their bodies...
...Not to do what it's doing," I said, sorrowfully...
...nouncing "Civil War Raging in Russia-—Guilt Charged to Cultivated Class," announced Women's Lawn Shirt Waist Suits at $3.75 (Weinstock, Lubin & Co...
...A fellow told me that General Motors will make a billion dollars this year—the first time in history a corporation has made a billion dollars...
...I am the man nobody is sorry for, and rightly so...
...I am the former rugged individual, still individual...
...I am an artist, like you," he said, "only better, but I am not crazy, and that is why I am going to buy half a can-opener plant...
...I cut your hair a month ago...
...I had left my razor in Des Moines the night before...
...I suppose that my own father, who was too good a man to make much of a "go" of things, was bringing home, at my age, a third of my present money...
...Go see your Senator...
...98c (Emporium's Grocery Dept...
...At least get a job in the OWI, if you haven't enough sense to run a can-opener factory into some money...
...But mass murder is not the worst of evils...
...Get in on the liberation graft...
...The last time I shaved you was the night of the Junior Prom, 20 years ago, and a shave was 15 cents with a haircut and 25 cents without...
...And the more I agonize the less I work...
...I say that if I lived wholly by my wits, I would be rolling with the punches and getting a few in under the belt myself...
...After a platter o[ chops and steak...
...A shave is a dollar, and that's what I was trying to tell you...
...I am an old radiator man myself, and I would say that if I bought that radiator in a junkyard it would cost me $8, and if my plumber bought it it cost him $3...
...I used to say that even if we lost our ideals in the course of conquering the world, we would get rich anyway and go to the devil in a barouche instead of a handbasket...
...There isn't any change," he said...
...If it were, the World Council of Churches would stop supporting it...
...There was one, written in '74, which Sigmund took them over, and it was all about the evils of early-morning classes...
...I'm glad, in my secret heart, and I hope you are the same, because it proves that a people can not even defend their money, much less their ideals, with carnal weapons...
...and there is, primarily in America, a new class, whose population is continually changing, of quick big-money people, who spend their money fast before they lose it, speculatively because they got it that way, spectacularly to avoid taxes (which didn't bother Rockefeller), and prof- ligately to avoid God (Who bothered Rockefeller...
...We must liberate them, my friends, and at once, while they still have homes to burn...
...The Mayers had a spare room—half a room, more like—off their kitchen...
...On Sept...
...You must mean the Indo-Chinese...
...Sure, but...
...Progress was an illusion, and prosperity is an illusion now...
...But my gladness is overshadowed by my day to day agonies at the grocery store...
...Don't you want to help liberate the Koreans...
...And the less I work, the less money I make, and that makes the grocery situation even worse...
...His articles have appeared in Commonweal, Harper's, Fellowship, Negro Digest, and Life...
...I am priced out of the market, and so are you...
Vol. 15 • February 1951 • No. 2
