PHAETON FOR SALE

...I can not say that The Progressive "pulled" as well as I had hoped...

...That was along about 1931-33...

...once it's going I am pretty sure it will keep on going until you bring it to a stop...

...The valves are, frankly, in a hell of a way, and the car will not, therefore, start in cold weather...

...Mayer's Patriotic Motive My present offering, my friends, and let me hasten to say that I will take my advertising elsewhere if this one fails to produce results, is really a darb...

...It cost me $75 two years ago and has never had a nickle put into it, though it has cried out to Heaven to witness its condition...

...There was a period, at that, when I hadn't a pot to put a chicken in or a car for my two-car garage...

...Throw an occasional war into that cycle and you have a pretty good description of capitalism, at that...

...The real reason I want to sell for as much as I can is a patriotic one...

...There are now 13 Memorial Chapels on the campus, the biggest and ugliest of which was erected by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in memory of his old man, a little too late, I'm afraid, to do his old man much good...

...Phaeton For Sale By MILTON MAYER SOME OF YOU old timers will remember that my last offering in these columns, in the way of goods and services, was my racoon coat, which my old man paid $395 for when he was in the chips...

...Five years after I first let Joe seduce me, we were each buying brand new cars...

...I bought, not a $25 job, but a $35 job...

...For I shall be on my feet for the first time since I persuaded my old man to buy me my first jallopy in 1925...

...Then I went bust, due to circumstances over which Rabbi Stephen A. Wise and I had no control, and I started all over again with my $75 phaeton...

...It is a 1936 Ford Tudor—two-door, get it?— sedan...

...That is why I want to sell it right away...

...Then there will be another siege of what Calvin Coolidge called permanent prosperity, and my Little Julie will dog me for a racoon coat, just as I dogged my old man when I was in college, and I will take my profits from my Insull stocks, just as my old man took his, and go down to Field's and buy my own coat back for $395...

...Besides, while I preach a very high-grade brand of Christian, or Jewish, socialism, I have always steered clear of the Party lest somebody ask me why, as long as I had joined the Party, I didn't lead a socialist life...

...Whoever wants it may jump in as I roll down the street...

...How can you lose...

...It began wearing out, as did Joe's, and when we got to figuring out how much it cost in repairs, we agreed that you saved money in the long run to trade it in for a $100 job...

...I am ready to let go of it before it stops running...

...The engine block is cracked and the crack is filled with chewing gum...

...The parts, including all four fenders, are a little loose...

...Do I hear an offer...

...Well, sir, here are all these working stiffs with all those extra dollars, menacing the national economy...

...And if it won't ever start again, there is still something nice and capitalistic about being able to look at a big, useless piece of anything, including junk, and say, "It's mine, all mine...

...The next job was a $250 job...

...As of even date, I can say, honestly, that it runs...

...You know what happened...

...I received on that occasion, two communications that might have been called firm offers...

...It needs a good coat of paint...

...This country is on the brink of inflation...

...If each worker gets a dollar more a day, it doesn't do him much good, but there are so many of him that the total increased purchasing power would be ruinous to the economy...

...I can not speak too highly of this little job, gents...

...It breaks my heart to sell, indeed it does...

...That one was a 1918 Overland, which dropped a steering knuckle coming down the hill out of Thoreau, New Mexico, and jumped the Great Divide...

...I shall spend the $75 profit on some worthy project of a public or semi-public nature, such as the erection of the Mayer Memorial Chapel on the University of Chicago campus...

...far from it...

...What do you want for $150—an aircraft carrier...

...You see, the reason the wage earners especially shouldn't _push the ceiling up is that there are so many of them...

...I swear, if there was a deflation on instead of an inflation, I wouldn't ask a cent more for my phaeton than it is actually worth...

...It doesn't affect the economy if a Eugene Grace or a Louis B. Mayer votes himself an extra $100,000 in dividends or bonuses, because there are, Gott sie dank, so few Graces and Mayers...

...As long as I keep out of the Party, I can (1) avoid falling victim to the various Marxist fallacies that the Party endorses, including its worship of the golden calf for all, and (2) continue to lead a capitalist life without too much agony of conscience...

...I was unemployed, due to circumstances over which Calvin Coolidge and I had no control, and I had sworn that when I got back into the money, the last thing I would ever own again, or be owned by, would be an automobile...

...my extravagances are great, and my needs are correspondingly great...

...You Know What Happened But my pal Joe Schwab persuaded me differently...

...Liberal trade-in allowance, of course, so it really didn't cost you a cent...

...I can not say, as a matter of fact, that it "pulled" at all...

...That Racoon Coat The other was from a socialist in Ohio, who addressed me either as "Comrade" or "Conrad," I forget which, and appealed to me to put the coat into production for use by giving it to him...

...So I turned down the fur worker's offer...

...Buy yourself a $25 job like mine," said Joe, "and when it wears out, just run it into the lake...

...I am willing to sell my phaeton for $150...

...Everybody is pushing the wage ceiling up except the partners at J. P. Morgan & Company, who are not wage earners...

...I was not interested in this lofty appeal to my patriotism as I am not, in the first place, patriotic, and, in the second place, I feel that if nations wish to indulge themselves in the luxurious nonsense of war, they should be made to pay for it...

...So I declined the shivering Comrade's appeal on the grounds that he was no Comrade, or Conrad, of mine...

...Let me conjure up a mental picture of my phaeton for you...

...One was from a fur worker in New York, who suggested I turn my racoon coat over to the fur workers, who would, free of charge, rework it into wristlets or anklets for the brave, if bewildered, boys who are killing as many of their fellow-men as they can on the snowy steppes of Russia, China, and the Road to Rome...

...What can I do, I say to myself, to save the national economy...

...The racoon coat, incidentally, continues to gather moss, if not moths, in the great frosty vaults of Marshall Field & Company, which, being a vicious capitalist institution, will doubtless replevin it one of these days to satisfy the storage charges...

...The tires are—well, tires...

...The reason I wish to sell it for $150 is not to take advantage of current market conditions by exploiting some fellow-citizen...

...I must say, he made more sense to me than the fur worker, but the fact is that he misunderstood my motive in offering the coat in the first place and, in point of fact, misunderstood my motives all along the line...

...All it does is make the workers so mad that they demand an extra dollar for every extra ten thousand the Graces and the Mayers get, and so it's the workers, with those extra dollars kicking around in their pants, who ruin the economy, and I solicit your enthusiasm in getting even with the workers at the end of the war...

...Why, I can take some of those inflationary dollars away from the working stiffs...

...To the extent that they get it free—and this includes the weekly cake I am asked to bake for the USO—to just that extent will they go on thinking that war is not such a bad idea, after all...

...I offered the coat for money because I wanted money...