t, neither," Morris commented, "because if his only
talking point to the English experts was that the American experts had
turned down his gun, y'understand, the English experts would give him a
big order without even asking him to unpack his samples."

"Sure, I know," Abe said. "But if Colonel Lewis would of had the
interests of America at heart, Mawruss, he should ought to have offered
his machine-gun to the English experts first, understand me, and after
he had got out of the observation ward, which the English experts would
just naturally send him to as a dangerous American crank with a foolish
idea for a machine-gun, y'understand, the American experts would have
taken his entire output at his own terms."

[Illustration: "'Well, if we are such big experts on machine-guns, we
should ought to know a whole lot more about machine-guns as Colonel
Lewis, and what does that _Schlemiel_ know about machine-guns,
_anyway_?'"]

"After all, you can't kick about such mistakes being made, because
that's the trouble about being a new beginner in any business," Morris
said. "It don't make no difference whether it would be war or pants,
Abe, you start out with one big liability, and that is the advice
proposition. Twice as many new beginners goes under from accepting what
they thought was good advice as from accepting what they thought was
good accounts, Abe, and them fellers on the Shipping Commission deserves
a great deal of credit that they already made such fine progress. You
can just imagine what this here Hurley which he used to was in the
railroad business must be up against from his friends which has been in
the ship-building business for years already. The chance is that every
time Mr. Hurley goes out on the street one of them old ship-building
friends comes up to him with that good-advice expression on his face and
says: '_Nu_, Hurley. How are they coming?' which it don't make a bit of
difference to such a feller whether Mr. Hurley would say, '_So, so_,'
'_Pretty good_,' or '_Rotten_,' y'understand, he might just as well save
his breath, on account the good-advice feller is going to get it off his
chest, anyhow.

"'You're lucky at that,' the good-advice feller says, 'because I just
met your assistant designer, Jake Rashkin, and he tells me you are
getting out a line of whalebacks in pastel shades.'

"'Well, why not?' Hurley says.

"'Why not!' the friend exclaims. 'You mean to tell me that you don't
know even that mu