salary, Abe,
has got any hopes that President Wilson would hold up taking over the
railroads pending negotiations for peace, y'understand, they must be
blessed with sanguinary dispositions, Abe, because it's going to take a
long time yet the Kaiser would concede enough to justify the Allies in
so much as hesitating on even a single pair of soldiers' pants."

"Say, if anybody thinks the government would let go the railroads when
we make peace with Germany, Mawruss, he don't know no more about
railroads as he does about governments," Abe declared, "because this war
which the government has got with the railroads, meat-packers, oil
trusts, and coal-mine owners wouldn't end when we've licked Germany any
more than it begun when Von Tirpitz started his submarine campaign. Yes,
Mawruss, if we wouldn't leave off fighting Germany till it's agreed
that no fellers like Von Tirpitz, Von Buelow, Von Bethmann-Hollweg, and
all them other Vons can use German subjects and German property for
their own personal purposes, why it's a hundred-to-one proposition that
we ain't going to leave off fighting the railroads till it's agreed that
them Von Tirpitzes, Von Buelows, and Von Hindenbergs of the American
railroads couldn't use the transportation business of this country for
stock-gambling purpose as though the railroads was gold and silver
mining prospects somewhere out in Nevada and didn't have a thing to do
with the food and coal supply of the nation."

"Wait a moment," Morris said, "and I'll ask Jake, the shipping-clerk, to
bring you in a button-box. We 'ain't got no soap-boxes."

"That ain't no soap-box stuff, Mawruss," Abe retorted. "If the
government should do the same thing to the meat-packers as they did to
the railroads, Mawruss, the arguments of them soap-box orators wouldn't
have a soap-box to stand on."

"Well, if the government thinks it is necessary in order to carry on the
war, Abe," Morris said, "it will grab the meat business like it has
taken over the railroads, but we've got enough to do to supply our
soldiers with ammunition without we would spend any time stopping the
ammunition of them soap-box fellers."

"Of course I may be wrong, Mawruss," Abe admitted, "but the way I look
at it, the war ain't an excuse for not cleaning up at home. On the
contrary, Mawruss, I think it is an opportunity for cleaning up, and
when I see in the papers where people writes to the editors that the
prohibitionists, the women suffragis