inging doom and so
depreciating the value of their properties, complained to the Federal
Communications Commission; Sundayschools voted him the Man of the Year
and hundreds of motherly ladies stored the studio with cakes baked by
their own hands. Brother Paul's answer to indorser and detractor alike
was to buy up more radiotime.

No one doubted the government would at length awaken from its apathy and
counter the menace swiftly and efficiently, as always before in crises
when the country was threatened. The nation with the highest rate of
production per manhour, the greatest efficiency per machine, the
greatest wealth per capita, and the greatest vision per mindseye was not
going to be defeated by a mere weed, however overgrown. While waiting
the inevitable action and equally inevitable solution the public had all
the excitement of war without suffering the accompanying privations and
bereavements. The grass was a nuisance, but a nuisance with titillating
compensations; most people felt like children whose schoolhouse had
burned down; they were sorry, they knew there'd be a new one, they were
quite ready to help build it--but in the meantime it was fun.

The _Daily Intelligencer_ was gorged with letters from its readers on
the subject of the grass. Many of them wanted to know what a newspaper
of its standing meant by devoting so much space to an ephemeral
happening, while many more asked indignantly why more space wasnt given
to something affecting their very lives and fortunes. Communist
partymembers, using improbable pennames, asked passionately if this was
not a direct result of the country's failure to come to a thorough
understanding with the Soviet Union? Terrified propertyholders irately
demanded that something, SOMETHING be done before realestate became as
valueless in Southern California as it already was in Red Russia.

Technocrats demanded the government be immediately turned over to a
committee of engineers and competent agronomists who would deal with the
situation as it deserved after harnessing the wasted energy of the
populace. Nationalists hinted darkly that the whole thing was the result
of a plot by the Elders of Zion and that Kaplan's Delicatessen--in
conspiracy with A Cohen, Notions--was at the bottom of the grass.
Brother Paul wrote--and his letter was printed, for he now advertised
his radioprograms in the columns of the _Intelligencer_--that
Caesar--presumably the state of California--had been