going on strike nowadays, from milk-wagon drivers to the United States
Senate, and although the last strike only _begun_ as a strike and ended
up as a lock-out, y'understand, still the example wasn't good to the
country, which if the strike fever is going to spread as high up as the
United States Senate, Abe, where is it going to stop? The first thing
you know, the members of the Metropolitan Club will be going on strike
for a minimum of six hundred sturgeon eggs in a ten-dollar portion of
fresh Astrakhan caviar, and the Amalgamated Bank Presidents of America,
New York Local No. 1, will be walking out in a body for a minimum wage
of fifty thousand dollars a year, with a maximum working year of four
months."

"But even when strikes had no foreign competition in the newspapers,
Mawruss," Abe said, "the interest in them soon died out, which very few
people outside the parties concerned ever finds out when a strike ends
or who wins, and you might even say gives a nickel one way or the other,
Mawruss."

"It ain't only strikes which affects people like that, Abe," Morris
commented. "Long-drawn-out murder trials and graft investigations also
suffers that way, which I bet yer the American newspaper-reading people
will soon get on to the fact that the newspapers is playing up to their
cable tolls, y'understand, and everybody will be starting in to read the
paper at the fourth or fifth page."

"Still, I think that considerable interest was revived in the League of
Nations and the Peace Conference by the argument that Senator Lodge put
up last week in Lowell, Massachusetts," Abe said.

"It wasn't _in_ Lowell, but _with_ Lowell," Morris corrected.

"In or with," Abe said, "it caused a whole lot of comment in the
newspapers, and the people which bought the next morning them papers
that printed the whole affair in full, Mawruss, skipped as much as two
or three pages about it."

"Well, they didn't miss much, Abe," Morris said, "because it didn't come
up to the advertisement."

"What do you mean--the advertisement?" Abe inquired.

"Why, for days already, the newspapers come out with a notice that
Senator Lodge would argue with this here Lowell, which he is a college
president and not a town, Abe, the argument to take place in a big hall
in Boston, and the application for tickets was something tremendous,
Abe, because you know how arguments about the League of Nations is,
Abe. Sometimes the parties only use language and someti