Copyright, 1959 by CHET BERRLOW

Preview Of Coming Attractions This is the second issue of "Fables From The (Hardly) Past". Watch for another Fable From The (Hardly) Past, coming soon. It has a different setting, a different cast of characters, and a different plot. But it will be easy to take - and hard to forget. In fact, although we haven't wraten it yet, we can hardly wait to read it ourselves. Chet Berrlow

A FABLE FROM THE (HARDLY) PAST

by CHET BERRLOW ONCE UPON A TIME there were two large islands, which their discoverer had given the unusual names of Forward and Backward. And once upon the same time there were two brothers, whom their father had christened Ramrod and Jello. Ramrod's name signifies a stern character. He was. Jello was also well labelled, because he had a backbone made out of the stuff. And the reason these names are all so appropriate is that we own this fable. We'd be silly to let any of our charac ters - or even an island - grab a name that didn't fit. The father of Ramrod and Jello was Croesus Vancroesus, IV. He was by far the richest man there has ever been in the whole world. But the old Van was so smart that nobody knew he was rich at all. And he got this story off the ground by quietly buying Backward and Forward, from the governments that owned them. He then gave Backward and Forward to his two sons, Ram.:. rod and Jello, respectively, as presents for their twenty-first birthdays. Next the old Van got all of the 107 fishermen on Backward to make Ramrod their king, and to swear allegiance to their new monarch. And he did the same thing on Forward for King J ello. He wanted to establish not one dynasty but two. The old Van remembered from his school days a line that went, "But oh, 'tis passing brave to be a king and ride in triumph." And he thought this would be true whether the king rode Backward or Forward. But for some reason the old Van loved Jello much more than Ramrod. So he set to work with his billions to make a real country out of Forward first. The island was about the size of Delaware, or twice as large as Texas felt after Alaska joined the Union. He picked out a beautiful valley, that stretched between two mountain peaks, as the site for his capital city, which was named Forward Pass. started humming. And things

The old Van hired architects and engineers, imported thous ands of workmen, and soon created a shining metropolis by the sheer magic of money. Even while the city was building he populated it, and the surrounding territory, as far as the sea in all directions. He gave free land and houses and trac':'

A Fable From The (Hardly) Past

tors and tools to the farmers. He built stores and stocked them, for the merchants. He put up plants full of equipment for the manufacturers, and homes on landscaped gardens for their workmen. He built theatres and schools and churches, power plants and transmission lines and a telephone system, news paper plants and broadcasting stations and a postoffice net work, all on a crash-program basis. And he attracted people to the island, to run them. He did it by the generosity of his original "transportation allowances" for whole families, and by the expectations he created of a sky full of pie for the future. The old Van installed an elaborate social security system, a pattern of government subsidies that guaranteed prosperity to all, an unemployment administration to take care of those who were allergic to prosperity, and everything that was needed for the Forward economy. He even brought a shipload of Nobel Prize winners and other in tellectuals, in order to put the Forward culture immediately on the map. By overlooking no human need or desire and spar ing no expense, the old Van brought Forward a whole civiliza tion in miniature as a going concern. Within ten years of the day King Jello I was crowned, he was ruling over a million subjects who were enjoying a utopia that had been handed to them on a silver platter. We'd love to stay in such fortunate company and share with you, gentle reader, the thrill of watching people live in a country where government took care of them so well and so completely that happiness, like vaccination, was practically compulsory. But we have other tasks awaiting. We must stop Forward-gazing, and lean over Backward to see what is happening there. II Which is quite a different story. For in the meantime mi gration to Backward has been sparse and slow. King Ramrod has had no bribes nor prosperity to offer. So he has been able to attract to his island only those settlers who were silly enough to want to earn their own livings, without either gov ernment help or governmental interference. And of these real Backward prospects, only the most thrifty and determined could make the move, for King Ramrod had no way to pay even their transportation. Of course he did sell new settlers their land cheap, for in the beginning the only means he had of building his modest

A Fable From The (Hardly) Past

palace and maintaining a tiny staff was from such sales. And the taxes were disgracefully low for any modern country, be cause King Ramrod knew that his poor struggling subjects simply could not pay, and would rebel against, any but the minimum of taxes required for the very minimum of govern ment. So little by little a few more farms and then a few more farms did become well tilled and abundantly productive. Little by little some of the farmers' sons turned their attention to making plows, or raising cattle, or manufacturing kitchen utensils or clothes or even such luxuries as soap or candy or bathtubs -which they swapped (through the exchange me dium of money) to the farmers who needed these things, for the surplus food which the farmers did not need. Little by little these various small industries sprang up and grew and prospered. And in Backward Drop, the capital city which slowly arose on the beautiful seaside ledge where King Ramrod had his palace, as well as in other villages where the early settlers clustered more thickly, tailors and bankers and mer chants and doctors gradually came in time to hang out their shingles and offer their services. And presently even small electric-light plants became commonplace in Backward Drop and in the larger villages. But even after ten years there was no mistaking the Back ward economy. The whole island was so far behind that it had a very small and inexpensive government, no social security system whatsoever, no subsidies to farmers and no lush gov ernment contracts for manufacturers, and not even temporary provisions for those who did not choose to work. Not only the telephone company but even the post office system belonged to and was run by private business, instead of the government. Worst of all, education was still in the hands of various private groups of all kinds, usually neighbors or members of a whole village, who had simply joined together to hire the teachers and supply the modest buildings for having their children taught the specific subjects which they thought schools should teach them. The economy and political science of Backward was so non progressive that people even took for granted that they must save money and make provision for their own old age, or be supported by their relatives, or become the objects of private charity. During the early years the acme of wit, philosophy, and truth for these Backward people was the local version of

A Fable From The (Hardly) Past

an old cliche, that "down in old Backward, boys, it's root hog or die." Only the most thrifty, industrious, and ambitious made any appreciable advance toward a higher standard of living, or accumulated any property above that which supplied their daily needs. How rapidly all of this might have been changed, after those first ten years, but for an unkind imagination on the part of the man making up this fable, you will never know. For the old Van, having completed his transformation of For ward into a J ello-run paradise, was now ready to devote his attention and his billions to doing the same for Backward. As much as it grieves us to bury one of our characters, however, the truth is that exactly at this juncture the old Van died. And then it was discovered that even his fortune had not been equal to keeping the Jello domain operating for the last two or three years, in the Forward style to which the inhabitants had be come accustomed. Which meant, that Backward was cut off from all or any of the hypodermic injection of industrializa tion and prosperity which the old Van had intended. This so disappoints and disgusts us that we are going to bring down a curtain at this point on the whole show, and not even take a look at either island again for the next ten years. III But the ten years are now up, so here we go again. And we recognize the Jello kingdom at once. For the famous Forward culture is now shining more brightly than ever. Not even at Harvard, Oxford, or the Sorbonne could you hear more de lightful highbrow buncombe being passed out as the ultimate wisdom of the ages, especially in the "social sciences," than in the beautifully modernistic lecture halls of Farward Pass University. There seems to be something seriously wrong, nevertheless. On a closer look it appears that the Forward economic band wagon - which was thought to be rolling along so nicely by everybody (except a few people who could add and subtract) must have had a wheel come off the axle somewhere down the line. At any rate, it is sadly stalled now. During these past ten years the population has increased by fifty percent. But the total production of manufactured goods has actually decreased by ten percent. It is rapidly be oming less, as the machinery and equipment in the factories

A Fable From The (Hardly) Past

wears out and breaks down without being replaced. Every body has plenty of money, but nobody can buy anything. "And it is all the fault," we just heard one Forward manu facturer say, "of those blankety-blank labor unions. Ten years ago they began to insist on higher and higher wages for less and less work. We kept on giving 'em the increases, because of course we could keep on raising the prices on our products. Then the government stepped in and froze wages, which was fine. But they also froze our prices too low, and that ruined us." "It's all the fault of the greedy manufacturers," we just heard one working man say. "They kept raising the prices on everything. We kept on getting our wages boosted to match. Then the government stepped in and froze prices, which was fine. But they also froze our wages too low, so we haven't cared much whether we worked or not." "It's all the fault of the government," we just heard Pro fessor R. E. Seeding Brow of Forward Pass University say. "It wouldn't keep the inflation going fast enough. When money will buy less and less, you've got to keep printing more and more money, faster, and pouring it into the economic blood stream. But our government didn't have the courage to be really progressive." "It's all the fault of the farmers," we just heard the head of one of the Ration Bureaus say. "With more mouths to feed in the cities, and .less food to feed them, the farmers began holding back more and more of their produce from the market and keeping it for themselves. So fil'lally we put regulations into effect that no farmer could keep any of the food he raised, for himself or his family, but had to get his food out of the general pool, with ration cards, the same as everybody else. Then too many farmers got unreasonable and just wouldn't raise anything at all." "It's all the fault of the legislators," we just heard a retired old man of fifty say. "They ought to drop the retirement age to forty-five for everybody, and double the pension and secur ity payments which retired people draw. Then we old folks would have enough money to spend to put the. whole Forward economy right back on its feet again." "It's all the fault of the storekeepers," we just heard one housewife say. "They simply will not hire enough clerks to

A Fable From The (Hardly) Past

wait on the customers, or we'd all have enough food and every thing else we need, without standing in line so long and have it give out before we get there." "It's certainly not our fault," we just heard King Jello say, in a speech from his forward balcony. "Your government has done everything possible for you. We have frozen prices so as to keep down the cost of living. We have granted subsidies so that everybody could still make a profit. We have pumped more money into circulation through the banks, so as to in crease everybody's earning power. We have then raised taxes higher and higher so as to draw off the surplus and prevent inflation. When the manufacturers would not expand their plants, we established government factories to compete with them, and to set the pace. "In fact, because the private manufacturers are now ac tually producing less instead of more despite all of the guid ance we have given them, more and more of those government owned factories are running today - or at least I think they are. Your government has got so big that we have sort of lost track of things. But we are right now putting a lot more peOc pIe on the government payrolls so that we can establish better controls over what everybody does. Besides, with all of these unfortunate shortages to face, we need thousands more ration clerks. And if we have to start taking over the farms, because the farmers too simply will not produce, then of course we shall need still more supervisory help. Also, we'll probably have to start huge public works to make jobs for the idle farm ers, so that they will have the money to buy food for them selves and their families. You can't please everybody, but we are certainly trying. "And now we wish to tell you about some wonderful long range planning for our nation's future which has been worked out by the economists at our great university. With .the added controls these plans will give your government . . . . " IV Frankly, we don't know what these great plans were, and we probably never shall know - nor you either. For just at that point, unfortunately, we fell asleep. And now we are go ing to study Backward briefly for a bit. We wonder what on earth has happened there during the last ten years.

A Fable From The (Hardly) Past

Well, whatever it is, starvation is not included. Every grocery store is loaded with food, and with clerks trying to sell it. And every other emporium of every kind seems to be stock ed as well. Apparently, not many of these Backward people have much money, but they can certainly buy things with what they do have. In fact, one of the hardest jobs of the ordinary Backward citizen seems to be to keep salesmen out of his hair. "You see," we just heard one manufacturer explaining to his employees, "we simply had to buy all of this new and im proved machinery, to make our products better and at less cost, in order to sell them against the competition. Otherwise neither you nor I might even have jobs much longer. But with this equipment, and the sales force we have, we feel so sure of good business that I think the firm can stand a small raise for everybody - incllllding me, thank goodness - and one is going through. Just don't forget to use this machinery, and push it to the best of your ability, if any of us is ever to get another raise." "You see," we just heard one of the workers explaining to a new immigrant, as they walked away from the meeting, "the good part of this raise the boss is talking about, small as it may be, is what it will buy. For we are now turning out so much goods of every kind on this whole island, and everybody is so anxious to sell what he is making or growing, that you can ac tually get more for your money every year. My problem now is to keep some salesman from getting my wife to buy a ten-foot refrigerator she doesn't need in place of the eight-foot one she already has - as soon as she hears about my raise. But at leMt I'd rather have that worry than be giving all of the raise and half of my regular wages to the government in taxes, to spend for me, as '1 hear "they do in Forward." "Tke government deserves a lot of credit," we" just heard Professor Downtew Earth of Backward Drop Institute say. "It could have stepped in very easily, three or four years ago, when everybody was yelling 'panic.' It could have started spawning bureaus and subsidies and controls all over the land scape. Instead, our government simply let economic nature work its own marvelous recovery. And the only lasting result was that so many of what had before been luxmries of the few have now become commonplace parts of the standard of living of the masses. For the manufacturers simply had to find larg er markets for their bathtubs or encyclopedias or raincoats in

A Fable From The (Hardly) Past

order to stay in business. To do this, they had to become more efficient. Also, to move the goods they already had, as well as the new and increased production, they were compelled to use both more salesmen and lower prices. A depression is always a spreader of future prosperity if allowed to run its natural course." "The place for us to look for greatly increased volume," we just heard one salesmanager say, "is to the farm market. Very few of those hornyhanded sons of toil are getting rich, but al most all of them are feeling their oats. And selling plenty of oats besides. They are independent as millionaires, too, be cause nobody tells 'em what to do, and they depend on nobody but themselves. So don't try to sell 'em; just let 'em decide to buy. But give them every chance." "You know," we just heard a fairly old man say, "I'm be ginning to think now that maybe I'll retire in another couple of years. Having been just an ordinary workman all my life; I certainly don't have a lot of money. But I have been saving a little ever since I came to Backward. With almost everything actually getting cheaper, and taxes very low, I think I can make out all right. And my wife and I can have a lot of fun for a few years just doing some of the things we have always wanted to do." "You should see the stores downtown," we just heard a housewife say. "I do declare they get in more goods and pret tier things all of the tIme. It's almost a sin. And they try so hard to sell 'em to you; it's all a body can do to get in a place and out again without buying something she doesn't really need." "Well, good folks," we just heard King Ramrod say, from the front porch of his palace, "as you can see, I'm going fish ing. Not only do I like to fish; but that's'the easiest way I know to get out of reach of various delegations that want me to solve their problems for them. The main reason Backward is mov ing forward so fast today is that your government has refused to take care of you or your problems. So you've had to solve those problems yourselves, mostly as individuals. "Personally, I think the results have been pretty good. A native of that formerly great and famous country, the United States of America- his name was Thomas Jefferson, I believe -- once said: "That government is best whose king goes fish-

A Fable From The (Hardly) Past

ing oftenest," or something to that effect. I think he was right; too, provided the king's ministers do not start government-ing all over the place while he is gone. My few ministers, I can assure you, are too busy keeping up with their own regular work for that. And they all know that the only way they can get a raise is by reducing the size of their departments. "The last time I was fishing, however, I got to thinking about what has happened over these past twenty years to my brother's realm and my own. And I came to the conclusion that every society and every country is always heading to wards one or the other of two ultimate stages. In one of these final stages, socialism, since nobody produces for profit but only for need, nothing gets produced unless and until it is ur gently needed. So the whole country normally suffers from underproduction, and always operates on a psychology of scar city. While in a free-market economy, everybody produces for profit, without waiting for the need to become visibly acute. So the whole country normally suffers from overproduction, and always operates on a psychology of abundance. Both have their faults, but the final choice comes down to this : You aTe either going to have no salesmen at all, and a million r'ation clerks trying to divide the too little .. or no mtion clerks, and a million salesmen trying to move the too much. "And I don't think there is any doubt as to which is the bet ter system. I know that you basically agree; and that you are going to remain a happy and prosperous nation just so long as you have some hardboiled head of government like myself who refuses to let you cry on the government's shoulders. "In fact I'm sure of the profound wisdom of these cogita tions of mine that I ask BackwaTd D1'OP Institute about giving me a Doctor's Degree as a reward. They said nothing doing unless I wrote a thesis and earned it; that this was the general rule in our great Backward nation. But they also said nobody had to work for anything, unless he wanted it badly enough. So I gave the President of the Institute a raise - I figured he had earned it, talking back to me that way - and told him I'd think it over. Which I'm going to do. So you folks please mind the kingdom till I get back. It's the best there is, anywhere in the world, today."