IV
HE DISCUSSES FINANCE
A messenger had just brought a "collect" telegram for the Doctor, andthat gentleman, after going through all his pockets, and finding nothingbut a bunch of keys and a prescription-pad, made the natural inquiry:
"Anybody got a quarter?"
"I have," said the Idiot. "One of the rare mintage of 1903, circulatedfor a short time only and warranted good as new."
"I didn't know the 1903 quarter was rare," said the Bibliomaniac, whoprided himself on being a numismatist of rare ability. "Who told you the1903 quarter was rare?"
"My old friend, Experience," said the Idiot.
"What's rare about it?" demanded the Bibliomaniac.
"Why--it's what they call ready money, spot cash, the real thing withthe water squeezed out, selling at par on sight," explained the Idiot."Millions of people never saw one, and under modern conditions it isvery difficult to amass them in any considerable quantity. What isworse, even if you happen to get one of them it is next to impossible tohang on to it without unusual effort. If you have a 1903 quarter in yourpocket, somehow or other the idea that it is in your possession seems tocommunicate itself to others, and every effort is made to lure it awayfrom you on some pretext or other."
"Excuse me for interrupting this lecture of yours, Mr. Idiot," said theDoctor, amiably, "but would you mind lending me that quarter to pay thismessenger? I've left my change in my other clothes."
"What did I tell you?" cried the Idiot, triumphantly. "The words are nosooner out of my mouth than they are verified. Hardly a minute elapsesfrom the time Doctor Capsule learns that I have that quarter before heputs in an application for it."
"Well, I renew the application in spite of its rarity," laughed theDoctor. "It's even rarer with me than it is with you. Shell out--there'sa good chap."
"I will if you'll put up a dollar for security," said the Idiot,extracting the coin from his pocket, "and give me a demand note atthirty days for the quarter."
"I haven't got a dollar," said the Doctor.
"Well, what other collateral have you to offer?" asked the Idiot. "Iwon't take buckwheat-cakes, or muffins, or your share of the sausages,mind you. They come under the head of wild-cat securities--here to-dayand gone to-morrow."
"My, but you're a Shylock!" ejaculated Mr. Brief.
"Not a bit of it," retorted the Idiot. "If I were Shylock I'd be willingto take a steak for security, but there's none of the pound of fleshbusiness about me. I simply proceed cautiously, like any modernfinancial institution that intends to stay in the ring more than twoweeks. I'm not one of your fortnightly trust companies with an oaktable, an unpaid bill for office rent, and a patent reversibledisappearing president for its assets. I do business on thenational-bank principle: millions for the rich, but not one cent for theman that needs the money."
"I tell you what I'll do," said the Doctor. "If you'll lend me thatquarter, I won't charge you a cent for my professional services nexttime you need them."
"That's a large offer, but I'm afraid of it," replied the Idiot. "Itpartakes of the nature of a speculation. It's dealing in futures, whichis not a safe thing for a financial institution to do, I don't care howsolid it is. You don't catch the Chemistry National Bank lending moneyto anybody on mere prospects, and, what is more, in my case, I'd have toget sick to win out. No, Doctor, that proposition does not appeal tome."
"Looks hopeless, doesn't it," said the Doctor. "Mary, tell the boy towait while I run up-stairs--"
"I wouldn't do that," said the Idiot, interrupting. "The matter can bearranged in another way. I honestly don't like to lend money, believingwith Polonius that it's a bad thing to do. As the Governor of NorthCarolina said to the Governor of South Carolina, who owed him a hundreddollars, 'It's a long time between payments on account,' and that sortof thing breaks up families, not to mention friendships. But I willmatch you for it."
"How can I match when I haven't anything to match with?" said theDoctor, growing a trifle irritable.
"You can match your credit against my quarter," said the Idiot. "We canmake it a mental match--a sort of Christian Science gamble. What am Ithinking of, heads or tails?"
"Heads," said the Doctor.
"By Jove, that's hard luck!" ejaculated the Idiot. "You lose. I wasthinking of tails."
"Oh, thunder!" cried the Doctor, impatiently.
"Try it again, double or quits. What am I thinking of?" said the Idiot.
"Heads," repeated the Doctor.
"Somebody must have told you. Heads it is. You win. We are quits,Doctor," said the Idiot.
"But I am still without the quarter," the physician observed.
"Yep," said the Idiot. "But there's one more way out of it. I'll buy thetelegram from you--C.O.D."
"Done," said the Doctor, holding out the message. "Here's your goods."
"And there's your money," said the Idiot, tossing the quarter across thetable. "If you want to buy this message back at any time within the nextsixty days, Doctor, I'll give you the refusal of it without extracharge."
And he folded the paper up and put it away in his pocketbook.
"Do the banks really ask for so much security when they make a loan?"asked the Poet.
"Hear him, will you!" cried the Idiot. "There's your lucky man. He'snever had to face a bank president in order to avoid the cold glances ofthe grocer. No cashier ever asked him how many times he had beensentenced to states-prison before he'd discount his note. Do they asksecurity? Security isn't the name for it. They demand a blockade,establish a quarantine. They require the would-be debtor to build up awall as high as Chimborazo and as invulnerable as Gibraltar between themand the loss before they will part with a dime. Why, they wouldn'tdiscount a note to his own order for Andrew Carnegie for seventeen centswithout his indorsement. Do they ask security!"
"Well, I didn't know," said the Poet. "I never had anything to do withbanks except as a small depositor in the savings-bank."
"Fortunate man," said the Idiot. "I wish I could say as much. I borrowedfive hundred dollars once from a bank, and what the deuce do you supposethey did?"
"I don't know," said the Poet. "What?"
"They made me pay it back," said the Idiot, mournfully, "although Ineeded it just as much when it was due as when I borrowed it. Thecashier was a friend of mine, too. But I got even with 'em. I refused toborrow another cent from their darned old institution. They lost mycustom then and there. If it hadn't been for that inconsiderate act Ishould probably have gone on borrowing from them for years, and insteadof owing them nothing to-day, as I do, I should have been their debtorto the tune of two or three thousand dollars."
"Don't you take any stock in what the Idiot tells you in that matter,Mr. Poet," said Mr. Brief. "The national banks are perfectly justifiedin protecting themselves as they do. If they didn't demand collateralsecurity they'd be put out of business in fifteen minutes by people likethe Idiot, who consider it a hardship to have to pay up."
"As the lady said when she was asked the name of her favorite author,'Pshaw!'" retorted the Idiot. "Likewise fudge--a whole panful of fudges!I don't object to paying my debts; fact is, I know of no greaterpleasure. What I do object to is the kind of collateral the banksdemand. They always want something a man hasn't got and, in most cases,hasn't any chance of getting. If I had a thousand-dollar bond I wouldn'tneed to borrow five hundred dollars, yet when I go to the bank and askfor the five hundred the thousand-dollar bond is what they ask for."
"Not always," said Mr. Brief. "If you can get your note indorsed you canget the money."
"That's true enough, but fellows like myself can't always find a captainof industry who is willing to take a long-shot to do the indorsing,"said the Idiot. "Besides, under the indorsement plan you merely askanother man to be responsible for your debt, and that isn't fair. Thewhole system is wrong. Every man to his own collateral, I say. Give methe bank that will lend money to the chap that needs it on the securityof his own product. Mr. Whitechoker, say, is short on
cash and long onsermons. My style of bank would take one barrel of his sermons and salt'em down in the safe-deposit company as security for the money he needs.The Poet here, finding the summer approaching and not a cent in hand toreplenish his wardrobe, should be able to secure an advance of two orthree hundred dollars on his sonnets, rondeaux, and lyrics--one dollarfor each two-and-a-half-dollar sonnet, and so on. The grocer should beable to borrow money on his dried apples, his vinegar pickles, hiscanned asparagus, and other non-perishable assets, such as dog-biscuit,Roquefort cheese, and California raisins. The tailor seeking anaccommodation of five hundred dollars should not be asked how many timeshe has been sentenced to jail for arson, and required to pay in tenthousand shares of Steel common, in order to get his grip on thecurrency, but should be approached appropriately and asked how manypairs of trousers he is willing to pledge as security for the loan."
"I don't know where I would come in on that proposition," said theDoctor. "There are times when we physicians need money, too."
"Pooh!" said the Idiot. "You are not a non-producer. It doesn't take avery smart doctor these days to produce patients, does it? You couldassign your cases to the bank. One little case of hypochondria aloneought to be a sufficient guarantee of a steady income for years,properly managed. If you haven't learned how to keep your patients insuch shape that they have to send for you two or three times a week,you'd better go back to the medical school and fit yourself for yourreal work in life. You never knew a plumber to be so careless of hisinterests as to clean up a job all at once, and what the plumber is tothe household, the physician should be to the individual. Same way withMr. Brief. With the machinery of the law in its present shape there isabsolutely no excuse for a lawyer who settles any case inside of fifteenyears, by which time it is reasonable to suppose his client will getinto some new trouble that will keep him going as a paying concern forfifteen more. There isn't a field of human endeavor in which a manapplies himself industriously that does not produce something thatshould be a negotiable security."
"How about burglars?" queried the Bibliomaniac.
"I stand corrected," said the Idiot. "The burglar is an exception, butthen he is an exception also at the banks. The expert burglar veryseldom leaves any security for what he gets at the banks, and so heisn't affected by the situation one way or the other."
"Oh, well," said Mr. Brief, rising, "it's only a pipe-dream all the waythrough. They might start in on such a proposition, but it would neverlast. When you went in to borrow fifteen dollars, putting up your idiocyas collateral, the emptiness of the whole scheme would reveal itself."
"You never can tell," observed the Idiot. "Even under their presentsystem the banks have done worse than that."
"Never!" cried the Lawyer.
"Yes, sir," replied the Idiot. "Only the other day I saw in the papersthat a bank out in Oklahoma had loaned a man ten thousand dollars onsixty thousand shares of Hot Air preferred."
"And is that worse than Idiocy?" demanded Mr. Brief.
"Infinitely," said the Idiot. "If a bank lost fifteen dollars on myidiocy it would be out ninety-nine hundred and eighty-five dollars lessthan that Oklahoma institution is on its hot-air loan."
"Bosh! What's Hot Air worth on the Exchange to-day?"
"As a selling proposition, zero and commissions off," said the Idiot."Fact is, they've changed its name. It is now known as InternationalNitting."