Xmas, Inc.

In Chicago, one "Herman," short, slender, redhaired, obsequious, shrewdest of elevator operators, reported for work one morning last week bearing a large brown-paper bundle. All that day, going up and down, he kept the bundle beside him. Whenever a prosperous and goodnatured face appeared in the car, a face which Herman had seen often before and so might judge belonged to an office-renter in that huge office building, he modestly fished into the bundle, drew out a smaller bundle wrapped in reddest tissue paper and tendered it, with winning humility, to the chosen passenger.

" 'Tsnot very much, Sir," Herman mumbled each time. "But, Merry Christmas."

Like the outsides of the small bundles, the insides were all alike. At a five-&-ten-cent store Herman had purchased some six dozen nickel-plated ash trays. Commuters in that office building compared gifts going out on the 5:15. They showed their prizes to their wives; in voices trembling with affection they told the story of humble Herman and his Christmas spirit.

The day before Christmas, Herman's trouser pocket began to bulge. Now and then, as he reached for the door lever, his pocket clinked. Going up from the ground floor, coming down from the sky, hearty businessmen full of good breakfast or luncheon, swooped under their overcoats and brought out folded bills, crumpled bills, gold coins.

"Here, m'boy," they said gruffly. Or they pounded his shoulder and said so that others noticed, "Here, old scout, buy the wife an' kiddies something nice from me."

As he shut off his elevator car Christmas eve, Herman addressed a fellow operator who was struggling into an overcoat.

"Jees," said Herman, scornfully. "Dat's de kind o' rig I used to wear. Youse guys ha' got about as much dope on yerselves as Santy Claus. Looka here."

He drew forth a roll of paper money, a chuckling pile of coins.

"Xmas, Inc., dat's me," said Herman. "Dey say you can't get sump'n fer nuthin' around here but dat's de bunk. Looka wot I got fer a lot o' lousy little saucers."

The other elevator man left during Herman's description of a "swell show," "a dame an' I don't mean maybe," and some "honest-tuh-God gin" from a man out in Ravenswood.

If people were shocked who heard of, or were victimized by, the tactics of Elevatorman Herman, what did they think of 101 examples of the same casuistry on a scale too large to be obvious? What did they think of newspapers like the Cleveland Times, which routed out an aged invalid lady, trundled her around the city in a motor car eagerly lent and frequently mentioned in the subsequent sob-story, named shops and hotels which elaborately displayed their wares and hospitality to her and the Times reporter, and trundled her home amid a short-hand account of her boundless gratitude to all the super-generous publicists concerned? What did they think of the St. Paul Pioneer Press which published a full-page self-advertisement to the effect that it was entirely responsible for the visit of Santy Claus to St. Paul this year? What did they think of 10,000 salesmen of everything from hairnets to pig iron who circularized their "prospects" with spurious store-bought rhymes about "sincere friendship" and "peace on earth"?

They thought, of course, that all these others were simply exploiting a convention over the bounds of which humble Herman had wickedly stepped. When Playwright George Bernard Shaw spoke out in London and denounced Christmas, the commercial phenomenon, as "an unbearable nuisance," they put the shoe on the other foot and called Mr. Shaw "George Bernard Scrooge,-- publicity-hunter." When the Portland (Ore.) Ministerial Association passed a resolution against Christmas giving, there were editorial boos and jeers.

Yet there was one voice raised besides George Bernard Scrooge's. It was a superb opportunity for that professionally altruistic sheetlet the Nation, and the voice therein belonged to one Eugene Lyons. To his editor's delight, Writer Lyons burlesqued the annual spectacle of U. S. newspapers trying to outdo one another in seasonal generosity and solicitude. He pictured Prosperity, "a big, blustering fellow," momentarily obscured in the national circus by sideshows of infirmity and destitution.

"Freaks, misfits, monstrosities. This way, ladies and gentlemen-- a special Christmas offering! The best selection of 'cases,' hand-picked by charity experts and described by literary artists. Nothing covered up. Come right in and see them squirm. Hear them howl. Buy a front seat and get your name in the paper; buy a box and get your picture in the paper, maybe on the front page.

"Indorsed by the Bible, Shakespeare and Dr. Frank Crane. 'The poor ye have always with you.' Under auspices of the best newspapers, cashing in on the Christmas spirit. New thrills this year, unique displays, incredible suffering and destitution, old-fashioned slums, widows and orphans, homeless babies and centenarians, everything. This way for the 'thrill of giving,' the 'pleasure and satisfaction' of charity (New York Times editorial). Good for jaded nerves and appetites; the best tonic for your conscience; a help in digesting your Christmas dinner.

"Here's the New York Evening Post's corner--the Old Couples' Christmas Fund. No one under 60; not one's had a decent meal since last Christmas. Documents to prove it; every case investigated. Better than ever before--older, poorer, sicker, more miserable. Testimonials by Fannie Hurst, Rex Beach, Konrad Bercovici, Frank Crane, lots of others. The real article--starving after 40 and 50 years of incessant toil, squeezed dry and cast aside, no good for anything but this sideshow. Case 56 is pretty: 'chuckle-voiced, hat-doffing Charlie the Iceman.' Now 'Charlie's on the shelf. Old and sick and done for. And forgotten.' Listen to Gene Tunney himself on the superb specimen in case 46: Mr. and Mrs. Pat Malloy, 74 years old, worked all their lives, k.o.'d by a taxicab going home from work. Now 'the grey end. . . . They are slaves of a social system. . . . Nothing they did or neglected to do was the cause of their destitution.' (Tunney will not be asked to do any more exhibiting if he utters such treason.)

"The New York American's Christmas Fund, good people. Don't miss it. Famous musicians, jazz babies, black-bottom wrigglers, prima donnas perform as the freaks are led out. Get the most for your dollar. . . .

"Come and look quick. The show will soon shut down for a year. Delectable slums; peep-shows of half-blind women and their broods basting mountainous piles of garments, making artificial flowers, beading gowns, and supported by charity. Take a good look before the curtain is drawn.

"This way, for Christ's sake, this way. And remember, contributions are tax-exempt.

"No fear of after-effects. After Christmas the show will positively close. On the front pages, on the floor of Congress, everywhere, big boy Prosperity will perform alone. His ballyhoo brigade does its stunts twelve months in the year."

Munsey's Will

A year ago last week many people were puzzling their heads over the just-then-published will of the late Publisher Frank Andrew Munsey. What on earth had inspired him, a man with no inkling or appreciation of art, to bequeath all but a trifle of his 40 millions-- to the Metropolitan Museum?

Last week one of Mr. Munsey's best friends and oldest associates, Erman Jesse Ridgway, long president and director of companies publishing Everybody's, Adventure, Delineator, who now lives in retirement at Chula Vista, Calif., judged that the time had come for an explanation of the "mystery." In a eulogy of "the chief" upon the anniversary of his death, intended to "show from the inside how one of the big men of our craft worked and thought and felt," Mr. Ridgway wrote:

"It has been urged that the chief did not know art and that therefore his will . . . was unnatural. Carnegie did not know literature when he gave his libraries. Rockefeller did not know medical science when he endowed the Foundation. It is natural for men to set high values on what they do not know about. . . .

"He talked to me quite a little about his will and was impatient because I could not help him. He seemed to think because I had graduated from college I should be able to tell him just where to make 20 or 30 million do the best work for education. There has been a good deal of criticism about the chief's will, most of it, I am bound to say, from people who will never have any difficulty in disposing of their own estates. The critics may rest assured--it was not a hasty will. It was a very far-sighted will. And the man who made it expected to face his Creator and was willing to stand or fall on His verdict. . . .

"The chief did not frequent art galleries, nor stand enrapt before a masterpiece, but he did appreciate loveliness--a rose, a stunning woman, a birch tree, a sunset. . . When in romantic and florid terms he was wont to tell of the dream [of a ducal estate in Austria he thought of buying, complete with 'superb art gallery'] ... he always saved the art gallery for the climax, and when he came to that his voice would take on a note almost of reverence as he told of the wonderful gallery and the priceless masterpieces. . . .

"That he wanted his will to make a huge splash I cheerfully affirm. How he would have enjoyed the universal amazement! . . . It must have strained him mightily to keep that gorgeous secret."

*The President of the U. S. gets $100,000 yearly.

*Ebenezer Scrooge, chief character in Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol, is first introduced as a squeezing, grasping, covetous old hunks, sharp and hard as a flint, whose favorite remark on all subjects, but especially Christmas, is "Bah! Humbug!"

*The figure then quoted. More lately this estimate has simmered to 25 millions.