by Unknown
That story was repeated by the Duke himself and swiftly made the London rounds and finally reached the stage. The comedian Arthur West, in England at the time, brought the yarn to America and employed it in a Ziegfeld Follies. The rest is history.
James Gleason, who won fame as a player in Is Zat So? which he wrote a season or so ago contributed to “slanguage”. Damon Runyon, the sports writer, Johnny O’Connors, Rube Goldberg, the cartoonist, Wilson Mizner and hundreds of other “wisecrackers” on Broadway are credited with many of the famous bits of slang. Among the newer expressions is: “He’s a phoney!” meaning “he isn’t on the square or on the level”, a fourflusher. “What’s your racket?” meaning “What do you do for a living?”. “To beef” or “squawk” is to complain. “Flicker” is a “movie”; “I’ve got the needles” is “My nerves are bad”. “The Heebie-jeebies”, ditto. “Take it on the lam” is making a quick getaway or hurried disappearance. “Flivver” which is a synonym for a Ford car was first used to describe a show that failed. “A turkey” is a third rate production. “Taking him for a ride” is underworld for enticing a person to death. A “rat” or a “heel” is a double-crosser or a worthless person. To be “burned up” is to be angry. A “flame” is a fellow’s sweetheart. A “femme” is a girl. “He’s gahgah” means “he’s crazy over her”. “Rolled off my knife” is being “hardboiled” or indifferent to trouble. “The run-around” is stalling or failing to keep a promise. “In your hat” is equivalent to “applesauce”, “boloney”, “hooey”, or “banana oil”.
When a fellow “carries the torch” it doesn’t imply that he is “lit up” or drunk, but girl-less. His steady has quit him for another or he is lonesome for her. “Sing a torch song” is commonly used in Broadway late-places as a request for a ballad in commemoration of the lonesome state. Tommy Lyman is said to have created the slang and he announced one night: “My famous torch song: ‘Come To Me, My Melancholy Baby’.”
“That’s hot!” or “She’s hot!” describes a girl who has a great deal of personality, charm or “It”. Elinor Glyn coined “It”, now commonly known as Sex-Appeal. A New York newspaper, The Morning Telegraph, boasts in its columns that it is “The only newspaper in the world with ‘IT’.” Broadway is known as “The Main Stem”. Abel Green, a theatrical reporter calls it “Mazda Lane” and others refer to Broadway as “The Incandescent District”; “Tungsten Territory”, “The Big Artery”, and “Coffee Pot Canyon”.
To “crash the gate” is getting into a place without paying. “Paper” is a pass. “And How!” is an ejaculation. For instance: “Did you meet Her?” “Did I? And How! ! !”
There is a current gag fashioned after it: “What two Generals crossed the Delaware?” “I give up.” “George Washington—and Howe!”
When a person is “all wet”, he’s a “flat tire”, a “wash-out”, a “dud”, a “false-alarm”—meaning “He’s not my type” or “no good”. In the underworld a “V” is a five dollar bill, a “saw-buck” is a ten spot, a “yard” is one hundred dollars, “two-bits” is twenty-five cents, a “grand” is a thousand dollars. A “poker-face” or a “dead-pan” is a lifeless facial expression. “He has a good poker face” meaning that he can be holding four aces and you wouldn’t suspect it. Eddie Sullivan, a sports writer, so called Helen Wills, the tennis champion, which appellation still clings to her because she seldom smiles.
When a patron in a night club is “clipped” he isn’t punched, he’s “taken” or “gypped” out of some currency or he is overcharged. “He got a fast count” means the same. To put on “the nosebag” is to eat. “Giving a guy the works” is handing someone a raw deal. “The sticks” are the small towns. “The Grouch bag” or “boodle bag” is the purse that actors wear pinned to the underclothing. To “die standing up” is to fail miserably. A “kibitzer” is some one who watches card players and offers suggestions. A speak-easy is a “whisper-low”, a “hush-house” or a “sotto voce parlor”.
“On the cuff” is “on the house” or “free” . . . “Coasting” is a kibitzer who “mooches” meals and drinks on others until payday . . . “the ice” is jewelry . . . “Give me the ice” is “ritzed me” or “chilled me” or “hi-hatted me” (to be snubbed) . . . To “bump off” is to murder or otherwise to get rid of a person . . . “Coffee and cake money” is small salary . . . A “bozo” is a bum . . . “Ankling” is walking . . . A “nance” is an effeminate man . . . A kootch or hootchie kootchie dancer is a “torso tosser”, a “thigh grinder” or a “hip-flipper” . . . “to milk an audience” is to overdo anything . . . “the top shelf” is the gallery . . . “Ace-deuce” is “nothing better” . . . to “hold up the exits” is to stop the show . . . an act that is “full of larceny” is an act that has stolen its material from many others and people who infringe on others’ style or material, are not plagiarists, but “echoes”.
Most of the argot that Broadway invents is relished and rolled on the tips of “Main Drag” tongues, but little of it is comprehensive west of the Hudson River, or north of Harlem.
Some wiseacre once said that a nation without its slang is in the period of decadence. The glory of Greece and the heights of the Roman civilization never left slang to posterity. Perhaps if they had, Caesar’s Commentaries might not be so difficult to swallow. If the greatest Roman of them all ever said that Cleopatra had “a mess of S. A.”, history carries no record of it. But hundreds of years later Will Shakespeare dug up the whole affair and was panned by the critics because he delved into the argot of his day to put it over.
And today, Shakespeare’s slang is the classic of literature. So it may be with Broadwayese.
RUSSIA: THE GREAT EXPERIMENT
THEODORE DREISER
FROM JUNE 1928
Editor’s Note: In this paper Theodore Dreiser, the greatly celebrated American novelist whose conscientious industry and acumen in observing and judging nations and men have been sufficiently established, presents a picture, several conclusions and an opinion of present-day Russia, whence he has lately returned. The mammoth, almost impudent, attempt of the Soviet to abolish all distinctions of class, private property, economic ambition and everything associated with them, in the face of all history and established institutions, is the magnificent theme of Mr. Dreiser’s article. Famous as an observer of life, his name stands behind his reporting of facts, but Vanity Fair must emphasize the fact that the opinions expressed in the article are not its own, but Mr. Dreiser’s.
Vladimir Lenin, [who died in 1924, was] the greatest of all modern leaders, I think. . . . The New Economic Policy [of 1921] as introduced by Lenin was not a retreat in the face of victorious capitalism, but rather the real beginning of the economic struggle against it. A new weapon for a new aim.
This new weapon has now been in action for almost seven years, and its results can already be judged to a certain extent. In these seven years Russia’s shattered economic system, as I found in my [recent] tour, has been rebuilt until today the pre-war level of production has been reached and passed. (Data in support of this fact is furnished in volume by the current heads of all departments in Russia and is rather easily substantiated.) At any rate, with change a new period opened up for the Russian government, the period termed by them the period of the building up of socialism.
And now comes the difference between Russian industry as it existed before the war and as it exists today. Large-scale industry, the immense electrical schemes, the harnessing of Russia’s immense water power, etc., are to the extent of almost ninety percent State undertakings. Foreign commerce is to the extent of a hundred percent under the control of the State through the State monopoly of foreign commerce. Transport is almost completely, if not completely, under the control of the State and the Co-operatives. In the commercial world alone, (and that to an ever-lessening degree), does that economic thing known to us as private initiative play any rôle, and even here it is a subord
inate one. Something like seventy percent of all commerce, both wholesale and retail, is now in the hands of the State and co-operative organizations. The influence of the business man (the NEPman, as he is called in Russia), is limited almost exclusively to commerce, and he is strongest in retail trade. But even here, as anyone can see for himself in Russia, the course of development is gradually eliminating him. The private shops are the poorest of all. Those of the state and of the Co-operatives (unions of buyers) are the best. It is the aim of the State organizations and above all of the cooperatives, to eliminate the private trader entirely, not with administrative measures, i.e., not at the point of the bayonet, but by producing better goods at a cheaper price.
• • •
The figures in all branches of industry and commerce for recent years show that the share of the State and co-operative organizations in the economic system of the country is steadily increasing, both relatively and absolutely, both with regard to turnover as well as invested capital. The last stronghold of the NEPman is, of course, in the villages. Here the land is officially the property of the State loaned out to the peasantry for usage. There are three types of peasantry—the well-to-do (for Russia), known as the Kulaks, the middle-scale peasantry and the poor peasantry and direct land-workers. It is the alliance of the factory workers and soldiers with these two latter categories, i.e., the middle-scale peasantry and the poor peasantry and land-workers, which forms the basis for the present government in Russia. The break-up of this alliance would make it impossible for any purely proletarian government to maintain itself with only the support of the workers. The policy of the government in Russia is now, therefore, directed towards maintaining this alliance by sharing the achievements of the development of industry and agriculture between the workers and peasants and reducing the distance between the two classes of those who work, and by making the peasant a participant as well as the worker in the building up of socialism. This latter is achieved by the growth of the cooperative idea amongst the peasantry, by the rational re-distribution of the land, by the establishment of direct connection between the workers in the towns and the peasants on the land through so-called adoptions, etc., i.e., the workers of one factory or one industrial district adopt a special agricultural district, collect money to buy tractors and farm implements for this district, distribute literature, make special journeys at the week-end, as far as this latter is practically possible, etc., etc. Thus, the peasants observe their share in the advance of industry in the ever-increasing number of tractors and modern agricultural machinery making their way into the country, also in the coming of the radio, telephone, electric light, phonograph, bus, street car, rural free delivery, etc., etc.
• • •
Take the manifesto issued by the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union, i.e., the supreme governing organ of the country, in connection with the tenth anniversary of the 1917 revolution, which was celebrated while I was there. This manifesto promised the workers the introduction of the seven hour day, and instructed the executive organs to commence with the gradual carrying out of this decision within the space of one year. This decrease of working hours is not to be accompanied by any reduction of wages. A further concession to the workers was the sum of fifty million roubles for the building of workers’ dwellings, in addition to an equal sum already set aside for this purpose in the State Budget for 1927–28. Today, the peasants, in practice, receive still greater immediate benefits. Before the manifesto referred to, twenty-five percent of the peasants were totally freed from the necessity of paying the single agricultural tax. Yet that manifesto ordered that a further ten percent be also freed; that is, that thirty-five percent of the peasantry from now on be further freed from the necessity of paying the agricultural tax. Further, the manifesto freed the peasants from the necessity of repaying the loans received as a credit from the State in connection with the bad harvest of the year 1924–25. The poor peasantry were declared freed from paying their outstanding taxes, and the middle-scale peasants were furnished favourable conditions for repayment of what they used. More, the State also agreed in this manifesto to take over the complete costs for supplying the poor and middle-scale peasants with land, and a further sum of ten million roubles was laid aside for this purpose. A scheme for old-age pensions for poor peasants was promised and is to be put through. Incidentally, the death sentence for all crimes with the exception of crimes against the State, military crimes and armed banditry, was abolished, and the sentences of all prisoners with the exception of those sentenced for any of the above crimes, plus that of malicious defalcation, were to be reduced.
From this manifesto, issued when I was in Moscow, one can see, I think, that the peasant class is neither downtrodden nor exploited. My subsequent travels confirmed me in this. If anything, my general impression was that the Central Government was trying to do more than the industries and the labour of the people would warrant at this time.
But now as to the people who actually rule Russia. The actual mechanism of the soviets I need not go into. It is rather well known by now, I think. Sufficient to say that the main principle of the franchise in Russia is votes for all those who are working for the aim of the government, i.e., the building up of socialism, and none for those who are not, such as NEPmen working for their own personal profit. In other words, modern Russia presents us with a class State almost in pure culture, a class State where one class openly dominates, if you will, in contradistinction to other States where the dominance of a class is concealed by the normal methods of democratic liberalism. The men who are the leaders of the State are poor. When they die, as all men must, they leave no estate behind them. This is a most tremendous fact for an outside observer. Whatever one may think of the present-day rulers of Russia, one cannot deny their honesty and, as measured by all our tests, their selflessness with regard to the good things of this world. During the latter part of his life, Lenin, in my opinion the greatest personality of our generation, lived with his wife and sister in two small rooms in the Kremlin. With the exception of that last part of his life when he lived as a reconvalescent at Gorki. The rooms of Lenin in the Kremlin have been maintained intact, with everything in them, as far as I know. They offer perhaps a classical example of the simplicity and frugality of the present-day rulers of Russia. Lenin, however, was not alone in this. Most of the leaders live in simple hotel rooms or in single rooms in the Kremlin, and the actual wage of all officials and leaders from Stalin down is 225 roubles a month—about $112. There is no question of personal accumulation of wealth. There can be none, save by graft and outside hoarding, and the men I met did not look like grafters. As a matter of fact, compared with our political leaders and those of some other countries that I have chanced to meet in my time, I rank them as high as any—more earnest, more thoughtful and sincere, more capable of thinking—and that is the highest compliment I can pay them.
• • •
There is then, of course, the problem of the Party. The Communist Party is openly the yeast of the revolution, or, as Lenin termed it, the locomotive of the revolution. Through this Party and its nation-wide organization, the hegemony of the working class is maintained, the soviets influenced, (controlled if you like), but once again, not at the point of the bayonet but by organized work among the masses, the communist agents or workers winning the confidence of the latter and acting as their leader. In every working class of peasant organization there is a communist fraction with its members and officials and leaders who definitely and openly work in an organized fashion to guide the policy of the whole organization. So it is in the soviets themselves and in the soviet congresses which finally elect the government of the country. The Party, of course, has a monopoly and it tolerates no other party at its side. Hence the recent ousting of Trotzky and his followers who wished to organize a second or rival party and so wrest the power from the present group. The regime which now exists in Russia is a dictatorship, openly, a dictatorship of the proleta
riat, as it is termed. No oppositional parties are tolerated, no bourgeois press and no bourgeois organizations. This dictatorship is a weapon for a particular end—the bringing of that classless, brother-loving society in which no dictatorship will be needed.
And now, as to the final aim of all this, the establishment of the classless society, the abolition of the dictatorship and the State. The aim of this workers’ dictatorship is not to perpetuate the working class as we understand it today, indefinitely. The aim is to abolish it. This class is the first class in history that set out to abolish itself. It intends to do this by abolishing all classes. That is its future aim.
As to the result or end, we have the privilege of watching this huge experiment. For that is what it is. Personally, I am dubious of the result because I cannot even conceive of a classless society any more than I can conceive of life without variations and distinctions. It is these same which give us our sense or illusion of reality and without these no reality. As a matter of fact in the Russia of 1928 with private property practically abolished there are as many classes—or almost as many—as ever. The Communists say not. And in their schools they teach the children that the day of a Classless society, brotherly love, all for one and one for all is at hand. But step forth into the streets, the offices, the factories, the stores, universities—what or where you will and see. Is the ditch-digger any less a ditch-digger or any less unimportant for being one in Communist Russia than would elsewhere be the case? Never believe it. Nor the beggar or the servant either. All appear to function as before—not oppressed of course—better taken care of than elsewhere in the world may be, but still ditch-diggers, servants, beggars and looked upon as such by all the superior intellects. Whereas the Communist official, with his assistants, his official car or cars, his offices and authority is as much if no more a big-wig than he was before the revolution. Certainly he is as much kowtowed to and respected as any other official in any other part of the world. I could not see any difference in his state here from elsewhere.