Читать книгу My Ten Years in a Quandary - Robert C Benchley - Страница 18

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There is a movement on foot to shut down the radio for one evening a week, or one week an evening, so that people will go out on the streets more.

Once they are out on the streets the theory is that they will wear out more shoes, thereby giving employment to 186,000 people in the shoe industry alone. Incidentally they might also drop into a poolroom and help along the chalk industry.

Why are economists always so concerned with shoes? It amounts to fetichism. When they want to make a point it is always illustrated by the number of pairs of shoes that a given number of people will wear out over a given period. Just as in the old arithmetics it was always that A and B were sawing wood or swimming up-stream, in practical economic problems it is always that shoes are being worn out. Doesn't anyone ever care about socks?

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"It has been estimated," says Mr. Irving Caesar, in his petition to the Federal Government to shut down the radio occasionally, "that the life of a pair of shoes is 2,500 hours. If fifteen million pairs of shoes have been inactive for one hour it means that the shoe industry has lost fifteen million shoe-hours—and the life of a pair of shoes being 2,500 hours, the shoe industry has lost 6,000 pairs of shoes."

That's an awful lot of shoes to lose. Just think how you feel when the porter doesn't bring one pair of shoes back to you in a Pullman, and then multiply that by 6,000. The wonder is that the shoe industry isn't crazy mad.

Personally, shoes do not bother me much. I sometimes just carry mine around with me in a green baize bag and put them on when I want to make a smart appearance. I don't suppose I wear out a pair of shoes in thirty years. I get sick of them and I throw them at pigeons, but I never wear them out. This is because I am what is known as "the sedentary type."

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If, however, the economic theory back of this move to shut down the radio for one night a week is to make people wear out their shoes, I have an even better plan. Why not let them stay at home and listen to their old radio if they want to, but, while they are listening have them hold a pair of shoes against a grindstone? There is an old Chinese proverb which says: "There are more ways than one to wear out a pair of shoes," and I think it is a very good motto for each and every one of us to take as a guide for our daily lives.

But here again we come to the old problem which worries me so much. Every theory of economic good is based on my wearing out shoes, on my looking in store windows, on my spending money. I have never yet encountered a plan for an economic Utopia which included anyone's reading a piece by Benchley in the paper or even asking Benchley out to dinner. In the Perfect State, Benchley pays.

I suppose it all works out right in the end. I'd be paying anyway. But I resent having it set forth as a dictum.

And, anyway, when I am at home of an evening I don't turn on the radio. I don't wear out my shoes. I am just a parasite—a paying parasite.