Money.
The following short articles, written by Gertrude Stein in 1936, were first printed in the The Saturday Evening Post between June and October of that year. Although that was two generations ago, they are nevertheless delightfully contemporary. Foreshadowing the present budget deficits and the stuggles between Congress and the President to spend or not to spend monwy, Gertrude Stein tells us how very difficult it it"...for anybody to think money is money when there is more of it than they can count."Gertrude Stein felt she knew a great deal about money because she never earned any until she was almost 60 years old, when The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was published in America and became a best seller. In her book Everybody's Autobiography she wrote:
"I have never made any money before in my life and I was most excited. When I was a child I used to be fascinated with the stories of how everybody had earned their first dollar. I always wanted to have earned my first dollar but I never had. I know a lot about money just because I never had earned my first dollar and now I have. We were all amused during the war there was an American over here and he once said he had just made five hundred thousand dollars and he added all honestly earned. Well, that is the way I felt there it was and all honestly earned. I have been writing a lot about money laterly, it is a fascinating subject, it is really the difference between men and animals, most of the things men feel animals feel and vice versa, but animals do not know about money, money is purely a human conception and that is very important to know very very important.... Anyway the Saturday Evening Post printed the little articles I wrote about money then and the young ones said I was reactionary and they said how could I be I who had always been so well ahead of every one and I myself was not and am not certain that I am not again well ahead as ahead as I ever have been."
Well, she was certainly right about that. Her creative work with the English language is a sparkling and as fresh today as it was when she first began writing more than 80 years alo, although it was little understood or appreciated at that time.
Money
Everybody now just has to make up their mind. Is money money or isn't money money. Everybody who earns it and spends it every day in order to live knows that money is money, anybody who votes it to be gathered in as taxes knows money is not money. That is what makes everybody go crazy.
Once upon a time there was a king and he was called Louis the fifteenth. He spend money as they are spending it now. He just spent it and spent it and one day somebody dared say something to the king about it. Oh, he said, after me the deluge, it would last out his time, and so what was the difference. When this king had begun his reign he was known as Louis the Well-beloved, when he died, nobody even stayed around to close his eyes.
But all the trouble really comes from this question is money money. Everybody who lives on it every day knows that money is money but the people who vote money, presidents and congress, do not think about money that way when they vote it. I remember when my nephew was a little boy he was out walking somewhere and he saw a lot of horses; he came home and he said, oh papa, I have just seen a million horses. A million, said his father, well anyway, said my nephew, I saw three. That came to be what we all used to say when anybody used numbers that they could nout count well anyway a million or three. That is the whole point. When you earn money and spend money every day anybody can know the difference between a million and three. But when you vote money away there really is not any difference between a million and three. And so everybody has to make up their mind is money money for everybody or is it not.
That is what everybody has to think about a lot or everybody is going to be awfully unhappy, because the time does come when the money voted comes suddenly to be money just like the money everybody earns every day and spends every day to live and when that time comes it makes everybody very unhappy. I do wish everybody would make up their mind about money being money.
It is awfully hard for anybody to think money is money when there is more of it than they can count. That is why there ought to be some kind of system that money should not be voted right away. When you spend money that you earn every day naturally think several times before you spend more than you have, and you mostly do not. Now if there was some arrangement made that when one lot voted to spend money, that they would have to wait a long time, and another lot have to vote, before they vote again to have that money, in short, if there was any way to make a government handle money the way a father of a family has to handle money if there only was. The natural feeling of a father of a family is that when anybody asks him for money he says no. Any father of a family, any member of a family, knows all about a So until everybody who
rd D avotes public money remembers rd D ahow he feels as a father rd D aof a family, when he says no, rd D awhen anybody in the family rd D awants money, until that time rd D acomes, there is going to be a rd D alot of trouble and some years rd D alater everybody is going to be rd D avery unhappy. rd D
In Russia they tried to decide that money was not money, but now slowly and surely they are coming back to know that money is money.
Whether you like it or whether you do not money is money and that is all there is about it. Everybody knows it. When they earn it and spend what they earn they know it they really know that money is money and when they vote it they do not know it as money.
That is the trouble with everybody, it is awfully hard to really know what you know. When you earn it and spend it you do know the difference between three dollars and a million dollars, but when you say it and vote it, it all sounds the same. Of course it does, it would to anybody, and that is the reason they vote it and keep on voting it. So, now please, everybody, everybody everybody, please, is money money, and if it is, it ought to be the same whether it is what a father of a family earns and spends or a government, if it isn't sooner or later there is disaster.
More About Money
When the parliament was invented by England long ago it was mostly done to keep the king from spending too much money.
Since then every country has a parliament but who is there to stop the parliaments from spending too much money. If anybody starts spending money they never stop themselves. If they stop, it is because somebody stops them. And who is to stop congress from spending too much money. Everybody has to think about that now.
In France the chamber has been doing the same thing spending too much money and so everybody voted for the communists hoping that communists would stop them. Now everybody thinks that the chamber under the communists will just go on spending the money and so a great many frenchmen are thinking of getting back a king, and that the king will stop the french parliament from spending money.
That is funny. Parliament was invented to stop a king spending money and now the french are thinking of getting back a king to stop the parliament from spending all their money.
In America where, ever since George Washington, nobody really can imagine a king, who is to stop congress from spending too much money. They will not stop themselves, that is certain. Everybody has to think about that now. Who is to stop them.
Still More About Money
One of the funny things is that when there is a great deal of unemployment you can never get any one to do any work. It was true in England it is true in America and it is now true in France. One unemployment is recognized as unemployment and organized as unemployment nobody starts to work. If you are out of work and you find some work then you go to work. But if you are part of the unemployed then you are part of that, and if work comes you have to change your position from the unemployed to the employed, and then perhaps you will have to change back again, so perhaps you had better just stay where you are.
That is what happens.
We have given up trying to employ french people, those who were not working were unemployed and that was no way of changing them back to work, so we took to Indo-Chinamen. Indo-Chinamen are after al frenchmen, so finally they too became part of the unemployed. I asked one of them, his name is Trac, and why don't any of you stay in a job when you get it. Why he said it's like this. They get ten francs a day as unemployed. Now a Chinaman can live on five francs a day and that gives him five francs to gamble. The rest of the time he puts on his hat and goest out. He takes a temporary job, which still leaves him unemployed, and buys a new suit of clothes. Then by and by he catches cold, he goes to a hospital, free, and then he dies, and has a free coffin. All the Indo-Chinamen in Indo-China want to come to Paris to live like that. They call that living like frenchmen.
Everybody has to think about the unemployed getting to be that and is there any way to stop them. Everybody has to think about that.
All About Money
It is very funny about money. The thing that differentiates man from animals is money. All animals have the same emotions and the same ways as men. Anybody who has lots of animals around knows that. But the thing no animal can do is count, and the thing no animal can know is money.
Men can count, and they do, and that is what makes them have money.
And so, as long as the earth turns around there will be men on it, and as long as there are men on it, they will count, and they will count money.
Everybody is always counting money.
The queen was in the parlor eating bread and honey the king was in his counting house counting out his money.
That is the way it is and the only trouble comes when they count money without counting it as money.
Counting is funny.
When you see a big store and see so many of each kind of anything that is in it, and on the counters, it is hard to believe that one more or less makes any difference to any one. When you see a cashier in a bank with drawers filled with money, it is hard to realize that one more or less makes any difference. But it does, if you buy it, or if you take it away, or if you sell it, or if you make a mistake in giving it out. Of course it does. But a government, well a government does just that, it does not really believe that when there is such a lot that one more or less does make any difference. It is funny, if you buy anything well it may cost four dollars and fifty-five cents or four hundred and eighty-nine dollars or any other sum, but when government votes money it is always even money. One or five or fifteen or thirty-six more or less does not make any difference. The minute it gets to be billions it does not make any difference, fifteen or twenty-five or thirty-six more or less. Well, everybody has to think about that, because when it is made up it has to be made up by all sorts of odd numbers, everybody who pays taxes knows that, and it does make a difference.
All these odd pieces of money have to go to make that even money that is voted, but does it. It is voted even but it is collected odd. Everybody has to think about that.
My Last About Money
Getting rid of the rich does end up very funnily. It is easy to get rid of the rich but it is not easy to get rid of the poor. Wherever they have tried it they have got rid of the rich all right and so then everybody is poor and also there are there more than ever there of ever so much poorer. And that is natural enough. When there are the rich you can always take from the rich to give to the poor but when everybody is poor then you cannot take from the poor to give to the ever so much poorer and there they are.
That is the inevitable end of too much organization. That organization business is a funny story.
The beginning of the eighteenth century, after everything had been completely under feudal and religious domination, was full of a desire for individual liberty and they went at it until they thought they had it, which ended up with first the English and then the American and then the French revolution, so there they were and everybody was free and then that went on to Lincoln. Then they began inventing machinery and at the same time they found virgin lands that could be worked with machinery and so they began organization, they began factory organization and laborers organization, and the more they began organization the more everybody wanted to be organized and the more they were organized the more everybody liked the slavery of being in an organization.
Just the other day I was reading a Footner detective story and the crooks who were being held together under orders under auwful conditions said when somebody tried to free them sure you got to be organized these days you got to have somebody do your thinking for you. And also the other day a very able young man, you would not have expected he would feel that way about it, wrote to me and said after all we are all glad to have Roosevelt do our thinking for us.
That is the logical end of organization and that is where the world is today, the beginning of the eighteenth century went in for freedom and ended with the beginning of te nineteenth century that went in for organization.
Now organization is getting kind of used up.
The virgin lands are getting kind of used up, the whole surface of the world is known now and also the air, and everywhere you see organization killing itself by just ending in organization. The more backward countries are still excited about it because they have just heard of it but in their hearts the rest of them know the poor are always there and the very much poorer are always there and what are you going to do about it.
Organization is a failure an everywhere the world over everybody has to begin again.
What are they going to try next, what does the twenty-first century want to do about it? They certainly will not want to be organized, the twentieth century is seeing the end of that, perhaps as the virgin lands will by that time by pretty well used up, nd also by that time everybody will have been as quickly everywhere as anybody can be, perhaps they will begin looking for liberty again and individually amusing themselves again and old-fashioned or dirt farming.
One thing is sure until there are rich again everybody will be poor and there will be more than ever of everybody who is even poorer.
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| Title Annotation: | from articles by Gertrude Stein |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Saturday Evening Post |
| Date: | Dec 1, 1984 |
| Words: | 2798 |
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