Waldo, and Magic, Inc

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “Who said I was going to sign up with them?”

  “Huh? Of course you are. It’s the logical thing to do. Don’t be a dope.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Why should you? Why, it’s the direction of progress, man. Take my case: I put out the fanciest line of vanishing desserts of any eating place in town. You can eat three of them if you like, and not feel full and not gain an ounce. Now I’ve been losing money on them, but kept them for advertising because of the way they bring in the women’s trade. Now Magic, Incorporated, comes along and offers me the same thing at a price I can make money with them too. Naturally, I signed up.”

  “You would. Suppose they raise the prices on you after they have hired, or driven out of business, every competent wizard in town?”

  Donahue laughed in a superior, irritating way. “I’ve got a contract.”

  “So? How long does it run? And did you read the cancellation clause?”

  I knew what he was talking about, even if Donahue didn’t; I had been through it. About five years ago a Portland cement firm came into town and began buying up the little dealers and cutting prices against the rest. They ran sixty-cent cement down to thirty-five cents a sack and broke their competitors. Then they jacked it back up by easy stages until cement sold for a dollar twenty-five. The boys took a whipping before they knew what had happened to them.

  We all had to shut up about then, for the guest speaker, old B.J. Timken, the big subdivider, started in. He spoke on “Cooperation and Service.” Although he is not exactly a scintillating speaker, he had some very inspiring things to say about how businessmen could serve the community and help each other; I enjoyed it.

  After the clapping died down, Norman Somers thanked B.J. and said, “That’s all for today, gentlemen, unless there is some new business to bring before the house—”

  Jedson got up. I was sitting with my back to him, and had not known he was present. “I think there is, Mr. Chairman—a very important matter. I ask the indulgence of the Chair for a few minutes of informal discussion.”

  Somers answered, “Certainly, Joe, if you’ve got something important.”

  “Thanks. I think it is. This is really an extension of the discussion between Al Donahue and Steve Harris earlier in the meeting. I think there has been a major change in business conditions going on in this city right under our noses and we haven’t noticed it, except where it directly affected our own business. I refer to the trade in commercial magic. How many of you use magic in your business? Put your hands up.” All the hands went up, except for a couple of lawyers’. Personally, I had always figured they were magicians themselves.

  “O.K.,” Jedson went on, “put them down. We knew that; we all use it. I use it for textiles. Hank Manning here uses nothing else for cleaning and pressing, and probably uses it for some of his dye jobs too. Wally Haight’s Maple Shop uses it to assemble and finish fine furniture. Stan Robertson will tell you that Le Bon Marche’s slick window displays are thrown together with spells, as well as two-thirds of the merchandise in his store, especially in the kids’ toy department. Now I want to ask you another question: In how many cases is the percentage of your cost charged to magic greater than your margin of profit? Think about it for a moment before answering.” He paused, then said: “All right—put up your hands.”

  Nearly as many hands went up as before.

  “That’s the point of the whole matter. We’ve got to have magic to stay in business. If anyone gets a strangle hold on magic in this community, we are all at his mercy. We would have to pay any prices that are handed us, charge the prices we are told to, and take what profits we are allowed to—or go out of business!”

  The chairman interrupted him. “Just a minute, Joe. Granting that what you say is true—it is, of course—do you have any reason to feel that we are confronted with any particular emergency in the matter?”

  “Yes, I do have.” Joe’s voice was low and very serious. “Little reasons, most of them, but they add up to convince me that someone is engaged in a conspiracy in restraint of trade.” Jedson ran rapidly over the history of Ditworth’s attempt to organize magicians and their clients into an association, presumably to raise the standards of the profession, and how alongside the non-profit association had suddenly appeared a capital corporation which was already in a fair way to becoming a monopoly.

  “Wait a second, Joe,” put in Ed Parmelee, who has a produce jobbing business. “I think that association is a fine idea. I was threatened by some rat who tried to intimidate me into letting him pick my magicians. I took it up with the association, and they took care of it; I didn’t have any more trouble. I think an organization which can clamp down on racketeers is a pretty fine thing.”

  “You had to sign with the association to get their help, didn’t you?”

  “Why, yes, but that’s entirely reasonable—”

  “Isn’t it possible that your gangster got what he wanted when you signed up?”

  “Why, that seems pretty farfetched.”

  “I don’t say,” persisted Joe, “that is the explanation, but it is a distinct possibility. It would not be the first time that monopolists used goon squads with their left hands to get by coercion what their right hands could not touch. I wonder whether any of the rest of you have had similar experiences?”

  It developed that several of them had. I could see them beginning to think.

  One of the lawyers present formally asked a question through the chairman. “Mr. Chairman, passing for the moment from the association to Magic, Incorporated, is this corporation anything more than a union of magicians? If so, they have a legal right to organize.”

  Norman turned to Jedson. “Will you answer that, Joe?”

  “Certainly. It is not a union at all. It is a parallel to a situation in which all the carpenters in town are employees of one contractor; you deal with that contractor or you don’t build.”

  “Then it’s a simple case of monopoly—if it is a monopoly. This state has a Little Sherman Act; you can prosecute.”

  “I think you will find that it is a monopoly. Have any of you noticed that there are no magicians present at today’s meeting?”

  We all looked around. It was perfectly true. “I think you can expect,” he added, “to find magicians represented hereafter in this chamber by some executive of Magic, Incorporated. With respect to the possibility of prosecution”—he hauled a folded newspaper out of his hip pocket—“have any of you paid any attention to the governor’s call for a special session of the legislature?”

  Al Donahue remarked superciliously that he was too busy making a living to waste any time on the political game. It was a deliberate dig at Joe, for everybody knew that he was a committeeman, and spent quite a lot of time on civic affairs. The dig must have gotten under Joe’s skin, for he said pityingly, “Al, it’s a damn good thing for you that some of us are willing to spend a little time on government, or you would wake up some morning to find they had stolen the sidewalks in front of your house.”

  The chairman rapped for order; Joe apologized. Donahue muttered something under his breath about the whole political business being dirty, and that anyone associated with it was bound to turn crooked. I reached out for an ash tray and knocked over a glass of water, which spilled into Donahue’s lap. It diverted his mind. Joe went on talking.

  “Of course we knew a special session was likely for several reasons, but when they published the agenda of the call last night, I found tucked away toward the bottom an item ‘Regulation of Thaumaturgy.’ I couldn’t believe that there was any reason to deal with such a matter in a special session unless something was up. I got on the phone last night and called a friend of mine at the capital, a fellow committee member. She did not know anything about it, but she called me back later. Here’s what she found out: The item was stuck into the agenda at the request of some of the governor’s campaign backers; he has no special interest in it himself. Nobody seems to know what it is all about
, but one bill on the subject has already been dropped in the hopper—” There was an interruption; somebody wanted to know what the bill said.

  “I’m trying to tell you,” Joe said patiently. “The bill was submitted by title alone; we won’t be likely to know its contents until it is taken up in committee. But here is the title: ‘A Bill to Establish Professional Standards for Thaumaturgists, Regulate the Practice of the Thaumaturgic Profession, Provide for the Appointment of a Commission to Examine, License, and Administer’—and so on. As you can see, it isn’t even a proper title; it’s just an omnibus onto which they can hang any sort of legislation regarding magic, including an abridgement of anti-monopoly regulation if they choose.”

  There was a short silence after this. I think all of us were trying to make up our minds on a subject that we were not really conversant with—politics. Presently someone spoke up and said, “What do you think we ought to do about it?”

  “Well,” he answered, “we at least ought to have our own representative at the capitol to protect us in the clinches. Besides that, we at least ought to be prepared to submit our own bill, if this one has any tricks in it, and bargain for the best compromise we can get. We should at least get an implementing amendment out of it that would put some real teeth into the state antitrust act, at least in so far as magic is concerned.” He grinned. “That’s four ‘at leasts,’ I think.”

  “Why can’t the state Chamber of Commerce handle it for us? They maintain a legislative bureau.”

  “Sure, they have a lobby, but you know perfectly well that the state chamber doesn’t see eye to eye with us little businessmen. We can’t depend on them; we may actually be fighting them.”

  There was quite a pow-wow after Joe sat down. Everybody had his own ideas about what to do and tried to express them all at once. It became evident that there was no general agreement, whereupon Somers adjourned the meeting with the announcement that those interested in sending a representative to the capitol should stay. A few of the diehards like Donahue left, and the rest of us reconvened with Somers again in the chair. It was suggested that Jedson should be the one to go, and he agreed to do it.

  Feldstein got up and made a speech with tears in his eyes. He wandered and did not seem to be getting anyplace, but finally he managed to get out that Jedson would need a good big war chest to do any good at the capitol, and also should be compensated for his expenses and loss of time. At that he astounded us by pulling out a roll of bills, counting out one thousand dollars, and shoving it over in front of Joe.

  That display of sincerity caused him to be made finance chairman by general consent, and the subscriptions came in very nicely. I held down my natural impulses and matched Feldstein’s donation, though I did wish he had not been quite so impetuous. I think Feldstein had a slight change of heart a little later, for he cautioned Joe to be economical and not to waste a lot of money buying liquor for “those schlemiels at the capitol.”

  Jedson shook his head at this, and said that while he intended to pay his own expenses, he would have to have a free hand in the spending of the fund, particularly with respect to entertainment. He said the time was too short to depend on sweet reasonableness and disinterested patriotism alone—that some of those lunkheads had no more opinions than a weather vane and would vote to favor the last man they had had a drink with.

  Someone made a shocked remark about bribery. “I don’t intend to bribe anyone,” Jedson answered with a brittle note in his voice. “If it comes to swapping bribes, we’re licked to start with. I am just praying that there are still enough unpledged votes up there to make a little persuasive talking and judicious browbeating worthwhile.”

  He got his own way, but I could not help agreeing privately with Feldstein. And I made a resolution to pay a little more attention to politics thereafter; I did not even know the name of my own legislator. How did I know whether or not he was a high-caliber man or just a cheap opportunist?

  And that is how Jedson, Bodie, and myself happened to find ourselves on the train, headed for the capitol.

  Bodie went along because Jedson wanted a first-rate magician to play bird-dog for him. He said he did not know what might turn up. I went along because I wanted to. I had never been to the capitol before, except to pass through, and was interested to see how this law-making business is done.

  Jedson went straight to the Secretary of State’s office to register as a lobbyist, while Jack and I took our baggage to the Hotel Constitution and booked some rooms. Mrs. Logan, Joe’s friend the committeewoman, showed up before he got back.

  Jedson had told us a great deal about Sally Logan during the train trip. He seemed to feel that she combined the shrewdness of Machiavelli with the great-hearted integrity of Oliver Wendell Holmes. I was surprised at his enthusiasm, for I have often heard him grouse about women in politics.

  “But you don’t understand, Archie,” he elaborated. “Sally isn’t a woman politician, she is simply a politician, and asks no special consideration because of her sex. She can stand up and trade punches with the toughest manipulators on the Hill. What I said about women politicians is perfectly true, as a statistical generalization, but it proves nothing about any particular woman.

  “It’s like this: Most women in the United States have a short-sighted, peasant individualism resulting from the male-created romantic tradition of the last century. They were told that they were superior creatures, a little nearer to the angels than their men folk. They were not encouraged to think, nor to assume social responsibility. It takes a strong mind to break out of that sort of conditioning, and most minds simply aren’t up to it, male or female.

  “Consequently, women as electors are usually suckers for romantic nonsense. They can be flattered into misusing their ballot even more easily than men. In politics their self-righteous feeling of virtue, combined with their essentially peasant training, resulted in their introducing a type of cut-rate, petty chiseling that should make Boss Tweed spin in his coffin.

  “But Sally’s not like that. She’s got a tough mind which could reject the hokum.”

  “You’re not in love with her, are you?”

  “Who, me? Sally’s happily married and has two of the best kids I know.”

  “What does her husband do?”

  “Lawyer. One of the governor’s supporters. Sally got started in politics through pinch-hitting for her husband one campaign.”

  “What is her official position up here?”

  “None. Right hand for the governor. That’s her strength. Sally has never held a patronage job, nor been paid for her services.”

  After this buildup I was anxious to meet the paragon. When she called I spoke to her over the house phone and was about to say that I would come down to the lobby when she announced that she was coming up, and hung up. I was a little startled at the informality, not yet realizing that politicians did not regard hotel rooms as bedrooms, but as business offices.

  When I let her in she said, “You’re Archie Fraser, aren’t you? I’m Sally Logan. Where’s Joe?”

  “He’ll be back soon. Won’t you sit down and wait?”

  “Thanks.” She plopped herself into a chair, took off her hat and shook out her hair. I looked her over.

  I had unconsciously expected something pretty formidable in the way of a mannish matron. What I saw was a young, plump, cheerful-looking blonde, with an untidy mass of yellow hair and frank blue eyes. She was entirely feminine, not over thirty at the outside, and there was something about her that was tremendously reassuring.

  She made me think of county fairs and well water and sugar cookies.

  “I’m afraid this is going to be a tough proposition,” she began at once. “I didn’t think so, but just the same someone has a solid bloc lined up for Assembly Bill 22—that’s the bill I wired Joe about. What do you boys plan to do, make a straight fight to kill it or submit a substitute bill?”

  “Jedson drew up a fair-practices act with the aid of some of our Half World
friends and a couple of lawyers. Would you like to see it?”

  “Please. I stopped by the State Printing Office and got a few copies of the bill you are against—AB 22. We’ll swap.”

  I was trying to translate the foreign language lawyers use when they write statutes when Jedson came in. He patted Sally’s cheek without speaking, and she reached up and squeezed his hand and went on with her reading. He commenced reading over my shoulder. I gave up and let him have it. It made a set of building specifications look simple.

  Sally asked, “What do you think of it, Joe?”

  “Worse than I expected,” he replied. “Take Paragraph 7—”

  “I haven’t read it yet.”

  “So? Well, in the first place it recognizes the association as a semipublic body like the Bar Association or the Community Chest, and permits it to initiate actions before the commission. That means that every magician had better by a damn sight belong to Ditworth’s association and be careful not to offend it.”

  “But how can that be legal?” I asked. “It sounds unconstitutional to me—a private association like that—”

  “Plenty of precedent, son. Corporations to promote world’s fairs, for example. They’re recognized, and even voted tax money. As for unconstitutionality, you’d have to prove that the law was not equal in application—which it isn’t!—but awfully hard to prove.”

  “But, anyhow, a witch gets a hearing before the commission?”

  “Sure, but there is the rub. The commission has very broad powers, almost unlimited powers over everything connected with magic. The bill is filled with phrases like ‘reasonable and proper,’ which means the sky’s the limit, with nothing but the good sense and decency of the commissioners to restrain them. That’s my objection to commissions in government—the law can never be equal in application under them. They have delegated legislative powers, and the law is what they say it is. You might as well face a drum-head court-martial.

  “There are nine commissioners provided for in this case, six of which must be licensed magicians, first-class. I don’t suppose it is necessary to point out that a few ill-advised appointments to the original commission will turn it into a tight little self-perpetuating oligarchy—through its power to license.”