The Mouse on Wall Street

by Leonard Wibberley

  Bentner, it is regrettable to report, rather fostered this kind of speculation. He was anxious that the whole of the sum be spent on the workingman, part in tax relief and part in the form of a back bonus. Bentner believed that if he got the expectations of the workingman up high enough, Mountjoy would not dare withhold any part of the sum (as was now proposed) but would have to give the whole amount to the voters in one form or another.

  Believing then that a substantial money gift was to come to them from the United States, many in Grand Fenwick became quite sentimental about Americans. American flags appeared here and there in windows, and at the sign of The Crooked Stick (a reference to Grand Fenwick’s national weapon, the longbow) there were some who ventured to say that the United States Marines, given a little training, might without a blush stand shoulder to shoulder on the field of battle with the men-at-arms of Grand Fenwick.

  Plans for spending the money were eagerly discussed. Some would refurnish their houses; others, rebuild portions of them or add a room or two. Mail orders for new bicycles (the only form of transportation other than horses available or permitted in Grand Fenwick) were huge, and even before a dollar of the delightful money had arrived in the Duchy, Sid Cromer, who ran a blacksmith forge and bicycle-repair shop in the town which surrounded the castle, complained that he was being ruined.

  “Not a damaged sprocket or a broken chain in a week,” he said to Bentner, waving under the latter’s nose a stubby forefinger grimy with dirty machine oil. “Who wants to repair anything when they can get it new? Answer me that.”

  “Take it easy, Sid,” said Bentner. “You’ll be getting yours too, you know. And with all those new bicycles coming in, business should double for you in a couple of months.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Mr. Cromer. “I’ve had five shillings every two months regular from the Derby family for fixing brakes and handlebars. Ten kids in that family and two bicycles both with bent frames. Makes for something regular that I can count on and that’s what I like.”

  “Well, there’ll be ten kids and ten bicycles in a little while,” said Bentner. “Don’t worry. They’ll be in to have things fixed. If you gave those Derby kids a hammer apiece they’d destroy half of Europe in six months.”

  Cromer went back into his shop, where he sat for a while, surrounded by fading advertisements for Lucas headlights, BSA sport kits, and Willhold handgrips, while he thought over the future of the bicycle business in Grand Fenwick. Then he washed his hands in a pan of dirty kerosene, wiped them on his overalls, and went over to see Bob Davis at the Fenwick Home Bank, which shared its premises with a candy store run by a lady known to everybody as Aunt Tettie. “What can I do for you, Sid?” asked the bank manager. “Well,” said Sid, “I want to draw out all my money.” “Why?” asked Davis, blanching slightly, for Mr. Cromer was one of the heaviest depositors.

  “Don’t know much about money,” said the other, “but if everybody in Grand Fenwick is going to get themselves a new bicycle, I’d do better to put my money into bicycle parts than leave it in the bank.”

  “True,” said Mr. Davis. “But I can lend you all you need for bicycle parts. You don’t have to touch your capital.” “Why should I borrow money when I already have money?” asked the mechanic. “Answer me that.”

  Mr. Davis took a little while to consider the correct phrasing with which to answer this question, which had been put to him many times before. It was remarkable how few people understood that you could not borrow money unless you had money—that credit was dependent on capital and you could not summon capital into being by borrowing—even some of the greatest corporations in the United States of America did not understand that.

  “If you use your capital to buy bicycle parts,” he said, “you have frozen your money in a particular kind of asset which you may be able to sell at a profit, or you may have to sell at a loss, which means selling your money at a discount. Supposing, for instance, people started ordering parts for their bicycles through the mail instead of from you. They might have to wait a little longer, but they might get them cheaper that way. Then you would be stuck with all your money tied up in bicycle parts which you could not sell. Or you might order a quantity of one kind of part only to find that another kind, which you did not have in stock, was needed. In any case, you are risking your money by turning it into a speculative asset which you may not be able to turn into money again very readily.

  “Now if you use borrowed money and the same thing happens—there is no market for your bicycle parts immediately— you owe the bank a certain sum plus interest. However, you have a lot of time in which to pay back the loan. That time gives you an opportunity of disposing of the bicycle parts. To be sure, the interest you must pay the bank for the loan will cut into your profits unless you can mark up the price of the parts so as to include your bank interest; that is, pass the interest on to the customer. Remember that time is money. Things that are worth money are often valueless or sold at far below their value because there is not time to turn them into money. Borrowing provides times as well as cash since the loan can be repaid over a long trading period.

  “Finally, if you borrow the money for your parts, instead of using your own capital, you still have your capital behind you. And I could, of course, lend you far more money than you have on deposit in the bank, so borrowing provides more money than your own capital provides.”

  Cromer considered this, rubbing the side of his nose with a forefinger from which the kerosene had by no means removed all the dirt.

  “You can lend me more than I have on deposit?” he asked with a measure of slyness.

  “Yes,” said Davis.

  “And the same goes, I suppose, for everybody else. You’re not making an exception in my case, I’m sure.”

  “Quite true.”

  “Well, how can you lend to your depositors more money than they have on deposit in the bank?” asked the mechanic. “That would use up all the money in the bank and more. Isn’t that true?”

  “Not at all,” said Mr. Davis. “Actual physical money is not involved. If you wanted to borrow a thousand pounds, you would not want to receive that money in your hands, would you? You wouldn’t have a safe place to keep it to start with. No. I would credit a thousand pounds to your account and . . .”

  “You mean you wouldn’t actually take money out of your vaults and put it in the place where you keep mine?” asked the mechanic.

  “Not at all,” said Davis, smiling at so simple a concept. “All I do is write in your account a credit of one thousand Grand Fenwick pounds. You can spend that amount from your account at any time, though you probably would not spend it all at once. The same with other borrowers. They would also get a credit on their accounts of the amount of their loan—a figure written there indicating the amount of the bank’s money they can borrow at that time.

  “Meanwhile, all the money deposited in the bank is still there except for the daily deposits and withdrawals of cash, and the bank is able to operate profitably on the interest received from the loans and also the investments which it itself may make with the money deposited by its clients.”

  “Just a minute,” said Sid. “Supposing I write a check to the Lucas Company of England for twenty pounds for bicycle lamps. I get the lamps. They get the check. The check comes back to you. You deduct twenty pounds from my balance. And then you have to send twenty pounds to the Lucas Company in England—or to their bank. Right?”

  “Wrong,” said the manager. “All that happens is that your balance is debited by the figure of twenty pounds and the account of the Lucas Company with their bank in England is credited with twenty pounds. No actual exchange of cash takes place immediately at all.”

  “So it’s just figures that banks write in books?” asked Cromer.

  Mr. Davis nodded.

  There was a silence while Sid Cromer absorbed the economic procedure with which he had been confronted. “All right,” he said. “How much money can you lend me?
” “Whatever you wish,” said Davis. “It will be at six percent.”

  “Fair enough,” said Sid. “Lend me two thousand pounds, and I am going to need five hundred of that in cash.”

  The papers were soon drawn and signed and five one-hundred-pound notes counted into his hand. Sid thanked the bank manager, left, and dropped in at The Crooked Stick, where he had a meditative glass of wine before the fire in the saloon bar.

  Then he went back to his shop and tore down all the faded and oil-grimed signs dealing with bicycles and bicycle parts. He found a piece of board and a pot. of paint and worked with these materials for a while. And when he was done, he hung over his shop a sign which read:

  FENWICK NATIONAL BANK AND BIKE SHOP Get Your Loans Here

  5

  THE Count of Mountjoy suffered his first budget defeat in twenty years over what was now known in the Duchy as the Gum Money. His budget proposals were in every aspect reasonable. But inflamed by Bentner, who rightly saw an opportunity of overthrowing the government, the Council of Freemen voted them down.

  The proposals were that the rate of income tax be reduced to 5 percent, that the deficit be made up with Gum Money, that a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of the same money be spent on equipping a completely new laboratory for Dr. Kokintz whether he wished it or not, that a further four hundred thousand dollars be spent on air-conditioning the castle of Grand Fenwick, Americans only being employed on that project, that each taxpayer be given a Christmas gift of seventy-five dollars (twenty-five pounds), and that the remainder of the money be sent as a gift to Columbia University in New York to set up a department of Grand Fenwick Studies in that eminent institution.

  The Count of Mountjoy, before appearing before the Council of Freemen, was well aware that his budget was not brilliant and had but little hope of acceptance. It was an effort of desperation, the best that he could devise, and he consoled himself that the problem he faced would have baffled Keynes, Montagu, Smith, or any of the other great economic theorists of the world.

  What, he wondered, would happen in Britain or America if the equivalent of the total national budget for five or six years was dumped suddenly into the nation’s treasury? With an unexpected budget surplus of perhaps 600 percent, how could any nation resist the demand for the utter abolition of taxation and a sharing of the wealth among all the citizens?

  No. Mountjoy knew that he was to go down to defeat, but he knew also that the budget he had drawn up or something like it was needed. For the national interest demanded that the money be got rid of and not allowed to flow into the nation’s economy.

  Bentner had himself perceived this dimly and for a short while. But no man whose political life has been spent in an unceasing struggle for higher wages for the workers can turn away from so tremendous a windfall. As Mountjoy remarked, the views on money of those who merely earn it will never coincide with the views on money of those who spend their time making it out of their production and business. The one will always demand more. The other may well sometimes demand less in the interest of preserving its value.

  The little sop which Mountjoy felt he could offer the voters—a Christmas gift of twenty-five pounds each—could not avert his overthrow. He presented his budget to a tense, irritated and supercritical House, and the hoots and jeers which greeted his offer were felt by some to be quite unworthy of the traditions of that chamber. In the days which preceded the budget presentation, however, the people had come to expect a vast fortune, and the Count’s offer struck even representatives of the Council as close to an insult.

  The vote against acceptance of the budget was overwhelming—thirty-three to seven, for even many members of Mount-joy’s own party crossed the floor to vote against him. Mountjoy, almost deserted, after the vote was taken and announced, looked in silence about the crowded Council chamber, with its ancient walls of golden Fenwick oak paneling and its yew benches, some of which dated from the late sixteenth century. Draped from the walls, above the heads of the delegates, were the battle banners of the Duchy’s knights—foremost among them, of course, the double-headed eagle of the Duchy, saying “Aye” from one beak and “Nay” from the other.

  Side by side with this was the Sunburst banner of Mountjoy and the Pickerels gules on a field azure of the Cromers and the Red Hand, coupe, of the Dermots of Ballycastle (the only Irish strain in Grand Fenwick) and so on. They represented a great deal of tradition and of courage, those banners, of honor and of loyalty. There was in them what required to be preserved not merely for Grand Fenwick but for the world at large. And it was with a heavy heart that the Count realized that the defeat he had been handed by the delegates to the Council of Freemen was a vote for self rather than for nation and not in accordance with the tradition of the country.

  Though defeated, Mountjoy would not retract his stand. “The government acknowledges its overwhelming defeat on the issue of the national budget,” he said when the vote was taken. “And honorable members may be assured that I will, at the first appropriate moment, submit my resignation to Her Grace, so that arrangements may be immediately put in hand for a general election.

  “I would, however, be lacking in my duty if I did not solemnly warn this Council now, and the people of the Duchy, that there are values which must be put ahead of money and of self if any nation or any civilization is to survive. Public welfare must always come ahead of private need, and this maxim, honored in the past, has, I fear, been thrown aside in the present vote. In the coming election I shall continue, however, to strongly oppose the introduction of these dollar earnings into our economy on the sound grounds that they will destroy first the value of our own currency and then the value of our own labor. For what man, I ask you, will work hard all year for a thousand shillings when he may receive the same sum by remaining idle for twelve months?

  “I would charge all of you to bear in mind that all societies exist through the efforts and work of their members and no society can exist where the members expect to receive without giving. I would recall to the memory of honorable members the words of the famous president of a young country, slain in office, on the occasion of his inauguration, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.’ There is guidance there for all men at all times and especially for us now in Grand Fenwick.”

  He paused and then, looking with scorn at those members of his own party who had crossed the floor to vote against him, said, “I am reminded, gentlemen, by your presence on the opposition benches of Browning’s rebuke to Wordsworth. I take the liberty of paraphrasing the words:

  "Just for a handful of silver, you left me,

  Just for a dollar to put in your coat... .”

  In silence he shut the scarlet leather dispatch box before him and handed it to the Speaker of the House. The gesture symbolized his resignation as Head of the Government, and then he walked from the Council, followed by the six of his party who had remained loyal to him.

  An election was now inevitable—an election to be held at the very worst time of the year for Grand Fenwick, that is, during the grape harvest. Before the election the Count of Mountjoy called formally on the Duchess to submit his resignation, which she was obliged to accept, although she was very fond of the Count.

  “Bobo, is it really this serious?” she asked him. “Will

  Grand Fenwick really be endangered by this money being put into circulation?”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” said the Count. “There will be an immediate effect on our economy which, however, will be trivial compared with the lasting effects which can be expected from millions of dollars a year being dumped into our country, without anybody in Grand Fenwick doing a tap of work toward earning this fortune.”

  “Millions a year?” queried the Duchess.

  “Yes, Your Grace,” said the Count. “Millions a year. For this is just the start. Each year we can expect more profits from the gum. And our people, having once taken that money to spend as they wish, are not likely at anoth
er time to turn it away and say they do not want it. We are seeing the last days of Grand Fenwick as it used to be—a sturdy, self-sufficient, independent nation with a heritage of which any country in the world could be proud. We are likely to become, now that Bentner is having his way, a nation of ne’er-do-wells, of slackers and idlers.

  “There is the workingman’s dream come to its logical fruition—no work, plenty of pay and rule by ignorance.” He paused and added solemnly, “We may even produce some kind of group like the Beatles, noted for complaining to the accompaniment of guitars.” This thought was so painful that the Count of Mountjoy, having uttered the words, closed his eyes as a man in an agony of shame.

  “You’re kidding,” said the Duchess, herself so deeply shaken that she was guilty of an Americanism.

  Bentner, summoned later to the Ducal presence, took a more cheerful view. Since he was leader of the Labor party, which was opposed to titles, he could not bring himself to call Gloriana Your Grace, as did the Count of Mountjoy. But he called her “Ma’am,” which delighted Gloriana as being cozier. She was quite as fond of Bentner, rotund, stubborn, plodding, as she was of the graceful and agile Count of Mountjoy.

  “Don’t you fret about it, Ma’am,” said Bentner, when she mentioned the Count’s fears to him. “The upper classes are always afraid of what the lower classes will do if they get their hands on some money. You’d think money was dynamite, the way they want to keep it away from people.”

  “If you should win the election, Mr. Bentner, what will you propose doing with the money?” asked Gloriana.

  “Give some to Kokintz for what he needs. And divide the rest of it among the voters.”

  “Which will give most of them the equivalent of a year’s wages for nothing,” said the Duchess. “Do you think that is wise? Will they work if they get money so freely?”