Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1917 — BIRSKY and ZAPP [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BIRSKY and ZAPP

By MONTAGUE GLASS

SEEN Max Maikafer In the •■I subway this morning,” said Louis Birsky, the real estater, to Barnett Zapp, the waist manufacturer, as they met for luncheon at the comer table in Wasserbauer’s. “He tells me he is going to make from his boy a painter.” “Some people don’t give a swear what becomes of their children,” Zapp Commented. “Is it such a bad Job to be a painter?” Birsky asked. “Seemingly Max Maikafer don’t think so,” Zapp replied. “Maybe he would enjoy it to see his son break his neck from a ladder, Birsky.” “What are you talking nonsense — break his neck from a ladder?” Birsky exclaimed. “A scaffold is Just as dangerous,” Zapp went on. “Yesterday lam seeing a couple fellers painting from the side of a building ten stories high, and even though one of them was an Italiener, I got so dizzy watching ’em that before I could eat my lunch at all it cost me 10 cents for some mathematic epirits 'of ammonia. If I would got to earn my living as a painter, I would a whole lot sooner be an aviator, because while the funeral expenses is the same as for a painter, an aviator don’t linger long enough to run up a doctor’s bill on his widow.” “You got the wrong idea, Zapp,” Birsky said. “Maikafer’s boy would be not a house painter but a picture painter.” ' “A picture -painter!” Zapp cried. "And. I thought Max Maikafer was a business pian. Why don’t’he learn the boy a trade where he coflld make real big money, like a buttonhole maker or a poet?” “That only goes to show what you know from poets,” Birsky retorted. “Jake Margonln, from the Fashion Store, Indianapolis, told me that right now there is a feller which from only being a poet is now owning most of the gilt-edged real estate thb jetty of Indianapolis.” “Sure,! I know,” Zapp declared, “but this here feller was an old established poet when Hart, Shaffner & Marx and Kuh, Nathan & Fisher was new beginners already. Then again, there is a bigger opening for a poet than there Is for a picture painter. Take the canned soup business, the breakfast food business and even some railroad companies—all them concerns has got working for them poets which they already pav them a good yearly salary, whereas a picture painter must got to work piecework, and what for a wages could a pieceworker on pictures make-when with my own eyes I see it a bill from a wholesale# in Weltfisch’s art store, which Welfisph buys, 16-12 doz. assarted oil paintings in Small sizes for $38.75 a dozqa*. including shadow boxes and frames, terms ■ tea off sixty days, ninety days net. Tell me about picture painters l” . “Say, there is a popular price, line of, -pictures, and then again there Is a high grade pictures,” Birsky said. ___ *£Syen so/’ Zapp rejoined. “You ifiustrvgot t<£admit that a toneern like B. Altrpan & Go. carries a high grade line and when B. Altman died stock was good, up-to-the-minute ttuff in £very department ex-

cept the picture department, and when it come to the pictures they closed ’em out to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for practically nothing.” Blrsky shrugged his shoulders. % “Say, what is the use arguing with a it ignerammus like you, Zapp,” he said. “Don’t you know that them pictures which B. Altman left to the Metropolitan Museum wasn’t taken out of stock at all? They were private pictures which fie collected?” “So he collected them?” Zapp commented. “Well, that’s the way it is with* them rich fellerk A big concern like B. Altman gets the credit for givtng them pictures to the Metropolitan Museum, y’understand, whereas the people he collected them from, nobody never hears about at.all. It’S the same way with them charitable people which Is running all them orphan asylums and homes. They bother the life out of you you should give ’em for ten or fifteen dollars to their asylums, and when you come to look

I'll » i ■! ii. i i ! ■ ' _________ 4 - It up in the annual report so that you can prove to a customer that you already paid out more than yon can aifoFd to charity* y’understand, aU you!see is: ‘Collected through Felix Qeigermann SIO2J)O,’ and the customer sticks you another ten dollars for a free soup society before he would buy from, you another dollar’s worth goods.” - * “So .that’s the idea you got when I tell you that B. Altman collected the pictures and give ’em to the Metropolitan Museum!” Birsky exclaimed. “Do you think the people which B. Altman collected them pictures from gave them to him for nothing?”!: “Why not r Zapp said. "Last week, Birsky, your wife comes round to my * wife wWle”T“am dow-ntown and says she is collecting for an immigrants’ home old clothing, y’understand, and my wife gives away on me two suits and an overcoat which I wouldn’t be ashamed to wear getting an accommodation at a bank, so becoming they looked.” “There’s collecting and collecting,” Birsky explained. “When I say B. Altman collected pictures, I mean he bought them and paid his good money for them.” “And the people which he collects

from makes a profit on the transaction?” Zapp asked. “Makes a profit!” Birsky said. “I should say they do.” “Then that is the first time that I hear such a thing,” Zapp cried. “Becausewhen someone tells me down at the store that there is a collector outside wants to see me, it don’t make no difference.if the collector is collecting for a bank, a hospital, the cloth sponger, a home or the landlord, I give my bookkeeper instructions she should say I Just went over to Newark.” “Well, pictures is different,” Birsky continued. “A feller which collects pictures like B. Altman sometimes pays enormous prices. Take for example Mr. Wid'ener- Selig, the Philadelphia millionaire, and. he is paying for a picture of a mill one half million dollars.” “What kind ol a mill?” Zapp asked. “What’s the difference what kind of a mill?” Birsky said. “I believe it was-a flour mill.” tj—* — “A flour mill he pays half a million for its picture ” Zapp said. “Why for a quarter of the monej* plenty people would have been glad to sell him a rolling mill, and throw In a dozen picfllWQfl !* ttuvo • “And yet you say Max Maikafer should make from his boy a buttonhole maker,” Birsky continued, “Take that picture painter which turned out the mill, y’understand, and if he gets only one order when he’s a new beginner, understand me, business could be bad with him for the rest of his lif4.” “You may be right, Birsky,” Zapp said, “but I don’t believe a picture painter gets anywheres near the retail price of his goods, because the profit to the retailer must got to be enormous, otherwise he couldn’t live at all. A retailer which handles them Mill pictures runs an awful risk, Birsky. It’s the same like he would be carrying a line of steam yachts. If he’s only got two on hahd, he’s overstocked bad already.”

“Sure I know,” Blrsky said, ‘‘but such a retailer also stocks a line of medium priced pictures too. For every Mill picture he sells, I bet yer he gets rid of a dozen Horse Shows or Angeluses.” “Of course, if the feller carries Angelus pictures as a side line, that’s something else again, Blrsky," Zapp said. “There’s big money In player pianos, Blrsky, because while in former times people wouldn’t take a piano as a gift on account of giving their children music lessons to get the use out of-Jt, nowadays they could pay a large price for a. .player piano and send their girls to business college, and still save money on it Consequently the demand for player pianos Is enormous, particularly as here Just lately they’ve got ’em working by electricity which could run for ten cents the kilowatt hour some of the heaviest things that Paderewski gets off at $5,000 a concert.” \ Birskyshruggedhls shouldersagalh. “What you understand from art, Zapp!” he exclaimed. “A Schwarzer from the Cannibal Islands which don’t even wear athaletlc underwear, knows more about fur overcoats than you do of pictures, Zapp.” IT 1 “Listen, Blrsky,” Zapp retorted, “if them millionaires which is buying these here high priced pictures knows as mueh about their art Investments as the public does about fur overcoats, you could take it from me, Blrsky, when them millionaires’ heirs comes to settle up the estate, Blrsky, they’ll find that instead of a five hundred thousand-dollar Mill, the old man i

jr got stuck with a hundred dollar sweat shop. When you come to, compare pictures with fur overcoats, Birsky, you never spoke a truer word in your life, because while it’s ah old saying and a true one that a cat comes to life nine times, Birsky, nobody but a (fur overcoat manufacturer knows whfether the cat Is going to come to life as Persian lamb, Siberian mink, Hudson Bay Seal, beaver, broad tall, nutria, ermine, skunk or sable. So if I would be a millionaire, Birsky, instead of oil painted pictures I would go to work and collect railroads and electric light plants and traction companies, because while it’s true that no millionaire ever got indicted on account of buying up a lot of competing oil paintings ~dr making agreements" wflh" ffie ‘ owners of competing oil paintings to keep up the price and limit the output, at the same time, Birsky, on a $500,000 oil parting no millionaire could float a $1,000,000 Issue of first refunding 5 per cent gold bonds of 1985, underlying $1,000,000 of first mortgage 4, per cent bonds maturing in 1976, which Is a first mortgage only on the back door of the mill, and on the rest of the mill is subject to an issue of $8,500,000 genwine, all wool, first mortgage per cent bonds maturing

January 1, 1917. Such things you could only do with a railroad, and believe me, Birsky, if you got indictments hanging over your head for the rest of your lifetime, there’s more money in collecting railroads than in collecting oil painted pictures and ctSHT you forget it.” (Copyright, Now York Tribune.)

"Give My Bookkeeper Instructions She Should Say I Just Went to Newark."

“A Picture Painter!" Zapp Cried. “And I thought Max Maikafer War a Business Man."