‘Mr. Cossett,’ he wept, ‘the Estate Wagons are eleven inches longer this month! I can’t stand it!’ he cried wildly. ‘We got eighteen hundred and forty-one cars piled up already! The floor’s full. The shop’s full. The top two floors are full. The lot’s full. We hauled all the trade-ins off to the junkyard yesterday and, even so, now we got them double-parked on both sides of the street for six blocks in every direction! You know, Chief, I couldn’t even get to the place this morning? I had to park at the corner of Grand and Sterling and walk the rest of the way, because I couldn’t get through!’
For the first time, Cossett’s expression changed. ‘Grand and Sterling?’ he repeated thoughtfully. ‘Yeah? I’ll have to try coming that way tomorrow.’ Then he laughed, a bitter laugh. ‘One thing, Harry. Be glad we’re handling Buicks and not, you know, one of the Low-Priced Three. I came by Culex Motors yesterday, and -
‘By Godfrey,’ he shouted suddenly, ‘I’m going to go down and talk to Manny Culex. Why not? It isn’t just our problem, Harry - it’s everybody’s. And may be the whole industry ought to get together, just for once. We never did; nobody would start it. But things are getting to a point where somebody’s got to lead the way. Well, it’s going to be me! There just isn’t any sense letting the caverns turn out all these new cars after Jack Tighe has told the whole blasted country that they don’t have to buy them any more. Washington will do something. They’ll have to!’
But all the way over to Manny Culex’s, past the carton-barricaded appliance stores, widely skirting the shambles that surrounded the five and ten, rolling up the windows as he threaded his way past the burst spoiled food cans at the supermarket, Cossett couldn’t put one question out of his mind:
Suppose they couldn’t?
2
Now you mustn’t think Jack Tighe wasn’t right on top of this situation. He knew about it. Oh, yes! Because it wasn’t just Archibald Cossett and Manny Culex - it was every car dealer -and it wasn’t just the car dealers, but every merchant in Rantoul who sold goods to the public; and it wasn’t just Rantoul, but all of Illinois, all of the Middle West, all the country - and, yes, when you come right down to it, all of the world. (I mean all the inhabited world. Naturally there was no problem in, say, Lower Westchester.)
Things were piling up.
It was a matter of automation and salesmanship. In the big war, it had seemed like a good idea to automate the factories. Maybe it was - production was what counted then, all kinds of production. They certainly got the production, sure enough. Then, when the war was over, there was a method for handling the production - a method named advertising. But what did that mean, when you came to think it over? It meant that people had to be hounded into buying what they didn’t really want, with money they hadn’t yet earned. It meant pressure. It meant hypertension and social embarrassment and competition and confusion.
Well, Jack Tighe took care of that part, him and his famous Bill of Wrongs.
Everybody agreed that things had been intolerable before - before, that is, Tighe and his heroic band had marched on the Pentagon and set us all free. The trouble was that now advertising had been abolished and nobody felt he had to buy the new models as they came out of the big automated plants in the underground caverns ... and what were we going to do with the products?
Jack Tighe felt that problem as keenly as any vacuum-cleaner salesman hard-selling a suburban neighbourhood from door to door. He knew what the people wanted. And if he hadn’t, why, he would have found it pretty quickly, because the people, in their delegations and petitions, were taking every conceivable opportunity to let him know.
For instance, there was the Midwest Motor Car Association’s delegation, led by Bill Cossett, his very own self. Cossett hadn’t wanted to be chairman, but he’d been the one to suggest it, and that usually carries a fixed penalty: ‘You thought it up? Okay. You make it go.’
Jack Tighe received them in person. He listened with great courtesy and concern to their prepared speech; and that was unusual, because Tighe wasn’t the relaxed old man who’d fished the Delaware south of Pung’s Corners for so many happy years. No, he was an irritable President now, and delegations were nothing in his life; he faced fifty of them a day. And they all wanted the same thing. Just let us push our product a little, please? Naturally, no other commodity should be privileged to violate the Bill of Wrongs - nobody wants the Age of Advertising back! - but, Mr. President, the jewellery findings game (or shoes, or drugs, or business machines, or frozen food, and so forth) is historically, intrinsically dynamically and pre-eminently different, because...
And, you’d be surprised, they all thought up reasons to follow the ‘because’. Some of the reasons were corkers.
But Jack Tighe didn’t let them get quite as far as the reasons. He listened about a sentence and a half past the ‘nobody wants the Age of Advertising back’ movement and into the broad largo that began the threnody of their unique troubles. And then he said, with a sudden impulse: ‘You there! The young fellow!’
‘Cossett! Good old Bill Cossett!’ cried a dozen eager voices, as they pushed him forward.
‘I’m impressed,’ said Jack Tighe thoughtfully, seizing him by the hand. He had had an idea, and maybe it was time to act on it. ‘I like your looks, Gossop,’ he said, ‘and I’m going to do something for you.’
“You mean you’re going to let us ad -’ began the eager voices.
‘Why, no,’ said Jack Tighe, surprised. ‘Of course not. But I’m setting up a Committee of Activity to deal with this situation, gentlemen. Yes, indeed. You mustn’t think we’ve been idle here in Washington. And I’m going to put Artie Gossop - I mean Hassop - here on the Committee. There!’ he said kindly, but proudly too. ‘And now,’ he added, leaving through his private door, ‘good day to you all.’
It was a signal honour, Bill Cossett thought, or anyway all the eager voices assured him that it was.
But forty-eight hours later, he wasn’t so sure.
The rest of the delegation had gone home. Why wouldn’t they? They had accomplished what they set out to do. The problem was being taken care of.
But as for good old Bill Cossett, why, at that moment he was doing the actual taking care.
And he didn’t like it. It turned out that this Committee of Activity was not merely to study and make recommendations. Oh, no. That wasn’t Jack Tighe’s way. The Committee was to do something. And for that reason, Cossett found himself with a rifle in his hand, in an armoured half track. He was part of a task force of heavy assault troops, staring down the inclined ramp that led to the cavern factory under Farmingdale, Long Island.
Let me tell you about Farmingdale.
National Electro-Mech had its home office there - in the good old days, you know. Came the Cold War. The Board of Directors of National Electro-Mechanical Appliances, Inc., tool a look at its balance sheet, smiled, thought of taxes, wept, and determined to plough a considerable part of its earnings into a new plant.
It was to be not merely a new plant, but a fine plant - wasn’t the government paying for it anyhow, in a way? I mean what didn’t come off taxes as capital expansion came back as pay for proximity-fuse contracts. So they dug themselves a great big hole - a regular underground Levittown of the machine, so to speak - acres and acres of floor surface, and all of it hidden from the light of day. Okay, chuckled the Board of Directors, rubbing its hands, let them shoot their ICBMs! Yah, Yah! Can’t touch me!