God Bless You, Mr Rosewater (an excerpt).

'Eliot -'

'Sir-?'

'We come to a supremely iconic moment in history, for Senator Rosewater of Indiana now asks his own son, "Are you or have you ever been a communist?" '

'Oh, I have what a lot of people would probably call communistic thoughts,' said Eliot artlessly, 'but, for heaven's sakes, Father, nobody can work with the poor and not fall over Karl Marx from time to time - or just fall over the Bible, as far as that goes. I think it's terrible the way people don't share things in this country. I think it's a heartless government that will let one baby be born owning a big piece of the country, the way I was born, and let another baby be born without owning anything. The least a government could do, it seems to me, is to divide things up fairly among the babies. Life is hard enough, without people having to worry themselves sick about money, too. There's plenty for everybody in this country, if we'll only share more.'

'And just what do you think that would do to incentive?'

"You mean fright about not getting enough to eat, about not being able to pay the doctor, about not being able to give your family nice clothes, a safe, cheerful, comfortable place to live, a decent education, and a few good times? You mean shame about not knowing where the Money River is?'

'The what?'

'The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it - and so were most of the mediocre people we grew up with, went to private schools with, sailed and played tennis with. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts' content. And we even take slurping lessons, so we can slurp more efficiently.'

'Slurping lessons?'

'From lawyers! From tax consultants! From customs men! We're born close enough to the river to drown ourselves and the next ten generations in wealth, simply using dippers and buckets. But we still hire the experts to teach us the use of aqueducts, dams, reservoirs, siphons, bucket brigades, and the Archimedes' screw. And our teachers in turn become rich, and their children become buyers of lessons in slurping.'

'I wasn't aware that I slurped.'

Eliot was fleetingly heartless, for he was thinking angrily in the abstract. 'Born slurpers never are. And they can't imagine what the poor people are talking about when they say they hear somebody slurping. They don't even know what it means when somebody mentions the Money River. When one of us claims that there is no such thing as the Money River I think to myself, "My gosh, that's a dishonest and tasteless thing to say." '

'How stimulating to hear you talk of taste,' said the Senator clankingly.

'You want me to start going to the opera again? You want me to build a perfect house in a perfect village, and sail and sail and sail?'

'Who cares what I want?'

'I admit this is no Taj Mahal. But should it be, with other Americans having such a rotten time?'

'Perhaps, if they stopped believing in crazy things like the Money River, and got to work they would stop having such a rotten time.'

'If there isn't a Money River, then how did I make ten thousand dollars today, just by snoozing and scratching myself, and occasionally answering the phone?'

'It's still possible for an American to make a fortune on his own.'

'Sure - provided somebody tells him when he's young enough that there is a Money River, that there's nothing fair about it, that he had damn well better forget about hard work and the merit system and honesty and all that crap, and get to where the river is. "Go where the rich and the powerful are," I'd tell him, "and learn their ways. They can be flattered and they can be scared. Please them enormously or scare them enormously, and one moonless night they will put their fingers to their lips, warning you not to make a sound. And they will lead you through the dark to the widest, deepest river of wealth ever known to man. You'll be shown your place on the riverbank, and handed a bucket all your own. Slurp as much as you want, but try to keep the racket of your slurping down. A poor man might hear." '