Alice in Blunderland: An Iridescent Dream

								

when a toothless wanderer wants a hickory nut cracked he has a perfectly
legal right to stop anybody in the street who has teeth and make him
crack the nut for him. Of course we've had a little trouble enforcing
the law--alleged private rights are always difficult to get around.
Long-continued possession has seemed so to convince people that they
have inherent rights to the things they have enjoyed, that they put up a
fight and appeal to the Constitution and all that, and even when you
mention the fact, as I did in a case that came up the other day (when a
man refused to bite on another chap's cigar for him), that the
Constitution doesn't mention teeth anywhere in all its classes, they are
not easy to convince. This fellow insisted that his teeth were private
property, and no city law should make them public property. He's going
to take it to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile his teeth are in the custody
of the sheriff.
"And what has become of the man?" asked Alice.
"He's in the custody of the sheriff too," said the Hatter. "We couldn't
arrange it any other way except by pulling his teeth, and he didn't want
that."
"I can't blame him," said Alice reflectively. "I should hate to have my
teeth taken away from me."
"O there's no obfuscation about it," said the Hatter.
"Confuscation," corrected the March Hare. "I wish you would get that
word right. It's too important to fool with."
"Thank you," replied the Hatter. "My mind is on higher things than mere
words. However, as I was saying, there is no cobfuscation about it. We
don't take a man's teeth away from him without compensation. We pay him
what the teeth are worth and place them at the service of the whole
community.
"Where do you get the money to pay him?" asked Alice.
"We give him a Municipal Bond," explained the Hatter. "It's a ten per
cent. bond costing two cents to print. When he cracks a hickory nut for
the public, the man he cracks it for pays him a cent. He rings this up
on a cash register he carries pinned to his vest, and at the end of
every week turns in the cash to the City Treasury. That money is used to
pay the interest on the bonds. The scheme has the additional advantage
that it makes a man's teeth negotiable property in the sense that
whereas under the old system he couldn't very well sell his teeth, under
the new system he can sell the bond if he gets hard up. Moreover, the
City Government having acquired control has to pay all his dentist's
bills, supply tooth powder and so on, which results in a great saving to
the individual. It hardly costs the city anything, except for the Tooth
Inspector, who is paid $1,200 a year, but we can handle that easily
enough, provided the people will use the Public Teeth in sufficiently
large numbers to bring in dividends. Anyhow, we have gone in for it,
and I see no reason why it should not work as well as any other
Municipal Ownership scheme."