Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, August 1922 · page 17 of 67
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #36 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This anecdote satirizes small-town power consolidation and the futility of debt collection against a well-connected merchant. A wholesaler attempts to collect payment for rejected goods through multiple official channels—bank draft, postmaster inquiry, and lawyer—only to discover the merchant IS all those channels: the merchant, bank president, postmaster, lawyer, and church pastor. The joke is that a single person controls every institution that might enforce the debt, making collection impossible. The punchline's near-profanity ("go plum to hell") underscores the merchant's exasperation and dominance. This reflects early 20th-century anxieties about concentrated power in small communities and the vulnerability of outside businesses dealing with local elites who answer to no authority but themselves.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
15 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang Henry W. Kiel. He motored me to the Hotel Statler, where my rooms were full of roses, and, in spite of an iron bed, we were more than comfortable.” It is hoped that Mrs. Kiel believes in the Japanese proverb: See no Evil, Speak no Evil, Hear no Evil. * * * It's Not So at Robbinsdale A salesman sold a bill of goods to a merchant in a small town. They were returned as not satisfactory. The wholesale house undertook to collect anyway, and drew a sight draft on the bank at the customer's town. The bank returned the draft unpaid. Then the house wrote to the village postmaster and asked if the merchant was good for the amount of the bill. The letter was returned O. K.'d at the bottom. Next the postmaster was asked to put the bill in the hands of a local lawyer for collection. The answer received by the wholesalers ran as follows: “The undersigned is the merchant on whom you tried to palm off your worthless junk. The undersigned is also president of the bank that returned your draft. The undersigned is the postmaster to whom you wrote, and also the lawyer whom you tried to get to collect your bill. And if the undersigned were not also the pastor of the local church, the undersigned would tell you to go plum to hell.”