“And now, what you’ve been waiting for,” Mongery continued. “The final Trotter Poll’s preelection analysis.” A novice Literate advanced, handing him a big looseleaf book, which he opened with the reverence a Literate always displayed toward the written word. “This,” he said, “is going to surprise you. For the whole state of Penn-Jersey-York, the poll shows a probable Radical-Socialist vote of approximately thirty million, an Independent-Conservative vote of approximately ten and a half million, and a vote of about a million for what we call the Who-Gives-A-Damn Party, which, frankly, is the party of your commentator’s choice. Very few sections differ widely from this average—there will be a much heavier Radical vote in the Pittsburgh area, and traditionally Conservative Philadelphia and the upper Hudson Valley will give the Radicals a much smaller majority.”
They all looked at one another, thunderstruck.
“If Mongery’s admitting that, I’m in!” Pelton exclaimed.
“Yeah, we can start calling him Senator, now, and really mean it,” Ray said. “Maybe old Mongie isn’t such a bad sort of twerp, after all.”
“Considering that the Conservatives carried this state by a substantial majority in the presidential election of two years ago, and by a huge majority in the previous presidential election of 2136,” Mongery, in the screen, continued, “this verdict of the almost infallible Trotter Poll needs some explaining. For the most part, it is the result of the untiring efforts of one man, the dynamic new leader of the Radical-Socialists and their present candidate for the Consolidated States of North America Senate, Chester Pelton, who has transformed that once-moribund party into the vital force it is today. And this achievement has been due, very largely, to a single slogan which he had hammered into your ears: Put the Literates in their place; our servants, not our masters!” He brushed a hand deprecatingly over his white smock and fingered the badges on his belt.
“There has always been, on the part of the Illiterate public, some resentment against organized Literacy. In part, it has been due to the high fees charged for Literate services, and to what seems, to many, to be monopolistic practices. But behind that is a general attitude of anti-intellectualism which is our heritage from the disastrous wars of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries. Chester Pelton has made himself the spokesman of this attitude. In his view, it was men who could read and write who hatched the diabolical political ideologies and designed the frightful nuclear weapons of that period. In his mind, Literacy is equated with Mein Kampf and Das Kapital, with the A-bomb and the H-bomb, with concentration camps and blasted cities. From this position, of course, I beg politely to differ. Literate men also gave us the Magna Charta and the Declaration of Independence.
“Now, in spite of a lunatic fringe in the Consolidated Illiterates’ Organization who want just that, Chester Pelton knows that we cannot abolish Literacy entirely. Even with modern audiovisual recording, need exists for some modicum of written recording, which can be rapidly scanned and selected from—indexing, cataloguing, tabulating data, et cetera—and for at least a few men and women who can form and interpret the written word. Mr. Pelton, himself, is the owner of a huge department store, employing over a thousand Illiterates; he must at all times have the services of at least fifty Literates.”
“And pays through the nose for them, too!” Pelton growled. It was more than fifty; and Russ Latterman had been forced to get twenty extras sent in for the sale.
“Now, since we cannot renounce Literacy entirely, without sinking to fellahin barbarism, and here I definitely part company with Mr. Pelton, he fears the potential power of organized Literacy. In a word, he fears a future Literate Dictatorship.”
“Future? What do you think we have now?” Pelton demanded.
“Nobody,” Mongery said, as though replying to him, “is stupid enough, today, to want to be a dictator. That ended by the middle of the Twenty-first Century. Everybody knows what happened to Mussolini, and Hitler, and Stalin, and all their imitators. Why, it is as much the public fear of Big Government as the breakdown of civil power because of the administrative handicap of a shortage of Literate administrators that is responsible for the disgraceful lawlessness of the past hundred years. Thus, it speaks well for the public trust in Chester Pelton’s known integrity and sincerity that so many of our people are willing to agree to his program for socialized Literacy. They feel that he can be trusted, and, violently as I disagree with him, I can only say that that trust is not misplaced.
“Of course, there is also the question, so often raised by Mr. Pelton, that under the Hamilton machine, the politics, and particularly the enforcement of the laws, in this state, are unbelievably corrupt, but I wonder—”
Mongery paused. “Just a moment; I see a flash bulletin being brought in.” The novice Literate came to his side and gave him a slip of paper, at which he glanced. Then he laughed heartily.
“It seems that shortly after I began speaking, the local blue-ribbon grand jury issued a summons for Chief Delaney to appear before them, with all his records. Unfortunately, the summons could not be served; Chief Delaney had just boarded a strato-rocket from Tom Dewey Field for Buenos Aires.” He cocked an eye at the audience. “I know Irish is going to have a nice time, down there in the springtime of the Southern Hemisphere. And, incidentally, the Argentine is one of the few major powers which never signed the World Extradition Convention of 2087.” He raised his hand to his audience. “And now, until tomorrow at breakfast, sincerely yours for Cardon’s Black Bottle, Elliot C. Mongery.”
“Well, whattaya know; that guy was plugging for you!” Ray said. “And see how he managed to slide in that bit about corruption,
