Smart Guy

I CAN GET IT FOR You WHOLESALE-- Jerome Weidman--Simon & Schuster ($2).

Boys in Manhattan's public schools are taught, among other things, that honesty is the best policy, that Kipling's It is a great poem with a practical moral message. But, as Jerome Weidman says, "It isn't what you're taught; it's what you learn." Jerome Weidman went to an East Side public school, thought his classmates "a pretty decent bunch." Meeting them again ten years later, he wondered "what had turned the kids I'd played with into these sharp little wise guys . . . what had happened to Kipling?" I Can Get It for You Wholesale, Author Weidman's first novel, partly answers his question. The East Side Jews he writes about with such authority are almost enough to tie an old-fashioned U. S. stomach into Nazi knots. Manhattanites who brush elbows every day with loud, cheap slickers like Author Weidman's hero, who tells the tale himself, may find the story much too true to be entertaining. Others will give it a good hand for a smart piece of work smartly done.

Harry Bogen, born on the East Side, and now living with his mother in The Bronx, was a smart guy and knew it better than anybody. A brief experience as a shipping clerk in the Seventh Avenue garment district gave him his big idea. With a radical acquaintance, Tootsie Maltz, as front, he engineered a shipping clerks' strike, succeeded in tying up deliveries in the garment district. At that point Bogen organized his own delivery service, soon had a near-monopoly in the garment trade. As reward for forensic services rendered he took Tootsie in as partner.

Bogen knew their monopoly could not last, so while business was still good he sold his interest to Tootsie, started his own dress business. His partners, both lured away from other firms, were a crack salesman and a first-rate designer, Meyer Babushkin. As soon as he had picked the salesman's brains, Bogen froze him out. Thanks to Babushkin's ability and Bogen's shrewdness, the money rolled in. Meantime Bogen's mother began to worry about him, tried to settle him down by making a match with a solid, sensible Jewish girl. Bogen saw through her schemes, but there was something about Ruthie he could not help admiring. If he had not met Actress Martha about that time, he might even have married Ruthie.

But Martha took up an increasing amount of his time and his money. To make a hit with her he drew more and more cash from the business. To get the cash, he persuaded simple-minded Babushkin to open a private account, cash firm checks there and hand him the money. Bogen explained this procedure to his partner by saying that it was a scheme for beating the Government out of a big income tax. As Bogen's pursuit of Martha got more expensive but no more successful, so much money went down the drain that the firm's credit was imperilled. Suddenly there was a creditors' meeting, bankruptcy proceedings.

In the referee's court the matter of Babushkin's cash checks soon came to light. Babushkin could give no reasonable explanation. Bogen swore his partner had been victimizing him. Babushkin went to jail. Smart Guy Bogen, totting up his assets, found he had $20,000, a car, an apartment, a snappy wardrobe, an actress. And he was still a smart guy.

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