Too Much Efficiency

[from dust jacket flap 1930 Grosset & Dunlap reprint]

"I'll guarantee to take any old-fashioned business, put it on its feet, and increase its earning capacity in a year," was what the Efficiency Expert said with pardonable pride.

"I know one thing you can't reform," retorted his well-pleased customer, "the business of running an American household!"

Whereat the Expert, after a blank moment, took him up -- and here you have the result.

The purpose of the young man who represented "The Economy and Efficiency Corporation, Limited," was to reorganize the household of John W. Brooke on the same basis as his business had been reorganized. As John W. Brooke's children saw it -- here was a fool who rushed in where angels feared to tread. And yet H. Hedge E. E. took the job. Naturally the result is amusing. It is more than that, it is riotously funny. And interwoven through this narrative is a charming love story where the various phases of efficiency finally meet and mingle for happiness.

The most fun thing about Too Much Efficiency is translating the prices of the rich kids' 1917 extravagances into today's dollars, thank you BLS CPI inflation calculator. The three baskets of $1.50 December strawberries on their breakfast table -- $114 in 2022. The $200/mo allowance Connie gets above and beyond her room, board, and wardrobe? $5075. Her $150 hat? $3805. Heady stuff! And I can see why it played well as a reprint in the Depression '30s, when wealthy young things being taught a lesson was in the cultural air (think "It Happened One Night" [source: "The Night Bus", Cosmopolitan, Samuel Hopkins Adams], think "My Man Godfrey" [source: "Irene, The Stubborn Girl", Liberty Magazine, Eric Hatch]). Unlike a lot of the others, though, where the young women well and truly learn, Too Much Efficiency takes a sharp right, more "Grease"-style, toward the end. I'm on the fence as to how well this actually works, but it's a snappily-written and frequently funny, ride. Usual Rath fare, in other words. And the Efficiency Engineer's Prophylactic Party (Chapter XV) is uncannily pandemic-ready.