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Who really said it

When the water reaches the upper deck, follow the rats

Not Mencken's own line — he was quoting a stock political maxim Unknown — an American political maxim In print by 1928 · quoted by H. L. Mencken in 1940 and 1941
Not his line — Mencken was quoting a stock political maxim, as his own books confirm. In copyright

Mencken put the line in print twice — in his lecture “The Politician” (4 January 1940, collected in A Mencken Chrestomathy, 1949, p. 152) and in Newspaper Days, 1899–1906 (1941) — and both times he framed it as somebody else’s saying rather than his own. It was already in print in 1928, in Frank R. Kent’s Political Behavior, and no source we could verify records who said it first.

Last verified 10 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“When the water reaches the upper deck, follow the rats” an American political maxim of unknown authorship, in print unattributed by 1928 (Frank R. Kent, "Political Behavior"). H. L. Mencken quoted it, but did not coin it: in "The Politician" (A Mencken Chrestomathy, Knopf, 1949, p. 152) he gives it to an unnamed Washington reporter, and in "Newspaper Days, 1899–1906" (1941) he calls it one of "the familiar maxims of American statecraft." Quote dictionaries credit Claude Swanson, also without evidence. — quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to H. L. Mencken. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Estate of H. L. Mencken and Alfred A. Knopf (Penguin Random House)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the themes of wisdom, change and resilience. Theme: "When the water reaches the upper deck, follow the rats". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "When the water reaches the upper deck, follow the rats". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the line actually appears

Quoted in
A Mencken Chrestomathy
Piece
“The Politician,” from a lecture before the Institute of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University, 4 January 1940; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, published 10 June 1949, p. 152
Also quoted in
Newspaper Days, 1899–1906
Earlier in print
Frank R. Kent, Political Behavior (New York: William Morrow, 1928) — “in other words he follows the rats when the water reaches the upper deck”

As we left him his interlocutor, a gentleman grown gray in Washington and long ago lost to every decency, pointed the moral of the episode… “When the water reaches the upper deck,” he said, “follow the rats.” trimmed

From “The Politician” in A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 152. The ellipsis omits a companion maxim the same speaker delivers first: “In politics,” he said, “man must learn to rise above principle.” Note who is speaking — not Mencken, but an unnamed veteran Washington reporter on a presidential campaign train.

Scanned book
Open the scanned Knopf text
A Mencken Chrestomathy at the Internet Archive

How we checked it

  • Wikiquote ↗ lists the line in its Misattributed section for Mencken, noting that he quotes it in Newspaper Days, 1899–1906 (1941) as a maxim he learned from Al Goodman.
  • The primary text bears that out. In the full scan of A Mencken Chrestomathy ↗, the line closes the essay “The Politician” on p. 152 — spoken not by Mencken but by “a gentleman grown gray in Washington,” a fellow reporter on a campaign train.
  • It was in circulation well before Mencken printed it: Internet Archive full-text search finds it in Frank R. Kent’s Political Behavior (1928) ↗ — “in other words he follows the rats when the water reaches the upper deck” — with no attribution at all.
  • Quotation dictionaries send the credit elsewhere entirely. A full-text sweep of scanned books ↗ turns up Hugh Rawson, A. K. Adams, William Safire and Bruce Bohle all filing it under Claude Swanson — but only two of them, Adams and Bohle, name a source at all, and both name the same one: a column by the journalist Joseph Alsop.
In copyright

The wording quoted here is Mencken’s transcription, and both books that carry it — Newspaper Days, 1899–1906 (1941) and A Mencken Chrestomathy (Knopf, published 10 June 1949) — were first published after 1930 and remain in copyright in the United States. The maxim as a spoken saying is older and unowned; Frank R. Kent’s 1928 Political Behavior, which prints a looser version of it, is itself in the public domain.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Three names, none of them provable

This is a stock piece of American political cynicism that has been repeatedly adopted by whichever famous person happened to repeat it. Three claimants circulate, and the evidence for each is weaker than it looks.

H. L. Mencken quoter, not author

Mencken printed it twice, which is how his name got attached — but in Newspaper Days he introduces it as one of “the familiar maxims of American statecraft” that he first heard from an older man, and in “The Politician” he gives it to an unnamed Washington reporter. Wikiquote lists it as misattributed to him ↗.

Claude A. Swanson credited, unverified

Hugh Rawson calls it “Swanson’s Law” and writes that Swanson “generally gets credit for devising this law, perhaps because he was secretary of the navy” — a hedge, not a citation. Swanson took over the Navy Department in 1933 ↗, years after the saying was already in print, and the two reference books that source the credit at all — Adams and Bohle — trace it no further back than a Joseph Alsop column; the rest cite nothing.

“Al” Goodman Mencken's source

In Newspaper Days Mencken says it was from this man that he “first heard all the familiar maxims of American statecraft.” Wikiquote names him as Al Goodman, and Carl Bode’s biography Mencken agrees — it was “from Al Goodman’s bearded lips” ↗ that Mencken first heard the companion maxim. Goodman passed the sayings on; nothing suggests he invented them.

The honest answer is that nobody knows who coined it. It was a piece of newspaper-and-lobby folklore before any of these three men repeated it — in print unattributed by 1928 ↗, and passed hand to hand from there.

Context

A maxim with two Menckens

The line survives because it is a perfect joke about political survival: the rats are the professionals, and the professional’s skill is knowing exactly when to leave. Mencken loved it enough to use it twice, and using it twice is precisely what got his name welded to it.

But the two tellings do not match, and that is the tell. In Newspaper Days he files it among the stock sayings of the trade, picked up from an older Baltimore hand in his cub-reporter years. In “The Politician” — a lecture he gave at Columbia University on 4 January 1940 — it is the punchline of a campaign-train anecdote, delivered by a nameless correspondent “grown gray in Washington and long ago lost to every decency.” A man does not report his own epigram two different ways.

A man does not report his own epigram two different ways.

What the 1928 appearance shows

Frank R. Kent was a Baltimore Sun political columnist and a colleague of Mencken’s. His 1928 book Political Behavior — subtitled, aptly, The Heretofore Unwritten Laws, Customs and Principles of Politics as Practiced in the United States — uses the saying in passing, folded into his own sentence and credited to no one: a politician, he writes, “follows the rats when the water reaches the upper deck.”

That is how genuinely proverbial sayings behave in print. They arrive already worn smooth, with no author attached, and only later acquire a famous owner. Mencken’s own description — “the familiar maxims of American statecraft” — says the same thing about where it came from: everywhere, and no one in particular.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Change Resilience

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

H. L. Mencken — Misattributeden.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote's sourced page lists this line under Misattributed, noting Mencken quotes it in Newspaper Days as a maxim learned from Al Goodman.
A Mencken Chrestomathy (Knopf)archive.org

Full scan of the Knopf collection. "The Politician" runs to p. 152, where the line is spoken by an unnamed Washington reporter.
Frank R. Kent, Political Behavior (1928)archive.org

The Baltimore Sun columnist's 1928 book, which uses the maxim unattributed — the earliest printing we located.
Full-text search: "when the water reaches the upper deck"openlibrary.org

Searches inside millions of scanned books; shows the Kent 1928 use, the Newspaper Days passage, and the quote dictionaries that credit Claude Swanson.
Hugh Rawson, The Unwritten Laws of Lifearchive.org

Files the saying as "Swanson's Law" while conceding Swanson only "generally gets credit" for it, "perhaps because he was secretary of the navy."
Claude A. Swansonen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the Virginia senator (1862–1939) who became FDR's Secretary of the Navy in 1933 — after the maxim was already in print.

The name it travels under

H. L. Mencken — the quoter, not the coiner

H. L. Mencken

1880–1956 · Baltimore journalist, critic and lexicographer

Henry Louis Mencken was the most quotable American newspaperman of his century — a Baltimore Sun columnist, co-founder of The American Mercury, and author of The American Language, whose contempt for democratic pieties made him a permanent supplier of epigrams. That reputation is exactly why loose lines drift toward him: anything sour and well-turned sounds like something he would have said. In this case he did say it — out loud, in print, twice — but always with quotation marks around it and someone else’s voice inside them.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Cite this

H. L. Mencken, "The Politician," in A Mencken Chrestomathy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 152 — where the line is spoken by an unnamed Washington reporter, not by Mencken. Also quoted, as one of "the familiar maxims of American statecraft," in Mencken, Newspaper Days, 1899–1906 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941). In print earlier, unattributed, in Frank R. Kent, Political Behavior (New York: William Morrow, 1928).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘When the water reaches the upper deck, follow the rats’?” Last verified 10 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/when-the-water-reaches-the-upper-deck-follow-the-rats/

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