﻿SOUP LINES 
 
Last night I got an idea. I found it running around in my head. Funny thing, about ideas: They always get into a fellow worker’s head and interfere with his brain when it is resting. 

Well, this idea was looking for an exit—so I reached over and got hold of my pencil and chewed on it a while. Then I decided to pass it on to posterity. (The idea, not the pencil.) 

We, the working people of the United States of America and of the world, have made up our minds we have no special hankering to take part in any panic. . . And that we can get along very well without a panic . . . And, that we will not accept a panic, if offered to us . . . And, if the masters do not like our way of doing business they are free to go to some other country . . . 

The masters in this our country have been holding a carnival of selfishness. They have lined their pockets with our cash until their pants are ripping down the sides. They have had one Hallelujah of a time. They have blowed in our loose change on magnetoes and self-starters until their backyards are full of scrapped limousines. They have laid in bed until their kidneys got sore, and now they have made arrangements for our funeral procession. Just think of it, after toughing it out for 30 or 40 years on liver and ham (burger) . . . we are scheduled to die by starvation next winter. It’s tough . . . tough! It ‘brings tears to my eyes to think of all the work I will miss next summer. The wages, too, may be higher by that time. It’s tough! 

Take a fool’s advice, don’t put in your coal supply now . . . Wait till you get some money. 

In the meantime, let us use Ham & Eggs for our complexion. 

The masters are going to start soup-lines. If there’s anything I love, it’s soup— well-cooked soup with lots of water. 

Who knows but we will become a nation of soup-eaters? And win fame! 
Locomotive boilers would make wonderful pots in which to cook the water. The soup can be mixed in the “tender”. It will go through the injector, certainly. 

Soup-lines! Oh. America! No country can compare with you in munificence. 

The next question is: What kind of soup do the workers want? A general referendum ballot should be got out. A special election held. 

I’m against cabbage soup— it doesn’t agree with me . . . and it won’t go trough the injector. If you want me in the soup-line you will have to make Bull-young cube soup. 

By the way, the master, too, is a soup-liner, but he doesn’t stand in the soup-line. No, he has his soup brought to him, in cubes, delivered at the rear entrance . . . he has an address. 

Gee, I wish I was a master, just for one winter . . . Nothing to do. Free board. Nice warm rooms . . . No war to fight . . . No bonus to fight for . . . No standing in the shivering soup-line . . . among the gaunt, hungry, no-good workers. 

Wonderful strides civilization has made. I look about me and see the great gains labor has made: We have fought consistently “on the flat of our backs” until we have succeeded in abolishing solid meals, substituting soup, instead. 

That’s because we were organized wrong. We were organized in the A. F. of L. and were fair to the boss, who is never fair to us. We have put the boss on the “fairlist”. 

I wish I was as sure of my soup as a pig is of his swill ... You see, I must trust the same outfit which has been clubbing me, jailing, me, shooting me, hanging me, and so on, for my soup. That outfit has a perfect right in law and fact to say whether I shall live or die. Why? Because there, is no red card in your pocket. 

But I have a solution. I am offering it free—gratis— to suffering humanity. Here it be: 

Whereas, the warehouses being full of food, it becomes imperative that capital and labor get together, and sit down in brotherly love, and eat this food. When the warehouses get empty the master can put his hand into his pocket and hire a few slaves to fill them up again. 

Whereas, it would be very difficult to find out who owns this food in the warehouses— who produces it— we go on record that it be divided according to the size of men’s stomacks, or . . . share and share alike. There’s enough of it. 

Your schemes and business deals, my lord capitalist, to get money from us his winter will avail you nothing. We are broke . . . Honest to goodness, cross my heart, we are broke, broke! 
You might as well split the chuck, or . . . pack up. 
You have the keys in your hands. The food belongs to us. 
T-Bone Slim.