﻿Nosebags. 
 
Just now found out Borah’s name is William E. . . . .Here I’ve been thinking all along that it was Axle. . . . Public men, like Borah, should try to get in front more—especially with their front, names. ‘Spose the E stands for Emil. 

Several of the public were apprehended last night as they were stealing freight from box cars—the Public’s morals lately have not been anything to brag about? The company’s bulls are kept busy watching the public lest that worthy augment his dwindling fortune—very little stealing is done by the bulls themselves. 

 The ultimate consumer has a clean bill of health. . . . Everybody, who steal, steal from him. 
Organized labor has a clean bill of health—especially the I. W. W. . . . It is only the unorganized that are compelled to get their living in a petty larceny way. 

Alas! Alas! that I should live to see the day when I must record that underfed freight handlers are in the habit of appropriating eatables (and delicacies even) from freight in process of transportation. Alas! 

(In Chicago.) 
The alleged board, in the alleged camps, fed to “actual” freight handlers is insufficient, and too damn ancient to keep alive that perfect specimen of physical force. 

The “force of the platorm” there or many times, after wrestling with their conscience, succumb to the bidding of their palate, running aterrible chance of doing their heavy sweatting in the next world, as the preacher would say. 

(Personally am saving my sweat for that eventuality.) 

I cannof help but feel that a working man should be allowed to eat —even in the harvest fields it has pained me greatly to put a nose cage on a horse to prevent it eating that which it helps to produce—of course I do not mean to say that freight handlers should get the “first crack” at goods in transport. No. I mean to say that equally good goods should be served them on equally good tables in equally good camps (homes). 

Food and clothing seem to be main sufferers from “shrinkage,” and on medium railroads this amounts to 250,000 in dollars and cents (per year) and is calculated as lost, strayed, stolen or damaged freight—the total estimate (possible and probable loss) then is carefully considered in adjusting freight rates to the end that the ultimate consumer, through the offices of the consignee, is s permitted to make up that which the company fails to provide its slaves. 

Should the employes, bulls and other citizens experience a particularly “honest” year—that is to say, if “mushrooms” were plentiful, fish biting good on Sundays and sample tobaccoes came back to style—the company would be $250,000 ahead of the game. 

The companys have a habit of contracting the boarding of their claves with a commissary co., said commisary to furnish food (to cull it food is perjury) at $9.00 per week. What part of this nine dollars goes back to the railroad I am unable to say, but the food, itself, is worth about $2.85 cents, in these profiteering days. 

Pilfering, even under these circumstances, is a very indirect way of obtaining additional victuals, in so far as “service” cannot be pilfered. . . . 

On the other hand, “our habit of making every social function the centre for the feeding of our bodies is essentially a relic of barbarism—of a time when man’s only forms of amusement was eating, sleeping and SLAYing”—of a time when the Ku Klux Klan was a factor in the otherwise sedate lives of our leading parasites—(which brings it up to date). 

Why should we pilfer our sustenance? What has become of the full meal? With trimmings? 

Let us, the people. organize in the I. W. W. 

Let us get all we got coming while here. 
T-BONE SLIM. 

P. S.— Is the capitalist system based on pilfering — When I look in my “nose bag” (lunch) and find therein two emaciated sandwiches and an apple (the apple to keep me cheerful about it) I very naturally open up the sandwiches to find the secret road to wealth— through men’s stomachs. And there it is: two slices of tissue of some dead animal. Maybe only a few short years ago this animal was well and able—and now it lies cold in death and in my sandwich. Still we never hear of a sandwich being called a mausoleum.—a grave! 

The boarding outfit has pilfered “me” to the extent the meat is cut very, very thin—and I, in turn, go south with a great big, fat, juicy piece of steak (wrapped in a clean handkerchief) from the breakfast table. Glory be, boys, this is pilfering in which we do not believe. 
Let us organize and organize to change this, ridiculous, pilfering, competitive condition. More steam! Make the system lay off of our table. 

Sleight of hand and speed of foot gets us but very, very, very little! 
T-B. S.