﻿Words and Woods and Wobs 
 
If you own property you have a “legal right to put a fence around it and keep it under lock and key, regardless of whether it interferes with other people’s rights. So much have I learned. 

If you have a house and lot, or a lot without a house, you have a legal right to build a fence around it, and keep everybody off it. So much I have learned. 

You have a legal right to build a fence around a farm—or ten farms; you have a legal right to build a fence around a country; a state, a country or a continent, provided you do not block the streets and obstruct traffic—that is; id your legal title is clear. 

You have a legal right to build a fence around the world; and any judge will grant you an injunction prohibiting all persons from inhabiting or trespassing on your broad acres. In fact you can tell everybody to go to Hell, if you are a property owner. But you cannot force anybody to go to hell against their will, (not while our laws give gum half the “right-of-way” on county roads, state highways and city thoroughfares). You can only advise him. You are only a sort of “advisory board”. 

The time is fast approaching when a few men will own the world. The product of labor are being taken away from him as fast as he produces them, carted away in carriages, bensine buggies and gasoline go-abouts; go-devils, fresnos, handcars and wheel-barrows—every conceivable form of vehicle, push or pull, is used to haul away the fruits of labors’ toil. 

PART II. 
And labor is paid wages (to console him). The boss picks out “suitable” wages to pay his men. In the woods (east of prairies) a “team of sawyers” cut over 50 logs per day. For this work each team gets $3, which amounts to 6 cents per log. Unskilled sawyers cannot cut 30 logs per day, hence a “green team” receiving $3 per day actually receives a bonus of 4 cents per log (more than the expert woodsmen). This is merely an instance where skill doesn’t count. Your skill only benefits the boss, anyway. 

Now considering that an unskilled team gets 10c per log and a skilled team gets 6c per log, it impresses me that the skilled loggers lose 4c on every log they cut. On 50 logs they los $2. Two dollars United States money is lost every day to the skilled sawyers for no other reason than skill—efficiency. 

Skill is a terrible thing for a poor man to be afflicted with and, for the life of me, I cannot see how a lumbcrjack can afford to be so skillful—in a hundred days die loses $200; in a year he loses $626; in a hundred years he loses $62,600. That is: he helps to lose this amount—his partner loses the other half. Sixty-two thousand, six hundred dollars is lost in a short period of a hundred years—all because “he” is a little more skillful than is the other “team.” Thus, under this system, skill is not a paying proposition—skill is not rewarded in this case nor in any case I know of. 

You may be getting twice as much as a “common laborer” receives, still you are defrauded of a part of your living. 

A very common laborer gets about one-third of a living wage. A semi-skilled worker gets over half a living. A skilled worker gets almost a living. An expert workman gets a semi-decent living. A technical expert gets a fairly decent living. But the one arid only “liver” in this world is the parasite—who never works. 

Three and one-half pounds of rib-roast, for Sunday’s dinner, is a momentous problem with a mechanic’s wife—and invariably you will find here ordering a pound of chopped meat (hamburger) as a compromise. 

From the top to the bottom, bottom to the top we need labor organization—a one big union of all indusrial workers. 

The need is to combat capitalism’s efforts to deprive us of the “necessaries” of life. 

Day by day capitalism tells us what to eat, where to eat, where to sleep and where and when to die. We are instructed as to “what to wear.” We are told what unionism is acceptable to the boss—capital! 

Every day in every way capitalism is fastening its “say-so” on us. The packers have an absolute voice in “how much meat you will eat with serial sausages.” 

The woolen trust tells you today how much burlap you must wear with your new overcoat—but why continue? 

For forty years you’ve been trying to get together (in craft unions) through your agents, “Powderly’s, Keefe’s and Gompers. Why not take matters into your own hands and spend 40 minutes joining the Wobblies — The Industrial Workers of the World? 

Capitalism can no longer reward its friends. It is looking for a way out—in war? 
War cannot relieve capitalism unless it is so arranged that it will reduce the per capita of the exploiting class. The number of our “dependents” is too great for us to support. Some parasites must go to the front!— (T-Bone Slim). 

P. S. —Mind your fellow worker, logger, I forgot to tell you (in the body of this article) that the $62,600 you lose every 100 years can all be saved if you will organize and slow down on the job to such an extent that you give the boss only the full product of his wages. Also: Don’t worry about anybody building a fence around the world—they may run barbwire through our woods but when they start fencing the old globe they will find the law has been changed to read: The World and all its possessions belongs to the Workers of the World. 
Hurrah! I see it, I see it coming. 
“Let ‘em gom”—pay day. 
When the boss starts hollering for the full product of his toil, and proves the toil, the day is come!—(T-B. S.) 

Through an error in proof reading or typesetting, the last line of T-Bone Slim’s article in last issue, was made to read, “The Steel Workers are organized.” It should have been, “The Steel Workers are NOT organized.”