﻿T-BONE SLIM DISCUSSES CHILDISH RIGHTS 
 
(POLITICO-ECONIMO) 
I have been brought up in the belief that a ballot is a sacred thing of great value to the possessor thereof— and I still hold that it is sacred, if not valuable. 
I have been taught — it was drilled into me—that our forefathers fought for it, hollered for it, sweated for it, bled for it and died for it— and then sold it, so much per sell. 
Now, if it can be sold it must be valuable; if it can be sold it must be sacred. And when a person is denied that sacred and valuable right it is up to him to holler, sweat, bleed and die for it—or cry for it, if he or she is a child. So have I been taught. 
Unfortunately, by law, a child is prevented the exercising of his right—this particular right—and yet, what do we find? Do we find our courts making any effort to remedy this evil—if any evil it is? Nay we do not. Our courts that have been wakeful in looking after the rights of our children have, in some inexplicable manner, neglected to restore to them these rights denied them from birth. 
Only recently our wide-awake supreme, court found that a “Child labor law” was in violation of the rights of children to toil, and in violation of the United States constitution. According to this decision, the “child” was restored the “right to labor,” as long and as hard as it may desire—not otherwise provided for by other laws that may exists in violation of said constitution. 
Now it seems to me that if a child has a right to labor, and the supreme court has given recognition to that right, that a great step has been taiken . . . no step forward could possibly be greater. But it happens that the child is denied the right no vote. It is i deprived of the sacred privilege inherent in our institutions. It is alienated from the enjoyment of the advantages of free legal exercise of- the suffrage ; as well as the illegal exercise thereof, for a consideration. 
Now, I would like to know by what rule of consistency and by what consistency of rule does the court declare in favor of, and restore labor rights to babies; and, still persist in denying them the right to vote? 
Our fathers fought and bled and died— dammit— to give these babes the right to labor. The bloody footprints of our sockless granddads is still fresh in the Valley Forge of our memory—were they made in vain? Washington crossed the Delaware in the dead of night, that [rest of the text is missing]

