﻿Can’t Get Worse 
 
Not feeling very well. I am curious to know what kind of an article of literatoor a sick man can turn out. It lies before you: 
We of the intelligent minority are in the habit of getting all puffed up (like a kernel of rice) without changing our quantity (and as to quality I can’t see no difference) so I got to thinking that about “now” is a good time to drag out a couple well preserved skeletons and put them on exhibition: 
Among the treasures handed down to us from the early settlers is the wonderful discovery, by the intelligible minority of those days, that the world is flat. It was only a mere handful of leading thinkers who expounded that theory with great nimbleness of eloquence, in those days—and, it is only recently that other minorities espouse the cause of the round world. 
Disregarding whether we live on the outside or inside the world and ignoring Slim’s theory that the world is goose-egged, slightly curving like a cucumber, which accounts for the long days and short nights (nights being at the ends of the cucumber), we will record the fact that the intelligent minority was wrong, the world isn’t flat— they were wrong then; right now? 
Again the intelligent minority inter-communicated with God and duly reported their findings to the masses, in return for their everyday bread—the Lord too went on record that the world is flat— not that it makes any difference to us. Right then? Wrong now? 
Some scientists, by studying the contour of a man’s foot say the world is flat and point to flat-footed people as proof of their contention; while other equally scientific gentlemen point out how admirably nature has formed the high instep so that man can stand comfortably on the top of the world—when he gets there. 
Theories, theories, theories are Truth if o. k.’d by the many and remain true until exploded by the Few . . . 

“God must have loved bums, he made so many of them!” Him in all His glory, and he in all his squalor. Wonderful love! “Greater, love hath no man,” etc, than the love of theee two. Fiancees of God, dressed in rags! I’m afraid this love is similar to that of two tom cats during dog-days. 
Well, well — God’s love for bum and bums’ love for God—it seems to be an affair of the heart, and those of the intelligent minority that think that life is a spark burning in water and that it is composed of two poles, positive and negative, are again discredited. The theory that brain is a positive pole and liver a negative pole won’t get far in these days of heart analysis. 

The intelligent minority is productive of many brilliant theories, some plausible and a few acceptable. But each and every theory must meet the test of majority thought (which is the court of last resort), before it can find stability of any degree. The despised majority, of the so-called puny brain, must he the “ones” to amend, accept or reject the brain progeny of the minority. They are the ones that decide whether the intellectual has had a legitimate offspring or merely a mental miscarriage. 
And isn’t it queer that the “benighted” majority is able to do this so effectively? Many a fond parent, of a thought (or somebody else’s thought) has had life blasted “for keeps” because: “The ignorant majority is too sluggish to see the fine points of my program. 
True for him, they might not have seen the fine points, but you can bet they didn’t miss many bum points. 

It is small consolation to us to say the working class is too apathetic to take kindly to our eloquence. They may be that and more, what of it? They are what they are and they are the factors we are dealing with, as they are—not as we would have them but as they want to be—it is their privilege. Our stuff, which is Industrial Unionism, ordinarily gets across so let us not become discouraged. We can improve our style of delivering goods. 
Personally I think our progress has been wonderful considering the layout we’re bucking. A man can’t make much progress when he strikes a pocket of pitch every little while. 
In conclusion: I merely wish to remark that we of the working class have been eating out of the paw of organized capital too long. A change at this time is highly important if not imperative . . . Afdter we get them to eat from our hand I think it advisable to let them testify as to the justice of such proceedings, in a free country to be. 
What do you say, fellow worker; have we got our second wind?— (T Bone Slim.)