﻿LESS THAN JEALOUSY 
 
It is now conceded by the capitalist press that capital is, entitled to a “reasonable return” on “investment;” labor to receive “living wage”— who get the surplus? or, is the surplus included among those “reasonable returns.” “All those in favor of giving capital a living return for investment, sit down.” 

Considerable agitation is being pulled off to have Ellis Island “cleaned.” Suppose they are successful? Suppose the immigrants get notions? Suppose they acquire an exaggerated idea of our living standards? And then suppose they strike a boarding camp?— Bolshevism! 
I would suggest “these agitators” visit a few railroad camps and get an idea of American standards before they put “phoney” notions into the heads of “these” simple folks. 

General Electric Company estimates a stroke of lightning contains 50,000,000 volts; a flash lasts one-thousandth part of a second; energy produced is only 500 kilowatts—That’s what. 
At the rate of eight cents per kilowatt-hour charged, the value of one of these discharges would be only 1.2 cents 
Yes, and I believe if they will look over those figures again they will find that lightning owes us money. 

Fellow Worker Robot shows, by his faith in the counsel of T.-B. S., that he needs no advice on the matter of heart trouble and hello girls. 
As for myself ; I have my head and hands full of quinine and morbus. Besides that I am going in for whiskers on a large scale as I figure them a powerful factor in calling bread down from the skies, as the cost of living climbs up. You say these girls have been blacklisted? That settles it. 

I hardly ever read the “press” when I can get our own papers, but the editor here, being fed up on third-grade journalism, askes me to kind of keep an eye on ‘em while I’m in town, so I got to reading in the boob’s column, about a major in Cleveland who took violent exception to the “yellow flag pole on Mayor Kohler’s Public Square; the pole itself is a beautiful orange color; as far from yellow as the uniform the major was wearing. A beautiful orange even so as a yellow taxi cab to which the grand army pays tribute. The color is entirely too rich to be called yellow. Any way I hope the major has no objections to yellow cold stripes on the defenders of our country—our country. 

Vast difference in living in dwellings and dwelling in living. 

I behold the powdered parasite upon the avenuoo, as I am convalescing, and I marvel at a society that ruins these butterflies and makes of them languid drones unfit for anything. Unfit even for the obvious. 
I behold the beefy be-jeweled matron and a shiver passes over my frame. I speak of this to a fellow worker keeping pace with me. “Slim,” he says, “you’re jealous of the easy living they have.” Jealous? Jealous! I should say I am. How could it be otherwise? Here I’ve been laboring twenty-five years, never had enough of anything, have nothing now; of course, I’m jealous . . . You must be a mind reader . . Of course, I’m jealous— anything less than jealousy would be idiocy.