﻿T-BONE SLIM DISCUSSES PARENTS BY PROXY (HALF AND HALF) 
 
Systems are instituted among men, with an ideal attached. 
Starting from an ideal it launches forth bravely into the affairs of men, and great hopes are entertained for its future. Like a child, it will one day be a president, a lawyer, a doctor— never a banker, for obvious reasons. The system grows and grows, goes to school, plays hookey, steals grapes, smokes cigarettes, and otherwise comports itself discreditably. . . . The fond parent is obliged to revise the program laid out for the child — I mean, the system. 
He’ll never make a president now. He’ll be a molder or a machinist. 
The child (system) grows more. 
It comes home “drunk on hard cider.” He’ll never make a machinist; but mebbe, he’ll make a shoveler or a poet—? 
The system grows to man’s estate, picks a gooseberry (robs clothesline). 
He’ll never “make a poet.” 
The system goes “on the bum” altogether, drinks “moon,” demoralizes boys, kicks in store fronts, holds up people, trains and traffic—the best you can make of him now is a dick, a stool, a professional witness. 
Still it deteriorates. 
It takes to dope. 
Becomes an all-around pervert.— 
What has become of the ideal? 
What has become of the glorious program laid out for this child —wonder child? What was the flaw inherent in the system that caused it to go “haywire”? 
President — Lawyer — Doctor — Molder — Machinist — Shoveler — Poet — “Dick” — Stool — P. Witness — Dope Fiend. 
And still slipping, defended by deluded parents still hoping and still scheming to find a niche where it, the system, may anchor in its mad downward plunge. What of it if they are parents by proxy only, the evidence is conclusive— the next step is insanity. 
Every symptom is there. 
The wonder child, the system, the very incomplete order, the elementary organization—the capitalist system of labor exploitation— is going nuts, bughouse. .... It never did convalesce. Always it has been in retreat and eventually, soon, it will be among the things that are no more.