﻿T-BONE SLIM DISCUSSES COINCIDENCES AND COMPLEXES 
 
Right around the corner from the I. U. 440 hall in Cleveland, on East 9th St, is the “Press” plant. — By the way, the Press is the least dead of the Cleveland papers. — Take it from me, an expert on arrested respiration. 
In this frowning edifice, in a mental straight-jacket, sits one of the brightest of Press reporters — great beads of sweat stand out on his brow only to melt and commingle with his 15½ collar. His face denotes great agony of spirit, such as could be induced only by a pair of tight shoes on a hot day. 
Something terrific portends and the reporter turns fend squirms as each new mysterious shock surges to overwhelm him— poor man. He knows that “worlds hang in the balance,” at this moment; that a fissure may be then and there forming between the superiority complex and solid cocrete; that the firmaments are probably right now crashing down on upper Euclid—oh, if he only knew! What a front page it would make! 
We will let the scribe suffer and proceed to explore the cause of his ailment: T-bone Slim, the noted author and authority on sanitary unionism had arrived in town. Traffic cops gasped, spun their semaphores around, wildly waved down all traffic that Slim might leisurely implant his aristocratic feet on the far side of the boulevard. . . . 
A low browed chauffeur permits his car to roll one inch too far, and the police officer uses the full force of his rusty profanity in an eloquent plea for courtesy: “What do you mean?” he yells, “what do you mean by endangering the life and equanimity of T-BONE Slim?”—That’s what he said, and he put special emphasis on my middle name.— At that moment the reporter, referred to, began to grow uneasy— telepathy or leprosy, I calls it. 

Uninjured, our hero arrived at the hall in due time and began writing his historical record about the one pounder, entitled “Safety First” — which no doubt you have read and condemned— quite unconscious of the mental torture he was causing the inoffensive reporter impaled upon the staff of the Cleveland Press. 
Every move of Slim’s No. 2 (pencil) was like a dagger thrust to the reporter, and when Slim finished his article and broadcast it to the amazed world (from Station I. U. 440), by reading it aloud to the bunch there, the reporter burst from his bonds, lethargy, or whatever you call it, and dashed off a column (screed) on his Overland (or Underwood) about one “Bailey,” who guards the federal reserve funds in a bullet-proof cage. 
The statue I called Labor, he calls Energy — thiswise: “Unlike Energy, that bronze guardian of the south side of the bank, ‘Bailey’ hasn’t any cannon concealed beneath his feet.”— Don’t know, is this an invite or bait?— And the ladies with the daggers and cash box, he manhandles thiswise: . And unlike Integrity and Security, those scantily-draped giant flappers of German extraction who guard the west portals of the edifice, his brow (Bailey’s) is not festooned with banana-draped wreaths.” Yes he has no bananas. — He had to bring that in too. 
Now my point is this: Our industrial union papers get out on the street dated one or two days late and thus it is that these inferiority complexes of this daily and hourly papers, and impoverished substitutes reach the people before our genuine literature has a chance to wend its weary way to Chicago and back. Despite every efficiency in Sol’s office they will scoop us unless our writers cease “broadcasting” and even then our papers should bear a date that is fresh in the memory of the inhabitants. Some day we will have a daily paper. Some day we will have daiIy papers. Some day we will run all the papers. And, in the meantime: we will do the very best we can, increasing “our best” as the necessity arises and the conditions require and complexes permit. 
What man can conceive can be done. Nothing is impossible. Everything is possible (i. e., Darwin conceives; Burbank provides.))  
P. S.— Ole Hanson, Seattle Wartime Mayor, “Pinched” as Horse Thief. — Herald Examiner, Chicago, 1 May 20th— News is scarce.