﻿T-BONE SLIM DISCUSSES ELIMINATION CONTESTS 
 
Rumor has it that many men beg for a living. Rumor probably is correct, for the once’t.— But, if so, that is not saying much for the advantages work is supposed to bring, but doesn’t—assuming that some men beg voluntarily, which they don’t. 

And furthermore to disabuse the reader’s mind of misgivings I freely, and blushingly confess that I work for a living, not that I get it— but merely from the force of habit, for 
I do not— to be explicit. 

I do not see where the farmer has any growl coming because he is bankrupted once in a lifetime. The harvest, worker goes bankrupt every time it rains, generally twice a week, Mondays and Friday morning—yet you don’t hear him call for “box-car-bloc”; to bear witness that the granger has his “goat.” 

Workers are increasing, work is decreasing—not only in the harvest fields. Not only the “combine,” which does, with two men, the work that ordinarily would require 15 men and 28 horses— needless to say the “Combine” is a light eater —but also in other industries the same thing is happening.—Statistics, unofficial: 
A present day locomotive is capable of hauling a load that would require 19 crews of 30 years ago (these 18 crews were in the harvest field this year watching the combine perform.) 
The “steamboat” Levi Nathan can carry ten of the-greatest-thirty-years-ago ships today, on her hurricane deck and not strain a stanchion— the crews of the “ten” would fill Levi’s every passenger space. Every day in every way work is getting scarcer and scarcer and the jobs are getting fewer, even as the fewer get jobs— every day in the same ol’ way. Ach! 

You can’t make six farms from one. Can’t give one pitchfork to six men “all in a Iump” at one and the same moment. Prospective slaves are getting thicker and thicker, 1-3-7 to a family. Jobs, as I said before, couple of times, are being eliminated and this, too, without making any provisions against the rainy day for ye hasbeen willing ex-worker. —The steam shovel does the work that would require 720 men, day for day, and it does it with six men (operation that of loading). These 714 men not needed to shovel dirt were riding on a long freight drawn by that big locomotive; they were on their way to Kansas to watch the combine eat straw. Their train met another one on a aiding loaded to the “gunnls” with harvest hands going back to take a peek at the steam shovel eating mud—and in the meantime these men are not eating. Some of them. 
Now, what are the managers of our destinies doing about this. Every industry is using less and less men. Every family is laying awake nights trying to devise more help . . . 
It would seem they are doing nothing. But they are —There is war. Periodically they thin us out—that is, the enemy thins us out and we return the compliment with eclat. You know, (while I’m wrong) the world is like a rowboat; you can fill it too full. (Eh, editor, let me be wrong, ‘slong’s I’m in earnest.) Like water in a glass, you can heap it, and heap it, until the glass contains more than its fill . . Thus, you see, the thinning out process, called war (we’re mad at each other) is the best the diplomats could invent to relieve the congestion in the situations-wanted columns, and in the slave marts. I’m wrong, I know I am, and I want to be wrong. Commercialism is not the cause, of war. Human nature is not the cause of war. Rulers can high-spade for markets and human nature can be trimmed down to fit Peace. Lack of Help-Wanted ads is the sole cause of war. 
Steam shovels have their jobs. 
A life of souplines and gasoline lines (like at Los) would be adding insult to injury so the great statesmen of the Great Powers get their heads together and declare war: “Whadda ye say we clean house,” says the Premier of Booblany.— 
“Think we can get along without ‘em,” inquires the Chance’lorr of Goofstria. 
“Jes’ thin ‘em out,” roars the premier, “ain’t ye got no diplomatic training at all?” 
“Awright,” says the Chance’lorr, “let Humbria start it an then we’ll all jump in; so that the thinning out doesn’t get too spotted.” 

Although I’m wrong that is the way wars start so far as I’m concerned—and I can prove that we have been thinned out. I’ve got the figures. Results are what count. 
Ye reap what ye sew, plus. Grapes don’t grow on barbvines. When I plant spuds I get potatoes, not bibles. 
Apology: Things are not what they seem. To wit: Since the automobiles were invented the number of grade crossings killings has increased 2000 per cent(?) Naturally one would think the railroads had a grudge against these inoffensive and smaller machines. Then again it would seem that the horse not being there, to do the thinking, was the cause of many an untimely death. But each hypo-tetanus (?) would be as wrong as to call the Kaiser “the decomposed monarch of Germany.” The true cause of increased crossings killings must forever reside in the fact that the auto, with its increased speed gets there in time and therefore permits of a greater number of people enjoying the thrill that comes only once in a lifetime.—T-b. S.