﻿ELECTRICITY 
By T-BONE SLIM 

JUICE is stranger than friction. 
A friendly stranger is half as strange as a strange friend. 
The world’s champion friend has 198 friends— two, former friends—are no more. 
China has 440,000,000 opportunities for a man looking for friends. 
The thinning out of the Chinese, in favor of western civilinsanity, has started in earnest—earnfest —to enslave the rest. 
The idea is to get the 440,000,000 Chinamen to support the world —an impossibility without thinning them out, and impossible after. 
China industrialized will number about 200,000,000 workers, and will be able to do much of Europe’s manufacturing, when not conducting an engagement with rice and chop-suey— and, when Europe’s unemployed hold extraordinary sessions with soup and petrified biscuits. 
Europe’s civilinsanity, too, will feel safer after China is deflated: remember how rosy the school girl complexion of “our” capitalism got after labor was deflated, 1920—? 
But, (note this) they do not deflate labor in America any more— they use a stomach-pump: they grab a man in the street, full of compulsory temperance, rush him to a hospital, and pump the constitutional sobriety out of him. 
Sometimes they save the man. Good I Bravo I But, neverthelittle, prohibition has killed more men than we lost in the last war— this is not favoring war nor prohibition — prohibition is the worst stuff I ever drank. 
I would not mention it if it wasn’t a thinning-out process—why carry on war when— when you can give the victims wood alcohol, hair oil, chloral and torso-ointment— ? 
If you want to thin ‘em faster, re-introduce saloons, legalize moonshine and denatured “gas.” 
Not much prohibitionary stimulant is being guzzled—little is SO effective, and SO cheap. Really, prohibition seems like a concession to the mounting gas bills— with what would you buy a radio if the people were allowed to spend the money for liquor? Only saloon-keepers would have Fords and “Neitherdynes.” 
Leaving all jokes aside, I would rather listen to a radio than a drunk, yes I would—as much as the pufformers stagger in their igloo—Sixon — but I would rather be half shot while doing it, yes I would. 
How helpless we Americans are. Law tells us when to work, what to eat, what to drink, what to chew and smoke, where and when to sleep; tells us what to think; tells us where to live; tells us when to die— where would we be without law? What would we do? It tells us not to celebrate our Independence with Chinese fire-crackers. 
I suggest — patriotically suggest —that we Ioan our laws to China, just as soon as we can spare them. 
Another thing in our favor is cheap food. It’s really astoundful! 
You can get two spoonfuls of oats and a tube of milk for 10 cents—everybody, too, seems to have a dime —ah, may the dimes never grow extinct! 
I stood by the cashier’s desk and watched the breakfast customers pay their bills. Here is what the register registered: 10, 15, 10, 05, 05, 10, 10, 10, 10, 05, 10, 20, 10, 10—I wonder where all that money is coming from.— A hundred years from now they’ll celebrate this prosperity and Coolidge— the one-man PROSPERITY.