﻿T-BONE SLIM DISCUSSES CHOP SUEY 
 
The best way to spend a loose hour is flirting with a chop suey––but be sure the suey is young and fresh in memory. When you can no longer, and any more, eat American civilization, you can confront the celestial stew. Ah, laborers, there is nothing like the lobelia poultice; the mournful looking “special plain”––made from contented onions and martyred suey––there is peace and plenty; cheer, and tears subdued––heroism.  
(Editor: Get your hat; we’ll go down to the Noodle-Distillery). 
o o o 
Then well return and throw our organized eye over what’s left of the capitalist’s system . . what’s that––what’s that! You say that onions interprevents the consternation of mind over labor matters? Shame on you! Shame . . . . that’s just the trouble, heretofore we have not kept faith with the succulent, chopped heelskins and we have fallen into a knowtion that our lot is the rest of a “paradise lost.” Impossible! 
Impossible, since paradise lost is the same thing as suckers––success––It is lost before it gets started. We can’t dream a paradise; we must make it––and with the aid of the lord and onions! we’ll build one.  
But that isn’t what I was gonna say. 
But that is not what I’m talking about. 
In a subject such as this it is real difficult to pick out what to write–– a few words in favor of cherry pie might have the “proper” flavor: I hear denunciations to the left of me, to the right of me , to the rear of me, to the front of me, above me, below me, around me . . . peoples claim that cherry pie is a dulusion in size, shape and materia; they say the name is wrong; that, instead of cherry pie it should read pied-cherry––so depraved are they.  
I took apart one of those cute V-shaped morsels, intending to count the flies in it (to determine by majority rule if the disguised “dish” is not meat pie) and found only four whole flies and three fractions (where the ruthless pie knife had severed their last remains). Checking further, I found three ghastly cherries, one raisin, one genuine pearl button and a spoontul of something that looked like blue ointment (cornstarch, the national custard, probably)––all for ten cents. 
Not satistied with robbing you of wages, sticking you up for money, rolling you and picking your pockets, they now rob your stomach and different parts of your–– of your physiology; eyesight, ear-hear, teeth-bite, nose-smell, mind-thought, hair-curl, voice-talk, foot-walk, life-live, etc. They rob you blind, deaf, toothless, smelless, thoughtless, baldheaded, dumb, halt and dead––am I plain? 
The system is now so rotten that, unless we organize, we will be compelled to start each a system of his own––every man will have to carry a pie factory and a fly trap; a cherry tree and an oven. 
(lce-cream is frozen corn starch). 
But that’s not what I’m writing about––I’m particular, I am. 
(If you do your own washing, rub the contents of one cone in the collars, wring dry, stretch and “press” between two hot stones . . . . .) 
Such are conditions. Things are dressed too much––with a name. 
Ah, when I think of it, they take a dozen houseflies and make a cherry pie; they take twelve flies and make an apple pie; six pairs of buzzers make a mince pie––ah––two half-dozens of these playful birds make one “crusted buggy of the dessert!” Ah. . . . 
(Editor: Kindly tell your readers how many flies you devoured during July). 
I can’t make the point slam! 
The point is not that German farmers are feeding dog and beef, nor is it the terrible waste of heat (on a windy day) at the jungle fire––the point is that things are misnamed. To illustrate: We are pleased to call men who superintend, oversee, propose (accept or reject) “Executives.” How come? They tell me what to do, and I execute the necessary moves, and they are executives. Truly, how come? Who am I? Am I an executor, executionist or an execustiff? 
Seems to me that it was I “that grasped his pipedream,” in a flash; that it was I (labor) that exceuted every move––’xcutive! 
Improvements in farm machinery has no part in this article –– that would be sentimentalism. 
The fact that I heard two harvest hands (8 and 11 years old) complaining that “the two of them could not keep up with an eight-foot binder” should not influence me.