﻿T-BONE SLIM DISCUSSES AD LIBRE 
 
The month of March has arrived in Duluth safely—rather early this year, true; seeing as how it came ahead of good ol’ February and wouldn’t let January Finish it’s “dirty” work. 
Even while Florida shivers on the shores of the southern sea. 

The only reason the plates insist that sawmill and factory whistles be blown each morning is because the fear, if slaves are left an option on the question, no one will get up first—they’d all want to see if George is stirring. 

“The only thing the plutes [fear] is power.”—BRITT SMITH. 

When the days begin to lengthen- The cold begins to strengthen. 

We very readily understand how a man can be as “broke” one day all. “Krizmuz” but we cannot understand how he happens to be “busted” 364 days before Xmas. 

If he is “broke” the day after we can blame Sandy Claws; but if he’s broke almost a year before, then we must blame slow income — dilatory dividends — truant distribution! 

“The lord made the world in six days.”—it is still growing.  
He didn’t have enough words to finish the job. The I. W. W. volunteers to finish the job. 

Experts have called sabotage “the withdrawal of efficiency.” Well and good—we care not what they call it, and we will be the last man to call them liars—everybody will have taken on his turn before us—in fact, we may decide to retain our opinion in the privacy of our secrecy and act noncommital-like or reciprocate—or grunt. 
But it has come to my knowledge that handles on syrup pails are hooked up so “cunningly” that they slip off in the most cute manner and the pail released from bondage sinks to the linoleum and lies there on it right side no longer filled with syrup but with anguish—the flood of nice juicy syrup spreading far and near like burning lava scorching the risque linoleum. I’m working on harness that, I’m confident, will break those outlaw pails to domestic uprighteousness). 
My reason for gathering my wits and concentrating them on the science of invention is not because one pail of syrup will ruin $14 worth of linoleum. Far from it. 
I own no linoleum. 
My move is selfish. 
I take that damn pail and fill it full of delicious coffee and carry it out to the job, figuring on stimulating my drooping soul with a mouthful of pure java.—Alas, I raise my hand and wipe the sweat off my brow. . . . 
Alas, I bend my weary frame and lift the steaming pot from the fire— I can see my fellow workers licking their chops—I raise the pall to my trembling lips. — Alas, as I stand there like Napoleon on a flat-car, I twig breaks under my foot—heavens drop—firmaments explode. 
There’s the damn coffee in the snow! My jaw drops. 
Haw! Haw! Haw! console my fellow workers trying to belittle my misfortune. 
No linoleum there, but the coffe is gone. 

I don’t say that the syrup company is pulling off deliberate sabotage—it might be criminal snickersneeism or mebbe they have lots of syrup. 
I’m not concerned about the syrup—what if a few million gallons is wasted one way or another—I’d rather see it on the floor than on a pancake. 
What if acres and acres of linoleum suffer the torments of hereafter, therebefore? 
But, gentlemen, fellow citizens and patriots, when my coffee lies there in the cold, cold snow, it is a blotch on our national honor and international ‘tegrity—and I, T-bone Slim, I direct descendant of forefathers that landed on Manhatton Rock and paid their way on the S. S. Elbe, and was not shipped out of England for the good of the mother land, I rise in my stentorian wrath and proceed to invent a harness for those pails. I’m resolved that these pails shall be made a useful part of our resplendent political economy.—T-bone Slim