﻿BONEYARD
By T-BONE SLIM

Editor:
I have a subject matter here that lays close to my heart, so if you’ll step aside or look the other way, I shall proceed to handle it with bare hands and clear conscience. These many moons I have been razzing our great speakers unmercifully, yet I have managed to live long without being scratched-up too badly or crowned with construction material (Note, having been a construction worker, I am familiar with the sailing habits of bricks and cobble stones and ran judge fairly close where such raw materials won’t land—if I see it coming— which I do, seeing as how I’m expecting it to come. This may account for the uncrowned condition of my uneasy head— weaving head.)
Further, A. Brisbane reminds us, “reading makes a full man, writing makes an exact man and speaking makes a ready man,” so you can see yourself, it kind of behooves us writers to keep an eye on the speakers’ throwing arm, at all times.
Of course, I cannot question Brisbane’s finding as to “reading makes a full man” but, do claim (to the gasping world) writers are not so “exact” as they are half-full — half the time.
Ha! I’ve come to my subject.
Shake!
The one great trouble with us great writers is faulty elimination—the result of which is: our thoughts cannot come out pure as the driven snow of Ontonagon country but resemble more the Chicago sewage-canal, as it ripples o’er the rocks at Joliet.
Heywood Brown, in The Nation, tries to bring home the above great truth to Brass-Check Sinclair (as he coyly points out to Upton that his thoughts are all wet and should be fumigated or sent to a dry cleaner.) Broun of course is too much of a gentleman to come right out and sav where the trouble lies.
Not so here!
When I peel off gloves to handle a subject you can bet your last dollar that the matter is urgent and demands instant attention.
Why, editor, in our own organization thousands and thousands of our fellow workers have threatened to tear up their cards unless I go to a doctor and get myself thoroughly renovated—so rotten had my articles become—can you blame ‘em editor? Didn’t you yourself get sick just from cursorily glancing at ‘em? You, who curse so rarely?
You did—and by rights, I should pay your doctor bills. And I will to as soon as I draw my back pay from the birds that’ve been robbing me all these years.
	
The name condition of congestion prevails in society, as a whole. Capitalism is poisoning the very fundsamentals of civilization. Things are going from worse to worse. The people are pale.
The very “faulty elimination,” that ruins well meant writings, is the same indisposition that makes society unequal to the task of expelling the thing (capitalism) that is slowly but surely killing it. But the people will not move.
That’s just the trouble!
Remedy?
You expect me to say, “buy an all-day sucker.”
I’ll say no such a thing, I’m not sarcastic— I’m serious.
Subscribe for the Industrial Solidarity.—T-bone Slim.