﻿TOOLS OF TRADE 
BY T-BONE SLIM 

Question Mark (?) 
 
Sayeth “Don’t S e l l America Short,” otherwise known as Art Brisbane: “A small refueling plane pumped 150 gallons of gasoline into the big plane’s tank in six minutes . . .” What was the matter, Art––wouldn’t the gasoline run down through a three-inch hose without being pumpt?? Why the pump? Why not just a “spiggot”––a valve––a gate valve? 
Art, are you trying to repudiate the convolutions of Newton’s “Delicious?” Don’t do it, Art––control yourself. Wait till we really overcome gravity. Then we’ll push the water down hill. 
Sayeth the WORLD, editorially, in regards lynching of negro in Mississippi: “Society is not the loser by this death.”–– 
How does The World get that way? Where does it get its hokum? 

I take the position “souls,” so-called, are interlocking to the extent of constituting a single unit––a whole––one soul––not “souls”––get me? 
Does The World think (if it thinks) that you can fry or roast a section of soul in a negro’s body without affecting the part that animates John Roach Stratton, for instance? Does it? 
I claim soul is indivisible and society cannot monkey with any part of it without coming out second best. Legally or illegelly, the result is the same––it backfires. 
Why dammit, you can’t even put a man in jail with good results (unless he’s paralyzed drunk). 
Soon as he sobers up the soul begins to squirm and people begin to shove their fingers in their mouth. 
Society cannot even tramp on a tramp’s pet corn without deteriorating and endangering the whole structure of our social soul . . .  
That’s how! How’s that? 
Ditto, it is easy (for that reason) to organize a one big union––unite the working class. Half the work is already done, by “nature”––they’re hooked-up through soul––through life, as it’s called––energy. (Now you tell one!) 
Yessirree, torture the soul and it kicks back like a muzzle loader . . . Some would say, “in the burning of the negro the soul left the body before it got uncomfortable; that it departed unscathed.” 
Ah, if that only were true! 
But it isn’t, and wishing won’t make it come true. 
Let’s quit punching ourselves in the face . . . 
The witnessing of torture, or the engineering of torture, soon can be forgotten, and the damage is slight. But when the soul backfires, you’ll never laugh that off! 
It hits and keeps on hitting. 
That’s where you get the eternal torment––Not in any theoretical hell, but this one. Right here and now––and how!––o-o-ow!!! 
That’s where you get the sins of fathers upon the children to the fourth and forty-ninth edition. Self-acquired by society at great sacrifice of time, energy and self-respect, with great and recurring persistency––under the guise of “protecting society.” 
Ye gods, society is protected so muchly that it’s all but a wreck! Go on ye meddlers, ye maudling bone-heids, ye masters of morals––go to it––we’ll all soon be madmen, morons, and murderers like yourself. 
I refuse to apologize––the foregoing is nothing spiritual, but very prosaic, platitudinous and moralistic; though invisible to eyes suffering the mortification of misdirected observation and inimical to the calculus born of wrongful premises. Ho hom! 
By the way: the fanatics are going to force religion upon us in the near future. They will make that mistake––and be warmly welcome. 
It’s their funeral––not in the sense of physical end.  
The makings of a religious war is in the offing, I’m sorry to say––but I console myself with the knowledge that each Christian war has resulted in the pulling in of myriads foreboding horns for several succeeding generations––to the glory of God and to forestall utter dissolution and general, and popular, disillusionment––ho, hom!––but they always come again. Things spiritual are not so easy of comprehension and, in fact, or fancy, even the careful records of the “chosen” whore-masters, conspirators and murderers are shrouded in mystery––an ordinary mortal cannot penetrate into the secrets of sanctified life, he’s got to have an interpreter to unravel the language of the ALL-WISE–– a theologian. 
I never could understand this: How in the world the Lord ever got stuck for words to make himself plain to us poor contributors that never had too much learning in theology to the tune of bottle beer, port wine, easy virtue and porterhouse; making it necessary for us to have a prompter, a professional exemplifier and informer––the aforesaid theologian.  
Now, you take Industrial Unionism: Strangely enough, it requires no service of super or supernatural (superifical) unionologist or professional correctifiers and simplifiers to explain itself to those that support the theological marvels of religious magic.  
The prospectus (excuse me Latin) is made so clear by mere man that the veriest tyro (excuse me again) gets it all without the aid of mental acrobats and intellectual contortionists. He gets it! 
He gets it now, but that is not saying that the time won’t come when he will be so dumb that he cannot get it––sorry day. 
The time may have been, too, when the religious message was so clear that folks needed no coaching from expert tongue manipulators––if so, we must conclude that education is a fizzle and tongue artists are fakes––either that, or religion is a fake and its interpreters are grafters––it needs explaining. 
P. S 
Any time a negro is tortured, an article of this kind is justified. Any time that the torture happens in a state of great religious fervor, the article is bound to be of this discription.  
Any time the great New York WORLD goes off at half-cock and prints a statement that i s wide open to question, i.e., “Society is not the loser by his death,” it is my duty to warn the people. 
(Obviously, the statement is ill-considered, or considered not at all).  
The statement is proofless––a sad frailty in unqualified remarks and, for that reason, taboo from ye editor’s tools of trade. 
Now if the I. W. W. editors suddenly got overly complacent, considered illy or not at all their findings, the fellow workers would rise, stretch––and run them ragged. 
Therefore: I advise all and sundry to read the I. W. W. papers, industriously––before it’s too late! 
What’s that you say? 
That some of my statements are proofless? 
Well, that’s all right––I ain’t an editor.