﻿Labor Pains 
 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
Millennium and prosperity have gone into a huddle, just around the corner—coffee and (3) rolls, seven cents. Steak 21 cts. a pound. 
T-bone steak 45 cts., burnt. 
But there’s a ketch, don’t cheer yet—where will you get the seven cents? Even the most sympathetic , rescuitraunts will ignore less powerful pleas. 

The republican party has for years been trying to make bums of the American people—with only a moderate degree of success—and now, with Hoover at the helm, it is willing to try just once more. 
True, the great party has succeeded to the extent of making “the boys” pound the back doors with their knuckles and interview the butcher and baker, confidentially, but what is that—a man is not truly a bum until he has “the face” to go down the main thoroughfare and see the situation eye to eye with any and all the citizens, princes, billionaires; male or female. In this the G. O. P. has utterly failed. Socalled bums ankle down the street and pick their subjects with a selectivity that is a downright disgrace to the grand old party; pass by flower stores, millinery shops and beauty parlors with a disdain that is almost a criminal offence. The whole procedure breathes of the failure of the party properly to bring those high spirited patriots to an understanding of their true mission in life; whether or not it was the party’s purpose to do so . . . If the party had no such intention, and those bums are purely accidental incidenta of the protective tariff squabbles, disarmament deals and other noble experiments, the party still stands indicted of the failure to prevent the necessity of dabbling in the art of loosening meals by force of eloquence and personality. 
Inconceivable as it may seem, such is the case. Inefficiency is exposed and it can serve only the purpose of showing political parties can but worsen the times—this by mismanagement—good times, when present, being phenomena of the industrial world. 
Politics, in addition to being & complication of diseases, is a machine of many lost motions, too much play and friction—the long way around, dilatorious to the extent of futurity in the rapid transit of conditions. It may be, politics can serve the employing class whose turnovers are farther apart. In fact, I believe that is its function, if it has any function—and therefore it follows the employing class is the class that should elect their political defenders. 
Political parties in the very nature of their get up cannot guard the interests of the working class, as I pointed out before, the parties are too loose jointed—it takes direct action as between employer and employee to care for the interests of the workers. 
What have we now, John? 
We have the workers ballotting for politicians to protect their bosses. Hm. and likewise ummh! Can you imagine? Why don’t they do it themselves. 
Now why’ pick on me? True, this article deals with bumming, so it does, altho it’s all about prohibition, mentioned once. 
Let me point out politics and panhandling are rampant — unemployment on rampage. What will you have? 
A ray of hope? Soap bubbles? 
Here it is: 
A manufacturing company in Chicago is going to perform a miracle—it’s going to put ten thousand men to work in next two months, so it says. 
Sounds interesting . . . . . . those ten thousand men will be in their coffins by that time and you know how a guy hates to leave his casket . . . But let the company try it—they might jump up and bang away at the time-clock. No knowing what a stiff will do.