﻿Laugh That Off 
By T-BONE SLIM 

“Makes It Safe To Be Hungry.”—General Electric Refrigerator. 
There are in this country about 6,000,000 unemployed who will forever be thankful to the General Electric for that great discovery—some of them actually worried. 
Now let the doctors get up and say, it’s perfectly all right, that hunger is good for ‘em, beneficial, and the poor unemployed will begin turning handsprings and cartwheels—all’s well that ends well. 
Santa Fe Shops, Topeka, Kans., laid off 280 men —500 elsewhere. 
Electrical appliance outfit, Kansas City, Mo. laid off 2,800 (rumor) workers. 
Uncle Sam, Fort Riley, Kansas, laid off gang of (civil service) workers.— (Signs of prosperity—Hearst papers please copy.) 
What in the world would those workers do had not the General Electric made it “safe to be hungry?” 
Now, even the very humblest can sport an appetite! 
That Second Childhood 
“Free Hide Move Fails”—that’s gonna work a great hardship on bachelors and bartenders unless I mistake my tariff. (No romance in business!) The failure of that move destroys the very base of barter and fundamental principles of contractual society. 
This will be the second time barter suffers destruction, this time it will lose its base—I think it will be a total eclipse. 
The first time it was wrecked was when the wages system was born, a system of paying less than the worth of your work with magic tokens called money — you all know what money is—many of you, no doubt, have seen it—some of you possibly held some of it in your hands for a short time. 
Well, sir, it made quick work of barter. People that used to run around trying to trade in seven buttertubs for a pair of pure cowhide boots now simply trade in the tubs for a bag of piastres at the chamber of commerce and then trade the piastres to the board of trade for a pair of cardboard boots and gets beat twice instead of once—and, if he hollers, congress passes an appropriation for $167,000,000 for eight new jails—the man sneaks back to his churn and consoles himself with the fact, “the butter was loaded with water, and rank at that . . .” 
Still some people say life is a serious undertaking! 
Let’s see? I was gonna write an article? Our hero, here, again, is even with the world—nothing coming, nothing going—and though he finds the abolition the wages system a difficult problem he reports with no small pride that he has succeeded, insofar as he is concerned, in abolishing the money system —a great gain for the working class. 
When you’re even with the world, you know, it amounts to beginning life anew—”ye must be born again,” was the sarcastic way our savior put it —a difficult performance in view of the many minor expenditure-habits, Copenhagen, Bull Durham, canned heat, etc., acquired during the first session upon earth. Not only must ye be born again but ye must rise from the dead. And you thought you could stay dead the rest of your life? 
Nothing like that! In this country! You may as well start breathing! Right now! In the boss’ ear! 
(Naturally these remarks are not intended for Chicago consumption for it may be that I will reconsider my present stand on the money question; in fact I may adopt the money system and raise it to heights of great moral uplift, turpitude and pulchritude.)