﻿PUTTING SLIM TO WORK 

By T-BONE SLIM 
 
Cops are great people. 
They have a duty to perforin—a very urgent duty. 
But sometimes they mistake their duty and present themselves in a form verging on the ridiculous . . . 
In these trying times it is clearly the duty of the cops to protect “the bums” in their hour of need. 
Nobody can gainsay this; especially in view of the fact the solvent citizen has been interviewed and reinterviewed on money matters so often and repeatedly as to awaken all his dormant dander and give rise to an irritability that is wholly foreign to his gentle nature. 
It is those moments when the solid citizen loses control of his usual equanimity and proceeds to murder his “auditor,” that the law in the person of a cop should rush up (all out of breath) and undertake to preserve the health and dignity of “the bum” and pour healing ointment on his wounded pride. 
Sometimes they forget to do so—at the same time remembering too many other and wrongful things they do perform. 
This should not be. 
True, the solid citizen should not be bothered. But then, again, when we evaluate mental agony truly, we can not help but feel it is better to be begged for a meal a hundred times than be absent from a hundred “food fights”. It must be remembered we are component parts of “United” States, if nothing holier and as Abhor’em Lincolonge said: “A nation half starving and half carving can not stand, withstand, understand, worth a damn,” he said. 
I could quote thousands of great men (if there be that many — in fact I could quote ‘em if they were yet to come) but why quote, the point is self-evident: Let’s All Eat—even Caesar. 
We have here touched on a condition that is a natural result of unemployment when it reaches people on a larger scale. Women, too, are not unaffected by the present yen of the capitalist to tame his slaves—I see them on the street and bend my ear to tales of most pitiful description and proposals of desperation: not Mothers Machree, but slightly soured sweet girl-graduates, sub-debs and “abandoned heifers” of twenty—girls from 12 to 30; 40 to 65—a serious matter, and strictly out of my line of chatter. 
Nobody will believe I speak the truth except the men responsible for it. 
“Slim is exaggerating”— (I heard you.) Yeah? Well, come with me—let’s take a walk—not far—four or five blocks and let the people hear you do a little of this “exaggerating” . . . 
We may as well get away from “results” and deal with “causes”—WHY? Until WHY is answered the remedy for this “Cancer” shall remain SECRET—a mystery. 
Nevertheless, there’s nothing mysterious’about unemployment. 
People are unemployed for two (2) reasons, both the same: 
First, they are unemployed because they are unorganized. 
Second, they are unemployed because they are not organized well. 
Out of 40,000,000 workers only 4,000,000 belong to unions, and Oh, what unions! 
What’s the result? 
Unemployment. 
Put 40,000,000 workers in a ONE BIG UNION—I. W. W.—and unemployment will be a MEMORY—not a mystery. This is getting serious—they might even put ME, poor me, to work. 
T-Bone Slim.