﻿DR. TIME—HEALER  

The unemployment situation is real enough, but it is not a problem to any but those who find themselves without work. Much racket is being raised by others, of course, and it would seem they are deeply effected and that unemployment to them is a problem. 
Such is not the case however and the lachrymose gentlemen are shedding crocodile tears—dry ones at that. No matter how anguishing their wail may sound, “give a job,” “do that work now,” “help the unemployed” and so on ad nauseam we must conclude them impersonal at best, insincere at worst and indifferent between times—to all intents and purposes the unem-ployed are deserted and, what’s more, are being at this time most efficiently and thoroughly betrayed.  
Unemployment left to its own resources would have come to a head and solved itself in hardly no time—probably not to the whole-souled liking of the hypocritical gentlemen now engaged in the pouring of soothing syrup on social disorders. But it must not be; the workless man bereft of his hamburgers, uneasy, worried, desperate, might despair of ever learning to do without food, cut loose and pull off deeds of great heroism and glory unethical as they might appear to one unversed in the purifying propensities of starvation. They must be broken m gradually. 
A day’s work now and again, tho it will not keep up their spirit, will serve to keep them living on hopes and by and by they’ll learn to live without eating altogether, or be so weak they don’t care whether they die, with or without help, a natural death is superinduced. 
Is not this a program of betrayal? 
It is, gentlemen, and wholly unintentional: well-meaning ignoramuses are yodeling the length and breadth of the land exhorting sundry grafters to turn loose a day’s work for the starving millions—they would do the same were 115,000,000 of our 120,000,000 on the verge of starvation. 
I wonder how big a problem must be before such as they recognize it as a problem? Ten million men without means of subsistence does not appear big enough to class as a problem, to them. Nevertheless, it is a problem to the ten million, nobody else. It is idle philanthropy to coax a day’s work for them—to live they need 300 days each, per year. Let’s have a few figures: 
Ten million times three-hundred days equals three-billion days—3,000,000,000—that’s how many days work the unemployed will need to live a year. Thinkest thou that those well-meaning imbeciles can beg that much work for “the dear unemployed”? If you think so, something’s the matter with your head. 
But I am an optimist, if I say it myself. An optimist, infact, a chief and champion optimist of all the Americas and points surrounding, near and remote. I can always see the bright side of things and if there isn’t a bright side I can always conjure up something that’s worse. I believe if I was hanging in the cross with a few rusty spikes driven in my insteps and hands (spikes are always rusty, ever notice it?) and a great big Roman was tickling my ribs with a bayonet, I would clear my throat and say : 
“It’s tough, fellow workingmen, but it isn’t as bad as sitting on a hot stove.  
We have here hinted, pretty strongly, more’s the pity, that workers presently employed have no problem and that their sympathetic consideration is inspired by politeness and diplomacy and we have thrown out a pretty broad hint that workers out of work have a problem and that their self-commiseration is inspired by first hand contact and intimate knowledge of the true difficulty and its meaning. Well and good, but, gloomy as the case may seem, we not only see what might be worse we see a distinctly bright side to this dilemma—so why console you with a recital of the thousand and one ways you could be more miserable. Not me. I’m here to tell you how to be less miserable, or miserable not at all. That’s me. 
The problem of unemployment is distinctly a property of the unemployed. It is theirs to have and hold or to throw aside. Which way ever they choose, it is entirely within their province and power to do with it whatever pleases them or doesn’t please them—they, alone, are architects of their destiny. But, unfortunately, so far, they have not recognized themselves as sole proprietors of their panic and have persistently placed their reliance on professional palliatives, professional first-aid—in other words, they have placed confidence in everybody but themselves. Unorganized, as a body of unemployed men, they have permitted themselves to be pulled and hauled hither and hence, a day’s work here, a day’s work there and thus laid themselves open to further disorganization, if such be possible where no organization existed before. 
The thing has now gone so far community of interest has practically been destroyed among them and each is striving with might and main to gain preferment in the eyes of appointed dolers of work and the blessings thereto attached—blessings that eventually reconcile them to slower starvation as between the whole cheese or none. A despicable position for, verily, I do believe as between life and death there should be no middle ground, except when life is impossible. 
But life is possible—ain’t I cheerful? 
Ten million unemployed men can make life possible, if they will, but not by remaining unorganized and trusting their affairs into hands that made or helped to make them jobless. They must take matters out of the hands of those that delude them with a few orphan dollars to prolong their agonies; place confidence in themselves, the only trustworthies; toss in The pot with the I. W. W. and help to create a condition wherein all hands or none shall work.