﻿A MOSQUITO’S LUNCH 

Detroit’s unemployed once more gathered in front of the city hall as a result of the closing up by the welfare board of the city’s several lodging houses for homeless men. The board’s acton was based on the question of finance, its insufficiency, and the “unnecessary” nature of such establishments in these warm days and warm nights when the wind blows from the sunny Indiana and sweltering Ohio. 
Evidently this board never has undertaken to cajole sleep dressed in a pair of torn pants or transparent skirts, as the case may be, in company with a swarm of healthy Michigan mosquitos.  
Last night I was swinging at them right and left till the wee sma’ hours and this morning when I awoke from my well-earned slumbers I was all but horrified to find about a quart of dead and mangled corpses, mosquitos, under either ear; where they had rolled from my noble brow, never to buzz again. Such was the terrific execution of my mighty paws when my dander was fully aroused. 
Now it occurs to me the good city of Detroit longs within its kindly heart to have all those mosquitos exterminated at once as a measure of enhancing civic comfort and can think of no more efficacious way to do it than by turning the unemployed, homeless men loose upon them in porous-knit pantaloons and BVD-less underwear. 
What at first appeared a question of funds and municipal thrift turns out to be an undertaking pregnant with great common good and, I’m sure, when the unemployed fully understand the true facts they will most cheerfully subordinate their individual comfort to public welfare and proceed to slap the pestiferous mosquitos without mercy or rest.  
But there is a small matter we must not overlook. 
What are the homeless men, those public benefactors, to be paid for ridding this thriving community of all those winged-demons of the soft and stilly night?  
And let us not overlook, a full-blooded Michigan mosquito is no mean adversary to contend with after business hours and before breakfast. There are those who say a Michigan mosquito is only little short of a foot in length and that a more ferocious and blood-thirsty creature never existed––they go over into Canada and tank-up and then they come over here raising hell in our law-abiding purlieus, sapping up the very life blood of our dynamic citizens and endangering the very republic. 
A gold medal or a bowl of soup would never never compensate those heroic homeless for their noble, unselfish battle for human rights and meritorious service in behalf of suffering humanity. 
They must have money. 
I knew that question would pop up again same as it did in the council chambers––it is a ghost that will not stay put or stand unhitched. Quite readily I can conceive as to how the council was more than willing (anxious) to bed the boys down but it could not bear the idea of parting with real money. For them to say, “a lodging in summertime in unnecessary in the absence of soul-killing frosts,” is to say a lodging house in winter months is unnecessary in the absence of vein-tapping mosquitos––a sweet way of passing the buck. 
My reader will think me ridiculous for taking up so much valuable space. But my reader is all wrong, it is my subject, not me, that is ridiculous. I will admit, tho, I should know better than to undertake the discussion of such ethereal matters so solemnly.  
I do not belong to Detroit and Detriot does not belong to me––no part of it is included among my possessions. I came here yesterday from Toledo and swear by all that’s pure and holy that I did not bring those mosquitos with me––and for those two quarts of mosquitos killed, I expect no emoluments other than a cup of good coffee (six cups of bad coffee) and a little buttered toast. 
The unemployed homeless are down at the city hall craving excelsior mattresses. The communists are down there with ‘em, telling ‘em all about the thick soft cushions in Russia. The city fathers are on the verge of civil war. Passing people honor the occasion with a fleeting glance little recking a great drama is unfolding and the fate of the republic hangs in the balance. 
To ignore this is to invite chaos, or worse. 
Today the unemployed are marching for mattresses; tomorrow they’ll march for matches; next day for mutton; and so on for milk, melons and millionaires. 
Tonight they will fight mosquitos; tomorrow night the law of logic ordains they shall seek bigger game––and only chaos can result. 
The gathering at the city hall in itself is not chaos but a very elementary form of orderliness––they know of no better way to win a bed for themselves. An attack against such a gathering is an attack against orderliness in its cradle. It need not surprise anybody that people adopt this old form of petition; it’s not so long ago the people prayed the moon––as successfully.  
Personally I think they should try the moon once more and then join the I. W. W. 
Well aware of the fact that Detroit is gripped by a deathly fear that she is getting more than her share of unemployed, I can only say: every city in the country is affiliated with the same fear, an unholy respect for their treasures. Nevertheless this attitude indicates a healthy regard and pride in their geographical subdivision. The condition is new. No precedent cue or hint intruded to inform the councils as to the nature and extent of this panic. Detroit’s council can not know that every shade tree in the state of Ohio shelters two to three workers whose jobs are abolished forever.  
The council can not know, the only way those men can be re-employed is by shortening the workday of those men not working or by abolishing child labor, baby-snatching and female help––nine months of the year a woman should be free of the burden of supporting a bunch of brainless, silk-hat parasites; the other three months she should be supported by those same parasites. 
God in his wisdom did not make these hard times. He had nothing to do with it. The same people that wrote the bible wrote this panic. A bunch of maniacs who mistakenly thought themselves intelligent––right now they are standing finger in their mouths wondering what it’s all about––and history is moving in a circle. 
Legal minds cannot grasp the significance of these times because there is no precedent––the precedents all lie west of the problem: Romanoff, Kaiser-Bill, Sultans and several kings, including Alphonso got their walking papers only to leave the problem untouched. 
Detroit in the infancy of its reasoning, destitute of thought, undertakes to solve the problem by feeding the unemployed to mosquitos; by raising a flock of big, fat, happy and contended mosquitos. 
But I cannot understand why a city should be so deeply concerned about the welfare of such a thirsty bunch of bloodsuckers. 
When the nation’s business is in such shape that a part of its citizens have no bed and must serve as mosquito bait the disgrace is more than any free people can bear; those people are no longer united by any ties, whatsoever and are justified in getting together and jumping in the lake––in a body. 

The foundation of fortunes is not laid in the blue skies of booms but in the hard pan of depression.  
––Roger W. Babson. 
By the same token the true foundation of unionism is laid in the panic of depressionn. ––T-B. S. 
Mistake me not, Roger doesn’t mean the “future greats” turn your pockets inside out only during periods of hardtimes. Stop. Let us have a little ambiguity here, professor. Allright: 
T-B. S. doesn’t mean the edifice of unionism can best be built during depressive days. No, he means just what he says: you can throw a good foundation “in the hole” and wait for the weather to clear; get the shingles and have them ready––and don’t forget the nails. 
Let us digest a few figures: 
According to New Ulm, Minn., Review, “the investment in American highways is currantly estimated at $25,000,000,000, or slightly in excess of the total investment in our railway system. In 1921, 388,000 miles, or 13 per cent of all United States roads, were surfaced, whereas, at the end of 1930 some 700,000 miles, or 23 per cent of the total, had been improved . . . in 1929 state governments spent $799,876,000 for highway construction and improvements, and in 1930 a total of $937,500,000.” 
Brave boys!––The New Ulm, Review quite properly threw a fit about those figures at the right time––but I can not see for the life of me how come the 60,000 millionaires let so much money get away from them, $25,000,000,000; it almost leads one to believe “the big one is never caught.” Coming as those figures do from New Ulm and copied by such organs as Mpls., St. Paul papers they do not leave much room for believing the figures are timely propaganada to keep the people from suspecting the 60,000 millionaires cost them 35 times as much per year as all the hard roads in this country since hardening of arteries were invented. $878,000,000 would build quite a stretch of hard roads! 
Far be it from me to insinuate the millionaires are an expensive luxury and that American people should moderate their expenditures in these trying times. Such is not the case. 
I firmly believe the American people should be allowed to spend their money as they choose and, if they invest it in millionaires, who am to chide them and suggest the money could have better been sunk in glazed do-nuts. 
Not me––once you allocate to me the power how the people shall spend their dough the republic is at an end. 
 
Why must the workingmen always fight 
With their backs up against the wall? 
Is it because they do not think alike 
Or because they think not at all? 
 
Those questions led me to consider the composition of United States working class in part––the complete list would be too long to carry in one issue: 

Tammanyites, Hooverties, Smithites, Fosterites, Rascobites, Cannonites, Mellonites, Lovestoneites, League of Nationites, Leninites, Trotskyites, Anglo-Saxonites, Holy-Rollerites, Neverites, Blatherskites, Muskovites, Farmerites, Dryites, Wetites, Laborites, Emergencyites, Let’er-slideites, Sobsisterites, Coldfeetites, Hamburgerites, Stewites and Whatinhellnotites. That answers the question as to whether the workingclass thinks for itself or hires it out to be done by “skilled mechanics.” 
P. S. Boulder Dam casualties indicate: Haste Makes Wakes.