﻿SERVICE WITH A SMIRK 
By T-bone Slim 
 
(Get the Spirit.) 
You can now get your shoes half-soled in a drug store, get your Gillett blades and Skandinavian tooth-powder in a beauty parlor, play Pool and get your hair cut in a shoe repair Shop, cornbeef sandwiches in a barber shop, genuine pre-war in a hardware store, aspirin iN a jewelry store . . . and, pst, on Labor Day this author tried, to mail a letter in a firehydrant. 
Was I right, editor? 

Drawing power. 
A sincere I. W. W. should be exhausted the first few times he crosses the street “on red”—red is a very attractive color. 

God bless the hamburger stands and hot dog joints! Years ago we had to save our nickels till we got seven of them together, before we could eat—now, through the grace of the stands and joints we can help to disperse the depression with a single git and, if we have two of them, prosperity beans at us like a fat chippy. 
Years ago did you throw down anything less than 35 cents the big hearted cafe keeper would refuse to operate the cash register and say, “that’s all right, buddy, put the change in your pocket.” 
So they do today, too, only you haven’t “the to less than 35 cents” to toss down— 
Only the other day when I hummed a café to salt-stake me, so that I might arrange for an ocean-bath in a boxcar, he filled a sack for me and inquired considerately, “can I lend you some money?” Naturally, I had to turn down the offer, for what in the world would I do with money that can not be done without it—my pockets, too, are getting kind of thin at the bottom. 

Bums have discovered a new cure for pauperism, “put more money into circulation.” Much good that will do them? Unless they rig a rudder on it, so they can stear it—otherwise it will all float to the boss like the money we had. 
To float more money without stearin gear attached is like giving the boss an extra ladle full of consomme—and* pauperism shall continue to strut its stuff, as at present. 
Note: Pauperism herein is not mentioned in the spirit of scorn. The term is merely a matter of fact description of a prevalent condition whose cost is nil, in a sense to wit : paupers are handed only unsalable goods, spoilt fruits, meats, breads and clothing, which formerly went to a garbage-dump (American generosity needs pruning) . . . You’re a liar, I didn’t say the paupers eat that stuff. I said such stuff is handed paupers, and they, always obliging, carry it away— nobody can eat it. 
How do they live, then? 
Roots and barks, brother, roots and barks. 

Now, for the benefit of those I. W. W. mem-bers who have been hoarding great sums of money in the cornerstone of their shacks and are figuring on investing it in gold-braided stocks and bonds, let me saw—let me, value me, get in a word here: 
Naturally, you want to get in on the ground floor in a 10,000.000 dollar corporation, so you pry the bricks loose and fish out the “ten-thousand dollars” from the blind chimney and slide it across the counter. 
That ten thousand, old-age grubstake, would have dwindled much more slowly in the cornerstone—dwindled it would have though and necessitated the taking up of garden or carpenter tools in the closing years of your life. 
In the cornerstone-racket you are dwindled out of, say, one-tenth of your hoard —by depreciation.  
In the corporation-racket you are swindled out of nine-tenths, and no “say” about it. 
That $10,000,000 corporation is $1,000.000 “substance” and $9,000,000 water. 
The minute you slide $10,000 over the counter, $9,000 turns into water: you receive $1,000 value for $10,000—$9,000 of your riches is wiped out in a flash of an eyelid. You can do almost as well, by throwing it away or letting somebody (pst!) steal it.  
That transaction, the changing of $9,000 hard cash into aqua pura, is called “getting your feet wet”, but were you to try to wash them in it you wouldn’t have enough water to dampen the dirt—better buy your footwash through the regular and galvanized channels. 
Nine to one is wetting down the substance altogether too freely and the saturation point can not be far away. Especially does it seem so when we look back and recall the erstwhile millman, God rest his soul, (and cool his soles) who never, never had the ernst to stretch his commodity more than one part of water to nine parts of milk. He was an honest man, yes, a saint, compared to these later day philantropists. Why, dammit, those stocks salesmen are every bit as unscrupulous as the missions Samaritans who collect ten dollars and give one dollar of it to hungry men in the form of transparent and rotten soups— nine dollars in that case represents watered stock, in financial sense and the one dollar is substances thinned out till it’s no more nourishing than the nine vanished simoleons. 

((Advertisement.) “Prosperity returns with leadership.”—Hm, that is a subtle, one, Bushong. Here we have been hoping that leadership will never return and now it’s coming back with prosperity in tow. Where did it capture prosperity? Or did it have prosperity in tow when it went away? Or did prosperity flee leadership? Or did leadership flee prosperity? And have they been chasing one another for the past two years? And which which one caught up? O, wot a block head I am! Prosperity returns with leadership in tow. 
(The edict now shall be No Parking Under Lumber Piles.) Now, that old prosperity hauls leadership back to us, I think is a good time to nail (or gail) leadership so it wont get lost again. 

The linearity judgement of our illustrations forefathers is something to marvel at. For instance, the limitting of the presidential term to four years the maximum period of time it is humanly possible for a free people to suffer without going non compos mentis. 

Muddy Waters. 
Only one restaurant in Portland, Ore., the “Virginia”, cooks better coffee than Arthur Boose — I personally investigated this matter and found it to be so. Of course, I had to drink much bad coffee in arriving at these figures and may have ruined my health— but what’s health in my stage of life? I’m supposed to be sick, coughing and splattering snot to the four winds—after a man reaches my age, if he is healthy he is out of style. Health or no health, I wasn’t going to stand by idle and let “that calumny” against Arthur’s coffee stand. 
(The test was absolutely fair; even Arthur didn’t know I was coming, and had no chance to get himself decent coffee.) 

Tom Mooney is still in the can. The prosecution of this man passes belief. Every honest man, woman and child in California know this man to be innnocent. How long. I wonder, must this traversty continue? 
Hang onto your reason, Tom, a way out shall be found. 

All the unions into whose strikes “the communists” elbowed their “leadership” and lost were tossed into the lap of the A. F. or L. or some other equally reactionary union—except strikes where communists were tossed out. That idiosyneracy places communists foursquare infavor of craft unionism. 
Trade Union League, the T. U. U. L. of the commissars, speaks for itself—trade unionism. 
The Pennsylvania “National” miners union, I believe, is their first territorial effort and indicates the goodly comrades are patriotic, after all —national unionism. (They got the name from National Biscuit Co.) Just now came from their I. Y. D. (International Youths’ Day) meetings—that, and other organizations on paper, gives them international unionism. 
Only one fly in their soothing syrup—they lack universal unionism, (including the sun, . moon and stars.) The opening salvo in their program in this country was, as articulated by Mother Bloor—”liquidate the I. W. W.” 
(I. W. W. happened to be Industrial Unionism.) 
From this it can be seen the communists are not in favor of industrial unionism. 
Shall I say more? 
I am not sure the comrades understand unionism and it might be well for them to hold conversations with themselves and try to find out which unionism they with to indorse—this blanket indorsement of internation, national, trade and craft unionism is too much like catching suckers in too many ponds. 
Should they feel incapable, momentarily, and unequal to the task of deciding which unionism is their true love, I would suggest they write a letter to Comrade Stalin or George Bernard Shaw, lay bare their soul and, I am sure, either of those gentlemen will honor them with the muchly needed information—otherwise the only solution to their dilemma is “the pulling straws”. 
I have here included George Bernhard, as we love to call him, because he too is a smart man, a dictator in the world of letters, not appointed—he grew—and because only recently, he indorsed the pouring of creosotes into bum’s coffee cans and the squirting of liquid-smoke on bindle-stiffs’ knapsacks and blanket-rolls in the name of communism as it carried, on in United States of America. 
(Note: I assume Shaw’s was a blanket indorsement.) Should the comrades desire information as to what is happening to syndicalism in Spain and communism in Russia, I can accommodate them. There is no need for them to leave the country, either in body or spirit, to gain this wisdom—but I shall not volunteer the information.