﻿Nostrums From Rostrums  

People have strange notions about the power of their respectvie individual acts. Here’s fellow spinner Mahatma Gandhi who apparently believes the Indian nation can be rescued from British rule or misrule by drinking goat’s milk. Mahatma should try our coca cola, once. Industrial overlords of America are presently curing the depression by cutting the wages of the workers. (Mahatma and goat milk seem to be an improvement on what our beloved bosses have to offer.) I would suggest that the bosses just try a swig of pure goats milk . . and a loiz cloth. 
The astute communists have an idea that by pooling the workers, the unemployed, the bunkrupt businessmen and prfessionals, the farmers and the ragged soupliners they can emancipate the workers. They cannot see the injustice of asking farmers to leave their stills to bestow emancipation upon a bunch of scissor bills; the unethicalness of requesting a few half-erased dealers and doctors and dentists and demonstrators to leave their private, engrossing affairs to emancipate an unorganized bunch of non-union men. 
Mahatma still has the right dope—may the Mohammedan Allah keep his nose out of the teacup. Another set of men are convinced the boss can best be put on bread and water diet by splitting the working class into two or more factious and then splitting the factions into two or more factions and, finally, splitting the worker into two or more parts—left and right wing. 
I hate to see them do this, halving a slave that way. (I’d rather see him cut crosswise, in line with his belly-button, top and bottom or split from the side so as to make it front and back—and 4 arms.) Enough, enough!—I believe they got this splitting idea from the boss, and Mahatma and his goats seem almost sacred is comparison . . . 
In a scrape of this kind wherein the theory is two-fold, to run a streak of less in the boss and to take the edge off the worker’s appetite, it is unreasonable to suppose a working man would use only one arm, if he has two, and I am persuaded he would be in there (over there) swinging right and left for God and country, frown fire sides, and graves of his ancestors, till hell wouldn’t have it; his eyes (not left or right but both) on a fat, juicy pork chop, yes. And here a bunch of blithering idiots imagine a worker can be split in two, up and down, to get more action from him. Nay, brother, the power still lies in Mahatma’s milk. 
The working class is a unit, all of these bucking the same grindstone, and can be divided only by leadership (informers, stool pigeons, agent-provocateurs), men whose mind works so fast it has not time to settle on the prosaic fact of human servitude, wage-slavery and the identity of interest of all those who work for wages and starve for parasites. Let there be no mistake, workers can be divided only by leadership; otherwise they are a unit, a one big whole of protesting wage slaves. 
What is it then that prevents “him” having a one big union? 
Well, sir, there is nothing under the sun to prevent him except he himself—it is not a question of fees—money doesn’t stop him. It is he, himself. 
There is nothing in the laws of the Industrial Workers of the World that would prevent a bonafine worker joining it. No new legislation need be passed to permit a “sure enough” worker to enroll in its time honored roster. All the chan[unclear] are open, sometimes night and day. 
But no, the working class would rather step high and mighty on the heels of fantastic leadership that leads to splits. And being a humorist, I shall split my sides—laughing. What has leadership brought you? 
The cure for the depression: Put the worker on a paying basis! 
(To do this at all, or best, or quickest, it is necessary for the workers to organize a one big union; became it is the worker himself who must make of himself a paying proposition. Don’t be horrified. It won’t take long—a one big union can be formed overnight, if all hands help. Is that quick enough?) Ans the paying base will follow fast, to quote Robert Emmet; “Then! and not until then.”		 
T. B. S.