﻿IT LOOKS LIKE THIS— 

Surprising the number of pocketbooks thrown away!  
Last week a Wall St. firm went kerflop; this week a Philadelphia house busted its suspenders; tomorrow, 10,000 storekeepers will be locked out. 
A great cry arises as to the terrific amount of hunger in the land and one is half convinced that the sympathy equals the suffering. Be that as it may, the workers need not puff up with importance. The huge wail and truck loads of week-old rolls are merely evidence of “better people” in distress. 
The proportion of sympathy to the amount of relief doled out, reminds me of the cigarette smoker who had the misfortune to be handed an ax when he applied for food. After toiling heroically for an hour or so, the pile of cigarette butts equalled the pile of wood. What would you call that—sympathetic relativity or magnetic affinity? 
Neither should a workingman throw out his chest and shout, 
“I’m a stockholder!” 
For, verily, stockholding is becoming a questionable office. Heretofore workers patted themselves on the back and opined, “the boss is in love with me and gives me a chance to hold stock in his company.” Today they are not so sure about that “love.” 
Early in life it occurred to the boss that sooner or later the figures would come out and it would look like hell for one man to get so much money—say $876,000,000— for doing nothing. He needed a bunch of dummy stockholders. A bunch of dummy stockholders—say 1,000 of them—behind whom he can hide while he salts away $875,994,000 in camphor balls, while $6,000 went to the thousand dummies.  
Six bucks apiece for acting as a smoke screen for the affectionate master’s thrifty peculations. The report ‘would look better— 
“The American Loud Squealer Corporation reports earnings of $876,000,000 to be split one thousand and one ways.” 
Then people would cross their fingers and fervently murmur,  
“God bless the Loud Squealer people!”  
Not all stockholders are “hold-my-horses, Willyum,-till-I-bury-this-treasure” kind, and I’m not writing about them. The kind I have over the fires are dummy shareholders (one share), dummy directors and dummy corporations. 
Step up closer, gentlemen. 
That’s better. 
It isn’t considered in good taste for workingmen and those that still consider themselves workingmen (who are that much class-conscious) to pride themselves on the wages they are getting. I had the figures before me yesterday, culled from Senator Couzens’ open letter to the C. of C., but damme if I didn’t go an use that paper for a Hoover blanket and then absentmindedly leave it in the brick kiln. 
40,000,000 men, women and children received $46,000,000 per day for their labors. That’s better than one dollar a day apiece and a lot of high standard living it will buy, as Brisbane will tell you. Some men and women of this great class received more than a dollar a day—some less—and counting the unemployed, they, as a whole, as a class received less than a dollar a day each. That’s nothing to brag about. That’s nothing to cause a worker to start strutting. It’s a disgrace. 
In the soupline last winter, a workingman appeared pretty dirty. One of the herders goes over to him and says, 
“Next time you come here to eat, wash yourself first. How’n’ell did you get so damn dirty?” 
“I was working,” protests the soiled citizen. 
“Well, don’t you know that this soupline is for the unemployed only?” 
“I was working,” corrected the soiled one, “but I didn’t get no money.” 
(Frightful grammar he used.) 
How many there are who trade their labor power for the exercise that’s in it—for the mere pleasure of production—of course I don’t know and I merely cite this instance to show some men are getting less than a dollar a day—some more. A disgraceful proceeding due wholly to the lack of organization among the toilers. Ignorance or intelligence has nothing to do with it. It’s lack of organization—common, everyday unionism. 
Some would say the cause is in the error of seeking prosperity at the ballot box. That is not so. Seeking remedies at the ballot box is the RESULT of non-unionism, a substitute for organization. 

This nation is now ready for Industrial Unionism and in order to help bring about the unionizing of the workers, I will here offer a suggestion: 
Let every I. W. W. take out credentials, become a delegate and donate what time he can spare (say 15 minutes a day) to organization work—it won’t kill you. Let every new member automatically become a delegate and arrange to supply him with credentials—the sooner the better. The selective credentialling is proven a failure—a farce—figures don’t lie. 
AND—fellow workers, there is only one way to determine the activity in a big organization: Watch closely, and if you see that YOU are not doing anything, make up your mind that activity is DEAD. 
—T-Bone Slim. 

NOTICE:— 
I have an impersonator down in the Gulf ports—a communist—not that I’m affected; but M. T. W., I. U. 510 may be. Therefore, I wish it known far and wide that I, the illustrious T-bone Slim, have not been south of the Mason-Dixon line in the past fifteen years. 
May 1, 1931, New York City, N. Y. 
—T-Bone Slim