﻿The Big Potato: 
Let me point out once more, in my gentle way, the depression in this country is not political and a billion politicians one or all working ain’t gonna cure it; the running of a bunch of patriots ain’t gonna cure it; the running of a bunch of christians ain’t gonna cure it; the running of a bunch convicts, combines or cleopatras ain’t gonna cure it. These have little more effect on a trouble that is economic than has a row of brass monkeys. 
To cure depression you must join a j good labor union, preferably the I. W . W .—whatever union you choose, it must be its composition—or no cure. If you do not join a labor union you thereby go on record us of living well pleased with the depression. And I nope you will continue to like it. 
Life in a political arena Is a precise reflex of the gigantic economic struggle as between banks and plants, going on, at this moment, in this country. Plants take a wallop at the bunks and Brookhart goes spinning like a headless rooster in a cornfield. Banks haul off with an upper cut and Masrachusetts goes wet. Plants land a long swing to the snout and Mooney stays in the can. Bunks put in a low punch and Kresel shows signs of being an angel of high emprise. Plants rock banks head with s terrific left to the jaw and Britt Smith, Centralia Boys, stay in Walla Walla, and so on. 
Interference in this struggle by an outsider shall cause Banks and Plants to turn on the intruder. 
Coolidge said we’ve got lots of prosperity, have some soup. 
Harding before him said take the teapot, we got lot’s of it. 
Hoover said, we’ve got lots of it and declared in favor of a moratorium just as Europe was about to pay its debts. We’ve got lots of it—last week in New York City I didn’t get one single meal. What I got was as follows: 
Forty-two cups of coffee (frail stuff). Sixty-two rolls of all description and some of no description at all. 
Eighty-three slices of bread and sixty cubes of grease. 
About one bathtubful of soup. 
One mushmelon, eight bananas—all of ‘em rotten. 
Note: I didn’t try to influence the city either one way or another—this diet is her voluntary contribution to science. It never occurs to N. Y. C. that Germans and Finns have thrived since time immemorial on full meals and that an occasional bellyful couldn’t hurt a guy even if he is unemployed. Nay brother, political action is no action—it is a result. 
For me to say, farmers or store keepers can remedy this depression by organizing farmer or store-keeper union is to say a falsehood—they can not. They are not numerous enough und they are not on the ground floor. 
They are merely the flora in the potato patch—labor is the bigbaked potato. Labor is the only power in this world that can cure this depression—and cure it to stay cured. This it can do only by organizing a one big union of the workers and by declining all help from parasites or their representatives. 
The minute it gets any help from bosses of any shade or description the bets are all off —and the depression shall have a relapse. Labor or Oblivion! 
P. S.—The fight between Banks and Plants is for to determine which shall be permitted to skin labor—a senseless, insane struggle.—Soup versus Worms: Do not think me unduly prejudiced against soup. Soup is all right in its place. I can conceive of nothing more suitable for fish to swim in—a combination of sport and nourishment, barbless breakfast you might say. And in re N Y C’s soupabillity, let me say, I could have changed that at any time by lying a little, tell Mr. Knickerbocker that the soup-shower occurred the week before. He would have risen to the occasion promptly—but a test is a test. As in buying a pair of sox I fell one penny short of the price: Knickerbocker howled loud and long that he must not be driven to the wailing wall, he must get ten cents. 
“Now lookit here, Knick,” says dropping the pennies into my pocket, “I’m a poor man whose family passed off by starvation.—Why not make it a gift of a pair of sox so I can cover my nakedness?” I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” says Knick, “I’ll give you that pair of sox for nine cents.” 
You see, Knick stood to lose sox or gain nine cents—he chose the nine—business is business. 
Soup we will have even in the workers commonwealth, and the parasites shall eat it.