﻿T-BONE ECONOMICS 
 
Read This The Second Time: (I’m getting swelled)––To see a barber making all those skillful moves over a man’s face one could not guess he is raising a family. That’s precisely what he is doing, stropping gruel for Annie and Anthony––and that ain’t saying a word about “Relief buying him fuel” for his workshop, Naturally one passing by would gather the impression he is administering a well deserved shave to the guy squirming in the chair. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If you step in, in a little while, he will tell you “I just made a pair of mitts for Antonio”––and here, all along, we thought he was shaving a guy. Aren’t looks deceptive!––we’d have bet money on it. A fisherman goes out on the lake and sets a mile of nets, right away we jump to the conclusion he’s going to catch fish. Nothing of the kind. He set those nets to catch his wife a new coat and an oilskin for himself––our mouths watering for pickerel and perch . . . 
A beggar goes out on the stem. People conclude he’s out there trying to get a few nickles for himself. Ha, ha, haw, that’s rich!––The bum protests: “you get me all wrong, I’m gathering these pennies and dimes for the landlord so he doesn’t have to go to a poorhouse.” Noble man! but who shall believe him? or me for that matter? 
So it is in this capitalist country of ours––you have to do the strangest things.  
If you want to eat a piece of pie you take a coal scoop and swing it eighty-eight times over your shoulder full of coal and the pie is yours. By looking at you, not a living creature could gues you were ordering a piece of pie. They’l swear up and down you were shovelling coal and stick to it. You could show them the piecrusts and they’d still insist you were shovelling coal––I’d hate to have them on a jury. 
In the factories, watching the swift moves of the workers, we never would suspect they are putting together a fortune for the boss. No, we’d think they are laying away something for a rainy day. (This isn’t so however, 85 out of every hundred die without a nickel). 
The poet said: (this is aside). 
Look! Look! oh any where, 
Where moves are fast, Labor’s there. 
I see you still think labor isn’t a slave and working for the boss (I was going to say the butcher, baker, banker and bishop but will not because of such taxation little or much must come from the boss) and if the boss has not delivered said requisites to Labor, then Labor must of needs pay them from the little he gets––this dissipates the wet weather fund and old age fund.) The giving of these is in the hands of labor and they have no quarrel with the boss––just so that they get theirs and, if they do, labor is just that much out).––Now it happens these dependants of Labor are in the habit of delivering advice to Labor; “do so and so; accept the cut” and Labor selects the smaller pay for himself . . . 
To illustrate: they told the farmers “Diversify your crops” and then went busted themselves because they had never learned to sharpen skates. Unreliable in toto! is their advice––for one thing they are impersonal and impertinant. 
 You just listen to me––I’m going to ask you to do a strange thing in a strange world. You saw how the barber knit a pair of mitts with a razor. You saw the fisherman pull an overcoat and an oil-skin from the net. 
You was right there when the bum’s eloquence saved the landlord from the poorhouse. 
You, yourself, ordered a piece of pie with a coal scoop. 
You saw the workers build a billionaire all the while making it look as if it were for the wife and kiddies. 
I’m going to ask you to join the I. W. W.––everything else is so crazy you might hit.