﻿Great Crime Wave Expected by T-Bone May Save Country 

The employer does not pay some men more; he pays other men less. In other words, steals less from some men and more from others. All workers are victims of this chiseling and should therefore get together and compare notes. Let us be understood, once and for all, that employers never pay more, always less, no matter what the wages are. Always less than value of the labor power they employ. Generally the worker who gets robbed most thoroughly is the most necessary worker in the plant—the sweeper, the man that has charge of the sanitation in detail. His envelop is smallest. Graded employment is a dead give away; considering the high pay worker is short changed, we can easily figure out how much the lesser lights are gypped. If the grade A worker gets twelve bucks a day and his Honor, the sweeper gets three bucks, the boss clips the sweeper for nine extra dollars per day, over and above the inherent percentage he weeds from all. No wonder he gets rich. Nine bucks plus from Tom, seven bucks plus from Dick and five bucks plus from Harry. Gee, I’d like to have people giving me money that way! No wonder he needs an armored truck to haul it to a bank and to make it look good he calls it capital. Ah, if the workers would only hand it to me, I would call it a godsend and never holler for the militia to shoot them down.
That reminds me. The militia—now isn’t it funny how one thing brings up another? The militia is our powerline. His upkeep comes from our toil—certainly not from employer’s toil because he hasn’t toiled since Garfield was shot. Whether it comes from his chiselings is not pertinent for we are the source of his chiselings. The militia is our powerline. You didn’t know you had property rights in militia, did you? And the employer has tapped your powerline and is using your power, that what I call jiu-jitsu!
America’s current crime bill is fifteen billion dollars. Stated simply, that amounts to one hundred and twenty dollars a year or ten dollars a month for every man, woman and child in the United States.
George E. D. Johnson in “this week”—That’s just what it would amount to George, if man, woman and child were to get it. But they ain’t. If the criminals go on strike and refuse to steal even for their mother or the little woman, who is all out of cigaretts, a smile will overspread the features of our bouncing millionairies, for they will have just fifteen billion more dollars to vitamin “P” against the barr. Millionaires never have been known to leave any money laying around “for man, woman and child,” so there isn’t any reason to think they would overlook a cent in the crime wave and workers even less—in fact they are money ahead in form of an occasional drink from a big hearted criminal after a good haul. (Note: a millionaire would rather cut his throat than buy you or me a drink.)
Let us look at Georgies figures: “The federal government records five million persons in its criminal files and estimates that five hundred thousand professional criminals are at large.” Now, if that fifteen billion dollar crime bill was pruned of all its fantasies, turned into cash and divided equally among the five million charter members of the criminal files, it would amount to a neat sum of three thousand a piece. On the other hand, if it was whacked up between the five hundred thousand at large, it would be thirty thousand. Why, dammit, that’s better than working. And when I look at what the millionaires are “getting away with,” I begin to suspect work is a big mistake.
Am I to be understood as advocating free and unlimited purloining of silver and gold and great gifted thievery? Stand and deliver? Hell, no! I’m advocating the organization of one big union of workers so that work might be placed on a basis of equal footing with thievery, legal and illegal or better. Competition is only as between thieves and when the “so privileged” holler through their mouth pieces, it is proof conclusive our calibrations of their mental equalibration approximates exactitude. So we’re supposed to step out and save those fifteen billion for the parasites? Heh, heh, heh,— that’s a good joke— but I tell you frankly, we haven’t got the time, we’ve got to promote a few groceries. Let us sing: “Big thieves have lesser thieves upon their backs to bite ‘em, etc., ad nauseum, e pluribus foolum.”
Then again if crime suddenly went virtuous, eighty-five thousand police would have to peddle pencils, take up tin cup begging, or go on relief, for our sacred parasites have inveigled into the country “nobility of labor” from every corner of the earth—to cut each other’s economic throats and some of them’ turned out to be better thieves than our own native sons —under compulsion. So, Georgie, instead of community centres for the uplift of youth before initiated into crime, have community centres for millionaires and take away their pants. The saving will be so great that it will flood the channels of crime and professional criminals will become too lazy to steal once the professional criminals are honest and the unprofessional thieves in community centres (without pockets). This country won’t be such a bad place to live in after all.
It is good logic that two and a half beers per hour is pretty slim wages to dangle in front of a criminal—or a saint. For that matter—it leaves nothing for shoe polish and sardines. And then the exploiters of labor expect these criminals to desert a three thousand to thirty thousand racket in favor of becomng an virtuous vassal of relief provides no tooth paste. But these men are potential workers, although they have high ideals and if John L. Lewis’ dream, that of giving every worker two thousand five hundred a year, comes true, then these lawbreakers might be prevailed upon to throw off few hundred in the interest of virtuous life. Now the millionaires we have concentrated in the community centres? There isn’t a life in ‘em. Too many generations of hookworm swirl around in their blood—just leave ‘em there—they’ll perish of their own faith with nobody to wash their face and neck. It is cheaper to employ bosses than by them be employed. If the boss does the employing, he gets thirty-four million a year; if the workers do the employing the boss gets twenty-five hundred as John L. Lewis truthfully remarked. Million dollars! Hm. (Many of them got that much a year.) It would take a worker four hundred years to make that much at two thousand five hundred a year!
There’s a small quarrel here:
The boss says: “I’ll do the hiring.”
We say: “You’re a liar.”
The boss does not and does not intend to hire more than half of the working class. So it is my guess, he is through. (I am not whooping up a wrong tree when I say criminals get three thousand per each per year, directly or indirectly, plus services, foul mouthed guards, etc. Labor on the other hand gets five hundred average minus services per year and even has to buy his own pick and shovel.
A new sunray motor is invented that will do away with much of the use of gas and oil as sources of motor energy. Miners,oil workers and gas house gangs may as well hang up their teeth. If the engine is still in its experimental stage, half horse power strong, but its performance is so satisfactory that we can well say it will displace most of all engines now in use in very few years. Note: When these new inventions come, they have a nasty habit of chasing millions away from the bread basket—and fish ain’t biting worth a damn.
Therefore: Organize so that you may have a say so in the matter: “eat or not to eat.”
The best investment I have ever made was when I joined the I.W.W. I have drawn dividend in perfect fellowship, solidarity and intelligence. But above all, and which I value higher than “time and a half,” is the consideration that has been showered upon me. I feel like a favored child.—T.B.S.