﻿T-Bone Slim Finds That Business Is A One-Way Racket

“43 corporations reported a new all-time record for earnings in 1935.” (Can it really be that there’s nobody home in unionism—that they’re all down at City Hall foaming at the gills?)
Is this a one way racket?
If a man is entitled to one million dollars of OUR money because of, and in recognition of, his superior intelligence, then it must be that we entitled to one million dollars of HIS money if he goes broke because of, and in recognition of, his inferior intellect. But how can we collect?
We have relinquished that one million dollars in good faith with specific intent to compensate him for packing a set of high-grade brains—and he turns out to be a lunk-head. He has swindled us and permitted his ill-gotten gains to fall into hands for which they were not intended. We were paying him—and “here it is—who wants it?” was farthest from out thoughts. He has secured one million dollars of our money under false pretences, laying claim to a set of brains he didn’t have—the fact that he went broke proves it. This money is still our money, regardless of who’s got it. To all intents and purposes it is stolen wealth because it was secured under misrepresentation, and because we paid for something that never was in existence.
My argument is that we (Labor) are the pay-off boys, and that anybody else that relinquishes wealth is stepping on our prerogative, and is doing so without authority. And furthermore I think we are paying those crooks too much even when they have bruins enough to hang on to it.
Be not startled at the word crook. It is a blunt term and means precisely what it says. These birds have evaded and bearded every Corrupt Grabtices Act man have ever invented, and are in bad odor. Be it wartime, period of stress or distress, they are right there to grab 100 per cent, 1000 per cent, or 90,000 per cent profit. Reformation is not in them, and Roosevelt is wasting his time.

We have in this country a vertical society— not upright. Nothing is on the level. A milk bottle is also vertical, and if it stands too long the cream rises to the top. Greater spread of cream can be had by laying the bottle on its side but what it really needs is a good shaking up.
And now, copying after the manner of imbecile society, we are to have vertical labor unions. This is to forestall the supplanting of craft with industrial unions. It is being put over under the guise of ending jurisdictional disputes. It has the masters’ O. K.—Why not?