﻿SAYS T-BONE SLIM

Legislation is a poor substitute for organization. Supreme Justices cannot alibi out of our miserable conditions by blaming it on the constitution. Any how it is infant industry to lay the blame on the dead letters of the law. Either we are men, or something the eat dragged in.

As to the CIO, we cannot yet know. We know only that it is a Committee FOR Industrial Organization. Press dispatches say it (the committee) has gone in for Federation, and between lines it says Departmental Form of Unionism.
Men have chased that delusion before. It is NOT Industrial Unionism.
Lewis seems to have an idea that he can split wood and then gather them into a cord. Mebbe so, mebbe so, but, darn the luck, people are using oil-burners and gas, and John’s woop-pile is destined to mellow with the years. Come, come, John —regular orthodox industrial unionism with the I. W. W. seal and preamble stamped fore and aft.
Agitation is life—let us live.
Life knows no defeat.
Compromise, John, is an infant stillborn.
Shorter workday is a healthy baby.
That’s our child.

A gentleman pulled a “strip tease” in front of the relief “Clarkgables” and “Thedabaras” in Cleveland, Ohio. Having heard a man must be “damn near naked” to get anything from the relief, he stepped out on the sidewalk and took off all his clothes. After presenting his clothes to innocent bystanders, he presented himself in the line-up of applicants. For a long time he remained unnoticed (to say nothing about being recognized) but when he finally gained their attention his act went over big with the ladies—one almost fainted, and the “old guard” had to take restoratives. He got a suit of clothes in record time. This is a democratic country. A sailor brings me this yarn, and a sailor wouldn’t lie except “for the good of the service.”.
Of course, fellow worker editor, we cannot be frank like the sailorman, right here in print. Sufficient to say however, the tale was rushed to me like perishable freight—sailors will be sailors—and I am putting an airmail stamp on it (the only one and kind I have—times is tough in downstate New York, but we are tougher.) Now if someone else will come out of his shell, we’ll get someplace.
Further, the truth loving sailorman avers, “the relief seeker wasn’t really nude for fumes arising to the skies enveloped his noble form.”
Keen observation, that’s what I calls it—so I asked him: “What do you think of those Wobblies squirming around with all that bottled up intelligence?”
“I quit thinking, Slim” sez he. “If they don’t let loose pretty soon they’ll blow up.”
“You mean that they should go among the natives, and blow off that extra intelligence?”
“You said it, Slim, lay down the law and gospel; that’s what the M. T. W. is doing.”—T-bs.