﻿Too Little Pay Is Organization
By T-BONE SLIM

Political job is merely a lift-raft that keeps the jobholder’s business interests afloat. . . . Isn’t truth rasping?
Few, few are the peoples’ representatives that are content to draw income from only one boss. Many there are that get paid by two or more bosses Many there are whose interests are so ramified that they themselves do not know how many paymasters they serve. This does not mean they peddle the peoples’ perquisites.
Many politicians actually resent this prosperity that dogs their footsteps. But what can they do? Being in business while serving the people they can only take it and hope they come by it honestly.
But—and this is my belief —if you send a plasterer to congress I’m afraid the contractor will wipe his name from the payroll. No bona fide worker is in congress, and those that are down there are using it for a side-line.
Spare time statesmen!
It is also my firm opinion that congressmen should come from the ranks of the unemployed. That’s one way of curing the depression. Me thinks the present bunch of statemen carry too many hooks on their fish line. Send a man in there with a bent pin and then watch the miracles—and dodge the big ones.
African elephant ears are three times as long as the Indian elephant’s. Politicians’ ears are three times as long as mine, but I get through the brush faster.
Sometimes we have to use our belly for a third hand, as when using a screwdriver. That’s another point in favor of our belly and we should worship it more than we do—at least as much as we do the parasites
Beefsteaks from below the knee of a cow is a direct insult to our belly. No wonder it revolts. Give the dogs a break!
But sending plasterers to Washington is not the remedy for scrawny pay envelopes. Organize industrially, where you are, as you are. Two is company, three is a powerful union. Don’t let anybody do it for you. Do it yourself. Get your fellow workers together and organize a union all your OWN—of the workers, for the workers, by the workers. But in order that we may have a one big union it is advisable to get your cards from an I.W.W. delegate.
Refusing to organize is like refusing to take more money, refusing to eat veal steak smothered in tomatoes, and spending the rest of our lives in burlaps and ashes.
Pleasure Future vs Pleasure Present
Preachers have a habit of defending their institutions against the entertainments of the pleasure world. This should not be. A church should not be held out as a substitute for worldly pleasure.
By the same token were I to say the I.W.W. is a better union than the A. F. of L. or C.I.O., my yardstick (measuring-pole) is short on both ends, for there is no comparison. I am offering no “substitute” for these The “orders” referred to are but the organized medium through which the boss can capitalize on the yen these men have to scab; and to permit them to do so under the guise of a sacred contract —a scab in disguise. What is this unionism coming to? A masquerade?
Much as I dislike to say so, facts is facts—and these members of “authorized” unions have a penchant for seeking a way out without assuming the responsibilities of a strike. They believe in outhollering the boss, and then sign on the dotted line so that they can scab with a clear conscience—in fact that is the purpose of signing on the dotted line.
Minor privileges for being servile.
If the I.W.W. ever gets a yen to climb up under the boss’ wing, I’ll leave it out of my last will and testament.
Only a Raven Eats Its Feeder
C.N.T. and F.A.I were the salvation of “Loyalist Spain” and now that Valencia government is reached so high an emprise it is all but ready to kick down the ladder it climbed.
Better not: It’s a big jump . . . The merits of the U.G.T. may be well and good, but the instrumentalities of the F.A.I. and the C.N.T. are self-evident. Remember the objective is the workers’ commonwealth, wherever human industry shall find compensation in the seats of the mighty—privileges to none.
It is labor that shall make a better Spain. If Franco wins, and it is unthinkable, the reconstruction of Spain will find strings attached leading to Rome, Berlin, London and Paris. These are in there for what they can get, not give.

I feel a little bit scratched up. A fellow opened his fishing basket on the ferry and, midst the tangle of fish lines, was trying to find something at the bottom.
“Ah,” says I brightly, “getting out your knitting?”
Yes, I think they took him to a hospital. I have been eating lately and , mebbe he didn’t catch nothing. . . . He was a big man, too.
