﻿His Excellency The Politician Keeps ‘em Dizzy 
By T-BONE SLIM

A great dizziness had attacked the working class and they went CIO almost on masse. This had happened at the time Chulius Scissor was Emperor of Rome or my Ingersol is slow.
Before this the working class had been living by special permit on captured bass, dandelions, and discarded tid-bits of the “quality folks”; as described by the world’s greatest Wheelsman and Navigator of the Great Lakes.
Squlorty was the keynote of political speeches and rotund politicians had to live pretty much, and well, on boodle and graft because the salaries for the “looks sake” were modestly balanced. Wars were carried on between the politicians because of the superior conniving of some of the sect and also as a result of the quarrels over equitable distribution of the proceeds of the toils of the heroic dog-catcher.
They sure had Chulius Scissor in hot water!
A. F. of L. had gone ultra-respectable and circumspect and had taken oath to neverstrike— even for 3.5 percent beer and a living wage. Drinking whisky those days was like drinking sea water; the drank the drier you got and many moved over to the Great Lake so as to save expenses.
Water companies had been charging ten (Roman) bucks a throw for installing water meters in the houses, which amounted to millions and billions of bucks. So the great Roman Scissor, Chulius, got up on his hind legs and shouted:
“What’t the big idea of charging these mutts ten bucks to store your property in their houses?”
Bedlam broke lose and the populi shouted, “Hear! Hear! (It went over big.) “Ungorge! Ungorge!” the people shouted and Chulius Scissor issued an ultimatum to the various sublime and supreme Heat, Light, Power, and Water companies to return the ten bucks to the people “pronto,” as he said, “or be cited for inciting to riot.”
The water companies promptly pulled in their horns and long queues of anxious citizens extended around the block waiting their turn- for ten bucks is big chicken feed in any land’s money—and, despite the fact that the water companies should have been forced to bring it (the ten bucks) up to the house, Chulius Scissor was re-elected by an over-whelming majority and the Roman Empire took a new lease on life.
But the people still kept hollering: “We just started to suffer. We can take it.” And every minute of the day there was danger that hey would take it too—and not on the chin
Politeness had gone out of war, and nations no longer made formal declarations of war against each other, no doubt figuring the hated natural-born, mortal enemy would find it out soon enough. (They must have got the idea from the wobblies.)
“Reprisals” was the great cry of the puerile press (when they weren’t talking about safe driving or scientific way of buying yeast cakes) for the benefit of the multitudes. Oh, it was awful! And then the prize monkeys would gather around the tubs of ginger ale and cracked ice even while the roaring mob was milling around the door hollering, “When do we eat?”
Change, eternal change, kept worming her way into the intricacies and intimacies of the tradesmen and they would lose their holds on the slippery cliffs of high emprise and go bounding down the precipice of lost hope, cherplunk, right into the middle of WPA. There wasn’t a parcel of sense in the whole land. Nothing had been organized but the exploitation of labor, and that only in a half hearted manner— for it’s a matter of record that numbers of the working class survived a long time and beyond the periods of their usefulness to the parasites—in a land of bountiful blessings of Ceres, there was hunger. Forests only brought open air treatment, in sleep for millions; mineral wealth supreme, and fuel, brought only shivers and grief.
So Chulius Scissor got up and said, “Whot the hell’s going on here?” Lifting one eyebrow politily, for he was a man of violent passions, and then he did thereupon put up to the folks and loving neighbors a parable:
(Hear! Hear! Breastworks of Colesium Broadcasting Company speaking)—
You’ve got $10,000 and you wish to deposit it in a bank. You go to the bank but you do not approach the subject directly; you wish to beat around the bush a little. So you put it this way:
“I wish to borrow $10,000 cash money.”
“Sure Mike,” says the banker, “have you good collateral for security?”
“Why yes,” sez you, “I’ve got two houses worth $25,000.”
“Good,” sez the banker, “and have you other security?”
“Yes, I’ve got $10,000 in life insurance.”
“Good,” sez the banker, and marks that down too.
“Do you mean to say, Mr. Banker that you demand $35,000 security on a $10,000 loan?”
“Sure we’ve got to, we’re a bank.”
“Well, how much security are you offering me if I deposit $10,000 here?”
“Why, none at all, we can’t; we’re a bank.”
“Well then, I guess I’ll just rent a box.”
And then Chulius Scissor, the
great Roman Emperor, opened his mouth bigger than ever and said; “I carry no truck for selfish interests and shall, soon as I get back to my desk, issue an edict: Lovers shall rule the world.
