﻿T-BONE SLIM SAYS:

The ethical fervor in the big shots of Europe is not caused by any new found conscientous scruples, but by the discovery that they had been phenagled into a crap game with loaded dice.
“My job,” they moan, and the program of impoverishment of Spain is OUT.
As I before said: “Brains are working behind the line, in Spain.” They are building a new society within the shell of the old.

Merry Christmas! (This is for next year—I always like to be “in plenty of time”.) We are celebrating today the birth of a child who had to flee the wolves to a far eastern country in his diapers.
Who, after his return and at the age of eight, had to step into the temple and teach the high-mucky nuts and imbecile scribes, and who reached the age of 32 before the book-learned wolves found time to crucify him.
We still have the wolves.
Children still fear humans.
Distant lands still beckon.
And we still have to open the mouth of a child to find truth, hear wisdom, and know freedom.

The abuses in the marine industry are very real, unquestionably real. Ordinarily the bosses put out more bait to the select minorities. Shipowners do not do so.
The captains and males are out.
The cooks and stewards are out.
The radio operators are out.
The engineers, firemen and watertenders are out.
And—of course, the seamen.
That makes it unanimous.
Where there is smoke there is fire.
Where there is much smoke there is much file.
The American public for safety sake, should support these strikers— the strike is only al the half way mark now.
And these strikers, including myself, should see to it that nobody gets the short end.
I ask you: Can it be possible, when masters, mates, engineers and radio protest, that seamen have no case?
It goes without saying, their wages, food and conditions are terrible.
If they want safety al sea, let them appease these strikers; for they have a dream that must come true. And it’s two miles to the bottom.

I am reminded here that the shipowners have made deliberate efforts to degenerate and demoralize the American marine industry with the most damnable foods human mind can conceive. To the present they have failed because of the fighting qualities of our seamen. There was ups and downs of course— but there is always another up and at ‘em. Latest effort of the shipowners is to supplant these noble sailors they failed to ruin with inexperienced mollycoddles from the billiard parlors and reformed freaks from Forty-Second Street Cod help the traveling public! They will drown themselves and thousands of “innocents abroad.” I would prevent all this by putting in front of Jack the choice of ice-cream, pie and watermelon for desert — and — a box of lemons in the fo’c’sle.
I was a long time in New York before I dared to mention thoiteenth street and foiteenth street.
Visiting firemen should drop in on the Finlanders’ Tarmo Club (Harlem) restaurant—a tip to the wise is nutricious.
Two “Dollar Lines” mudhooks down, blockade the traffic in North (Hudson) River; synthetic smoke coming from (one) funnel. Roll of tarpaper probably?
Black eyes are back in style in Manhattan, and finks are having their ears propped back in place— about 50 per cent of the black eyes are misplaced or caused by nerve troubles. Everybody seems happy.
l.W.W. is riding the crest of approval.