﻿Strange Are the Ways of Man in A Strange World 
By T-BONE SLIM

It has happened in many lands but Sinclair Lewis, a likely lad, assures me “Il cannot happen here.”
In those Strange Lands the economic oilers maintained an army of gunmen in the factories and plants to the extent of 10 percent of the working population— counting the stool pigeons and part-time renegades. Say, all told, about on thousand gunmen to every ten thousand workers and all these, including the gunmen, were slaves to A Voice and nothing else but . . .
Maintenance of those armies by the employers was not altogether an unalloyed joy, and clashes frequently occured between these slaves of The Voice; and, whenever the allotment of gunmen was unable to hold its own with the most outraged workers, the employers would send out and get reinforcements from the underworld and pay them well.
But it sometimes happened that even then The Voice could not get the workers to accept 70 years of toil with nothing to show for it except a righteous grave, and then it was incumbent upon The Voice to call in the State Militia. Whenever the workers saw the “ungodly” prospered beyond the fruits of their production and the miltia was as insufficient to get the boys to accept inferior food, inferior, raiment, inferior housing, the employers would call in the “devil dogs” and regiments of infantry on the grounds that a national crisis existed.
Guns and Depravity
All this panoply of war, clash of arms, and summary execution of workers was the result of permitting industrial autocrats to maintain an army of gunmen in the factories and sweat shops of the nation for the intimidation of the workers.
Arsenels in the factories bespeak the depth of depravity of the aforsaid “ungodly” and no further word of mine can add or detract therefrom and, were the workers to collaborate with these, they would have to go to work with a high-powered rifle strung across their shoulders—and that would not be so much fun either.
Strange are those strange people in those strange lands and I am ever the more pleased to live in a free democracy where the bosses trot around bearing olive branches and soothing syrup— especially when Sinclair Lewis, my pal, assures me “it cannot happen here.” (F. W. Ed: Notice the increasingly heavier chirography up to here as evening shadows fall—it is now 2 a. m.)
In those strange lands whereof we speak the soldier was an unsocial being and would just as soon as not shoot down his father and mother and be glad of it for he attributed much of his plight to his scissorbills with very sketchy ideas about unionism. Whereas in our own land the boys in blue or gray wouldn’t think of shooting into the ranks of their partents without great provocation or mortal insult; much the as they love the army and navy and secretary of the treasury.
Never, no never! does it enter in to the minds of our brave boys that they have “kaunas” against their parents for raising them up to be soldiers. In fact they siew the business of war as a path to glory and beans, and tire duly greatful to the great republic for saving them from starvation.
Maybe He Don’t Want to Mix the Breed?
Monter Martin, president of the United Automobile Workers, is in favor of physical examination for the workers. Sounds fine in print but when you put it into an adding machine it comes out a row of 000,000s. By strange coincidence there are 4,000,000 bosses in this country’ who are in favor of examining workers physically—only 80 percent of the workers are opposed.
The boss can cull the workers in a company doctor’s office no matter how fit—only new mollycoddles will take the examination. Maybe Homer Martin’s men are mollycoddles?
The unwritten rule of the I. W. W. is: Find out what the boss wants you to do— then don’t do it.
Homer is learning fast.
Also by a strange coincidence the boss believes in bargaining. But there is a joker. He believes that the worker should bargain as an individual. Haw . . . Ever hear the boss say: “Now, Jimmie, don’t tell the rest of the boy’s about this”?
Then again the boss believes that he should bargain with the union’s professional bargainers only. All that aside, the fact remains there is nothing on the bargain counter for the workers—either as individual, union or represented. His welfare lies in his organized yower, not in eloquence.

The self interest of the powers in Europe seems to be to keep the war going in Spain so that they can sell them clean bandages. Spain’s workers have everything in common but I cannot see a solution as between loyalist and rebel because the parasites have divided themselves among the two factions; each hoping to be on the winning side. The war is prejudiced to that extent, internally, but not irrepairably.
I think it would be well to bring European diplomats into the United States of America—and civilize them.
