﻿If You Know a Way Out Don’t Keep it Secret 
By T-BONE SLIM

What. would you think of a business man that threatened one of his best customers? You’d naturally think.”It won’t be long now.”. I agree with you.
Uncle Sam is that business man and Japan is that customer. Japan buys twice as much goods from the U. S. ns we buy from her; she buys more goods from us than South America and China combined. Some workers waul to boycott her. 
Every Monday the Daily News (New York) puts up a holler, “Two ships for one,” just as if Japan were a danger to us; as if all that trade ($ 165,000,000 worth), is merely a blind to make us careless and then when we ain’t looking while counting our gold, the Rising Sun will burst in on us and grab the whole works.
Though titty, to have a leading newspaper get the horror that way; it generally comes just before rigor mortis sets in. To all intents and purposes the News makes it a point to say every Monday morning, “Hey. Sam, whet your knife; he’s in again,.”
I do not know how much it will take to exasperate Japan but it would seem reasonable that the U. S. will lose that trade and save the A. F. of L. the trouble of boycotting her. A way should be found to abate the News, for it is self-evident that the statesmanship of the News belongs to another age and another race.
Somebody’s Chestnuts are in the Fire
I cannot see what license a newspaper has to throw monkey wrenches into our foreign trade. (Note: If we fight Japan it will be a big lift for communism of the Moscow type.) Chestnuts.
I do not favor foreign trade; it smacks too much of a couple of stick-up-men dickering over a dying victim. Neither do I favor fighting anybody’s war for them. I do not believe Japan takes the News seriously—me too. The News is not serious. It’s Johannes Bull that is drawing the long face.
John wants to sell Japan and considers us an interloper, intermoper—a bloody, bleeding intruder and trespasser.
Our Unsocial Employers
What would you think of government that arms itself against its citizens in a continual warfare of petty tyrannies against its populace; red tape, mugging, finger-printing, espionage, etc.?
You’d naturally think that such a government is shy of wit and all the word implies—inefficiency. So do I. Such governments are many. Incapable of pruning its top-heavy tree of social procedure, having driven its workers to the point where they can be driven no further it resorts to instruments of warfare, compulsion. A dirty mess.
What would you think of an employer that arms himself against his workers whose substance he eats and uses “those arms,” at not infrequent intervals, with dire results against the peace and life of his employes? Naturally you’d think that such an employer is an unsocial animal and requires special and organized attention so that sense may be driven into his head and so that he may be freed of his greed. So do I. We ought to get together for our self protection and for the protection of our liberties now all but extinct.
These are but the earmarks of what life has in store for us along the trail of laizes faire—gradual degradation and, ultimately, inglorious death—if we remain unorganized.
The political world has two choices—war or depression; workers have two blessings to bestow on the world—peace and plenty. Let’s put this house in order.
	Do You Know the Way
The first perquisite of good organization is—build your press. Not that it is a scale to go by, a blue print or a template, but because it is the reduction into black and white of the progress you have made. It is a voice crying in the wilderness of ideas, a “halloo” in the woods that encourages the lost (who have strayed), a concrete the world that tells the world that you were here and that civilization cannot be far.
Support your press by all means at your command, I do not mean by money alone. Stick it into the other fellow’s face and say, “Here’s where I come from, my name is Fellow Worker.”
How many times have you clutched at your heart at the fork of the road and said, “Why in the hell don’t they put up signs so that afellow can see where he is going? Then again:
“Why’n hell don’t they stick up the name of this street I’m walking on — those cross streets aint no good to me whatsoever. Why, damn it,” you add hopefully, “what I want to know is am I on Gunderson Ave. or Sunset Boulevard.”
So, fellow workers, don’t ever let it be said that you failed to stick up your press to let the world know what’s what.
We have gone so far now that I fear we cannot keep industrial unionism secret much longer. I’m not arguing that you need the press—I wouldn’t be that dumb. You’ve been over the road so many times you could find your way even if the night was pitch black and you yourself was half-seas over. It’s those other guys that need your press; the guys that are feeling their way; the young, the unborn.
You wouldn’t hardly deny a man the name of a street or the, way to the Lexington Ave. subway, would you?
Why then deny the man the road to freedom? What in hell do you wan’t ‘em to do; fall onto your neck and say, “Please Mr. Wobblie, won’t you let me have , a copy or your Paper so I can find out what it’s all about?
There is only one thing more pitiful than lack of information and that is misinformation. And who is there to deny the present bumper crop of misinformation.
Unquestionally the wobblies have the dope— but why be bashful about it?
