﻿Capitalism Is a Crime Under Any Direction
By T-BONE SLIM

It is now admitted “an I.W.W. is human”; next they will say, “He is the only human!”
Courage, time, and tissue, that’s what he has. What more does he want—faith? Determination? Say, a more determined cus never was, and faith is good only for business.
You’ve gotta have faith to skin and be skinned—you’ve gotta have confidence that the bark ain’t all off even after the hemlock is in the catafalque and the bark in the tannery.
They skin you and then peel your back so that they can tan your hide—no, no—that’s not the way to say it.
They disrobe you and then they still your cries, gag you, so that you can’t holler, “I’m naked lord. (Talk about strip-tease, hey!) You hand to your master your raiment and he hands it or its equivalent to deserving foreigners. No wonder we ain’t got sox.
I woulds suggest that American labor discontinue this strip-tease in front of the boss, and for his edi-fication, and step into the I.W.W. out of the wind while naked. And that he stay there at least until we can get some cloth on his back.
It breaks me up, fellow workers, to see our industrial overlords fawning before the slave traders of a foreign world, trying to bribe them with presents, our sox. Oh, where is wandering sox agone? The sox of a prosperous day—even so as it grieves me to see the American working class fawning before the yellow curs & a business world.

Oh well, the ranchers of the Lone Star State (La Estrella Solitaire) Texas, threw a banquet and the main hors d’hoover was—alfalfa salad. Looks like a concession (to me) and I suppose Weyerhaeuser will throw a sawdust party next.

“People unfilled with food will lead to a people filled with revolution,” shouts Senator Borah. I’m not quoting him word for word my memory is bad. Good work, Elmer, old boy; 72 last bathday.

Castagna is Italian for chestnut. In New York harbor the game of castagna is played on a broad scale. Boating life is in highly scrambled condition and boat owners have the special privilege of choosing which union they will deal with; which union will act as cat’s paw to rake Valentine’s chestnute from the; burning. It will be remembered that it was a monkey that first used a cat’s paw to get chestnuts from the roaster and history doesn’t say whether the monk got scratched.
But the guardians of bosses’ favors haven’t a one-way tide, for the bosses won’t stay put and they distribute their favors more promiscuously than the angels of mercy in the redlight district.
It is to be expected when you permit the boss to choose a union he will also assume the right to give or withhold favors. Thus it is that squads of favorites are on the beach eating their hearts out; the only thing they have left to chew on. Suck-holing always did wind up that way.

In view of the fact that workers in this country have produced too much of everything (not including hey hey) and in further view of the fact that they, the workers, have too little of everything (which includes hey hey) the employer has but a triple-plated alibi—a sort of triple entaunt:
First: MISMANAGEMENT (plenty of M’s in that). Second: CROOKEDNESS—of second water. Third: THEIR SYSTEM WON’T WORK.
Not much percentage in that—hardly worth tipping the hat to them. Royalists, hey? It seems their hired brains can’t make a crooked scheme honest; but they can make it pay.
Those three virtues come under the head of EMPLOYER IGNORANCE; we’ve got lunkheads in there—and I say most deliberately, they are ILLITERATE (when caught alone without a coach they refuse to be interviewed except by “standard” interviewers that can make it sound SENSIBLE. You didn’t know we had registered interviewers who jump in there every time THE MASTER MIND GOES BLANK, did you?
Oh, what a farce! Don’t you think, fellow worker, it is time to shag those racketeers out? Put an end to this LION AND LAZARUS SYSTEM OF SOCIETY.
Starving Amidst Too Much! Can’t you see the employer system is through? Done? Positively. And next comes FASCISM.
Organize.
Capitalism under the astute influence of worker control will not work any better—it’s a crime on the face of it—a crime is a crime whether worker or dictator does it and to see some of our steaming revolutionists flexing their muscles ready to jump in there and grab the “sad remains,” (the glittering watermelon rinds in the moonlight) is more pitiful than comic—they quite forget the economic souls have beat them to it. The motives are identical.
The Wobblies believe in putting some meat in the hollow shells and rap the parasites over the knuckles if they try to chisel—that’s better than being chief mourner at your own funeral; example horrible of modern purge.
“A new society in the shell of the old”—nobody should object to that. The trouble with my countrymen is they don’t want to produce, only consume. They want to sit down in the warehouse eating storage eggs, whereas I want to step out and lay some strictly fresh ones.
I’ll tell you, boys and girls, the whole thing is so artificial I wouldn’t know just where to begin if I was to junk it—but this much I know: None of it will do in any self-respecting workers’ commonwealth. Not one thing is there in the parasite junkpile that we want. Any new society built on salvage requires too much paint. Second hand stuff is second hand and if artificial to begin with it is pure undiluted punishment.
