﻿Why Bother With Employers When They Do Not Employ
Observations by T-BONE SLIM

We have a condition wherein more than ten million cannot find employment. That is not merely an industrial aberration or a passing apparition. It is something very real and concrete.
It is readily admitted that seven million will forever be unemployed. That makes it solid ivory. My figures “two thirds unemployed and one third employed’ are not a hard and fast rule, and cannot be because the matter is in flux. But in order to understand it, let us have a concrete example.
A father has six growing up sons. It will not take long for these sons to displace the father at the point of production. Not only that—one of these sons will “bid in” his father’s job over the heads of his brothers. What have we now? We had a father with six sons. We now have a son with five brothers and one father. The precentage of unemployment is 6 to 1.
The time factor here ordains that 40 million fathers will be on the scrap pile unless these matters be corrected.
Now if it is true that two-thirds of the working class is unemployed, and that is the best our employers can do, what in the name of common sense it the use of having employers? Hire all or none is my motto, and if they can’t make the ripple let ‘em go out.

Regardless of your conditions, good, bad, or indifferent—even though you be hedged, sheltered and nursed like a chrysanthemum, you are borrowing from your old age.
“Here Slim,” you say, “lend me three months to ease me over the present rough spots.” It’s a go. (This bill you pay of course, and you die three months short.) Fair enough. But you are not a chrysanthemum. You are in fact Chysostomus of the Island of Patmos, and you must borrow a year or two at a crack. Damn this credit business anyway—it’s going to be our ruination.
“Senate Bill to Put War on Cash Basis.”
Good for you, Bill!

“Borah Urges Vote on New Deal Power.”
“Only the People Can Sanction Change to a Strong Central Authority,” he says.
“Yes, they’ll cure a helluva lot of corns by rubbing freezone on that bald pate of theirs—they might as well sit on it.”
Oh, my gorsh! that reminds me: When the General Motors Corporation went on its famous sit-down strike a couple of years ago, it sat down on a pile of jobs, and nobody thought of getting an injunction ‘gainst DuPont, Morgan and the bunch. When they finally called off the sit-down, the jobs were as flat as a pancake and -now the men are trying to sit, down on them until the regain their former grandeur, glory and embonpoint.

The people are not hurrying, they are hysterical. Less hysteria and they will hurry faster; make more time. All are delayed and yet they are ahead of time.
It is easy to say slow down, but, inasmuch as the hysterical have no volition, no remedy occurs. So 740,000 are killed or injured by automobiles in 1935—hysteria at the wheel; 350,000 killed or injured in our end of the World War—hysteria in the White House.
Iron, Calcium or Bicarbonate will not correct this condition—and who is there to say which is the better doctor, Copeland or Gladys Glad? Safety First drives are useless seats in the elevated trains are still detachable, and if the car ever does an Immelman nose dive to the street one of those lose-leaf cushions might break a man’s wrist-watch crystal. The hysteria here is low pressure.
The remedy for hysteria, high or low pressure, is as follows:
Start from the bottom and build a One Big Union of workers. Subject the industry to majority rule—reversing the rule that subjects the workers to industrial command. Instead of being used by economic power, use economic power. Instead of letting power run you, you run the power— and you will be surprised to learn that you are the power, the economic power, and that your name is LABOR.