﻿Get a Better Boat, Boys 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
I cannot understand why politicians persist in hatching their eggs in labor’s nest; nor can’t I understand why labor permits it. Why do thev not hatch their eggs in their own nest? Is their nest so foul they have to use labor’s? 
Rank and file tells me the Communist party is trying to hatch out some doorknobs in the N. M. U. No harm in that except that it keeps the nest occupied so that the seamen cannot hatch any real eggs. Since when has a politician turned into a highsea mariner? 
Seamen maintain halls, pay the rent so that politicians can strut their stuff and take up seamen’s time from important matters. Politics has absolutely no remedy for seamen’s ills. Once politics gets into a labor union it cannot be bailed out, deeper and deeper sinks the yawl. 
Seamen, you have a Jonah in your boat. Better change boats. 
All , th gains seamen have made have been without political action, and will be lost with it. Politicians follow labor action like a tern follows ships—but they do not go far to sea. 
They have no action of their own so they appear suddenly in the midst of labor action. WHY? I wonder—why do the “leaders” appear after the action is started? Think it over. 
Don’t Know Their Own Stuff 
My contention is: politicians understand neither political action or labor action. The best the they can do is set one body of workers against the other. Workers themselves have no quarrel. 
Political action is by its nature—slow. We were to get our eggs through political action they would be over-ripe before they arrive—we’d be glad to get rid of ‘em. So it is with everything political—relief comes to you thirty days after you are in jail for stealing bread. 
You aren’t supposed to be in jail, you are supposed to be dead —starved to death. Why couldn’t you wait and let nature take its course? But why wait for jail or death just to please political muddlers? Why not join the I. W. W.? 

Compromise is a loss to the workers. 
When there is no mush in the cupboard, and none likely to be, it’s a poor time to talk compromise; it, the mush, is or isn’t present; and compromise spells isn’t.  
We do not need generals to get us “isn’t,” the boss hands us that without help from the labor generals of this work-a-day world. 
We do not need labor generals to get us relief rations; the economic power of begging gets us the scrawny relief tickets automatically—begging adventures are followed by souplines, for uneasy lies the head that weas a crown. 
Economic power will feed, clothe, shelter, and free the workers—generals never did, never will. 
Join the I. W. W. 
Economic power is the only power the workers have—only the workers have it. Parasites are using borrowed power—our power, our lawnmower, and our hired man tu push it. Let’s make them return it. The world needs a haircut.