﻿Why Drink Skim Milk if Cream Won’t Sell? 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
Wiseacres in this country say “back to the soil” and think they havesolved the economic maladjustment; easy as all that . . . 
France is such a farm but it seems she cannot make it pay. 
Wine, alone, she imports three times as much as she produces. Can it be grapes are on strike? But, “France exports wine!” (Now you’ve got me puzzled.) 
What would you think of a farmer that hauls four quarters of beef to market and then buys seven pounds of neckbones for his own use? That’s how we do it in U.S.A. How do you do? 
Can it be that France sends its good wines to world markets and drinks “dago red” herself—(no slur intended)? The problem makes no sense. If these be true, they are an involuntary move on the part of La Belle France and our beloved farmer—someone is stepping on their tail! 
Very good! I have a very good idea who it is that is so careless with his feet: It is the parasite system; that “best of all systems” that is driving the world to suicide and insanity—for in the end there will be no swill barrels. 
Solution then for the rescue of civilization on these premises hinges on the question shall the right man eat his last and final neighbor and be spared the more fatal agonies of indigestion. Not that it makes any difference to us, for by that time we will be hanging from trees . . . 
Note, if we can be robbed as WHOLE people, we can be emancipated as ONE BIG UNION. 
Rather a gloomy picture I have drawn: folks forget to leave the gas shut off . . . here and there a dull thud punctuates the arrival of a window jumper in the alley—squash. Others will not lift a hand against themselves and mournfully await death . . . “nervous breakdown” is it: even so, me hearties, it would be better to organize industrially in the IWW and put the parasites in their proper stalls—rather than suffer a nervous breakdown? 
“We found him there at the old fir stum 
His hand all knots and his back all bumps . . .” 
Author unknown 

Present bunch of political highsteppers in Washington are not trying to save democracy. They are trying to save capitalism. 

WPA is NOT a scheme to increase buying power. I found this out by placing a yardstick alongside the wages—they were low. 

WPA itself is a yardstick and shows the dizzy heights to which politicians go when it comes to adjusting workers’ wages. 

No funds? (Taffy!) Taxing power is unlimited and country must needs accommodate itself to the tax; when it becomes cheaper to employ the discarded workers in private industry than to sustain them under the wings of taxation they shall cease to unemployed. 

PWA is NOT an instrument for recovery because it is doing both unnecessary work and work of the future at cut-rates— both a loss of substance. 

What is it then? 
I believe it is pattern for adopting the WHOLE working class into the governments’ fold and do ALL the work at LESS than HALF WAGES. 

What is the holler against high taxes? 
A smoke screen. The masters of America do not trust the politicians and they fear that the argument for half-pay will not hold. So they stir up lots of smoke and stink about high taxes and economy in expenditures. 

“Force-contract” work is extinct and the older workers have no place to turn to— 45 and junked! They had their chance to organize. Failing this, they can tell the younger workers what will happen to them in turn if THEY DO NOT ORGANIZE. 
True enough, industry was based upon roses in their day; heaven was right next door—$8.25 a week for five and a half days and burlesque was only 10 cents. 
Now all is Hell! It’s pitiful. 
Had they organized rightly they could still be living in the district rubbing elbows with heaven in a miniature fool’s paradise. 
They wouldn’t join the “I Won’t Works”—oh, my garsh, no—and now they themselves are “I Won’t Works” whether they like it or not; even so as the college-bred alderman’s son is on the WPA and the councillor’s daughter a home relief investigator. Barnum still lives! Darn the luck.