﻿Democracy? It’s Not a Bad Idea 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
Minimum wages are 30 cents an hour, 42-hour week—$12.60 a week, $655.20 a year. Jeeze, we’re rich—if we get full time. 
Why, that’s better’n two bucks a day. 
Depend on Congress to keep you out of the poorhouse? Hope they don’t pull a tendon! 
Congressmen get in the neighborhood of $2/000 a month fob the time they put in—right around $66 a day—and they’re worth it, every cent of it, as the above figures do show. Six hundred fifty-five dollars and twenty cents a year? Hm. Feed the wife and kiddies on that. 
Other $10,000 a year men say it’s all right. Millionaires should go on record and tell about the two-fifty a week they got before they went stealing by wholesale. 
God knows, labor needs encouragement. 
Bootball Injuries 
“Lew Burton’s account of the disposal of Sunday’s football receipts . . . Owner Mara’s cut was $39,000. Owner Halas’ cut was $26,000. The players’ cuts were touched with mercurocrome!”—Jimmy Powers. 
What? No iodine or St. Jacob’s oil? How true it is. The boss gets a million dollars and the workers get pink slips. 
Our Democracy 
“Guard Democracy, First Lady Warns.” Not a bad idea at all, Lady, once we locate It. 
Democracy, like cow’s milk, divides itself into these merits: Unsterilized, sterilized, canned, evaporated, condensed, malted, and watered. There can be no democracy without industrial democracy. Without it no democracy can stand up long. 
Apparent long life of some democracies is due wholly to expansion and growth of country, which permits of flight from its immediate caresses. Once the expansion ceases, for whatever reason, then comes the showdown and industrial democracy is the ONLY way out. It could have served the same purpose in the first place and much good skin might have been preserved on the great American nose. Choose right this time. 
Sweet Marie 
This is the peacefullest war Europe has had in a long time. Very little blasting on the Western Front. (The boys down there are broadcasting eternal love over calliopes—sound trucks.) 
Even the blasting down in our beloved Washington is a model of virtue—you’d almost think the “gentlemen from” . . . are prepared to crack a double case of Jackson Koehler’s Export. 
Indeed, the heaviest blasting is being done by the propagandist trying to sell us the war. 
Why dammit, they haven’t enough war for their own use, to say nothing of wishing Uncle Samuel any part of it. 
What do they want us to do, for cripes sake? Peddle leaflets over Germany or send Marshall over to warble “Loves Sweet Young Dream” to the French? 
Call off the fracas, boys, it’s a flop. 
Hitler, Daladier, and Chamberlain have laid an egg. In other words: 
This war was precipitated as a faux pas in the first place and now they want Uncle Shylock (of beloved memory) to hop, skip, and jump lover there to cut down the effigy. 
Let her hang as she looks, boys, land when you get hungry enough, we’ll hand out some beef stew and petrified frankfurts. 

N.Y.C.— Ex-convict with a long long record and 32 sticks of dynamite was seized in subway. That makes the wierd movies of yesterday look strictly candled —Kosher. 
Albany—”A salary of $25,000 a year was not enough to pay all the bills, the wife of George W. Martin testified today at the Senate hearing on removal charges against the Brooklyn jurist.”—News. 
Hm. John Workox, Joe Doe, and JuliusMcGillicuddy get $655 a year, minimum low—less lost time. 

If John Workox waits long enough for our two million dollar congress to help him, he will find himself “short-winded” when the time comes for him to help hisself. 

Over There—The dole is for the purpose of acclimating the boys to the acceptance of soldierly rewards. 
Thar’s gold in them thar hills. Thar’s 10,000,000 jobless, long hours and speedup. Surely, these are more than coincidence? 
Couple Other Guys? 
“The boss never skinned me of anything.” 
That may be all true, but how did he get the $500,000? He hasn’t lived 500 years, has he? You know, you get only 1,000 a year, and plenty abuse. It’s the system. 
It’s easy enough to contribute to the bosses’ welfare while the country booms, but how hard it is to get it back after you see the light! 
Nothing short of an Industrial One Big Union will do it. The IWW, to be exact. 
Top Wage 
In view of the mass production nature of most all migratory work there is no reason why it should not pay the highest (top) wages. Whether it be farms, dams, highways, or railroads—temporary’ work at best—it is all high-speed. 
Take the big farms, they are the chief offenders. They skin the living Jesus out of the worker for a couple of weeks’ work and set a precedent religiously followed by all farmers the rest of the year, making then own and the workers’ lives hopeless. 
Such craziness—organize. Madness is not a solution for an economic problem—organize. Don’t be two-by-four. Organize. 

Feeling for money is a damn poor way to wear out pockets. 
Get the shekles. If anybody calls your bet, tell ‘em I told you. T-Bone Slim, may he always be right; but right or wrong—T-Bone Slim. 

Then the British censor, Grover Whalen, informs us that we Americans are all practically Anglophiles—a bright lad he used to be, too.