﻿Workers Taken In For Brenda’s “Coming Out” 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
Brenda Diana Duff Frazier’s coming out party cost in the neighborhood of $50,000. Now that’s what I call coming out proper. It couldn’t be improved upon except by raising the nte. They had everything, everything. She’s seventeen and, God wot how she must have been surprised to see what a hole can be sunk into our surpluses with one little, teeny, weeny, lousy, fifty thousand thaelers. Only one drawback to this social explosion, the surpluses should not have been present at this particular engagement. They should have been, (to inject a little pathos this historical record.) gobbled-up six years ago by boys and girls who are now WPA. 
True enough, the 50,000 is buying power put in circulation, and true it is “better late than never” but still I can’t help mourning the fact that we had to go through a depression twice before it was turned loose—we had to wait until Brenda was seventeen before we could quit sucking our thumbs. 
In other words, as they say in Spokane—”that money should have been spent when it was earned and these surpluses should have been non-existent these many years-” 

Gone With the Finn? 
Gather ‘round me neighbors and cheer in my grief; I’m pierced by million sabers—some one has been a thief . . .? Ah! Germany won’t let the General Motors haul its profits out of the Vaterland. $35,000,000 G M.’s got invested across the Rhine and now she can’t get her money back. Her money?— or even samples thereof. 
Heluva trick to play on our unsuspecting magnates. News wipes away its tears and hints G.M. has to wait until Hitler dies (I hope they ain’t thinking of assassinating him?) 
G.M. naively explains they get around this dilemna by “sinking the money back in industry.” May as well, seeing as how Adolf won’t let ‘em throw it in the Rhine. 
Germany gets the benefit of our (American) capital . . . Heluva note! So General Motors had to cross the pond to take one on the schnozzle? She couldn’t sink the money back into industry in this country (where it was produced) could she? 
Cue for G.M.: 1 was just thinking, with an eye to the future, would not it be a good idea to raise the wages of your workers here— so as to guard against having so many millions to toss overboard. (Henry Ford too was stuck for the drinks— him a breath-smeller, too; darn the luck). 
Both we and our bosses are—crazy. That $35,000,000 was purely a free-will offering, on the part of General Motors and we can’t afford to send a single battleship to collect it. They might grab the battleship too? Hellsbells. 
Outside of the material benefits of higher wages we find that it is our bounden duty to Jack up the wages. (Oho ho, you didn’t think of that, did you?) — a duty? Every cut-rate pay leaves a surplus of commodities in the bosses’ hands; the lower the pay the greater the surplus. To get rid of these surpluses the boss has to fight Germany, Japan, France and England. Big contract that. A better way would be to raise the wages so high that there will be no surplus; hence no war! I’m just wondering if we haven’t been just a little bit derelict in our duty (there’s a big holler for war) besides sacrificing planksteaks and pork tenderloin (every visit to a swill barrel is as good as asking for war.) 
Even if you don’t give a damn about yourself you should have consideration for those that have to go out and fight the bouses’ wars. 
A juggy horse doesn’t kick. 
Working class is calm-posed of those that have and those that have it to get. 
The Nu Year starts on a hoptimistic note— IOU. Ring the bell, brother Delano. 
But they haven’t the remedy—they’re out there bicycle riding. There are not short cuts in the whirlpool; except straight down. Working Class to the rescue!— have a bottom that stands the gaff. We, in America, stand to win no matter which way the race goes— but not by copy or rote. We must progress, we must improve. We can hold the course or turn tail and run like hell. We can outweather the gale, without pulling canvas; we can outsteer the storm, run around it like “a Red Devil” around “Ohio River Boat” or — we can beat her to the harbor. 
There is nothing being at tempted in this whole wide world that spells SUCCESS. 
The field is open. The day is clear. Not a cloud in the sky. 
The trouble is people want to do things the hard way; so as to pose as supermen and women. 
The joke of it is the thing is so easy of accomplishment that nobody would notice the actual operation, historians wouldn’t mention it, no cheer leaders would applaud it, no black magics would bless it, it is so simple, it is so automatic, it is so matter of course— just join the One Big Union of the working class and it is done. I’d be an awful donkey, wouldn’t I, to start turning handsprings just because a worker uses his noodle? See a delegate right away and let’s get out of this dizzy swirl.