﻿How Slim Brought Peace To Frazee 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
Counting noses over in Jersey City, I found no scalps had been lifted and the town still is present as usual . . . Heard a colored gentleman in the West Side elevated sing “My Wild Irish Rose.” All agreed “he is happy.” Mebbe only driving away gloom. 

Tinplate heir is off for Pitcairn Island in the South Seas and in the meantime tinplate industry will survive best it can. 
Despite the fact that USA is strictly snootral on the matter of the Finn-Russian war, the great preponderance believe the war ended too soon––the newspapers were just getting so they could talk Finn better than I can myself. Radio, too, was getting so that it could spiel äidin kieltä like thoroughbreds. 

The French Revolution, 1793-94, had it gone in four directions instead of three, might have been a howling success. The great engineers appeared and proceeded to tailor-make a complication of many artifices and the course never was in ONE direction.  
Even today we find nations attempting to run a set of three governments side-by-side: military, agricultural and industrial. Transition period? Hm. 
The most wierd nomenclature emerges––among them “transmission belt.” 
Transmission of the workers’ production into the playboys’ pockets. 
The “transmission” takes many forms, of course, but the most outstanding one is that individuals and cities grow rich at the expense of those less favorably located in trade and commerce and whole nations grow rich at the expense of other nations less developed, industrialized or organized. In other words here again we have monopoly in favor of nobility (rakes) and businessmen (chiselers). 

Senator Norris, Nebraska, land of feather mattresses and feather quilts, gets up and says in effect: 
“Shorten the hours, 30 per week, 20 per week . . .” In other words, make the hours fit the needs and the workers present––but that is only a step in the right direction, automatic as it is. 
Workers should organize, and in their case it is just as ludicrous for them to try to maintain several disconnected unions side by side as it is for the nation to maintain several governments––it means fights, disputes and corruption. 
Workers on the lakes should belong to one union only. Plethora of unions is like a 54-room dwelling for a sourdough bachelor–unnecessary, unseemly and unsound. It is a pile of furniture going to waste. One union, one objective––and let that objective be “porkchops” in the full sense of the word: food, clothing, shelter, comfort and recreation for the workers of the world. 

Seamen are complaining that owing to a plethora of certificates, maritime passports and union books their sea-bag resembles a Zeppelin. 
 
There are two kinds of politicians: those that make it while trying to prevent it, and those that prevent it while trying to make it––and no matter which way you cut, it’s baloney. 
Swivel (Civil) Service is a matter in point. 
So long as the garbage scows were privately owned and swills could be dumped right into the Master’s (Captain’s) state-room, civil service was an unheard of thing but when the new steel scows came out right away you’ve got to pass a swivel service examination and, I suppose, be looked over by a couple of horse doctors. 
Boating is taking on proportions and the noose is getting tighter with time. You can’t even swing a mop or wield a broom in a public toilet unless you have passed cum laude before the civil service body. 

Now on coal barges, they load you one day, the tug tows that night; next day they unload you and the tug tows you that night. Next day they load you and the considerate tug again tows you under cover of darkness. Tugs tow only in the night time and mony of them would be ashamed to show themselves in broad daylight. 
This goes on indefinitely and the captain is supposed to get his sleep––in the grave; and remain cheerful in the meantime.  
After the captain is thoroughly exhausted and staggers a little on his off-hoof, the offices at both ends of the “run” conclude “the captain has bent a knee to the powerful John Barleycorn in hope of gaining enforced wakefulness.” What an outrageous calumny! Who ever heard of a barge captain “bending a knee” to say nothing about bending an elbow. And they pull down the telephones and notify the poor captain’s boss: “Your captain on the coal barge Paradise is––drunk.” Not satisfied with that they spell it right out D-R-U-N-K. And the poor man was only T-I-R-E-D. 
A married captain once hadn’t seen his home and family for 37 days. When he showed up at the house his dear wife failed to recognize him and his children crawled under the bed. 
And still the boatowners have the guts to deny these workers even simple, fair, single-time for double-time work and they stalk them night and day trying to place a wolf upon their doorstep. 
A little organization just about now would be of great benefit to the boatmen of the gilded harbor. 

The nerve of those Finns, trying to lick half of Asia and the big half of Europe reminds me of the time I tried to bring law and order to Frazee, Minn. Elmer Buddinger, strapping lad of 5 ft. 1, wrote me afterwards: “You ought to know better than to try to lick a town the size of Frazee without my assistance.” And him 48 miles away! 
It was thought that peace could best be preserved by having a deputy walk guard in front of my cell.