﻿Here, too, People Are Not Eating 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
The reason Russia took so much Finnish land is because they had forgotten where they left their tanks . . . The reason an employer wants so much of the workers’ production is because his girl friend fails to remember where she left her pearls. 
The only way statesmen can estimate the size of the relief dish required is by counting the robberies and stick-ups prevailing. Just now it looks as if the relief dish is not too large. 
Any suspected improvement in business is preceeded by a sizeable cut (228,000) from WPA rolls. Not so “Johnny-Come-Lately,” hey? 

All wealth is the product of workers of the past and workers of the present so how can anyone sat, “this is mine?” And how can any government deny any worker any part of it? 
Those in the graves wouldn’t kick—and those alive—who cares? 

All invention is synthetic (nothing is new—even the pants you wear may be in part made from a pair of second-hand sox). 
That toothpick you whittled is not your product. Blacksmith made the knife-blade, miners dug the ore, furnace men supplied the iron, mechanics assembled the parts etc.—in fact the invisible hands of practically the whole working class helped you make that toothpick. You ought to have a One Big Union. 

“Rumania has an Allied pledge of assistance against aggression, made prior to the war.” 
So did Czechoslovakia, so did Poland, so did Finland—down where the weeping willows grow. 

New Year resolutions are as frail “on paper” as a drunkards reformation. Your own organization is your best succor and if you must fight hit first, and hard. The pity of it—dishonest agreements deviously arrived at. 
Finland isn’t weeping yet, and Risto Ryti does all the smiling for a sorrowing nation. 

It’s costly to live in Russia. During the World War, Russia sacrificed 7,000,000 dead, crippled, wounded in 1,000 days (3 years)—7,000 a day. 
In the Finnish war, Russia sacrificed only 2,000 a day. But they were most thoroughly dead (crippled, wounded not counted). 
For fun, whiskey or marbles, war doesn’t pay . . . 
Submarine warfare is no more horrible than misleading a bear into trap or disguising a fishhook with an angleworm—making it look like a blue-plate dinner. 
Full many a sucker hath sighed: Oh what a donkey I was’” “Me “ they scream, “a shark, and they hook me for a smelt!” 
X marks the spot where the whale blowed. 

I haven’t the precise figures of the number the world has butchered in all he wars, but after careful study of the brains extant I am led to the conclusion some of them must have been pretty smart men. 
Dictated peace is dishonest before and after the fact. Betrayal of confidence—no flowers grow in such soil. 
“Take or be taken,” in the rule in warfare. 
Economic brainlessness results in brainless war. 
Dearth of mental moxie permits a man to starve (to death) in an overstocked pantry. Brains? 
Others die of lack of organization. They disdain to live on borrowed thought. 
Nations ride to hell unorganized on the strength of their own neighbor nations’ wierd economics. Poor, dear nations—exploited by a select tribe of millionaires! 

Elliot says, “Employers should have equal rights with the workers.” 
I agree without a stutter—a stint on the same shift with the workers, and equal voice in the management of industry (with the workers), equal pay and equal hours. 
But I suggest sweating be prohibited all around—or put the boys in a cooler with an electric fan to cool their fevered temples. Overproduction doesn’t rate fever charts. 
I suggest 1941 be declared a legal holiday to permit demand to catch up with production. 
Today I met a man of Scandinavian persuasion who seemed to be offended because, as he said, “can’t get nothing to eat.” So I can readily understand how America can sympathize with the Finns, for we, too, are not eating. 
I joined him in his sorrows but I was less dagger-eyed. 
Later I met another man who was more composed, one of those old fashioned, considerate sort, and he said just one word—”Jevla.” So I gathered that his mind, too, was on such momentous things as hamburgers and ham and eggs. 
City says “No man need go hungry,” and I take much stock in their words because the very men that say so look as if they never missed a meal in their whole life . . . 
There might be something in that without going into details. 
Still later I met some ladies, all smiles—Saturday afternoon. I could see they wanted to take me out and show me the town. But I thought to myself if I should so far forget my early training as to lean upon a feminine pocketbook, Spokane would never forget to remind of it—a greater punishment than which there is none. 
Some might say, “That’s so, Slim, ladies are kind of irresponsible that way on payday.” 
I do not agree. Why even as old as I am, bowed over from hard work, a tear dangling from the end of my nose, people mistake me for a Yale student—if not something worse. Why, the very intelligence shines from the bristles of my two-weeks old whiskers. 
There might be something to that—without going into details.