﻿Wage Slave Knows His Economics 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
Greece was the beginning of the Western World and it now looks as if grease (oil) will bo the end of it. 

Politics that was to cure economics now needs a “wash in the lake” itself. 
Provocatuers are no less familiar in political parties than in labor movements. (Sincere sourpusses not counted; their cry stems from loss of economic security that three pork chops can cure.) 
There they stand, agents provocateur, not grim and forbidding, but sweet as honey. 
Yes. the egg was good until it became rotten—then, no omlette. 
Politician has no deeds before election only sweet words, embonpoint and super-elegant grace and dignity—after election: one day among the polecats and he has the full flavor of the gray stripe. 
Market Report 
Demand for ham and eggs is weak, a mere squawk. Very few bay-windows are hurling the belt-buckles. Millionaires are talking about sirloin steaks in hushed whispers. Roosevelt can run but won’t; I would run but can’t Best I can do is walk half-speed in second shift. 
Let’s see now: 
Allies didn’t win in the Ethiopian campaign; that went to the Rome-Berlin Axle. 
Russia, Italy. Morocco and Germany were in Spain; that war went to the Rome-Berlin Axle. 
Saar, Sudeten, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Memel, Lithuania, Esthonia, Latvia, Poland, Finland and now Norway went to the Rome-Berlin Axle, (I ain’t so naive) Copenhagen and Denmark. 
If anybody knows of a campaign that went to the Allies, I haven’t heard of it. “But England always wins the last war.” 
England and who? (I have a hunch great bodies will be dropping from the heavens just prior to Decoration Day.) 
 
Inflamatory books, plays and commentary, pleading for our intervention in the madhouse of European chiselings and resultant squabbles are hot off the griddle; sneering at our reluctance to jump in and get our feet burned. 
The facts (Daily Mirror, NYC, May 1, 1940) : 
“Finland died because democracy cannot live in Europe. 
“Finland was sold out. 
“If America goes into this war, America will be sold out . . . and then democracy will die in America, the only place left in the world where it has a chance to LIVE!” 
Yes, and pletny of deserving statesmen will find themselves carrying mortar for bricklayers; we mustn’t forget THAT— we better relax our military muscles NOW and we may be able to duck the hod-carrying. 
Finland, Spain, Albania, Poland, Ethiopia, Czechoslovakia and Norway fought for the allies (other nations surrendered) and now the allies want us to fight their war—and they don’t even offer to act as cheerleaders. 
Cripes, are we going to be donkeys ALL our life? 
On the Other Hand 
Romo-Berlin Axle and Co. are whacking up the performances between themselves. First Mussolini prances upon the pedestal in Ethiopia, in avenging something or other. When he is through, Hitler turns a few cartwheels in Poland and then Joe Stalin throws a few handsprings in Finland. 
They perform only in one country at a time and catch their wind between rounds—a continuous performance, not a serial story. 
That’s better than asking the good neighbor to shell out a few acts as a guest conductor. 
Yes, they want Uncle Sam to come and get it—with fine yarns about “Adolph’s cartridge box is empty,” and the cheerleaders report more German subs sunk than Germany over had. 
Oh what an awakening! Thank goodness the water is getting warm-er. 

Imaginery mines and imaginary armies do not twin victories and too often prove to be a mare’s nest or a white elephant. 
Not only should we forever stay out of Europe’s squabbles, but we should say our regrets and depart from the game.  
Artificial democracy, whether it be in a union or geographical principality, is a fake that cannot prosper. True democracy is enforced from the bottom up and makes for mass education. Dictatorship, on the other hand, makes for diseducation and many other drawbacks in progress such as hero worship and passiveness—specializing only in the present hobby of the leader to the exclusion of all else. Under artificial democracy we can have kings dukes, counts, marquis—the blooded aristocracy and parasites—and millions of paupers and unemployed. 
We are not living under democracy, but under hypocrisy and industrial autocracy to the detriment of many and benefit of few. Enforcement of true democracy comes from the bottom up! 
We have a raft of economic experts that haven’t the slightest idea about economy and cannot have because they are too many jumps ahead of starvation — their knowledge is wholly superficial and sketchy. They have no true picture of it and if you listen to their rantings you will be a donkey the rest of your life. 
The only man that can and does understand economic matters is the worker. He knows that he cannot get rich by helping a millionaire barrel up his shekles. He knows he cannot hang a double chin on his ears by letting the businessmen and professional playboys eat up all the white meat from the roast turkey. He knows that the northwind will rattle his bones in the burlaps if the parasites wear all the broadcloth and tweeds. 
He knows that if Neverworks live in 40-room mansions, he must weather the gale in a 2-room shack along the railroad tracks. 
All this he knows, and much more—and he is getting sick and tired of these exploiters and their henchmen, the pseudo-economists. 
But as much as he knows about economic laws, he has not yet discovered the healthy wholesomeness of joining the IWW and aplying economic action to economic ills in a direct way, without benefit of agents, advisors, or academic acrobats. 
A word might be said for the unions of the “aristocracy of labor,” aidermen’s sons and daughters, but the whole resolves itself into a deathly fear of the unemployed millions and discomfiture in the end—a war between the working classes—without altering the relative position of the employing class in the slightest. Under that prospectus there can be only a worsening of workers’ circumstances to the point of unqualified slavery. 
Let there be action in this nation that is predominently international in its very nature.