﻿The Threat To America Is Economic 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
The “Old Home Town Stanley has it: 
“Muh arithmetic says dat one of yoh birds is goin’ to put you haid through there twice and only take it out once!” . . . 
I hate to see binds sticking out their necks that way—the cook’s tomahawk may drop on it. 

Only difference between man and a horse is. man gets milk with his oats.  
All these women you see with their big toe sticking out of their shoes are waitresses; they get that way from kicking open the swinging doors when they carry dishes back and forth. 
Duluth still has ice water in her water mains. And here it is the middle of June. Duluth is a winter resort in summer and a summer resort in the winter. The third crop of mosquitoes froze to death last night. 

Time comes in every man’s life when he feels he has been skinned enough. So what this country really needs is an unemployment office where he can put in an application for unemployment, or skinproof idleness. 
I see where Stimson and Knox have been read out of the Republican party; but, praise be, the capitalist parry still retains them as honored members. The Democrat party better look out for fifth columnists. This idea of taking those Republicans to your bosom isn’t going to end in good. 
Another thing, I don’t believe that Pan-American anschluss will jell—not enough cornstarch. 
You cannot solidify the nation on the proposition of unemployment . . . Stimson and Knox in the cab will not solidify (or curdle) it. They hatch doorknobs. 
I don’t know which way they will throw the election, but throw it they will! 

As the Duke of Wellington said before the battle of Waterloo (Iowa), “Mosquitoes by night! Flies by day’!” All the heartrend of the ages are in that crack. The night air stiffens up the flies so they don’t show up until the sun comes up. It is for that reason the mosquitoes must work an hour overtime in the morning so there won’t be any time our for comfort. 
Another thing to worry about: Robins are depleting our fair land of all its angleworms, fishbait, and it begins to look as if the bullheads and sunfish will have to go hungry—to say nothing about us, come Friday. 
There’s your subversive talent, if you ask me, the real (royal) fifth columnists; I tell you they are undermining the very foundation of our republic. For who is to say fishbait isn’t our ultimate salvation, in view of the hippoconorious antics of the guardians of our economic fate. We should deny those robins entry into this country . . . 
Here are our able senators and representatives worried about air-raids and not one mealy-mouthed word do they say about the worm-raid now’ going on in the United States of America. 
Yes, four billion dollars they put out for battleships etc., and the joke of it is, we are not confronted with a military attack—the attack will be economic. 
That four billion would come in handy to feed the workers of an industrial nation suddenly gone nonproductive, marketless. 
Years ago, the IWW discovered that “produce for use only” was the proper ointment to rub on the spavined shanks of the parasites system. Now everybody seems to have the very some idea. It takes time for these great truths to penetrate solid ivory—we want no credit. 
Uncle Sam will produce for home consumption only, whether he Iikes it or not. There is no second choice and time will find Sim wholly unprepared, still buying and still selling with no customer present. Ah, ‘tis sad—termites chewing up the store shelves and rust removing the corrugated windbreaks of factories. And grass growing out of solid concrete pavements. 
You don’t think it will be that bad? Have patience, the worst is yet to come. Then —O, what a donkey I was! War boom is not monopolized across the pond and we’re betting on a dead horse. 
In July and August, even a mudturtle finds it difficult to keep his neck under the shell. 

Finance and commerce pages in newspapers are in tears: “Economic upsets resulting from the present conflict in Europe are likely to be even more serious and far-reaching to the United States than those resulting from the World War.” 
Tighten the belt, boys. 
‘“Chicago exporters and trade authorities will met Wednesday to study problems created by Germany’s growing power in Europe . . .” 
“One by one, the many traditional markets for our exports have withered away . . .” 
“More thin 1200 advertising executives from all parts of the country will discuss their problems today . . .” 

Our exercises in the labyrinths of the intelligence tests the past seven lean years may help those great men to compute that the disappearing markets went into the maws of modern machinery and remote industrial establishments in far distant lands. 
There must be a hole in that emtpy sack our parasites are holding—and our money scattered from hell to Halifax. Bright boys, those buzzards, eh? 
Truly, it looks as if investment finance (industrial screwballs) will have to collect from Herr Hitler, and just as truly they expect us to jump into armor and do the debating.