﻿Cat Must Have Got Into Their Skein of Yarn 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
Ho, hum—the coffee was weak, but whattahell, the nickel was almost worn out, too . . . 
I was in Battle Creek and observed they make breakfast food there. Traveling eastward, I noticed a town that makes dyspepsia tablets. I kept my eyeball pealed looking for a town that makes coffins. Seeing none, I said to myself, ‘“Slim,” says I, “we can’t prove a thing unless we find a casket factory.” 

So much ballyhoo is being spread about the fifth column that I’m beginning to toss in my sleep, when I’m not on shipboard or in a boxcar. 
All our generals will agree with me that the establishment of a fifth column in our land is an act of war and very effective, and not an alibi for a defeat at arms. 
If so, I wish to ask this time, how many fifth columnists have we in foreign lands? If none, why? 
Either they are no good or a figment of the imagination. However, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it pans out the fifth columnists are the under-privileged. In that case, we have fifth columnists in every land throughout the exploiting world. 
The remedy for columnists is three porkchops, fried a rich brown, for breakfast—and do not skip too many meals in a row. 

I attended the Democratic convention in Union Square today (July 16) and discovered they were all primed for war. 
As to that, Fritz, would disdain to shoot at ‘em. It will be other people that get shot. Yes, by gosh, an Indian wouldn’t scalp them; they are so baldheaded.  

The foolishness of war . . . Let us look at the record: 500,000 insane in our nuthouses; plus 850,000 under-witted children. If the rate of insanity continues in the future, inside of 105 years all peaple will be half-wits. 
In the past 300 years, Europe has had 286 wars. Since 1919 Europe has signed 200 peace agreements. (They’re good with pen and ink, Pal.) Where are those agreements now? 
The last world war cost 400,000,000,000 dollars and today the folks are in training for a bigger and better war. The demons of war are as active as ever. True it is, mental deficients are hard to teach. Same holds true to the war-crazed. 
The last war cost more than all previous wars put together since the beginning of Christianity. Not a single nation has ever paid its past war debts in full. All the loans are just so many handouts. (And to hink we fell for the bait once—and will again—for there is no understanding in a mind diseased.) 
Eighty cents for war and 20 cents for living. 
Man power of the last war was 53,000,000, every seventh man was in uniform. Plenty harness there to uphold insanity! Thirteen million never looked the same thereafter. Was the war based on brain-power? 
Now let me ask one: What did we gain? 

Some people have an idea that much good will come from Herr Hitler’s recent pyrotechnics. But isn’t that an extravagant way to popularize a best seller, “Mein Kampf”? 
Sword as a means to bring the gospel to confirmed chiselers? I don’t see it this way. Better arguments abound. There is no short cut to economic security; but that doesn’t mean that we must travail through an indefinite labyrinth of error. We can cease making mistakes instantly. 

A darkling rumor is going the rounds that seamen on the lakes are kinda skittish, that overstuffed police in some of the ports (ports by courtesy) are tamping up on the freshwater salts. Now Dunkirk is no port even by courtesy, but a seaman tells me he had to “lay in the weeds a whole day training to be a wild man,” because he didn’t dare to prance on the beautiful pavements of that time-honored town. 
Cold shivers ran up and down my spine when I heard that bloodcurdling tale, for fate has decreed that I, too, am a seafarer and may have to take to the tall timbers. 

Industrial unionism proposes to build a new society within the shell of the old and prove its merits; totalitarianism proposes to destroy the shell first and take chances with the merit of the new. One of these is practically bloodless. 
Defending the old order in a new age is like defending a high-wheel bycicle (or horse and buggy) against a motorcycle—or footwork against a bouncing Buick. 
A union that is a combination of unionism, politics, banking, life insurance and mortuary service is neither a union nor a business establishment; its many sideshows bespeak the frailty of the circus. A union that specializes exclusively in unionism is the more likely to succeed. 
Not only does industrial unionism propose to build a new society within the shell of the old, but it proposes to augment its ranks with replacements and reinforce its membership with vast numbers of wage slaves, to the point where it will include all the Industrial Workers of the World. 
Organize, then, your industrial union—trust in God if you will, but don’t trust the parasites or their commercial leg-men. 
Capitalism might well be ignored for it is suffering from an incurable disease. What a tangled web! The cat must have got into their skin of yarn.