﻿War Drums Call Business Men To the Harvest 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
In the radio someone is bellering about “rainbow” and it seems to hurt him; another yodles about his corns. No wonder the Japs gave a newscaster 10 minutes to get off the air—I suppose he was bringing in his tonsils and seven-year itch. 

“Military Training Good for Youth.” 
My gosh! After while they will be saying that dishwashing is good for girl scouts. 

Prizefighters do not train for selfdefense. In a fight, self-defense is merely an alibi. Attack is the objective of all genuine training. 
Any expansion now is over-expansion (puffed rice). It’s like dropping a bigger pump into a dry well. The bigger the pump, the bigger the “prime.” , 

Associated Press has it that a small county in Texas has bought $380 worth of cuspidors. No doubt the spittoons are to cover the spots where the boys have been spitting. 

It isn’t logical to be born rich; I was born without even a pair of pants. 

A good state is one that can so perform that it will give each man 21 years of age a house and lot, one cradle and a good toaster. 
Any state can accomplish this by “sitting out” one first class war. Look at the saving in coffins alone! Coffins or cradles? 

Considerable gangsterism is rife in our country, in the rackets of whatever description. (If capitalism is no racket, rackets result from it.) 
Brutality is the distinguishing mark of racketeering. It’s a cutthroat business in all the word implies—an attack against society, in segment or in whole; it’s a nation at war with itself: a citizen beating-up himself . . . How dare you smile? It’s serious business, this acting as your own executioner. 
Whether the racket be exploitation of labor or simple shakedown of an individual or corporation is all the same goods. Out of the last World War we got 1800 new millionaires. Profitable? Well sir, the same tribe would like another shambles. 
Gangsterism in its simple form attacks and murders citizens with no more compuction than snapping off an electric switch: “Shall I let him have it now or wait till next Tuesday? Gangsterism employes gunmen to bump-off workers at the, the factory gate. there is no difference in degree, the difference is only in the number of clubs the respective gangsters belong to. 
Labor unions, too, have deviated from the path of righteousness and have taken up these so-called cudgles of darkness; scorning less violent methods on the principle of “fight violence with violence.” But I am not prepared to say they were driven to it. They could have co-ordinated the desires of the whole working class in One Big Union without prejudice or privilege, and force and violence would have a dead issue. This they could have done and can do today. 
But they, the unions, cannot do it under the principle of “profit taking” or greed. Only class consciousness and solidarity can cut the mustard. 
So if you’re going to make dis tinctions and frisk the workers, you’ll find many empty pockets and a mask would be an unnecessary ornament . . . 
But take heart, my friends and neighbors, we are traveling at lightning’s pace, intellectually. Our intelligence already is so complete we do not bow to handmade gods of wood and stone or to images we can see and feel. (Lots of bozos over in China and India sprawl in front of the damnedest looking gargoyles and idols made of peetwood and plaster of Paris.) None of that for us! 
However, I can readily understand that the oppressed individuals of the world, and Ashtabula Harbor feel they need supernatural aid in their distress, and that bringing their troubles to their fellow man would be but a fuitle gesture and they holler r’god” and “cop”—and make much of their sorrowful estate. Ah! If sorrow only, and nothing but sorrow were organized—what a power that would be 

Our troubles, overwhelming as they are, nevertheless are so insignificant that they remind me of a sorrowing soul that ankled down to the corner saloon to drown his grief. When he got ready to drown them, horror struck him he had forgotten which troubles to drown. 

Say, fellow worker editor, this here preparedness and military training has me worried. What’s the big idea of skipping the important part of the rtual, the “blackout,” if war is a sure-fire threat? Here, bejabbers, the New York skyscrapers are ablaze with light like an Elk’s carnival and you can’t tell what minute one of our many enemies may start pushing down pineapples into the canyons of wealth. Only today, when I went out for a walk to exercise my spavined shanks, I was horrified to discover no one wearing a gasmask and no one digging bombproof shelters. These three are the most important part of war hysteria and no hysteria can long survive unless these three be recognized and honored. 
Paying through the nose or rooking the rabble: “Flour went up as much as $2 a barrel. 
“Some foods went up as much as 35 per cent. 
“Coal went up, leather went up, tires went up, codliver oil trippled,” quoth Friday. 
Businessmen have rushed to the harvest. In all those things we have a surplus.