﻿Glance at the Cupboard Shows Up Capitalism 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
After working for one concern for 30 years, he was promoted to the scrap heap. Of course, he had a number of years left in him, but the boss didn’t feel like squeezing them out; especially with so much young stock prancing around. 
“Pass Dictatorship Bill”— (headline). 
Pooh, pooh—just stirring the stew-pot so that the delectable concoction won’t scorch. I’ like to get a whiff of at goulash just to see whether it is consomme a la Charlemagne or common hog slop. 

American household science has been so manhandled that the people find themselves 40 billion dollars in the hole. That 40 billion is jinging in the manhandlers’ jeans; 80 billion next. In debt up to their necks and eyeteeth missing—the peepul, rara avis! (Excuse the Latin.) 
Pretty soft, eh? Grab everything in sight and 40 billions from the hole. Guess that’s getting down to fundamentals. 
I ain’t worrying about that 40 billions. Our children will pay for that by eating grass, and bark from trees. Better start wetting your fishline—I’ve got a container of salt. 
Lots of people don’t understand the idea of syphoning 40 billion out of the hole. They think the overlords are simply determined that the people shall not have a cent, just in case . . . 
That idea is slightly damp. 
The overlords are determined that the unborn generations shall not jump their diaper-debts, doctor bills, schooling cost and board bills before they get a crack at ‘em in industry. They ain’t missing a thing! Even whooping cough and diptheria is reduced to dollars and cents. 
No more free children are born. If they get sassy, flash the national debt on them. Thus it is the young folks do not owe their parents a cent. The overlords have already deducted the cost of bringing them forth, upkeep and even funeral expense, from the future earnings they may have; and were they to pay their parents, they would be paying twice. So if the parents feel that they should be paid, they can go to the overlords and put in a bill. 
Inasmuch as 40 billion is a big piece of change, they better organize a One Big Union and do it all in one move. 
Through that simple legerdemain of dropping a syphon into the nation’s credit, the big shots are protected against any possible epidemic that may sweep the land of its young (future wage slaves) or against the day when their schemes don’t jell and the occasion may arise when they must perforce feed them to cannon. 
Verily they do imagine our children are their children and that we ourselves are childdish; that their claims are our claims; that our wealth is their wealth; that poverty alone is ours. 
No wonder the banks are full. No wonder the grain bins are bursting. No wonder I wonder. 

One would almost think that nothing new had transpired in England since Dickens, Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, etc., that England is living in the glory of the past. That is bad poker. 
It isn’t enough that Washington, Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry were great; that Edison, Burbank and Bob Ingersol were great. No, we must have a newer model a later issue; all these heroes are dead. 

We don’t have to go to the Crimean War to get a Florence Nightingale. Why, the next-door neighbor’s daughter will do, and her mother may be a veritable Betsy Ross. 
We don’t have to hike back centuries for a Joan of Arc, a Pocahontas or a Cleopatra, we have them right here—even if they do paint their fingernails and wear rubber gloves when they wash dishes. 
We don’t have to turn to an almanac every time we want to see something accomplished. Abraham Lincoln was and is considered great for helping to liberate negroes as well as whites from chattel slavery. But I wish to say, Little Egypt is full of Lincolns today. 
Where is Napoleon Bonaparte? His spirit is hopping the hedges at Waterloo and bemoaning the memory that could not carry the sunken road of Ohain, and the unemployed reserves. 
Enough, enough! We are surrounded by greatness! 
There is no greatness that can survive unless it be, an organized greatness, even then it must be in process of seeking greater greatness, and perfection its final object. 
The IWW is started in that general direction and, inasmuch as it tries to organize the workers in One Big Union regardless of race, creed or color or condition of content or discontent, it is great. It is something more than a great name, it is a living movement. Quite a difference between a great name whose career lies moldering in a grave and a living movement that throws sparks right and left. 
But the IWW is not greater than you; it is only after One Big Union is a fact that greatness begins to sprout. 

It is not necessary for me to depict the despicable meanness of the capitalist system. You can glance into the cupboard and verify every word that I could say. 
Let us then stick up some new (1940) model traditions, for other immortals that follow us to sponge upon.