﻿Investigation Shows Eating Very Popular 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
Pass the bi-carb, please. 
Whenever a dinner is thrown in honor of some leading citizen, we must not take it too seriously. The poor man or woman may be entirely innocent of the charge that he or she is great. Dinners have such powerful chow-appeal that they are quite popular and sometimes it is quite a puzzel to find enough great men or women in whose honor they can be held. Some men even eat dinners in honor of themselves and if you ask them, are they great? they reply: “Naw, hell no; but the dinner was.” 

The side show: The very presence of poorhouses defeats the argument that capitalism is virtuous. Poorhouses are based upon a presumption that they can beat the capitalist system and feed the poor cheaper poorhouses; that extraordinary efforts must be made to overcome the ravages of racketeering economy—parasitism. 

It took the Jones three generations to pay for their house and when the last Jones got it, the roof had worn out and blackbirds had built nests between the decks. Years ago 85 out of 100 died without a nickel. Today, I suppose, only about 5 per cent have money in that last great day. 
Jones No. 4 will have to start “from scratch.” 

Bosses sure had a hard time picking out all the strapping young men and putting them in industry (every one of them a potential soldier.) And the extra effort they had to go to in weeding out the old and worn-out fathers and uncles—sometimes, when a father had six sons he had to make room for them by firing the father and five uncles. 
This stirred up bad blood in the family. 
Now the bosses want these young men out of the industries and in the army—a heluva how-de-do—but the youngsters refuse to resign and enlist. (They’ve seep Paree and nothing else matters.) 
Of course the boss could fire them, but then again, the youngsters might head for Zenomezombia instead of to the recruiting station. And in the meantime those who have gone without eating for the past ten years are so weak they can hardly lift a spoon to their mouths, if it contains more than seven beans, to say nothing about picking up a monkeywrench or posthole digger. 
But the bosses have It all figured out—”conscript the boys.” 

Years ago, the profits of our industry and much of the principal, flowed into many hands of Godfearing businessmen, all the way from Two Tarbors to Corpus Christi, and from Tacoma to Kennebunkport—and the country was better for it. 
Today, the profits flow into the jeans of a few corporations and the government must raid them with an income tax ever so ‘often to preserve their claim to virtue—something after the manner of cops raiding a redlight district. But virtue remains blemished. The argument here is “the more thieves, the better” and that is the best that can be said of the capitalist system. 

My beloved sister was bawling out one of her children for getting the orders mixed and bringing home the wrong kind of gingersnaps . . . 
“Fer cripes sake, Serafina,” says I encouragingly, “now don’t murder the child for a simple mistake. Mistakes will happen,” I groaned. “Consider,” sez I, “the United States government built twenty destroyers and then discovered that their armament had been condemned dozens of years ago. 
“Even at that, the government can congratulate itself that the destroyers didn’t turn out to be greyhound buses or ice-cream freezers.” 
I felt a gnawing in my stomach and rightly guessed: “There goes that tapeworm again.” Half gallop I trotted over to the diner and, after carefully looking around to see that no dead customers were lying around, I thought it safe to go inside and feed the tapeworm. But I protest most solemnly: restaurants should not be permitted to cut the hamburgher sandwich in two, after it is made, because I like to chew all around the edge and leave the part that contains the meat to the last. 

Whenever industry falls into fewer and fewer hands, more and more would-be and has-been industrialists become public charges and live from the fat of national tax monies or find other means of gaining a livelihood with or without working for it. 
Likewise, whenever more and more horsepower is added to machine tools, more and more workers join the armies of unemployed and live on the strength of whatever monies government is able to wangle from the people. 
wlw 
When the Lord made Cuyahoga river and the employers, he made ‘em both crooked. 

Capitalism has nothing more to offer labor except hunger and crime; coffins and crutches. 

Employers didn’t have too many brains to begin with, that’s why they have to hire brains to hornswogg us . The big shots seldom come out into the open politically.