﻿We’ll Have To Organize To Collect 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
By T-BONE SLIM 
Years ago it was quite a problem to get some clothes on Gerty Hoffman. And, as time rolled on, Gypsy Rose Lee and Sally Rand became, in turn, the “problem child”; but now America is confronted with the problem of getting some pants on the “hobo.” We dare not fail! We must not fail! We cannot fail—and a new pair of suspenders. 

A farmer out of Moorehead (Minnesota) loaded 30 harvest hands on a truck and took them out to pick potatoes. When he brought them back, in the evening, he paid them off with $30. 
That makes mathematics easy . . . 
“That’s all right, too, the farmer says, “pay ‘em a dollar a day and let them eat themselves sleep themselves.” 

All right, gyppo, shake ‘em up. You’re behind in your board. Pork 5 and 6 cents a pound, store-ham 75 cents a pound. If the hog weighs 1000 pounds, as many of them do, the butch can crank the cash register to $750 a sow—enough to keep him in spending money for a month or two. Note: Butcher’s expenditures higher than ordinary because of high cost of good liquor. 

I did have a job to go haying (wild hay in North Dakota matures late) but the farmer seemed to have the impression that I should pay him a neat sum of four-bits a day for the pleasure of working for him, sitting on a choice, body-fitting, grandstand seat on a 1917 mower; horses easy on the bit, claimed. 
I hastened to explain to the farmer that my life has been so filled with pleasure that were I to enjoy more I would feel as if I were cheating some one that has suffered for the lack of it, and rather than do that I would carry my sorrows to the grave. 

I have a sense of impending tragedy—that the bottom will fall out of the capitalist system. Have you a gold watch that isn’t in hock? 

John Bum’s honesty is a model of complete perfection. You can leave your gold watch on the jungle mantlepiece, go up town and talk politics with the butcher and baker and harnessmaker, and it will still be there when you return, whether Willkie gets elected or not. If you are gone too long, John Bum will wind it up for you so that it doesn’t get stiff in the joints. 

There is no law that says how little or much you must work for That’s up to you, a soverign worker. 
But there is a law that sets a minimum wage the employer is allowed to pay. It is as I suspected; it is the employer that needs a guardian or a straitjackets. Labor stands pure and undefiled. 

When the horseless carriage came, full many a dobbin could see himself headed for the glue factory—even race horses were no longer sure of pasturage. 
So the noble steed came to an untimely end after earning for its master beefsteak and mushrooms for a lifetime and they hired a technological unemployed to dig the grave for; six-bits—a non-union grave to top off an illustrious career. 
Many a draft horse looked askance at the horseless carriage and did not shy without reason. Even the more rambunctious ones ceased kicking down the side of the barn and regular “maneaters” were almost ready to kiss the teamster at feeding time and beg for a bridle. 
They had seen their epitaph on the wall! That is all history, and now we will take up the matter of man-minus industry. 
The discarded worker cannot turn to his previous condition of life any more so than age can return to the days of its youth; for the world has moved. 
The horse cannot return to the great open spaces when his oats are cut out. Grasping civilization has stepped in and barbwired all the water holes. He has nothing to do but stand and take it. 
Fido—let me interrupt myself—good old, loyal, trustful Fido, is in the hands of the packing companies as far as his rations are concerned; and considering what the meat packers feed humans, it looks like slow music for Fido. Sometimes the can comes and sometimes it doesn’t. 
Horses are suffering from technological unemployment same as man. But horses do not know enough to organize and protect their interests. Individual kicking is the limit of their protest. 
It is idle to argue that horses have an equity in the wealth that is. A ship comes into harbor and drops anchor without a human being aboard — robot steers her and other robots do other services. Iron Mike, Brass Pete and Copper Joe. One-man industry is a fact—the rest of the force is picking mushrooms or trying to snare n pickrel. 
After a while we won’t need airplane pilots. What’s the answer, Mr. Workox? 
The IWW. 

Three dollars for the job, but there is no guarantee the boss won’t fire you the first day. So that $3 investment makes you work twice as hard so as to stave off the discharge. 
Ten dollars for a work permit. Is that unionism or a racket? 
Ostensibly our defense program is to head off attack by dictators, but is there a guarantee that the power so generated will not be use to defend fascist dictatorship?