﻿Nothing Goes East or Far On Charity 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
“When the wheels go ‘round everybody profits.” 
Alas, how true; especially the manufacturer, for there is no limit to his “take” that he cannot enforce by agreement and force of arms. The worker, too, gets a small fraction —small, because the employer has appointed himself guardian angel over the worker’s “take.” 
Workers should appoint their own guardian angels. 
The bum, too, gets a share when the wheels go ‘round. It is called charity, and some of it is. But most of it (all told) is business. It is cheeper to give the bums a few pennies worth and preserve them from mischief and law breaking. 
Note: Prisoner’s bill of fare calls for 27 to 31 cents a day. That’s the established and tested minimum. Anything less creates revolts in the institutions of the drivers. 
I should judge that figure is half-fare, for the boatman’s budget, which calls for native veal steak occasionally, is 57 cents a day per person. 
But the worker is not given to the use of the common sense with which he was blessed so lavishly, and year in and year out he treks over the hill to the poorhouse and the pauper’s grave. 
And why not? Has he not tolerated the self-appointed, self- anointed economic masters, the gentlemen that now have the world record for skinning the people— including their government —and have the treasures to prove it? 
The 40 Arabian thieves were petty crooks. 
Thirty-day waiting period before the strike starts cuts the effectiveness by half or better. Strikebreakers are marshalled ready to step in. Strikes to be effective should start before they begin, without halbaloo, display or advance notice. 

After all a job is merely work. 
About 10,000 lumber workers on strike on the west coast, as of December 6. 

Speaking further about “waitingperiods”: USA is weeding out promising young men from the ranks of the worker’s and removing them from the point of production as incumbent or prospective . . . 
The percentage is not great but at the same time, it is of much moment to the worker from its several angles. This constitutes a “waiting period” in which organized workers can and should consolidate their positions and gain new ones. 
The job no longer is defense so much as aggressiveness, for the turning point is here—today, now. Out-arguing the merchants and manufacturers is waste of time, it’s defense and its age is past. 
Attack is the strategy of all leading puppets, be they of any discription whatsoever. 
Workers should get into one union and organize it solid. 
The prestige of the IWW is good in sea-going dungarees as well as in full-bib overalls. 
Workers have much to learn from the Wobblies—not so much to be one of them but to be like them—undaunted, unterrified, uncompromising, unbowed. 

Feed Europe? 
Hm. Do my contemporaries think that armies will travel far on the stuff charity is made of? (A pig would turn up its nose.) 
Present day charity is a crime against civilization. One onion, Belinda, and five gallons of water. 
I tell you it’s offal! 

Winston Churchill and I have much in common. We both love oyster. I’m not saying we’re getting ‘em—just love ‘em. 
“Members of the New York State Guard, who are to replace the National Guard, will have to get along without uniforms until January 8, when the legislature convenes.” 
Until then—diapers? 

Whenever a union “head” runs for political preferment in a party that is in the doghouse and beards the fury of self-confessed righteousness, there is more to it than appears on the surface. Pandora has found another evil in her magic box. 
Workers were so slow emancipating themselves and their leaders had their hands full wrestling with satan, so the employers decided to emancipate the slaves themselves through the medium of fascism—bring Utopia to ‘em right here on earth and into the treadmills. 
Oldest inhabitant can’t remember anything like it ever having happened before—so the bosses must have got religion four-square or Jehovah’s Revelation. Heretofore, whenever the bosses wanted to help the slaves, they took away their liver and onions and fed them oats and barley, figuring on running a streak of lean into ‘em and maybe clear their heads. 
So I let go of a toe-hold and says to my chief secretary: How many words does that make I’ve written since Roosevelt (Teddy) panic? 
“Sir,” says my custodian. “you passed the million-and-a-half mark week before last and if words could emancipate workers they’d now be as free as the stink in a fertilizer factory or as clambroth in Hoboken—many of the words are spelled different, too.” 
I had a notion to fire him for that ebullience, or whatever ailed him. but just then I happened to think that slaves, if they would be free, must perform the emancipation themselves. And that means one big union: organized action, not words.