﻿It’s Always More Speed Bosses Want 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
It is not generally known that a soldier is a savior. Such is the addenda however: 
A businessman informs me doors, thumb a ride to tin poorhouse or jump in the lake when who should sashay in but a company of soldiers, all primed up to purchase the store out. 
“Yes sir, Slim.” says the merchant, “the purchasing power of those soldiers was my salvation and now I haven’t a worry in the world.” 
Like the big wind in Florida that blew the stink from solid citizens and persuaded them to join the chuich; and, even to this late date, I am informed, they smell pure and sweet. 
Who is there, then, to say a saloon-keeper can’t get religion banging away at the cash register? 
It has come to my notice in the last few sorry hours that food prices are going up. This indicates the people are short of sugar and businessmen are making a last desperate grab at the stuff that sweetens the pot. In lieu of prayer let us sing Maxicali Rose. Or do you think my diagnosis over-fetched? 

“Stone walls do not a prison make.”— Nor overalla a slave. Hush! 
War reports are coming in blanketed, lumped and conflicting: “Rock captured” . . . “Several beartraps gained, ready baited.” 
One great trouble with the “friendly nations” across the puddle was that they tried to settle Germany’s economic problems and hash for her. 

Economic problems and hash cannot be farmed out for settlement; you repair them yourself and trust them not to buttery fingers. 
Same holds true of labor problems and deleted vitimins— you do or you don’t. 

Advent of totalitarian state in USA is a laborious process. Several if not all democracies have been sold down the river and the auctioneer is winding up to swing the gavel down again. 
Beware of giftbearers, unless you prefer an Oregon bracelet on your shanks. Do all your fighting “in person,” not by proxy or by “stand-in”— if you prefer to fight or must fight. 
This war is still a phony. It’s swan song well might be: O wotta donkey I was! 

Whatever war may be, it is primarily a massacre of youth. 
Quite clearly it is impossible to make of the USA a totalitarian state unless the USA is a parcel in war; and quite clearly USA cannot be a parcel in war unless it gets nearer war. An approach to war, then, is an approach to totalitarianism—dissipation of substance to the end of making totalitarianism compulsory, and defense of democracy impossible—a condition of reaction and probable chaos—repudiation of the machine process. 
Or maybe again my diagnosis skidded? 
And to think that mechanized warfare should put an end to machine process and return us to the wooden spoon! 
Methinks our beloved masters and kind, gentle foremen have gone “way back,” but not to it down. When the battle is on, you will find them lying down back of the out-house, play mg po-stim. 

Word reaches me from the world’s best and most articulate critics, the seamen, that conditions, sanitation and quarters are positively substandard on shipboard—as well on the giant liners us on the tramps now resurrected into service. 
Seamen might improve their time by joining One Big Union. 

Our Civil War generals had considerable trouble losing two thousand men every day. Grant lost 18,000 in two days; 60,000 in 30 days. In the World War (at the Marne 300,000 were killed in five days; at Verdun, Germany lost 500,000 men. In the Somme fight, July to December, British lost 450,000 the French 250,000, and the Germans 600,000. That equals 1,300,000 casulties in five and one-half months. The whole war claimed 7,694,336 lives. 
Machinery has improved since and generals should be able to knock off a better average in this and the next war. 
And, O the agony that comes over the air waves! 

Your great friend (T-Bone Slim) was almost run down by a garbage truck in . . . Name of the city is a military’ secret. 

Kingdom, Emperordom, Churchdom, Blueblooddom and Johannes Workoxdom mays be democracy; if so, the democrats are taking it lying down. One thing in favor of Forddom is that he has no concentration camp. 

Every little while our employers have an emergency and it calls for more speed. They never have an emergency that calls for slowdown — it’s speed and more speed they demand. 
Whenever the workers have an emergency that calls for slowdown, the bosses kick them out and hire men that have no emergency and hand them one that calls for “hi-ball.” 
Speed maniacs, that’s what they are; especially now that they are changing from peacetime production to wartime production. 
But tell me. what is the reason the 16 million unemployed have not been working on that production during the past ten years?