Book cover with a photo of a person reading the Industrial Worker and the title reading The Popular Wobbly: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim.

The Proper Form of Politeness: Quotes from the Pen of T-Bone Slim

By T-Bone Slim

Contents

Introduction

T-Bone Slim, born Matti Valentinpoika Huhta in 1882, was a Finnish-American humorist, columnist, poet, musician, hobo, and labor activist who was a prominent writer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Known as “the laureate of the logging camps” he wrote more than 1000 humorous and polemical columns, songs and poems from 1920 until his passing in 1942. His witticisms, sayings, and exhortations were widely circulated amongst radical, unionist, and hobo circles via IWW newspapers, songbook, postcards and pamphlets.

The following examples of Slim’s work are drawn from a recent collection edited by Iain McIntyre and Owen Clayton entitled The Popular Wobbly: Selected Writings of T-Bone Slim (University of Minnesota Press).

Quotes

Wherever you find injustice, the proper form of politeness is attack. – Newberry Library T-Bone Slim archive, 1933-36

The best way to take what is justly due you is to organize to take, the way the employer is organized to retain, the products of your toil––industrially! Once you are organized he will be “tickled to death” to hand it to you. You will not “have” to take it. He will bring it up to the house… – Industrial Worker, 15 July 1922.

Solidarity means something.

It is the difference between emancipation and slavery.

Education without solidarity is ENVY.

Organization without solidarity––ain’t!

Emancipation without solidarity will never be… – Industrial Worker, 06 February 1924.

Only the poor break laws––the rich evade them. – Industrial Worker, 17 December 1924.

Cartoon of a man with devil horns and a t-bone steak in his hand. Caption says "Magic Words", T-Bone Slim. — Cartoon of T-Bone Slim which appeared at the top of many of his columns. This one accompanied a piece in the Industrial Worker on 13 February 1926.

You think all those stories about the little bootblack that got to be a millionaire is for the purpose of encouraging your little bootblacks.

Your nickel is in the wrong slot.

Those stories are for to convince you it is proper to have a million dollars. – Newberry Library T-Bone Slim archive, written 20 May 1934

“Coordination of collective action,” is the big word Harvard boys hung onto the neck of the One Big Union. You’ve got to be almost a contortionist to say it. However, it means the same as “Scat, capitalism,” or “Scram, privilege,” as Victor Hugo would say it. – Industrial Worker, 05 April 1941.

Tear Gas: The most effective agent used by employers to persuade their employees that the interests of capital and labor are identical. – Industrial Worker, 06 March 1937.

[Industrial Unionism] is here explained for the first time by the author himself––uncoached or prompted. It is a deep study and is understood only by a few lunkheads like myself and the dumbest members of society. It is a situation where all hands working in any industry are members of a union made up of workers working in that industry––that’s how deep it is. Only the dumbest of us can understand it. (And only the toughest can withstand it). Brainiest men have fallen down miserably trying to cipher it (or syphon) it out. – Industrial Worker, 27 June 1925.

We are born with a cry and die with a rattle but in the meantime we will speak. – Industrial Solidarity, 04 June 1924.

Great minds are still booting the “moot question” as to whether newspapers create public sentiment or merely reflect it. (Let me answer that, editor––it is my turn). I believe the modern murder-messengers and advertising-argosies, after pruning the public of all sentiment, reflect the shorn… To me the question is not “do they create, or do they reflect––but do they destroy sentiment?” We know what they reflect––disaster, devastation and desolation. Dissolution, in fact! And they refuse responsibility––debating as to whether they create or reflect public sentiment. Methinks they’re “off the subject”––and “off” other ways, too––not so wise––and, really, it’s a shame to pay three cents for all the department store advertisements that’s fit to read, and worth printing. – Industrial Worker, 26 June 1926.

Profit: The price ignorance pays greed for the privilege of starving in a world of plenty. – Industrial Worker, 06 March 1937.

It makes no difference to us, the citizens of industry, whether we are robbed at point of bayonet, point of order or point of desperation; whether it’s done by broadcloth, cheese cloth or pure burlap––yea and likewise verily––be it done under whatflagsoever, white flag, black flag, rainbow, dishrag, its all the same to us––the mere fact that we ARE robbed is sufficient unto the day if not too much. But I fear it’s too much––more than sufficient and only less than calamity and its attendant HOWL. And what are you going to do about it?

Are you going to howl?

Are you going to lift your beautiful baritone in dirge of distress, or are you going to organize? I was thinking if you’re going to howl I’m with you––let’s yodel together, that’s a mild form of organization: Two souls without a single cent; two lungs that howl as one. Can you beat it? – Industrial Worker, 16 July 1927.

Cartoon of a man smoking a cigar with the word boss and various workers pointing their fingers at him over the word Organization — IWW cartoon, 1920s

Alas and wurra wurra, the alarm clock manufacturers got caught with their pants slightly down!

So many of the workers were dispossessed of their jobs and put on relief that the sale of alarm clocks fell off tragically. Manufacturers discovered alarm clock production terrifically over-expanded –– and there they stood, fingers, hearts and legs crossed. But they hope to recoup the price of brass by high-pressure advertising.

They now offer a first class dollar alarm clock for 54 cents. And, they swear by all that’s pure and holy that these alarm clocks will actually coax you out of bed and find your shoes for you, even if you left them on the porch last night.

That’s what I call service, and if I had the 54 cents I would buy me one of them; if for no other reason than as a memento of the days when I too had a job, so long ago. As it is, I get up too early, for I cannot sleep, thinking about where’s the breakfast coming from. – Industrial Worker, 17 August 1940.

Verily, must I say, unorganized peace is war, and unorganized aspirations hell. Whatever you want, organize, and it shall be. Nothing is impossible to organization. The wildest of schemes is entirely possible to an organized people—so wild that ninety-nine out of a hundred would scream “impossible” and even as they scream the thing is done.

We haven’t seen anything yet. – Industrial Worker, 24 April 1937.

In the beginning there was war.

Oracles got up on their hind legs and shouted: “Lookit ’em! Lookit ’em! Those Phoenicians are eating all our ostrich eggs in the deserts and pulling up our mushrooms in the caves!”

So out they went, all God’s children, hell-bent for election, and when they got through with the Phoenicians there were less mouths to forage for on both sides, and plenty of crowbait lying around.

Then, as now, it was maldistribution––want. A condition of HAVES and HAVES-NOTS. After the war the HAVES still had and the HAVE-NOTS were dead––on both sides.

“Half nuts,” did you say? Shame on you! – Industrial Worker, 23 September 1939.

Law of Supply and Demand: The capitalist dictum that makes a commodity in the hands of a robber more deadly than a gun. – Industrial Worker, 06 March 1937.

So it is in this capitalist country of ours––you have to do the strangest things.

If you want to eat a piece of pie you take a coal scoop and swing it eighty-eight times over your shoulder full of coal and the pie is yours. By looking at you, not a living creature could guess you were ordering a piece of pie. They’ll swear up and down you were shoveling coal and stick to it. You could show them the piecrusts and they’d still insist you were shoveling coal––I’d hate to have them on a jury.

In the factories, watching the swift moves of the workers, we never would suspect they are putting together a fortune for the boss. No, we’d think they are laying away something for a rainy day. (This isn’t so however, 85 out of every hundred die without a nickel). – Industrial Worker, 28 February 1933.

Only ten years now the cracker sandwich economists have been solving unemployment. First hundred years are worst.

In a gale of wind shorten sail, or slow the ship; in a doldrum of hot air, shorten hours and let nature take its course.

Organize industrially and acknowledge your corn. – Industrial Worker, 06 January 1940.

Many people have an idea that I stay up nights and Sunday afternoons writing these heartrending truths for the purpose of uplifting the readers of our otherwise faultless press.

Nothing of the kind.

In the first place I don’t write in the night time, in the second place I slumber all day Sunday and, in the third place, our readers don’t need any uplifting.

My sole purpose is to enlighten the linotype operator. – Industrial Solidarity, 06 February 1929.

About The Book

The Popular Wobbly brings together a wide selection of writings by T-Bone Slim, the most popular and talented writer belonging to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

Slim wrote humorous, polemical pieces, engaging with topics like labor and class injustice, which were mostly published in IWW publications from 1920 until his death in 1942.

Although relatively little is known about Slim, editors Owen Clayton and Iain McIntyre coalesce the latest research on this enigmatic character to create a vivid portrait that adds valuable context for the array of writings assembled here.

Slim also composed numerous songs that have been performed and recorded by Pete Seeger, Utah Phillips, and Candie Carawan, who in 1960 updated Slim’s song “The Popular Wobbly” with Civil Rights–era lyrics. Slim’s witticisms, sayings, and exhortations (“Wherever you find injustice, the proper form of politeness is attack”; “Only the poor break laws—the rich evade them”) were widely discussed among fellow hobos across the “jungle” campfires that dotted the railways, and some even transcribed his commentary on boxcars that traveled the country. Yet despite Slim’s importance and fame during his lifetime, his work disappeared from public view almost immediately after his death.

The Popular Wobbly is the first critical edition of Slim’s work and also a significant contribution to literature about working-class writers, the radical labor movement, and the history and culture of nomadism and precarity.

With this publication, Slim’s rediscovered writings can once again inspire artists and activists to march and agitate for a more just and equitable world.