ng your
usual proclivity for action, you started something while in the hash
foundry, and consequently got a fine run for your money; the result
being that you were shook down for your large and munificent earnings
when discharged, and turned loose on a warmhearted world without any
change in your jeans. But why worry? You've got a good and lucrative
trade now, learned at the expense of the state of New York; and you
know as well as I do that a good clever basket and broom maker,
besides becoming a competitor of the unhappy blind, who are wont to
follow this trade, can also earn as much as one dollar per day
weaving waste-paper baskets for the masses.

I also note that a guy by the name of Osborne interviewed you after
your release, and that you immediately put up a howl about your not
liking the basic principles which call such joints as the one which
you just quitted into existence; and that as per usual the
foresighted and profound-thinking editorial writers on several of the
big New York joy-sheets, which are published as accessories to the
Sunday comic supplements, immediately broke into song and wanted to
know what in hell you expected such places to be.

But don't mind these newspaper stiffs, Tom. One discovers on coming
in personal contact with them that, as a rule, their writings are all
based on inexperience and the writers may be classified as belonging
to the same species as Balaam's ass. So forget them.

I know this Osborne party personally; and take it from me that if he
had been born and brought up in the neighborhood of the gas-house
he'd sure have been some rough-neck. He is full of pep and actually
thinks for himself. He also has some peculiar ideas relative to the
rights and duties of humanity, and your experiences truthfully
related to him will probably bring results.

This Osborne guy is no novice in prison dope, and for years has been
beefing about society throwing away its so-called "waste material,"
when it might just as well be turned into valuable by-products by an
intelligent application of the laws of synthetic social chemistry.

It's his dope that if some Dutch guy can beat it into some big
industrial joint, say like those of the United States Steel Company
or the Standard Oil, and by an intelligent application of th