The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-09-06
What
a
World
BY Michael Gold
The Mickey Finn.

Juan Dlaz SOccOrrO is SpaIldru,
a waiter and an anarchist, II you
have met this combination you will
understand what literary critics don't
seem to get-that Don QuiXote is
a serious photograph and not a bur-
lesque.
Juan Diaz is a bantam about five
feet high, fragile as a girl, with tiny
hands and feet, and with large
black outstanding moustache. He
struts in his walk; he struts sitting
down. I have watched him waiting
on a table; he has the pomposity of
a Lord High Chamberlain bringing
in the royal chamber-pot of frosty
morning.
This bantam is terrifically pugna-
cious. He is forever defending him
self and the working class. But the
weapons he uses are not the Latin
stiletto or American Six-Shooter; he
employs the Mickey Finn. This is
a typical sly weapon used by OPP
pressed walters all over the world;
a powdered emetic that makes the
bourgeois patron reich, or something
like Croton oil, that gives him an
immediate orgasm of diarrhea.
r 1t is an unethica1 thing to do, and
of course, very individualistic. AS
/ have explained to Juan time and
again, one ought not go after single
capitalists; one ought organize so
as to make the whole class disgorge
its wealth. But Don Quixtotes must
follow their own wisdom, and here
is little story Juan told me the
other day:
"There is a fat rich old lady stop
ping in our hotel She has breasts
like bushel baskets, elephant hips
and a white poodle dog. She is very
naughty and nervous. That pale
little cur is all she has in life. What
misery it has made for us waitersl
Imagine. even the poodle dogs of the
bourgeoisie can bring misery to the
workers!
she carries the dog to the dining
room three times a day. We walters
avoid her like death, but she changes
seats every day. All of us have had
to run at her whip. Do you know
what she makes us do. my friend?
The poodle, like the rich madam
is old It's teeth are worn. So we
walters must take its crackers or
bones in our mouth, and chew them
for the dog. Yes, we must all do it;
we have been commanded by the
management.
so yesterday. my friend, it was
my fate to gnaw the flesh off a
vealbone for this pampered old cur.
Outside in the great city little pro-
letarian children were dying for a
glass of milk The mothers watched
them perish, and could do nothing.
In China there was a famine and a
flood. In Germany and Italy fascists
were numbering our comrades. In
Spain the Socialists were shooting
down strikers. And here was I, Juan
Diaz Soccorro, an anarchist, a free
spirit, a soldier Of humanity, per-
forming the act Of mastication for
filthy bourgeois poodle.
MY friend, you have often sneered
at the Mickey Finn, and called it
the weapon of an individualist. But
never has it failed me in the mo-
ment of need. No, it may not emanci-
pate the workers of the world, but it
never fails to cheer my own liberated
spirit under the heel of the tyrants.
Is that so little? In a great battle
one uses all weapons, the tear gas
as well as the big cannon; and mod
est little Mickey Finn has conquered
as many bourgeoisie, perhaps, as
another.
But let us not philosophize too
much on a brutal battlefield it is
the place Of action. not sentiment.
SO thus it was, inflamed by my
degradation, that I first used Mickey
Finn against a poodle dog. 1t was
quite successful, my friend. The old
lady was amazed, I assure you, at
this sudden vulgarity of her pet
Her dress was quite ruined, she lost
her dignity. Several walters smiled,
and the old lady has informed the
manager she will stay no longer. And
all this was accomplished by faith
full little Mickey Finn. And you,
my friend, scott at him. But 1 I'M
derStand, you are not free! You have
received instructions from the Krem-
linz