The Sledge Hammer. (Okemah, Okla.), Vol. 2, No. 28, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 13, 1913 Page: 1 of 12
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THE SLEDGE HAMMER.
To Hammer the System Not the Individual
\ T7/XT r. ™ J- FLEMING JONES, 50 CENTS
VOL. 2, NO. 28. editor. OKEMAH, OKLAHOMA, NOVEMBER 13, 1913. a year. WHOLE NO. 80
©
COMRADE JONAH I
Fish Story Which Teaches a Valuable Lesson ^
watch towers two hundred feet
high. It .was the capital of the
great Assyrian empire, and from
the graft, violence and general
wickedness mentioned in the
bible, which was going on there
at the time of Jonah, we are
led to conclude that a gang of
democrat politicians had got
control of things and were
running them in real old demo^
cratic style. The Lord wanted
them to get right and told
Jonah to go over there and get
busy.
The old prophet didn't like to
tackle the job the Lord had cut
out for him. He knew that
Nineveh was a hard proposition.
The politicians might break up
his meetings. The police might
arrest him for obstructing the
streets and throw him in the
calaboose. So the old prophet
decided to bolt.
We are told that Jonah in-
tended to flee to Tarshish, "from
the presence of the Lord."
Right there is where the old
comrade made a mistake. The
jurisdiction of the Lord covered
a whole lot more territory than
the prophet figured on. Tarshish
was on the other side of the
Great Sea. It was the southern j
part of the peniusula of Spain. I
This was the uttermost part of j
the earth in those days and!
Jonah seemed to be laboring'
under the mistake that the Lord
didn't know that Tarshish was
on the map.
We have nothing to do with
the fact that when Jonah took
passage on a ship bound for
Tarshish a great storm arose
and they had to throw the
prophet over board, although it
was this incident which gave
him a bad reputation. Neither
It is ,ier late in the day to
attend to do justice to the
memory of a man who died
twenty-five hundred or three
thousand years ago; but there
is an old adge which says: "Better
late than never."
We are pursuaded that no man
of ancient or modern times has
been so unjustly slandered, so
persistently misrepresented, as
old Comrade Joanh. This old
Hebrew agitator has been held
up for centuries as the prototype
of the man who fails; of the
man who queers every enter-
prise with which he is connected.
If a man acquires a reputation
for swamping every undertaking
that is launched—if he is a
veritable hoodoo—his acquain-
tances always refer to him as a
"Jonah."
The truth is, however, that
Jonah was one of the most
successful agitators in history.
We call him an agitator because
the words agitator and prophet
mean about the same thing. The
old Hebrew word for prophet
means "a pourer fourth of
words," and the modern labor
agitator is also a pourer forth of
words. _ The old prophets were
not necessarily gifted with divine
foresight, though we have to
acknowledge that some of them
hit it off just right in their
prognostications. But the gentle-
men whose business it was to
foretell future events were called
"seers."
So far as we can tell from the
best records available the old
prophets spent most of their
time trying to prevail on the
rulers of the people to quit their
meanness. The indictments
which some of them brought
against the exploiting class of
that day read very much like
the speech of a socialist agitator;
so we feel warranted in referring
to old Comrade Jonah as an
agitator.
Now old Comrade Jonah had a
satisfactory record as a prophet,
and we suppose he was a good
class conscious socialist. At
least we have no record that his
dues were ever in arrears; but
when the Lord told him to go
over to Nineveh and hold an en-
campment he balked. Don't
blame him too severely. The
old prophet knew the gang he
would have to deal with over at
Nineveh. From what we are
told of the place it was almost as
bad as Oklahoma City.
Nineveh, before the boom left j
it, was a good-sized town. The J
wall which was built around it
was over sixty miles in circum-
ference and was one hundred
feet high. This wall was so
wide that three chariots could
drive abreast on the top cf it.
On this wall were fifteen hundred
are we going to try to explain
how Jonah could have remained
for three days in the interior of
the fish and come out again alive
and apparently in good health.
The digestive powers of the fish
may have been weak, or Jonah,
being an agitator, may have been
a tough proposition and the fifch
gave him up as a bad job. But
we are told that the Lord had
prepared a great fish to swallow
Jonah and we are willing to let
it go at that. For all we know
to the contrary,' that particular
fish, being prepared for a special
purpose, may have been fitted
up with a neat little ventillating
apparatus, hot and cold baths
and all the modern conveniences.
But the chances are that as the
prophet was undergoing punish-
ment for disobedience, he was
not overly comfortable; and we
are sure the fish was in a regret-
ful mood, and they probably
separated by mutual consent. All
that we care about in connection
with this incident is the lesson it
teaches, whi(ih is that you can
gain nothing by shirking your
duty.
There was also a lesson in this
incident for the fish, and that is
that you can't keep a good man
down. That is, a fish cannot.
Capitalism has been known to
manage the job, but it is beyond
the powers of a mere fish.
It strikes us that the joke was
on the fish. But we have never
sized up this huge member of the
finny tribe as a sucker, and we
do not doubt that it learned its
lesson, and venture the assertion
that the next time a plump,
juicy looking prophet was
dumped into the water this par-
ticular fish grabbed its nose,
made a wry face, gave its tail a
vigorous flirt and paddled off to
some other part of the pond.
Jonah learned his lesson, paid
his board bill, and bought a
through ticket for Nineveh. He
went into the city a day's
journey and started his campaign
by proclaiming: "Yet forty
COMRADES!
Y\/ E do not wish to take up the space that is needed
* * for propaganda, to boost the Sledge Hammer, but
if we are to make any progress we must reach the mem-
bers of the old parties, and will have to depend largely
on the socialists to place this paper in their hands.
Quite a number of subscriptions expire with this
issue. We are trying to send all whose subs are out
notification of same. This is done for two reasons, one
being that any socialist paper to exist must keep a paid
up subscription list—they cannot live in any other manner
—and the other that we want to comply at all times with
the postal laws.
We aim to give the very best paper possible and
improve just as fast as the resources will admit. Now,
if you are interested in this fight for economic freedom,
get up a list of subscribers for the Sledge Hammer and
help the work along.
days and Nineveh shall be over-
thrown!"
We suppose that the prophet
really said more than the words
quoted above, but unfortunately
we have no short hand report of
his speech. It was during the
warm season and the steno-
graphers were probably down on
the Tigris on an outing vacation,
fishing and bathing and drinking
Anhauser-Busch.
But we know that Jonah said
a plenty. The grafters and
politicians were scared into
caniption fits. They were as
badly frightened as a bunch of
Oklahoma office holders after a
socialist encampment. The king
slid down off of his throne, tore
off his robe of state, jammed his
legs into a gunny sack, pawed
around in the ash pile, like a
mad steer, to let the people know
that he meant business, and then
told them to get busy.
The people all promised to be
good, and clean up on the
grafters and politicians, and quit
voting the democrat ticket. This
did the work. When the people
got right the threatened danger
was averted. This action on the
part of the people of Nineveh,
is an exception to the usual
course of history. It has al-
ways been said that the master
class never learn anything—that
in spite of all warning—regard-
less of unmistakable danger sig-
nals—they always march blindly
to their doom. Nineveh is an
exception, the people heeded the
warning of Jonah, repented and
escaped destruction; and this is
the reason we assert that Jonah
was one of the most successful
agitators in the history of the
world.
Of course when the Lord ac-
cepted the repentence of the
people of Nineveh, and decided
not to wipe them off of the face
of the earth, Jonah got sore. He
thought he would be called a
liar, and he wanted to save his
face. He went out on the east
side of the city wall and laid
down, with the worst kind of a
grouch. A gourd sprang up to
shade him from the rays of the
sun, but still the old prophet
was mad. A worm got in its
work on the gourd vine and then
the sun beat down on the
prophet's old bald head until he
was ready to croak. Then the
Lord revived him and told him
where to head in.
There is still another lesson in
the story of Jonah and the fish
and the Nineveh revival, and
that is, that when a bunch get
so rotten that their cussedness
smells to high heaven, the only
way they can escape destruction
is to repent and quit their
meanness.
Things could not have been
much worse in "Nineveh than
they are in Okfuskee county.
The political gang, who are now
running affairs with a high hand
would do well to repent. If they
do not they cannot hope to
escape the wreck and ruin of
their political hopes.
J. Walter Long has Just Received a Large Line of Fresh Chocolates. Call and See Us.
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Jones, J. Fleming. The Sledge Hammer. (Okemah, Okla.), Vol. 2, No. 28, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 13, 1913, newspaper, November 13, 1913; Okemah, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc149933/m1/1/?q=wichita+falls: accessed June 3, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.