Cartoon: Hay, Slow Down! – Industrial Worker

Editors note: This is the fifth issue in the “Pacey Pratt the Sabo Cat” series. Today, Pacey Pratt teaches us once again that collective action on the shop floor gets the goods.

A thirteen-panel comic strip entitled Pacey Pratt the Sabo Cat in "Hay, Slow Down!”

Panel one shows the boss, a giant rat, driving a pickup truck through a farm field in the morning light and looking in the rear-view mirror. The boss says “Step lively now and load those hay bales on the trailers. I’m setting the cruise control, so you’d better keep up!”

Panel two shows three workers carrying bales of hay and loading them into a trailer behind the boss’s truck. From inside the vehicle the boss yells “Back when I was throwing hay, we worked twice this fast. Just give me an excuse and I’ll replace all you bums!” A worker named Mattie, in a purple tee shirt, read baseball cap, and handlebar mustache, says “Bums? He wouldn’t even be the boss if he wasn’t the farmer’s son-in-law.”

Panel three shows numerous hay bales waiting in the field to be collected by workers and loaded onto two trailers behind the boss’s truck. Four workers are carrying haybales to-and-from the trailers. Mattie gasps and says “This speed is inhuman. Two hours in and my back is screaming! This next bale is going straight up his—”

In panel four Mattie is interrupted by the worker named Bella, who says “Woah Mattie, before you fly off the handle, let’s think it over.” She is dropping a hay bale into the trialer next to Mattie, and wearing a rose-colored long sleeve shirt and a straw sun hat. Mattie shrugs his shoulders, palms up, and says “Oh Bella, I just can’t take it anymore!”

In panel five Bella and Mattie are riding home from work in the bed of the boss’s truck as evening sets it. Bella says “We’re all barely keeping up, but is there a more effective way to change things that assault with deadly hay?” Mattie, his baseball cap on backwards now, slouches and says “Maybe if the other workers had some guts, I wouldn’t have to go it alone.”

In panel six Bella and Mattie are spending the evening near a large tree outside. It’s gotten dark, but light falls on them from an unseen source to their left, like a porch light. Bella is hanging from a tire swing, and her features have become cat-like, with poity ears and a tabby mark on her forehead. She asks “How can we get the other workers to take action?” Mattiew replies, “I don’t know, talk to them? Hear about their struggles? Maybe we could all plan something together.” “As a union,” interjects Bella. Mattiew continues, “Wait, Bella, you’re Pacey Pratt, the Sabo Cat!” Bella replies, “Who me?”

Panel seven shows the boss again adjusting his rear-view mirror as he drives his truck through the field in the morning. A narration informs us that these event are happening “A few meetings later.” The boss says “Now step lively you bums, and load that, Hey!”

Panel eight zooms in on the boss’s rear-view mirror, showing six farm workers, in sweatshirst and sun hats or hoods, all pointing to their left. The boss asks “What are these wobbly scumbags up to now?”

Panel nine is as wide as the two previous panels, and shows the rolling hills of the farm field, with the sun rising in the background. In the foreground, the boss pokes his head out of his truck, looking past the six workers to a series of stacked hay bales, rising approximately eight to ten feet off the ground, and spelling out the words “Slow Down”. One of the workers adds under her breath, “Or else.”

The next panels are tall and thin. Panel ten shows the boss furiously climbing the “S” in “Slow Down”. “Slow down?” he asks. “I’m the boss and I set the speed!”

In Panel eleven he’s reached the top of the stacked haybales, which are beginning to wobble. He says “Now look up here and listen to me!”

In panel twelve he’s standing atop the “S”, waving his arms and shouting as the bales get wobblier. Bella, Mattie, and Pacey Pratt are standing below him, looking up. The boss begins to say “This rebellion will not stand, you—”

In the final panel the boss cries out as he falls to the ground and lands in a pile of collapsed hay bales and lands with a “Whump!” Bella and Mattie attempt to finish his sentence, suggesting “bums?” Pacey Pratt, a six-foot tall black tabby wearing a leather jacket and black jeans says “Now that’s how you make an impact.” The end. Cartoon by x423931.

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