at the store, they always took the merchandise and gave credit for future purchases.
You can always use the public libraries. Find out when they do their yearly housecleaning. Every library discards thousands of books on this day. Just show up and ask if you can take some.
Almost anything you might want to know from plans for constructing a sundial to a complete blueprint for building a house may be obtained free from the Government Printing Office. Write: to Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington D.C. 20402. Most publication are free. Those that are not are dirt cheap. Ask to be put on the list to receive the free biweekly list of Selected U.S. Government Publications.
One of the best ways to receive records and books free is to invest twenty dollars and print up some stationery with an artistic logo for some non-existent publication. Write to all the public relations departments of record companies, publishing houses, and movie studios. Say you are a newspaper with a large youth readership and have regular reviews of books, or records, or movies, and would like to be placed on their mailing list. Say that you would be glad to send them any reviews of their records that appear in the paper. That adds a note of authenticity to the letter. After a month or so you’ll be receiving more records and books than you can use.
If you really want a book badly enough, follow the title of this one-Dig!
10. FREE MONEY
No book on survival should fail to give you some good tips on how to rip-off bread. Really horning in on this chapter will put you on Free-loader Street life, ’cause with all the money in Amerika, the only thing you’ll have trouble getting is poor.
WELFARE
It’s easy to get on welfare that anyone who is broke and doesn’t have a regular relief check coming in is nothing but a goddamn lazy bum! Each state has a different set up. The racist penny-pinchers of Mississippi dole out only $8.00 a month. New York dishes ont the most with monthly payments up to $120.00. The Amerikan Public Welfare Association publishes a book called The Public Welfare Directory with information on exactly what each welfare agency provides and how you go about qualifying. You can read the directory at any public library to find out all you can about how your local office operates.
When you’ve discovered everything you need to know, head on down to the Welfare Department in your grubbiest clothes. Not sleeping the night before helps. The receptionist will assign an “intaker” to interview you. After a long wait, you’ll be directed to a desk. The intaker raps to you for a while, generally showing sympathy for your plight and turns you over to the caseworker who will make the final and ultimate assessment.
Have your heaviest story ready to ooze out. If you have no physical disabilities, lay down a “mentally deranged” rap. Getting medical papers saying you have any long-term illness or defect helps a lot. Tell the caseworker you get dizzy spells on the job and faint in the street. Keep bobbing your head, yawning, or scratching.
Tell him that you have tried to commit suicide recently because you just can’t make it in a world that has forgotten how to love. Don’t lay it on too obviously.
Wait till he “pries” some of the details from you. This makes the story even more convincing. Many welfare workers are young and hip. The image you are working on is that of a warm, sensitive kid victimized by brutal parents and a cold ruthless society. Tell them you held off coming for months because you wanted to maintain some self-respect even though have been walking the streets broke and hungry. If you are a woman tell him you were recently raped. In sexist Amerika, this will probably be true.
After about an hour or so of this soap-opera stuff, you’ll be ready to get your first check. From then on it’s a monthly check, complete medical care for free and all sorts of other outasight benefits. Occasionally the caseworker will drop by your pad or ask you down to the office to see how you’re coming along, but with your condition, things don’t look so good. Don’t abandon hope though. Hope always helps fill in a caseworker’s report.
The real trick is to parlay welfare payments in a few different states. Work out an exchange system with a buddy and mail each other the checks when they come in. If the caseworker comes by, your roommate can say you went to find a job or enrolled in a class. We know cats who have parlayed welfare payments up to six hundred dollars a month.
UNEMPLOYMENT
Every outlaw should learn everything there is to know about the rules governing unemployment insurance. As in the case of welfare rules, eligibility, and the size of payments differ from state to state. In New York, you are eligible for payments equivalent to half your weekly salary before taxes up to $65 per week, on the condition that you have worked for a minimum of twenty weeks during the year.
Payments are somewhat lower in most other states. In order to collect, you must show you are actively searching for a job and keep a record of employers you contact. This can easily be fudged. Every time you’re questioned about it, mention one or two companies. If your hair is long, you’ll have no problem. Just say they won’t hire you until you get a haircut. When this is the case, the unemployment office cannot cut off your payments or your hair. They also cannot make you accept a job you do not want. Tell them any job offer you get is not challenging enough for your talents. Unemployment can be collected for six months before payments are terminated. Twenty more weeks of slavery and you can go back to maintaining your dignity in the unemployment line. These job insurance payments cannot be taxed and since you are working so few weeks out of each year, your taxable income is at a minimum. Read all the fine print for tax form 1040 and discover all the deductible loopholes available to you. You should wind up paying no taxes at all or having all the taxes that were deducted from your pay reimbursed. Never turn over to the pig government any funds you can rip off. Remember, it isn’t your government, so why submit to its taxation if you feel you do not have representation.
PANHANDLING
The practice of going up to folks and bumming money is a basic hustling art. If you are successful at panhandling, you’ll be able to master all the skills in the book and then some. To be good at it requires a complete knowledge of what motivates people. Even if we don’t need the bread, we panhandle on the streets in the same way doctors go back to medical school. It helps us stay in shape.
Panhandling is illegal throughout Pig Empire, but it’s one of those laws that is rarely enforced unless they want to “clean the area” of hippies. If you’re in a strange locale, ask a fellow panhandler what the best places to work are without risking a bust. Do it in front of supermarkets, theaters, sporting events, hip dress shops and restaurants. College cafeterias are very good hunting grounds.
When you’re hustling, be assertive. Don’t lean against the wall with your palm out mumbling “Spare some change?” Go up to people and stand directly in front of them so they have to look you in the eye and say no. Bum from guys with dates.
Bum from motherly looking types. After a while you’ll get a sense of the type of people you get results with.
Theater can be real handy. The best actors get the most bread. Devising a street theater skit can help. A
