Page:Melbourne Riots (Andrade, 1892).djvu/39

Rh That is the first step in the plunder of the workers, and we call it rent. Then when the worker wants to exchange the surplus part of that product, over and above what he consumes and gives to his landlord, for the surplus product of someone else, he has to do so through a legal medium, which we call money. This of course he has to borrow from the privileged monopolists who are ‘chartered’ by the landlord government to issue it. But they demand that when he pays it back, in a given time, he shall repay more than he borrowed. This extortion is the next burden on the laborer, and they call it interest, or usury. Of course, he can't pay more then he borrows, though he agrees to; and so someday the banker, who lent him the money, metaphorically gobbles him up, robs him of all he has got and makes him a pauper, when he will perhaps finish by imprisoning him for vagrancy. Then the officers, who run this landlords' and bankers' government, want paying, as they are not producers themselves, and that makes another big hole in the worker's product, which we call taxation. But that is not all. A man can't work on land unless he has tools. So if he is only a worker, with nothing but his arms, he goes to one of the fortunate possessors of the money (which alone buys the monopolized lands and tools), and he asks him to let him use those tools. This the employer agrees to do provided he gives him another large slice out of his product, which of course the worker does, and we call that slice the profit. The little slice that now remains to the worker we call his wages; it is sometimes so small that it takes a powerful economic microscope to find it (laughter). Now, here is the way such an unjust system operates. You go to work for a man, and in a given time produce an article, say a suit of clothes, which he offers to sell you for £6. But he only gives you £1 for your labor in producing it. So you produce five more suits before you can afford to buy one, which you then do. You have now a suit, and he has five, one of which he uses himself. But you want to buy something else, so you ask him to let you make more suits, as you want to earn more money. But he tells you he can't till you buy the four that he has got by him. And so you are thrown out of work. He calls that ‘overproduction’ and you call yourself ‘unemployed.’ All the workers under our present slave system are in exactly the some position; and although there is a division of labor and a distribution of products it doesn't alter the relations between employer and employee a bit, but leaves them just as I have described them. Now you see that if you got the full £6 for making that suit, you could have bought it at once, and all this trouble would have been avoided; you would have remained at work making another to exchange with someone else; your employer would have had to make his own instead of being idle; and everyone else would be doing the same, and we would never have depressions or riots, excessive wealth or poverty, but would all be happy and prosperous mates like the Masinkers that Treadway told us about. Now, if you will help me, I will show you how we can do it, and thereby earn the gratitude of our fellow-men and better our own condition. If you are agreeable I will fully explain the whole thing to you at another meeting when you have more time, so that you can fully understand it, and be prepared to help me in