Page:Melbourne Riots (Andrade, 1892).djvu/49

Rh interchanges of commodity with each other? Certainly not; for in many cases that interchange was entirely spontaneous and unregulated, and in others it was successfully directed by a labor-note system that gave results quite the reverse of the pauperizing monetary system that we are suffering under. Then what were the causes of their failure? Let us find them, that we may not fail also, but may take advantage of their example by imitating their successes but avoiding their stumbles. If we study their history, we soon find that their successes were due to the fact that they freed the lands, gave employment to the labor upon it, worked with their own machinery instead of the machinery of others, and rendered themselves dependent upon the product of their own labor instead of upon the money belonging to the usurer. And their failures we find were due to the fact that they frequently made the products of the individual laborers the common property of all, whether they assisted in the creation of those products or not, and utterly regardless of the amount of exertion each individual put forth in their creation; some failed because the land they were throwing open to the free use of all their members was not out of the monopolist's grip before they commenced to use it, and they had to relinquished it to the cruel mortgagee, with all the improvements they had placed upon it; others failed because although they they had the land properly, but like many a poor struggling farmer they lack sufficient means to ‘hang out’ until the crops begin to ripen and the harvest comes to reward their patient toil; or they have means too small to tide over famines, droughts, fires, or other calamities; and others yet again failed because they were overburdened with authority, hemmed in by laws, and regulations, and restrictions imposed upon men who knew little of the requirements of hard pioneering life by others who knew still less of those requirements, and who unintentionally only brought about the old order of things that existed in the old exploitative society from which they had just fled. Now, friends, I propose that you assist me to imitate their successes, and avoid their failures, by the following means. Club together a stated sum each, say ten shillings. If there are a hundred of you that means fifty pounds; a thousand of you five hundred pounds; and ten thousand of you five thousand pounds. Now that five thousand pounds employed in securing you what I have suggested would do more good than five hundred thousands of pounds employed in charity or government relief works (hear, hear). After that you can pay a small sum every week, say a shilling, until you have paid up some five or ten pounds each. Now that isn't much to pay to secure your emancipation, is it? You'd think nothing of paying a hundred pounds through a building society for a house and land, and a poor one at that. And yet that small ten pounds will gain you not only a house and land free of all liabilities, but it will find you capital to work it, and sufficient food and clothing for you to carry on with until you become absolutely independent. And here is how you go about it. You have clubbed together say the five thousand pounds. With some of that you buy enough land somewhere in the country, and decide amongst yourselves by ballot who shall first go and live on it. You don't need to all