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Title: Notes [Dec, 1886] Author: Freedom Press (London) Date: December, 1886 Language: en Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 1, No. 3, online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3063, retrieved on April 14, 2020.
The attempt of the local authorities to renew the London coal and corn
duties has revealed to the people one of the numberless indirect methods
by which they are fleeced by their masters. The Corporation and Board of
Works devote these duties (coal, taxed 13d. a ton, brings in L450,000
a-year) to the fair-seeming purposes of town improvements and the
purchase of open spaces. But-putting aside all questions of jobbery and
and speculation, of " turns " and " bonuses " and " good things " for
self and friends-for whose benefit are town improvements chiefly
undertaken !The rich dwellers in fashionable districts and the traders
of the City, or the poor crowded together in the slums ? Pulling down an
occasional rookery is about as far as the authorities usually go in in
improving poor localities. In this case, as in so many others, the
workers pay the piper that their masters may dance.
It would be well worth the people's while to insist that the grassy
hillocks between Hampstead and Highgate should remain undefiled by
bricks and mortar, if only to preserve the ancient barrow there, in
memory of the days when Londoners 'were not afraid to fight for their
freedom. But why should Sir Maryan Wilson and Lord Mansfield 1 demand
L300,000 in consequence? The market value of this land results from the
busy cooperation of countless generations of citizens in its
neighborhood and these two gentlemen, it would seem, have done nothing
but be born. Surely the remuneration is somewhat excessive. Especially
when it is alleged as an argument for continuing to tax the food and
fuel of the workers of the whole town.
The newspapers have been filled for the last week or two with the
domestic affairs of three aristocratic families. Are two people married
or not? Were a certain young woman's relations justified in saying that
her choice of a husband was indiscreet ? If a married couple are
unhappy, and one prefers another companion, shall they separate ? These
are the questions which not only flood the public press with personal
details pandering to mere idle curiosity, but occupy the whole time and
attention of a number of able men upon whose mental training society has
spent a large share of wealth. Nor is this waste of energy a passing
aberration. A costly system of procedure, involving gorgeous buildings
and the labor of a large staff of hand and brain workers, is permanently
devoted to such matters. Is not all this loss and expenditure, rather a
heavy price to pay for the unsatisfactory arrangement of the private
affairs of the upper classes?
Suits for libel and divorce are luxuries for the rich. A poor man has no
chance of healing his wounded reputation with L20,000; and divorce, even
when the plaintiff swears himself penniless, costs about L30.
So much the better for the poor man. No enforced exchange of gold can
either wash a black sheep white, or save each one of us from walking 11
in a cloud of poisonous flies." And as for lovers, they either love each
other or they do not. In the first case artificial bonds are but paint
on the lily, in the second, union is a ghastly mockery which honest
nature promptly destroys. In either case the collective meddling of the
community is, to say the least, eminently superfluous.
The descendants of the Puritans in Kansas, U.S., are not of this
opinion, however. They have lately carried the principle of state
interference to its reductio ad absurdum, and thrown into prison two
unfortunate lovers who conscientiously disapprove of contracts enforced
by law. Legal forms, separation or captivity, insist these inexorable
bigots; as their spiritual ancestors of the rival persuasion used to
impose upon heretics the sacraments or the stake. The form of
fetish-worship ordained by authority changes, but wherever the rule of
man by man is admitted, there is some description of burning fiery
furnace ready for all such as refuse to bow down before the image the
rulers have set up.
"Where does your interest come from I" is a tract that may well be
useful in rousing the consciences of women of property. It is perfectly
true of the majority of such women, and men, that "if capital were a
tree planted in an orchard, and interest the fruit with which it war
annually laden, they could not take it more as a matter of course."
Unfortunately, whilst pointing out that the appropriation of interest by
the idle is essentially a robbery of the wage-workers, the author
concedes the social claim of able-bodied women to live idly on interest,
if they see that their capital is " humanely " utilized.
Encouraging tidings reach us from the North, where our comrade P.
Kropotkin is explaining Anarchism before large and sympathetic
audiences. His lecture on the 31st of October in the theater at
Newcastle-the first public exposition of our ideas in that part of
England-was attended by over 4000 persons, and many hundreds were unable
to obtain admittance. He is now carrying the propaganda into Scotland,
where the ground has been already well prepared by the Socialist League.