Socialism for the Farmer
THE SAD STORY OF THE SLAMERICANS.
Once upon a time there was a great island named Slamerica. It laid two hundred miles beyond Christmas and on the left side of New Year. Its inhabitants called themselves Slamericans. The island was divided by a wide and turbulent river. On one side of the river lived the Slamericans who raised food; on the other side those who made Clothing. The river was spanned by a bridge belonging to a fat man named Ploot.
Now it so happened that the Slamerican food raisers could not live without clothing, while the clothing makers could not live without food. This being the case, one would think that these people simply exchanged the products of their labor, clothes for food, and food for clothes, but they didn't.
Whenever a food raiser wanted clothing to cover his nakedness he would fetch a pig to the owner of the bridge and Speak thusly: "Oh! mighty Ploot, Lord of Spondulix and Captain of Iron Wheels, behold thy servant and take pity upon him. The seat of my breeches has gone to naught and the seam of my garment has frazzled to frazzles, My elbows peep through the sleeves and cry for coverning. Mighty Lord, I pray of thee give me spondulix for this porker that I may purchase garments for my nakedness."
Thereupon Ploot would consult a chart of information. Which he had made for himself this very morning, and spake also: "The market price of pigs is five plunks to-day; here are the plunks."
Then the food raiser would tear his hair and smite his chest and cry in loud tones: "I am robbed, hornswaggled and flimflammed out of this noble porker which I have slopped, fed and nursed with more diligence and care than I have expended upon the children of my own bosom. Five plunks! oh! my eyes! Five plunks—have mercy upon me!"
But Ploot only smole a smile and jingled the silver plunks in his fat paw.
While the food raiser thus wailed and wept a chilly breeze stole out of the icebergs on the north pole and crawled through the holes of his garments and he made a frantic grab for the five plunks. "Now," he muttered, "let me have a garment."
