An Imperial Banquet
₤10,000 is required before Christmas day. Gifts may be made to any specific section or home, if desired. Can you please send us something to keep the work going? Please address cheques, crossed 'Bank of England' (Law Courts Branch), to me at 101, Queen Victoria Street, E.C. Balance Sheets and Reports upon application.
Bramwell Booth."
'Oh, that's part of the great 'appiness an' prosperity wot Owen makes out Free Trade brings,' said Crass, with a jeering laugh.
'I never said Free Trade brought happiness or prosperity,' said Owen.
'Well, praps you didn't say exactly them words, but that's wot it amounts to.'
'I never said anything of the kind. We've had Free Trade for the last fifty years and to-day most people are living in a condition of more or less abject poverty, and thousands are literally starving. When we had Protection things were worse still. Other countries have Protection and yet many of their people are glad to come here and work for starvation wages. The only difference between Free Trade and Protection is that under certain circumstances one might be a little worse than the other, but as remedies for poverty neither of them are of any real use whatever, for the simple reason that they do not deal with the real causes of poverty.'
'The greatest cause of poverty is hover-population,' remarked Harlow.
'Yes,' said old Joe Philpot, 'if a boss wants two men, twenty goes after the job; there's too many people and not enough work.'
'Over-population,' cried Owen, 'when there's thousands of acres of uncultivated land in England without a house or human being to be seen! Is over-population the cause of poverty in France? Is over-population the cause of poverty in Ireland? Within the last fifty years the population of Ireland has been reduced by more than half. Four millions of people have been exterminated by famine or got rid of by emigration, but they haven't got rid of the poverty. Pr'aps you think that half the people in this country ought to be exterminated as well. That's the sort of opinion that Philanthropists like you, who spend your lives in slavery for other people, might be expected to hold.'
11
