The Oblong
lectures I have endeavoured to convince you that money is in itself of no value and of no real use whatever. In this I am afraid I have been rather unsuccessful.'
'Not a bit of it, mate,' cried Crass, sarcastically; 'we all agrees with it.'
''Ear, 'ear!' shouted Easton. 'If a bloke was to come in 'ere now and orfer to give me a quid I'd refuse it!'
'So would I,' said Philpot.
'Well, whether you agree or not, the fact remains. A man might possess so much money that, in England, he would be comparatively rich, and yet if he went to some country where the cost of living is very high he would find himself in a condition of poverty. Or he might be in a place where the necessaries of life could not be bought for money at all. Therefore it follows that to be rich consists not necessarily in having much money, but in being able to enjoy an abundance of the things that are made by work; and that poverty consists not merely in being without money, but in being short of the necessaries and comforts of life—or in other words in being short of the Benefits of Civilisation, those things that are all, without exception, produced by work. Whether you agree or not with anything else that I say, you will all admit that that is our condition at the present time. We do not enjoy a full share of the benefits of civilisation—we are all in a state of more or less abject poverty.'
'And the reason why we're short of the things that's made by work,' interrupted Crass, mimicking Owen's manner, 'is that we ain't got the bloody money to buy 'em.'
'Yes,' said the man on the pail, 'and as I said before, if all the money in the country was shared out equal to-day, according to Owen's ideas, in six months' time it would be all back again in the same 'ands as it is now, and what are you goin' to do then?'
'Share again, of course.'
This answer came derisively from several places at the same instant, and then they all began speaking at once, vicing with each other in ridiculing the foolishness of 'them there Socialists,' whom they called 'The Sharers Out.'
'I never said anything about "sharing out all the money,"' said Owen, during a lull in the storm, 'and I don't know of any Socialist who advocates it. Give me your authority for saying that Socialists believe in sharing out all the money equally!'
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