The Great Money Trick
'I've paid you your wages, and provided you with Plenty of Work for a long time past. I have no more work for you to do at present. Come round again in a few months' time and I'll see what I can do for you.'
'But what about the necessaries of life?' demanded Harlow. 'We must have something to eat.'
'Of course you must,' replied the Capitalist, affably, 'and I shall be very pleased to sell you some.'
'But we ain't got no bloody money!'
'Well, you can't expect me to give you my goods for nothing! You didn't work for me for nothing you know. I paid you for your work and you should have saved something: you should have been thrifty like me. Look how I have got on by being thrifty!'
The unemployed looked blankly at each other, but the crowd only laughed; and then the three unemployed began to abuse the kind-hearted Capitalist, demanding that he should give them some of the necessaries of life that he had piled up in his warehouses, or to be allowed to work and produce some more for their own needs; and they even threatened to take some of the things by force if he did not comply with their demands. But the kind-hearted Capitalist told them not to be insolent, and spoke to them about honesty, and said if they were not careful he would have their faces battered in for them by the police, or if necessary he would call out the military and have them shot down like dogs.
'Of course,' continued the kind-hearted Capitalist, 'if it were not for foreign competition I should be able to sell these things that you have made, and then I should be able to give you plenty of work again. But until I have sold them to somebody or other, or until I have used them myself, you will have to remain idle.'
'Well, this takes the bloody biskit, don't it?' said Harlow.
'The only thing as I can see for it,' said Philpot, mournfully, 'is to 'ave a unemployed procession.'
'That's the idear,' said Harlow, and the three began to march about the room in Indian file, singing:—
'We've got no work to do-oo-oo!
We've got no work to do-oo-oo!
Just because we've been workin a dam sight too hard,
Now we've got no work to do.'
175
