A Terrible Crime

Dan Baxter, 1893

“I give you a kiss as a guarantee that I shall tell it in such a manner as will save you all tragic emotions.”

“Well, proceed,” said she.

“In the days,” began he, “when the desires of a free people were controlled by men and women who were trained from their infancy to deal only with results, and could not, or would not, look deeper than results, there lived a man who became so wealthy that neither dukes, nor even clergymen could stand upright in his presence.

“Philip Bullion was his name, He lived in a house like yours, surrounded by lawns, and gardens, and forests, and streams.

“The source of his wealth was a mystery to the whole people, until one day the report was flashed all over the world, along with the intelligence that he had been found dead on a couch.

“In each some two hundred rooms of his palace, and some out-houses, were found plaster casts and dies, and machinery of all kinds for producing every coin of the various realms of the world. Not only that, but in four of the largest rooms were found expensive photographic and lithographic¹ plants adapted for the making of all descriptions of paper money.

“Ha!” cried everybody. “Then Bullion was a maker of counterfeit coins, and notes—a forger, a scoundrel.”²

“All that I know,” cried one man, “is that had it not been for Bullion, a great many thousands of our respectable people would not be such large shareholders in the railways, mines, and other company concerns formed for the purpose of sucking the life’s blood out of the people.”

“Now it happened that the free, generous, good-natured slow-to-anger people, who lived in those days, were so careful to guard against any tampering with their money stamps, that they had proclaimed forgery to be one of the vilest of crimes, and punishable even by death.

“It had been made a crime to order that individuals might not become possessed of the power to command the products of the people’s labour, without giving products of their own labour, or some appreciable equivalent in exchange.

“So, when it became known that Squire Bullion was not only a forger, but had made thousands of men and women wealthy by giving them gifts of the money he made, and in that way enabling them without working to procure what the people had sweated to produce, the whole population turned out, and in their wrath were preparing to burn his body, when a more highly developed man than the rest stepped on to a chair and cried:

“Friends, listen to me before you set fire to these tar barrels.

“You are cursing Mr. Bullion and his satellites. Why?

“Yesterday you would have gone, hat in hand, to beg of them to be allowed to toil for your means of life!

“Is it because thousands of your fellows have, without your knowledge, accumulated large stocks of forged coins and notes, and are going amongst you with them, forcing you to supply them with food and clothing, forcing you to dig coal and make gas and build fine houses, and repair these fine houses, and provide them with all the other comforts and luxuries, without their doing a hand’s turn in the work?

“Is that what makes you angry? Is it because they are giving you forged money instead of good money for the products of your labour, that you are so angry?

“If these thousands, tens of thousands of idle men and women, gave you what you call ‘current’ coin of the realm, what would be the difference to you, you asses?

“Would they not be idle all the same?

“Would you not be doing all the work that requires to be done without their help, forged money or good money?

“There are many thousands giving you good money.

“Lord Rent, Squire Tax and Messrs. Profit and Interest and their flunkies are giving you good money. They do no work. You do it all.

“Why, then, curse Forgery without at the same time cursing Rent, Profit and Interest?

“Your anger, friends, shows that you have got a glimpse at the truth. You shall have a good look at it.

“See. Who is that at the castle door? He is no other than Squire Bullion. He was not dead—only pretending. He filled his rooms with the implements of the forger, in order that you might rise in your wrath against a system that permits a poor type of men and women to live lives of idleness and wrong-doing by obtaining large stacks of your money-stamps—the token of your labour—in a way that is no more honourable than it is to forge them.

“Mr. Bullion is a convert to the truth—to Socialism—and has taken this way of showing it to you.”

“Yes,” cried Mr. Bullion, stepping from the door of his castle, “I have taken this way of showing you why you should take charge of your own affairs; why you should take back to yourselves the money, the keys to the products of your own labour; the articles you, as a people, put your stamps upon; the articles that were intended to measure the value of your own labour, but which have not served that purpose since your fore-fathers introduced the use of coal and machinery. These money stamps (the money) are your own. You must take them. And if you do not need them, to make ornaments for your wives and daughters, place them under the control, the distributive control, not of irresponsible anybodies who have the cunning and greed to do nothing but keep them from your reach; place them under the control, the distributive control, of men and women whom you can trust to distribute them in such a way as to make sure that every man, woman boy, and girl, shall not only get what they need, without crime, but also be placed in a position that will enable them to give what Nature alone will force them to give.”