“No, mates, it’s his business to rise up and give ’em a good kick in the seats of their pants, to remind them of their bed-rock bottoms. You’d think, to hear all the fairy tales they let off, that their pants didn’t have such a region as seats. Like the blooming little angels, all fluttery tops and no bottoms. Don’t you be sucked in any more, mates. Look at ’em, and you’ll see they’ve got good, heavy-weight sit-upons, and big, deep trouser-pockets next door. That’s them. Up-end ’em for once, and look at ’em upside down. Greedy fat-arses, mates, if you’ll pardon the vulgarity for once. Greedy fat-arses.
“And that’s what we’ve got to knuckle under to, is it? They’re the upper classes? Them and a few derelict lords and cuttle-fish capitalists. Upper classes? I’m damned if I see much upper about it, mates. Drop ’em in the sea and they’ll float butt-end uppermost, you see if they don’t. For that’s where they keep their fat, like the camel his hump. Upper classes!
“But I wish them no special harm. A bit of a kick in the rear, to remind them that they’ve got a rear, a largely kickable rear. And then, let them pick themselves up and mingle with the rest. Give them a living wage, like any other working man. But it’s hell on earth to see them floating their fat bottoms through the upper regions, and just stooping low enough to lick the cream off things, as it were, and to squeal if a working man asks for more than a gill of the skilly.
“Work? What is one man’s job more than another. Your Andrew Carnegies and your Rothschilds may be very smart at their jobs. All right—give ’em the maximum wage. Give ’em a pound a day. They won’t starve on it. And what do they want with more? A job is nothing but a job, when all’s said and done. And if Mr Hebrew Rothschild is smart on the finance job, so am I a smart sheep-shearer, hold my own with any man. And what’s the odds? Wherein is Mr Hebrew, or Lord Benjamin Israelite any better man than I am? Why does he want so damned much for his dirty financing, and begrudges me my bit for shearing ten score o’ sheep?
“No, mates, we’re not sucked in. It may be Mr Steel-trust Carnegie, it may even be Mr Very-clever Marconi, it may be Marquis Tribes von Israel; and it certainly is Willie Struthers. Now, mates, I, Willie Struthers, a big fortune I do not want. But I’m damned if I am going to let a few other brainy vampires suck big fortunes out of me. Not I. I wouldn’t be a man if I did. Upper classes? They’ve got more greedy brains in the seats of their pants than in their top storeys.
“We’re having no more of their classes and masses. We’ll just put a hook in their trouser-bottoms and hook ’em gently to earth. That’s all. And put ’em on a basic wage like all the rest: one job, one wage. Isn’t that fair? No man can do more than his best. And why should one poor devil get ten bob for his level best, and another fat-arse get ten thousand for some blooming trick? No, no, if a man’s a sincere citizen he does his best for the community he belongs to. And his simple wage is enough for him to live on.
“That’s why we’ll have a Soviet. Water finds its own level, and so shall money. It shall not be dammed up by a few sly fat-arses much longer. I don’t pretend it will be paradise. But there’ll be fewer lies about it, and less fat-arsed hypocrisy, and less dirty injustice than there is now. If a man works, he shall not have less than the basic wage, be he even a lying lawyer. There shall be no politicians, thank God. But more than the basic wage also he shall not have. Let us bring things down to a rock-bottom.
“Upper? Why all their uppishness amounts to is extra special greedy guts, ten-thousand-a-year minimum. Upper classes! Upper classes! Upper arses.
“We’ll have a Soviet, mates, and then we shall feel better about it. We s’ll be getting nasty tempered if we put it off much longer. Let’s know our own mind. We’ll unite with the World’s Workers. Which doesn’t mean we’ll take the hearts out of our chests to give it Brother Brown to eat. No, Brother Brown and Brother Yellow had, on the whole, best stop at home and sweep their own streets, rather than come and sweep ours. But that doesn’t mean we can’t come to more or less of an understanding with them. We don’t want to get too much mixed up with them or anybody. But a proper understanding we can have. I don’t say, Open the gates of Australia to all the waiting workers of India and China, let alone Japan. But, mates, you can be quite friendly with your neighbour over the fence without giving him the run of your house. And that is International Labour. You have a genuine understanding with your neighbours down the street. You know they won’t shy stones through your windows or break into your house at night or kill your children in a dark corner. Why not? Because they’re your neighbours and you all have a certain amount of trust in one another. And that is International Labour. That is the World’s Workers.
“After all, mates, the biggest part of our waking lives belongs to our work. And certainly the biggest part of our importance is our importance as workers. Mates we are, and we are bound to be, workers, first and foremost. So were our fathers before us, so will our children be after us. Workers first. And as workers, mates. On this everything else depends. On our being workers depends our being husbands and fathers and playmates: nay, our being men. If we are not workers we are not even men, for we can’t exist.