Riallaro: The Archipelago of Exiles

by Godfrey Sweven

An ambitious young statesman who could not oust his opponents or get himself into office bethought himself of a new scheme. He knew what it was that had annihilated the commerce; but the electorate would not listen to him if he told them the truth; they thought that it was malignant envy that had driven foreign nations into withdrawing from the ports of the island; how could it be Wotnekstian legislation, when it had all been meant for the good of the human race? But let them go; they could do very well without foreigners. The youth saw it was vain to attempt to persuade them that their own laws and tariffs and inspectors had made commerce impossible; and he turned his attention to a new stepping-stone to power. In their anxiety to please and conciliate the middle classes who had achieved all the recent reforms, statesmen had forgotten the artisans and labourers; and everybody assumed that in passing laws for the benefit of employers, they were conferring benefits on the employees too; their interests were bound together. But this new candidate for power saw that the lion’s share went to the middle classes and that the interests of the two divisions of the community were by no means completely identical.

He sent his lieutenants and agents out amongst the workingmen and wooed their confidence by urging their grievances, which they suddenly awoke to find they had. His emissaries made the artisans pick quarrels with their masters, and he stepped in to settle them; but he settled them in such a way that they should be chronic ulcers. He encouraged their discontent and promised them a position in the commonwealth as good as their masters. At intervals the strife he provoked blazed out into open warfare; and he led the crusade. He was execrated by the middle classes; but he did not care for that; for, as soon as he had inspired the mass of the workingmen to act independently of their employers, he knew he would carry the day.

And after ten years of uphill struggle he came out victorious. He had rent the state in two; but he had the larger part behind him; and he took every precaution to bind it to him with all the bonds of self-interest and fear. There followed a long period of legislation in favour of the artisan and labourer. He drew his revenues from a new source, the penalisation of capital. Every man who employed others with profit, or who had any surplus from his earnings, was forced step by step to hand over his profits or his surplus to the state or in the form of wages to the employees. Industry after industry grew waterlogged and sank. All who were thrown out of employment had to be provided for by the state; those vile employers, through hatred of labour, had in their malignity withdrawn their capital from the industries, and many of them had gone abroad with it to escape taxation and the just laws that had been passed to guide them in the employment of their capital.

The new army of government inspectors and employees who had come into being in order to see the labour laws carried out could not be dismissed; and the government had to take over most of the industrial enterprises that had been abandoned. The labourers learned with facility the art of seeming to work when idling; and, as they were the masters through the ballot-box, it was no one’s interest to see that they did what they were paid to do. Things drifted from bad to worse; but the statesman put the best face upon them. Borrowings from abroad at huge rates and crooked accounts concealed the deficit for many years.

At last his rival, a younger and as unscrupulous a politician, advertised the disaster that was about to befall the state, and, though denounced as a liar and slanderer, persuaded half the electorate that he was not far from the truth, especially as the administration was driven to all kinds of dubious shifts to pay their employees; and a considerable section of the labouring class looked to them for work and support. But in the crusade against industrial capital and foreign trade the landlords and mine-owners had been forgotten. Agricultural work and mining had not been to the taste of the Wotnekstians, and they had allowed these employments to drift into the hands of introduced labourers, contracted, or, in other words, enslaved, for a number of years. The owners kept as silent as they could and shut the mouths of their foreign workmen by learning their language and allowing them no opportunity of learning Wotnekstian. It was assumed that they were contented and happy, as no one heard them complain, and all outsiders who could understand them were carefully kept out of their way. They cost little beyond their sustenance to their masters, who avoided any show of the wealth they were laying by, and even kept up the appearance of being poor.

The new candidate for power was an outcast from their ranks, and knew the enormous profits that came to them from their lands and mines. He spoke with authority when he declared that he could pay all the expenses of administration without laying any more burden on the existing taxpayers; he could in fact remove many of their taxes, enrich the state coffers, and give a higher rate of wages to all the employees of the government. His long-successful rival made a bold stroke for the retention of power. He knew that his own special party, the artisans, had the largest families, and had therefore the largest number of women and young men in their ranks; and he brought in a bill extending the suffrage to women and to youths of sixteen years and upwards. His opponent was suspiciously eager to help him in passing it; but he could not draw back; and it became law. The result was a still more overwhelming defeat for him and his followers. His rival had honeycombed the labour party with disloyalty by means of promised bribes.

Then began the new system of taxation, which was to draw all revenues from lands and mines. From time to time the taxes had to be increased in order to fill the gulf that was made by a new addition to the inspectorate. The owners had to resort to a lower and lower stratum of workers, who would work for nothing and whose food would cost less. The proletariate raised a cry against the introduction of such savages; and the artisans and labourers took it up, and insisted on native labour being substituted for the aliens. Stringent laws were passed excluding all aliens from the island; and real poverty began to take the place of seeming poverty amongst the landlords and mine-owners. A few generations of laws against foreigners and of taxation of natural products ruined this milch-cow of the state; and the end was that all lands and all mines had to be taken over from private owners.

Still there were new stepping-stones for youthful ambitions in politics to rise. One who thought that too many years were passing without the due recognition of his genius saw that his only chance lay in an utterly neglected section of the electorate. The paupers and the unimprisoned criminals, though long enfranchised, had been too unimportant to appeal to. But state employment, state doles, and state impecuniosity had by this time pauperised half the population, and the half-developed criminals had begun to recognise in the statesmen and politicians brothers-in-arms, whilst the constant torrent of legislation had induced utter contempt of all laws and made most of the people lawbreakers.

Our young political leader saw his opportunity, and knew that if he propounded a scheme that would appeal to both pauper and criminal he would seduce Wotnekstian human nature and rise into power. He proposed to give a competency to every man and woman above fifty who was poor enough or idle enough to appeal to the state for sustenance or employment. He did not reveal whence he would get his revenues to carry out his scheme, but assured the electorate with great confidence that he would find them. The semi-criminal was astute enough to see that it was out of his quiver that the new scheme must find its weapons. The pauper did not care whence the means came; and the two combined put the budding statesman into office. The financial scheme was of course to take from those who had saved and to give to those who had spent their all or had never earned. Anticipating the effect of his measures, he passed a law prohibiting emigration from the island; and he made the semi-criminal inspectors to see its provisions enforced. In spite of increasing deficits and increasing inability to borrow from the islands around even at exorbitant rates, statesman after statesman climbed to power by reducing the age at which a competency would be granted, and the age at which a boy or girl could begin to claim electoral rights.

Notwithstanding the army of inspectors and the precautions taken, the thrifty section of the people who did not care to abandon work dribbled away one by one clandestinely to neighbouring islands, along with their thrift. The wealthy had taken care to escape long before; and the state bank, which had gradually absorbed all other banks, had begun to feel the limit of its paper. Its chief reserve and plant had been for many years a printing-press. One ambitious youth of meagre intellectual capacity had leapt into power on the preaching of the doctrine that the only essentials of great wealth in a country were a good supply of paper and a good printing-press; the credit of the community did the rest. So thoroughly did the people come to believe in this that the precious metals and the movables of value were allowed to drift out of the island along with the rich or thrifty escapees. They were chary of accepting any piece of government paper in payment for anything they did or sold, and still the people believed in the inexhaustibility of the wealth of the state. Did not the whole of the industries and mines and lands of the island belong to it? Issue of paper followed issue of paper to meet the increasing deficit, each growing of less value and of less acceptance than the last. More than half the population were government inspectors, and the rest were government pensioners; and they had to be paid. At last there was nothing to pay them with but the state bank paper. Then there was indignant protest. Statesman after statesman in whom the electorate trusted to pay them in goods or the cash of other islands was hurled from power. Hundreds of laws were passed asserting the value of the paper money and refixing it at its original face value. Yet neither electors nor politicians would acknowledge the facts of the case, that as long as there was no one to work, there was nothing to be got to pay the inspectors and pensioners. There were the mines and lands as rich as ever they were; but there were none to dig or cultivate them. The alien labourers who used to work them had been thrust out, and the natives had worked in such a way that they did not earn their wages. There were the factories and industries; but they were silent and their buildings were falling into ruin.