“And there’s another thing I objects to,” said Crass. “And that’s all this ’ere talk about hignorance: wot about all the money wots spent every year for edication?”
“You should rather say—‘What about all the money that’s wasted every year on education?’ What can be more brutal and senseless than trying to ‘educate’ a poor little, hungry, ill-clad child? Such so-called ‘instruction’ is like the seed in the parable of the Sower, which fell on stony ground and withered away because it had no depth of earth; and even in those cases where it does take root and grow, it becomes like the seed that fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it bore no fruit.
“The majority of us forget in a year or two all that we learnt at school because the conditions of our lives are such as to destroy all inclination for culture or refinement. We must see that the children are properly clothed and fed and that they are not made to get up in the middle of the night to go to work for several hours before they go to school. We must make it illegal for any greedy, heartless profit-hunter to hire them and make them labour for several hours in the evening after school, or all day and till nearly midnight on Saturday. We must first see that our children are cared for, as well as the children of savage races, before we can expect a proper return for the money that we spend on education.”
“I don’t mind admitting that this ’ere scheme of national ownership and industries is all right if it could only be done,” said Harlow, “but at present, all the land, railways and factories, belongs to private capitalists; they can’t be bought without money, and you say you ain’t goin’ to take ’em away by force, so I should like to know how the bloody ’ell you are goin’ to get ’em?”
“We certainly don’t propose to buy them with money, for the simple reason that there is not sufficient money in existence to pay for them.
“If all the gold and silver money in the World were gathered together into one heap, it would scarcely be sufficient to buy all the private property in England. The people who own all these things now never really paid for them with money—they obtained possession of them by means of the ‘Money Trick’ which Owen explained to us some time ago.”
“They obtained possession of them by usin’ their brain,” said Crass. “Exactly,” replied the lecturer. “They tell us themselves that that is how they got them away from us; they call their profits the ‘wages of intelligence’. Whilst we have been working, they have been using their intelligence in order to obtain possession of the things we have created. The time has now arrived for us to use our intelligence in order to get back the things they have robbed us of, and to prevent them from robbing us any more. As for how it is to be done, we might copy the methods that they have found so successful.”
“Oh, then you DO mean to rob them after all,” cried Slyme, triumphantly. “If it’s true that they robbed the workers, and if we’re to adopt the same method then we’ll be robbers too!”
“When a thief is caught having in his possession the property of others it is not robbery to take the things away from him and to restore them to their rightful owners,” retorted Barrington.
“I can’t allow this ’ere disorder to go on no longer,” shouted Philpot, banging the table with the plumber’s hammer as several men began talking at the same time.