330 REPORT— 1891. 



are the two peas that the thirabie-riggers of finance will con- 

 tinue to play in the game of picking the pockets of the public, 

 and of keeping bread from the mouths of the poor, until the 

 regulation of the currency passes out of the hands of private 

 persons and becomes a matter of public policy. 



I will now refer to the dynamics of money, as exemplified 

 in modern times by "moving" food, as the Americans call it. 

 In 1847-48 there was a famine of potatoes in Ireland ; but was 

 no food produced there? Certainly there was. Why, then, 

 did it not reach the famishing Irish poor ? Because the power 

 of the marked pebbles was exercised by a class who " toil not, 

 neither do they spin." By making a levy called "rent," the 

 oatmeal, and the pork, and the butter raised in Ireland went 

 to feed absentees and their dependents, while the producers at 

 home were left to starve. The co-operation of labour to-day 

 is effected by means of money moving wheat from the elevators 

 of Chicago, from the grain heaps of India, and from the ports 

 of the Baltic and Black Seas, to wherever it is wanted to keep 

 labour going. This result is accomplished by what is known 

 as " capital " — the dynamics of money in the hands of a com- 

 paratively few^ persons. If universal labour had a sufficiently 

 developed organization, the year's production of food might be 

 delivered in rations, like the supplies of an army, so that each 

 worker, having done the task allotted to him for the day, 

 would have no other concern than to take his ration and 

 spend the rest of his time as was most agreeable to his in- 

 clination. 



At present, capital means that amount of the result that 

 labour has gained from the soil, as food, which has been 

 exacted from the toilers by middlemen, w4io, while dis- 

 tributing that product, not only kept food enough for them- 

 selves and their immediate helpers, but who retained enough 

 of food-value in their own hands to create a new class of 

 persons to produce food specially for the advantage of them- 

 selves. These persons are known as tenants — borrowers of the 

 very money that the lenders had abstracted from employes 

 in the exchange of commodities placed in their hands, &c. 

 They thus practically say to themselves and their children, by 

 their accumulations, "Take your ease; eat, drink, and be 

 merry ; for, by the eternal fitness of things, you have provided 

 for yourselves an income of food for all generations to come." 

 Nemesis is not, however, to be evaded. To escape ennui, the 

 child of luxury, by etiquette and custom, has invented for him- 

 self toils peculiarly his own. Science itself cannot escape the 

 never-ceasing contagion of custom. That cynical woman of 

 genius, " Ouida" — who, by her satire, preserved that interesting 

 relic of the past, the Cathedral of Venice — in turn twits the 

 devotees of science with the keen eye that they keep upon the 



