These sacks in the market open to all to thrust their
hands in are not sacks of corn but
Of golden sovereigns, half-sovereigns,
new George and the dragon, old George and the dragon, Sydney mint
sovereigns, Napoleons, half-Napoleons, Belgian gold, German gold, Italian
gold; gold scraped and scratched and gathered together like old rags from
door to door. Sacks full of gold, verily I may say that all the gold
poured out from the Australian fields, every pennyweight of it, hundreds
of tons, all shipped over the sea to India, Australia, South Africa,
Egypt, and, above all, America, to buy wheat. It was said that Pompey and
his sons covered the great earth with their bones, for each one died in a
different quarter of the world; but now he would want two more sons for
Australia and America, the two new quarters which are now at work
ploughing, sowing, reaping, without a month's intermission, growing corn
for us. When you buy a bag of flour at the baker's you pay fivepence over
the counter, a very simple transaction. Still you do not expect to get
even that little bag of flour for nothing, your fivepence goes over the
counter in somebody else's till. Consider now the broad ocean as the
counter and yourself to represent thirty-five millions of English people
buying sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen million quarters of wheat from the
nations opposite, and paying for it shiploads of gold.
So that these sacks of corn in the market are truly filled with gold
dust; and how strange it seems at first that our farmers, who are for
ever dabbling with their hands in these golden sands, should be for ever
grumbling at their poverty! 'The nearer the church the farther from God'
is an old country proverb; the nearer to wheat the farther from mammon, I
may construct as an addendum. Quite lately a gentleman told me that while
he grew wheat on his thousand acres he lost just a pound an acre per
annum, - i.e. - a thousand a year out of capital, so that if he had not
happily given up this amusement he would now have been in the workhouse
munching the putty there supplied for bread.
The rag and bone men go from door to door filling an old bag with scraps
of linen, and so innumerable agents of bankers and financiers, vampires
that suck gold, are for ever prowling about collecting every golden coin
they can scent out and shipping it over sea. And what does not go abroad
is in consequence of this great drain sharply locked up in the London
safes as reserves against paper, and cannot be utilised in enterprises or
manufacture. Therefore trade stands still, and factories are closed, and
ship-yards are idle, and beautiful vessels are stored up doing nothing by
hundreds in dock; coal mines left to be filled with water, and furnaces
blown out. Therefore there is bitter distress and starvation, and cries
for relief works, and one meal a day for Board school children, and the
red flag of Socialism is unfurled.
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