The Catechism of Capital and Labour

Written for Lumpers, Pick-and-Shovel Men, Policemen, Bush Hands, &c.

Axiom:—Capital is the Representative of Labour.

Question. Is capital the enemy of labour?

Answer. No.

Q Is capital the friend of labour?

A. No

Q. What then is capital?

A. Capital is the representative of labour

Q. Whose labour does capital represent?

A. The labouring class

Q. Who are the labouring class?

A. The people who labour

Q. Is capital a good thing to have in a country?

A. Capital is a blessing to have in a country when capital is in the hands of the creators of capital

Q. Why is it that in every country the non-labourers have all the capital?

A. Because it is more profitable to cheat the labouring class than to labour yourself. It would never pay to go about from flower to flower sucking the honey. It is more profitable to murder the poor little bees, and then eat the honey sweet.

Q. Do you believe in the dogma of a personal God? Do you believe that He gave us the bees even as he gave the Amalekites unto the children of Israel?

A. The English gooseberries arc enormously large, but have not the flavour of the Scotch gooseberry. It would appear that the gooseberry bush is a native of a cold climate, hence the superb flavour of the Scotch gooseberry

Q. Can you give me one or more examples shewing how the harvest of capital is reaped of labourers by the non-labourers?

A. Example 1. The Maungatapu Mountains assassins saw an old man crossing the ranges. They said he was poor and miserable, but he might have a little gold dust, and so they fired a charge of slugs into his stomach. When he was dead they got a few shillings in his pocket, which represented the poor old man's labour. It would require a nightman to believe that those shillings represented the labour of the Maungatapu Mountains assassins.

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Example 2. A draper buys a yard of cloth from one labourer for one shilling, and sells it to another labourer for five shillings. In. .this Way a fortunate drapet will accumulate £50,000 in a few years. It would require common' chimney sweep to believe all that money represents the draper's labour. No lumper would believe it.

Example 3. The descendants of the men who conquered at the Battle of Hastings in England and the descendants of the men who conquered at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland charge the labourers rent or tribute for digging earth. The principal is called landlordism, rights, privileges, Mana. It is called by a different name in every land.

Example 4. Take the case of a man who has £20,000. Let us call him John Smith as it is a handy name. He may have got this money by robbing bank shareholders, by scuttling a ship, by telling lies about a gold mine, or he may have got it lawfully in the ordinary course of trade, We will draw a veil over the way he got it because for our purpose it does not matter how he got it so that he has it. He could not have got it by labouring hard and selling his labour at 6s per day because if he had a wife and family to support he could not support nature on that. Now that he has it the labouring class will build twenty houses for him. The labouring architect will design. The labouring contractor will oversee. The labouring house agent will let the houses to the tobacconists, fruiterers, &c. &c. John Smith will have nothing to do but receive the rent. He can feast, he can squander, he can waste, and he will have enough left so that the labouring class will build another house for him at the year's end, and so on. John Smith's capital will roll on of its own accord, and John Smith will do no labour either bodily or mental, and in a thousand years to come the sons and daughters of John Smith will feast squander and waste, and they will do no labour at all, and the sons and daughters of the working class that are yet unborn and have done neither good nor evil will have to suffer the shame of building houses, raising crops, &c., &c. to support the descendants of John Smith because capital rolls on of its own accord.

Q. Do you mean that capital rolls on in the selfsame manner that the five loaves and fishes rolled on, or do you mean that capital rolls on out of the sweat and shame of the labouring class into the pockets of John Smith?

A. There is really no desire to hurt your feelings. You are as strong as a lion, and that is better than to have an overgrown brain with a miserable little body full of rotten diseases, but there are problems in capital and labour that require the page break intelligence of a master tailor or a master coachmaker, &c., &c., and there are even problems that a master tailor could not understand. Problems that would require the intelligence of a stationer, a banker's clerk or a mining agent, but it is enough never to trouble about what is above you

Q. Is manual labour a shame? Is it a shame to make a pair of trowsers?

A. At the present time shame is a most inserutable mystery. All we can do is to collect the charts and soundings of shame and allow the generations who come after us to form a science. It would appear that shame is mixed up with capital and labour, with social rank, with sexual equality, sexual contempt, sexual abasement. It would appear if you make a pair of trowsers for a blacksmith, and he makes a grate for you in exchange the two shames balance each other, and you have no shame. If he sells the grate and gives you the money it is all the same because the money represents his shame, but if you make a pair of trowsers for a non-labourer the money he gives you does not represent his own shame. It only represents the shame of the labouring class, and there is nothing to balance your shame. The men and women who dance in Government House never invite the men who work for Thomas Faulder because the Government House people feel a profound sexual contempt for Thomas Faulder's men, and Thomas Faulder's men feel a profound sexual abasement in connection with the Government House people, and this sexual contempt and abasement does not depend on physical or moral development because the first half-crowns with George III on them were called in for fear of the vulgar contempt, and the die sinker was ordered to tone down the brutality, the grossness, &c., and the Prince of Orange who married George's daughter was so crooked and ugly when you looked at him in front you could not see his waist. When you looked at him from behind you could not see his head. Nell Gwynne, a prostitute, was the only women who could appear naked without being ashamed. Because she was so beautiful there was nothing to be ashamed of. Naked people are ashamed not because one part of the body requires to be covered more than other but because the whole world without exception are as ugly as filth. Disease has nothing to do with social rank because if one of Thomas Faulder's men becomes possessed of £500,000 he is at once accorded the highest social rank. He is not subjected to a medical examination to see if he has cancer, scrofula, consumption, Bright's disease, or any other equally rotten disease, and the sons and daughters of Thomas Faulder's man will have the privilege of according social rank and sexual page break equality to others. It would appear capital, and capital alone, is the supreme arbiter in all questions of shame, sexual contempt, sexual abasement, sexual equality, social rank, &c.

Q. Has anyone ever tried to alter the present distribution of capital and shame?

A. Wild mad fanatics have proposed to make it unlawful to own more than forty acres of land. Wilder and madder fanatics have proposed to make earth, air and water free. If it were possible wilder and madder fanatics have proposed to put on an income tax of 50 per cent on incomes of £500 per annum and an income tax of 70 per cent on incomes of £1000 per annum. Of course none of these mad schemes, have been successful. Some think manhood suffrage would make everything right. There could not be a madder delusion because the great German philosopher, David Frederick Strauss, has said the government of every country on earth is a photograph of the views of the majority. If you murder a Maori chief the Maories will set up another chief. If you murder any functoinary from a beadle to a shah the people will set up the very same. You see now it is the labouring class that makes, has made, and will make the laws. If we bad good laws the human race would only have to work two days in the week, but you see the only mercy for the human race is to give the labouring class a compulsory high class education. No doubt it is nice to have different zones of sexual and social rank as it is nice to have the Norfolk Island pine different from the gum tree but still it is very hard to work six days in the week instead of two days. If you are in the position of the harrow it is nice, but if you are the toad under the harrow it is not nice.

If every labourer got the full reward of his labour the human race would have only to work two days in the week.

If we had a compulsory high class education that would include all the lower orders, that is to say, the labouring class, the policemen and their mothers, the chambermaids, the rogues, burglars, prostitutes, the unwashed, the lanes, slums, scrub, and offscourings, in fine the lower orders. Then, and not till then will every labourer get the full reward of his labour.

If we had good laws the Chinese cheap labour would be a blessing to every white person in the Colonies, but under our bad laws the Chinese competition in the labour market alters the balance between the labouring class and the non-labouring class to the great misery of the labouring class.

The labouring clubs should advertise this catechism in the newspapers all over the colony as the writer is poor and cannot afford to advertise.

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