“Pilson,” said I to myself, “shall have the benefit of this. He does not
need anything boisterously funny. A few playfully witty remarks on the
subject will be the ideal.”
I lit a pipe and sat down to think. At half-past twelve, having to write
some letters before going out to lunch, I dismissed the Fiscal question
from my mind.
But not for long. It worried me all the afternoon. I thought, maybe,
something would come to me in the evening. I wasted all that evening,
and I wasted all the following morning. Everything has its amusing side,
I told myself. One turns out comic stories about funerals, about
weddings. Hardly a misfortune that can happen to mankind but has
produced its comic literature. An American friend of mine once took a
contract from the Editor of an Insurance Journal to write four humorous
stories; one was to deal with an earthquake, the second with a cyclone,
the third with a flood, and the fourth with a thunderstorm. And more
amusing stories I have never read. What is the matter with the Fiscal
question?
I myself have written lightly on Bime-metallism. Home Rule we used to be
merry over in the eighties. I remember one delightful evening at the
Codgers’ Hall. It would have been more delightful still, but for a
raw-boned Irishman, who rose towards eleven o’clock and requested to be
informed if any other speaker was wishful to make any more jokes on the
subject of Ould Ireland; because, if so, the raw-boned gentleman was
prepared to save time by waiting and dealing with them altogether. But
if not, then—so the raw-boned gentleman announced—his intention was to go
for the last speaker and the last speaker but two at once and without
further warning.
No other humourist rising, the raw-boned gentleman proceeded to make good
his threat, with the result that the fun degenerated somewhat. Even on
the Boer War we used to whisper jokes to one another in quiet places. In
this Fiscal question there must be fun. Where is it?
For days I thought of little else. My laundress—as we call them in the
Temple—noticed my trouble.
“Mrs. Wilkins,” I confessed, “I am trying to think of something
innocently amusing to say on the Fiscal question.”
“I’ve ’eard about it,” she said, “but I don’t ’ave much time to read the
papers. They want to make us pay more for our food, don’t they?”
“For some of it,” I explained. “But, then, we shall pay less for other
things, so that really we shan’t be paying more at all.”
“There don’t seem much in it, either way,” was Mrs. Wilkins’ opinion.
“Just so,” I agreed, “that is the advantage of the system. It will cost
nobody anything, and will result in everybody being better off.”
“The pity is,” said Mrs. Wilkins “that pity nobody ever thought of it
before.”
“The whole trouble hitherto,” I explained, “has been the foreigner.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “I never ’eard much good of ’em, though they do
say the Almighty ’as a use for almost everything.”
“These foreigners,” I continued, “these Germans and Americans, they dump
things on us, you know.”
“What’s that?” demanded Mrs. Wilkins.
“What’s dump? Well, it’s dumping, you know. You take things, and you
dump them down.”
“But what things? ’Ow do they do it?” asked Mrs. Wilkins.
“Why, all sorts of things: pig iron, bacon, door-mats—everything. They
bring them over here—in ships, you understand—and then, if you please,
just dump them down upon our shores.”
“You don’t mean surely to tell me that they just throw them out and leave
them there?” queried Mrs. Wilkins.
“Of course not,” I replied; “when I say they dump these things upon our
shores, that is a figure of speech. What I mean is they sell them to
us.”
“But why do we buy them if we don’t want them?” asked Mrs. Wilkins;
“we’re not bound to buy them, are we?”
“It is their artfulness,” I explained, “these Germans and Americans, and
the others; they are all just as bad as one another—they insist on
selling us these things at less price than they cost to make.”
“It seems a bit silly of them, don’t it?” thought Mrs. Wilkins. “I
suppose being foreigners, poor things, they ain’t naturally got much
sense.”
“It does seem silly of them, if you look at it that way,” I admitted,
“but what we have got to consider is, the injury it is doing us.”
“Don’t see ’ow it can do us much ’arm,” argued Mrs. Wilkins; “seems a bit
of luck so far as we are concerned. There’s a few more things they’d be
welcome to dump round my way.”
“I don’t seem to be putting this thing quite in the right light to you,
Mrs. Wilkins,” I confessed. “It is a long argument, and you might not be
able to follow it; but you must take it as a fact now generally admitted
that the cheaper you buy things the sooner your money goes. By allowing
the foreigner to sell us all these things at about half the cost price,
he is getting richer every day, and we are getting poorer. Unless we, as
a country, insist on paying at least twenty per cent. more for everything
we want, it is calculated that in a very few years England won’t have a
penny left.”
“Sounds a bit topsy turvy,” suggested Mrs. Wilkins.
“It may sound so,” I answered, “but I fear there can be no doubt of it.
The Board of Trade Returns would seem to prove it conclusively.”
“Well, God be praised, we’ve found it out in time,” ejaculated Mrs.
Wilkins piously.
“It is a matter of congratulation,” I agreed; “the difficulty is that a
good many other people say that far from being ruined, we are doing very
well indeed, and are growing richer every year.”
“But ’ow can they say that,” argued Mrs. Wilkins, “when, as you tell me,
those Trade Returns prove just the opposite?”
“Well, they say the same, Mrs. Wilkins, that the Board of Trade Returns
prove just the opposite.”
“Well, they can’t both be right,” said Mrs. Wilkins.
“You would be surprised, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said, “how many things can be
proved from Board of Trade Returns!”
But I have not yet thought of that article for Pilson.