Th. Rothstein 1908
Source: Justice, 11 July 1908, p. 9;
Transcribed: Ted Crawford,
HTML Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2007). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
DEAR COMRADE,—Is it not wonderful how history repeats itself? More than seventy years ago the people of this country were suffering from unemployment and low wages as they do now, and just like the present Liberal Government, the Government of the time found nothing better to do than to issue a report on the conditions of labour abroad, showing that the foreign workers were in a still greater plight than the English. It was in this connection that the “Destructive,” the organ of Bronterre O'Brien, wrote: “What a murderous logic is this, that would reconcile Englishmen to hunger, and the destroyer to his conscience, by simply teaching that there was more misery and oppression 300 miles off than there is here, or, in other words, that no 10,000 Englishmen should ever grumble at hunger or death so long as France could supply 20,000 in the same condition.” And in that robust fashion, which we have long since exchanged for the “temperate language” and “tone of the House,” the writer of the article, addressing the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had repeated the arguments of the Blue-Book during a debate in the House of Commons, exclaimed: “Oh, Baring, Baring! many a better man than you was hanged at the lamp-post; and our sincere prayer is that no Englishman may ever again suffer for burglary or sheep-stealing so long as enormous culprits like you cheat the gallows of its due.” What a sickly generation we are now, to be sure, that the “murderous logic” of our masters does not raise our indignation to such a pitch!
Yours fraternally,
TH. ROTHSTEIN