WHEN A MAN IS ROBBED, THE WAY FOR HIM TO GET MONEY IS NOT TO WORK FOR
IT BUT TO FIGHT FOR IT. To tell a man that he cannot possibly make any
money by talking nor get any potatoes by agitating police officers
is absolutely true, PROVIDED, the man has been loafing all year and
has not been robbed of his crop. But these demonstrations of the
economists go into the waste basket, when the fact is made plain that
the man, seeking by government aid to get potatoes, has already earned
them by hard labor, but is deprived of them by the criminal act of
another. Under such circumstances, the man who, instead of fighting and
pursuing, applies himself to honest toil, is a coward.
Men who, wrongfully deprived of their property, go to work to earn
more, thus providing additional booty for their despoilers, are
unworthy a better fate. Honor impels a true man to fight, not work,
when a wrong is suffered either by himself or friends.
To quietly plow while another eats the result of last year's plowing,
to contentedly plant while another reaps, to submissively bow one's
head beneath a yoke and receive the kicks and jeers and sneers of the
drivers, are not the acts of a man nor the duties of a citizen, but the
follies of an ass. When a true man, after gathering his harvest, sees
his product taken by another, he mounts his horse, before planting
again, and with pitchfork, shotgun or other efficient weapon, starts in
hot pursuit. He seeks to recover last year's product before trying to
raise another crop.
Therefore, when government-made millionaires try to persuade the
working people, small tax-payers and business men to stop meddling with
politics and instead to work harder in the hope of laying by something
for old age, they really desire them to cease defending their property
and to continue creating more for others to enjoy.
The learned professor teaches that "the government cannot legislate
into being a single dollar, nor a dollar's worth of wealth." From this
premise, he reasons that a dollar legislated into one man's pocket
must necessarily be legislated out of another man's pocket. He then
concludes that the poor cannot legislate themselves comfortable without
to the extent of their gain depriving another class of their earnings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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