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Squirrel Island

http://www.cooperative-individualism.org/freeland-a_squirrel-island-191x.pdf

SQUIRREL ISLAND

By A. FREELAND.

One hundred squirrels lived on a certain island which contained a thousand nut trees. Each tree yielded sufficient nuts to support one hundred squirrels. But all of the trees were owned by ten of the squirrels. The ninety treeless squirrels rented portions of trees from the ten treelords, paying part of the nuts they gathered. The treelords did no work, but kept fat and sleek, while the treeless squirrels were very poor, both physically and financially.

One of the working squirrels invented a machine for gathering nuts. The ten treelords formed a company and paid the inventor a peck of nuts for his patent, and promised him steady employment at higher wages.

Thirty squirrels, aided by the machines, could gather as many nuts as were formerly gathered by all the working squirrels. Sixty squirrels were thus thrown out of employment. Thirty of these eventually secured employment as menials in the households of the treelords. They became cooks, flunkys, coachmen, footmen, etc., at a very low wage. The remaining thirty unemployed squirrels subsisted on charity or by theft, some actually dying of starvation.

Owing to the diminished demand for nuts, because so many were unable to buy what they needed, there was soon an “overproduction" of nuts, and the treelords were obliged to “shut down" a part of the time, thus throwing many more of the treeless squirrels out of work.

Competition among treeless squirrels for employment became exceedingly fierce and wages steadily fell. Some of the squirrels organized a union and struck for higher wages, but there were plenty of unemployed squirrels who were willing to work for the low rate. These “scab" workers were hired in place of the strikers. The latter did not relinquish their jobs without a struggle. Riots ensued, in which several of the “scabs’’ and strikers were killed.

A charitable society was organized which doled out every day a nutshell full of nut-soup to the unfortunates. The government also established a rock-pile and a public wood-yard, where unemployed squirrels could secure half of an inferior nut in return for breaking a basketful of rocks or gnawing off six double-armfuls of wood. In this way, although the majority of the squirrels were always on the verge of starvation, very few getting enough to eat, it was seldom that one actually starved. Of course their lives were shortened, but that was due, it was said, to inexorable and unavoidable conditions over which squirrels has no control.

The unemployed squirrels and those receiving meager pay began to murmur. Even some of those who operated machines were touched by the sufferings of their fellows and suggested that something must be wrong on an island which yielded sufficient nuts to feed 100,000 squirrels and yet did not support 100.

Some attributed their woes to the single nut standard; others asserted that their condition was due to the importation of pauper cracked nuts from foreign islands; still others that it was because some of the squirrels drank rain-water.

Some suggested that the hours of labor of working squirrels should be shortened, thus making work for more squirrels; others that pauper squirrel immigration should be prohibited, while a pious squirrel declared that times always would be hard so long as some of the wicked squirrels persisted in working on the Sabbath.

Many demanded an income tax of two nuts annually from each of the treelords, the revenue from such source to be given in bounties to nut-tree owners to encourage the production of nuts.

Some contended for the free and unlimited coinage of nut-shells at the ratio of sixteen nut-shells to one nut, while others asserted with considerable unction that green nut-tree leaves were the only safe, sound and flexible currency. They demanded national greenleaf money sufficient in volume to transact the business of the island on a cash basis—not less than fifty greenleaves per capita—declaring that to be the only means of restoring prosperity to the island.

To elevate the standard of citizenship, as a prerequisite to the right of franchise, a poll tax was proposed, the argument being adduced that any squirrel who would not pay for the privilege of wearing a head on his shoulders could not possibly be a good citizen.

There was a popular demand for legislation against the basket and wood trusts, which, it was claimed, were ruining the island by lowering wages and raising prices.

The treelords and the pious squirrels declared that there always were poor squirrels and always would be; that it was an inscrutable decree of Providence that some (the idlers) should be rich and the others (the workers) poor, some masters and others servants.

Many clamored for common ownership of the machines, maintaining that all the ills that were befalling treeless squirrels were the result of machinery displacing labor.

A single-tax squirrel mildly suggested that there were sufficient nut trees on the island to support in comfort 100,000 squirrels; that the treelords did not create the nut trees; that if nut-tree monopoly were abolished there would be plenty of nuts, not only for the squirrels then on the island, but for all the other squirrels on all the other islands; that then any thrifty squirrel or association of squirrels could make machines or hire them made, and the hours of labor would be reduced without legislative enactment.

Immediately there were cries from all quarters: “Anarchist! Socialist! Communist! Thief! Robber! Traitor! Revolutionist! Confiscator! Agitator! Hang him! Throw him to the sharks!" etc. So he wrote this letter.

THE JOSEPH FELS FUND OF AMERICA
Cincinnati, Ohio
Price 10 Cents Per Hundred.

 

We don't know who A. Freeland is, but there is reason to think that Louis Freeland Post could have been the author.  In The Standard, there were a couple of articles signed by "Lewis Freeland."   See "A Mysterious Disappearance," in Issue #013, 1887-04-02 and  "Lavender's Yarn," in Issue #025, 1887-06-25.

 

See also Edward Vance Cooke's poem, "Uncivilized" and J. W. Bengough's "A Poem of Political Economy"

 

 

John Farrell, The Philosophy of the Single Tax, Part VI: Trades Unionism and Socialism

The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW: 1883-1930)  Sat 4 Jan 1890  Page 9

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SINGLE TAX.
BY J. FARRELL.

No. VI. TRADES UNIONISM AND SOCIALISM.

It is not probable that the protective delusion will so possess the people of New South Wales as to cause a change of policy in the direction of increased duties on imports. There is little doubt, even in the minds of many of those who champion trade restriction and try to appear confident of ultimate success, that the political power of their party reached high-water mark at the last general election. The depression that for a few years had sat so heavily upon New South Wales, as a result of former land booms, severe droughts, the cessation of heavy governmental expenditure on public works and other obvious causes, was an instrument upon which the protectionists played to some purpose and to eager audiences. A great mass of the people, conscious that things were not by any means satisfactory or prosperous, were discontented, and the disciples of restriction had the great advantage of proposing a change to those who were weary of existing conditions. But since then much has taken place to reconcile the electors of this colony with the difference between their tariff and that of most of the other colonies. The latest statistics from all quarters have shown substantial advance on our part and have rendered it necessary on the part of the press of some of these colonies to resort to misrepresentation so labored and palpable as to entirely defeat its own ends. The present feeling among the largest class of those who think about these things in our own colony is becoming more and more favorable to expansion rather than restriction of freedom of trade. In the United Kingdom the real vital organization of free trade — the Financial Reform Association — has given its full adhesion to the single-tax principle, and avowing that land value taxation and the total abolition of all other imposts is the end to which all that British free trade yet means is but part of the road, is  working with a vigor and directness that cannot fail to have great and immediate effect. So far from any idea of protection, or fair trade as they call it there, getting a hold, the air is full of demand for the larger measure of free trade which shall give to labor its due reward. There is ample indication that such a wave of public feeling as that which once swept down the Corn Laws is now rising, and that before it land monopoly in Great Britain will go. The keener political intelligence which during the past few years has awakened among the masses will hardly much longer be hoodwinked by a scheme which helps one class at the expense of many others.

Trades unionism is another reed upon which labor is beginning to learn that it has leaned far too confidently. We have had proof of how little of such pressure it can bear in the defeat and practical decimation of the Knights of Labor in the United States. This was the most powerful and splendidly organized industrial army the world has any record of, and in the days of its growth much was confidently