About that thousand pounds

Damn it all, you chaps, this won’t do. When we asked you for £1,000 we wanted it for the purpose of fighting FOR the Revolution, not for “reconstruction” after it, and if we failed to say so it was because it seemed so obvious. We have to record a matter of £78, and one here and there among you are probably capable of working out how long it would take to reach the necessary four figures at that rate.

Now, give us a little faith, O, our brothers ! When we say its your money we want we speak absolute truth. It is your money we want. And the getting of it is like drawing blood out of a stone, or, worse, extracting baubees from a Scotch policeman. The capitalists would have done far better—with their own crowd, of course. It is up to you to do better while ye may. At present you are wallowing in wealth—all the papers say so. Only the capitalists are poor to-day. Yet they subscribe millions where you subscribe one, and the incentive, the interest, in their case, is nothing to what it is in yours.

And now a word to collectors. You are not to forget that extracting money from the genus homo is like performing a surgical operation—say like drawing a tooth. The more agony you cause the subject the more grateful he is—when you stop. So don’t let your innocent victim fob you off with a tanner and a smile. Screw him till it hurts. And now we will tell you a story.

A one-time eminent British general, now dead and pretty rotten, while engaged on a butcher’s job in Canada, had an interview with one of the “noble red men.” Upon parting, the “great” soldier, with that noble generosity and perfect tact which characterises the “compleat gentleman,” presented to his red brother a souvenir of the occasion, in the shape of a beautifully wrought medallion, with a bas-relief profile of old Queen Vic in her blooming virginal young loveliness on one side, and on the other the sententious announcement: “One Florin. Tenth of a Pound.” And the noble red man, struggling with his emotions as he gazed upon the exquisite piece of craftsmanship, murmured : “Can’t you make it half-a-crown ?”

Now you will see the appropriateness of the story, and if each of our collectors, having brought beads of agony to the brow of his victim, claps on his head a figurative crown of thorns by asking “Can’t you make it another bob?” we shall undoubtedly be within measurable distance of that thousand pounds by this time next mcnth.

Below we record those who have suffered in the cause, with the extent of their martyrdom expressed in terms of filthy lucre. As we go to press we hear the yells of many others who are being bled for Socialism’s sake, and whose agonies will be blazoned on the scroll in our next.