The Editorial Mill May 25, 1895.

*THE WORKER*

BRISBANE, MAY 25, 1895.

The Editorial Mill.

Our Motto: “Socialism in our time.”

The Beatitudes of Boodle.

The gang in office, triumphing in the success of the recently-floated loan, taunt the Labour Party with jealously and regret. Why? We are their enemies, not Queensland's. Our grievance is but that they prefer their own profit to hers, and pouch with greedy hands the price of her undoing. Why should we grudge the colony her rehabilitated credit? Because the credit of the Government Party is also rehabilitated. But is it?

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Who are our rulers? Consider for a moment those lilies, those political puritans for ever parading with such suspicious persistence the white flowers of their blameless lives! There is the blustering Blank, the Great Panjandrum of them all, ten times traitor to the people, struggling to bolster up his notorious bank, and praying every night, “O Lord, stave off insolvency in my time!” There is Dash, the canny son of a canny father, who commenced his life in the odour of sanctity, continued it in the odour of Pro-putty, and looks likely to end it in the odour of “eau de cologne.” There is Asterisk, the able and incorrigible “George Washington,” who started with political intrigue, and hopes to finish up with knighthood. There is “Lord save us!” the pompous mediocrity who thinks he locks the universe up in his safe every night and lets it out every morning. There is the somewhat bloated “Home Ruler” - (save the mark) – the sun of whose ambition has apparently dried up all his sympathies with the poor masses from whence he sprang. There is the bilious oldster who gases at reform through his liver and sells it revolution. There are a couple of ciphers tagged on to salaries. And these be thy gods, O Queensland!

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Not much about them intrinsically to command respect, eh? But we must look at them in the light of £1,250,000 borrowed at £101 12s. 7d.-less, of course, the little pickings allowed to Panjandrum's bank, and Panjandrum's friends, and Panjandrum's firm, which will leave the nett receipts at perhaps 991/2 or 993/4. A fine covey of financial vultures make their living out of Queensland loans! This successful flotation – for successful it certainly is for Queensland, which (with practically the same gang in office) floated its last big loan at a loss of £168,000, and the one before that at a loss of £300,000 – is, of course, all due to the virtues of the Government. There is nothing in the circumstance that the London market was so gorged with money that New Zealand has been able to float the first 3 per cent loan in Australian history. When the last loan failed so signally it was because the time was inauspicious. When this loan succeeds, it is -because the time is auspicious? Not at all -because Blank, Dash, Asterisk and Co. did so much to restore the credit of the colony. And what precisely have they done? As a Southern critic said, they have drifted, they have dribbled, and they have bolstered the banks – or, rather, their own particular bank. Therefore, vote for the Government.

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The Government takes the credit of the loan and the WORKER would not take it away from them. What is a loan? People talk of it as if it were a thing to be proud of. A loan is a debt, which has to be repaid by the people of this colony, and the annual interest on which has to be paid by the people of this colony. A loan means a fresh burden on every producer, a fresh tax on every bread winner. For the £1,250,000 which the Government brings home (no, beg pardon, brings to the bank in which nearly every member of the Government Party is directly interested as a shareholder, or depositor, or overdrafter) – for this £1,250,000 the taxpayers have to sweat an additional £44,000 or so every year of their lives, and their children must stump up the principal at maturity, or ask their children to continue sweating. This is the boon which the Government offers with timbrels and shouting!

* * *

The system of living on borrowed money is the curse of Australia. Every fresh fruit of labour, every fresh result of progress, disappears in the maw of the foreign usurer. Queensland has approximately a population of 400,000 and a debt of 32 millions, and pays annually 11/4 million interest from 31/4 million revenue. Obligations privately contracted form even a heavier drain on her resources. The New South Wales Government statistician estimates that in the 22 years ended 1892 the total capital introduced to Queensland was £49,270,000, while the total capital withdrawn was £60,066,000. Of the former sum £11,525,000 was brought by persons taking up their abode in the colony; of the latter £8,169,000 was capital withdrawn from investment by non-residents, or sent away by residents for investment. Pitting, therefore, the capital sent from without for investment - £37,745,000 – against (1) the interest directly paid as earnings on non-residents' investments, and (2) incomes of absentees in excess of incomes derived by residents of the province from investments abroad - £51,897,000 – we find that in 22 years Queensland has actually repaid £14,152,000 more as interest than she received in principal, while nearly the whole of the principal (all but that lost through private insolvencies) is still a debt intact!

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This estimate, of course, is only approximate; but there is no doubt that it fairly represents the facts. The estimate for the two years 1891-2 can be made almost exactly. For those two years, then, the New South Wales statistician affirms that the State and local government bodies brought into Queensland £1,111,000 as borrowed capital. Nothing was advanced privately. The interest paid on public loans in those years was £4,175,000, and on private loans £2,520,000, showing a surplus of interest outgo over loan income of £5,584,000. With this immense drain on her resources, is it any wonder that even Queensland, “the queen of the colonies,” cannot make ends meet, though in 1893 she exported goods to more than double the value of those she imported? Is it any wonder that times are hard and employment is scarce when every year a community of 400,000 people has to find nearly £3,000,000 in money-lenders' tribute – money which goes almost every cent of it to London, and only comes back in the shape of new loans, with a fresh burden of interest to follow? Why, the clutch of the foreign usurer is throttling the colony – and the Government takes credit that it has enabled him to tighten his grip!