Dear Miss Clatterbox ~~
[VAR]|I'm afraid I hurt your feelings the other day when I [VAR]| brusquely refused to pay blackmail to your "Charity" appeal, [VAR]| and perhaps even more so when I requested you to get hence [VAR]| with your precious advertisement chewing-gum.
[VAR]|I'm sorry. You're not a bad little kid, you know no better, [VAR]| and the game wasn't of your making, anyhow. But you were [VAR]| the umpteenth and I was determined not to stultify myself by [VAR]| buying-out and thus intensifying the discomfiture of some [VAR]| other fellow who couldn't afford the shilling ~~ supposing I [VAR]| could. And besides I don't quite forget the way your people [VAR]| used their boots on the lumpers' dependents.
[VAR]|I feel just a bit sorry for you, Miss Clatterbox, when I [VAR]| picture your nice respectable dad, your sweet, matronly [VAR]| mother, and your delicately nurtured little self, all relentlessly [VAR]| grinding under your heels the faces of weans and sucklings of [VAR]| working mothers.
[VAR]|But then, you know no better, not even your nice, [VAR]| respectable dad ~~ though Heaven knows, if he talks as much, [VAR]| and knows as little, about his own business as he does about [VAR]| the affairs of the State, he'll soon be in Queer Street!
[VAR]|Of course your dad didn't make the game, any more than [VAR]| you did. Like you, me and the lumpers, he's a pawn in it ~~ to [VAR]| be moved hither and thither by the player ~~ a shiny-hatted, [VAR]| large-abdomened ('scuse the expression), oof-oozing (pardon [VAR]| my vulgarity), pharisaic and unpleasantly-unctuous gentleman [VAR]| whose portrait occasionally appears in
This gentleman does very well in Australia. His [VAR]| investments include mining, sugar, pastoral propositions, [VAR]| pubs, public companies and war bonds. He has large interests [VAR]| in the financial institutions of the country, and, as a sort of [VAR]| sideline, he runs the Government of the Commonwealth [VAR]| (through his agents Hughes, Irvine and Co.) It is also rumored [VAR]| that he exerts a powerful influence in the State Ministry in [VAR]| Western Australia.
[VAR]|Some of his relatives have, of late, experienced a few [VAR]| severe shocks. A very old-established brother, who carried on [VAR]| business in Russia, has been practically expelled from the [VAR]| country. In England another brother has been obliged to [VAR]| partially relinquish a lucrative line of business known as [VAR]| profiteering. In America, France, and even Germany, severe [VAR]| restrictions have been imposed upon the operations of the [VAR]| local branches of the firm.
[VAR]|But in Australia, the land of freedom, he retains his [VAR]| ancient liberties, and at the same time succeeds in fooling the [VAR]| public by the simple expedient of making laws to restrain [VAR]| himself, and then framing regulations to remove the restraint. [VAR]|
[VAR]|This gentleman's business success has been so [VAR]| phenomenal ~~ especially since the war ~~ that any taxation [VAR]| measure that spares the working people must needs punish [VAR]| him severely. But, as he has all the wealth, and the working [VAR]| people next to nothing, no great sums of money can be raised [VAR]| at all without taxing Mr. Fat (for that is the gentleman's name) [VAR]| ~~ and that, of course, would be "unthinkable."
[VAR]| So the only way out is the one suggested in the late Mr.
[VAR]| Furphy's poem:
[VAR]|
When it's all boiled down, my dear Miss Clatterbox, the [VAR]| "most deserving charity" you ask me to contribute to should, [VAR]| in plain honesty, be labelled "For the Relief of Fat's Taxation [VAR]| Bill."
[VAR]|Hospitals and kindred institutions, my dear young lady, [VAR]| should be supported by the State, and the necessary funds [VAR]| should be obtained by taxation, to which people would be [VAR]| required to contribute in the measure of the incomes they draw [VAR]| from the country, and which the protection afforded by the [VAR]| State permits them to enjoy. That's fair and square: isn't it? [VAR]|
[VAR]|I'm ready to admit, Miss Clatterbox, that your intentions [VAR]| are of the best, and your sentiments a great credit to you, and [VAR]| ~~ all that sort of rot. But good intentions and humane [VAR]| sentiment are, with Mr. Fat, merely weaknesses of which he [VAR]| DOES take profitable advantage.
[VAR]|Miss Clatterbox, he regards you as a silly little goose ~~ [VAR]| or; as he would say, a "mug" ~~ to spend your time cadging [VAR]| shillings to reduce his taxation bill. He would regard me as a [VAR]| bigger "mug" if I contributed. But because I decline to be a [VAR]| "mug," and say so, at the same time letting the cat out of his [VAR]| bag of tricks, he'll call me a disloyalist, pro-German, and ~~ [VAR]| whisper it ~~ a Socialist!
[VAR]|And, incidentally, you'll believe him.
[VAR]|So much for your shilling exemption-from-blackmail [VAR]| badge, Miss Clatterbox. As for your sticky chewing-gum ~~ [VAR]| well, I prefer to let Paul the Apostle speak:
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Which, transposed into current phrase, might be [VAR]| expressed: