|
Very little is known of this man's life and situation. Possibly a bootmaker by trade, he was 'converted' to 'individualist-anarchism' by David Andrade and became a staunch member of the Club, during the period of abuse and media - mockery following the Haymarket explosion.
He dropped out of sight when Andrade Influenced the Club to alter its view of how labor product would be distributed, Brookhouse supporting Benjamin Tucker (Boston 'Liberty') that the change to time-based labor-notes was a 'socialist deviation'.
|
In writing the following paper I wish to make it clear that Anarchy is not only the friend of the working man and all lovers of liberty, but also that we can start at once to accomplish our purpose.
I will not trouble my readers with quotations, but will refer them at once to Herbert Spencer, Auberon Herbert, Proudhon, Michael Bakounine, and also a very interesting series by Fowler, published as a bimonthly in the State of Kansas, U.S.A., called The Sun. I shall endeavour to be as logical as possible, for I wish to convince by sound argument, and not by quibble, and if my arguments are defective I hope criticism will put me right.
Why do we have Anarchism? There is a reason for everything, surely there must be for this. Well then, this is the answer. Our race has a past history, and that history tells us that man has always rebelled against forced authority, or forced-rule or government - rebelled on account of feeling their liberty limited by government. Those rebelling have not recognised that it was government that oppressed them; but have supposed that it was the one particular government against whom they rebelled that was doing all the mischief; and the result of this delusion has been that the rebels have hastened to form another government, when the same or new tyrannies would crop up, the result being another civil war with all its horrors. But these wholesale rebellions are not the only ones. The individual rebellions are far more numerous, for they are constant; and these individual rebels are the very best men of our race, they are in the vanguard of progress; they guide their actions by what they are convinced is right; they do not ask, Will government allow us to do this or that? but they do it. Government has said that it was treason to preach against slavery, but men have preached against it and been punished. Government has said that it was treason and heresy to preach against the Church of Rome, but many a martyr's fire marks the spot where a hero died that preferred death and liberty of speech and action to life and bowing to government.
All though history you find this individualistic rebellion against government, and government using every power at its command to crush out progression; in fact, government is the foe to progress, it is essentially conservative and cannot be otherwise, for it attempts to crystalize the customs of this generation, by writing them into law, to be the customs of the next; but the next always rebels. If the crystallizing process has been tolerably complete, the rebellion is terrific, and we have war; if the process has been imperfect, the rebellion assumes a mild form in the shape of an electoral campaign.
After taking the past teachings of history into consideration, we have been forced to ask ourselves the question, Can a government be so constructed that it will avoid the crime of tyranny? and have had the answer forced upon us; No, no! A thousand times No, for reasons that I hope to make clear before I am through. Now let me give what I consider is a definition of government from the standpoint of an Anarchist.
Government is either an individual, as a king or czar; or a combination of individuals; or either a fixed class, i.e., the nobility; or a shifting mass, i.e., the majority, - forcing the rest of their countrymen to conform to such laws as they like to make for them. Government is a forced organisation of disjointed interests, therefore, there is always a tendency to disorganise. It is not a voluntary organisation, so I am in doubt if the word organisation is a correct name to apply.
Anarchists advocate organisation; but only of a voluntary character and where interests are identical.
I am not appealing to those that are satisfied with their lot (for a man that is satisfied has no reason for a change, and I don't blame him for not wanting one), but to those that feel that they are oppressed; to those that know that the fruits of their labor is taken from them, and understand that the chance of changing their condition from that of a working man is only a gambler's chance, and are well satisfied that their hope and that of their children is in a complete revolution of society (not necessarily a violent one.)
I belong to the working class, and I think that class is the very foundation of society, and I feel confident that the working man must work out the freedom of society, for I cannot see it coming from another source. I am sure that a large portion of the working class know that they do not retain more than one-third of the product of their labor, and are looking for the fundamental reasons for this state of things, which I believe they will be able to find to be the evils of government, or as government is essentially evil, in government itself.
Let us glance at a few of the existing evils of government. I am sure, at this stage, that each of my readers will acknowledge some one or more of the following as evils, though he might pronounce the others to be quite the reverse; but after following me to the end of the subject I hope to make it clear that they all come under the same head.
I will first deal with the land laws. From these laws arise many evils. One man is enabled to hold large tracts of land (much larger than he can cultivate and look after personally), and also enabled to let that land to a tenant, and to extort from the tenant all that the land will produce, save enough to keep the warmth of life in his body. The land laws makes the large land owners dictators, and the working classes slaves; in fact, every one in the community is a slave to a more or less degree to the great land owners; their power being limited by the amount of capital that a non-landholder possesses. For instance, a tenant farmer having small means can only cultivate a small piece of ground with his own hands, almost unaided by machinery, and the landlord takes all he produces, excepting enough to keep the tenant in working condition, and sometimes not even enough for that. Now it strikes me very forcibly that the tenant is a slave, if not worse, for the bonded slave is given enough to keep him in good working condition. If a tenant has enough capital to rent ten times the amount of land that the first had, and to supply machinery and labor, he might be able to save a profit over his rent and living, and, inasmuch, he would not be a slave to so great a degree; but slave, nevertheless, for the landlord takes a large amount of his time and profit before he can start to work for himself. The same remarks apply to town tenants, as between large and small shopmen, &c. Take any shop in Bourke street, or near the centre of the City of Melbourne, and you will find that a large portion of the profits go to pay rent, and unless the business is very large the tenant will often only get wages after paying his rent. He will work four days a week for his landlord and two days for himself. I have not room to mention all the misery arising from the land laws, and then again, they have been well ventilated by many writers.
Banking laws are the next greatest evil (if not as great) that the working man has to deal with, and the ignorance that prevails in this direction is something astonishing; therefore, I hope my readers will have patience with me, if I deal rather more fully with this subject than with the last. In the first place, banks are allowed by government to issue a paper circulating medium, being a promise to pay gold, and sometimes silver. Now let us see what power the banks have for evil with this circulating medium. Of course, we all understand that things are cheap if money is scarce. Now we will suppose that the banks hold mortgages on large amounts of property. You can see that it would be to their interest to make that property cheap, so that they might get it into their possession, and after once possessing it to make it dear again so they might sell at a profit, viz., a piece of land is worth £1,000, mortgage, £700. If the land can be reduced in value to £680, the chances are that the owner will be compelled to let the bank have the land for the mortgage, and still be in debt to the bank for £20, and the pious banker will say, What a wicked world is this, I am robbed of £20 by this unprincipled man. But how can the bankers shrink the value of property? All they have to do is to withdraw their paper circulating medium sufficiently and the thing is done, for money is scarce; when they wish to sell the land, restore the circulating medium and up goes the land, and they have made their little £300 on a transaction of £700. So you see it is a very wicked world. But this is not all - a bank can issue paper largely in excess of what gold they hold in their coffers, so the chances are that this £700 that they have lent is only paper representing nothing, being a promise to pay what they have not got, and the banks are really in debt to the person hiring for seven hundred pounds, in the shape of promises to pay, and they charge him interest for it. Just think of it; living on the interest of what they owe! But what about the interest? who pays for it? why the producer, to be sure, not the man that hires it, for it has to go on to the cost of production, and the working man has to pay for it in what he consumes, or, if competition is so keen that the interest cannot be added to the cost of production, the chances are that the man hiring the money will fail, and then the consumer has to pay for it in the shape of the 2% per cent. that is added by all business men for losses, and these losses are attributable, principally to interest that business men pay for their capital, for a large portion of them have but a very little of their own. How often does that 2½ per cent come in? We will take a pair of boots for example: on the raw hide, on the dressed leather, on the manufactured boot, and also when finally sold to the retailer, in all about 10 per cent; and the consumer has to pay for it. But this is not all. There is 2½ per cent that has to be allowed for discounts on all of the above items, so there is a further 10 per cent that the banks get; so you see if it was not for the banks and the credit system, instead of paying 12s. 6d. for a pair of boots you would have to pay 10s. only. You see there is another disturbing element, and that is the credit system which governments have made laws to duly regulate and perpetuate. If it was not for this credit system, the most of the complaints lodged against banks would not exist.
Now let us take a turn to the protection laws. The working class advocate protection in Victoria, not because they object to buying cheaply, but because they want work all the year. But is it because they want work? Suppose that they could get much more than they have now, for six months work instead of twelve, which would they take, the larger amount with six months' work, or the smaller amount with twelve months' work? It is not because they want the extra work, or because they object to pay a cheap price for an article, but it is because the landlords, bankers, and profit-makers rob them of their purchasing power and reap the advantage of free trade, instead of the working man. Because these moneyed classes occupy the position of slave holder, and do not need so many slaves under free trade, and as the slave cannot employ himself under this system as he has no home of his own or no capital to keep himself while producing articles to meet the market, all he has to do is to starve or have protection laws. But protection laws are only a temporary remedy, for in a few years internal competition will make labor in your own country quite as cheap as in the countries from which you wish to protect yourself. Instead of passing these protection laws, why not go to the bottom of the evil, why not kick overboard all the laws that make these protection laws necessary, or in other words, destroy government, for when you have destroyed all statute laws you have destroyed government.
The evils of government are as numerous as the written laws, and it would be impossible to name them all and show their tortuous effects, except by means of compiling an encyclopedia. So we will confine ourselves to natural laws.
I presume that it is self-evident to most people, that whenever a written law prevents them from doing what they consider right, they feel that that law is not only infringing their liberty, but that it is essentially wrong or immoral whether it is to be enacted by a majority or a king, and feel that it should be repealed. If you acknowledge the truth of the above you have consented morally to the abolition of the laws bearing heavily upon you, but you have not consented as yet to abolish laws oppressing others: especially if you have helped to make them yourself. I will try to state a case. We will suppose there are five individuals, A B C D and E; or, if you like, we will suppose that these letters represent one thousand each, instead of one. Let A B and C be Catholics, D and E Protestants. Now A B and C could pass a law to the effect, if they liked, that there be schools supported by the State, that all children attending these schools should be compelled to receive religious instruction from the Romish priest-hood, that education should be compulsory, and if a Protestant should educate his children at home he should still be taxed to support the State school. Now D and E would say that that law was tyrannous and ought to be abolished, because their ideas could not agree in the least with it. Now suppose D and E go on a proselytising expedition and convert C to Protestantism, then they (viz., C D and E) could pass a law to the effect that we have State schools, and that all children shall be compelled to receive an education free from Catholic teachings. That in case of their being educated elsewhere than the State schools, those parents shall be taxed all the same. Now A and B will protest and claim that it is unfair to expect them to support schools where Catholicism is not taught, while they look upon their religious instructions as the most important part of education. In one case, D and E say the laws are wrong; in the other case A and B say they are wrong, and C has been on both sides. Now if any man can put himself in the place of either party for the moment, it seems to me that he would have to acknowledge that both parties were wrong, each in endeavouring to compel the other party to do what they considered the right thing. I consider my code of morals right, you also consider yours right. I may be wrong, but don't think so; so may you. If a third one comes along of my way of things: because we are in a majority, is that any reason we should compel you to acknowledge us to be right, and force you to fashion your actions by mine? But if you convert this third man to your way of thinking, are your morals any better than they were before you converted him? You see it does not matter whether an idea is right or not: but it is how many thinks it right that decides it. Now I will tell you what an Anarchist considers as moral, evil and criminal. We consider that to be moral which a person considers to be right: also that he should have a perfect right to practise his morality, providing it does not interfere with the liberty of another. We consider that to be evil, which is injurious to the individual. Where an individual, or a number of individuals, interfere with the liberty of a person, we consider that to be a crime, and that the ones committing that crime have lost all right to have their own liberty respected; or in other words, the one offended against has a right to punish the offender.
I think you will see by this, the fundamental principle of Anarchy to be as follows: That every individual shall do as he likes, providing he does not interfere with the liberty of others. I intend to confine myself to the Anarchial question from the working man's standpoint, and shall keep strictly within the bounds of the above principle.
We, as working men, know we do not retain the equivalent of what we produce, or anything like it, and we are looking for a remedy. There are a few fanatics who advocate seizing that which is in the possession of the rich and appropriating it to their own use; but the moment you do that, you violate the very fundamental principle of Anarchy, for they gained their riches by the consent of the working classes and have a right to it by the mere fact of possession. You don't mean to say, if you have made a bad bargain with a man and find it out afterwards, that it would be right to rob him of sufficient to recompense you for your loss; especially when it comes about by your own stupidity? Rather take a lesson by the past, and don't let it occur again. Now that is just what we want to do: take measures to prevent it occuring again, and we will set to work to see how we will do it.
We Anarchists are fully convinced that coercive legislation is injurious to not only the working man, but to nearly every one, and as we recognise that as our stumbling block in all our schemes, we propose to refrain from it. Also as we understand high rates, interest, and profits to be injurious in their effects upon ourselves, we shall endeavour to eliminate them as far as possible.
There is one thing more that we must not forget for a moment, and that is, that we are consumers as well as producers, and we will have to give this fact full recognition in the scheme that we propose. Last, but not least, we have made up our minds to be men and women, to depend upon our own exertions for our success; not to ask government or classes, kings or queens, for any concessions. We shall endeavour to arrive at a just conclusion in regard to what is right and wrong doing, in accordance with our principles: then we shall go ahead and do it. If others interfere with our actions it will be their fault, and having infringed our liberty that must not expect us to respect theirs. In this country we can accomplish our object without violence, provided government lets us alone, ie., don't legislate especially to crush us. In Russia we can gain nothing without bloodshed; and as slavery is worse than bloodshed when a Russian state of affairs exist, we propose to introduce all the horrors of dynamite, guerilla warfare, murder; for to the slave life is not worth the living, and the tyrant must expect no respect from the one whose life he has made unbearable. The plan that I propose is for this country only, or those where a similar state of things exists. When Russia and some other countries have gained the same ground that we have, from that point they would be able to adopt the same plans. I have said that working men must understand that they are consumers, and as we need no capital in this direction, outside of one week's wages, this will be the natural direction for us to investigate in first. Therefore we will see what we can do to establish purchasing companies. We have in Melbourne an Anarchist Club - we will endeavour to get as many members of that club, and also as many men as are Anarchists as possible, to form a company for purchasing groceries, &c., and distributing the same at as near the cost price as possible. We will have to make a small beginning at first, and this is the best plan that I can think of. After forming the company, hire a small room in some right-of-way or back street, one that we could get at a low price: it need not be a large one, and we would need no shop front. Now let some one of the company be appointed to make the preliminary arrangements for buying (some one who is used to buying in a wholesale way, if possible), go to the largest wholesale grocery warehouses and represent that there is a company formed that is prepared to buy for cash, to ask no credit, and that can deal to the extent of £50 or £60 per month: and we could get our goods at the cheapest wholesale cash prices. Now this is the way that we would pay for them: let each member send to the store, each Thursday, the money for his week's groceries: the one appointed to do the buying could take the cash brought in, and on Friday take in the orders in bulk to be put up and delivered to our store. Let me explain. Supposing all the orders brought into the store for tea when added together made thirty pounds weight, let the warehouses break bulk to make the thirty pounds, and after we get it into the store it could be weighed up into separate orders, and so with other articles. What we now pay ten shillings for, we could get for seven and sixpence, and if we make the amount eight shillings, this would allow sixpence in each seven and sixpence to meet expenses, i.e., rent, paper, twine, &c., so each individual now purchasing ten shillings worth would save a clear 20 per cent. We would let any family that liked purchase through us on the same terms, but not let them become members, for not being convinced of our principles they might attempt to convert the company into a profit-making concern. But letting these people trade through us, we would have the advantage in being able to purchase goods in much larger quantities, and the small percentage that we levied for expenses would aggregate to considerably more. When we shall have procured purchasers to the amount of one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds in our company, we could afford to have a delivery cart; then we could add butchering, drapery and other lines. We should make every endeavour to establish as many of these companies as possible throughout the town and suburbs, and also in the country. As our future operations depended upon the success of the purchasing companies, we must make them a success. Let every member feel that the movement is depending upon him.
We will suppose that we now have our purchasing companies established, and that we are saving 20 per cent, on an average expenditure of 30s. week per family, i.e., 6s. per week that each head of family could save. Now, these that laid up 6s. weekly for one year, would have £15 12s., or sufficient capital to start a producing company, providing the co-operative principle was adopted.
You will now shortly see the benefit of the purchasing companies, and that your success depends greatly upon them. I will trace the growth of a single producing company from the purchasing companies. We, as Anarchists, understand that profits are picking our pockets as working men, and as we want our liberty respected in this direction, if we wish to be successful, we must respect the liberties of others in this same direction, therefore, those of us that are members of the purchasing company, will call a meeting of Anarchists together for the purpose of establishing producing companies on the cost principle. We, as purchasers, will announce that if there are any producers among us in any trade that would like to start a company for production purposes, that we will agree to take all that they will produce, and pay them for their produce on delivery with paper promises- to-pay similar to the paper bank note of the present time, but instead of it being a promise to pay only one product, ie., gold, that we would pay any product that we held in our stores.
Now that our stores are converted into banks of issue, and banks that would be established upon a sound basis, for they would have the full value in store for every note issued, and as the notes came back to the store for the purposes of purchasing, the outstanding circulation would shrink as the stock in the store diminished.
These stores or purchasing companies could combine together if they liked to redeem the notes of each other's issue, and at the same time to settle upon some design in common for the face and back of their notes, having spaces to be filled in by the officers of each purchasing company. You would need to have your circulating medium handled in some such a way for convenience sake, so that you could purchase at any store established upon our principle.
Now, remember, there is not much to fear from the failure or fraud of one of these stores, for although as a producer, you take the store's notes, being a member of the store yourself, you have merely yourself to trust. There is one more function that the store bank could perform after the stores have become general, and that would be to loan money on the plant of any newly-formed company (after having assured itself that the people of that company thoroughly understood their business), thereby furnishing them with sufficient capital to begin operations with.
Let us take a hasty glance at these producing companies, and see what the effect of them would be from a business standpoint. We will suppose that we have established amongst us companies representing all of the principal trades, and at the same time selling the stores at the cost of production. We are now buying boots, clothing, hats, in fact everything that can be manufactured, at cost, but we are getting no less for our labor, so our day's wages has increased in value to a very large extent; and then again, as we have required no large shop fronts, and have been contented to carry on business elsewhere, the main business street rents have had to fall, and we have a less burden in this direction as well. But where does the farm laborer come in? He must adopt the same tactics. Say fifteen to twenty men combine together and invest what they have saved through their purchasing companies, to buy land, and at first put in only those crops that pay the best and bring their land to a high state of cultivation (for their land at first would be of a small amount, and to make it employ the labor of the whole company, they would need to make every square inch of the land yield). The city purchasing companies could take all of their produce, and in that way the farming company would always have a sure market for their produce.
Now, supposing we had these co-operative farms established in every district within easy access to the cities, selling to those cities for cost, what would become of the farmer that had to hire labor to do his work and make a profit out of it? He simply could not carry on, for the prices he would get for his stuff would have no room for profit, and he would only be able to cultivate what land he could by his own hands; and as a large number working together can produce more for capital than single, that farmer with all his land would be better off if he was in one of these companies: in fact a large lot of land would be a hindrance to him. Even if he had a sheep-run, he could not keep an excessive run fenced, and at the same time do all of his own shearing and working in connection with his flocks. Now no man would be able to hire labor to do his work for him, for the reason that men could do better for themselves by combining in companies, than they could by working for a master.
The time would surely come when large land owners would relinquish their possessions voluntarily, because they would be no richer by calling a large tract of land their own. Land would fall in price until its value would only be fixed by the demand of food from it. Let me explain: Victoria with its present population has such an abundance of land, that the food demanded per acre is very slight, and if only food producers or working agriculturists occupied it there would be so much spare land that the value of that occupied would be very slight, compared to the present value, but as population increased, the demand for food per square acre would increase until such times that food would be so dear that it would pay to get the utmost from each acre by an extra expenditure of work, and in that way a larger population would be continually going on to the soil, or in other words, when it would now pay a company of twenty to purely cultivate fifty acres of land, it would pay them better in the time to come, to cultivate only twenty-five acres in a thorough manner, and sell the remaining twenty-five acres to new comers. The occupier of the land either in country or city must own it, and not hire it, and if the working man co-operate on the Anarchist's principle, he will be able to. That is the only ultimate to solve the rent question, own the land you occupy.
Land Nationalisation is all humbug. It simply helps to perpetuate Government, that tries to crush you on the one hand, and fixes a false value for the land on the other. I think that I will write an article on this land question and go into it more fully at some future date.
We have killed our present credit system with all of its evils, and the various banks can no longer exist. The profit-making manufacturer and land owner have become defunct, so the next thing that we will enquire into will be imports or products of foreign countries and our protective policy.
I intend to show the difference of the prices of a woman's levant lace boot, under the present system, and under the cost system. The first column of the subjoined table will show how the price is arrived at under the present system; the second column will show how the price would be arrived at by a co-operative company of working men, acting on the cost principle. Supposing that company to be the only one working under the cost principle; and the third column will show how the price would be arrived at, when all the other trades had adopted the same principle:-
You will notice in the above table, in the first and second columns, that the items of material are of the same cost; and in the third column the cost of material is only about one-half.
Of course when all trades are manufacturing and selling for cost, the bootmakers would be able to get their leather and all other boot material for cost; but when they first started being the only ones running upon the cost principle, they would have to pay the same prices for materials as other manufacturers. When first established, the co-operative company would have this advantage, that they would have work the year round on account of underselling other manufacturers. Selling for cost, they could command cash for their goods, and would need no expensive traveller constantly on the road to push a trade. So the 15 per cent expenses due to present systems would become nil in the second and third columns.
The labor item would remain the same throughout, for working men, uniting in a cost company, would reckon their labor, material, and expenses as the cost of a boot, and would set their wages (if piece-work) at about the average of other working men in the same trade; and their object being only to eliminate the expenses arising out of our present system, it would, under ordinary circumstances, keep their wages at the same standard.
We have supposed the purchasing company to be formed, so the retailing expenses would not be over 10 per cent, which I believe would be an excessive amount. If you examine the table for the wholesale price of the boot in the first and second column, you will find a reduction of one-eighth in the second column; and as the boot is, at the least calculation, four processes removed from the raw material, the wholesale price of the material entering into the boot should be only one-half (i.e. 1s. 11½d. as against 3s. 11d.) in the third column. But there are several things not taken into account in the cost of material, such as the middle-man's excessive charges for railway carriage, national taxes to support useless political officials, &c., &c.
I believe if the exact thing could be arrived at, we would find our material reduced still further, so that our retail price would be one-third instead of one-half of its present price.
Manufacturing expenses would be less, for you would need less supervision, for each one would take an interest in their work; and also there would not be so much clerical work, on account of no credit books being kept.
The example of the boot would apply to every article, for the profit on one trade is about the same in all; - if these were not so, you would see people flocking to the business that would give them the greatest profit.
Why not carry out the cost principle in everything, instead of throwing away your time on governmental questions? Why be swindled on the one hand, through governmental officials drawing big salaries and perpetrating huge jobs in carrying out public works, and on the other hand, by profit-makers, bankers, middle-men, and so on? Let those of you that are interested in public works, such as railways, canals, waterworks, &c., unite to construct them, and you will have them done better and cheaper; and unite together for production and purchasing, and you get rid of a host of swindles.
Don't throw away any more energy at the polling-booth, fighting over protection laws and the Chinese questions; you having nothing to fear from either if you have no government to harrass you.
Why not go to the root of the evil at once? Protection is only a temporary expedient, at best, to compel the slave-holder to provide work for the slave, and then only for a little while, for internal competition will surely bring wages down, in a few years, to that of the country you are competing against, (about 25 years has been sufficient in America). It strikes me very forcibly that the most sensible thing to do is to get rid of the slave-holder.
There was a very good example given in Our Commonwealth, of Adelaide, S.A., some little time back. I will only quote the ideas in as few words as possible:-
A man owns an island, and on that island lives the man, his family, and ten slaves. These ten slaves can just support them selves, their master, and his family. We will suppose that a foreigner now comes to the master, and offers to supply him with all that he now gets from the slaves and a good few luxuries beside, and to take in exchange the amount that five of the slaves will produce.
The master could say to the slaves: "I only want five of you to work for me after this, so there will be five of you that will have look out for yourselves." "But," say the slaves, "can the five of us, whose services are to be dispensed with, have a part of the island to cultivate, to keep us from starving?"
"Oh, dear, no, that would be stealing my land." So our readers can see that the slave has the choice of starving, or protecting their island against foreign trade, or declaring himself free by refusing to work for their master any longer, by appropriating and cultivating the island for themselves.
If they were free, then it would be to their advantage to arrange with the foreigner to provide them with all that they wanted, for what they could produce by four hours work per diem, or if the foreigner would be kind enough to support them for no return, so much the better; there would be no cry against free-trade at all events. So much for Our Commonwealth. Now let me ask the question, What would be the most sensible thing for the slave to do, - try to get protection, or get rid of the slave- master?
