There is no reason to vote one red cent to the corporations.

[The Magistrate]

21. I Am Aware Of That, Sir

It is, however, a solid chunk of their expenses, and relieving them of it would make it easier to get private credit to deal with interest and debts. Firms that are going concerns should have no trouble doing this, and those which are not will simply be going to the wall sooner than otherwise, and with their employees, at least, retaining their income. Executive and boardroom salaries would of course have to go by the board, such people have a sufficient nest egg to see them through, and if they haven't managed that have no business managing a large firm.

Your attempt to switch the discussion from large firms to the smallest of the small fry is noted, and is not a tactic I have much respect for. There is entirely too much blurring where the meaning of words like 'property' and 'business owner' is concerned. When a man says he loves his wife, loves his daughter, and loves a good rare hamburger, he had better be meaning something different each time. That the same word is used for all three meanings may be taken to indicate our culture finds 'love' a confusing thing. This is not so deliberate, or of much use in disputation. But the confusion created by use of the word 'property' to indicate such varied things as a carpenter's tool-chest, a family's house, a factory employing several hundred persons, a sprawl of land extending several thousand acres, and paper certificates entitling their holder to a share in the proceeds of an enterprise he has never taken part in personally, or even seen, is deliberate, and intended to convince small-holders that their interests are identical with those of plutocrats and rentiers, which they are not.

A person who is sole owner of an enterprise which employs no one else is in no real sense the owner of a business, but actually a person scrounging for temporary employment, client by client, or else an employee in all but name of a larger concern he or she supplies with some article or service. They live, then, not on profit but on a wage, paid by their clients. This wage can be readily calculated by the tax documents they must file, and for purposes of my proposal would treated as any other employee's wage. Such people may require some extra protection from creditors in present circumstances, and ought to get it.



"It is nonesense to suppose something beneficial to the greater portion of society may be injurious to its whole."