English 598
Spring 1976
This intimidator will be a fortress—a bastion of Big Brotherhood—trained in the combative arts, well-enough-paid himself to be fervent, and relentless in his preventative capacity. His purpose will be to challenge the citizen’s determination to recover his sack of salary. The wage earner will have one hour in which to distract, dupe, disable, disarm or dispatch his obstacle and grab the gelt. Once he has wrestled away his rightful pay, he is free to spend his money for a while.
As each man or woman flees the wage station, orders are given that within one half hour, doors will be locked and streets blockaded. Prices of all staple food items are raised tenfold and a cannon is sounded to signal the hike. This warned the customer that he has now only ten minutes in which to discover a curiosity shop, tobacco dealer, or other such purveyor of incidental or luxurious items upon which to waste his hard-earned coin. At the close of the ten minute term, fifty muskets are fired, and a troop of cavalry will be dispatched down the street toward the frantic searcher, and without a qualm trample him into the cobblestones or the mire. They will then jostle the mangled corpse into the putrefactions effluvium in the way, while a team of six tarpaulin-clad retrievers, straddling the body-bearing stream at its narrows, snatch with fine nets at the careening coins as they spit and tumble from the victim’s flailing sack.
The Nyah Nyah Chorus, all the while, strolls up and back sneering, spitting and wagging bandage-bound forefingers. This distresses our careless citizen. He now confirms in himself a previously suspected unfriendly atmosphere, and mutters a muffled “Hold, please. You must be mistaken; I am an honorable man. I love my country and pay my share of taxes.” The Chorus smiles and replies
Taxes, axes, spittle and dung,
We want everything: body, heart and lung.
Since you begrudge a percent of it,
We disengage your wage without consent of it.
Apply it to any battle ground we see,
And leave you guttered, even though
You gasped and uttered patriotically
Fiscally fine intentions of
Fairly following conventions.
Taxes, axes, spittle and dung,
We take it all: body, heart and lung.
Now, having turned my thoughts, for many months, upon this crucial subject, and maturely weighed the proposals of other well-meaning innovators, I have concluded that my suggestion is not only the most practical (since it secures one hundred per cent of a citizen’s income) but the most fun, for it provides free entertainment to onlookers, gay advertisements which are sorely needed in these troubled times.
I myself am retired from active labor, and a small annuity keeps me in snuff and stockings. So I profess in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least wish of personal gain in promoting this pecuniary practice, having no other motive than the general welfare and the common good of my countrymen, and bringing wholesome and free fun into their stressful lives.