My last about money

This is the last of a series of five articles, written by Gertrude Stein for The Saturday Evening Post in 1936.  The series was extremely popular at the time, and although her views on money and public spending are out of touch with current economic theory, I still find them entertaining to read in the context of the late-Depression days.

Getting rid of the rich does end up very funnily.  It is easy to get rid of the rich but it is not easy to get rid of the poor.  Wherever they have tried it they have got rid of the rich all right and so then everybody is poor and also there are there more than ever there of ever so much poorer.  And that is natural enough.  When there are the rich you can always take from the rich to give to the poor but when everybody is poor then you cannot take from the poor to give to the ever so much poorer and there they are.

That is the inevitable end of too much organization.  That organization business is a funny story.

The beginning of the eighteenth century, after everything had been completely under feudal and religious domination, was full of a desire for individual liberty and they went at it until they thought they had it, which ended up with first the English and then the American and then the French revolution, so there they were and everybody was free and then that went on to Lincoln.  Then they began inventing machinery and at the same time they found virgin lands that could be worked with machinery and so they began organization, then began factory organization and laborers organization, and the more they began organization the more everybody wanted to be organized and the more they were organized the more everybody liked the slavery of being in an organization.

Just the other day I was reading a Footner detective story and the crooks who were being held together under orders under awful conditions said when somebody tried to free them sure you got to be organized these days you got to have somebody to do your thinking for you.  And also the other day a very able young man, you would not have expected he would feel that way about it, wrote to me and said after all we are all glad to have Roosevelt to do our thinking for us.

That is the logical end of organization and that is where the world is today, the beginning of the eighteenth century went in for freedom and ended with the beginning of the nineteenth century that went in for organizations.

Now organization is getting kind of used up.

The virgin lands are getting kind of used up, the whole surface of the world is known now and also the air, and everywhere you see organization killing itself by just ending in organization.  The more backward countries are still excited about it because they have just heard of it but in their hearts the rest of them know the poor are always there and the very much poorer are always there and what are you going to do about it.

Organization is a failure and everywhere the world over everybody has to begin again.

What are they going to try next, what does the twenty-first century want to do about it.  They certainly will not want to be organized, the twentieth century is seeing the end of that, perhaps as the virgin lands will by that time be pretty well used up, and also by that time everybody will have been as quickly everywhere as anybody can be, perhaps they will begin looking for liberty again and individually amusing themselves again and old-fashioned or dirt farming.

One thing is sure until there are rich again everybody will be poor and there will be more than ever of everybody who is even poorer.

That is sure and certain.

Money for nothin’ and chicks for free.  Fnord.