The Apple Cart

until somebody has the gumption to put his foot down and stop it. Crassus Yes: I know. But that is not democracy. Boanerges Democracy be⁠—He leaves the word unspoken. ! I have thirty years experience of democracy. So have most of you. I say no more. Balbus Wages are too high, if you ask me. Anybody can earn from five to twenty pounds a week now, and a big dole when there is no job for him. And what Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car? Nicobar How many voted at the last election? Not seven percent of the register. Balbus Yes; and the seven percent were only a parcel of sillies playing at ins and outs. To make democracy work in Crassus’s way we need poverty and hardship. Proteus Emphatically. And we have abolished poverty and hardship. That is why the people trust us. To the King. And that is why you will have to give way to us. We have the people of England in comfort⁠—solid middle class comfort⁠—at our backs. Magnus No: we have not abolished poverty and hardship. Our big business men have abolished them. But how? By sending our capital abroad to places where poverty and hardship still exist: in other words, where labor is cheap. We live in comfort on the imported profits of that capital. We are all ladies and gentlemen now. Nicobar Well, what more do you want? Pliny You surely don’t grudge us our wonderful prosperity, sir. Magnus I want it to last. Nicobar Why shouldn’t it last? Rising. Own the truth. You had rather have the people poor, and pose as their champion and savior, than have to admit that the people are better off under our government⁠—under our squabbling and bungling, as you call it. Magnus No: it was the Prime Minister who used those expressions. Nicobar Don’t quibble: he was quoting them from your reptile press. What I say is that we stand for high wages, and you are always belittling and opposing the men that pay them. Well, the voters like high wages. They know when they are well off; and they don’t know what you are grumbling about; and that’s what will beat you every time you try to stir them against us. He resumes his seat. Pliny There is no need to rub it in like that, Nick. We’re all good friends. Nobody objects to prosperity. Magnus You think this prosperity is safe? Nicobar Safe! Pliny Oh come, sir! Really! Balbus Safe! Look at my constituency: Northeast-by-north Birmingham, with its four square miles of confectionery works! Do you know that in the Christmas cracker trade Birmingham is the workshop of the world? Crassus Take Gateshead and Middlesbrough alone! Do you know that there has not been a day’s unemployment there for five years past, and that their daily output of chocolate creams totals up to twenty thousand tons? Magnus It is certainly a consoling thought that if we were peacefully blockaded by the League of Nations we could live for at least three weeks on our chocolate creams. Nicobar You needn’t sneer at the sweets: we turn out plenty of solid stuff. Where will you find the equal of the English golf club? Balbus Look at the potteries: the new crown Derby! the new Chelsea! Look at the tapestries! Why, Greenwich Goblin has chased the French stuff out of the market. Crassus Don’t forget our racing motor boats and cars, sir: the finest on earth, and all individually designed. No cheap mass production stuff there. Pliny And our livestock! Can you beat the English polo pony? Amanda Or the English parlormaid? She wins in all the international beauty shows. Pliny Now Mandy, Mandy! None of your triviality. Magnus I am not sure that the British parlormaid is not the only real asset in your balance sheet. Amanda Triumphant. Aha! To Pliny. You go home to bed and reflect on that, old man. Proteus Well, sir? Are you satisfied that we have the best paid proletariat in the world on our side? Magnus Gravely. I dread revolution. All except the two women laugh uproariously at this. Boanerges I must join them there, sir. I am as much against chocolate creams as you are: they never agree with me. But a revolution in England!!! Put that out of your head, sir. Not if you were to tear up Magna Carta in Trafalgar Square, and light the fires of Smithfield to burn every member of the House of Commons. Magnus I was not thinking of a revolution in England. I was thinking of the countries on whose tribute we are living. Suppose it occurs to them to stop paying it! That has happened before. Pliny Oh no, sir: no, no, no. What would become of their foreign trade with us? Magnus At a pinch, I think they could do without the Christmas crackers. Crassus Oh, that’s childish. Magnus Children in their innocence are sometimes very practical, Mr. Colonial Secretary. The more I see of the sort of prosperity that comes of your leaving our vital industries to big business men as long as they keep your constituents quiet with high wages, the more I feel as if I were sitting on a volcano. Lysistrata Who has been listening with implacable contempt to the discussion, suddenly breaks in in a sepulchral contralto. Hear hear! My department was perfectly able and ready to deal with the supply of power from the tides in the north of Scotland, and you gave it away, like the boobs you are, to the Pentland Firth Syndicate: a gang of foreign capitalists who will make billions out of it at the people’s expense while we are bungling and squabbling. Crassus worked that. His uncle is chairman. Crassus A lie. A flat lie. He is not related to me. He is only my stepson’s father-in-law. Balbus I demand an explanation of the words bungling and squabbling. We have had quite enough of them here today. Who are you getting at? It was not I who bungled the Factory Bill. I found it on