Industrial Workers of the World

Legislators by Mick Sawtell

"Proud man, clothed in a little brief authority, cuts such fantastic capers before the high heavens, as would make angels weep" Henry v.

Most people have a certain amount of respect for law makers and their laws.

I always question the wisdom of constituted authority, the powers that be. It is always a good idea to analyse and critisise every dogma, creed, or accepted ideal.

Of all the shams in modern society, the one of government making laws, is the greatest.

I have it on high legal authority that the social affairs of the people of Australia are regulated by nearly two thousand laws.
Two thousand laws and six hundred and sixty six legislators at a cost of nearly 700 000's a year, making more laws.

Let it be said, however, that so easy an occupation is law making that legislators only work three and a half days a week, for six months of the year, the rest of their time can be given to making money in other ways. Of course the public pays them full time, but then the public is very kind to legislators. I don't know why; for I consider parliamentarians are the worst of workmen, their laws can be, and are, broken, few of them are workable, and they all become obsolete in ten years.

The people as yet do not know the first principles of government. They are obsessed with the idea that they want good laws, and that a successful government squares its accounts. What odds about the National Debt, or huge deficit in the State, a two-million surplus in the Commonwealth. Yet we have unemployment in our midst, and yet people are denied the very freedom that man was born for - the right to live.

No, legislators and their acts will always be failures whilst society is viewed as a ballance sheet, rather than a human institution. Good laws, all man made laws, are more or less wrong.

Nature has supplied laws, let us observe them.

Nature has decreed that every man shall have enough to eat or die; legislators let them die.

Nature insists that no man shall over eat without disasterous results; even good laws allow man to over eat.

Nature demands that every man shall decelop his highest individuality, and the people ask only a living wage.

A living wage is a brute wage, it takes not into consideration those tender mercies that make life so intensley human, the sick wife or the delicate child, and the gloris of higher education.

The toilers go to the Arbitration Court and ask for a living wage, and get technical squabbles; they ask for peace and are told there is no dispute.

Nearly all legislators will admit that Arbitration is experimental; then, if our legislators can only experiment - that is with our lives and happinness.

No the workers do not want more laws, nor legislation, but administration. Administer the worlds wealth for the benifit of all
No! the workers do not want legislation so much as teachers, philosophers, artists and poets, men who can think, and what is more mn who can feal - feal the wrongs of our times. I do not doubt the sincerity of our legislators, but I doubt their wisdom, and very much their usefullness

(from Dawnward 1/10/1912)