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192

(1914) Author: Emma Goldman
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192 George Bernard Shaw
cided on those measures. When I want anything to
keep my dividends up, you will discover that my want is
a national need. When other people want something to
keep my dividends down, you will call out the police and
military. And in return you shall have the support and
applause of my newspapers, and the delight of imagining
that you are a great statesman. Government of your
country! Be off with you, my boy, and play with your
caucuses and leading articles and historic parties and great
leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys.
I am going back to my counting house to pay the piper
and call the tune. . . . To give arms to all men who
offer an honest price for them, without respect of persons
or principles: to Aristocrat and Republican, to Nihilist
and Tsar, to Capitalist and Socialist, to Protestant and
Catholic, to burglar and policeman, to black man, white
man, and yellow man, to all sorts and conditions, all na
tionalities, all faiths, all follies, all causes and all crimes.
... I will take an order from a good man as cheerfully
as from a bad one. If you good people prefer preaching
and shirking to buying my weapons and fighting the ras
cals, don t blame me. I can make cannons: I cannot
make courage and conviction.
That is just it. The Undershafts cannot make
conviction and courage; yet both are indispens
able if one is to see that, in the words of Under-
shaft:
"
Cleanliness and respectability do not need justifica
tion :
they justify themselves. There are millions of poor
people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed

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