NEUOFFENBARUNGA variety of human laments (9 April 1847)
1. There are all kinds of complaints among the people. For some, times are too bad; everything is getting more expensive and worse at the same time. Still others have a formal rage against governments and lay all the blame on them; still others are not satisfied when there is peace and no war for too long. Others again lay all the blame on the clergy; still others on all kinds of luxuries, and especially on the newly built iron roads. In short, everyone seeks the cause of the evil of this time, sometimes in one, sometimes in another; but that one of all these complainants should take himself by the nose and ask himself whether he, too, has not at some time contributed to the aggravation of such a time, and perhaps still contributes to it, occurs to no-one. Everyone feels the evil only from the outside; but he does not see it in himself.
2. There I see a father of a family going wild about the luxury of this time, how he is just in a sales vault, and buys his daughters expensive, sparkling-brand-new all most modern witnesses for clothes. What should one say to such a luxury accuser? Nothing but: You fool, if you dislike luxury so much, why do you let yourself be driven by your luxury devil to buy such malicious things for your daughters? Buy them linen garments, or even better, buy rice, and let your daughters spin, so you will create a garment for your daughters that will be much more useful to them than your modern stuff, which annoys you so much that you buy it out of sheer annoyance, only to make your daughters shine, so that your prosperity might be seen in them, and so that they might make favorable conquests. Oh fool! for you there is still far too little luxury, far too little change of fashion; and when the fashion of the day will change twice, you will still be the old donkey, you will scold even more, as now, but nevertheless pay homage to the advancing spirit of the time, as it befits you. But now I ask: who else but such fools as you open the doors of luxury because they take pleasure in the chameleon-like appearance of their daughters?
3. Instead of your scolding in your house, begin to despise luxury. Dress your children as indicated above, perhaps you will find some imitators, and these again some others; thus luxury will gradually lose itself, when it will find no outlet. So there are also newspaper writers who continually go on about luxury, while in everything they continually dress themselves according to the latest fashion, whereby their scribblings naturally always remain without success; for he who does not improve himself, how shall he improve another?
4. On the other hand, one again sees peasants and innkeepers violently ranting and cursing about the consumption tax; they do not consider, however, that they are the first inventors of this state plague, and dictate to their customers a consumption tax ten times greater than the one the regent demands from his subjects.
5. When this tax did not yet exist, all innkeepers already took a quite inhuman consumption tax from their guests; many a person had to leave his coat at the innkeeper because of the consumption tax. I ask, how can such a man complain about a tax that he had already been paying for a long time, when the state still only considered such a tax; if it was considered cheap in his house, why should it not be cheap for the whole country? Doesn't an innkeeper charge two coins for a piece of bread that costs him hardly one? That is a consumption tax of 100! The state does not charge that much, and it is much cheaper, and the innkeeper may well put up with the state consumption tax, for he has long been most pleased with this monopoly.
6. So also the farmer, if he brings a basket of fruit into the city, and pays for it a few coins of state consumption tax; but how does he bring this in? What he paid for the whole basket he adds to ten pieces, but after these ten pieces he still has ninety in the basket; these would therefore be free of consumption tax; but does he sell them in this way? Oh no; he collects it nine times more. Question,
has not man a workmanlike pleasure in this tax; how may he rail against it? Has the usurer, to whom I have filled his trees with fruit for nothing, not had enough with 900 percent? Therefore go ahead; only more consumption tax, and it shall not stop until it has not stopped in the hearts of brothers against brothers.
7. Whoever gives something to someone out of a good heart, I remember, the state has put little or no tax on it, take note! But if man no longer has a heart for his neighbor, how can he demand that from the state, which he lacks so completely? And I say to this: People judge themselves; but I judge the state according to the people.
8. According to what they take the greatest pleasure in working, the state shall also be judged by Me. Who takes a greater tax on consumption than the usurer of grain from his brothers? The state should demand a thousandfold tax from him, then the balance would hardly be established.
9. You see from this that people themselves are always the creators of the evils among them; therefore these evils shall also be among them as long as they remain it's perpetual creators. The poor, however, are always an addition as a plague for such orders; for who makes the poor? The great covetousness and general consumptiveness of those who are able; therefore they shall also receive them; for what a man produces himself, that he shall also have and bear.
10. So the citizens of a city also complain tremendously about their house interest tax, but what their interest parties say, they do not hear; if by chance a party sometimes cannot pay it's rent on time, then a lawsuit and garnishment are soon initiated against it. Therefore, only more house interest tax, until the heart of the house owner becomes softer, and he will be able to put a small room in his house for the poor free of charge, and lower his house interest; then I will also instill milder attitudes in the heart of the ruler, but otherwise, as I said, only higher with the taxes. Instead of silk robes and other luxuries of the house-owning family, rather a gentle heart and fairness in the house interest, then it will already become better.
11. There is also horrible cursing and swearing about the present railroads. It is true that they are an evil sign of this time for the people, and I wanted them not to be; but the people wanted it, and so I want it. You have never seen before how the great and the rich kept carriages and drove all over the place, but when a poor man, tired of walking, begged them to let him get on, he was rejected with the whip if he was only a little pushy, and even if he wanted to pay, he was not accepted. Now a smelly farmer sits in one and the same wagon, also another so-called vagabond, and next to him a fine-nosed city lady must place herself, and both ride for the same price, and enjoy the same rights; and the frequent city fi donc next to a horse-servant has completely ceased, and the service of the former fragrance flacons is performed by boiler smoke. Thus the fine noses are somewhat softened, and no longer feel the unpleasant smell of the farmer so much. In the past, the cavaliers and the upper-class fashionables could never drive fast enough. Unfortunate was the one who was on the road; he was recklessly driven over. Now there is speed enough; such a fast sailor at least comes to the conclusion on the railroad that his horse-drawn vehicle is only a pure botch-up in comparison. Therefore, he leaves his equipage at home, and no longer makes such a nuisance of the wanderers on the road; for he himself prefers to ride on the railroad than in his carriage. But what a great boon it is for those highwaymen of innkeepers, for they are only now beginning to become a little human; and what a just punishment for all kinds of wagoners, who not infrequently charged twice as much for a single wagonload of little postage as what their wagon and horses were worth. The blacksmiths along the roads, who often charged as much for a nail as if it were made of gold, are only now coming to realize, when they see entire iron roads, that iron cannot be all that expensive after all; even wainwrights, saddlers, and strappers are only now realizing what their goods are worth, because in the past they thought they were selling nothing but gold and
silver goods. Even the oatmeal growers will gradually come to the conclusion that they will need far less of this fruit, and the city coachmen, who in the past never knew what they should charge for a bad carriage, can now drive for two pennies, and those who charge more can drive themselves out to the station, where there is one, and there watch wistfully as hundreds of travelers move on quickly for a small carriage fee; Even the posts, which previously did not know for how many horses they should rent a stable, now have enough so-called barns, and the shareholders will thus also – and mainly because of the very fast means of transport – soon realize that they have speculated very heavily here; For then their supposed gain will become as certain as snow on the sun, and they will also recognize that in the water vapors, besides the powerful driving force, there also the fortune is dissolving.
12. Strictly speaking, such a railroad is of course as little in My order as the Babylonian tower construction, but this tower construction also had it's decided good; it led the peoples apart and brought them in time to the conviction that man can also live elsewhere and not only in Babylon, and that God lets His sun shine and His rain fall everywhere, and so in the end all those have won who were driven away by the tower construction of Babylon. It will be the same with the railroads; in the end, everyone will win. The main actionary wins materially, for he outshines the others; but the others gain in insight, and soon from that in humanity, for when rich people become beggars, they then become quite gentle and humble people. The innkeepers on the streets also gain, for they lose the marauding and gain the human. The country people, over whose best grounds the railroad was not infrequently run, also gain; for in former times they covered their meadows and acres with fences and thorns, and if a man stepped on their meadow, he was often maltreated, but now it is good, where he must tolerate such a wide iron road on his land. He is now gaining in patience and also in humanity, and that is also a great gain. The travelers win, because they get to the place where they want to go much cheaper and faster, and at least in the wagons they learn that they are not worth more than others, because everyone pays the same freight. But in spite of all this, the people complain about this ruthlessness, which they themselves have brought about by all kinds of means; but if you do it yourself, you have to have and suffer it yourself. But if landlords, carters, and other processionists, and the shareholders become human, as befits them, then it should also look better with the breed: for everything is in My hand, and I can shape and change it in such and such a way. But I have once said that I have no pleasure in this work, and so it is; for I am not pleased with the rod of discipline. But once it is there, as the people wanted it, let it be a blessing to the good and a curse to the bad, and you may now use it quietly, and I will bless on top of it the one who uses it, so that the highwaymen will receive a full chastisement.