Cartoon from PUNCH 1861

In chapter 16, titled “Property Versus Person,” Jack London explored how the courts provided stiffer punishments for offenses involving damage or theft to property than they did for offenses against human beings, including violence. He gave examples of both types of cases from different English police courts, and placed them side by side for comparison. Consistently, one can see that the penalties were worse for crimes involving property, while man’s brutality to man got a comparatively light punishment.

A man caught sleeping rough got 14 days hard labor, while one who beat his wife severely was fined 1£, 8 shillings, which at the time amounted to about a week and a half of wages for a poor, low-skilled worker. A coal miner attacked a man, knocked him down, beat him about the head and body, then picked up a pit prop (a wooden beam used to prop up a mine ceiling) and continued the beating with that. He was fined 1£, while a 62 year old man was sentenced to 4 months hard labor for poaching rabbits. Poaching of this type was usually hunting for food on large tracts of land owned by a wealthy, often titled individual.

Jack London’s opinion was that the sentences chosen by the magistrates involved in the cases indicated that the wealthy had representation in local government and law enforcement, but the poor largely did not. He wasn’t alone in those sentiments. The gap between the haves and have-nots in Great Britain fed a growing resentment among ordinary human beings, just as we see happening today in the United States. Would it take throwing much of a generation of young Englishmen on the fire of WWI to relieve the pressure in England? I’m not suggesting that was the plan, but the war took so many men off the streets of Great Britain—just under a million Englishmen lost their lives—and innumerable jobs were created to support the war effort. Did it alleviate to some extent the problems of poverty and homelessness?

What does it take here in the U.S. to relieve the pressure we experience when there are too many people looking for work and too few jobs? During the Great Depression, the federal government poured money back into the pockets of the people by funding work projects, most of them needed infrastructure improvements. Laws were passed to place regulations on financial institutions to help avoid the problems that led to the depression.

Many of those regulations were weakened in the 1990s. During the Great Recession of 2008, the congress had a tug of war between austerity and liberal spending policy. I believe the austerity measures that prevailed slowed the recovery.

Many Americans were angry after the crash of the U.S. economy with the Great Recession when none of the major players in the credit default swaps debacle went to prison. Instead, some of the financial institutions involved were bailed out to the tune of billions of dollars at the tax-payers’ expense during a time when the gap between the haves and have-nots has grown into a gulf. The banks got bailed out, but the little guy, hurt by the financial institution that gambled and lost, did not. Again, we seem to have much better representation in government for the haves than the have-nots. For the gamble taken by financial firms, many people world-wide suffered tremendously.

The anger and resentment have not gone away.

In the United States today, we have Presidential election coming soon. One of the candidates, of a nationalistic bent, preys upon that resentment to gain power. He uses illegal immigrants and a particular religious group as scapegoats, and lies about the dangers in the world to increase fear as he works to divide and conquer the American electorate.

I see very creepy parallels with the time of terrible depression in Europe following WWI when several dangerous nationalists used similar tactics to seize power. We, in America, have not just gone through a blood bath like that of WWI. Our economy is slowly recovering. I have hope that we are smart enough to not buy what our nationalistic candidate is selling.

—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon

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About Alan M Clark

Author and illustrator, Alan M. Clark grew up in Tennessee in a house full of bones and old medical books. His awards include the World Fantasy Award and four Chesley Awards. He is the author of seventeen books, including ten novels, a lavishly illustrated novella, four collections of fiction, and a nonfiction full-color book of his artwork. Mr. Clark’s company, IFD Publishing, has released 44 titles of various editions, including traditional books, both paperback and hardcover, audio books, and ebooks by such authors as F. Paul Wilson, Elizabeth Engstrom, and Jeremy Robert Johnson. Alan M. Clark and his wife, Melody, live in Oregon. www.alanmclark.com