Lennie Lower
April 12, 2005
Lennie Lower was one of the most famous journalists in Australia during the 1930's and 1940's. He was a prolific writer of satirical vignettes (for a long time he wrote eight columns a week, plus other projects). Some of his writing cover the same issues discussed in this venue. However, Lower's thoughts have been totally neglected by almost all Austro-libertarians. To remedy this situation I offer readers a sample of his more relevant writings. In these three articles from Here's Another (1932), he writes about the gold standard and the nature of gold.
A LOWER STANDARD
One of the brightest spots in our hitherto drab life is the abolition of the gold standard in favour of a note standard.
The British Government is merely following a procedure which we have advocated and put into practice for many months past.
Some of our notes have been classics.
DEAR SIR, – Owing to the present financial depression, we find ourself unable to meet your just demands immediately. However, we are expecting shortly a legacy from a wealthy relative in Fiji, and you may rest assured…
Then there was the other one which always worked. You simply pin the note on your door: "BACK IN TEN MINUTES." You then go away for eleven years, and are never heard of again.
GAS CO.
Sirs, – Your insulting message reached me this morning. Need I say that I was disgusted and annoyed? This is the fourth final notice I have had from you. Any more of this, and I shall be compelled to request you to send a man to cut off my gas supply.
This usually fixes things. Of course, there are faults in the system.
Yesterday we were presented with a note, "I.O.U. 5/-. Signed, L. W. Lower." So we went back to the gold standard.
The whole thing is very involved. Mean to say, come home and find on kitchen table a note, "Waited up till 2 o’clock. Where have you been? Your dinner is in the oven."
That sort of note is NOT negotiable.
HOW TO DISCOVER A GOLD MINE
The gold quest is still on. Countless unemployed are now working like mad, though still practically unemployed. We ask you, citizens, what do you know about gold? Echo answers, "Ask me?"
What do you know about quartz?
Quartz is what you get milk in.
What is a quartette? It is a pint and a half.
Gold is found in veins and seams. How vein it seems?
The unsuccessful prospector spends all his life tapping rocks. The successful prospector spends about three weeks rocking taps. After which he sets off for the desert once more.
Alluvial gold is usually dished from the start. From the cradle to the grave, so to speak. More trips are made from the cradle to the grave than from the cradle to the "Australia."
Which reminds us of minny golf courses. There are too minny golf courses. Which also reminds us that very few golfing prospectors tell the hole truth.
Mines! Mines! What do we know about mines? Mine’s a beer!
My heavens, amigo (Spanish) if you had to fill up a certain amount of space like this, you would also do as we do.
We are stonkered for ideas. There comes a tide in the affairs of men when they rush to cover. When they go into nursing homes. When they discover that they have important business about 300 miles away. When they say, “You know damn well I don’t like baked rabbit!” and such harsh words.
One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin. Two touches, and you’ve got it suspicious.
Let us then away.
WHAT GOLD IS HOW TO GET IT AND WHERE IT IS
It’s not a bit of use looking for gold if you don’t know where it is.
People are pegging out claims all over the place when they would be better employed pegging out the washing.
Gold is a metallic auriferous gold metal which is found in large or small single lumps, or linked together as is in gold watch-chains, or invisible, such as sovereigns.
Amateur prospectors must remember, however, that it is illegal to peg out a claim on a man’s stomach just because he has a gold watch-chain.
Alluvial gold is found in creek-beds, water-holes, drain-pipes, and various other places. It is found on mountains and in valleys, etcetera.
It is also not found in many of the above places. That is the catch.
The best way to tell gold is to pass the nugget around a crowded bar, and ask them if it’s gold.
If it comes back, it’s not gold.
It should be no surprise, after reading his writings on gold, to discover that his writings on war are equally instructive. We need to bask in the glories of war, and not let it all go to waste. War is when the government makes a killing. It's about time, in the true spirit of democracy, that we share in the spoils, and there's no one better to guide us than Lennie Lower. This article is from pages 30 and 31 of his Side Splitter (1941):
SPOILS OF WAR
We now have a Chairman of the Commonwealth Disposals Commission. This is to sell off surplus war material after the war is over.
It might be a good idea to buy up some of this stuff and sell it at a large profit when we have our next war.
A second-hand tank could be let out as a flat, for instance.
You could shell peas much quicker with a machine-gun, or a pea-rifle or something.
I could think of a lot of uses for gas masks.
Naming no names, of course.
And you needn't look at me like that.
And I would like a bulldozer with a direction-finder on it.
No trouble getting home. The direction-finder gets you home, and the bulldozer gets you in.
No key required.
I would also like an after-the-war parachute. My pyjamas are in a terrible state, and no coupons, and I think it would be swell just to blow into your pyjamas and float up to the ceiling, out of the window, up the street (following me?), and just have a look about to see where you parked your jeep the night before.
I would like a jeep to play golf in.
It would save a lot of mucking about.
What's more, I could do with a few booby-traps.
I am prepared to pay good dough for these.
How jolly to see the landlord blown fifteen feet in the air, and when he came down you could say: "Well, it serves you right! I've been complaining about our bath-heater for eight months!"
That would give him something to ponder on.
There will be miles and miles of barbed-wire left over, which will be very handy for scrubbing pots and for clotheslines.
Especially clothes-lines.
The head of the house tells me that she can't buy clothes pegs these days. Which reminds me again of my pyjamas.
When I get into my pyjamas I seem to come out the other side. The buttons are all there on the coat, but what's the use of that?
My pyjamas are now hung out to dry in the bathroom, so that the neighbors won't see them.
Which is damn silly, because I don't think any of our neighbours have any pyjamas at all.
Not that they really need them, being married, and the cold weather and all that.
I would like most from the Chairman of the Commonwealth Disposals Commission a tent.
Just a tent!
"A tent, my ration book and thou – and Mr. Curtin – the wilderness were paradise enow."
I quote of course.
I would never say "enow." The compositors wouldn't stand it.
But, man, if there's going to be any surplus war stores, I still want to buy my old regimental sergeant-major.
Also a bugler and a cook.
Would I like to see an out-of-work ex-provost? Pounds I would pay for him.
Lastly, I would like from the army surplus stores a couple of those bed-boards for guests who stay for the week-end. And a kitbag full of things that stick into your neck when you use them as pillows.
I do not want a submarine.
It would disturb our goldfish and, besides, I'm sunk already.
There's one thing about it: If we hadn't had a war, we wouldn't have had all these things left over.
Aren't we lucky!
Whether you like him for a laugh or a lesson, or both, or neither, there is no doubt that Lennie Lower would be a welcome read in today's mainstream newspapers, just as he was in the far bleaker years of The Great Depression. On foreign policy he would probably talk of the inevitability of another war in the Middle East on the basis that Iraq is the past tense of Iran. He would have questioned the strategy behind the use of missiles on an etymological basis. Throughout all this he would be principled, sticking to the almost universal belief, shared by The Remnant and The Masses, that no government is better than democracy.
April 12, 2005
The Smear Artists