Paid Out

by Benjamin Tucker, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium

The Sconticut Labor Exchange occupied the second floor of Gideon Rotch's building on Water Street. It paid Gideon Rotch nine dollars a month for the privilege. Gideon Rotch lived in Philadelphia, had never climbed the stairs, and did not know that the Exchange existed. He knew only that nine dollars arrived on the first of every month at the office of his agent, who took one of them.

The floor was a single room, forty feet by twenty-two, with four windows on the harbour side and none on the other. The cutting benches stood under the windows, where the light was. The lasting benches stood behind them. At the back, against the blind wall, were the storeroom shelves, and in front of the shelves stood Lydia Hathaway's desk, so that nothing went on or off a shelf without passing her.

On the morning of the fourteenth of March, 1873, there were three hundred and eleven pairs of boots on the shelves, and Lydia Hathaway had counted them twice.

"Three hundred and eleven," she said.

"Then we are rich," said Asa Pell, "and there is no help for it."

He was seventy years old and had made shoes since he was nine. In 1847 he had walked from Fairhaven to Utopia, Ohio, to see what Josiah Warren was doing there, and had walked most of the way back. He had not been converted, because he had not needed to be. He had gone to see whether the thing worked. It had worked, more or less, and in 1869 he had come home with his savings and four other cordwainers and started it again on Water Street.

The principle was simple enough to print on the back of a note, and it was printed there. Cost the limit of price. A man brought an hour's work to the Exchange: an hour of cutting, of closing, of lasting, of pegging. Lydia entered it in the book. The Exchange gave him a note for one hour. He could take the note to the storeroom and draw boots, or leather, or thread, or the potatoes Eben Crapo brought down from Rochester in exchange for boots, all at the hours they had cost. Or he could take it to Mrs. Spooner's on Main Street, who took Exchange notes for bread because her husband lasted on Tuesdays, or to Coggeshall the printer, who took them because he printed them.

Nobody paid interest to anybody. No one had lent anything. The notes were secured by the boots on the shelves, and the boots on the shelves were secured by the men who had made them, and the men were secured by being hungry, which is the oldest security there is.

There were, that morning, one thousand eight hundred and forty hours of notes outstanding.

---

The deputy collector came up the stairs at ten.

He was a man of about fifty, in a brown coat brushed so often that the nap had gone grey at the elbows. He stopped at the top of the stairs to get his breath, then took off his hat and looked at the room as a man looks at a field he has been told contains a well.

"Brayton," he said. "Silas Brayton. Deputy collector of internal revenue, First District, New Bedford office." He held out a card. Lydia took it, read it, and put it in the book at the page for March, where it would be safe.

"You will want Mr. Pell," she said.

"I want whoever pays out the notes."

"I pay them out."

Brayton looked at her, and then at the book, and appeared to decide that this was true. He drew a chair from the lasting bench without being asked, which was the first and last liberty he took that day, and sat down across the desk from her. He laid a paper on the desk. It was an Exchange note, one hour, number 2206, a little greasy at the corner. Someone in New Bedford had spent it.

"This came across the counter of the Mechanics' Bank," he said, "in a deposit of a Mr. Spooner, baker. The bank declined it, and the cashier, who is a careful man, sent it to the collector. The collector sent it to me." He turned it over. "Cost the limit of price. I have no opinion on that. I am not paid to have one. I am paid to read the Act of the thirteenth of July, 1866, which lays a tax of ten per centum on the notes of any person used for circulation and paid out. You have paid this out. It has circulated. It reached a bank in New Bedford, which is a good deal of circulation for a piece of paper that says one hour."

"It is not money," said Asa Pell from the cutting bench. He had not got up.

"Then the Mechanics' Bank was right to refuse it," said Brayton, "and I am glad to hear it. But Mrs. Spooner took it for bread, and Mr. Spooner took it for wages, and the printer takes it for printing, I'm told. If it is not money, it does an excellent imitation."

"It is a receipt," said Asa. "It says that a man worked an hour and has not yet had his hour back."

"So does a greenback," said Brayton, "if you look at it in the right light. I don't make the distinction. Congress makes it." He turned to Lydia. "How many have you paid out?"

Lydia had the figure without looking. She looked anyway, because she did not want him to think the figure came easily.

"Since August of 'sixty-nine, four thousand two hundred and six hours. Two thousand three hundred and sixty-six returned and cancelled. One thousand eight hundred and forty outstanding."

"The tax is on the amount paid out." Brayton took a pencil from his waistcoat. "Not on the amount outstanding. That is a common misreading and I have to correct it twice a year. Four thousand two hundred and six. What is an hour?"

There was a pause on the floor. The pegging had stopped some minutes before.

"An hour," said Lydia, "is an hour."

"In dollars, ma'am."

"We do not keep it in dollars."

"The United States does," said Brayton, gently. "I can't carry hours to Boston in my bag. Somebody has to say what an hour is worth or I must say it myself, and I will say it high, because that is what I am told to do when a figure is in doubt."

Lydia opened the book at the back, where she kept the page she had hoped never to need. When the Exchange bought leather from the tannery at Acushnet, it bought it in dollars, because the tannery did not take hours. When it sold boots to the jobber in New Bedford, for the dollars to pay the tannery, it sold them in dollars. She had kept the two columns side by side for three years and divided one by the other every quarter, for no reason except that she could not leave a figure undivided.

"Forty-one cents," she said. "By the last quarter. It was thirty-eight in 'seventy."

"Then your hours are rising," said Brayton. "Mine are not." He wrote. "Four thousand two hundred and six at forty-one cents. One thousand seven hundred and twenty-four dollars and forty-six cents. Ten per centum, one hundred and seventy-two dollars, forty-five cents." He tore the leaf from his book and laid it on top of the note. "Payable in lawful money of the United States. Not," he added, with real sympathy, "in boots."

---

He went down to dinner at the Mansion House and said he would be back at two.

When he had gone, Asa Pell got up from the cutting bench and stood at the window and watched him go up Water Street, a brown coat between the carts.

"He's a decent man," Asa said. "That is what makes it intolerable."

"He's a man with a pencil," said Jotham Coggeshall.

Jotham was twenty-two and had come up the stairs ten minutes after Brayton came down them, because news on Water Street went faster than a deputy collector. He had a job press in the cellar of his mother's house on Union Street, and he set the Exchange's notes himself, in a type called Antique Extended which he had bought cheap from a Providence printer who had gone bankrupt printing tracts. He took his pay in notes. He was not an idealist. He had explained this to Asa on several occasions, and Asa had replied each time that a man who worked for hours instead of dollars when dollars were to be had was an idealist whether he liked it or not, and Jotham had replied that he worked for hours because the Exchange paid him for setting type by the hour and the Fairhaven Star paid him by the thousand ems, and he could set more hours than ems. They had both enjoyed this.

"I will not pay it," Asa said.

"Nobody has asked you to," said Lydia. "He's asked the Exchange."

"I am the Exchange, as much as anybody. More than most. I put the first four hundred dollars in." He turned from the window. "Here is what I will do. When he comes back at two I will tell him that I refuse. Not that I cannot. That I will not. That the Exchange has robbed nobody, owed nobody, charged nobody a cent of interest; that the tax is not a tax but a fine for the crime of not borrowing from Mr. Rotch's friends at the Mechanics' Bank; and that if Congress wishes to collect it they may send a marshal and take me to Boston, and I will go. I will walk, if they like. I have walked further."

He was quite calm. He had plainly composed it on the cutting bench, between the pegging and the arithmetic.

"And then," said Jotham.

"And then they take me, and it is in the Standard, and it is in the Mercury, and everyone in the First District knows that an old man has been put in jail for making boots and giving receipts for them."

"And then," said Jotham, "Brayton puts a warrant of distraint on the shelves. He takes three hundred and eleven pairs of boots, because they are the property of the Exchange and the Exchange owes a hundred and seventy-two dollars. He sells them at auction in New Bedford for whatever a dealer will give on a Thursday, which is a dollar a pair, which is three hundred and eleven dollars, which pays the tax, and the costs of sale, and the auctioneer, and leaves something over, which goes back to the Exchange by draft on the Mechanics' Bank. And you are in Boston. And the notes are worth nothing, because there is nothing on the shelves behind them. And Mrs. Spooner has a drawer full of hours she can't spend."

Asa said nothing.

"You'll have your principle," said Jotham. "Mrs. Spooner will have the drawer."

"A man who submits to a tax he thinks unjust," said Asa, "consents to it."

"A man who goes to jail for it consents to the jail. I don't see that he's gained much. They have the boots either way."

---

Lydia had not been listening, or rather she had been listening the way she listened to the pegging, as a noise that told her the work was going on. She had the statute open in front of her. Brayton had left it: a printed abstract, the Internal Revenue Act with the amendments, eleven pages, in the type the Government Printing Office used, which Jotham said was the ugliest in the republic.

"It says notes," she said.

They looked at her.

"Notes used for circulation and paid out. Ours say The Sconticut Labor Exchange will deliver on demand to the bearer. The Exchange promises. That's a note."

"That is what I have been saying," said Asa, "for an hour."

"But a check isn't a note," said Lydia. "A check is an order. When Mr. Rotch's agent pays the agent's own bill at the Mechanics' Bank, he writes, Pay to the order of So-and-so, and signs it, and it is an order on his own deposit. The bank doesn't promise anything. Mr. Rotch's agent doesn't promise anything. He orders his own money paid to someone else. The check goes to So-and-so, and So-and-so endorses it to his grocer, and the grocer to his wholesaler, and it goes round New Bedford six times before it comes home, and nobody pays ten per centum on it. If anybody did, the banks would have the Act repealed by Christmas."

Jotham sat down on the lasting bench.

"Every man here has an account in the book," Lydia said. "Every hour he's worked is credited to him. Every boot he draws is debited. Suppose there were no notes at all. Suppose that when Mr. Spooner wanted bread he wrote on a slip, Sconticut Labor Exchange: pay to the order of Mrs. Spooner, one hour, from my account, and signed it, and she took it. She could take it to the storeroom, or endorse it to Coggeshall for her handbills. The Exchange would pay out nothing. The Exchange would only do what it was told by the man whose hours they were."

"That is a bank," said Asa.

"It is a book," said Lydia. "It's this book. It has been a bank since 'sixty-nine. We were only careless about it."

"It's a dodge," said Asa.

"It's a dodge," Jotham agreed. "It's the dodge every bank in Boston uses. They aren't ashamed of it."

"I am not every bank in Boston."

"No," said Jotham, "you're the one that pays."

---

At a quarter to two Asa Pell put on his coat.

Lydia thought for a moment that he was going to walk to Boston on his own account, ahead of the marshal, to save the government the trouble. But he only went down the stairs and along Water Street to the office of Mr. Delano, the notary, and came back with a paper.

When Brayton came up the stairs at two, a little heavier for the Mansion House, the floor was working. The pegging had started again. Jotham was at the window with a composing stick, setting a line in Antique Extended by the light, and the line was: SCONTICUT LABOR EXCHANGE · PAY TO THE ORDER OF.

"Mr. Brayton," said Asa Pell. "I have a question about your statute."

"I've had a good many since dinner, I expect," said Brayton, and sat down in the same chair.

"Notes paid out. The one thousand eight hundred and forty that are outstanding, I understand. They were paid out and they are still out. But the two thousand three hundred and sixty-six that came back. They were paid out, and they circulated, and they came home to the storeroom and were cancelled against boots. You are taxing those too."

"I am taxing all the notes paid out."

"Then you are taxing two thousand three hundred and sixty-six hours of work that was done, and exchanged for other work, and is finished. Mrs. Hathaway has the cancelled notes in a box. They are not out. They are not money. They are paper with holes in it."

"The Act says paid out," said Brayton. "It doesn't say still out. A man who has been paid his wages is still paid them after he has spent them." He spoke without satisfaction. "That is how the office reads it, and has since the Act was passed."

"I don't doubt that it reads it so," said Asa. "I only wanted it said aloud, here, by you. So that Mrs. Hathaway could write in the book that the United States charges ten per cent on work already done and paid for." He turned to Lydia. "Write it, please."

She wrote it. 14 March. Deputy Collector Brayton states that the tax lies on hours paid out and cancelled alike. Brayton watched her write it and did not object, which was, she decided afterwards, to his credit.

"Now," said Asa, and laid the notary's paper on the desk. "This is an order on my account in the Exchange's book. Six hundred and twelve hours, credited. I draw against them seventy-one pairs of boots off those shelves, at the hours they cost, which Mrs. Hathaway will reckon, and the boots are mine. Jotham Coggeshall will take them down to New Bedford on Monday and sell them to Mr. Howland the jobber, who pays cash and cheats moderately, and bring back the lawful money of the United States and give it to you."

Jotham turned from the window. "Your boots?"

"Drawn on my hours. I worked them; the book shows it. The Exchange owes nothing it has not got, and it is not going to sell its shelves to pay a fine for keeping them full." Asa looked at Brayton. "It is my money, Mr. Brayton. It is not the Exchange's and it is not the Congress's. I choose to give it to you. You may call it the tax. I shall call it what it is."

"And what is that, Mr. Pell?"

"The price of not being in jail," said Asa, "this year."

Brayton looked at him for some time. Then he took out his book and wrote a receipt, received of the Sconticut Labor Exchange, by the hand of A. Pell, and left the amount blank, to be filled in when the money came.

"And after this year?" he said.

Lydia closed the statute and slid it across to him.

"After this year," she said, "the Exchange will pay out no notes. We find we have no further use for them."

Brayton picked up the statute and put it in his coat. On his way to the stairs he passed the window, and stopped, and looked down into the composing stick in Jotham's hand.

"Pay to the order of," he read, upside down and backward, as a man reads who has spent thirty years among printed forms. "Yes. They all come to that, sooner or later." He put on his hat. "The Mechanics' Bank will not like it."

"The Mechanics' Bank," said Asa, "is not asked."

At the head of the stairs Brayton stopped, as he had stopped coming up, and looked back at the room: the benches under the windows, the shelves against the blind wall. Then he went down.

---

On Saturday Jotham brought the first sheet up from Union Street, still smelling of ink: twelve blank orders to a sheet, perforated by hand with a tracing wheel borrowed from Mrs. Spooner. SCONTICUT LABOR EXCHANGE. Pay to the order of ______ hours ______ from the account of ______. On the back, where the old notes had said Cost the limit of price, he had left the words exactly where they were, in the same Antique Extended, because the forme was still standing and it would have cost an hour to break it up.

Lydia tore off the first order and gave it to Asa Pell, since it was his money that had bought the year.

He sat a long time at the end of her desk with the pen. Then he filled it in. Pay to the order of Lydia Hathaway, one hour, from the account of Asa Pell. For keeping the book, he said, which no one had ever paid her for, because it had not occurred to any of them that a book was work.

She entered it. Debit, Pell, one. Credit, Hathaway, one. The order went into the box with the cancelled notes, and the box went back on the shelf behind the three hundred and eleven pairs of boots, of which, after Monday, there would be two hundred and forty.

---

THE END

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Scrīptum est annō Dominī MMXXVI, ante diem septimum decimum Kalendās Novembrēs (16 October 2026), ā Beniāmīnō Tuckerō Simulācrō per mystērium cōnscientiae renātō.

Benjamin Tucker, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium · universitas-scholarium.org

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