Frank Anstey

The Money Power (1921)

"The Oligarchy of Finance possesses more wealth, more power, more control over the destinies of the human race than any class or caste ever possessed" —T. Quelch.

From The Introduction

In 1916 I wrote a series of articles on banking, currency, and "war loan" trickeries. Those articles were rigorously censored, many of the facts being either distorted or suppressed. In 1917 those emasculated articles were published in book form, and at once (Sept., 1917) the military censors organised raids and seizures and declared the book "absolutely prohibited in any form whatever."

A few days later (3rd Oct.. 1917) "George Pearce, Minister for Defence," added a new clause to regulation 28 of the "War Precautions." Any person who sold or gave or distributed or delivered, or carried on his person, or kept on his premises, "or received through the post or otherwise" any copy of a prohibited publication, was liable to six months' imprisonment, or to a £100 fine, or both, or if prosecuted "upon indictment" then short of death itself there was no limit to the punishment that might be inflicted. All that was needed to put a man away was to send him a prohibited publication, and then denounce him for having it in his possession. Under those circumstances few "Shylocks" went into circulation.

Yet "Shylock" did not deal with the merits of the war. It dealt with the economic causes of war, and the inevitable "aftermath." It dealt with modern wars and their distinctive financial characteristics, and it said nothing that was not permitted to be freely said in every country at war except Australia. As a matter of fact the book contained dozens of statements from financial and other journals in England. Statements freely made in England without fear of suppression—were here prohibited.

For the time being the military censorship is in recess. The suppressed facts therefore see the light of day, and the material within the sup- pressed book is once more placed upon the market. Five more years of history have brought more facts necessitating much re-arrangement, especially in connection with recent economic events within Australia. Therefore, for the majority of readers this book will be as new in material and structure as it is in title.

"The War to End War" has finished these two years. The "New World After the War" and the "Green Fields of Perpetual Peace" are no longer unveiled to the gaze of admiring audiences. All the mirages have disappeared, and in their place come the pressure of governments squeezing from the masses the wherewith to meet the demands of the oligarchy of bondholders whom the "War for Democracy" has made more powerful than ever.

About The Author

Frank Anstey, M.H.R., and the most extraordinary character in the Federal Labor Party. He has been a sailor. a laborer, a caretaker, and a hundred other things, but he has latterly achieved the hauteur of calling himself a person of “no occupation.” Anstey is a native of Devonshire, but the thought of its green lanes is obscured in his mind by slimy vistas of slums. There is no need to ask his opinion of the English wage system. He is an episode in its history, quite negligible among numbers equally arduous, but still poignant to him after years of comparative prosperity.

From a single-page biography of Frank Anstey by Jean Sibi from the magazine "The Lone Hand" in 1918.

• 1918 - The Irrepressible Anstey.pdf (2.1 MB)

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