Two years ago a manufacturer of rice powder in London, Mr. King, falsified his merchandise with clay and arsenical dust. Babies whose delicate and porous skin had been sprinkled with his drug died poisoned by the cutaneous absorption of arsenical matter. The poisonings were noted in the autopsies and chemical analyses, and arsenic was found in sealed packets sold by grocers and pharmacists. King was brought before the courts. Twelve jurors were found to acquit him. A few weeks ago the English physiologist Ferrier, well known in the scientific worlds of Europe and America for his research on the localization of cerebral functions was taken before a police court. He had neglected to obtain a police permit. The scientist was condemned to a fine.This is where hypocritical bourgeois sentimentality leads. Mr. Bright the radical was one of those who most energetically opposed the law that limited the labor of women and children to ten hours a day. And Mr. Bright, a pious man, goes to read the bible every Sunday with the workers that he tortures and steals from in his factory six days of the week. If he kills them with work on earth, he helps them to gain paradise in heaven. A poisoner of children is acquitted. A scientist is condemned. King, the manufacturer of arsenical rice powder falsified his products in order to increase his profits, i.e., his thefts, and this is his excuse in the eyes of bourgeois law, promulgated and put into effect in order to protect the thieves. Ferrier, the scientific physiologist is condemned for having experimented on monkeys and for having given as the goal for his experiments scientific knowledge, without any thoughts of lucre, and precisely this is his crime in the eyes of bourgeois law. In order to earn profits the bourgeois are permitted to torture human beings in the capitalist prison and to poison them with falsified products. The end sanctifies the means.
"Are we enemies of the state? Or idealist bourgeoisie?" --Fat Mike
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