Archive: Money for nothing in a leap year

Since this is the morning when an enriched February puts forth its modest Leap Year bud in the shape of that extra day, presumably there will be another outcrop of venerable references to ladies who “pop the question” and to little boys and girls who are supposed to have only one birthday in four years.

It might give a fresher turn to the subject to suggest that comrades and proletarians in general might do much worse than adopt the Twenty-ninth of February as “Labour Day” instead of May 1. It seems to be the one occasion in the calendar when the wage-earners score at the expense of the “rentier” and salaried classes – for the man who is paid by the day or week gets his money for to-day’s labours, while the man who is paid by the month or year does a day’s work for nothing. The invested funds of the bloated capitalist also fail him; as compared with normal years he loses a whole day’s interest on his ill-gotten gains.

However, there are plenty of redeeming features for the bourgeois. For example, he does the Post Office out of a day’s rent for his telephone; if his contract with the railway company is on a quarterly or yearly basis to-day he travels free. If he does not own his dwelling-house he lives rent free for a day; his insurance policies cover an extra day but he pays no more in premiums. He gets a day’s water for nothing – but not a day’s electricity or gas, for there the faithful meter looks after its master’s Leap Year interests. (But he gets the meter’s services – for what they are worth – free of charge for the day.)

Still, considering the subject by and large, the man who gets a full day’s pay for a full day’s work is probably better off than the man (or money) who does a day’s work for nothing but picks up a few odd perquisites here and there. So up the proletariat! – this is the real Labour Day if ever there was one.