Read Online Snowball's Chance by John Reed - Free Book Online Page A

large—our expenses low. Where now there are trees—tomorrow, lights. Glowing electric lights like ten million fireflies. Animal Farm will become Animal Fair—a land where dreams come true. Hot baths, air-conditioning—have we not made our own dreams come true? We have! So now, let us help to make everyone else’s dream come true. It will be, not just an amusement park, but a wondrous demonstration of the pure spirit of the animal! Wewill share with all the village—our own magic! And from it, we will feed not only our renown, but our stomachs, and the stomachs of our young—as our vision rewards us with every conceivable animal comfort!”
    To this, there were honks, snorts, and grunts all around, and the sheep burst out, “Animal comfort! Animal comfort!”
    Over the clamor and natter, Minimus asserted his disagreement. But his arguments seemed so feeble (as he seemed so feeble—that old fat pig) so as to be almost nonexistent. He called the carnival a zoo. Snowball’s retort that Animal Fair would not be a zoo, that it would not be a zoo at all, was gratefully received by the animals. They understood the theme park as Snowball saw it—an educational resort that would spread the word, and teach the village, about the victories of Animal Farm, and the lives of animals free!
    Minimus, glowering through his jowls, was not convinced—though the resistance he offered was marginal. Truth be told, Minimus was increasingly marginalized himself. Snowball, with his educated goats and the support of the next generation of pigs, was firmly placed at the nexus of decision-making. Minimus, meanwhile, had moldered, gone mushy—not only in the flesh, but in the brain. Though seldom discussed, Minimus was often noticed, during Sunday Meeting, dozing off at the most crucial moments.
    So, Snowball had wrested power from Minimus. So, Minimus had become Snowball’s rival. All that was clear but … So what? Minimus was no more than a specter—a shadowy figure at the rear of the barn. And yet, there remained some undercurrent of nervousness, as surelyone could not ignore Minimus entirely. Though zizzing pacifically at his place along the back wall, Minimus was still flanked by the power-hungry Pinkeye, and the I’ll-eat-anyone-if-you-give-me-the-order Brutus.…
    At the first Sunday Meeting of December, it was resolved that the farm should undertake the ambitious project of the fair—and Snowball (his approval ratings at an all time high) told the animals what he would need.
    He would need all the eggs laid by the chickens—and he would need them for some time to come.
    To every species but the chickens, the justification that the farm had exhausted its resources on the Twin Mills seemed a reasonable one. Though profitable, the Mills had not yet paid off the “bank loan” that had, in the end, been taken out to fund the construction. As Snowball explained it, a “bank loan” was like borrowing something from a friend, but the something was money, and the friend was the bank. Currently, the moneys generated by the mills were only enough to repay that friend. The chicken eggs would be used to finance a new loan, which in turn would be used to finance Henron, a collectively owned pig and hen corporation (the pigs would take on the onerous task of administration), which in turn would be used to finance the amusement park. He was sorry, Snowball told the chickens, but milling grain and lumber just wouldn’t pay the bills.
    It was in silence that the black Minorca hens toddled from the Sunday Meeting. And it was in silence, without a peep of justification, that they rebelled—as they had in Napoleon’s time. The eggs already in their nests—they pushed out. They would have considered it barbaric to sell them for food, as close to hatching as those eggs hadbeen. Their new eggs—they laid on the slanted roof of their coop. The eggs would roll down the shingles and smash on the packed ground—financing nothing, and hatching