The rich had always blamed the poor for bringing poverty upon themselves by being idle or feckless. But Rowntree’s study demonstrated in cold statistical facts that people slipped into poverty for many different reasons. The poor were victims; they weren’t genetic failures ... Rowntree’s book published in 1901 and called simply Poverty is among the most important things written by a British person in the twentieth century. Andrew Marr’s Making of Modern Britain, BBC 2009
Fabulous wealth was spilling from roaring belching cities, but millions went hungry. Really hungry. Gaunt hungry. Shoeless children could be seen on the streets of every town. ibid.
How many people there are that weep with want, or are mad with oppression, or are desperate by too quick a sense of a constant infelicity. Jeremy Taylor, The Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying, 1651
Untaught to bear poverty. Horace, Odes
Men have transformed the world with their knowledge. The short lean wheat has been made big and productive. Little sour apples have grown large and sweet, and that old grape that grew among the trees and fed the big birds has mothered a thousand varieties, red and black, green and pale pink, purple and yellow; and each variety with its own flavour.
The men who work in the experimental farms have made new fruits; nectarines and forty kinds of plums, walnuts with paper shells and always they work, selecting, grafting, changing, driving themselves, driving the earth to produce.
But men who graft the trees and make the seeds fertile and big can find no way to make the hungry eat their produce.
A million people hungry, needing the fruit – and kerosene spread over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country.
The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back. They come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes flow by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze.
And in the eyes of the people there is a failure and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our successes. The fertile Earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And the children dying of (hunger) must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates – died of malnutrition – because the food must rot (if not sold at a profit) … and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. ibid.
I lost the spirit. I got nothing to preach about no more, that’s all. The Grapes of Wrath 1940 starring Henry Fonda & Jane Darwell & Charley Grapewin & Dorris Bowdon & John Carradine & Russell Simpson & O Z Whitehead & John Qualen & Eddie Quillan & Zefie Tilbury et al, director John Ford, tramp to Fonda
Maybe there ain’t no sin. There ain’t no virtue. There’s just what people does. ibid.
If I was to pray, I’d pray for folks who’s alive and don’t know which way to turn. ibid.
There she is, folks. The land of milk and honey – California. ibid.
We’ll go on for ever, Pa. ’Cause we’re the people. ibid.
Why did good hard-working people suffer so? Why were men who were willing, able, and anxious to work, denied jobs? Why was there so much unemployment? Why were there rich people who apparently did little but enjoyed life? I hated poverty. I was determined to do something about the bad conditions under which our family and all around us suffered. I have stuck to that purpose for 46 years. I consider in so doing I have been a good American. I have spent my life among the American workers all over this country, slept in their homes, eaten at their tables. They are the majority of the people who have the inalienable right in our view to govern the country. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, 1952
Many of us regard ourselves as mildly liberal or centrist politically, voice fairly pleasant sentiments about our poor children, contribute money to send poor kids to summer camp, feel benevolent. We’re not Nazis; we’re nice people. We read sophisticated books. We go to church. We go to synagogue. Meanwhile, we put other people’s children into an economic and environmental death zone. We make it hard for them to get out. We strip the place bare of amenities. And we sit back and say to ourselves, ‘Well, I hope that they don’t kill each other off. But if they do, it’s not my fault.’ Jonathan Kozol
In the United States child poverty has reached record levels with over sixteen million children now affected. One in twelve Americans are now jobless. Foodbanks and homeless shelters are facing unprecedented demand. America’s Poor Kids, BBC 2013
The homelessness Kaylie fears is already a reality for one and a half million children across the US. ibid.
More than forty-nine million Americans are now living below the poverty line, many as a result of unemployment. ibid.
There is no nobility in poverty. Wall Street 1987 starring Michael Douglas & Charlie Sheen & Daryl Hannah & Martin Sheen & John C McGinley & Terence Stamp & James Karen & Hal Holbrook & Sean Young & James Spader et al, director Oliver Stone, Sheen junior to senior
Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools. J K Rowling
We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination. Nelson Mandela
Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence. A P J Abdul Kalam
Poverty is the worst form of violence. Mahatma Gandhi
Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim. James A Garfield
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. Woody Allen
Wealthy men can’t live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance. Ayrton Senna
I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty. Groucho Marx
Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the US steps in and blocks it. Noam Chomsky
There is something about poverty that smells like death. Zora Neale Hurston
There is a deep sadness to American poverty, greater than the sadness of any other kind. It’s because America has such an ideology of success. Will Self
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. Aristotle
Poverty breeds despair. We know this. Despair breeds violence. We know this. In turbulent times, isn’t it cheaper, and smarter, to make friends out of potential enemies than to defend yourself against them later? Bono
Poverty of a different kind. Poverty to the extent that families go to the dustbin and others to eat. The requirement of revolution: bread, freedom and social justice. This is the first banner in the square. Mamdouh Hamza
‘These ruined shelters have bred a crowd of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards and coils itself to sleep in maggot numbers where the rain drips in and comes and goes fetching and carrying fever and sowing more evil in its every footprint.’ Charles Dickens, Bleak House
The London poor with their hideous voices and clothes and bad teeth make one doubt whether any decent life will ever be possible, or whether it matters we are at war or peace. Virginia Woolf
Hunger is always with us. From the dawn of time poverty has been the destiny of man. Horizon: Bread, BBC 1969
Jack Matthews: killed by social class. He was an unskilled labourer. A member of the lowest social class. Now Mr Matthews has died of lung cancer aged only fifty-four. His risk of early death was twice as great as someone from the middle classes. What’s more he lived in Newcastle. And the north has worse health than the south. The younger you are, the most effectively class kills. Horizon: Death of the Working Classes, BBC 1988
There are five classes: Professional, Managerial, Skilled, Partly Skilled, Unskilled ... The results are shocking. ibid.
The gap has got wider. ibid.
Perhaps the value of the Longitudinal Study [1971-1975] has been to confirm the reality of the health gap between classes. ibid.