‘Well, the vicar goes about telling the Idlers that it’s quite right for them to do nothing, and that God meant them to have nearly everything that is made by those who work. In fact, he tells them that God made the poor for the use of the rich. Then he goes to the workers and tells them that God meant them to work very hard and to give all the good things they make to those who do nothing, and that they should be very thankful to God and to the idlers for being allowed to have even the very worst food to eat and the rags, and broken boots to wear. He also tells them they mustn’t grumble, or be discontented because they’re poor in this world, but that they must wait till they’re dead, and then God will reward them by letting them go to a place called heaven.’ ibid. mother to son
In consequence of living in this manner, you will die at least twenty years sooner than is natural, or, should you have an unusually strong constitution and live after you cease to be able to work, you will be put into a kind of jail and treated like a criminal for the remainder of your life. ibid. Owen
Well, we’re all living in a house called the Money System; and as a result most of us are suffering from a disease called poverty. There’s so much the matter with the present system that it’s no good tinkering at it. Everything about it is wrong and there’s nothing about it that’s right. There’s only one thing to be done with it and that is to smash it up and have a different system altogether. We must get out of it. ibid.
The majority work hard and live in poverty in order that the minority may live in luxury without working at all, and as the majority are mostly fools, they not only agree to pass their lives in incessant slavery and want, in order to pay this rent to those who own the country, but they say it is quite right that they should have to do so, and are very grateful to the little minority for allowing them to remain in the country at all. ibid.
And now this had happened – to plunge them back into that abyss of wretchedness from which they had so recently escaped. They still owed several weeks’ rent, and were already so much in debt to the baker and the grocer that it was useless to expect any further credit. ibid.
An evil-minded worldly or unconverted person might possibly sum up the matter thus: These people required this work done: they employed this woman to do it, taking advantage of her poverty to impose upon her conditions of price and labour they would not have liked to endure themselves. Although she worked very hard, early and late, the money they paid her as wages was insufficient to enable her to provide herself with the bare necessities of life. Then her employers, being good, kind, generous, Christian people, came to the rescue and bestowed charity, in the form of cast-off clothing and broken victuals. ibid.
They did not think they were entitled to a fair share of the good things they helped to create! ibid.
But the kind Capitalist told them not to be insolent, and spoke to them about honesty, and said if they were not careful he would have their faces battered in for them by the police, or if necessary he would call out the military and have them shot down like dogs, the same as he had done before at Featherstone and Belfast. ibid.
‘This is a bloody life, ain’t it?’ Harlow said, bitterly. ‘Workin’ our guts out like a lot of slaves for the benefit of other people, and then as soon as they’ve done with you, you’re chucked aside like a dirty rag.’ ibid.
As he grows older he will have to be content with even less; and all the time he holds his employment at the caprice and by favour of his masters, who regard him merely as a piece of mechanism that enables them to accumulate money – a thing which they are justified in casting aside as soon as it becomes unprofitable. And the working-man must not only be an efficient money-making machine, but he must also be the servile subject of his masters. ibid.
To allow one’s child to grow up to suffer it in turn was a callous, criminal cruelty. ibid.
He had been working like a slave all his life and there was nothing to show for it – there was never anything to show for it. He thought of the man who had killed his wife and children. The jury had returned the usual verdict, ‘Temporary Insanity’. It never occurred to these people that the truth was that to continue to suffer hopelessly like this was evidence of permanent insanity. ibid.
Most of them were artisans and labourers out of employment and evidently in no hurry to go home. Some of them had neither tea nor fire to go to, and stayed away from home as long as possible so as not to be compelled to look upon the misery of those who were waiting for them there. Others hung about hoping against all probability that they might even yet – although it was so late – hear of some job to be started somewhere or other. ibid.
They had been so busy running after work, and working for the benefit of others, that they had overlooked the fact that they were only earning a bare living for themselves and now, after forty years’ hard labour, the old man was clothed in rags and on the verge of destitution. ibid.
This made 40 hours a week, so that those who were paid sevenpence an hour earned £1.3.4. Those who got sixpence-halfpenny drew £1.1.8. Those whose wages were fivepence an hour were paid the princely sum of 16/8d, for their week’s hard labour, and those whose rate was fourpence-halfpenny ‘picked up’ 15/-. ibid.
They don’t have to buy him; all they have to do is to give him enough money to provide him with food and clothing – of a kind – while he is working for them. If they only make him ill, they will not have to feed him or provide him with medical care while he is laid up. He will either go without these things or pay for them himself. ibid.
He is a Free man. He is the Heir of all the Ages. He enjoys perfect Liberty. He has the right to choose freely which he will do – Submit or Starve. Eat dirt, or eat nothing. ibid.
To be rich consists not necessarily in having much money, but in being able to enjoy an abundance of the things that are made by work; and that poverty consists not merely in being without money, but in being short of the necessities and comforts of life – or in other words in being short of the Benefits of Civilisation, the things that are all, without exception, produced by work. ibid. Owen
Who advocates taking all the money in the country and sharing it out equally? ibid.
If all the money were distributed equally amongst all the people tomorrow, it would all be up in heaps again in a very short time. But that only proves that while the present Money System remains, it will be impossible to do away with poverty, for heaps in some places man little or nothing in other places. ibid.
Plenty of materials – Plenty of Labour – Plenty of Machinery – and, nearly everybody going short of nearly everything! ibid.
All these people are suffering from the delusion that it doesn’t matter what kind of work they do – of whether they merely do nothing – so long as they get money for doing it. ibid.
‘I mean this,’ replied Owen, speaking very slowly, ‘Everything is produced by the people .. in return for their work they are given – Money and the things they have made become the property of the people who do nothing. Then, as the money is of no use, the workers go to shops and give it away in exchange for some of the things they themselves have made.’ ibid.
‘There are the wretches who cause poverty: they not only devour or waste or hoard the things made by the worker, but as soon as their own wants are supplied – they compel the workers to cease working and prevent them producing the things they need. Most of these people!’ cried Owen, his usually pale face flushing red and his eyes shining with sudden anger, ‘most of these people do not deserve to be called human beings at all!’ ibid.
‘This systematic robbery has been going on for generations, the value of the accumulated loot is enormous, and all of it, all the wealth at present in the possession of the rich, is rightly the property of the working class – it has been stolen from them by means of the Money Trick ...’ ibid.
The little work that remained to be done they did in silence, every man oppressed by the same terror – the dread of the impending want, the privation and unhappiness that they knew they and their families would have to suffer during the next few months. ibid.
This is how the working classes are robbed. Although their incomes are the lowest, they are compelled to buy the most expensive articles – that is, the lowest-priced articles. ibid.
The ‘Pandorama’ consisted of a stage-front made of painted cardboard and fixed on the front of a wooden box about three feet long by two feet six inches high, and about one foot deep from back to front. The ‘Show’ was a lot of pictures cut out of illustrated weekly papers and pasted together, end to end, so as to form a long strip or ribbon. Bert had coloured all the pictures with water-colours.
Just behind the wings of the stage-front at each end of the box – was an upright roller, and the long strip of pictures was rolled up on this ... ‘Our next picture is called ‘An Englishman’s ’ome’. ’Ere we see the inside of another room in Slumtown, with the father and mother and four children sitting down to dinner – bread and drippin’ and tea. It says underneath the pitcher that there’s Thirteen millions of people in England always on the verge of starvation. ibid.
‘Here we see another unemployment procession’ continued Bert as he rolled another picture into sight; ‘2,000 able-bodied who are not allowed to work … Ere we see a lot of small boys about twelve and thirteen years old being served out with their Labour Stiffcats.’ ibid.
It being now what is usually called the festive season – possibly because at this period of the year a greater number of people are suffering from hunger and cold that at any other time. ibid.
Most of the money she earned went to pay the rent, and sometimes there was only two or three shillings left to buy food for all of them; sometimes not even so much, because although she had Plenty of Work she was not always able to do it. There were times when the strain of working the machine was unendurable: her shoulders ached, her arms became cramped, and her eyes pained so that it was impossible to continue. ibid.
He paid the money at once; half an hour afterwards the van came to take the things away, and when they were gone, Mary sank down on the hearthrug in the wrecked room and sobbed as if her heart would break. ibid.
They felt the loss of the bedclothes more than anything else, for although all the clothes they wore during the day, and all the old clothes and dresses in the house and even an old coloured table cloth, were put on the beds at night, they did not compensate for the blankets, and they were often unable to sleep on account of the intense cold. ibid.