The Road To Wigan Pier
Summary
In
the first part of this book Orwell tries to give the reader a detailed view of
the conditions of the poor and unemployed. In the first chapter of the first
part, Orwell describes the Brooker family. They belong to the so-called
'wealthy' among the poor ones. In their house, they have installed a
cheap lodging-house and a tiny shop. Both, Mr and Mrs Brooker are already
pensioners, and with the rent they get for the rooms, they can afford at least
enough to eat. The people who live in this lodging house are unmarried or very
old and also pensioners. Orwell himself spends a couple of weeks in this house
during his researches. In the second chapter he describes the life of miners.
Their working conditions are very bad, for they work underground, where it is very
hot, dusty, and where the miners have just the minimum of space. The work is
also very dangerous, the coal-miners are often handling with dynamite and the
tunnels aren't very stable. Here Orwell describes how he went down to see the
working conditions down there. He describes that the place where the coal is
dismantled is not just right at the elevator, but often lies some miles away
from it. And the tunnel is often only three to four feet high. This means that
the miners not only have to work under the hardest conditions, but also have to
'travel', this means going to the working place in the miners-jargon,
for about half an hour. Orwell who is not trained needed about one hour to get
there ('After half a mile it gets an unbearable agony', 1/2 P 23). In
the next chapter Orwell takes a look at the social situation of an average
miner. First of all he looks at the hygienic situation of the miners, for many
people believe that miners generally do not wash. But in fact only every third
has a bath or shower for the miners. The situation in the homes of the miners
is even worse. Only a couple of houses in the industrial region have bathrooms.
The rest of the coal-workers have to wash in little basin. The miners also have
very little time, although they work only seven hours a day. But actually
getting to the pit, and the travelling underground can
make up to three hours. So the average miner has about four
hours leisure time, including washing dressing and eating. Then there is
the common believe that miners get comparatively well paid, about ten to eleven
shillings a week. But this is very misleading, because only the ' coal getter' is paid at this rate, whereas for
example the 'dattler' is paid at eight to nine shilling per shift.
But one also has to look at the conditions the miners are paid at. So the
'getter' is paid for the tons he extracts. On the one hand he is
dependent on the quality of the coal, and when the machinery breaks down it may
rob him a days or two earnings. Another fact is that
miners certainly do not work six days a week. In 1936 the average earning of
the miners per shift actually was 9s 1¾d. But even this sum is just a gross earning, there are all kind of stoppages, which are deducted
from the miners wage every week. Totally this stoppages
make around 4s 5d per week.
The next
chapter deals about the housing situation in those districts. Generally all the
houses look all the same. The main problem is the housing shortage in this
region. So people are ready to accept any dirty hole, bugs, blackmailing agents
and bad landlord, just to get a roof over ones head. And as long as the housing
shortage exists the local authorities cannot do anything to make the existing
houses more liveable. The authorities can condemn a house, but they cannot pull
it down till the tenant has no other house to live in. But there is another
problem that results from this one. The landlord will surely not invest more
money that he can help in a house that is going to be pulled down in the
future. Orwell has made notes to a dozens of houses in this region, and here
are two examples: House in Wigan, near Scholesquarter: Condemned house, four
rooms (two up two down) +coal hole, walls falling to pieces, water comes into
upstairs rooms in quantities, downstairs windows will not open. Rent 6s, Rates
3s 6d total 9s 6d. House in Barnsley, Peel Street: Back to back (front house
facing street, back house facing yard), two up and two down + large cellar, all
rooms have about 10 feet square, living room very dark, gaslight at 4 ½d a day,
distance to the lavatory 70 yards (lies in the yard), four beds for eight
persons (parents, two girls one 27, young man, and three children), bugs very
bad, smell upstairs almost unbearable. Rent 5s 7½d including rates.
Another problem in these regions is, that whole rows
of houses are undermined, and the windows often are ten to twenty degrees out
of the horizontal. Because of the bad housing situation there are also
so-called 'caravan dwellers'. Only in Wigan,
which has a population of 85.000, there are about 200 caravans, which are
inhabited by about 700 people. In whole Britain there might be around ten
thousand families living in caravans. The worst thing about those caravans is
that the people who live in such a place don't even save money, because the
rent can make up to ten shillings! Despite this problems the city of Barnsley
for example built a new town hall for 150.000 £ although there is a need for
over 2000 houses, not mention pubic baths (the public baths in Barnsley contain
nineteen men's slipper baths-in a town with 70.000 inhabitants, largely miners
who have not a bath at home).
The next
chapter of The Road To Wigan Pier deals about
unemployment. In 1937 there were about two million unemployed persons. But this
number only shows how many persons are receiving the dole. One has to take this
number and multiply it with at least three, to get the number of persons
actually living on the dole. But there are a large number of people that have a
work, but from financial point of view, might as well be unemployed, because
they are not drawing anything that can be described as a living wage. Together
with the pensioners in the industrial regions that makes around fifteen million
poor and underfed people. Only in Wigan there
are around 30.000 drawing or living on the dole. So every third person in Wigan is dependent on social help. The money that the
families get varies from twenty-five to thirty shillings per week. One
organisation that helps the unemployed is the NUWM (National Unemployed
Workers Movement). This organisation helps the unemployed to
spend their time.
In the
sixth chapter of the book Orwell takes a look at the food of a family living on
the dole, or on a very low wage. Generally the food for an average family makes
fifteen shillings a week, including fuel for cooking. Of course these families
could live on even less money, but especially in the poor families one can see
the trend not to buy the cheapest, and most nutritious things, but rather to
buy something ' tasty', in order to forget
ones dull life. This trend results in general physic degeneration among the
poor people. So for example in industrial towns the mortality is at a very high
level. Another fact that can be observed is that hardly anyone, except children
of course, has his own teeth. In the next chapter Orwell criticises the
ugliness of the industrial towns (e.g.: Birmingham,
Coventry, Norwich
Market)
In the second part Orwell describes his
personal idea of socialism, and what socialism is like in England. The general idea of Orwell
is that socialism and communism are no longer movements of the working class.
This movement is lead by the middle-class. The bourgeoisie, as Orwell always
calls them. But firstly he explains how the English class-system works. In Britain
it isn't possible to determine the class of a person by simply looking at his
income. In England the tradition plays a very important part, and therefore one
can find middle-class persons with an income up to 2000£ a year, and down to
300£ a year. The things that make a middle-class person are his behaviour,
birth and profession. The people around 400£ led a life on two social levels;
so for example they had a standard of living comparable to a good situated
worker, but knew everything about good behaviour, how to give a servant a tip,
how to ride a horse, about a decent dinner, although they never could afford a
servant or a good dinner. One could say that they are struggling to live gentle
lives on what are virtually working-class incomes. So the colonies (India and
Africa) are very attractive to this social class, for the people would earn as
much as in England (if they had a job in the administration or army), and could
afford a servant and many things more and, what was most important, they could
act like big gentlemen. Another aspect of the class-system in Britain is the almost inherited
rejection of the lower classes. Orwell here tells a story of his early boyhood,
when he felt that the lower-class people are almost subhuman, that they have
coarse faces, hideous accents, gross manners, and that they hated everyone who
was not like themselves. This rejection somehow results from the time before
the first world war when it was impossible or at least
very dangerous for a well-dressed person to go trough a slum street. Whole
quarters were considerate as unsafe because of hooligans. But nevertheless the
rejection of the lower class has also some physical root. So the children of
the middle-class were always taught that the working-class smelled. And this is
obviously an impassable barrier, for no feeling of like and dislike is so fundamental as a physical feeling. Class hatred,
religious hatred, differences of education, of temperament, of intellect, even
differences of moral code can be got over; but physical repulsion cannot. But
what about those middle-class people whose views are
not reactionary but 'advanced'? Beneath his revolution mask is he so
much different from the other? Are there any changes in his habits, his taste
and his manners, his ideology, as it is called in the communistic jargon? Is
there any change at all except that he votes Labour of Communist? It can be
observed that middle-classed communist still associates with the middle-class,
still lives among the middle-classed, and his tastes are those of a bourgeoisie
person. The main thing Orwell criticises is that middle-classed communists and
Socialists often speak against their own class, but that they evidently have
the behaviour and manner of a middle-classed person. The Socialists who make propaganda
for 'proletarian solidarity' generally don't even have a lot of
contact with the class they are 'fighting for'. The only contact with
working-class that socialists generally have is only with the lower-class
intelligentsia at the divers politic workshops. Generally Orwell says that
Socialism is a nearly impossible thing.
