down and out in paris and london by george orwell

If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately.

By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. In all the modem talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except 'Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it'? Money has become the grand test of virtue. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised?-for they are despised, universally. I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets him in a different class from other people, or gives most modern men the right to despise him. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout-in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. It is a trade like any other quite useless, of course-but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc.

An accountant works by adding up figures. Beggars do not work, it is said but, then, what is WORK? A navvy works by swinging a pick. Yet if one looks closely one sees that there is no ESSENTIAL difference between a beggar's livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. He is a mere social excrescence, tolerated because we live in a humane age, but essentially despicable. It is taken for granted that a beggar does not 'earn' his living, as a bricklayer or a literary critic 'earns' his. Working men 'work', beggars do not 'work' they are parasites, worthless in their very nature. They are a race apart-outcasts, like criminals and prostitutes. People seem to feel that there is some essential difference between beggars and ordinary 'working' men. “It is worth saying something about the social position of beggars, for when one has consorted with them, and found that they are ordinary human beings, one cannot help being struck by the curious attitude that society takes towards them.

Down and out in paris and london by george orwell