Swell (social class)

“ If there be one class which is the despair of the social reformer, it is that which is variously described, but which we may term the lost women of our streets. From the point of view of the industrial organiser, they suffer from almost every fault that human material can possess. They are, with some exceptions, untrained to labour, demoralised by a life of debauchery, accustomed to the wildest license, emancipated from all discipline but that of starvation, given to drink, and, for the most part, impaired in health. ”

“ I need not further illustrate the more special distortions of sociological belief which result from the class-bias. They may be detected in the conversations over every table, and in the articles appearing in every party-journal or professional publication. The effects here most worthy of our attention are the general effects—the effects produced on the minds of the upper and lower classes. Let us observe how greatly the sentiments and ideas generated by their respective social positions pervert the conceptions of employers and employed. We will deal with the employed first. ”

“ The problem of the social unrest must seek for its source in all three classes of society! Two classes are employer and employee, the third is the great middle class, looking on. What is the relationship between the dominating employing figure in American industrial life and the men who work? ”

“ If one of the poorer (they do not like "lower") class rises in the social scale, he or she is welcome—if one of the richer (they do not like "higher") falls, no effort is made by the class they formerly belonged to to maintain her status in order to save its dignity or repute. ”

“ In relation to this question, I would ask, "Is there anybody so high, that they do not see others above them?" The [Pg 132] working classes of this country have no social communication with the aristocracy. Every day of my life I see people who can dress better, and live in better houses, than I can afford. ”

“ It is mainly a middle-class problem, because the rich and the poor are, for reasons which I will show later in this argument, exempt in a large measure from the fatality of the Eighth Year. But all the influences at work among the middle-classes, in this strange age of intellectual disturbance, and of blind gropings forward to new social and moral conditions, have a close hearing upon this seeming mystery. ”

“ They are, at present, only within the reach of the richer classes, ardently as we may hope that the power of partaking them may be extended as rapidly and widely as possible. But the growth of luxury, in the bad sense, is the indication that the class which should act as the brain of the social organism is ceasing to discharge its functions, and becoming what we call a survival. It is a kind of moral gout—an aristocratic disease, showing that the secretions are becoming disordered for want of a proper application of the energies. ”

“ Such are the causes of poverty, organic, political, social. You may see families pass from the comfortable to the miserable class, by intemperance, idleness, wastefulness, even by feebleness of body and of mind; yet, while it is common for the rich to descend into the comfortable class, solely by lack of the eminent thrift which raised their fathers thence, or because they lack the common stimulus to toil and save, it is not common for the comfortable to fall into the pit of misery in New England, except through wickedness, through idleness, or intemperance. ”

“ He supposed the existence of a middle class of serious moral habits, imbued with the feelings of its own dignity, and having the energy necessary to govern the country without recourse to the old traditional bureaucracy. To those men, who held riches and power in their hands, he professed to teach their social duty towards their subjects. ”

“ It is the tendency of all social burdens to crush out the middle class, and to force the society into an organization of only two classes, one at each social extreme. ”

“ From that British middle-class tradition comes the individualist protestant spirit, the keen self-reliance and personal responsibility, the irresponsible expenditure, the indiscipline and mystical faith in things being managed properly if they are only let alone. “State blindness” is the natural and almost inevitable quality of a middle-class tradition, a class that has been forced neither to rule nor obey, which has been concentrated and successfully concentrated on private gain. ”

“ Since those days we have made advances in social and political freedom, and class distinctions have become less obvious. Freedom of thought has developed a greater equality of social rights; but are the poor really any better off now than they were in the days when William hunted in the New Forest? ”

“ If society were only relieved of the waste and expense of keeping a lazy class, and the equally great expense of the paraphernalia of protection this lazy class requires, the social tables would contain an abundance for all, including even the occasional lazy individual. ”

“ The great need of this class is training for domestic life—by which I do not mean domestic service. Herein lies the only effective cure for the industrial and social miseries of the poor. The children are overworked, or else allowed to spend their time in a most dangerous idleness. ”

“ An ill service was done to the working class by utterances on marriage and the family, which gave the ruling classes who keep the workers out of their rights the plea that they were maintaining the fundamental principles of social order. ”

“ That, for instance, wealth, station, talents, are the standard by which our claims upon, and our regard for, others, should be modified?—That those who are pinched by poverty, worn by disease, tasked in menial labors, or marked by features offensive to the taste of the artificial and capricious, are to be excluded from those refreshing and elevating influences which intelligence and refinement may be expected to exert; that thus they are to constitute a class by themselves, and to be made to know and keep their place at the very bottom of society? ”

“ About a century ago, after, the American and French Revolutions and the Napoleonic wars, the present industrial era opened, and brought with it a new governing class, as every considerable change in human environment must bring with it a governing class to give it expression. Perhaps, for lack of a recognized name, I may describe this class as the industrial capitalistic class, composed in the main of administrators and bankers. ”

“ The most that a working-class party could do, even if its politicians remained honest, would be to form a strong faction in the legislatures which might, by combining its vote with one side or another, win certain political or economic palliatives.
But what the working-class can do, when once they grow into a solidified organization, is to show the possessing class, through a sudden cessation of all work, that the whole social structure rests on them; that the possessions of the others are absolutely worthless to them without the workers' activity; ”

“ The healthy, well nourished and well educated class escapes, the poor, ill-nourished, and ignorant class bears the burden until this burden is shifted on society in the form of beggar, defective, imbecile or criminal. ”

“ Hence the most numerous classes, the artificers of social wealth, the active and direct creators of all comfort and luxury, will always be condemned to touch closely on poverty and hunger; they will always be the slaves to ignorance and degradation; they will continue to be always that huge herd of [63] mere beasts of burden whom we see ill-grown, decimated by disease, bowed down in the great workshop of society over the plow or over the counter, that they may prepare the delicate food, and the sumptuous enjoyments of the upper and idle classes. ”

“ Some inevitable hour shall see the universal agitation of the vast body known as the "labouring class." For the welfare of the whole world, may it not come whilst they are so ignorant and so down-pressed. ”

“ So very tender are we becoming of what we suppose to be the comfort of the poor, that we seem to be on the point of depriving them of the greatest comfort of all—personal freedom. How many members of the middle class would endure for a week the inspection and "ordering about" which our philanthropic reformers are never tired of inflicting on their poorer neighbours? ”

“ To those influences may be added, the absence of a middle class, as a connecting link between the employer and the employed; the neglect of such moral supervision on the part of the employers as might influence the character of their workmen; and the want of those institutions for the relief of moral or physical destitution—whether churches, schools, almshouses, or hospitals—which characterise our older communities. ”

“ The second Class comprehends the vagrant Poor, who are able but not willing to work, or who cannot obtain employment in consequence of their bad character. This class may be said to have descended from poverty into beggary, in which state they become objects of peculiar attention, since the State suffers not only the loss of their labour, but also of the money which they obtain by the present ill-judged mode of giving charity. ”

“ These sufferings—at least in their more tangible forms—fall almost wholly upon the poorer classes, while the richer get a larger share of the increased product which the progress brings. By sufferings I mean not only the physical hardship and liability to disease, early decay, and mutilation or death by accident, which fall to the hand-worker; but also the debasement of children by premature and stunting labor, the comparative lack of intellectual and social opportunities, the ugly and discouraging surroundings, and the insecurity of employment, to which he and his are subject. ”

“ How far they can raise the people by degrees above the degrading need of charitable or Poor Law relief, to be energetic, self-reliant, provident, and industrious, will depend upon the height of their own hope, the patience of their own labor, the moral courage which will teach them to prefer being helpful to being popular, and finally to the temper and spirit of their own homes and lives. For, say what [Pg 78] we may, if our upper class were to become extravagant, improvident, and showy, it would be aped by those below it, even though as surely it would be despised. ”

“ So in the economy of society; if there be any who suffer physical privation or [29] moral degradation, whose bodily necessities are either not satisfied or satisfied in a manner which only brutish creatures can be content with, this, though not necessarily the crime of society, is pro tanto a failure of the social arrangements. And to assert as a mitigation of the evil that those who thus suffer are the weaker members of the community, morally or physically, is to add insult to misfortune. Is weakness a justification of suffering? ”

“ Where there is not, in the people, or in some very large proportion of them, a resolute resistance to this deterioration—a determination to preserve an established standard of comfort—the condition of the poorest class sinks, even in a progressive state, to the lowest point which they will consent to endure. ”

“ The poor are inclined to suspect and dislike the classes just above them, the tradesmen. Nowhere is the moral standard more divergent than between the frugal, laborious, and rather timid assiduities of the lower middle class on the one hand, and on the other the reckless, generous, improvident life of the working peoples. ”

“ Whatever the original cause of their poverty, they cannot, being poor, work so hard, think so clearly, plan so hopefully, or resist temptation with so much steadfastness as those who have the primary means of keeping themselves in sound condition.
Moreover, the lack of adequate food, clothing and housing commonly implies other lacks, among which are poor early training and education, the absence of contact with elevating and inspiring personalities, a narrow outlook upon the world, and, in short, a general lack of social opportunity. ”

“ These people below him belonged, he learnt, to the lower middle class, the class just above the blue labourers, a class so accustomed in the Victorian period to feed with every precaution of privacy that its members, when occasion confronted them with a public meal, would usually hide their embarrassment under horseplay or a markedly militant demeanour. ”

“ With the quick discernment of the man of the world—one to whom many climes and many people were familiar—he had begun to discover for himself that this great middle class was really the backbone of the whole civil structure about him, its self-restraint, sanity, and cleanliness marking the normal in the tide-gauge of the city's activities ”

“ The young people of these households would have their boots blacked for them, their hot water and bath water carried up for them, and be waited on, before they went out to their shops or work, as one’s own children would never dream of being waited on, in a much much higher rank of life. In these households the servants have simply an awful time of it, and hence class prejudice is fostered terribly, while the unthrifty ways of the household leave their mark on all who pass through it, and help to build up a class that is in every way unsatisfactory. ”

“ Brought up to earn their subsistence as soon as is practicable, the parents are eager to cast them wholly on their own exertions: and the numerous class of young people, male and female, decently born and bred, who, in that city, live by attendance in shops, {Pg 114} by the needle, or the workman's tool, suffer much of the excess of labour and poor living to which the inferior classes in our manufacturing towns are subject. ”