The Camel and the Needle's Eye — Context and Discussion

ass along they can see the seats packed closely with men and women leaning against one another in an exhausted or half-drunken slumber. They can see the ragged and filthy bundles of humanity lying round the parapet at the foot of Cleopatra’s Needle, or the rows of wretched caricatures of men and women lined along the wall under the shelter of the bridges. If they go late enough, there is a strange silence which at first gives the impression that the place is deserted. But it only means that these waifs and strays, these wretched outcasts, are enjoying the few hours’ reprieve given even to them by the blessed oblivion of sleep. The moon shines on them from over the river, but no melodrama can reproduce that scene; estimates are drawn up of their number, but no statistics can give an adequate analysis; books are written on their condition, but no language can describe it. A man who sees this squalid throng for the first time must be deeply impressed, but it strikes even more anyone who sees it constantly, and he must be less than human if he can pass without a poignant pang of shame. But nine out of ten of those who do pass along will tell you these wretches only have themselves to blame, and it would be better if they could be stowed away somewhere out of sight.

This, which is only one of many similar scenes throughout the country, is not described by way of presenting a dramatic contrast, but as an integral part of the problem of riches. These nocturnal spectres of the Embankment and the knots of bedraggled starvelings at the workhouse gates are the counterpart of the millionaire, the necessary concomitant to balance and complete the picture. The shameful waste of money one end produces a shameful waste of human life the other end. One species of parasite on the social body breeds another species of parasite. They are as much a part of the train of a rich man as his butlers and gamekeepers. They are the natural, though perhaps to him invisible, consequence of his misapplied and squandered thousands. The rich must take their full share of the responsibility, because the wealth represented by growing incomes is being increasingly ill-directed and wasted, and the inevitable outcome is to aggravate the problem of unemployment, to extend still further miserable conditions of living, and to nurture a neglected class devoid of moral and physical stamina, who fall out as incompetents and wastrels in the great struggle for existence. There are some who complain of any relief from the State being given to the unemployed poor as only encouraging their continued existence; but the maintenance of the unemployed rich by those who are instrumental in producing the national wealth is a far graver question. The unemployed pauper is a deplorable, but in each case a solitary and isolated outgrowth of circumstances too strong for him to resist. Whereas the unemployed capitalist is, on account of his riches, the centrifugal point of a whole set of dynamic forces of the gravest consequence. They radiate from him, vibrate far and wide into the vital concerns of others, and continue to operate harmfully so long as he attempts to manipulate his riches single-handed. He constitutes, therefore, a social danger.

This is no place to give a picture of poverty. It has been done often enough of late years and with faithful accuracy, so that society has no excuse for ignoring the real state of affairs, though in their stampede after money they have little time to give it a passing thought. To reflect about it and speak of it is to display foolish pessimism; to describe scenes of poverty is to be guilty of sentimentality and bad taste.

And what are the prevailing sentiments of the fat parasites towards their lean colleagues? Either pity or contempt. Their whole faith and all their actions naturally breed contempt for poverty, although they make some effort to conceal it. It is quite in consonance with a belief that money makes people refined, generous, dignified, gracious, subjects of reverence and models for emulation, and that those who have no resources cannot aspire to these notable qualities. But their pity, which is the mainspring to their so-called charity and is reserved more especially for the destitute, is misplaced, and would be better applied to themselves if only they could see the true position they fill in the general design of human society.