Columbus sailed the Atlantic, the first steam engines tottered into motion, the British squares stood firm under the French guns at Waterloo, the one-eyed scoundrels of the nineteenth century praised God and filled their pockets and this is where it all led to - to labyrinthine slums and dark back kitchens with sickly, ageing people creeping round and round them like blackbeetles.

They want their money but they look on them as intruders and have a curiously watchful, jealous attitude which at bottom is a determination not to let the lodger make himself too much at home.

I have noticed that people who let lodgings nearly always hate their lodgers.The logical end of mechanical progress is to reduce the human being to something resembling a brain in a bottle. A world of rabbits ruled by stoats would be nearer the mark.

It is usual to speak of the Fascist objective as the 'beehive state', which does grave injustice to bees. As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents. But for the moment I am advocatus diaboli. The world is a raft sailing through space with, potentially, plenty of provisions for everybody… And please notice that I am arguing for Socialism, not against it. All his opinions change into their opposites at the first brush of reality. This is the inevitable fate of the sentimentalist. Our age has not been altogether a bad one to live in. It it curious how seldom the all-importance of food is recognized. There is at least a tinge of truth in that picture of Southern England as one enormous Brighton inhabited by lounge-lizards. Quotes A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role. The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) by George Orwell is a sociological look at living conditions in the industrial north of England before World War II. I have noticed that people who let lodgings nearly always hate their lodgers.

The road to wigan pier