The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
(Robert Tressell)
This book should be on the National Curriculum for showing what life
would be like without benefits from the state, and for showing why
people are the way they are over money and jobs. A course in economics
and socialism set as a novel, it follows the struggles to survive on
near starvation wages of a group of Painters and Decorators in the
early twentieth century Set in Mugsborough which is really Hastings in
about 1906, it follows Owen an enlightened worker and Barrington a
painter who has come done in the world as they tell their workmates
about the system that is grinding them down. The Great Money Trick
whereby the working class do most of the work but receive hardly any of
the produce. The book advocates self help and not accepting your
downtrodden lot, if not hinting at helping yourself if you have to. It
blames competition and greed and also their fellow suffers for
perpetuating the system. It even hints at the beginnings of the United
Nations and how there should be no more wars and commercial
exploitation. Christianity comes in for a good bashing aswell for being
hypocrites and taking yet more money from the people who have hardly
any to eat anyway. Their wives suffer and the children grow up
undernourished and the whole system starts grinding to a halt with
unemployment and the workhouse for some of them, but there is light at
the end of the tunnel when Barrington gets a situation and saves the
others from the terrors of the future and with co-operatives and the
glorious rise of socialism on the horizon.
Resumos Relacionados
- How To Make Millions Ia A Day!!!
- Retire Rich Retire Young
- Manifesto Of The Communist Party
- Unemployment
- Rich Dad, Poor Dad
|
|
