Page 140 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

ment. But they do not think, because they have no leisure
for it; their life has made slaves of them.
The question is, why does this slavery continue? People
have a way of taking it for granted that all work is done for
a sound purpose. They see somebody else doing a disagree-
able job, and think that they have solved things by saying
that the job is necessary. Coal-mining, for example, is hard
work, but it is necessary—we must have coal. Working in the
sewers is unpleasant, but somebody must work in the sew-
ers. And similarly with a PLONGEUR’S work. Some people
must feed in restaurants, and so other people must swab
dishes for eighty hours a week. It is the work of civilization,
therefore unquestionable. This point is worth considering.
Is a PLONGEUR’S work really necessary to civilization?
We have a feeling that it must be ‘honest’ work, because it
is hard and disagreeable, and we have made a sort of fetish
of manual work. We see a man cutting down a tree, and we
make sure that he is filling a social need, just because he
uses his muscles; it does not occur to us that he may only be
cutting down a beautiful tree to make room for a hideous
statue. I believe it is the same with a PLONGEUR. He earns
his bread in the sweat of his brow, but it does not follow that
he is doing anything useful; he may be only supplying a lux-
ury which, very often, is not a luxury.
As an example of what I mean by luxuries which are not
luxuries, take an extreme case, such as one hardly sees in
Europe. Take an Indian rickshaw puller, or a gharry pony.
In any Far Eastern town there are rickshaw pullers by the
hundred, black wretches weighing eight stone, clad in loin-

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