Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/218

 sake of saving up something for life. Desiring to make myself a valuable man, I have underrated my individuality in every way possible. In order to study and not die of starvation, I have for six years in succession taught blockheads how to read and write, and had to bear a mass of abominations at the hands of various papas and mammas, who humiliated me without any constraint. Earning my bread and tea, I could not, I had not the time to earn my shoes, and I had to turn to charitable institutions with humble petitions for loans on the strength of my poverty. If the philanthropists could only reckon up how much of the spirit they kill in man while supporting the life of his body! If they only knew that each rouble they give for bread contains ninety-nine copecks worth of poison for the soul! If they could only burst from excess of their kindness and pride, which they draw from their holy activity! There is no one on earth more disgusting and repulsive than he who gives alms. Even as there is no one so miserable as he who accepts them."

The Sight of Inequality

(From "The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe")

(English novelist and pamphleteer, 1661-1731; many times imprisoned for satires upon the authorities)

I saw the world round me, one part laboring for bread, and the other part squandering in vile excess or empty pleasures, equally miserable, because the end they proposed still fled from them; for the man of pleas