She walked alone—with God.
I met her in the city street;
Oh, changed her aspect then!
With heavy eyes and weary feet
She walked alone—with men.
Preface to “Major Barbara”
By G. Bernard Shaw
(Irish dramatist and critic, born 1856; recognized as one of the world’s most brilliant advocates of Socialism)
The thoughtless wickedness with which we scatter sentences of imprisonment, torture in the solitary cell and on the plank bed, and flogging, on moral invalids and energetic rebels, is as nothing compared to the stupid levity with which we tolerate poverty as if it were either a wholesome tonic for lazy people or else a virtue to be embraced as St. Francis embraced it. If a man is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let him be poor. If he is not a gentleman, let him be poor. If he is addicted to the fine arts or to pure science instead of to trade and finance, let him be poor. If he chooses to spend his urban eighteen shillings a week or his agricultural thirteen shillings a week on his beer and his family instead of saving it up for his old age, let him be poor. Let nothing be done for “the undeserving”: let him be poor. Serves him right! Also—somewhat inconsistently—blessed are the poor!