George Orwell

Excerpt from The Road to Wigan Pier The Road to Wigan Pier was first published in England in 1937. It was commissioned by the Left Book Club, which flourished in the thirties. The aim of the club, according to one of its brochures, which reﬂects the temper of the time, was to help in the terribly urgent struggle for World Peace a better social economic order against Fascism, by giving (to all who are determined to play their part in this struggle) such knowledge as will immensely increase their efficiency. Members of the club received each month a book se lected by a board of editors made up of Victor Gollancz, Harold Laski, and John Strachey. The book selected was issued in a special format and sold to members at the low price of two shillings Sixpence. In 1937 the club claimed more than members. The board of editors asked George Orwell to write a documentary report on conditions among the unem ployed in the north of England. He carried out this assignment, though he wrote about people who were still working as well as about the unemployed. In the latter part of the book, however, he went on to discuss, from his own Socialist but highly individual point of View, what he considered to be wrong with Socialism and Socialists. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The Road to Wigan Pier (Classic Reprint)

Daniel Bower

What we have lost in food we have gained in electricity… in cheap luxuries which mitigate the surface of life.

I would love to find a source for this gramophone claim. An early example of a "killer acquisition" as it gets called in economics parlance.

Given a mechanical civilization the process of invention and improvement will always continue, but the tendency of capitalism is to slow it down, because under capitalism any invention which does not promise fairly immediate profits is neglected; some, indeed, which threaten to reduce profits are suppressed almost as ruthlessly as the flexible glass mentioned by Petronius.

For example: Some years ago someone invented a gramophone needle that would last for decades. One of the big gramophone companies bought up the patent rights, and that was the last that was ever heard of it.

The Road to Wigan Pier (Classic Reprint) quotes

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