What to Do? Thoughts Evoked By the Census of MoscowTolstoy, Leo, graf
Philosophy
What to Do? Thoughts Evoked By the Census of Moscow
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Moscow (Russia) -- Social conditions; Social problems
Not only this; but, on taking a survey of our life, of the life of the
wealthy, I saw that every thing which is considered desirable in that
life consists in, or is inseparably bound up with, the idea of getting as
far away from the poor as possible. In fact, all the efforts of our
well-endowed life, beginning with our food, dress, houses, our
cleanliness, and even down to our education,—every thing has for its
chief object, the separation of ourselves from the poor. In procuring
this seclusion of ourselves by impassable barriers, we spend, to put it
mildly, nine-tenths of our wealth. The first thing that a man who was
grown wealthy does is to stop eating out of one bowl, and he sets up
crockery, and fits himself out with a kitchen and servants. And he feeds
his servants high, too, so that their mouths may not water over his
dainty viands; and he eats alone; and as eating in solitude is wearisome,
he plans how he may improve his food and deck his table; and the very
manner of taking his food (dinner) becomes a matter for pride and vain
glory with him, and his manner of taking his food becomes for him a means
of sequestering himself from other men. A rich man cannot think of such
a thing as inviting a poor man to his table. A man must know how to
conduct ladies to table, how to bow, to sit down, to eat, to rinse out
the mouth; and only rich people know all these things. The same thing
occurs in the matter of clothing. If a rich man were to wear ordinary
clothing, simply for the purpose of protecting his body from the cold,—a
short jacket, a coat, felt and leather boots, an under-jacket, trousers,
shirt,—he would require but very little, and he would not be unable, when
he had two coats, to give one of them to a man who had none. But the
rich man begins by procuring for himself clothing which consists entirely
of separate pieces, and which is fit only for separate occasions, and
which is, therefore, unsuited to the poor man. He has frock-coats,
vests, pea-jackets, lacquered boots, cloaks, shoes with French heels,
garments that are chopped up into bits to conform with the fashion,
hunting-coats, travelling-coats, and so on, which can only be used under
conditions of existence far removed from poverty. And his clothing also
furnishes him with a means of keeping at a distance from the poor. The
same is the case, and even more clearly, with his dwelling. In order
that one may live alone in ten rooms, it is indispensable that those who
live ten in one room should not see it. The richer a man is, the more
difficult is he of access; the more porters there are between him and
people who are not rich, the more impossible is it to conduct a poor man
over rugs, and seat him in a satin chair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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