Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1923-03-22
Bernard Shaw Has Very
Queer Ideas on Poverty
INTERVIEW TELLS WHY WEAK
SHOULD BE KILLED IF CIVIL
zATIoN is TO SURVIVE

aDOuSheQ, MT SudW! Inc CHoANA W
clare Blessed are the poor. Another
common aphorism is that God made
both rich and poor asked the renown
ed Fabian and dramatist.
Pat came the reply:
dislike poverty, and notice that
my feeling about it is shared to the
extent that everybody who can avoid
it does so, even at the cost of commit
ing any atrocity that is not techni-
cally criminal.
The church giving the Apostolic sue
cession and very little else to its I'M
fortunate curates (not to mention
many of it's bona fide clergymen.) nat
urally proclaims them blessed.
The aphorism that God made both
rich and poor is a lie. Naked we came
into the world and naked we go out of
it. If we chose to rob one another in
the interval, that is not Gods fault.
It might as well be said that God made
archbishops and burglars as a justifi-
cation of burglary.
In the preface to your play Major
Barbara entitled First Aid to Critics,
written in 1905, you asked with the
utmost gravity and the deepest sense
of responsibility, would not an habit
uaIly poor man do ten times less harm
as a prosperous burglar, incendiary,
ravisher or murderer to the utmost
limits of humanity's comparatively
negligible impulses in these directions
than by Lying contentedly in his
poverty? Do you still hold this view?
YES"
In the preface to Major Barbara you
also wrote Suppose we were to abol-
ish all penalties for such activities,
and decide that poverty is the one
thing we will not tolerate-that every
adult with less than, say $50 pounds
a year, shall be painlessly but inexor-
ably killed, and every hungry half
naked child forcibly fattened and
clothed, would not that be an enor-
nous improvement on our existing
system, which has already destroyed
so many civilizations, and is visibly
destroying ours in the same way?
Can you improve on this PROPOSE
ton?
No. Why not ask me Why influen-
"a should be avoided? or Why He'll
oho,,I5 ~ oovc,dov,od &c q N ,,udociro h q
residence, as inquire Why poverty
must be abolished?
Security; the chief pretence Of civil
lization, cannot exist where the worst
of dangers, the danger of poverty,
hangs over everyone's head, and
where the alleged protection of our
persons from violence is only the ac-
cidental result of police force whose
real business is to force the poor man
to see his children starve whilst idle
people spend fortunes in killing
themselves with drugs and overfeed
pet dogs with the money that might
feed and clothe them.
There is nothing to be compared,
not even the thoughtless wickedness
which inspired and brought about the
war, to the stupid levity with which
we tolerate poverty as if it were either
wholesome tonic for lazy people OF
else a virtue to be embraced as St
Francis embraced it. If man is in
dolent let him be poor. If he is addict
ed to the fine arts or to pure science
instead of to trade and finance, let
him be poor. If ne is not gentleman
let him be poor. If he chooses to
spend his urban war time wage of 2
pounds a week or his agricultural
twenty-five 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 undeserv
ing. let him be poor. Serve him right
Also-somewhat inconsistently-
blessed are the poor
Now what does this let him be poor
mean? 1t means let him be weak, lei
him be ignorant, let him become &
nucleus of disease. Let him be stand
ing exhibition and example of ugliness
and dirt Let him have rickety chill
dren. Let him be cheap and let hin
drag his fellows down to his price by
selling himself to do their work. Lei
his habitations turn our cities into poi
sonous congeries of slums Let his
daughters infect our young men with
the diseases of the streets and his
sons revenge him by turning the ma
TONS manhood into scrofula, coward
ice, cruelty, hypocrisy, political imbe
cility, and all the other fruits of op
pFession and malnhtrition. Let the
undeserving become still less deserv
ing; and let the deserving lay up fol
himself, not treasures in Heaven, bur
horrors in He'll upon earth. This being
so, is it really wise to let him be poor
The march of events has not caused
Shaw to change his opinions.-By
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
'' r-o II