V. I.

Lenin

Bourgeois society lives and subsists exclusively by the
wage labour of the millions. Failing this, neither the in comes of the
landlords, nor the profits of the capitalists, nor yet the various
derivative” sources of a life of plenty, such as royalties, salaries,
etc., would be possible. And the force which drives the millions into the
ranks of wage labourers is hunger.

This is an old, universally known, hackneyed fact. The bourgeois public
gets used to it and “does not notice” it. But from time to time glaring
cases of want and poverty side by side with luxury compel “discoveries”
to be made, particularly if the health and well-being of the bourgeois
gentlemen are endangered! Once in a while they “discover”, in every big
city and any rural backwoods, appalling, abominable squalor, want and
neglect unworthy of human beings. They “discover” them, inform the public
through the “big” newspapers, comment on the fact for a day or two, and
then forget it. The sated do not understand the hungry, Recently in St. Petersburg a Dr. Kozlovsky, who inspected 251 lodging
rooms in Rozhdestvensky District, acquainted the public with a
“discovery” of this kind.

“ Dark, damp rooms, suffocating air, squalor, people sleeping on trunks or on the floor, horrible overcrowding (3,578 tenants in
251 lodging rooms), crushed bugs on the walls—an appalling picture”
( Novoye Vremya , No. 13236).

The public health society which heard the report resolved to study the
problem, to make representations ... to ask for an investigation—i.e., it
did all it could.

A few figures from St. Petersburg statistics for 1911. The Special
Department for the Investigation and Accommodation of Paupers had 16,960
paupers entrusted to its care. Of these, 1,761 were handed over to the courts —next time they will know better than to disturb clean
people!—1,371 were sent back to their native parts (the countryside is
“accustomed” to having paupers on its hands). 1,892 remained to be cared
for in the institutions of the Department, and 9,694 were
released .

People did work hard in the Department, after all—they “investigated”; they do not get their salaries for nothing.

The same year 1911 saw 43,156 unskilled workers apply for employment to
the city labour exchange (beyond Moskovskaya Zastava). Work was found for
6,076 men.

The “released” (those freed from “care “in the case of the paupers
and from jobs in the case of unskilled labour) spend the night in the
street, in doss-houses, in lodging rooms.... They are material for
discoveries.

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