To commemorate the 75th anniversary of George Orwell's death, The New Statesman has published two essays by the author of 1984 and Animal Farm.
The special opens with "Hop-picking," Orwell's 1931 piece documenting his experience working in Kent's hop fields. Far from the "holiday with pay" some claimed it to be, Orwell reveals the brutal economic reality: "As far as wages go, no worse employment exists." He details how the piece-work system exploits workers through unfair measurement practices and arbitrary rules that "reduce [the picker] practically to a slave: "One rule, for instance, empowers a farmer to sack his employees on any pretext whatever, and in doing so to confiscate a quarter of their earnings: and the picker's earnings are also docked if he resigns his job."
In his 1932 piece on common lodging houses, Orwell describes the "disgusting" conditions in these facilities, which housed tens of thousands of London's poorest residents. Despite being "subject to constant inspection by the LCC [London County Council]," these establishments remained "murky, troglodytic caves" where men slept on "beds a good deal inferior to those in a London casual ward… As often as not the beds are verminous, and the kitchens invariably swarm with cockroaches or black beetles. There are no baths, of course, and no room where any privacy is attainable. These are the normal and accepted conditions in all ordinary lodging houses."
The essays are illustrated with a portrait of Orwell by Ralph Steadman.
Previously:
• George Orwell on the real meaning of Animal Farm: get rid of the pigs
• Orwell's review of Mein Kampf
• Orwell's ill-tempered rant on bookselling
• George Orwell's letter from his former French teacher, Aldous Huxley, about Nineteen Eighty-Four
• Unhappy birthday, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four!
• Kafka, meet Orwell: Lavabit's founder explains why he shut down his company
• Kafka, meet Orwell: peek behind the scenes of the modern surveillance state
