Work record

The Road to Wigan Pier

George Orwell

1937 · Early 20th Century · Essays · English

Copyrightedmedium medical relevanceFive-minute digest

Abstract

Written: Published March 1937
Setting: Early 1936; Wigan, Sheffield and Barnsley in northern England
Author: George Orwell
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Genre: Social reportage and political essay
Form: Book in two parts
Recommended: Grades 10–12 (Frank descriptions of squalor; polemical politics.)

Commission. A left-wing publisher sent the author to report on unemployment in the industrial north during the Depression.

Part I. He describes a filthy lodging over a tripe shop, the brutal labor of miners crawling to the coal face, overcrowded housing, poor diet and the humiliation of the household means test.

Part II. He turns to autobiography, describing the class snobbery he learned as a boy and his years as a police officer in Burma.

Argument. He claims that reform is the only answer to poverty but that its middle-class champions alienate ordinary people with crankiness and love of machines.

Reception. The publisher added a foreword disowning parts of the argument.

For students. Part I is outstanding reportage. Weigh the political conclusions in Part II against Christian teaching on work and the poor. The reporting rests on lodgings with working families, visits to mines and meetings, and pages of figures on wages, rents and household budgets. The Left Book Club edition of 1937 stays in US copyright through 2032, so the Wigan, Sheffield and Barnsley chapters appear here only as summary; read the figures and the mine descent in a library copy.

Key figures

George Orwell: author and observer
The Brookers: lodging-house keepers
Victor Gollancz: publisher
The miners: subjects of Part I

Portrait of George Orwell. Source · Public domain

Summary

The Road to Wigan Pier is George Orwell's report on working-class life in the industrial north of England during the Depression, followed by a personal argument about class and socialism. In early 1936 the Left Book Club's publisher, Victor Gollancz, commissioned Orwell to investigate unemployment in Lancashire and Yorkshire. In Part I Orwell describes what he saw in Wigan, Sheffield and Barnsley. He begins in a squalid lodging house above a tripe shop run by the Brookers, where dirt and meanness fill every corner. He goes down a coal mine and describes the miners crawling for miles bent double to reach the coal face, then working in heat and dust: our whole civilization, he says, rests on their labor. He studies housing, with its overcrowded back-to-back houses, slums and new council estates; diet, showing why the poor eat white bread and tinned food rather than healthy food; and the effects of unemployment and the means test on families' dignity. Part II is an essay on class and socialism. Orwell describes his own 'lower-upper-middle-class' upbringing, the snobbery he learned, including the belief that 'the lower classes smell', and how his time in Burma made him hate imperialism and want to escape class. He argues that socialism is the only answer to poverty, but that it is unpopular because many of its advocates are cranks and intellectuals who love machines and planning more than people. He calls for a socialism rooted in justice and common decency. Gollancz added a foreword distancing the Left Book Club from Part II. Orwell lodged with working families, attended meetings of the unemployed, and filled notebooks with figures on wages, rents and household budgets, which give the book its weight. The book is valuable for its vivid reportage and its honesty about class prejudice; Christian readers can engage its concern for the poor while weighing its political conclusions. The 1937 book stays in US copyright through 2032, so its mining and housing descriptions are summarized, not quoted.

Virtues in this work

Justice: Orwell pleads for justice for workers.
Humility: He confesses his own class prejudice.

Plot or Argument

Part I, Chapter 1: The Brookers' lodging house
Orwell describes squalid lodgings in Wigan.
Part I, Chapter 2: Down the mine
He describes coal miners' labor underground in vivid detail.
Part I, Chapters 3-7: Housing, diet and unemployment
He surveys living conditions in the north.
Part II, Chapters 8-13: Class and socialism
He analyzes his own class prejudice and the failures of socialists.

Lessons

The hidden labor of the miners
Orwell shows that comfortable lives depend on dangerous work.
- What does Orwell see in the mine?
- Whose hidden labor supports us?
Related across the library
- Rerum Novarum, Medical lens
  The encyclical is a document in the history of occupational health as much as of economics. In its section on the State's duties Leo argues that hours must be measured by the worker's health and strength, that miners and quarrymen should work shorter hours because their labor is more trying to health, that the season of the year matters, and that children should not enter workshops and factories until body and mind are sufficiently developed. He compares premature toil to rough weather that destroys the buds of...
- Down and Out in Paris and London, Lesson: Hidden labor
  Hidden labor. Diners never see the kitchens that serve them.
- The Wealth of Nations, Lesson: Specialization multiplies what labour can produce
  Specialization multiplies what labour can produce. The pin factory shows that dividing a task among many hands multiplies output far beyond what the same people could make alone. Smith traces much of the difference between rich and poor nations to how far this division has gone, and how far markets allow it to go.
- Capital, Volume I, Lesson: Evidence from the factory
  Evidence from the factory. Capital draws heavily on official reports of long hours, child labour and dangerous conditions in Victorian industry, and on the Factory Acts that limited them. These chapters are among the most vivid historical documents of the Industrial Revolution.
- The Commonwealth of Oceana, Lesson: Divide and choose
  Divide and choose. Two girls sharing a cake show the secret of a just commonwealth: if one divides and the other chooses, the divider has every reason to be fair. Harrington builds his constitution on this idea, giving a senate of the wise the power to propose and the people the power to decide.
Class prejudice
Orwell confesses his own class snobbery as a step toward honesty.
- What prejudices does he admit?
- How does Galatians 3:28 answer them?
Related across the library
- Rerum Novarum, The duties of the State, on children and women
  Children not to be put to factory work before their bodies and minds are developed; work to be suited to sex and age.
- Chartism, Lesson: Prejudice inside a plea for justice
  Prejudice inside a plea for justice. Chapter IV pleads for the starving and admits England's long guilt toward Ireland, yet it describes the Irish in degrading terms and even writes that they must be 'improved a little, or else exterminated.' Teach the passage directly: an argument for justice can carry contempt for the very people it concerns, and readers must notice both. Measure Carlyle's words against his own claim that every 'Sanspotatoe' has an immortal soul.
- The Twelve Caesars, Lesson: Biography can make the body political
  Biography can make the body political. Suetonius repeatedly treats appearance, appetite, illness and sexual behavior as signs of rule. The work teaches how ancient political judgment often passed through bodily anecdote.
- The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Lesson: One person's spending is another's income
  One person's spending is another's income. The multiplier rests on a simple observation: when a firm spends on a new factory, the builders spend their wages, and so on in diminishing rounds. Keynes uses it to argue that a fall in investment can shrink income far more than its own size. The idea changed how governments thought about depressions.
- Ruth, Chapter Ii
  any inquiries about her daughter whose illness it was understood although its severity was mitigated was likely to be long and tedious While all the feelings and thoughts relating to Jenny were predominant Sunday arrived Mrs Mason went the accustomed visit to her father's making some little show of apology to Mrs Wood for leaving her and her daughter the apprentices dispersed to the various friends with whom they were in the habit of spending the day and Ruth went to St Nicholas' with a sorrowful heart depressed...
Decency in politics
He argues that political movements must be grounded in justice and decency.
- Why does Orwell criticize socialists?
- Do you agree?
Related across the library
- The Wealth of Nations, Lesson: Specialization multiplies what labour can produce
  Specialization multiplies what labour can produce. The pin factory shows that dividing a task among many hands multiplies output far beyond what the same people could make alone. Smith traces much of the difference between rich and poor nations to how far this division has gone, and how far markets allow it to go.
- Bleak House, Lesson: Jo and the question of who is responsible
  Jo and the question of who is responsible. Jo is told everywhere to move on, and no institution takes responsibility for him. The fever he carries from Tom-all-Alone's reaches Bleak House itself. His death, with Woodcourt teaching him the Lord's Prayer, ends with the narrator turning directly to the nation's rulers and its Christians.
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Lesson: A person reaches as far as memory and consciousness reach
  A person reaches as far as memory and consciousness reach. Locke separates the human organism from the person, an accountable self constituted by consciousness of past actions. This makes identity a question of psychological continuity, with direct consequences for punishment and responsibility.
- The House of the Dead, Lesson: Punishment and cruelty
  Punishment and cruelty. The narrator condemns flogging and the corrupting power of executioners.
- Homer Price, Summary
  Homer Price is a book of six connected comic stories about a resourceful Ohio boy and the small town of Centerburg. Homer lives two miles outside town at a tourist camp, where his father runs the filling station and his mother looks after the cabins and cooks in the lunch room. His hobby is building radios, and he keeps a pet skunk named Aroma. In "The Case of the Sensational Scent," Homer's new homemade radio brings news of a robbery. Walking through the woods next day, he smells bacon and finds four robbers ca...

Context

Commissioned by Victor Gollancz for the Left Book Club after Orwell's visits to the north in early 1936.

Composition

Published in March 1937 by Gollancz, with a foreword distancing the club from Part II.

Reception

An influential work of social reportage, admired for Part I and debated for Part II.

Class / Society Money Wealth Justice Law Technology Modernity Power / Politics Illness / Body

Comparisons

Down and Out in Paris and London
Orwell's earlier report on poverty.
Hard Times
Dickens's novel of a northern industrial town.
North and South
Gaskell's novel of northern mill life.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

The Brookers' lodging house.
The descent into the mine.
Orwell's account of his own class.
His critique of socialists.

Key terms and names

Means test: Inspection of household income before unemployment relief.
Left Book Club: Publisher's club for left-wing books.
Back-to-back houses: Terraced houses sharing a rear wall.
Wigan Pier: A canal wharf; a music-hall joke.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension What did Orwell see in the mine?
Comprehension What is the means test?
Interpretation Why does Orwell describe the Brookers in detail?
Interpretation What prejudices does he confess?
Interpretation Why does he think socialism is unpopular?
Big Question What does justice require for workers?

Faith Connections

James 5:4 (Scripture)
The wages of laborers kept back cry out.
Galatians 3:28 (Scripture)
There is neither bond nor free; a rebuke to class pride.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Industrial civilization rests on the hidden suffering of workers, and only a decent, just reform can answer it.

Rhetorical device: concrete detail. Orwell argues through precise physical description.

Debate: Resolved: that Part II weakens the book.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Explain how Orwell makes readers feel the reality of poverty.

Comparison with Hard Times: Compare Orwell's Wigan with Dickens's Coketown.

Medical Lens

Orwell documents slum housing, poor diet and occupational disease among miners.

Public Health Sanitation Starvation Nutrition Tuberculosis Consumption

Part I, Ch. 2
Physical toll of mining.
Public Health Sanitation
Part I, Ch. 6
The diet of the unemployed.
Starvation Nutrition

Creative Prompts

Essay
Is Part II a fair critique of socialists?
Classroom
Compare coal mining in 1936 with mining today.
Fiction
Write a miner's account of a day underground.