I read this article this morning
about opinions about poor people - generally not very generous! Some nasty statistics emerge:
76% of people in his country believe that everyone should be able to afford their utility bills
74% believe everyone should be able to afford to eat a balanced diet.
What’s so nasty about that? I imagine people asking. Well, it suggests that 25% think that some people should go hungry and cold.
55% say everyone should be able to afford a television - which again implies that quite a lot of folk don’t think that’s the case.
And so it goes on. We seem to be quite mean on the whole.
Personally I can think of worse things to do without than television - so long as well-stocked libraries stay open! And I would like to keep my music. But I do recognise that that might be just me and that there are famous personalities I’ve never heard of and other things related to shows I have never watched. Yes! I am a bit of a TV snob!
Anyway, the closing paragraph of the article, reflecting on the fact that everyone deserves have some good things in their life, includes this sentence: “After all, life is not just about bread, but roses too.”
So I followed the link to the reference to roses and came eventually to this poem:
Bread and Roses
As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing, "Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses."
As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men—
For they are women's children and we mother them again.
Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes—
Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses.
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread;
Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew—
Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too.
As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days—
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes—
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.
— James Oppenheim, 1911.
James Oppenheim, I discovered, was inspired to write his poem (first published in The American Magazine in December 1911, with the attribution line "'Bread for all, and Roses, too'—a slogan of the women in the West”) by the words of American women’s suffrage activist Helen Todd, in a speech on the condition of working women. She in turn seems to have got her inspiration from a young hired girl whose family she stayed with overnight during her campaign. The girl told her that what she had liked the most about the speeches the night before: "It was that about the women votin' so's everybody would have bread and flowers too." And so Bread and Roses became a political slogan.
The poem has been translated into other languages and has been set to music by at least three composers. There you go!
The less fortunate, aka the poor, have always been criticised for spending money on non-essentials - beer, cigarettes, television, days out. It’s all very well to say we should live within our means but we need to be sure those means allow everyone to live above the old workhouse standard. Surely we should have made progress since 1911!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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