LOWERING LIFE'S LEVELS
By ONE WHO IS DOING IT
WHEN a family of normal habits and desires has lived for three years on a steady income-level, whether it be five pounds, two pounds or the twenty-five shillings allowed under the Means Test regime, it has by the end of that time adjusted itself to the opportunities and limita- tions which that weekly sum determines. For six years the domestic security and independence of myself, my wife, both just over thirty, and our son, now seven, rested upon the two pounds I brought home every Friday from the pit. We shopped within our means and went to a concert or the pictures at our pleasure. The world did as it liked beyond our door when we had closed it in the evening and taken up a book. If footsteps approached and knockings sounded, one of us left the fireside without apprehension, to welcome a friend or relative with whom we should spend an hour in cheerful, unrestrained con- versation. What was to hinder us from being contented and happy—in regular work, no debts, fifty pounds in the bank, in full benefit with the sick clubs, both insured, just as a safeguard ?
Now, after three years unemployment, our family life is again settled on an understandable level. We know what can be done with twenty-five shillings and three- pence in the winter weather, when bodies, inside and out, require extra attention. We do not chafe now at the knowledge that our luxuries stop short far below the level of where the necessities of the " comfortable and secure " begin ; it is natural now to riddle the cold ashes of the fire in order to mend it again. Maybe the wife finds cynical entertainment in metamorphosing the willing potato ; in varying round, it comes on the table boiled, roasted, mashed, in the form of " chips " or fritters. On Sunday only it is accompanied by meat bought cheaply at " closing time " on Saturday night.
Home-pride and independence left us long ago ; we lost them when we slunk back numbed and weary from our wild gropings in the frustrating fog which had cut us off from " work." In the long periods when my wife and I are together in the house, we are sensible. enough to keep up a continual conversation on topics which permit of no sliding towards the dangerous ground of our economic condition. We know how bitter outbursts are bred from chin-on-chest silences, how easy to abandon one's self to the weakness of self-pity. But this firmness is patently superficial ; beneath, dominating, enslaving -almost, • is a mighty, persisting fear. With no bank- balance behind us, insurance and pension benefits lapsed, we tremblingly wait with mental eyes closed for some hitch in the ill-regulated system to force us into we know not what. There is no social stratum below us.
The Means Investigator, that monthly reminder that we are living on charitable sufferance, is human but firm. He is a married man with children of his own ; as soon as I have signed away every secret of our domestic life he is anxious to be gone—maybe he senses the moral desolation and is eager to escape from the realization of how thin are the bounds dividing him and his from a like state. He has become the calendar of our existence ; we place events as having occurred so much time before or after his visits.
We still have friends in that other world where money is worked for, though now, when we meet, the topics of the conversation have shrunk to the less vital ones of literature and art and the subject-matter of the weekly lectures we attend. The only completely free heart- conversation is with the friends of our own race—the unemployed. We have some relations, too, in that other world who are positively unhappy because of our condi- tion. Their disturbed state of mind, however, is not conditioned altruistically ; rather is it engendered by the fear that at any moment they may be called upon to contribute from their hard-won earnings some mite which will help to keep us alive. They need not fear; there is always the river . . .
In the Transitional Benefit queue at the " Exchange " there is no moaning and groaning, no obvious hopelessness among those who have attended more than six months. Newcomers, alter their first subjection to the Means Test, wear a hunted expression and are eager to talk of the difficulties of managing on the pittance allowed, but they soon settle down like Milton's kicked-out angels, and make the best of their condition. The country need never be afraid of violence while it continues to give them the minimum of food and warmth, and soft-hearted traders offer a reasonable amount of credit. Outside in the queue they may curse add boast that " I shan't see my kids starve while there is food in So-and-So's grocery window," yet if occasion arises to bring them into the Supervisor's office they a z.e tremblingly timid and pitiably polite.
Though not yet quite cut off from the habits of normal men, they have forsaken the idea of organizing for mutual benefit ; the cry of " work " will scatter any crowd of discontents, hurrying them in all directions as the -phantom warmth of a long-lost level of existence floods -their hearts. But the general body of the seasoned unemployed heed not the unsubstantial voice ; each member knows that the only hope lies in an influential friend or the extravagant luck of a Jess Oakroyd.
Under the very noses of the evolutionists, whether they are aware of it or not, a new type of being is emerging. Eventually it will reach the steady level of its deter- -mined existence, a level as far below. man as the angels were said to be above him. These lucky creatures were intelligent and knew nothing but bliss ; this emerging type will be intelligent, but experience nothing except is mighty, enduring fear, and the sharp edges of circum- stance.. Further ahead still, the tendencies indicate that this being will degenerate into a mere insensate lump of flesh, into which a charitable system will pump a scientifically determined amount of sustenance.
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