1984 - Planet eBook

In the old days (it ran), before the glorious Revolution,London was not the beautiful city that we know today. Itwas a dark, dirty, miserable place where hardly anybodyhad enough to eat and where hundreds and thousands ofpoor people had no boots on their feet and not even a roof tosleep under. Children no older than you had to work twelvehours a day for cruel masters who flogged them with whipsif they worked too slowly and fed them on nothing but stalebreadcrusts and water. But in among all this terrible povertythere were just a few great big beautiful houses that werelived in by rich men who had as many as thirty servants tolook after them. These rich men were called capitalists. Theywere fat, ugly men with wicked faces, like the one in thepicture on the opposite page. You can see that he is dressed ina long black coat which was called a frock coat, and a queer,shiny hat shaped like a stovepipe, which was called a top hat.This was the uniform of the capitalists, and no one else wasallowed to wear it. The capitalists owned everything in theworld, and everyone else was their slave. They owned all theland, all the houses, all the factories, and all the money. Ifanyone disobeyed them they could throw them into prison, orthey could take his job away and starve him to death. Whenany ordinary person spoke to a capitalist he had to cringe andbow to him, and take off his cap and address him as ‘Sir’. Thechief of all the capitalists was called the King, and——But he knew the rest of the catalogue. There would bemention of the bishops in their lawn sleeves, the judges intheir ermine robes, the pillory, the stocks, the treadmill, the