Charles Dickens: Carrying a Burden of Social Responsibility Essay Example

with anybody but himself.

Two men approached Scrooge and informed him that many of the poor would rather die, Scrooge replied, "If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. " (Dickens- 13) Unlike Dickens, Scrooge did not care at all about the poor and wanted no part in trying to help them or try to push for a social reform of any kind. In England at the time many of the upper class thought of the poor as "social and moral outcasts. "(Spencer) The poor were sent to poorhouses, or workhouses. A workhouse  was a place where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment.

Hover the living conditions and the employment was terrible. Inmates broke rock, ground corn by hand, picked oakum, and ground animal bones for fertilizer and manufacturing. (Spencer)  In some workhouses, "inmates assigned to bone grinding were observed gnawing the bones they were to grind. "(Spencer) In A Christmas Carol two men approached Scrooge and asked for a donation to benefit the poor. They said, "Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir. " (Dickens-12). To this Scrooge replied, "Are there no prisons?