My entire possessions consisted of five dollars and a small hand-bag. My sewing-machine, which was to help me to independence, I had checked as baggage. Ignorant of the distance from West Forty-second Street to the Bowery, where my aunt lived, and unaware of the enervating heat of a New York day in August, I started out on foot. How confusing and endless a large city seems to the new-comer, how cold and unfriendly!*
-Emma Goldman, Living My Life, Vol. One, Page 1
Walking Off the Big Apple is increasingly concerned about the appalling division of social classes in the city. Though an ever-present part of the city's life, documented over the ages in fiction and non-fiction, the current configuration of hedge fund managers on top and the working poor at the bottom bothers the moral conscience. Thusly, I am rummaging through the grad school shelves for wisdom on the topic - Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class, Karl Marx's articles for the New York Daily Tribune, Edith Wharton's novels, and everything by Emma Goldman - to share with you in the days ahead.
* Emma Goldman walked approximately 4 miles from the ferry landing near W. 42nd St. to the Bowery.
See full text of Living My Life at the Anarchy Archives
Marxists Internet Archive Library
See full text of Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class here.
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