an appalling amount of poverty and a still more appalling bitterness in the struggle for life under sordid and heartless conditions. Practically the whole of the vital energy of more than half of our people is consumed in providing bread and butter for their stomachs and a shelter for their heads, and then they do not always succeed.[1]
Nor is the reply that poverty is a self-inflicted wound very decisive. It is true that drunkenness brings misery upon individuals. The wasteful man must come to grief whether he be rich or poor. But intemperance—to select only the most frequently discussed source of personal poverty—is not the cause of social poverty. Its chief effect is to select the victims of poverty. For there come to all slackness of work and misfortunes of many kinds, and the most that thriftless expenditure does is to determine who are to be completely, and who partially, wrecked in the hard times. It is said that if every penny which finds its way into the pockets of rich and poor were well spent, every man would face the rainy day with an umbrella over his head, and the slack time with something in the savings bank. Only to a small extent is this true. The best
- ↑ American conditions, despite the newness of the country and the vast extent of its territory, show the same features. One-eighth of the families of the United States enjoy seven-eighths of the wealth of the country; and investigations conducted by the New York State Conference of Charities and Correction in 1906–7, by the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics and by private inquirers in other states show that great masses of the town workers of America have incomes which come considerably below the efficient subsistence minimum.
