~j~tr ~





POVE RTY:


Three Essays for the


Season.


B Y
CHARLES P. KRAUTH.


3~lessed is he that considereth thee Poor."1
PITTSBURGH:
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY W. S. HAVEN,
CORNER OF MARKET AND SECOND STREETS.
1858.










THESE three Essays, which propose no more than a glance at their
topics, and which have been prepared in haste under the pressure of'
many duties, were presented, in their original form, as an Address at
the Anniversary of the Allegheny Ladies' Society for the Relief of
the Poor.  They were used subsequently in the pulpit.     At the
request of Mr. W. S. HAVEN, who regarded them as adapted for
pradical usefulness, and who hoped by their circulation to promote
the holy objeds of Christian Charity, they have been placed in his
hands for publication.
DECEMBER, 1858.










he Peetit  f  ett.
The Perpetuity of Poverty.










The Perpetuity of Poverty.
THERE is scarcely a duty at once so imperative, and so
difficult to perform rightly, as that which we owe to the
poor. The questions connected with the relief, the prevention, and the cure of Poverty and Pauperism, have
engaged, in an extraordinary degree, the attention not of
individual thinkers merely, but of great communities, in
this age of ours. Such has been the vastness of the
issues involved, that some of the most stable governments
in the world have felt that the very continuance of their
existence depended on their ability to meet these questions. On them, in fact, some of the greatest revolutions
of past centuries have hinged. It is, perhaps, not going
too far to assert, that the nation which solves the problem
of Poverty, grasps the secret of immortality.
There have been, indeed, dreamers, in this dreaming
world, who have imagined that it would be possible to do
away with poverty. Some have treated it as an absolute
social evil-a disease of the State, to be removed like
cholera or small-pox; others, as a crime, to be met with
the severities of law, like robbery or murder. In Egypt





8


and in Athens, beggars were treated by law as infamous;
Draco punished begging with death; and in many of the
ancient states, the only refuge for the poor man and his
family was to become slaves. In England the first movements of law in the repression of begging were all in the
direction of severity. The act of 1536 provides that
"any one able to work, who shall yet ask alms, shall be
whipped for the first offense, have his ears cropped for
the second, and on conviction of the third, shall suffer
execution of death as a felon and hn enemy of the commonwealth." The severity of this act led to its abrogation in 1547. The mild statute which took its place,
provided for the reduction of beggars to slavery of two
years, a repeated attempt to escape from which was to be
punished with death. As this law proved ineffectual, a
new effort was made in the reign of Queen Elizabeth:
in 1572 it was enacted that vagrants, and all others refusing to work, should "for the first offense be grievously whipped and burned through the gristle of the
right ear, with a hot iron, of the compass of an inch
about; for the second, should be deemed felons, and for
the third, should suffer death as felons, without benefit of
clergy."
The school of Malthus has proposed to prevent the
birth of a class which can give no guarantee to society that
it will be able to provide for itself. To remove poverty,
Socialism has devised a set of new names-expecting to
heal the evil by the jugglery of language; the demagogue
has set forth his agrarian schemes; gifts of land by government have been demanded; mutual aid societies, and
secret beneficial associations to assure life and health,





9


have been entered into. Some have taken the ground
that the true preventive would be found in.an uncompromising refusal to aid the poor in any case. Shut your
purse, shut your hand, shut your eyes, shut your heartif one who could practice on this system has a heartand sternly say, No, to every demand.-Let these miserable creatures work or die. When they see that they
must support themselves or perish, they will be aroused,
and poverty will vanish. Society has but to stoop down
and write with her finger in the sand;, "There shall be no
poor," and from that hour the poor shall cease.
In the face of all such theories, it is nevertheless very
clear that the poor, as a class, will necessarily always
exist. The best of these plans can only mitigate the
pains and ills of poverty; they cannot entirely remove
them; still less can they remove it. Diminish its amount,
and relieve its various features as you may, poverty will
be perpetual.
The Bible allows of no Utopian visions in reference to
this point. Under the Old Testament dispensation, it
was declared: " The poor shall never cease out of the
land;" and our Saviour says: " The poor ye have ALWAYS
with you."
Experience confirms here, as everywhere, the truth of
God's Word. There has been no large general community in any age or in any land, where there has not been
poverty. In monarchy and republic, in aristocracy and
democracy, there have been varieties in the experience,
but no contradiction of it. In the beginning of social existence, even in the shepherd life, there is soon a division





10


between those who own the sheep and those who feed
them. In our aboriginal forests there was the poor Inlian and the rich Indian; in Slavery itself, on the very
same plantation, where everything would seem to be reduced to a dead level, where all have precisely the same
supply, the same opportunity or lack of opportunity, comparative thrift and management cause some to abound,
and the lack of them keeps others in perpetual want.
The sternness of ancient Paganism-the absence of all
measures,& either of public or private relief-the shame
and suffering attached by law to poverty-would have
repressed it, if severity were the secret of prevention;
but the poor increased, till, by the dead weight of mere
aggregation, they dragged the state to ruin.
The beneficent and ample arrangements, and the spirit
of tenderness for the poor which characterized the Hebrew
nation, would have repressed Poverty, if gentleness in its
treatment could work a perfect cure; but we have learned
from the inspired records of that people, that it was not
pretended that such would be the result. In the far-off
ages, a prophet opening on his harp-strings deep thoughts
of One who was to crown the covenant nation with its
highest glory, said of him: " He shall deliver the needy
when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper."
More than ten centuries afterward, Messiah came, and
found thousands of the class he was to bless, meeting him
everywhere. He became Himself a member of it. Lowly
as it was, his deep-piercing eye saw that in its regeneration
is bound up the redemption of the race. He had such
words as man never spoke, such works as man never





11


wrought, such gifts as only the hand of God could dispense; but thronging everywhere, He found enough of
the poor, to receive them all.
One of the first great tokens that Christianity had begun
its mission in the world, was that its spirit made such
provision for the poor as had never been made before, so
that out of pure love the rich unprompted made the poor
partakers with them. " They had all things common.
Distribution was made unto every man according as he
had need. Neither was there any amorg them that lacked."
One of the first difficulties of the young Church, a difficulty which arose in this very year in which Poverty
seemed to be vanquished, was to regulate equitably the
ministration to the widows. The office of deacon, which,
in its true use, is the guardianship of the poor, has stood
in the Church for nearly two thousand years as an evidence
that poverty was with the Church in her cradle, and has
been borne in her arms of love to this hour; an attestation
of the difficulties connected early and always with the
treatment of the poor, and of the Church's high resolve
to meet duty, be its difficulties what they may. For upward of three centuries, the sole fountain of relief was
the spontaneous benevolence of the people of God, and
pastors, deacons, and deaconesses, were the almoners of
their bounty. So thoroughly was a recognition of the
perpetual claim of the poor involved in the very life of
the Church, that her unhappy union with the State did
not suppress her consciousness of it. In her deepest
hours of darkness, she reared monastery and hospital,
and attached, indeed, a superstitious sanctity to poverty.
The relief of the poor retained through the entire Middle





12


Ages, the character of private and unforced benevolence,
unsustained by law or tax. When the Church at the
Reformation renewed her youth, one of the first subjects
of her solicitude was the care of the poor. In England,
free, Christian, and prosperous as she is, it is said that
statistics show that there were eight hundred and seven
thousand paupers receiving assistance in the last week of
August of the present year. The census of the United
States in 1850, showed that within the year ending June
1st, one hundred and thirty-four thlousand nine hundred
and seventy-two paupers had been supported in whole or
in part. All Christendom-even the Church and the
State on this virgin soil, uncrowded with population, and
budding with plenty, has to encounter the solemn perplexities of human poverty.
No zone or clime impairs the force of the law of which
we speak. In Lapland, the herd of reindeer is owned by
one man, and tended by another; in the Arctic region, one
has an abundant supply of blubber, and another lives on
the offitl of his abundance; one has a large store of skins,
another hardly enough covering to keep him from perishing. The masses of snow and ice would seem to preclude
much variety in the houses reared from them, yet one has a
large space with its rough comfort, another creeps into his
cheerless little cavern where there is none.
It was the fortune of the writer, in the providence of
God, to spend a winter and spring in the West Indies,
where poverty seemed to be precluded by Nature herself,
if poverty ever can be precluded. How could poverty
with its ills exist there? With the thermometer at 840
in the shade, in December and January, little clothing





13


and no fuel, except a few faggots for cooking, would be
wanted. Perpetual Autumn walked the round of the
months, hand in hand with perpetual Spring. The fruit
in vast variety hung on the trees, with no price but the
plucking. The oranges gleamed among the green leaves,
which no wintry wind sweeps from the boughs, and could
be furnished for the merest trifle to those who did not
wish to gather them. The bananas and plantains waved
their long leaves, like banners of satin, around the heavy
clusters bending from the centre of thd plant. The cocoanut offered itself to the climber-the guava, and all the
luxurious wonders whose names are hardly known out of
the tropics, hung within reach of the hand of a child. The
waters swarmed with fish. The native had but to drop a
fish-basket in the harbor, or some inlet of the sea, and in
the morning he found in it more than enough fishes to
feed his family, and by the sale of the surplus could supply their other wants. Far more labor than could be
taken up, was offering at large prices. Scarcely could
want be less, and supply greater than here. You would
say: people in such a clime could hardly suffer if they
would try. Yet large Poor-Houses are found necessary.in these islands; you meet beggars everywhere, bearing
the unmistakable evidences of wretchedness and suffering.
The very abundance which makes it so easy to secure a
living, seems to foster helplessness. But not indolence
alone; sickness, accident, feeble-mindedness, old age and
crime, have brought poverty thither. Some of the most
abject objects human eyes ever rested on, wasted by the
deadly fevers of the clime, covered with festering sores,
and with the scurf of leprosy, decaying before they die, can





14
be seen crawling, or carried about the streets of St.
Thomas, and the plantations of Santa Cruz.
Even in this land of ours, the home of equal rights,
and removed as it is from extremes which hasten poverty,
were there an absolutely equal distribution of property
this day, so that no man were richer or poorer than
another, not twenty-four hours would pass before there
would be the two classes of rich and poor again-the line
already almost as sharply drawn in some cases, as it is in
any at this hour. If a universal experience can justify a
universal proposition, then is it unmistakably true that
the poor, as a class, must be perpetual.





The Causes


of Poverty.










The Causes of Poverty.
HE who has pondered the facts connected with the
perpetuity of Poverty, will not require much further
reflection to lead him to perceive how manifold are the
causes which must render the number of the poor very
great. There is nothing in man, or about him, which
may not become the occasion of poverty.
FEEBLENESS OF BODY, disease and prostration of strength,
will make many poor. If there must be workers, dependent on their daily labor, then, in the nature of the case,
when the ability to work is gone, there must be poverty.
There is no power which averts the ordinary ills of human
life from the laboring classes, though the misery entailed
upon them is heightened by their dependent condition.
The lowly child of toil, who is heir to nothing else, may
inherit a tendency to a special disease. The sicknesses,
which are the soldiers of death, quarter themselves on the
houses of the poor to make them poorer. The ratio of
disease must indeed be larger among the poor than among
the rich, because they are more exposed, and have fewer
comforts; they live' in crowded, damp, unwholesome
houses, in lanes reeking with filth, in cellars which are
2





18


simply spacious graves, in garrets where human life is
extinguished by a slow  process of suffocation.  The
pure air and joyous sunshine, which a merciful Father
gives to the evil as well as to the good, are not shared
alike by the rich and the poor. Their food is in smaller
quantities, is inferior in its quality, and badly prepared.
The cookery of the poor often converts their food into
poison. They have not medical advice promptly, for
they feel a reluctance to diminish the little they have, by
paying a physician, and shrink xwith an honorable sensitiveness from accepting his services as a charity. The
poor are not nursed as carefully in sickness. To save
expense, they often, in their ignorance, use some widelyadvertised nostrum.  The result is, that though the
disease itself may not be dangerous, they are killed or
disabled by quackery. There is least provision for sickness just where most sickness is sure to prevail. In
Paris, thirty deaths in every hundred take place in hospitals.  Not all these are cases of poverty; but neither,
on the other hand, are the cases of the dying poor, who
suffer for want of that which is given in the hospital,
included in the statistics. But the causes which make so
large a demand there, make many demands everywhere;
for in addition to the accidents to which all are exposed,
labor has its own special circle of contingencies. The
engineer is killed by an explosion or collision, the carpenter falls from a roof and has his skull fractured, a man
attending machinery has his hand caught, and his arm
torn from its socket, and is disabled for life. Sickness
and casualty are busy removing or reducing to feebleness
the father, the mother, the elder brother or sister, on
whom many depended.





19


The soul of the poor man is preyed upon during sickness by thoughts of the wants of his family, and of their
utter helplessness if he should be taken away. His love
for his family, and his solicitude for thenm, aggravate his
disease.  The dread of death is thrown on the side of
death in the balance, and he dies because he so much
dreads to die.
DEPRIVATION OR DULLNESS OF THE SENSES, OR OF THE
NECESSARY BODILY ORGANS, makes poverty. The "impotent
folk," the blind, the deaf, the dumb; the maimed, the
halt, must be comparatively helpless. Many, too, who are
not devoid of the senses and organs, have yet defects in
them which largely interfere with their ability to support
themselves.  They are not blind, but their eyes are
diseased; not deaf, but dull of hearing. They have the
organ, but it is shorn of its strength. Often the defect,
though real, is so latent, that the sufferer finds that men
will not believe that he is an unfortunate who cannot do
full work, but regard him as an indolent impostor, who
prefers lying to labor.
INSANITY will make cases of poverty. What can the
unreasoning, the maniac, the idiot, the feeble-minded, do
for themselves or for others? Go to that home of poverty,
where the father wrestled with death and seemed triumph.
ant-but the triumph was dearly bought. His mind sunk.
in those awful hours of delirium, to rise no more. See that
poor mother, who, urged by the wants of her other little.
ones, exerted herself too soon after the birth of her last
child. She has brought on brain fever; and in those eyesa
out of which she had looked so lovingly and gently before,
there is a wild glare, before which they cower in terror.





20


Look at that family in which the children are mysteriously
blighted with a fatal tendency to idiocy-infants in helplessness, but adults in their animal needs and depraved
passions. While these things may be, must not Poverty
endure?
Is it imagined that such cases are few? Look at a few
statistics of the most favored country of the Old World.
In Great Britain, the total number actually ascertained, of
Jlunatics and idiots, in the latest returns up to 1841, was
between twenty-seven and twenty-eight thousand-the
ratio in England being about one to a thousand, and in
Scotland about one to every seven hundred of the popula-,tion. In 1846, more than 20,000 insane persons were in
confinement in the asylums in England, of whom 16,000
were paupers. This embraces none of those who are confined separately, or in the care of friends. In 436 Unions
of England and Wales, the number of pauper lunatics
and of pauper idiots deemed incurable, in the returns up
to 1841, was upward of 9,000. This is a statistic of insanity limited by the smallness of the region over which
it extends, and by the fact that it embraces none but cases
of paupers-and among these only the incurable cases.
The very complications and excitements of prosperity
heighten the tendencies to diseases of the mind. In Great
Britain, insanity has more than tripled in twenty years.
In the only land on earth more blessed than Englandour own country-the census of 1850, which cannot overstate the fact, and for many reasons must almost certainly
very far understate it, shows, by the ascertained aggregate,
that ONE PERSON IN EVERY FOUR HUNDRED AND SIXTY OF OUR
POPULATION, is either deaf and dumb, blind, insane or





21


idiotic. Many of these hapless creatures not only cannot
supply their own wants-they cannot even tell them. The
motto of the London Asylum for idiots, tells the story of
the whole class: "WE PLEAD FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT PLEAD
FOR THEMSELVES."
PRACTICAL INCOMPETENCE makes poverty. There are
those not destitute of a large measure of mind, but who
do not know how to take care of themselves. The highest
order of genius, the gifts which have made men worldrenowned, have not always saved their possessors from
wretchedness and starvation. Men whose thoughts have
shaken ancient thrones, men whose words have changed
the face of nations, men of the pencil and chisel, who
have wrought miracles on canvas, and cut marble into
immortal shapes, men who have sung the poets' highest
strains or sounded the depths of philosophy and theology,
have oftentimes not had skill enough to find themselves
three meals a day and a bed to sleep on. The astronomer
who weighs the stars may not have the practical sense of
a plowboy; the author who can apparel thought in the
robes of a matchless style, may not be able to provide
himself with clothing. Destitute of that common sense
which is indispensable in the sphere of common things,
these monarchs in the realm of mind have often been
objects of common charity-often have perished for want
of it. Misery has brought them to the garret, the almshouse, the jail, and the dark grave of the suicide. And
there is a large class in the world without their genius,
but exactly like them in their practical incompetence.
You may reason and grow angry with them; the prosperous man may say: " Why do they not get along as I do?





22


They have as good opportunities as I have, it is their own
fault that they do not prosper." But it is not their fault.
They do not prosper, for they do not know how; it is not
in them. There is as much air for the barn-yard fowl as
for the eagle, and he has wings, too, but he cannot soar;
a flounder has fins, and there is the water for him, but he
will stick to the bottom while the dolphin plays upon the
top-so is there a class in this world of ours not destitute
of mind, nor of a large measure of industry and of earnestness, but who never rise.
The comparative bodily weakness of WOMAN, and some
false ideas connected with it, increase the cases of poverty.
From one class of occupations, woman is kept back by
want of the muscular strength, from another class by the
refinement of her nature, from another by the selfishness
of those who wish to retain a monopoly, or by the prejudices of society. The result is, that the occupations of
women are, in proportion to the demand on their part for
labor, fewer than those of men. These occupations are,
of necessity, therefore, overstocked. It is not because of
the inhumanity of employers, but because there is a surplus of workers, that the price of female labor is brought
down. The, poor woman consents to take half the value
of her labor, for she knows that a dozen eager applicants
are ready to seize what she refuses. She chooses, therefore, not between the half and the whole, but between the
half and nothing. Because of these low wages, she is
obliged to toil far more than she can bear, in order to
support herself and those dependent on her. Late and
early, she wears body and soul away: the hand fails, and
heart and life sink under it.





23


We talk of the inhumanity with which pagans and
savages treat woman, but it may be doubted whether her
ordinary condition among them is further below that of
the men, than the condition of a large class of laboring
women in our cities is below that which is demanded by
the civilization and refinement of Christian lands, as absolutely essential to meet the common necessities and
proprieties of life.
ACCIDENTS AND MISHAPS make poverty. Property is
destroyed by them. The lightning, the tornado and the
flood, fall upon field, forest and home. A fire sweeps down
a block of buildings, the whole property of one man, and
with it is consumed, unnoticed, the little frame house, the
whole property of another. One has lost his much, the
other has lost his little, but both have lost their all, and
in an hour the rich man is as poor as the poor man.
ARREST OF BUSINESS makes poverty. Commercial revulsions throw men out of employment. Factories and
works are stopped; rivers fall or freeze; branches of
business with which alone, men, too old to learn new
ones, are familiar, are superseded; machinery is introduced, and compels those who wrought by hand to abandon their calling, and the most industrious know not
where to earn their bread. The very march of civilization brings with it, incidentally, new forms of poverty.
A class of mind which, in a simple condition of society,
takes a relatively high position, is helpless when the
strength, intelligence, and enterprise of a large and cultivated community is around it. Thousands who can prosper in a new country could do nothing in an old one. A
bungling mechanic, a sluggish merchant, or an incompetent physician, may get rich, if he is the only one in





24


a vicinity; but put him where there are others in the
same employment, superior to him, and his occupation
is gone. The business capacity which might answer
for a little village, will not answer for a great city; and
the helplessness of the individual will be equally manifested, whether he goes from his quiet nook to the city,
or the city, or flourishing community, comes and grows
around him. Nor is the case altered, if the man was
born and reared in the city, but with only the range of
mind and energy to suit him for an humbler sphere. If
the little man does not take refuge in the little place, or
in the little position in the large place, he is destined for
ruin. The law which makes cities the places to gather
wealth, is identical, to a large extent, with that which
renders them the theatre of poverty in its worst form-as
beneath the mighty wave, which bears the strong ship
onward, the fragile boat is swamped and sinks forever.
The close connection of NATIONS, the vital bond of COMMERCE, the arrangements of GOVERNMENT, incidentally
bring with them the hazards of poverty. Seasons of
scarcity on one side of the Atlantic are felt on the other;
changes in the Old World ruin many in the New. Overtrading breaks up the capitalist and brings down the
working class with him. The disproportion between exports and imports, and all mistakes in regard to duties,
have tendencies, which are at first unsuspected, but which
are sure to burst in devastation over a land. The working man would perhaps smile incredulously if you told
him that his personal ruin is connected with great questions of policy about which he never thinks-that far
away, where laws are made or executed, some plausible
theory is rising like a cloud, and that out of that cloud





25


will fall the hail which will cut to pieces the harvest of
his hopes.
To increase the burden of poverty, which causes of
domestic growth have placed upon us, the wretched of
OTHER NATIONS come to us, as if the waves of ocean flung
them on our shores. After each storm of European
revolution, they are heaped, like matted and wilted seaweed, on our coast.
IGNORANCE, even where it is not vicious, makes men
helpless. It precludes them from all but a few employments, and those of the lowest order, the occupations
for which the least elevated are fit, and which are, therefore, overcrowded-whose wages, consequently, are smaller, and more precarious, and the workers in which can
make little provision for the future.
But ignorance creates VICE, and thus, in a new form,
becomes the agent of misery. We are, indeed, confining
ourselves to the causes of innocent poverty. Yet vice is
not to be omitted in the enumeration, for the guilty misery of one is often the cause of the undeserved suffering
of another. The guilty father is a drunkard, a pugilist, a
swindler; but his family, though innocent, suffer with
him.
The TREACHERY AND CRUELTY of man to man, and of
man to woman, the grasping of avarice, the violation of
promises, the plausibilities of villainous speculation, bring
ruin into happy homes. Here a widow invests her all in
some phantom stock, some swindling bank, some enterprise designed to delude-the bubble bursts, and she and
her children are left helpless in the world. Here, one of
the noblest of the race, with the infirmity of too generous a





26


trust, stakes his all, and loses it, to relieve one whom
he dreams to be a friend. Over the shoulder of many a
man, as he has written his name on the back of that which
was to be the death-warrant of all his prosperity, the
grim phantom of Beggary has leaned and leered-for he
knew that the fatal paper gave its indorser into his hands
forever.
The rich, by inordinate expenditures, by fine horses, fine
houses, and fine furniture, by fashion, and costly amusements, by gambling, by company; and by the various
vices of their class, are brought to poverty. This is their
guilt; but their sons reared in habits of indolence, their
daughters carefully educated to uselessness, share in the
woe of the downfall.
There is a domain of Poverty too sad to be gazed upon
-the tears of the virtuous blind them as they try to fix
their eyes upon it-the domain of the woe-begone and
heart-broken, the miserable creatures who can force the
loud laugh but can never smile:
"Where Beauty falls betray'd, despis'd, distress'd,
And hissing Infamy proclaims the rest."
IRRELIGION makes poverty. Infidelity destroys the temporal prosperity of men. FALSE RELIGION is the mother of
temporal suffering. Contrast heathenism with Christianity, in their effects, as regards the ratio and character of
poverty. All systems which separate religion from morality, which destroy or diminish a sense of responsibilityall so-called religion, which is not penetrated by the vital
power of a pure Gospel, tends to poverty. Contrast the
countries in which a pure Christianity is presented to the





27


view, with those in which it is corrupted. Go to the lanes
of great cities, and ascertain what forms of religion and of
irreligion are represented in the worst classes of pauperism, and you will see evidences of the energy with which
the neglect or perversion of the religious principle acts,
in the production of suffering.
But why should we continue the endless task of enumerating the sources of poverty? The very laws of our
existence are laws which doom the race to dependence.
The birth of a human being is, of necessity, the birth of
a beggar; and the mother is, of necessity, a beggar. The
child and the wife of the rich are as helpless and dependent as the poor child and its poor mother; only, in the
one case there is a well-defined relief, comparatively above
the reach of accident; in the other, it is vague relief,
trembling in contingencies. When the child has walked
the circle of human life, he comes back to the point from
which he started, and is, in " second childlishness," a babe
again. Infancy and old age meet together in making
poverty.
So many are the sources of Poverty, that not one of
our race can say, with certainty, that he may not be
reduced to absolute want. No matter how rich he may
be, or how prudent; no matter how secure his investments, or how multiplied the safe-guards of his property;
though he may purpose in his soul, that if villainy of the
deepest die becomes necessary to maintain his hold on his
earthly goods, he will hesitate at no villainy-still he may
die a beggar, just as thousands, equally wealthy and prudent, as strong in every way, and as desperately unscru




28
pulous in their purpose as he can be, have come to beggary before him.
While Nature retains her present course; while Providence clouds in mystery the throne of mercy;while State,
society and trade maintain their complicated relations,
and err alike in their ends and in their means; in a
word, while man is man, Poverty must remain, and the
poor must be many.





The Relief of Poverty.










The Relief of Poverty.
To the facts which prove the perpetuity of Poverty,
and illustrate its causes, the reply of some may b~e:- We
admit that there must be poor people, and that society
must provide for them, but the right way is to do the
whole work by a public system, sustained by taxation.
If the poor will not use the provision thus made, that is
their own concern; to wiser heads than ours we leave it
to settle the details of this, as of any other matter of State;
our taxe~s are large, we pay them promptly, and do not feel
that we owe the subject any further consideration.
We think, however, that even on the part of such a reasoner, it will be admitted, that, whatever might or should
be the case, not all the poor are, in fact, relieved by these
public arrangements. In their actual working they meet
the wants of an exceedingly small part of the class. An
hour's walk through the city will overwhelm an observant
man with the proofs of wretchedness, famine, sickness
and exposure, on the one side, and of the crimes to which
they tempt, on the other, which public' institutions have
not touched, and which there is little reason to hope they
ever will touch.





32


We concede that some might be relieved, who are not;
that the poor, to a large extent, feel in a false sense that
there is a stigma connected with receiving such relief.
Yet reason with them about their foolish pride, as we
may, we cannot change their feelings; and if the poor
should turn on us and ask whether we would not, under
the same circumstances, feel and act in the same way, we
are compelled to admit that we would. When a man
has on him the brand of pauperism, he looks upon his
life as a hopeless failure. He giv6s up the dearest treasure of his human heart at the poor-house door, for above
it, though invisible to others, stand clear before his gaze,
the words, which Dante says are inscribed over the gates
of hell:
"All hope abandon, ye who enter here."
The poor in whom any nobility of mind is left, still
hope for brighter days. Even when the soul is sick with
hope deferred--hope is its only medicine. If it be too
sick to take that medicine, it is too sick to live. Many
and striking are the proofs in God's providence, that this
yearning instinct, which we call hope, does not breathe in
vain in the bosom of the poorest-the neediest may be
lifted from the dunghill, and set with princes.
Often the very charm of hope has wrought the fulfill.
ment of its own visions. A charity which relieved temporary want with the secresy and delicacy of a true
refinement, has preserved to society valuable members,
who, had they sunk so far, as it seemed to them, as to
accept aid from a public source, would have hidden
their broken hearts and humbled heads from the eyes of





33


men forever.  But hope, which is the seed of purpose,
remained uncrushed, though buried, and under the'warm
rains and the sunbeams of a happier time, pushed itself'
forth into leaf, and in due season into fruit.
Though public institutions for relief are indispensable,
yet they are ordinarily the most costly means of attaining
the end. In the nature of the case, they are open to the
hazard of being perverted by corrupt political influences.
They may come to be considered as prizes of party. Their
emoluments may be enlarged, so as to render them tempting rewards for the unscrupulous. Men may be paid for.
the mischief they have done, by putting them in a place
where they can get rich by doing more. Thousands of
dollars may be squandered in salaries and fees, to pay forthe distribution of a few hundreds in questionable relief.
Let those who have a passion for accomplishing this whole
work by taxation, ponder the history of the poor-tax in
England. This tax was formally organized by statute in
the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The burden it imposed grew
steadily, generation by generation, until in 1831 it had
reached the enormous sum of eight million two hundred
and eighty thousand pounds sterling per annum. Whatever effect the development of resources, the invention
of machinery, the extension of commerce, the changes of
state, might have in other directions, they seemed to have
but one on the poor-tax, and that was to increase it. Enormous abuses hung with a parasitic tenacity and fattened
on the system. To relieve beggars and to pay their legal
guardians, the industrious in moderate circumstances
were pinched with penury. The laborious found themselves in a condition worse than that of the paupers whom
3





34


they were drained to support. The inability to meet the
taxes led to legal proceedings, which completed the ruin
of the tax payers, and yet gave them a sad relief by transferring them from the class of the overburdened supporters to that of the beggars. This tremendous incubus has
been in large part thrown off, but England does not yet,breathe freely; the remembrance of that night-mare of the
nation, and the fear of its return, still make her tremble.
Let the man who wishes to save his purse, be sure of
this, that the wisest plans sustained by taxation, must, in
the nature of the case, involve more expense than the
same amount of good would involve, when done on a
judicious system of private charity. If all were done by
public system that might be done, and yet more, if all
could be done by it for the poor that must be done, it is
certain that without an amount of judgment and economy
for which long and bitter experience forbids communities
to hope, we could be forced to take upon us a yoke of taxation, to which the present yoke and all the demands of
private charity together, would seem light as air.
We are far from arguing, however, against relief by
public agencies, or against their being sustained by taxes,
and controlled by law. We must have them, but they must
be the objects of watchfulness. They cannot do everything, but they can do a great deal, if they are properly
controlled. No restraint upon their tendency to abuse,
is more effectual than that imposed by the active spirit
of private charity. The two systems give each other a
healthy provocation, and are a safeguard against the special
one-sidedness and the dangers which pertain to each respectively.





35


Let it not be forgotten that Poverty and Pauperism are
not synonymous. The poor, as a class, do not demand
charity. Their poverty, in the vast majority of cases, is
not such as to make them dependent on society; on the
contrary, the result of it is, that society is dependent on
them. Poverty is the source of all useful labor, of the
inventions that comfort, and of the arts which refine men.
The wisdom of the poor wise man delivers the city. As
a class, the poor are more necessary than the rich. "Much
more," says St. Paul, "those members of the body which
seem to be more feeble are necessary." A few of the great
of our race come from the ranks of the rich; none from the
herd of pauperism; nearly all from the homes of the
poor. A community could not exist where all were rich,
and who would, as a consequence, do only what the rich
now do. Rich and poor are, in fact, relative terms; where
none are poor, none can be rich, for that in virtue of
which a great deal of money is wealth, is that others have
not a great deal, and are seeking for more. Change the
circumstances of property, and it ceases to be wealth. To
Robinson Crusoe, on his island, a ten-penny nail was a
treasure-the chest of gold was valueless. Take Robinson Crusoe back to England, and his chest of gold makes
him a rich man; put him at a California placer, with its
enormous expenses, and he is a poor man, with only
enough in his chest to support him for a few months.
Were there a community in which all had a great deal of
property, yet in different degrees, the relative disproportion
would still practically work poverty; the man of a hundred
thousand would be the poor man, to one with a hundred
million. Were all unchangeably rich to the same degree,





36


and shut up to the internal resources of the community, society would either instantly come to a dead lock, or the rich
would be forced to do what the poor now do. Every man
would have to go bare-footed, or make his own shoes,
though, where the leather, and the thread, and the materials to work, could come from, none can tell; for all
being unchangeably rich, none could present inducements
to others to prepare these things. Every man would have
his own dinner to cook, though it would be hard to tell
where the ox would be found to furnish the material, as
there would be no inducement to any one to attend to
grazing; or how the other parts of a meal would be furnished, as the inducement to the market man, the grocer,
and the whole family of workers who now supply men
with food, woulibe gone. The humblest necessities would
rest upon each man, and the whole be made insufferably
heavy by the want of that skill which is now produced
by the division of labor. All public enterprises would,
of course, be an unknown thing, and the whole coinmmunity would go back to something below barbarism.
Where the chasm is greatest between wealth and poverty,
and, at the same time, the restrictions in the way of crossing it are removed, a nation will be most active. Just as
money is valuable, just in proportion as its possession is
an advantage, will men be quickened to effort in every
department, that they may become possessors of it. Poverty, then, is the motive power of communities.  The
poor, not the rich, are the independent class.  They
are the main-spring of the social watch-not the part
that glitters, nor the part that first meets the eye, but that
which makes it possible for the other parts to accomplish





37


their end; at once, the least costly, and the most indispensable part of the whole. Take it away, and the watch
with its golden case and jeweled pivots, is but a bauble.
No class gives to society so much for so little, as the poor.
In no class is purer virtue found-a warmer devotion to
the interests of religion-a more willing consecration of
all energies to the service of God. It is the class of
apostles and martyrs, of missionaries and of confessors,
of faithful ministers and heroic reformers. It has furnished a large proportion of the most eminent workers,
and the most enduring sufferers, for truth and God.
Withdraw the poor from any great cause, and its knell is
struck in that hour.
Now when the poverty of this vital class, in exceptional
cases, becomes such as to need relief, society, by mere
justice, by the simple wisdom of far-sighted selfishness, is
bound to see that there be provision made for their needs.
Let her once say to the hand, "Because thou art not the
head, thou art not of the body, and if there be a fester
on thee, I will not cure thee, but cut thee off," and she
will soon discover where the head and body would be,
without the hand.
Say now, without distinction, to this class in the hour
of their need: "Go where our taxes have made provision
for you," and mark the result. The basest, who are worn
out in crime, to whom shelter and a regular supply of food
have become more desirable than full freedom to indulgence in vice, will go with willingness to the poor-house, if
they cannot have their first choice, which is the jail. The
utterly helpless will be compelled to go. But will that





38


poor widow, whose heart beats high with all a mother's
hope for her children, will she go with them to the alms
house, and help to brand them with what she considers,
and knows the world will consider, as eternal infamy?
Rather will she work, and starve till she dies. That
stalwart man, thrown for a time out of employment, and
eagerly seeking it but not finding it, will he go thither
with the wife of whom he is as proud as you can be of
yours, and with his children whose faces are as fair and
whose smile is as sweet to him as those of your little ones
are to you? Be careful when you say to him, "As you
can find no work, and your family is starving, you had
better go where provision is made for paupers;" if you
value your personal safety, have your retreat well planned
before you say this to him.
Practice on this system, and many of the poor will be
driven to desperation and crime. They will not go to the
poor-house, and as on your plan every one would refuse
to relieve them, they would come to an open war with
society. They would rob your houses and burn them;
they would take your purses and your lives. A French
writer on the questions connected with Poverty, has
entitled his book, " The Dangerous Classes," and among
these classes are the poor, when intense suffering and a
sense of cruel neglect have nursed in them all the demon
passions of the human heart; when desperate with want,
and inflamed by the arts of demagogues, they go forth
demanding labor or bread. Such critical periods have
appeared at times to be approaching even our own shores.
Nothing but the general conviction felt by the poor, of





39


the humanity and sympathy of society, has deprived such
risings in our country of the infinite power of mischief
they have had in other lands.
But if public agencies were able to accomplish every
thing in the way of outward relief, and the poor actually
accepted them, still would the blessing which our Heavenly Father has designed to connect with Poverty, thus be
lost alike to the relieved and to the reliever. The strongest
bonds which hold man to man would not be woven; some
of the tenderest affections of the human heart would dry
up by disuse; poverty would become the badge of degra.
dation, and cease to be the incentive to action; the poor
would be thankless, because they would see no connection
between their relief and the sympathy of society; the
rich man would forget his human brotherhood with the
poor, would read no more the solemn lessons of their
presence among men, the lessons which now so healthfully disturb him in his dangerous tendency to forget the
hollowness of temporal good, and the uncertainty of
earthly possessions. The relief which a system of taxation affords, neither excites the sense of benevolence
on the one side, nor of gratitude on the other. Were
it the sole system, the poor would be as the flint, with
the rich as the steel, and the sparks of hatred and the
kindling of malignity would be the perpetual result of
their collision. The individual consideration of the poor,
then, is as much needed by us as it is needed for the poor.
The.Bible declarations are almost always addressed to the
individual, and are designed to hold the rich man and the
poor man together, heart to heart. "Blessed is he that
considereth the poor." "He that giveth to the poor lendeth





40


to the Lord." "Thine alms have come up as a memorial."
"Thou when thou doest thine alms."   "Thy Father shall
reward thee." There must then be private charity, and by
this we mean charity dependent on the voluntary act of
the individual. An institution, however extensive, if it
be sustained by voluntary gifts, by annual contributions,
or by individual endowment, is a private charity. The
aid of the State, provided it be not such as to make the
institution dependent on the State or subject to its control,
does not take from it its character as a private charity.
Every charity not sustained by law, nor deriving its revenue from a tax, is a private charity.
Yet while there must be a private charity, of all its modes,
indiscriminate giving to every one who asks is the worst.
To give indolently and carelessly increases poverty just
in the ratio of the profusion with which it is done. Street
begging is a burden to the rich, but it is an unspeakable
curse to the poor; it makes liars and thieves of the worst
class of the poor, and increases the difficulties of the deserving.
Neither on the other hand, however, is indiscriminate
refusing all who ask, justifiable, unless we carry out some
good plan by which the really needy shall be found out;,for if we will not give at all lest we should give to the,unworthy, and will not seek for the worthy, we force the.poor to beg or perish-or in fact, on this plan, to beg and
perish. Knowing what human nature is, we are driving,them to crime, just as the other plan lures them to it.
Our charity, removing itself from  each of these extremes, is to be broad, yet full of intelligent discrimination. The poor of the "household of faith" are to be





41


relieved within the Church, promptly, and with all the
refinement of Christian sympathy. This is to be a family
matter-something between brothers and sisters. This
done, we are to go forth in the wide field of society to do
good on a larger scale "to all men." This is the sphere
of charity. The field in which she sows her alms, like
seeds of blessing, is the world.
For what are "alms," and what is "charity?" The
word "alms" was first employed in the "German Church
usage, and has passed into almost every Christian language. It is simply the contraction of the Greek word
for "mercy;" which is always, in the New Testament,
used in the sense of "alms."  "Alms," then, are gifts or
deeds of "mercy." "He that hath mercy on the poor,
happy is he." There must be the prompting of pity, or
there can be no true alms. If you have no money, loving
words and tender acts are alms. The meaning of charity
is love. It takes its stamp from something within the
man. St. Paul supposes a case, which, on the popular
misapprehension of charity, (a misapprehension which
would confer that sacred name on the cold and careless
gift of a trifle to a beggar, to get rid of him,) is a very
absurd one:."Though I bestow all my goods to feed the
poor, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing."
Charity is a quality of the heart, not a detached act of
the hand; it prompts the hand, and hallows its deed.
The sympathy which prompts healing words and gentle
ways, is dearer to the poor man than meat or money.
Give him what else you may, he feels that in it lies the
true charity. You fling a few coppers at a mendicant; he
picks them from the mud, and curses you internally while





42


he does so. The bread he buys with them relieves his
hunger, but the man is not relieved. His soul is sadder
and sorer; he has less of its treasure of kindliness and
hopefulness than he had before. Your gift has made him
poorer than ever. You are not his benefactor; you are
his robber. True charity is considerate mercy; it benefits
the right persons. It is not, on the one hand, frightened
into compliance with the demands of insolent mendicancy; nor does it, on the other, fail to relieve the humble
and the truly needy, because they shrink from making
their wants known. For true charity SEEKS its objects.
It "GOES ABOUT, doing good." It relieves at once, for it
will not add to the pains of poverty, the agony of suspense. It is thoughtful, and therefore gives the right sort
of relief, in the right way. Some charity is pure blundering walking about under the mantle of good intentions, hurting people for love of them. True charity is
not mere well-meaning profusion, without examination.
It will not send the right things to the wrong people, nor
the wrong things to the right people. A man may spend,
and scatter, and waste a fortune, without fulfilling the
real ends of benevolence. Nobody is the better of it all.
True charity is at once abounding and economical. It
does not feed the hungry on delicacies, but on simple
and healthy food, and feeds them well. But it makes the
barley loaves and fishes go as far as possible, and gathers
up the fragments, that nothing be lost. It will feed five
thousand with the provision which a badly administered
law might make for a few pampered officials. Charity is
patient. It seeks long, and when it finds itself mistaken,
is not deterred from trying again. It does not give up a





43


good work because it cannot be done in a day. It bears
with the short-sightedness of the poor, which often makes
them exacting and ungrateful to their best benefactors.
It is steadfast. It does not allow itself to be carried away
by novelty, then sink into indifference, and require to be
aroused by artificial stimulation; but goes from strength
to strength, in a daily advance, on the pathway of duty.
It is, in the true sense, radical. It goes, where it can,
to the root of the evil, and labors to prevent its growth,
as well as to relieve its ills.  It exercises a wise caution, so as not to encourage indolence or dependence.
It does not work planlessly, but on well devised systems;
not in isolation, but in coiperation. It is not smitten
with the ambition of seeming to do everything, but divides, that it may conquer, and declines many things, that
it may accomplish much. It shapes its course after the
right example; not that of a pretentious, and often infidel
show of concern for men's bodies, which tacitly assumes
that they have no souls, but in lowly conformity with that
divine life which was made manifest in the flesh, as the
guide of ours.
This is the charity which rears the hospital, and nurses
its sick and friendless inmates. When ungrateful governments forget the war-worn soldier, she finds him a peaceful home; when Commerce abandons the sailor who can
serve her no more, she finds him a harbor where the seabeaten hulk shall lie safe from wind and wave. Like the
Divine One who breathed her into being, she knows not
Greek nor Jew, bond nor free-no clime, no color, no
religion, no sex; she sees the lineaments of a common
Father in the duskiest visage, and hears the accents of





44


brotherhood in the uncouthest tongue. The poor immigrant, come whence he will, she welcomes.   Whom
Christ died to redeem, she lives to bless. Like the sunbeam which descends and slants through the window
pane of the chamber of suffering, she comes down from
heaven and enters the sick room to brighten all she
touches. She cools the parched lips of fever, and flies to
the side of the wasting consumptive, as his hollow cough
breaks in on the stillness of the night. She provides:for
the mother and the child, for the fatherless and motherless, and the widow. Charity does not fear contagion, nor
the loathsomeness of disease. She takes into her care those
from whose " sore " friend and lover, wife and sister, have
fled in terror. She searches for hope in the eye of the
blind, and when that hope fails, teaches him to see with
his fingers; she interprets her soul of sweetness to the
deaf, and teaches the dumb an eloquence beyond that of
words; she lifts the lame and sends him into the Beautiful
gate of the temple, "walking, and leaping, and praising
God." What is too loathsome for mere humanity to
touch, she lays tenderly upon her bosom. She strives to
wake up the dormant reason and the slumbering affections
in the lunatic and idiot. She has medicine for the sick,
food for the hungry, garments for the suffering, and health
and comfort for the homes of the poor. She is humble
enough to do the lowliest offices, and has faith enough in
God to undertake the greatest. Ask who place.d the
warm little socks on the feet of that poor babe, the reply
is, Charity. Ask who reared those mighty houses of relief
-in building which millions were expended-in sustaining which hundreds of thousands are spent annually-the





45


institutions of which kings are proud to be nursing
fathers, and of which great nations make their boast
-who reared them? and the reply is, Charity. Often,
indeed, it is the most glorious angels of her presence,
those who do always behold her face, who have the lowliest cares, and are the guardians of the least among the
little ones whom she loves. It may be some seraph spirit
of her sending, which hangs over the forsaken in that
ministration of mercy of which none but the sufferer and
God shall ever know; while the proniptings of one of the
furthest removed of her angels, of one whose wings perhaps were not totally unsoiled with the love of the praise
of man, led to the munificent gifts whose trumpeting fills
the world's ear, and whose results are seen in some vast
palace for the poor, which gives the name of its founder
to eternal fame.
But true Charity has a grander sphere than all of which
we have spoken. She looks at the immortal nature of the
unfortunate, sees that the most awful feature of poverty
is, that it is a lure to the soul, seducing it to crime, is
linked with vice which aggravates all its horrors. She
educates, therefore; she trains, she shields, she preaches
the Gospel to the poor, she upholds the sinking, and
tenderly lifts the fallen. Those whom society has hissed
from its presence, she strives to redeem; she searches for
the jewel amid the wreck of the casket. The erring
Magdalen, who looked at mankind with a brow which
seemed all brazen and defiant, has wept at her feet, has
felt her gentle and pitying hand on her drooping head,
and strengthened by her voice of love, has learned to sin
no more. She is a mother to the foundling, and a nurse





46


to the aged; she saves the young offender by finding him
a place of refuge from the dread temptations which would
harden him into an irreclaimable criminal; and hoping
against hope, she presses to the jail, the penitentiary, the
scaffold, on her mission of love. She gives and endows;
she has her week, her day, her hour, her constancy in
season, her promptness out of season. She follows the
plan of the beneficence of the Highest, which is not to do
good fitfully and at random, but to put the exercise of
mercy under the law of order. She is ever meek, save when
human applause strives to draw from her one look of regard. Then is her heart moved to disdain; and when on
the eve of some surpassing sacrifice toward which she has
set her face, selfish love whispers, " Be this far from thee;"
then the lightning of a griefful indignation breaks forth
from her holy eyes, and she says, " Get thee behind me,
Satan."
Look on her face, so seraphic, yet so serene and tender,so beaming, yet with a gentle tinge of solicitude softening
its radiance. There is in it a sadness transfigured, a grief
melting into heavenly light, such as shines on but one
face. Are your eyes holden, that they know it not? It is
the very face of CHRIST. He is gone--yet lo, he is here
always, dwelling in the faithful and the holy.  Oh, if
Christ, the suffering, Christ, the hungering and thirsting,
the naked and sick, the stranger and prisoner, still abides
on earth in the persons of those who suffer, abides in
their persons because his love makes him one with them,Christ the pitying and relieving moves among men in the
persons of those who pity and relieve, moves in their
persons because his grace makes them one with him. As





47


the burdened and sorrowing " fill up that which is behind
of the afflictions of Christ," so do the loving and helping
become channels of that stream of his love which yet
remains to be poured upon the world through every age,
filling up that which is behind of the benedictions of
Him who ascended on high that Hie might give gifts unto
men.   Charity has gazed on the incarnate Mercy, and
loved, and followed, and given herself up to His transforming power, till she has been changed into his very
image. Ie who would know how 'Christ looked, must
not go to the dim imaginings of the painter or of the
statuary, but must fix on her his eyes, and learn from her
what was the marvelous beauty of him who was "fairer
than the children of men."
Need we speak of the blessings which such a visitant
brings to the heart of those who receive her? She is
herself her own blessing. Whatever she may bring to
the poor, great as its blessings may be-and its blessings
are priceless-it is little compared with that which she
brings to him in whose bosom she dwells. When the
widow's heart is singing for joy, it is sweet to hear the
music of her gladness in the grateful words in which she
thanks her benefactor; it is sweet to read in the eyes of
those who are desolate no more, what they struggle in
vain to utter with their lips; but there is something
sweeter, which fills in the pauses of our busy hours,
something which beautifies our brightest moments, and
mitigates our saddest. It is like a sky-lark in our sunshine, and a nightingale in our darkness, singing all day
and all night, but loveliest in the night. Led by the hand





48
of a pure charity, that sister angel ever enters the soul.
That angel of the heart is a happy conscience, testifying
of the approval of our God. Sweeter even than the song
of the poor, is its song. He, in whom a heaven-illumed
conscience dwelt, like the fullness of the God-head
bodily, has declared:
"At is more blessed to rMve than to 5eceive."