Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 749, May 4, 1878

No. 749.
Price 1½ d.
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 1878.
We have on several occasions called attention to the Power of Draw. It is a force which for good as well as for evil pervades the whole social system. Every centre of industry exerts this attractive force by drawing to it large numbers of persons for the sake of employment, and so far the Draw acts beneficially. All our large towns are in no small degree made up of individuals who have drifted thither in the hope of exercising their abilities for their own and the public advantage. This is exactly as it should be. The world is open to everybody. It is only a truism to say that by the Power of Draw the uttermost ends of the earth are peopled.
Unfortunately, this subtle power in its pervading energy is not limited to the industrious and well-disposed. It is acutely demonstrated by all who are looking about for the means of indulging in a life of idleness at the cost of others. The disposition to abstain from useful labour and to depend less or more on gratuitous benefactions, has been largely encouraged by mistaken views of what is ordinarily called charity. The poor—no matter how they happen to be poor—have been extolled as if they were superior beings, to whom all must contribute as one of the noblest of virtues. With perverted notions of this kind, society has for ages done everything in its power to consecrate and encourage poverty, and no wonder it has attained to stupendous dimensions. Early injunctions to give all to the poor were followed by the piously inconsiderate and wide-sweeping benefactions of the monasteries. These in their turn were followed by the statutory obligations of the poor-laws. And now there is superadded a system of voluntary contribution so extensive and varied as to dominate the soundest principles of political economy, and which in its general working amounts to a kind of communism. By every large city, arrangements are organised to succour every human need and infirmity. Those who do not find it agreeable to work will be fed—the feeding, perhaps, not being what all would like, but pretty well as a make-shift. For every species of ailment, from a broken leg to diseased lungs, there is adequate provision. The cultivation of thrift and self-respect not to be thought of. Bad as things seem to have been in the palmy days of the monasteries, they are now in some quarters ten times worse. While one set of people are slaving between death and life, another set, determined to take their ease, keep hovering on the verge of that agreeable category the poor, and so contrive to lead a jolly sort of existence.