They come from very modest homes, from the log cabin, and from the towpath, as advertised. They come from those whose fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers had at least enough to eat, and enough fresh air to give them pure blood and proper nourishment for their brains.
Poverty destroys ambition, inventive power and the capacity to struggle.
A starved body produces a starved brain. The greatest genius that ever lived could not think better than a child of ten if you deprived him of food for ten days.
What can you expect of the inferior minds that have been half fed through a lifetime, or through several generations?
Do you know what made the Revolution and changed conditions in France? It was not poverty. Not a single poor man was a leader in that Revolution. Every one of them was well fed, had a well- nourished brain—Danton, Robespierre, Marat, Desmoulins, Mirabeau—every one a well-fed brain in a vigorous body.
The labor unions and the great strikes, although sometimes unwise and unreasonable, are great blessings to the Nation. They compel the worker to get such pay as will feed himself and his children, giving the Nation well-fed brains. The Union is the enemy of poverty, and for that reason especially it is an agent for good. ——
As poverty breeds ignorance, so ignorance breeds poverty. The greatest enemy of poverty is the Public School. Work and vote, therefore, for public school betterment.
Miserable women walk the streets by thousands on cold Winter nights—poverty has put them there.
Hundreds of thousands of children are born only to struggle for a few years through a stunted infancy—poverty digs their graves.
For one genius that has fought and conquered in spite of poverty ten thousand have sunk out of sight in the fight against the worst of enemies.