[46] "An Economic and Social History of New England," 11:825.
[47] Hunt's "Lives of American Merchants":139.
[48] Life of Eli Whitney, "Our Great Benefactors":567.
[49] "The Astor Fortune," McClure's Magazine, April, 1905.
[50] Innumerable were the sermons and addresses poured forth, all to the same end. To cite one: The Rev. Daniel Sharp of the Third Baptist Meeting House, Boston, delivered a sermon in 1828 on "The Tendency of Evil Speaking Against Rulers." It was considered so powerful an argument in favor of obedience that it was printed in pamphlet form (Beals, Homer & Co., Printers), and was widely distributed to press and public.
[51] Various writers assert that twenty dollars was the average minimum. In many places, however, the great majority of debts were for less than ten dollars. Thus, for the year ending November 26, 1831, nearly one thousand citizens had been imprisoned for debt in Baltimore. Of this number more than half owed less than ten dollars, and of the whole number, only thirty-four individually had debts exceeding one hundred dollars.—Reports of Committees, First Session, Twenty-fourth Congress, Vol. II, Report No. 732:3.
[52] In his series of published articles, "The History of the Prosecution of Bankrupt Frauds," the author has brought out comprehensive facts on this point.
[53] The eminent merchants who sat on this committee had their own conclusive opinion of what produced poverty. In commenting on the growth of paupers they ascribed pauperism to seven sources. (1) Ignorance, (2) Intemperance, (3) Pawnbrokers, (4) Lotteries, (5) Charitable Institutions, (6) Houses of Ill-Fame, (7) Gambling.
No documents more wonderfully illustrate the bourgeois type of temperament and reasoning than their reports. The people of the city were ignorant because 15,000 of the 25,000 families did not attend church. Pawnbrokers were an incentive to theft, cunning and lack of honest industry, etc., etc. Thus their explanations ran. In referring to mechanics and paupers, the committee described them as "the middling and inferior classes." Is it any wonder that the working class justly views "charitable" societies, and the spirit behind them, with intense suspicion and deep execration?
[54] Documents of the Board of Assistant Aldermen of New York City, 1831-32, Doc. No. 45:1.