Two things may be said of European legislation in general, and especially of English legislation. First, That it has aimed to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few and keep it there. Hence it favors primogeniture, entails monopolies of posts of profit and of honor. Second, It has always looked out for the proprietor and his property, and cared little for the man without property; hence it always wanted the price of things high, the wages of men low, and in addition to natural and organic obstacles it continually put social impediments in the poor man's way. In England no son of a laborer could rise to eminence in the law or in medicine, scarcely in the church; no, not even in the army or navy.
These two statements will bear examination. The genius of England has demanded these two things. The genius of America demands neither, but rejects both; demands the distribution of property, puts the rights of man first, the rights of things last. Such are the political causes, and such their effects.
III. Then there are social causes which make a nation poor. Such are the prevalence of an opinion that industry is not respectable; that it is honorable to consume, disgraceful to create; that much must be spent, though little earned. The Spanish nation is poor in part through the prevalence of this opinion.
Sometimes social causes seem only to affect a class. The Pariahs in India must not fill any office that is well paid. They are despised, and of course they are poor and miserable. The blacks in New England are despised and frowned down, not admitted to the steamboat, the omnibus, to the school-houses in Boston, or even to the meeting-house with white men; not often allowed to work in company with the whites; and so they are kept in poverty. In Europe the Jews have been equally despised and treated in the same way, but not made poor, because they are in many respects a superior race of men, and because they have the advantage of belonging to a nation whose civilization is older than any other in Europe; a nation specially gifted with the faculty of thrift; a tribe whom none but other Jews, Scotchmen, or New Englanders, could outwit, over-reach, and make poor. No Ferdinand and Isabella, no inquisition could so completely expel them from any country, as the superior craft and cunning of the Yankee has driven them out of New England. There are Jews in every country of Europe, everywhere despised and maltreated, and forced into the corners of society, but everywhere superior to the men who surround them. Such are the social causes which produce poverty.
Now let us look at the matter on a smaller scale, and see the cause of poverty in New-England, of poverty in Broad street and Sea street. From the great mass let me take out a class who are accidentally poor. There are the widows and orphan children who inherit no estate; the able men reduced by sickness before they have accumulated enough to sustain them. Then let me take out a class of men transiently poor, men who start with nothing, but have vigor and will to make their own way in the world. The majority of the poor still remain—the class who are permanently poor. The accidentally poor can easily be taken care of by public or private charity; the transient poor will soon take care of themselves. The young man who lives on six cents a day while studying medicine in Boston, is doubtless a poor man, but will soon repay society for the slight aid it has lent him, and in time will take care of other poor men. So these two classes, the accidental and the transient poor, can easily be disposed of.
What causes have produced the class that is permanently poor? What has just been said of nations, is true also of individuals.
First, there are natural and organic causes of poverty. Some men are born into the midst of want, ignorance, idleness, filthiness, intemperance, vice, crime; their earliest associations are debasing, their companions bad. They are born into the Iceland of society, into the frigid zone, some of them under the very pole-star of want. Such men are born and bred under the greatest disadvantages. Every star in their horoscope has a malignant aspect, and sheds disastrous influence. I do not remember five men in New England, from that class, becoming distinguished in any manly pursuit,—not five. Almost all of our great men and our rich men came from the comfortable class, none from the miserable. The old poverty is parent of new poverty. It takes at least two generations to outgrow the pernicious influence of such circumstances.
Then much of the permanent poverty comes from the lack of ability, power of body and of mind. In that Iceland of society men are commonly born with a feeble organization, and bred under every physical disadvantage; the man is physically weak, or else runs to muscle and not brain, and so is mentally weak. His feebleness is the result of the poverty of his fathers, and his own want in childhood. The oak tree grows tall and large in a rich valley, stunted, small, and scrubby on the barren sand.
Again this class of men increase most rapidly in numbers. When the poor man has not half enough to fill his own mouth, and clothe his own back, other backs are added, other mouths opened. He abounds in nothing but naked and hungry children.