Every thing is against the poor man; he pays the dearest tax, the highest rent for his house, the dearest price for all he eats or wears. The poor cannot watch their opportunity, and take advantage of the markets, as other men. They have the most numerous temptations to intemperance and crime; they have the poorest safeguards from these evils. If the chief value of wealth, as a rich man tells us, be this—that "it renders its owner independent of others," then on what shall the poor men lean, neglected and despised by others, looked on as loathsome, and held in contempt, shut out even from the sermons and the prayers of respectable men? It is no marvel if they cease to respect themselves.
The poor are the most obnoxious to disease; their children are not only most numerous, but most unhealthy. More than half of the children of that class, perish at the age of five. Amongst the poor, infectious diseases rage with frightful violence. The mortality in that class is amazing. If things are to continue as now, I thank God it is so. If Death is their only guardian, he is at least powerful, and does not scorn his work.
In addition to the poor, whom these causes have made and kept in poverty, the needy of other lands flock hither. The nobility of old England, so zealous in pursuing their game, in keeping their entails unbroken, and primogeniture safe, have sent their beggary to New England, to be supported by the crumbs that fall from our table. So, in the same New England city, the extremes of society are brought together. Here is health, elegance, cultivation, sobriety, decency, refinement—I wish there was more of it; there is poverty, ignorance, drunkenness, violence, crime, in most odious forms—starvation! We have our St. Giles's and St. James's; our nobility, not a whit less noble than the noblest of other lands, and our beggars, both in a Christian city. Amid the needy population, Misery and Death have found their parish. Who shall dare stop his ears, when they preach their awful denunciation of want and woe?
Good men ask, What shall we do? Foreign poverty has had this good effect; it has shamed or frightened the American beggar into industry and thrift.
Poverty will not be removed till the causes thereof are removed. There are some who look for a great social revolution. So do I; only I do not look for it to come about suddenly, or by mechanical means. We are in a social revolution, and do not know it. While I cannot accept the peculiar doctrines of the Associationists, I rejoice in their existence. I sympathize with their hope. They point out the evils of society, and that is something. They propose a method of removing its evils. I do not believe in that method, but mankind will probably make many experiments before we hit upon the right one. For my own part, I confess I do not see any way of removing poverty wholly or entirely, in one or two, or in four or five generations. I think it will linger for some ages to come. Like the snow, it is to be removed by a general elevation of the temperature of the air, not all at once, and will long hang about the dark and cold places of the world. But I do think it will at last be overcome, so that a man who cannot subsist, will be as rare as a cannibal. "Ye have the poor with you always," said Jesus, and many who remember this, forget that he also said, "and when soever ye will, ye may do them good." I expect to see a mitigation of poverty in this country, and that before long.
It is likely that the legal theory of property in Europe will undergo a great change before many years; that the right to bequeathe enormous estates to individuals will be cut off; that primogeniture will cease, and entailments be broken, and all monopolies of rank and power come to an end, and so a great change take place in the social condition of Europe, and especially of England. That change will bring many of the comfortable into the rich class, and eventually many of the miserable into the comfortable class. But I do not expect such a radical change here, where we have not such enormous abuses to surmount.
I think something will be done in Europe for the organization of labor, I do not know what; I do not know how; I have not the ability to know; and will not pretend to criticize what I know I cannot create, and do not at present understand. I think there will be a great change in the form of society; that able men will endeavor to remove the causes of crime, not merely to make money out of that crime; that intemperance will be diminished; that idleness in rich or poor will be counted a disgrace; that labor will be more respected; education more widely diffused; and that institutions will be founded, which will tend to produce these results. But I do not pretend to devise those institutions, and certainly shall not throw obstacles in the way of such as can or will try. It seems likely that something will be first done in Europe, where the need is greatest. There a change must come. By and by, if it does not come peaceably, the continent will not furnish "special constables" enough to put down human nature. If the white republicans cannot make a revolution peacefully, wait a little, and the red republicans will make it in blood. "Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must," says mankind, first in a whisper, then in a voice of thunder. If powerful men will not write justice with black ink, on white paper, ignorant and violent men will write it on the soil, in letters of blood, and illuminate their rude legislation with burning castles, palaces and towns. While the social change is taking place never so peacefully, men will think the world is going to ruin. But it is an old world, pretty well put together, and, with all these changes, will probably last some time longer. Human society is like one of those enormous boulders, so nicely poised on another rock, that a man may move it with a single hand. You are afraid to come under its sides, lest it fall. When the wind blows, it rocks with formidable noise, and men say it will soon be down upon us. Now and then a rude boy undertakes to throw it over, but all the men who can get their shoulders under, cannot raise the ponderous mass from its solid and firm-set base.
Still, after all these changes have taken place, there remains the difference between the strong and the weak, the active and the idle, the thrifty and the spendthrift, the temperate and the intemperate, and though the term poverty ceases to be so dreadful, and no longer denotes want of the natural necessaries of the body, there will still remain the relatively rich and the relatively poor.
But now something can be done directly, to remove the causes of poverty, something to mitigate their effects; we need both the palliative charity, and the remedial justice. Tenements for the poor can be provided at a cheap rent, that shall yet pay their owner a reasonable income. This has been proved by actual experiment, and, after all that has been said about it, I am amazed that no more is done. I will not exhort the churches to this in the name of religion—they have other matters to attend to; but if capitalists will not, in a place like Boston, it seems to me the City should see that this class of the population is provided with tenements, at a rate not ruinous. It would be good economy to do it, in the pecuniary sense of good economy; certainly to hire money at six per cent., and rent the houses built therewith, at eight per cent., would cost less than to support the poor entirely in almshouses, and punish them in jails.
Something yet more may be done, in the way of furnishing them with work, or of directing them to it; something towards enabling them to purchase food and other articles cheap.