The Fear of Poverty
Henry George: The Condition
of Labor — An
Open Letter to Pope Leo XIII in response to Rerum Novarum (1891)
Men who are sure of getting food when they shall need it eat only what appetite
dictates. But with the sparse tribes who exist on the verge of the habitable
globe life is either a famine or a feast. Enduring hunger for days, the fear
of it prompts them to gorge like anacondas when successful in their quest
of game. And so, what gives wealth its curse is what drives men to
seek it, what makes it so envied and admired — the fear of want. As the unduly
rich are the corollary of the unduly poor, so is the soul-destroying quality
of riches but the reflex of the want that embrutes and degrades. The real
evil lies in the injustice from which unnatural possession and unnatural
deprivation both spring.
But this injustice can hardly be charged on individuals or classes. The
existence of private property in land is a great social wrong from which
society at large suffers, and of which the very rich and the very poor are
alike victims, though at the opposite extremes. Seeing this, it seems to
us like a violation of Christian charity to speak of the rich as though they
individually were responsible for the sufferings of the poor. Yet, while
you do this, you insist that the cause of monstrous wealth and degrading
poverty shall not be touched. Here is a man with a disfiguring and dangerous
excrescence. One physician would kindly, gently, but firmly remove it. Another
insists that it shall not be removed, but at the same time holds up the poor
victim to hatred and ridicule. Which is right?
In seeking to restore all men to their equal and natural rights we do not
seek the benefit of any class, but of all. For we both know by faith and
see by fact that injustice can profit no one and that justice must benefit
all. ... read the whole letter
Louis Post: Outlines of Louis F. Post's
Lectures,
with Illustrative Notes and Charts (1894)
But it is not alone to objects of charity that the question of poverty calls
our attention. There is a keener poverty, which pinches and goes hungry,
but is beyond the reach of charity because it never complains. And back of
all and over all is fear of poverty, which chills the best instincts of men
of every social grade, from recipients of out-door relief who dread the poorhouse,
to millionaires who dread the possibility of poverty for their children if
not for themselves.38
38. A well known millionaire is quoted as saying: "I
would rather leave my children penniless in a world in which they could
at all times
obtain
employment for wages equal to the value of their work as measured by
the work of others, than to leave them millions of dollars in a world like
this,
where if thy lose their inheritance, they may have no chance of earning
am decent living."
It is poverty and fear of poverty that prompt men of honest
instincts to steal, to bribe, to take bribes, to oppress, either under
color of law
or
against law, and — what is worst than all, because it is not merely
a depraved act, but a course of conduct that implies a state of depravity — to
enlist their talents in crusades against their convictions. 39 Our civilization
cannot long resist such enemies as poverty and fear of poverty breed;
to intelligent observers it already seems to yield. 40
39. "From whence springs this lust for gain, to gratify which men tread
everything pure and noble under their feet; to which they sacrifice all the
higher possibilities of life; which converts civility into a hollow pretense,
patriotism into a sham, and religion into hypocrisy; which makes so much
of civilized existence an Ishmaelitish warfare, of which the weapons are
cunning and fraud? Does it not spring from the existence of want? Carlyle
somewhere says that poverty is the hell of which the modern Englishman is
most afraid. And he is right. Poverty is the openmouthed, relentless hell
which yawns beneath civilized society. And it is hell enough. The Vedas declare
no truer thing than when the wise crow Bushanda tells the eagle-bearer of
Vishnu that the keenest pain is in poverty. For poverty is not merely deprivation;
it means shame, degradation; the searing of the most sensitive parts of our
moral and mental nature as with hot irons; the denial of the strongest impulses
and the sweetest affections; the wrenching of the most vital nerves. You
love your wife, you love your children; but would it not be easier to see
them die than to see them reduced to the pinch of want in which large classes
in every highly civilized community live? ... From this hell of poverty,
it is but natural that men should make every effort to escape. With the impulse
to self-preservation and self-gratification combine nobler feelings, and
love as well as fear urges in the struggle. Many a man does a mean thing,
a dishonest thing, a greedy and grasping and unjust thing, in the effort
to place above want, or the fear of want, mother or wife or children." — Progress
and Poverty, book ix, ch iv.
But how is the development of these social enemies to be arrested? Only
by tracing poverty to its cause, and, having found the cause, deliberately
removing it. Poverty cannot be traced to its cause, however, without serious
thought; not mere reading and school study and other tutoring, but thought.41
To jump at a conclusion is very likely to jump over the cause, at which no
class is more apt than the tutored class.42 We must proceed step by
step from familiar and indisputable premises. ... read
the book
Rev. A. C. Auchmuty: Gems from George,
a themed collection of excerpts from the writings of Henry
George (with links to sources)
Social Study
I BELIEVE that in a really Christian community, in a society that honored, not
with the lips but with the act, the doctrines of Jesus, no one would have occasion
to worry about physical needs any more than do the lilies of the field. There
is enough and to spare. The trouble is that, in this mad struggle, we trample
in the mire what has been provided in sufficiency for us all; trample it in the
mire while we tear and rend each other. — The
Crime of Poverty
WHOSE fault is it that social conditions are such that men have to make that
terrible choice between what conscience tells them is right, and the necessity
of earning a living? I hold that it is the fault of society; that it is the fault
of us all. Pestilence is a curse. The man who would bring cholera to this country,
or the man who, having the power to prevent its coming here, would make no effort
to do so, would be guilty of a crime. Poverty is worse than cholera; poverty
kills more people than pestilence, even in the best of times. Look at the death
statistics of our cities; see where the deaths come quickest; see where it is
that the little children die like flies — it is in the poorer quarters.
And the man who looks with careless eyes upon the ravages of this pestilence;
the man who does not set himself to stay and eradicate it, he, I say, is guilty
of a crime. — The Crime of Poverty
SOCIAL progress makes the well-being of all more and more the business of each;
it binds all closer and closer together in bonds from which none can escape.
He who observes the law and the proprieties, and cares for his family, yet takes
no interest in the general weal, and gives no thought to those who are trodden
underfoot, save now and then to bestow alms, is not a true Christian. Nor is
he a good citizen. — Social
Problems — Chapter
1, the Increasing Importance of Social Questions
WE cannot safely leave politics to politicians, or political economy to college
professors. The people themselves must think, because the people alone can act. — Social
Problems — Chapter
1, the Increasing Importance of Social Questions
THAT the masses now festering in the tenement houses of our cities, under
conditions which breed disease and death, and vice and crime, should each
family have its healthful home, set in its garden; that the working farmer
should be able to make a living with a daily average of two or three hours'
work, which more resembled healthy recreation than toil; that his home should
be replete with all the conveniences yet esteemed luxuries; that it should
be supplied with light and heat, and power if needed, and connected with
those of his neighbors by the telephone; that his family should be free to
libraries, and lectures, and scientific apparatus and instruction; that they
should be able to visit the theater, or concert, or opera, as often as they
cared to do so, and occasionally to make trips to other parts of the country
or to Europe; that, in short, not merely the successful man, the one in a
thousand, but the man of ordinary parts and ordinary foresight and prudence,
should enjoy all that advancing civilization can bring to elevate and expand
human life, seems, in the light of existing facts, as wild a dream as ever
entered the brain of hasheesh eater. Yet the powers already within the grasp
of man make it easily possible. — Social
Problems — Chapter 21: City and Country.
GIVE labor a free field and its full earnings; take for the benefit of the whole
community that fund which the growth of the community creates, and want and the
fear of want would be gone. The springs of production would be set free, and
the enormous increase of wealth would give the poorest ample comfort. Men would
no more worry about finding employment than they worry about finding air to breathe;
they need have no more care about physical necessities than do the lilies of
the field. The progress of science, the march of invention, the diffusion of
knowledge, would bring their benefits to all.
With this abolition of want and the fear of want, the admiration of riches would
decay, and men would seek the respect and approbation of their fellows in other
modes than by the acquisition and display of wealth. In this way there would
be brought to the management of public affairs and the administration of common
funds the skill, the attention, the fidelity and integrity, that can now only
be secured for private interests, and a railroad or gas works might be operated
on public account, not only more economically and efficiently than, as at present,
under joint stock management, but as economically and efficiently as would be
possible under a single ownership. The prize of the Olympian games, that called
forth the most strenuous exertions of all Greece, was but a wreath of wild olive;
for a bit of ribbon men have over and over again performed services no money
could have bought. — Progress & Poverty — Book
IX, Chapter 4— Effects of the Remedy: Of the Changes that Would be Wrought
in Social Organization and Social Life
THE law of human progress, what is it but the moral law? Just as social
adjustments promote justice, just as they acknowledge the equality of right
between man and man, just as they insure to each the perfect liberty which
is bounded only by the equal liberty of every other, must civilization advance.
Just as they fail in this, must advancing civilization come to a halt and
recede. Political economy and social science cannot teach any lessons that
are not embraced in the simple truths that were taught to poor fishermen
and Jewish peasants by One who eighteen hundred years ago was crucified — the
simple truths which, beneath the warpings of selfishness and the distortions
of superstition, seem to underlie every religion that has ever striven to
formulate the spiritual yearnings of man. — Progress & Poverty — Book
X, Chapter 3, The Law of Human Progress
THE poverty which in the midst of abundance pinches and embrutes men, and
all the manifold evils which flow from it, spring from a denial of justice.
In permitting the monopolization of the opportunities which nature freely
offers to all, we have ignored the fundamental law of justice — for,
so far as we can see, when we view things upon a large scale, justice seems
to be the supreme law of the universe. But by sweeping away this injustice
and asserting the rights of all men to natural opportunities, we shall conform
ourselves to the law — we shall remove the great cause of unnatural
inequality in the distribution of wealth and power; we shall abolish poverty;
tame the ruthless passions of greed; dry up the springs of vice and misery;
light in dark places the lamp of knowledge; give new vigor to invention and
a fresh impulse to discovery; substitute political strength for political
weakness; and make tyranny and anarchy impossible. — Progress & Poverty — Book
X, Chapter 5, The Law of Human Progress: The Central Truth ... go
to "Gems from George"
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