Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY PERSONS disposed to exaggerate not infrequently tell us that we are living on a volcano; and that an upheaval more destructive than the French Revolution is close upon us, unless we set to and change the present conditions under which some have unlimited expenditure for their slightest desire, while masses of others struggle for a miserable existence only with pain and grinding labor. Certainly, in the whole problem of improving the economic status of mankind, the one phase which appeals most to us all is the one which concerns the lower class of unskilled workers. With those who have already won something, and who have already risen a round or two on the industrial ladder, we are not so deeply interested as with those at the bottom who are unskilled, the sport of every change of industrial demand, and ignorant of means ofbetterment. It is the beggarly sums received by those in uncertain and overcrowded employments ?and too often the unemployment itself?which ought to stir our sympathies and set us to thinking. What have we to offer? If economics has nothing to present as an offset to the vague and often injurious schemes of the untrained sentimentalists, then it should retire to the limbo of useless and abandoned studies. In brief, what has it to say as to -the elevation of a race, or class, in the scale of living ? Has it any practical advice to offer for the abolition of extreme poverty ? If we can offer even partial solutions of the problem, we may help those who come after us to get nearer the whole truth. In this particular field, however, there is a deal of feeling and passion to be found, to say nothing of prejudice, narrowness, ignorance and intolerance. In matters touching everyday comfort and satisfaction, where misery and bitter…
