The poor

“ Those gentlemen, who have all the wealth and the power of the country in their hands, I strongly advise, and earnestly exhort, to pay attention to the poor—by the poor I mean the labouring class of the community, their tenantry and dependents. I advise them for their good to look into their grievances, to sympathize in their distress, and to spread comfort and happiness around their dwellings. It might be that they may not hold their power long, but at all events to attend to the wants and distresses of the poor is their truest interest. ”

“ Enthusiasm glowed in me at the thought, and absorbed in those ambitious dreams I cried: “Thank God for life’s depths, that we may have the glory of outclimbing them.”
And here be it said, we make a mistake when we pity the poor. It is the rich we should pity, those who have never known the joy of poverty, the ecstasy of squeezing the dollar to the last cent. How good the plain fare looks to our hunger! ”

“ Is it better that the poor should starve than that the rich should be at the expence of relieving them? Or if the pressure in scarce times falls on the middle classes, have they to complain, that they, in whom ‘life and death may always be said to contend for victory,’ are still just kept alive, or that the sleek and pampered continue to fatten on the distresses of others? ”

“ Yes, gentlemen—for while I would use caution, I will not indulge in cowardice—yes, and your starving population is willing to purchase that pabulum of life; not, indeed, with wealth,—for, like the poor disciples of a poorer master, they shake their tattered garments, and say, 'Silver and gold we have none,' but they are willing to purchase food with the well-strained sinews of nervous industry, with the sweat of their honest brows. ”

“ The interests of the rich man and the poor
Are one and same, inseparable evermore;
And, when scant wage or labor fail to give
Food, shelter, raiment, wherewithal to live,
Need has its rights, necessity its claim. ”

“ Now, I ask you, friends, should not such work as this be amply sustained? So much more could be accomplished if the funds and sympathy were not so stinted! "The destruction of the poor is their poverty." ”

“ It is so with the rich, doubtless, and it may be so with the poor who were born in this poverty; but to the well-born and well-educated, to the refined and intellectual, poverty is a dreadful, dreadful thing. ”

“ I do not mean that the rich are obdurate to the sufferings of the poor, but that the artificial condition of the country has choked the ordinary channels of sympathy, and that the latter, when known at all, are known only as the poor. ”

“ The poor indeed may prove their watchful cares, That nicely sift and weigh their mean affairs, From scanty earnings nibbling portions small, As mice, by bits, steal cheese with rind and all; But why should statesmen for mechanics carve, What are they fit for but to work and starve. ”

“ They seek to excite what they call “the poor” against what they call “the rich”—in this land of great opportunities for all, where, now as ever, so many of the poor of yesterday are among the rich of to-day, and so many of the rich of to-day may be among the poor of to-morrow. ”

“ We are told that 'the poor shall never cease out of the land;' and can poverty exist unattended by its consequent evils? Would it not, on our part, be a profitable exercise, were we sometimes to leave our warm fireside, during the inclemency of the weather, and visit the huts and cottages of the poor, to examine for ourselves how they are clad, and how they are warmed and fed? ”

“ The state of the poor in our country is frightful; and ask any one in the habit of coming in contact with the lower classes, to what is this distress mainly attributable? The answer will always be the same—the improvidence of the poor. ”

“ Just think of a few ways of helping the poor. Look at the East End and suburban vestries, boards of guardians, and public bodies generally. Why are they so corrupt, so hard to move, so gluttonous and backward? That is not far to seek. Consider the mental calibre, the social status, the education and tastes of the men who compose them too generally. The gentry are far away, where they only see the poor as rare and interesting objects on which to bestow Bibles, blankets, soup, and occasional recitations and songs. ”

“ Out upon the folly which, in estimating human misery, allows aught to bear comparison with the agony of the poor! I use the word poor relatively; I call not those poor to whom honesty brings self-respect, whose habits and whose means have gone together, and whose industry is its own support. But those are the poor whose exertion supplies not their wants—to whom cold, hunger, and weariness, are common feelings; who have known better days—to whom the past furnishes contrast, and the future fear. ”

“ The poor are set to labour,—for what? Not the food for which they famish: not the blankets for want of which their babes are frozen by the cold of their miserable hovels: not those comforts of civilization without which civilized man is far more miserable than the meanest savage ”

“ What a contrast, indeed, do we exhibit!—What! in such an hour as this, at a moment pregnant with the national fate, when, pressing as the exigency may be, the hard task of squeezing the money from the pockets of an impoverished people, from the toil, the drudgery of the shivering poor, must make the most practised collector's heart ache while he tears it from them—can it be that people of high rank, and professing high principles, that they or their families should seek to thrive on the spoils of misery and fatten on the meals wrested from industrious poverty? ”

“ The poor should learn more of the cares, responsibilities, unrecorded charities, and absorbing worries of the rich; the rich should learn more intimately the sorrows, privations, struggles, and despair of poverty. ”

“ The Rich solace themselves in a fancied exemption from the miseries and ignominy which attach to the Poor, though their daily experience of the caprice of fortune ought to teach them, that, while they have the power, it would be wiser to diminish the contrast by ameliorating the condition of Poverty! ”

“ Did I ever tell you this? The poor, they are despised for being poor, and they are let to suffer. Here poverty is not permitted. If a man lose his dwelling by fire, the town builds him another house. You know this. ”

“ I may just say here in passing, that I think this experience is in a great measure what has enabled me to understand the peculiar misery of the poor in our large towns,—they have no hope, no impulse to look forward, nothing to expect; they live but in the present, and the dreariness of that soon shapes the whole atmosphere of their spirits to its own likeness. ”

“ Did the rich esteem the poor, and admit them into their social circle solely on the ground of moral worth, there would be but little danger of these poor ever forfeiting their standing, by plunging into the floods of intemperance and crime. ”

“ Never was the distinction so sharp between the poor—the sullen poor who stand scornful and desperate at the street corners—and the well-to-do. The contrast now extends to every one who can afford a black coat. It is not confined to the millionaire. ”

“ Added to this is their poverty, which makes it necessary for them to accept whatever work with whatever wages they can get. "The destruction of the poor is their poverty," according to the old proverb. ”

“ The poor rates increased alarmingly, little able as were the impoverished population to bear an increase; the workhouses were filled, and lamentations were heard in the streets. Poor men! They only asked for work, work ”

“ When I saw the rich revelling in luxury, crowding upon the poor, crushing out their lives, the poor living in squalor and misery, their lives a burden to them, not having, in many instances, enough food to eat, or raiment to wear, or a shelter, and when winter approached dreading it with feelings indescribable. ”

“ The poor, whom at such vast cost and with such parade of machinery it relieves, are often demoralized. There is neither worth nor joy to be got out of the pauper, who has learned to measure success in life by skill in evading inquiry. 168And, what is most striking of all, the Poor Law has allowed a mass of poverty to accumulate which has led to the erection of charity upon charity, and is still, by its squalor, its misery and hopelessness, a disgrace and a danger to the nation. ”

“ We may observe, that the manufactures, the laborious part of mankind, the poor's rates, and the number of paupers, will everlastingly go hand in hand; they will increase and decrease together; we cannot annihilate one, but the others will follow, and odd as the expression may sound, we become rich by payment and poverty. If we discharge the poor, who shall act the laborious part? ”

“ The only way we can realize the sufferings of the poor is to suppose ourselves in their situation. Let a wealthy gentleman and lady, with five or six small children, be suddenly deprived of all their property, and compelled to obtain a support for their family by daily labor, and the lowest employments. Would they think they could live comfortably upon perhaps no more than seventy-five cents a day, as the proceeds of the husband's labor? ”

“ Who are the poor? The "poor law," on the one hand, assigns a meaning too narrow for our purpose, confining the application of the name to "the destitute," who alone are recognized as fit subjects of legal relief. The common speech of the comfortable classes, on the other hand, not infrequently includes the whole of the wage-earning class under the title of "the poor." As it is our purpose to deal with the pressure of poverty as a painful social disease, it is evident that the latter meaning is unduly wide. ”

“ The poor suffered dreadfully, whilst the rich locked up their treasures and store-rooms, and only gave the poor people, who came to beg for bread, insolent words, telling them that, after all, they were but a miserable lot, and the best thing they could do was to die in God’s name, and go straight to Heaven. ”

“ The mention of the poor brings up to most people’s minds scenes of suffering, want, and misery. The vast number of people who, while poor in money, are rich in life’s good, who live quiet, thoughtful, dignified lives, are forgotten, and the word ‘poor’ means to many the class which we may call degraded. ”

“ When we sum up all the advantages enjoyed by this and other favored bodies and classes in the middle ages, the reflection naturally suggests itself—what must have been the condition of the poor, who possessed no privileges and bore all the financial burdens? ”

“ The clothing of the workmen in contrast with the gorgeous apparel of the fashionable bon ton; the furnishings of the hovels of the poor and the mansions of the rich placed side by side; the coarse and homely fare of the wealth producer compared with the dainty viands of the non-producer; all told more plainly than words the story of undeserved poverty, and in millions of cases, the abject want and misery of the most useful [Pg 299] classes of society, in striking contrast with the unearned abundance of the idle, and for all practical purposes, the useless rich. ”

“ Last winter’s experience shows that outside the classes of regular wage-earning workmen, who are often included among ‘the poor,’ is a mass of people numbering some tens of thousands who are without the means of living. These are the poor, and their poverty is the common concern. ”

“ That one half the world knows not how the other half lives, is a common and just observation;—complaints and murmurs are frequent I find among those of the inhabitants of this highly favoured country, who are not only blessed with the liberty and means of procuring for themselves and their families, the necessaries and comforts, but even many of the luxuries of life!—they complain of poverty, and yet never knew what it was to be really poor! ”

“ To these causes we must add what comes therefrom [Pg 349] as their joint result: idleness, by which the poor waste their time; thriftlessness and improvidence, by which they lose their opportunities and squander their substance. The poor are seldom so economical as the rich; it is so with children, they spoil the furniture, soil and rend their garments, put things to a wasteful use, consume heedlessly and squander, careless of to-morrow. The poor are the children of society.
To these five causes I must add intemperance, the great bane of the miserable class. ”

“ Any observer of the poor in this city is familiar with the appearance among them of that most distressing and most dangerous symptom, the home-feeling for the slum that opposes all efforts at betterment with dull indifference. ”

“ And the poor seldom persecute the poor; remember that the needy family who first sheltered her, had been for months 266at the sole expense of her food, lodging, and long illness—and yet they had never reproached or persecuted her for unpaid debts—though they scarcely refrained from reproaching themselves for sending her away. ”

“ “That’s right, grannie! And the rich have to look down on the poor.”
“No, my dear. I did not say that. The rich have to be KIND to the poor.” ”

“ He must be made acquainted with the real situation of the Poor—with the extent and magnitude of their misfortunes and sufferings, before it can be expected that he should enter warmly into measures calculated for their relief. ”

“ Nor is it the poor alone who are stricken with discontent. Clearer thought and saner feelings are beginning to make it evident that in the march of true civilization no one class can remain hopelessly behind. ”

“ But, if you ask them for a small contribution for suffering poverty, you will perhaps be compelled to listen to a long complaint against the improvidence of the poor; their want of industry and economy ”

“ I must guard myself, because the Lord has chosen the poor of this world. But what kind of poor? Now the poor may be divided into three classes. In the first place there is the Lord's poor, of which you may pick up one here and another there, one in a city, two in a family. ”