Wealth and poverty

“ Wealth and poverty are seen for what they are. It begins to be seen that the poor are only they who feel poor, and poverty consists in feeling poor. The rich, as we reckon them, and among them the very rich, in a true scale would be found very indigent and ragged. ”

“ The one receives without producing; the others produce without receiving. The one is unjustly enriched; the others are robbed. To this fundamental wrong we have traced the unjust distribution of wealth which is separating modern society into the very rich bind the very poor. ”

“ Do you expect me to sit and listen patiently to your wild theories of social reform? You asked me one day why the wages of the idle rich was wealth and the wages of hard work was poverty, and I told you that I worked harder in one day than a tunnel digger works in a life-time. ”

“ Wealth hung out his golden trappings, and rolled by in all the splendor of ease and luxury The children of poverty trudged on in tattered garments, stung by pinching want, bearing heavy burdens upon their heads, and weighed down by oppression. ”

“ Wealth has accumulated itself into masses; and poverty, also in accumulation enough, lies impassably separated from it; opposed, uncommunicating, like forces in positive and negative poles. The gods of this lower world sit aloft on glittering thrones, less happy than Epicurus’s gods, but as indolent, as impotent; while the boundless living chaos of ignorance and hunger welters, terrific in its dark fury, under their feet. ”

“ But these, on the other hand, prefer ignorance to wisdom, turning their wealth into stone, that is, into pearls and Indian emeralds. And they squander and throw away their wealth on fading dyes, and bought slaves; like crammed fowls scraping the dung of life. “Poverty,” it is said, “humbles a man.” [665] By poverty is meant that niggardliness by which the rich are poor, having nothing to give away. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What is it but to wear coarse cloaths, to feed on plain and simple fare, to work and take some pains, to sit or goe in a lower place, to have few friends and not one flatterer? And what great harm in this? If I had time to compare it with the many dangers and temptations to which wealth is expos'd,—pray consider that poverty is a state which many have born with great chearfulness. Many wise men have voluntarily embrac'd it. ”

“ On the one hand we are called upon to see, in the existence of deep poverty side by side with vast accumulations of wealth, the aggressions of capital on labor, and in reply it is pointed out that capital aids labor, and hence we are asked to conclude that there is nothing unjust or unnatural in the wide gulf between rich and poor; that wealth is but the reward of industry, intelligence, and thrift ”

“ Where a property is actually bequeathed, supposing the circumstances of the case and the usages of society to leave a practical discretion to the testator, it is most frequently in such portions as can be of the least service. Where there is much already, much is given; where much is wanted, little or nothing. Poverty invites a sort of pity, a miserable dole of assistance; necessity neglect and scorn; wealth attracts and allures to itself more wealth, by natural association of ideas, or by that innate love of inequality and injustice, which is the favourite principle of the imagination. ”

“ The vulgar explanation of progress is, I think, very much like the view naturally taken by the money maker of the causes of the unequal distribution of wealth. His theory, if he has one, usually is, that there is plenty of money to be made by those who have will and ability, and that it is ignorance, or idleness, or extravagance, that makes the difference between the rich and the poor. And so the common explanation of differences of civilization is of differences in capacity. ”

“ Where will you find wealth devoted with the most lavishness to non-productive use—costly buildings, fine furniture, luxurious equipages, statues, pictures, pleasure gardens and yachts? Is it not where population is densest rather144 than where it is sparsest? Where will you find in largest proportion those whom the general production suffices to keep without productive labor on their part—men of income and of elegant leisure, thieves, policemen, menial servants, lawyers, men of letters, and the like? ”

“ You may sit down and smoke your pipe; you may lie around like the lazzaroni of Naples or the leperos of Mexico; you may go up in a balloon, or down a hole in the ground; and without doing one stroke of work, without adding one iota to the wealth of the community, in ten years you will be rich! In the new city you may have a luxurious mansion ”

“ The grains dispersed here and there will grow and multiply, and thou wilt derive profit from them both in this world and in the next.
He who created poverty and wealth made alms the share of the poor. By an impenetrable mystery of his omnipotence, he has assigned to thee ease and to another indigence. Retain not unjustly the rights of the poor ”

“ Modern life has no more tragical figure than the gaunt, hungry labourer wandering about the crowded centres of industry and wealth, begging in vain for permission to share in that industry, and to contribute to that wealth ”

“ Chapter XIV The persistence of poverty amidst advancing wealth Look over the world today. In countries the most widely differing - under conditions the most diverse as to government, as to industries, as to tariffs, as to currency - you will find distress among the working-classes; but everywhere that you thus find distress and destitution in the midst of wealth you will find that the land is monopolized; that, for its use by labour, large revenues are extorted from the earnings of labour. ”

“ So then, the argument runs, poverty is a benefit both to the individual in that it makes him work, and to society in that it causes the production of much to satisfy human needs and in so doing binds society together. Conversely, the satisfaction of all needs by means of wealth breeds gout and inactivity and crime. ”

“ Yet with the whole force of the community thus devoted to production, no such consumption of wealth in proportion to the whole population takes place, or can be afforded, as goes on in the old country; for, though the condition of the lowest class is better, and there is no one who cannot get a living, there is no one who gets much more—few or none who can live in anything like what would be called luxury, or even comfort, in the older country. ”

“ Multiply examples, choose them where you will, consider the origin of all fortunes, large or small, whether arising out of commerce, finance, manufactures, or the land. Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor. ”

“ The growth of wealth and of luxury, wicked, wasteful and wanton, as before God I declare that luxury to be, has been matched step by step by a deepening and deadening poverty, which has left whole neighborhoods of people practically without hope and without aspiration.—Bishop Potter. ”

“ They show that current theories do not satisfactorily explain the connection of poverty with material progress, but throw no light upon the problem itself, beyond showing that its solution must be sought in the laws which govern the distribution of wealth. ”

“ Examine this, my dear children: in all time of our tribulation,—that is in poverty and distress, and perhaps famishing from want (and in few positions are people so incited to crime) , then in all time of our wealth, evidently and distinctly placing wealth as more dangerous to the soul’s welfare than the extremest poverty and its accompanying temptations ”

“ Most of these emigrants, however, were poor; but where all were poor, this was no degradation. The concomitants of poverty in densely populated communities—where great wealth confers social distinction and frowns from its association the poor, making poverty humility, however elevated its virtues—were unknown in these new countries. ”

“ "This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said. "There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!" ”

“ I have observed and I think with truth that the most malignant feelings which enter into the present struggle between classes have been generated by the ostentation of idle wealth in contrast with surrounding poverty. It would of course be absurd to say this of a man living on a small income in a modest house and in a plain way. ”

“ Unlike the older countries of the Earth, where the increasing poverty of the masses is a natural and unavoidable sequence of the large accumulations of wealth in few hands, your poor do not grow sensibly poorer during this unequal distribution. ”

“ Poverty demoralizes. A man in debt is so far a slave; and Wall-street thinks it easy for a millionaire to be a man of his word, a man of honor, but, that, in failing circumstances, no man can be relied on to keep his integrity. ”

“ At the beginning of this marvelous era it was natural to expect, and it was expected, that labor-saving inventions would lighten the toil and improve the condition of the laborer; that the enormous increase in the power of producing wealth would make real poverty a thing of the past. ”

“ The extreme poverty of the greater part of the persons employed in this expensive, though trifling manufacture, may satisfy us that the price of their work does not, in ordinary cases, exceed the value of their subsistence. ”

“ We should discourage excess of riches and we should endeavor to relieve all of distressing poverty. We should hedge about accumulation with such conditions as to make it very difficult to gain great wealth, and at the same time we should so ease the conditions of accumulation that only gross indolence or great misfortune could cause dependent poverty. ”

“ Wealth, I said, and poverty; the one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent. ”

“ The great cause of inequality in the distribution of wealth is inequality in the ownership of land. The ownership of land is the great fundamental fact which ultimately determines the social, the political, and consequently the intellectual and moral condition of a people. ”

“ It is true that wealth has been greatly increased, and that the average of comfort, leisure, and refinement has been raised; but these gains are not general. In them the lowest class do not share. [1] I do not mean that the9 condition of the lowest class has nowhere nor in anything been improved; but that there is nowhere any improvement which can be credited to increased productive power. I mean that the tendency of what we call material progress is in nowise to improve the condition of the lowest class in the essentials of healthy, happy human life. ”

“ Our mastery over the forces of mature has led to a rapid growth of population, and a vast accumulation of wealth; but these have brought with them such au amount of poverty and crime, and have fostered the growth of so much sordid feeling and so many fierce passions, that it may well be questioned, whether the mental and moral status of our population has not on the average been lowered, and whether the evil has not overbalanced the good. ”

“ Wealth brings with it refinement, the spirit of conservation, while poverty inspires adventurous ideas, the desire to change things, and has little care for life. ”

“ This is where the children of honest poverty have the most precious of all advantages over those of wealth. The mother, nurse, cook, governess, teacher, saint, all in one; the father, exemplar, guide, counselor, and friend! Thus were my brother and I brought up. What has the child of millionaire or nobleman that counts compared to such a heritage? ”

“ What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power. ”

“ When the question is reduced to the simple expression of the struggle between poverty and wealth, the tendency of each side of the dispute becomes perfectly evident without further controversy. ”

“ So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent. ”

“ Better poverty without a care than wealth with its many obligations. ”

“ I replied, "how it was possible that this country could ever have been cursed with poverty as the normal condition of the masses of the people while the few were rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and held those masses bound by fetters that they could not break." ”

“ From the standpoint that we are a people with a great income, with a clear idea as to the ill-distribution of that income and the manner in which, through the joint operations of luxury and poverty, a nation may be devitalized even while its income is growing, let us consider the means of amelioration. ”

“ 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! ”