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Chapter 1- Introduction
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From Poverty by James Platt
Page 8
kindly disposed to feel for those less
favourably equipped for the battle of life. The Italians have a
proverb, " The better is the enemy of the good." It is
our duty, while there is a better capable of attainment, not to
rest satisfied with the good; and having attained the better, to
press forwards towards the best, although it may be for the time
unattainable. To lessen poverty, to get rid of much of the misery
that exists, men must have a more practical training, be better
qualified for earning their daily bread,
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and must recognize the necessity
for a higher intelligence, to get a living in an advanced and
complicated social system like our own in 1884. It is of the greatest
importance for the national progress, that it be impressed upon
catch one as a duty to strive after improvement, to have an ideal
before us which we strive earnestly to overtake ; and to understand
that although we may not overtake it, yet our struggle to overtake
it is in itself of inestimable advantage to our intellectual and
moral character.
Poverty! Are there causes for poverty? Yes, to a certain extent,
it is the natural result of their condition. They enter upon the
struggle of life heavily weighted with all that keeps man to the
level of the beast. Born in and accustomed to life in a small
room, which serves as the living and sleeping room of the family;
the room foul and dirty, their only recreation idling or playing
in the street; unclean, familiar with drink, and its attendants,
vice, quarrelling and crime, it is surprising that the "outcast
poor," the "lowest" class of our people, are not
worse than they are. The few among them who work on, hoping to
get away from such horrible surroundings, are like a rare plant
in a bed of weeds, and support the belief that there exists in
all great power of higher development, if you will incite the
same to action by giving it a "motive." All theories
of social reform are valueless unless their object is to degrade
the man in his own sight, so that, from his own intense feeling
of disgust at the wreck he has become, he will willingly grasp
the rope held out to save him, and work heart and soul with his
only true friend, the man who is trying to "make him save
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© Peter Smith 2008
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