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Chapter 2 - Poverty
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From Poverty by James Platt
Page 29
the ferocious passions and outrageous tyrannies
of his obdurate
task masters. Bad as we are now, there was a lower depth in the
past of ignorance, and its consequence - crime; and our treatment
of the criminal, the state of our gaols, exhibit signs of progress,
of more humanity, and less of the animal in human nature. There
is much cruel poverty still, but in the past it was attended more
frequently by its stern attendant - want. In the earlier period
of our history, famines were of frequent
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occurrence. This was attributable
to the wretched manner in which the land was cultivated. Thousands
perished of actual hunger, and thousands more preserved life by
eating the bark of trees, acorns, and pig- nuts. The condition
of the labourer was very bad.
The laws forbade him to leave the estate on which he was born.
The want of knowledge, the absence of machinery, kept all classes
poor. There was a burden of labour, but not the skill to direct,
or the capital to employ it. Those who refer ns to the past forget
that the chief distinction between man in a rude, and man in a
civilized state of Society, is, t-hat the one wastes his force,
whether natural o1· acquired, the other economises--that is, saves
it. The man in a rude state has very rude instruments - he, therefore,
wastes his force; the man in a civilized state has very perfect
ones - he, therefore, economises it. Yet there is a growing opinion
that the artisan is not what he once was, when he had "An independency
of look, And heart ; and, plodding in his lonely path, Disdained
the parish dole, - content, though poor." But against this theory
we have the unanswerable facts of statistics to prove pauperism
is on the decrease, and that the accumulated earnings and savings
of the working class have been steadily increasing. You will have
no doubt as to the improved position of the working class if you
imagine for a moment that the ingenious machinery employed in
the fabrication of our clothing were destroyed. Clothing is indispensable;
so there would be plenty of occupation for the working class;
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© Peter Smith 2008
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