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Chapter 2 - Poverty -
From Poverty by James Platt

Page 33

daughter, does it not appear to you that it is old and worn?" It
was, but "Claire had never remarked the fact before; but she new perceived clearly that there was no longer any possibility of tracing the pattern of the carpet, that the curtains were dingy, the coverings of the chairs faded, the table rickety, 'The poor old furniture!' said Claire, 'must that go? Yet it is frightfully shabby. 'The Poison is eating into our souls,' her father went on, with deeper gloom ; 'for twenty years and more, I have thought this

 
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Sociology

Poverty - by James Platt

little sales a model of good taste. Claire, when we go into a large house, we will keep the old furniture all in a room by itself, whither we can go and remind ourse1ves of the past. If we are to be rich, we must never forget that we were once poor and happy.'" He is a line old fellow, and had often thought that if he died, his daughter would he left alone in the world, and poor; but with riches there was longer this anxiety. Yet, although he ought to have felt happy, he was sad. The old furniture and the poor little cottage was full of associations, and his thoughts went back to the days when he was poor, and yet really happy, with a wife and a little girl. The news of riches soon flies abroad ; a man thought to be rich is besieged with applications for support from benevo1ent societies, hospitals, churches, chapels, etc., and circular follows circular, pointing out in the most attractive manner how "the rich may become richer," by investing their money in trams, plans, and shams of all kinds, and, as Hector said, " one under- stands now why the poor think better of mankind, than the rich."

There must he causes of Poverty, one of the principal is "drink." "For the ten years ending 1829, the yearly expenditure of the United Kingdom upon drink averaged £58,890,009; while for the ten years ending 1881, it averaged £136,481,000 yearly. In 1825, the middle of the former decade, the population of the United Kingdom was 22,258,598; in 1875 it was 32,719,167; and, calculating from these figures, I find that, while the population only increased 47 per cent, the consumption of intoxicating liquors grew 131 per cent ....

"If we take the ten years prior to 1830, we find that the

© Peter Smith 2008