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Sociology

Poverty - by James Platt

Socialist may be good, but man's reason, guided by experience from the past, tells him unmistakably that the world is not to be made better or happier by Act of Parliament. Legislative reform, equal voting power, all useless, until you have reformed the man himself. By all means let the labourer have his full share of the fruits of his labour, but, at the same time, let it be as clearly understood that "if any will not work, neither shall he eat."

Poverty is a disease that will require very careful manipulation. To quote Herbert Spencer: " The kinship of pity to love is shown among other ways in this, that it idealizes its object. Sympathy with one in suffering suppresses, for the time being, remembrance of his transgressions. The feeling which vents itself in 'poor fellow!' on seeing one in agony, excludes the thought of 'bad fellow,' which might at another time arise. Naturally, then, if the wretched are unknown, or but vaguely known, all the demerits they may have are ignored; and thus it happens that when, as just now, the miseries of the poor are depicted, they are thought of as the miseries of the deserving poor, instead of being thought of, as in large measure they should be, as the miseries of the undeserving poor. Those whose hardships are set forth in pamphlets and proclaimed in sermons and speeches which echo throughout society, are assumed to be all worthy souls, grievously wronged; and none of them are thought of as bearing the penalties of their own misdeeds ..... My wish is to prove that sympathy with the people and self-sacrificing efforts on their behalf, do not necessarily imply approval of gratuitous aids; and to show that benefits may result, not