Many successful people in easy circumstances refuse
to admit that they have any duties to the poor. The agree with Tennyson’s Northern
farmer when he said. The poor in a lump is bad.” The comfort themselves with
the belief that all poverty is due to laziness, drink, or stupidity and is. Therefore
the fault of the poor themselves. . Even if this were true. We should still have
a duty to the poor: for it is the duty. Of the wise, the strong. The
industrious and the virtuous, to help the weak, the idle. The foolish and the vicious.
To change their mode of life. But it is not true: at any rate it is only a part
of the truth. For in modern civilization, a great deal of the terrible poverty
that exists is not due to any fault of the poor themselves, but to the organization
of society, for which the individual poor are not responsible Whether a man is
born rich or poor is a matter of chance. Many of the rich have simply inherited
their wealth. And have in no way earned it: and many of the poor have in like
manner inherited their poverty, and have in no way deserved it. It matters not
how idle and worthless the rich man is: he remains rich: and similarly it
matters not how industrious and sober and able a poor man is, for under present
conditions he is too often doomed to a life of poverty.
Leaving aside, therefore, cases of poverty that are
really due to idleness or vice, there is a large mass of poverty for which the
modem social organization is responsible These poor are therefore a legitimate
burden on their more fortunate rich brothers, whose duty is to relieve them in
their distress.
Usually the duty of the rich to the poor is summed
up in the word alms giving. Or charity it certainly is the duty of those who
have to give of their abundance to those who have not, according to their
needs. But indiscriminate alms giving and even organized charity, is no solution
of the problem of poverty: and the mere giving of money to the poor does not
relieve a rich man of all further responsibility.
Nor is it enough to throw all the responsibility of
the poor on to the State. In England the Government provides workhouses for the
old people who are passed work, for orphans. And even for able- bodied man out
of employment. But in order to discourage pauperism, these work houses have to
be made so undesirable that no poor people will willingly resort to them until
they are forced to do so.
The poor requires something more than money. They
want intelligent sympathy: they want moral help, which no money can they want
to be treated as human brothers, and not as creatures of another race, and as
dirt under our feet. To give these things to the poor requires a larger heart.
a broader mind, and more personal sacrifice, than most rich people are prepared
to give. Yet we shall never be able t relieve the poor in a real until, we can
give them our hearts as well as our money.
finally, the chief duty of the rich is to so reorganize
society that no man needs be poor if he is industrious, sober and honest. This
is a very difficult and complicated problem. Which cannot be solved b any
simple measures: but if a nation as a whole is resolved to abolish all poverty
that is not due to individual vice and idleness. It will be able to find a way.