There will always be
inequalities in wealth and room for personal gifts from the more to
the less fortunate; but the State must not be content with such patching
and palliating, but must strike at the roots of the evil. We will
consider the chief causes of poverty and their cure.
(1) The cause that bulks largest is the inadequate wages of a
considerable portion of the lowest class. It is obviously impossible
to support the average family of five in decency, not to say in health,
efficiency, or comfort, with an income of, say, less than a thousand
dollars a year, as prices go at time of writing (1914). Yet great
numbers of families at present have to exist somehow upon less, even
much less. Five million adult male workers in this country receive
less than six hundred dollars a year for their work.[Footnote: Cf.
Professor Fairchild's comments in Forum, vol. 52, p. 49 (July, 1914).]
Even when mothers work who ought to be at home tending the children,
even when children work who ought to be in school, the total income
is often miserably inadequate. Yet there is ample wealth in the country,
if it were better distributed, to pay a living wage to every laborer.
By some one of the means which we shall presently discuss, the State
must see that all laborers are well enough paid to enable them, while
they work, to support in comfort a moderate family.
(2) Involuntary unemployment is the next source of poverty.
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