Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-09-11
THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY.

cal that any man would seriously put forth the theory that poverty can be abolished in this world, that the distri button of wealth can and ought to be made so equally and generally that all men who are not drones will have enough and the terrible condition of widespread involuntary poverty that is in the world shall be driven forever from off the face of the earth. And yet we imagine that few who heard the wonderful exposition of anti-poverty doctrine at the opera house last evening by the Rev Dr McGlynn will be disposed seriously to question that the abolition of poverty would be entirely possible if the conditions which he predicated could be established. And we imagine, too that in the face of the terrible increase of poverty, that seems by some strange inexplicable law to keep step with na- tional and material progress, greater heed is going to be paid to the principles and methods by which the anti-poverty leaders are pursuing their mission. It must needs be so in the natural order of things.
 It is matter that has not escaped the attention of the most superficial observer among men that the rich as class are continually growing richer, that wealth is being heaped up in vast accumulations which are menace to the we'll being of the masses, that the struggle to get what each one rightly regards as his individual share of the natural bounties is continually becoming harder and harder, that poverty con- tinues to increase, and that naturally there is growth of social discontent among the people that bodes no good as we look ahead. It is not so many years since the social condition of the people in these United States was almost an ideal one, when there was little pow erty except the voluntary kind that will always be found while human nature remains unchanged, when the conditions of social, political and material equality prevailed as largely almost as even the socialists themselves could dream of and hope for. But this state of things no longer prevails. Men are no longer equals in this land, the opportunities for securing the individual appropriation of natural bounties are no longer equal; in word, there is more truth than fiction in the declaration that the rich are grow ing richer and the poor are growing fhn Ofv wealth has very largely increased in the last few decades, from an estimated per capita amount of $3OS in 1850 to $S7O in 1880 and a calculated sum of $1, ,0O0 for each individual in 1890, nobody will deny that we have an amount of individual poverty in the land that is out of all proportion to the total estimated valuation of pro- perty in 1880 of s44 4,0O0,0 100000. The number of millionaires has increased, and the number of millions in their hands has increased as we'll; but so, too, in much larger ratio have paupers in- creased and the difficulties of securing the individuals rightful share of the natural bounties have multiplied. In the September number of the Forum MT Thomas G. Shearman showed that twenty-five thousand persons possess more than half of the whole national wealth, real and personal, according to the highest estimate which anyone has yet ventured to make of the aggregate amount. There is certainly something wrong in the social system where such unequal distribution of wealth and the bounties of nature is increasingly possi- ble, something wrong with the methods under which it is possible to drive in- creasing numbers of men to all the hor- TOTS and hopelessness of Involuntary pow erty. The platitudes that have been worn threadbare by pulpit pounders and rostrum ranters concerning the equal rights and opportunities of all men in this free land and the beneficence of the existing conditions of good order have no longer a philosophy for the masses they are unable to dis cover merit in system that for them means ruin or the bare possibility of
  physical existence. It is this increasing centralization of wealth in the hands of a few, the increasing enriching of the classes as against the spreading poverty of the masses, that is at the root of the social discomfort that is fast settling down upon this fair land.
 Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey,
 U6oro
 As to the remedy proposed for this deplorable state of things men naturally differ. The naturalization of our indus tries, the fair distribution of natural bounties and the impossibility of an un- due appropriation of these is the remedy preached by Dr McGlynn in the evangel of the new crusade. It is not, as a writer in one of the local papers flip- panty insinuated, putting premium on idleness to nationralize industries, nor is it to abolish involuntary poverty by put ting an undue amount of work on some to the benefit of the drones and idlers. To the extent that Dr McGlynn and the social reformers seek to abolish this in- voluntary poverty good citizens who have at heart the highest and best well fare of the country will lift up their l&- IL