New-York tribune., 1902-02-03
"sPIRITUAL LIFE OF THE POOR"
PROFESSOR FELIX ADLER TELLS ABOUT
SOME OF THE EVILS OF POVERTY.

SOME OF THE EVILS OF POVERTY.
The Spiritual Life of the Poor the sub
ject of Professor Felix Ader's address before the
Society of Ethical Culture the Carnegie Ly-
ceum yesterday. He said in part:
There many intellectual persons among the
MIo ar teiylIls q HlsnX SpIIIudl Hle e IN @ ete
tenements 1t is because OF the presence OF these
persons of education and genius among our city
ton What are the evils fu Of poverty Some Of
them them are obxi9Is Not actual starvation, per
hundreds of thousands Of people to-day starving
because of poor nourishment. They are unable 70
resist sickness It may not be starvation that kills.
perhaps. but a fever. When the disease comes
it, and they die of fever perhaps it is said. but IT
headed ones men Of the old school who insist that
the evils of poverty are due TO their vices, but
there be vciousness there. and the statistics
show the dreadful mortality among the little ones
Another evil Of poverty is care Care @ steals in
door and windows; it steals stealthily down the
future that brings deep burrows to the brow OF the
makes the lot of the poor man harder to bear He
knows not what the morrow may bring forth
ployer NAV Law of a humber of his en1ployes The
employer does not stop 70 think that the laying off
Business and Industrial depression may sweep over
means the losing Of The foothoId eajn4d bv .bs
hardest kind of efforts. II the exhausting OF
the most pitiable economy. and these are slowly,
but the less surely. depleted
Business is a very proper thing. and business IN
terests must be protected I admit all that. but
your business relations not the only reia-
tions that you should consider. There the
siderations Of the people dependent upon you. or
the work you give them. They have some rights
that you morally bound to remember and con-
slider. well your personal business in
terests.
Professor Adler then said that in poverty men
were more brutal and less inclined be gentlemen
than where the poverty lacking The good
manners of polite society were forgotten in the
tenement houses, and there the vices were pain
fully in evidence. There a frankness In pow
erty that nothing short OF brutal; the
roundings and environments of poverty inclined
the men of education whom fate had forced to
make their home there cynical and pessimistic.
II killed the best there in them. and destroyed
their finer feelings IL also crushed mental activity
and growth He continued:
But despite il all. and despite the evils CT pov-
erty. when human nature fights to the last ditch.
when it is hard pressed and against the wall when
it is all but strangled by the force Of circumstances
that seem TO rise on every hand them and then
ert power spiritual power, that has never be-
fore been called out. but its very calling out IS
the spiritual compensation.
Professor Adler closed with an appeal to his
listeners to advance their spiritual growth He
pleaded that il receive the first consideration and
of his fellow man strengthened himself to bear the
additional burden He begged who employed
men to remember that they the same as
himself and that the difference. perhaps, due
the oppression of the classes hundreds of years
ago, and for which neither the unfortunate man
his parents his immediate remote an
who regarded the whom <ate had placed un-
der his direction adding to his spiritual
burdens. burdens. perhaps, which they were not
mentally able to bear.