The San Francisco call., 1905-01-08

ture OF socialism is ROBERT Hun
~ ter's book Poverty This
~ study of the condition of the
poor man falls under the head
of socialistic literature because of
the writer's deductions; the facts he
sets forth rightly belong to the domain
of Industrial economies. And when l
denominate Hunters book as socialis-
tic do so with strong qualifying res
ervation; his is the socialism of the
thinker and the student Of conditions
and not that of the hare-brained theo-
rist and the agitator. AS Ruskin was
q socialist, as William Morris was an
advocate of like tenets, so is this wri-
ter, and the added weight of long
study of conditions carries conviction
with everything that he advances.
Between pauperism and poverty
Hunter makes a sharp distinction at
the very outset-a distinction which
acts as the pivotal point of his argu-
ments throughout. One is in poverty
when he cannot by labor obtain those
necessaries which will permit him to
maintain state of physical efficiency"
A pauper has gone beyond poverty the
minute that he solicits and receives
charity and becomes thereby a depen-
dent upon the bounty of society. The
pauper class in any city and in the
country at large can be reckoned ap-
proximately; no set of statistics. how
ever, is complete enough to register the
number OF that larger class, the class
in poverty, whose several members
oil iIrSt hnlnW fh6
mean line of physical efficiency and
postpone for time the dread scourge
of pauperism. England and Germany,
says the writer, have awakened to the
stern necessity of obtaining data upon
the constantly increasing army Of the
poverty stricken and the helplessly
poor, but the United States is abso-
lutely without the machinery of census
gathering which returns statistics upon
this vital question of industrialism.
From fragments of information such as
the evictions from lodgings, the record
Of burials in the potters' field, the death
rate from tuberculosis in the tene-
ments, the roll Of the unemployed, etc..
Hunter has made a conservative esti-
mate of poverty and paupertsm based
upon these incomplete sources. Not less
than IA per cent of the people in pros
porous times and not less than 20 per
cent in bad times are in a state Of pow
erty; the actual dependents upon char
ity approximate 100000.
Continuing with his evidences Of
the wide extent of poverty in this
country, the writer touches upon some
Of the fundamental causes of its ex-
istence. Lack of employment, un-
steady employment, the intense COM
petition in labor-these things serve
to make uncertain even the barely ef-
ficient wage of the laborer. The ac-
cidents, casualties and diseases result
ing from Industrial employments;
these are other fruitful sources of the
scourge Of penury. The possession of
property Is a reserve force to the
worker; yet the last census figures
show that considerably over one-half
of the families in the United States
do not own the houses they live in
and that 80 per cent of the workers in
cities are propertyless. Furthermore,
according to the same census. seven
eighths of the families hold but one
eighth of the national wealth.
lHeSe are SOIIle Oh the autnOr'S
facts; what are his deductions? Most
men are brought to poverty by the
wrongs of society; some by their own
faults. This is socialism, simon pure;
but what are the authors suggested
remedies? Not the overthrow of So
ciety, not the equal division of wealth.
The factories the mines, the work.
shops and the railroads must be
forced to cease from killing the faith
er or the boy or the girl whose wages
alone suffice to keep the family from
poverty" Again: "Tenements may be
made sanitary by the action of the
community, and thereby much of this
breeding OF wretched souls and ruined
bodies stopped" This remedy also: "a
broader education may be provided
for the masses, so that the street child
may be saved from idleness, crime and
vagrancy. and the working child saved
from ruinous labor
There is nothing inf1ammatory or ex-
treme in these views; in fact the pa-
ternalism OF the German Government
is already making some very near ap-
proaches to the ideals of Industrial
conditions which the author upholds.
The wrong of society lies not in the
mere possession Of money but in the
methods OF acquiring it. You can kill
a man with a tenement just as easily
as you can kill him with an AK" saws
Jacob Riis in How the Other Half
Lives" The man who owns a deadly
then. is, according to Riis'
view and the authors, murderer; the