Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1907-04-28
IGNORANCE, POVERTY AND
 CRIME.

Out of her late husbands ample estate she has made provision to set aside $10,OOO,00O for practical social research for the purpose of alleviating the hard conditions of poverty She has named as admin istrators of this fund Robert w. De Forest, Cleveland H. Dodge, Daniel c. Gilman, John M. Glenn, Miss Helen Gould, Mrs. William B. Rice, and Miss Louisa l.. Schuyler. The task she has assigned them the object of the movement Mrs. Sage has so generously financed, it is to ascertain the causes of ig- norance, poverty and crime in the marvelously rich country of ours Ignorance, poverty and crime-they are so intimately associated that no philosopher can deny their relation ship. The terms are almost inter- changeable. To be ignorant means to be poor. To be poor-ah, there's the rub! But to be intelligent and poverty stricken, too-is this com bination often found? And if it does exist in the same person, does crime necessarily follow? Not often, will be the answer from lips that quiv- CT from emptiness of stomach and pride of spirit. We hope that the administrators of Mrs. Sage's fund all excellent persons-will give us light on this phase of the subject
 The people have come to accept without question the doctrine that in this country of boundless opportuni- ties there is little, if any, excuse for any person of intelligence to be poor The term is used in it's broad sense. It is not meant to say that ereryboay who is intelligent enough to work can be a millionaire. Necessarily, only the few can be millionaires, as only the few can be poets, and sculptors, and statesmen, and what-not. Like. wise is there another doctrine which we have come to accept without queS tion, and that is that there is no eS- cuse for anybody of normal mental faculties being ignorant in the United States. The State has carefully pro- vided against an illiterate citizenship And still illiteracy exists. Govern ment fights ignorance and it's twin sister, crime, and leaves the citizen unshaekled to fight poverty. It was Bismarck who declared: "Educate, educate, Or We shall perish in our own prosperity!" And forthwith Ger many devised a compulsory education al system that is being rigidly en- forced Whether poverty and crime are any less prevalent in Germany to- day than they were before Bismarck stirred his people to an educational campaign We do not know Our crit ies declare that crime is On the in crease in the United States, and the statistics of homicdes, suicides, em- bezzlements, etc., seem plainly 10 show that our critics for once are no reliable statistics on poverty in the United States. All We are assured on that point is that our per capita wealth is rapidly increasing, and that it almost leads the world. England may still be little ahead of us in this matter, but poverty-gaunt. hol- lands great problem today. Perhaps the pressure of population upon the resources of production may account for poverty in England. If England's workless hordes could be thinned out, probably there would be noticeable diminution of poverty over there.
 Poverty and ignorance in the United States are massed in our centers of greatest population. There, too, is where crime that does not figure in the statistics is most common. The administrators of Mrs. Sages fund might be able to do something of real practical value if they should devote their efforts to devising a scheme for relieving the congestion of the popula- ton in certain parts of the country and filling up the waste places in other parts. Our per capita wealth might not thereby be necessarily in creased but ignorance, poverty and crime would undoubtedly be diminish ed.
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