Willmar tribune., 1909-09-01

During the last thirty years the
advances in the handling of the
problem of poverty have been many
and important. Indeed, it is only
in that period that we have even
become conscious of the fact that
there was such thing as problem
|of poverty. 1t was quite univer-
sally thought that poor man was
simply man without money and
therefore, if he were given money,
albeit a dime or a quarter. he
would no longer be poor. 1t was
also believed that if you could but
get hold of every poor man in ex-
istence and treat him in the same
way, you could, after having tickled
the palm of the last mothers son
of them, pat yourself on the hack
and exclaim, "Lo! now does pover-
ty aff1ict the earth no more."
But we of this day and genera
tion are wiser. We realize first
that man is a composite of several
selves, physical. mental, moral and
spiritual, each Of them in it's turn
the product Of many and varied in
huences. He is a mixture of her.
edity and the long train of elements
that have made up what broadly
may be termed his environment.
So in dealing with the man who is
poor, If we are to get anywhere,
we must needs consider him more
than a mere stomach to be filled or
back to be covered; not necessarily
a moral delinquent whose wrong
doing has made him poor and whose
cure therefore is a religious tract,
as was the old idea. No, the task
Of the charity worker today is an
infinitely more difficult one. He
must analyze, he must get "the
story He must consider the man
in his relation to himself, to his
family, to his neighbors and his
neighborhood, to his church, to the
industrial situation surrounding
him, to the general life of the COM
munity. This method it is that is
leading to the establishment of GER
tain convictions as to what the
problem of poverty in our modern
times really is. And no other
method could have established these
convictions.
Well, what are they? The first
important one is that, since men,
complex beings, have brought into
existence a problem of poverty, so
the problem itself is complexity
and must be considered in broad
way If we are even to approach a
solution of it. The second is that,
unless society, particularly the So
cial worker, the legislator and the
church, pay at least as much atten-
tion to the bettering of industrial
and social conditions as they ordi-
narily do to personal wrongdoing,
they will no more solve the problem
of poverty than they can sweep
back the ocean with broom.
Third, among the causes of individ-
uaf poverty, none ranks higher than
disease and accident. Fourth,
among the diseases, the great talk
ing captain of misery and death is
tuberculosis.
Therefore, would we do anything
to throttle poverty we must try to
throttle tuberculosis. In the words
of another: "This is the archen.
emy Of mankind, bringing in its
wake more tears, more broken and
desolated families, more widows
and orphans than war or pestilence
or all the calamities of nature and
commerce. 1t kills every year
about 300 Minneapolis citizens
1000 persons in the state of Mime.
sofa; over 100000 in the nation
two million in the world. All un
necessarily, let US remember that
More people die IN the United
States from tuberculosis each yeal
than we're killed on both sides il
the battles of Gettysburg ant
Waterloo together, or in the whole
Russo Japanese war. It is alto
gether probable, according to tn,
researches of experts in differen