The Celina Democrat. (Celina, O. [Ohio]) 1895-1921, 1917-08-31
POVERTY RECOGNIZED
AS SOCIAL DISEASE
Leaders of Thought Say Its Dis
appearance viii in Time Be
Effected by Adoption of
Wise Social Party.
Alfred w. Greeley in Pennsylvania
Grit

Grit.
It is not to die. or even to die of hun
ger, that makes man wretched; many
men have died; all men must die.
/ But It is to live miserable we know not
why: to work sore and yet gain nothing;
| to be heat-wOTn, weary, yet isolated un-
related girt In with cold. universal lais-
sez faire-Thomas Carlyle.
TT IS beginning to be recognized
that the great bulk of the burden
of poverty is as unnecessary and
preventahle as smallpox or tuber-
culosis. Just as tuberculosis is a
ease of the social organism. II is
/ probably the greatest burden humanity
! staggers under and it eXacts directly
and indirectly its toll from all mem
| bers of society. Why should there be
/ hungry mouths when the proper cult
vation of even one state of the Union
would furnish sufficient food for our
whole population? Why should mil
| lions shiver underclOthed every winter
when we are able to furnish textiles
for the whole world? Why should
| there be grim periods of unemploy-
ment with vast natural resources yet
untouched? These and similar ques-
| tions are beginning to demand an an
swer that must be more than IA SNUG,
hypocritical shouldering of the respon-
sibility upon Providence.
Poverty Never Essential.
As Professor Hollander declares, the
attitude of hopeless pessimism toward
the problem of poverty, has practically
passed or is passing. We no longer
tamely accept the postulates of theo-
logical convenience, Of industrial fatal
ism, and class quietism. On the con-
trary, "the general body of economic
students (and this includes our ma
tional leaders of Industry, assert that
poverty, understood as economic in
sufficiency, is an incident of Industrial
evolution, not an essential of the eco
nomiC structure; I; that its presence i'm
plies maladjustment, not normal work
ing that its control may be effected
by wise social policy, and that its ulti-
mate disappearance is fair inference
from the facts of economic expert
ence"
This also is the opinion held by the
great English economist and thinker.
Prof. Alfred Marshall, who voices the
doctrine of social hOpefulness in de-
clar1ng that just as we have out
grown the conviction that slavery,
which the ancient world regarded as
an ordinance of nature, is necessary,
so we are abandoning the belief that
poverty must exist, or that there
should be great numbers Of people
foredoomed from their birth to grind
ing toll. unrewarded by even the bare
necessities of decent existence.
The conquest of poverty is now an
economic possibility. 1t is definitely
within reach if we are willing to pay
for it and f0rmly desire it's achieve
ment. The campaign, many of its fea-
lures now In development, is mainly
one of social and economic betterments
for the correction of social injustice
fog the increase Of the earning power
of labor and capital, not one but both |
as a unit of efficient production; for |
the prolongation of human life through |
public sanitation and hygiene, together |
with preventive medicine in a war on |
disease; for the salvage |
of the deficient and defective classes
of society, and for the rectlfcatiOn of |
and the prevention of
understood as invOlun-
tary idleness of competent workmen.
Every factor of human betterment is
doing it's part directly or Indirectly,
in this war upon poverty !