Fulton County tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio) 1883-1925, 1917-08-31
POVERTY RECOGNIZED
AS SOCIAL DISEASE
Leaders Of Thought Say Its Dis
appearance Win in Time Be
Effected by Adoption Of
Wise Social Party.
Alfred w. Greeley in Pennsylvania
Crit


Alfred w. Greeley in Pennsylvania
Grit.
1t is not to die or even to die of hum
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-worn, weary, yet isolated, un-
related, girt In with cold, universal lais-
seq faire-Thomas Carlyle.
TT is beginning to be recognized
that the great bulk of the burden
of poverty is as unnecessary and
preventable as smallpox or tuber-
culosis. Just as tuberculosis is a
physical disease, so poverty is a dis
ease of the social organism. 1t is
probably the greatest burden humanity
staggers under and it exacts directly
and indirectly its toll from all men,
bers of society. Why should there be
hungry mouths when the proper culti-
walton 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-
tons are beginning to demand an an
swer that must be more than a 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 thai
poverty, understood as economic in
sufficiency, is an incident of industrial
evolution, not an essential Of the eco
nomic structure; that its presence i'm
plies maladjustment, not normal work
ing; that it's control may be effected
by wise social policy, and that its ulti
mate disappearance is a fair inferenc,
from the facts Of economic expert
ence."
This also Is the opinion held by tn,
great English economist and thinker
Prof. Alfred Marshall, who voices tn,
doctrine of social hopefulness in de
claring that just as we have out
grown the conviction that slavery
which the ancient world regarded a
an ordinance of nature, is necessary
so we are abandoning the belief tha
poverty must exist, or that ther
should be great numbers of peopl
foredoomed from their birth to grind
ing toll, unrewarded by even the bar
necessities of decent existence.
The conquest of poverty is now a
economic possibility. 1t is definitel
within reach If we are willing to pa
for 1t and formly desire its achieve
ment. The campaign, many of its fes
lures now in development, is mainl
one of social and economic betterment
for the correction of social injustic,
for the increase of the earning powe
of labor and capital, not one but bot
as unit of efficient production; fo
the prolongation of human life throug
public sanitation and hygiene, togethe
with preventive medicine in a war O
preventable disease; for the salvag
of the deficient and defective classt
of society, and for the rectification {
underpayment and the prevention I
unemployment, understood as involul
tary idleness of competent WORKINGS
Every factor of human betterment
doing its part directly or indirectl
In this war upon poverty.