The Parma herald. (Parma, Idaho) 1903-1917, 1917-08-30
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.
1t is not to die, or even to die of hun
| ger that makes man wretched; many
men have died; all men must die.
| why; to work sore and yet gain nothing;
| to be heat-worn, weary, yet isolated, I'M
| related, grit in with cold. universal lais-
| SEE falre-Thomas Carlyle.
TT is beginning to be recognized
that the great bulk of the burden
1 of poverty is as unnecessary and
preventable as smallpox or tuber-
culosis. Just as tuberculosis is a
physical disease, so poverty is 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 cult
walton of even one state of the Union
would furnish sufficient food for our
whole population? Why should mil
lions SILVER 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 vet
untouched? These and similar ques-
lions 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 that
poverty, understood as economic in
sufiiciency, 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 its control may be effected |
by wise social policy, and that its ulti- |
mate disappearance is a 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 4
doctrine of social hopefulneSs in de- /
claring 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 It is definitely
within reach IL we are willing to pay
for it and formly desire its 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.
for the increase Of the earning powar
Of labor and capital, not one but both
as a unit OF efficient production for {
the prOlonCatiOn Of human life through I
public sanitation and hygiene, together
with preventive medicine in a war on
disease; for the salvage
Of the deficient and defective classes
Of society. ard for the rectIfcatiOn Of ,
underpayment and the prevention Of
understood az invOlun- ;
tary ldleuess Of competent workmen. /
Every factor Of human betterment is :
doing its part directly or Indirectly, I
10 this var upon poverty. II