THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 



BY EMIL MUNSTERBERG 



[Emil Miinsterberg, Member of the County Council, and President, City Charities, 

 Berlin, Germany, since 1S98. b. Dantzic;, Germany, July 13, 1855. Dr. Jur. 

 Judge 'in Menden, Westfalen, 1887-90; Mayor in Iserlohn, 1890-92; Director 

 of Public Charities, Hamburg, 1 893-96. Author of numerous books and papers 

 treating subjects of charity and social welfare.] 



POVERTY means a condition where there is lack of the necessaries 

 of life. The preservation of the life of the body is a necessity, and 

 the man who does not possess the means necessary to such preserva- 

 tion is poor. Whether it be directly through starvation, or indirectly 

 through sickness brought on by insufficient nourishment, poverty 

 must necessarily lead to the extinction of the- physical life. The 

 individual's instinctive love of life will not allow him to submit to this 

 result without resistance, and so in one way or another, according to 

 the circumstances in which he lives, he struggles against it. He will 

 either beg the means of subsistence from his fellows, or, if this fails, 

 he will resort to fraud or force in his efforts to obtain it. This means 

 that he will strive to escape want by secret or forcible appropriation 

 of the necessary means of subsistence. But so far as begging and 

 force fail, whether it be because his fellow men are also poor, or 

 because they take sufficient precautions to protect themselves against 

 fraud and force, so far the condition of poverty continues to exist, 

 and that consequence of physical degeneration makes its appearance 

 which penetrates the whole being through disease, through moral 

 neglect, and through embitterment of soul. Where wider circles of 

 population fall into this condition we speak of collective poverty, in 

 contrast to individual poverty. 



There is this great difference between poverty and all other human 

 conditions, that the man who suffers from it has at his disposal no 

 means of resistance out of his own power; that here there is no 

 service rendered which furnishes a claim for a counter-service, as is 

 the case in all other human relations. Hence, when help is rendered 

 to the poor, be it by the individual or by society in its various forms, 

 the question is always of a service without return. For this reason, 

 therefore, such service cannot, without further ceremony, be left to the 

 general principles governing economics and equity which otherwise 

 regulate the relation between service and counter-service. There 

 are many other points of view on which the necessity of helping the 

 poor is based. They may be briefly classified as " philanthropic '' 

 and " police." The spectacle of a human being suffering from want 

 is so affecting that it calls out the feeling of sympathy which impels 



