THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 837 



as especially the replacing of hand labor by machine labor; further, 

 destructive events of nature, such as earthquakes, conflagrations, 

 inundations, epidemics, etc. Through all these causes numberless 

 individuals are simultaneously rendered penniless and countless 

 families deprived of their bread-winners. The particular causes of 

 poverty are disease, infirmity, old age, etc., which are again to be 

 distinguished as those for which the individual is responsible and 

 those for which he is not responsible. For idleness, prodigality, 

 drink-mania, and unchastity he is responsible; for youth, old age, 

 sickness, and infirmity, and death of the bread-winner he is not 

 responsible. Yet a sharp line of distinction is not to be drawn here. 

 A bad course of life, for which a vicious bringing-up is to blame, is 

 something for which, in a higher sense, the individual is not respon- 

 sible. Moreover, a similar consideration will show us how the 

 individual case broadens into the general. Take, for example, the 

 problem of criminality among the young, a problem which has 

 lately been the subject of especially earnest consideration and which 

 is bound up with domestic conditions. In like manner, the sickness 

 of the individual assumes a general importance when the condition of 

 dwellings, the general diet, etc., deteriorate the health of the popula- 

 tion. And if the state of dwellings and food have such a result, 

 there forces itself to the front the question of wage and labor condi- 

 tions which do not allow a sufficient expenditure for food and dwell- 

 ing. And from this wage and labor question we are immediately led 

 back to the question of economic and social conditions. In short, 

 we have an immense variety of circumstances produced through 

 causes the ultimate source of which is hidden in almost impenetrable 

 obscurity. Personal, physical, intellectual, and mental qualities 

 exercise a contributive but not decisive influence, where the deter- 

 mining circumstances are more powerful than the will of the indi- 

 vidual. 



However difficult it may be in particular cases to press back to the 

 ultimate cause, yet the knowledge of the connection between the 

 individual case and circumstances in general affords us points of view 

 for the measures that are to be taken to counteract poverty. Indeed, 

 it is this insight into the indissoluble connection of the single case 

 with the general which gives its decisive character to the efforts of 

 to-day to solve the problem of poverty. The well-worn comparison 

 between poverty and disease here obtrudes itself. It is not a piece 

 of court-plaster fastened over a wound which heals a disease whose 

 causes lie within, but only the treatment of the whole bodily condition, 

 the improvement of the vital forces, the restoration of regular circu- 

 lation of the blood, the stimulation of the activity of the heart. 

 Thus poor-relief, as a means of protecting the poor from direct want, 

 is only the court-plaster which serves as a temporary relief, but does 



