Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/351

Rh becomes the freedom of "sweating," which receives only the slightest check from the good-will of philanthropists. The immense pressure from above calls forth the counter-pressure from below. As their feeling of self-consciousness develops, the laboring classes seek to realize themselves as a unity, and in their wishes, needs, and point of view to oppose themselves to the employing class. One can speak of this movement among the laboring classes as something quite new in the history of sociology and of the world. This does not mean that there ever was a time when the struggle of the impoverished classes to improve their social and economic condition had no existence. But no movement has seized hold of such great masses of people. First of all, the modern means of communication and the press, together with a universal political freedom which has, in spite of every obstacle, made great advances, have been the powers which have given that solidarity to modern labor which is its peculiar characteristic. This movement of labor to realize itself as a great unity gives rise to the modern social problem of which the problem of poverty forms a part. As a part of the social problem if assumes a new aspect. The conception of poor-relief, in the old sense of the term, is entirely foreign to the labor program, the first principle of which is self-help; not pity, but justice; not a prayer, but a claim.

This social conception of the problem increases the difficulty of treating it, because the attention is now directed away from the outer appearance of poverty to its deep-lying cause, and the trouble now is to find those measures through which the cause of poverty may be counteracted. We are accustomed to classify the causes of poverty as "general" and "particular." The former comprise events over which the individual has no influence, such as the whole organization of state and society, business crises, wars, discoveries and inventions which revolutionize a whole branch of industry, such as especially the replacing of hand 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