Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/352

340. 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 responsible. 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 population. And if the state of dwellings and food have such a result, there forces itself to the front the question of wage and labor conditions which do not allow a sufficient expenditure for food and dwelling. 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 determining circumstances are more powerful than the will of the individual.

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 today 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