Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/109

 PUBLIC OUTDOOR RELIEF 95

dole relief from a treasury. When those who give to the poor visit them in their homes, there is a personal tie of humanity ; but when the state interferes to do this work, that tie snaps. Prejudices are increased, bitter feelings are fostered in the unfor- tunate and forgotten.

This system does actually tend to extinguish that very spirit of humanity which gave it birth. It is not safe for the well-to-do to forget the existence of their poor neighbors. Nothing hardens character more than the ease with which poverty is shut out of sight by the successful. So long as there is distress in the world, the rich need to know it by contact, and not by official reports alone.

The tendency of outdoor relief is to lower wages. This it does it several ways. Money taken by taxation is so much taken from the productive capital of the country, and from the wages fund. Subsidized labor, working by the side of unsub- sidized labor, can and will take work at lower rates, and compel the entire class to accept the lower rates. The law punishes the thrifty to reward the thriftless. This history of the English poor law gives ample and painful illustrations of this assertion ; but at the door of our own city poor offices we can observe the same fact at work. In a new country, where labor is still in great demand most of the time, the full evil effects cannot be seen. But the dangerous system is here ready to do all its natural mischief in times of reverses and crowded population.

The system tends to excite hostility to the state itself. First, relief educates a large class to look to government for help; and when this is received the feeling of dependence increases. The poor man has become a pauper, a beggar. A willing pauper is near to being a thief. As the state excites hope which it can never fulfill, a time comes when the pauper is a public enemy. Having been educated by the state to be a beggar, he turns upon the state because it does not recognize his demand for support to be based upon "natural rights."

None of these considerations weigh against personal and voluntary charity, which is a favor, and not a legal obligation, and which may be suspended when the demand is made in the name