Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/107

Rh associations are debasing, their companions bad. They are born into the Iceland of society, into the frigid zone, some of them under the very pole-star of want. Such men are born and bred under the greatest disadvantages. Every star in their horoscope has a malignant aspect, and sheds disastrous influence. I do not remember five men in New England, from that class, becoming distinguished in any manly pursuit,—not five. Almost all of our great men and our rich men came from the comfortable class, none from the miserable. The old poverty is parent of new poverty. It takes at least two generations to outgrow the pernicious influence of such circumstances.

Then much of the permanent poverty comes from the lack of ability, power of body and of mind. In that Iceland of society men are commonly born with a feeble organization, and bred under every physical disadvantage; the man is physically weak, or else runs to muscle and not brain, and so is mentally weak. His feebleness is the result of the poverty of his fathers, and his own want in childhood. The oak tree grows tall and large in a rich valley; stunted, small, and scrubby on the barren sand.

Again, this class of men increase most rapidly in numbers. When the poor man has not half enough to fill his own mouth, and clothe his own back, other backs are added, other mouths opened. He abounds in nothing but naked and hungry children.

Further still, he has not so good a chance as the comfortable to get education and general development. A rude man, with superior abilities, in this century, will often be distanced by the well-trained man who started at birth with inferior powers. But if the rude man begin with inferior abilities, Inferior circumstances, incumbered also with a load becoming rapidly more burdensome, you see under what accumulated disadvantages he labours all his life. So to the first natural and organic cause of poverty, his untoward position in society; to the second, his inferior ability; and to the third, the increase of his family, excessively rapid, we must add a fourth cause, his inferior development. An ignorant man, who is also weak in body, and besides that, starts with every disadvantage, his burdens annually increasing, may be expected to con-