Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/108

104 tinue a poor man. It is only in most extraordinary cases that it turns out otherwise.

To these causes we must add what comes therefrom as their joint result: idleness, by which the poor waste their time; thriftlessncss and improvidence, by which they lose their opportunities and squander their substance. The poor are seldom so economical as tho rich; it is so with children, they spoil tho furniture, soil and rend their garments, put things to a wasteful use, consume heedlessly and squander, careless of to-morrow. The poor are the children of society.

To these five causes I must add intemperance, the great bane of the miserable class. I feel no temptation to be drunken, but if I were always miserable, cold, hungry, naked, so ignorant that I aid not know tho result of violating God's laws, had I been surrounded from youth with tho worst examples, not respected by other men, but a loathsome object in their sight, not eve: respecting myself, I can easily understand how the temporary madness of strong drink would be a most welcome thing. The poor are the prey of the rum-seller. As the lion in the Hebrew wilderness eateth up the wild ass, so in modern society the rum-seller and rum-maker suck the bones of the miserable poor. I never hear of^a great fortune made in the liquor trade, but I think of the wives that have been made widows thereby, of the children bereft of their parents, the fathers and mothers whom strong drink has brought down to shame, to crime, and to ruin. The history of the first barrel of rum that ever visited New England is well known. It brought seme forty men before the bar of the court. The history of the kst barrel can scarcely be much better.

Such are the natural and organic causes which make poverty.

With the exception of laws which allow the sale of intoxicating drink, I think there are few political causes of poverty in New England, and they are too inconsiderable to mention in so brief a sketch as this. However, there are some social causes of our permanent poverty. I do not think we have much respect for the men who do the rude work of life, however faithfully and well—little respect for work itself; The rich man is ashamed to have