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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 24a

Poverty and Wealth

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This paper having been written in compliance with a request, is now published together with the note with which it was returned declined. The reader will judge whether the reason given was a just and true one.

Melbourne Social Science Congress. Office—Custom House. Melbourne, 18th Nov. 1880.

Dear Sir,

I am directed by the Committee of the Economy Section of No. 5 Department to return to you the Paper enclosed, and to inform you that they do not consider the subject treated therein one which comes within the scope of the Economy Section.

Yours faithfully,

J. S. Greig,

Hon. Sec.

H. K. Eusden, Esq.,

Poverty and Wealth.

It is commonly said that there should be no poverty in such a place as Victoria, yet it undeniably exists here. How is this? All are not poor here. Some are wealthy; some are not wealthy; but some are poor. What is poverty? Poverty is comparative. The same man who possesses what would make him not other than poor in a civilized—might find it wealth in a poorer—place. Poverty is having not only less than other people of the means of subsistence, but absolutely insufficient to maintain oneself in efficiency and health. To say then that poverty exists, is equivalent to saying that conditions are unequal.

Well, men are born naturally unequal, and if they could all be made equal tomorrow, which they cannot, they page 2 would not remain so five minutes. To make men equal, they must be of the same size, health, strength and wit; as well as wealth; and though a lack of one may be compensated by plenty of another, men differently constituted cannot properly be called equal.

Men are born unequal. But as regards wealth the main point is this. Some men are born with Thrift, while the majority of men are without it, or have less of it than others. All men desire wealth, and would have it if they could. But those who are without thrift will never have wealth; or if it come to them by any odd chance, it is ten to one that they will not keep it. There is no cure for the lack of thrift. Those who have not thrift, the natural knack of accumulation, will never acquire it. Thrift is a moral quality, and like all moral qualities it is congenital—inherited. Thrift is not economy alone, nor industry alone nor cleverness alone, nor a combination of these, though they may often be concomitants. But thrift seems to me to be what I have called it,'a special faculty or knack of accumulation. A thrifty man is one whose pleasure lies less in spending than in accumulating, and whose abilities minister to his desire. Let him be born ever so poor, he will become wealthy, whatever the circumstances in which he may be placed. In whomsoever thrift really exists, it will tell; whether associated with benevolence and generosity as in Robert Owen and Leclaire, or on the other hand with habits of laziness and even drunkenness.

There is no error more common than the supposition that wealthy men become so at the expense of other people. The converse is nearer the case. Without thrifty men, no wealth could be accumulated; and no civilization nor numerous population would be possible. The numerous population subsists therefore by means partly of the wealth which the thrifty accumulate; and were the thrifty and their wealth annihilated, or were they prevented from accumulating, the numerous population must dwindle quickly or slowly down to the numbers which can subsist without civilisation and wealth. Fifty years ago Melbourne maintained less than one savage for every thousand of its present inhabitants; and were wealth and thrift to disappear the people would die off to the numbers of the aboriginal in page 3 habitants, who had not only no thrift, but no idea of property. If, therefore, it is the interest of many people to live, it is their interest that some thrifty people should accumulate. For the thrifty man does not live upon his principal, but upon interest gained by passing it to the hands of others to use for the benefit of the community. He himself uses the interest only, but cannot do even that without giving the use of his principal to others, the use of it by whom, to enable them to pay the interest to him, must benefit the whole community. The interest upon which he lives is a trifle to that which the circulation or use of the principal realises for all. Every member of the community benefits by it; for everyone may for a trifle telegraph or travel by railway or steamer to the antipodes by means which were created by the thrift of a few. Thus not only the comfort and prosperity of the community, but the very existence of a dense population depends upon the thrift of some; for no dense population can subsist without the accumulation of wealth by some. The unthrifty dense population therefore lives rather at the expense of the thrifty, than the thrifty at the expense of the unthrifty. Large numbers of persons earn so little or save so little, that they are barely self-supporting, and even their labour, would often be of no worth to the community, were it not directed by others, who if not thrifty themselves, are employed by the thrifty for the purpose.

Society is thus composed of a mass of people, a few of whom are thrifty and wealthy, but many of whom are less so in differing degress. Some few are over thrifty and never enjoy the benefit of the wealth their thrift produces to the community. When combined with penuriousness, it produces little happiness to the saver himself, though the benefit to society by the accumulation of his savings is none the less. The bulk of society, I think it may be said, are not thrifty, but are sufficiently prudent to raise themselves, at least in later life, above the level of the poor. But there are large numbers in every community who are naturally entirely incapable of thrift, notwithstanding that some of them work hard and are not imprudent. The children of thriftless people are at a special disadvantage in inheriting unthrifty habits, besides wanting page 4 the knowledge which is power. They never save from what they earn, and often earn scarcely enough to save anything. The industrious and the prudent—although not actually thrifty, will not be poor, unless from special causes such as misfortune or ignorance. But the idle, the lazy, the improvident, those who take no thought for the morrow, will without thrift be poor and remain so. Nothing will make them otherwise, unless shame or misery create in them a desire to improve.

The private evils of poverty it is not my purpose to dilate upon. The personal privation, discomfort, disease and loss of respect, are notorious results, too often aggravated by their infliction on a whole family. But the public social aspect of them is of more importance and affects all classes. The crime, disease, lunacy, and drunkenness, which are more or less necessary concomitants of poverty, permeate all classes and deteriorate the race. The enormous increase of lunacy and the prevalence of drunkenness are gigantic evils which affect every class of rich and poor, and I have brought them to the notice of other sections of this congress, and proposed remedies the advantages of which were not and could not be disputed; and the alleged impractibility of which consists in nothing more than the disinclination to use them.

I propose now to examine the causes of poverty, which are all divisible into primary and secondary. I shall call those primary which are congenital and therefore irremediable defects, such as the lack of thrift, the lack of sense, and the lack of energy. We see people every day with these natural defects, which they recognise and would remedy if they could; but feel themselves—or simply are—incapable of doing so. All desire wealth, and would do almost anything within their capacity to get it. But few have the faculty of thrift; and if more have intelligence it has generally a very limited special direction; while energy without sense or thrift is wasted unless under the direction of the sense or thrift of others. We find these faculties combined—or existing separately in various degrees in the majority of people, so as to prevent their falling into absolute poverty. Those who are without them, and who inherit besides habits of idleness, vice and dissipation, fall inevitably page 5 into poverty, and too often recruit the ranks of immorality and crime. I have elsewhere recommended what I consider the only practicable course which I think that society can and should pursue to prevent this general degradation of the moral average of the people, by permanently eliminating the lowest on the scale when selected by themselves and the law as criminals or lunatics.

But there is a secondary cause of poverty and degradation which is remediable. This is the lack of knowledge which is power. Knowledge is of immense value and assistance both to the thrifty, the wise, and the energetic. Knowledge enables them to minimise their difficulties and to maximise their action. But as it is of more consequence to avoid pain than to achieve pleasure—to repel poverty than to accumulate wealth, so knowledge must be regarded as of even more value to assist those to avoid, poverty who are without thrift, wit and energy, than to help to wealth—those who possess those qualities. Knowledge how to avoid poverty is attainable. The sense and resolution to apply it are another matter, and are beyond the reach of those who have not inherited thrift, wit and energy. For them there is no help. But there are vast numbers of people who have just enough sense and resolution to save them from poverty, if they only had also the necessary knowledge. To save them—to prevent them from swelling the numbers of those at the very bottom of the moral scale, and thus surely the lowering of the moral average, is then the object I have in view : and I consider it the duty as well as interest of those who desire to prevent the degradation of the moral average, to assist to spread this knowledge as widely as possible.

The knowledge most effective to preserve from poverty, is unquestionably that of the law of population and its consequences as expounded by modern malthusianism. That law is, that population in excess of the means of subsistence must die off, and poverty is the painful process. It is not necessary that a whole country shall be over-populated to produce the result. Wherever in any country or in any house, there is insufficient food for the population, the process begins at once. Extermination commences with pri- page 6 vation, and privation is poverty. Now where among us does privation begin?

If a young single person cannot earn a good living and save a little out of it, it must be from a physical, mental or moral defect, which being hereditary is incurable. Instances constantly occur in which individuals with no special advantages but the natural talent of thrift, attain from the lowest rank to wealth and eminence But without the special talent of thrift, an individual may, by industry, energy, and temperance, maintain himself in a respectable position and keep himself from anything like poverty. But when an average man who can get no more than a single man's wages, has with one pair of hands, to provide for eight or ten mouths, backs, and feet, he is obviously at an enormous disadvantage. His wages are determined by the competition of single persons, and unless he can do the work of five or six, how can he provide properly for a large family? And if he has a difficulty in providing for the necessities of their bodies, how can he furnish their minds with knowledge in which he himself is deficient? This is where it touches society. If children must thus be bred up in ignorance and helplessness, if not in want and squalor, what is the prospect for the next generation? and is it surprising if they resort to immorality and crime for a living. The enormous increase of lunacy and drunkenness cannot much longer be passed over with customary apathy. Society still declines to interfere; and if individuals do not know how to help themselves, there is no other help available. If their means are limited, they must learn to limit their responsibilities; and the only way to do so is by recognising the principle of the law of population, and acting upon it with determination. Even temperance and frugality will not enable one pair of hands to provide properly for eight or ten children.

The law of population is based on the fact that human increase takes place in a geometrical ratio. Population doubles itself in a few years, while food can only increase slowly by dint of arduous human labor. The consequence is that the population must die down to the level of the means of subsistence; not of food alone, but of care in page 7 infancy and sickness. It does so under all circumstances, Sometimes by famine as in Ireland and India, by poverty as in England, by pestilence as in many other places, by infanticide nearly all over the world. The population in England doubles in about forty years, notwithstanding that 256,000 die yearly under 20 years of age. It really doubles in less that 20 years, but the means of subsistence cannot be increased to keep up with it, and it necessarily dies down to their level; the weakest, the rising generation being crushed out of existence in the struggle, being deprived of the care which their parents are unable to afford. This is proved by the fact that the children of the poor die three times as fast as the children of the rich, while those of the rich die many times as fast as they ought. They are destroyed by ignorance of the law of population.

Now I contend that the wanton over production of children in the face of their enormous preventible destruction, is equivalent to wholesale murder, causes nearly all avoidable poverty, and incalculable sorrow and unhappiness, to say nothing of the enormous waste of labour in half. rearing thousands who must inevitably die prematurely. Were this wholesale overproduction and consequently unnecessary murder of the innocents prevented, an immense amount of human sorrow, immorality, and wasted labour would be saved. Most of it is saved in France, and therefore can and should be saved in England. The means are within everybody's reach, and the knowledge of them has—in the face of foul abuse and ignorant persecution—been published by men and women who have had sense to perceive that the welfare of civilised mankind depends upon its promulgation. Mr. J. S. Mill, says (Political Economy p. 226)—"Civilisation in every one of its aspects is a struggle against the animal instincts." Note—" Little improvement can be expected in morality until the producing large families is regarded with the same feelings as drunkenness or any other physical excess." Yet there are many people who pretend to moral feelings and principles, who insist that men ought to be guided in this matter by their animal instinct alone, and not by the intellectual judgment of the wise and prudent! "But while" Mr. Mill proceeds" the aristocracy and the clergy are foremost to page 8 set the example of this kind of incontinence, what can be expected of the poor?" Now I think much may be expected of the poor if only they possess the necessary knowledge. For the poor need not be poor, if they will use this knowledge which is to them inestimable by placing their fate in their own hands but this does not affect the poor alone. Society is deeply interested in lessening poverty as the cause of crime and immorality. One of the best and most direct means of lessening poverty, crime and immorality, is the wide circulation of the knowledge of how to prevent the excess in one's own house—of population in excess of the means of subsistence; and I shall be happy to communicate to anyone the names of the publications devoted to that end, and where to get them.

H. K. Rusden.
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E. Purton & Co., Steam Printers, 106 Elizabeth-st., Melbourne.