A SOCIAL PROBLEM.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3439, 5 March 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

A SOCIAL PROBLEM.

IS IT A MAN'S FAULT THAT HE'S

POOR?

"Trouble with the poor," said a sensible, prosperous man once, "is that their troubles are their own fault.

"They have no foresight. They waste their money. They don't save. They don't think about the future. They waste their opportunities, too. Every man has a chance, at least once in his life, to make his future secure —but the poor let their opportunities slip by. It's their own fault and I haven't much sympathy for them." Well, it is true that the poor make many mistakes, and they'd be richer if they made fewer. If they thought more about money and less about other things they wouldn't get into as much trouble as they do. If they were heartless, for example, they'd have bank accounts. If they thought things out as some people do, they'd have money for rainy days.

But this "sensible" fellow doesn't seem to realise how sickness weighs upon a poor man. Sickness is what burdens the poor family. There are clinics, yes, and there are hospitals, to be sure. But a lot of families are too proud to take what they mistakenly call charity. They prefer to pay out of their own pockets for what they get. They shouldn't feel like that, but they do. So the bills pile up and they're crippled for years. And the poor like children. They like the idea of having many sons and daughters growing up in the family, and being a comfort and a pride to them. They don't think ahead and calculate that they'll never be able to give all those children the "advantages" that some other children get. They just go ahead and have them. Maybe it's foolish o£ them to do that —maybe it isn't. But they want to live a full life now.

And the poor are too generous. More prosperous folks give away what they can spare. The poor, too often, give what they ought to keep for themselves. Maybe it is stupid not to be selfish? Not to be heartless?

Well, perhaps it is—but most people will get all hot inside when they hear "self-made men" abusing the poor, when they hear the more prosperous sagely advising the less prosperous, when they hear the go-getter explaining that if- a man: is poor it's almost always his own flault. What right nave people to talk like that? No right at all, if you stop to think about it.