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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

1942

MOSES

THE CRIME OF POVERTY

BY
HENRY GEORGE

THE INTERNATIONAL JOSEPH FELS COMMISSION
122 EAST 37th STREET
NEW YORK, U. S. A.
1918

|Alw9l MS

MOSES

MOSES

THERE is in modern thought a tendency to look upon
the prominent characters of history as resultants
rather than as initiatory forces. As in an earlier
stage the irresistible disposition is to personification, so
now it is to reverse this process, and to resolve into myths
mighty figures long enshrined by tradition.
Yet if we try to trace to their sources movements whose
perpetuated impulses eddy and play in the currents of our
times, we at last reach the individual. It is true that "in
stitutions make men," but it is also true that "in the begin
nings men make institutions."
In a well-known passage Macaulay has described the
impression made upon the imagination by the antiquity of
that church, which, surviving dynasties and empires, car
ries the mind back to a time when the smoke of sacrifice
rose from the Pantheon and camelopard and tiger bounded
in the Flavian amphitheatre. But there still exist among
us observances — transmitted in unbroken succession from
father to son — that go back to a yet more remote past.
Each recurring year brings a day on which, in every land,
there are men who, gathering about them their families,
and attired as if for a journey, eat with solemnity a hur
ried meal. Before the walls of Rome were traced, before
Homer sang, this feast was kept, and the event to which it
points was even then centuries old.
That event signals the entrance upon the historic stage
of a people on many accounts remarkable — a people who,
though they never founded a great empire nor built a great

The lecture "Moses" was first delivered by Henry George in San
Francisco, June, 1878. The lecture was again delivered at Steinway
Hall, New York, Nov. 27, 1887. It is the text of the American lecture
that is reprinted in this booklet and differs from the first only in the
addition of a few passages referring to American conditions.

8 Moses
metropolis, have exercised upon a large portion of man
kind an influence, widespread, potent, and continuous; a
people who have for nearly two thousand years been with
out country or organized nationality, yet have preserved
their identity and faith through all vicissitudes of time and
fortune — who have been overthrown, crushed, scattered;
who have been ground, as it were, to very dust, and flung
to the four winds of heaven ; yet who, though thrones have
fallen, and empires have perished, and creeds have
changed, and living tongues have become dead, still exist
with a vitality seemingly unimpaired — a people who unite
the strangest contradictions ; whose annals now blaze with
glory, now sound the depths of shame and woe.
The advent of such a people marks an epoch in the his
tory of the world. But it is not of that advent so much as
of the central and colossal figure around which its tradi
tions cluster that, I propose to speak.
Three great religions place the leader of the Exodus
upon the highest plane they allot to man. To Christendom
and to Islam, as well as to Judaism, Moses is the mouth
piece and lawgiver of the Most High ; the medium, clothed
with supernatural powers, through which the Divine Will
has spoken. Yet this very exaltation, by raising him above
comparison, may prevent the real grandeur of the man
from being seen. It is amid his brethren that Saul stands
taller and fairer.
On the other hand, the latest school of Biblical criti
cism asserts that the books and legislation attributed to
Moses are really the product of an age subsequent to that
of the prophets. Yet to this Moses, looming vague and
dim, of whom they can tell us almost nothing, they, too,
attribute the beginning of that growth which flowered
after centuries in the humanities of Jewish law, and in
the sublime conception of one God, universal and eternal,
the Almighty Father; and again, higher still and fairer,

Moses 9
culminated in that guiding star of spiritual light which
rested .over the stable of Bethlehem in Judea.
But whether wont to look on Moses in this way or in
that, it may be sometimes worth our while to take the point
of view in which all shades of belief or disbelief may find
common ground, and accepting the main features of
Hebrew record and tradition, consider them in the light of
history as we know it, and of human nature as it shows
itself today. Here is a case in which sacred history may
be treated as we treat profane history without any shock
to religious feeling. Nor can the keenest criticism resolve
Moses into a myth. The fact of the Exodus presupposes
such a leader.
To lead into freedom a people long crushed by tyranny ;
to discipline and order such a mighty host ; to harden them
into fighting men, before whom warlike tribes quailed and
walled cities went down ; to repress discontent and jealousy
and mutiny ; to combat reactions and reversions ; to turn
the quick, fierce flame of enthusiasm to the service of a
steady purpose, require some towering character — a char
acter blending in highest expression the qualities of politi
cian, patriot, philosopher, and statesman.
Such a character in rough but strong outline the tradi
tion shows us — the union of the wisdom of the Egyptians
with the unselfish devotion of the meekest of men. From
first to last, in every glimpse we get, this character is con
sistent with itself and with the mighty work which is its
monument. It is the character of a great mind, hemmed
in by conditions and limitations, and working with such
forces and materials as were at hand — accomplishing, yet
failing. Behind grand deeds a grander thought. Behind
high performance the still nobler ideal.
Egypt was the mould of the Hebrew nation — the
matrix, so to speak, in which a single family, or, at most,
a small tribe grew to a people as numerous as the Ameri-

10 Moses
can people at the time of the Declaration of Independence.
For four centuries, according to Hebrew tradition — that is
to say, for a period longer than America has been known
to Europe — this growing people, coming a patriarchal
family from a roving, pastoral life, had been under the
dominance of a highly developed and ancient civilization
— a civilization whose fixity is symbolized by monuments
that rival in endurance the everlasting hills — a civilization
so ancient that the Pyramids, as we now know, were hoary
with centuries ere Abraham looked upon them.
No matter how clearly the descendants of the kinsmen
who came into Egypt at the invitation of the boy-slave be
come prime minister, maintained the distinction of race,
and the traditions of a freer life, they must have been
powerfully affected by such a civilization; and just as the
Hebrews of today are Polish in Poland, German in Ger
many, and American in the United States, so, but far more
clearly and strongly, the Hebrews of the Exodus must
have been essentially Egyptians.
It is not remarkable, therefore, that the ancient He
brew institutions show in so many points the influence of
Egyptian ideas and customs. What is remarkable is the
dissimilarity. To the unreflecting, nothing may seem more
natural than that a people, in turning their backs upon a
land where they had been long oppressed, should discard
its ideas and institutions. But the student of history, the
observer of politics, knows that nothing is more unnatural.
Habits of thought are even more tyrannous than habits of
body. They make for the masses of men a mental atmos
phere out of which they can no more rise than out of the
physical atmosphere. A people long used to despotism
may rebel against a tyrant; they may break his statutes
and repeal his laws, cover with odium that which he loved,
and honor that which he hated; but they will hasten to
set up another tyrant in his place. A people used to super-

Moses 11
stition may embrace a purer faith, but it will be only to
degrade it to their old ideas. A people used to persecution
may flee from it, but only to persecute in their turn when
they get power.
For "institutions make men." And when amid a peo
ple used to institutions of one kind, we see suddenly arise
institutions of an opposite kind, we know that behind
them must be that active, that initiative force — the men
who in the beginnings make institutions.
This is what occurs in the Exodus. The striking dif
ferences between Egyptian and Hebrew polity are not of
form but of essence. The tendency of the one is to sub
ordination and oppression ; of the other to individual free
dom. Strangest of recorded births ! From out the strong
est and most splendid despotism of antiquity comes the
freest republic. From between the paws of the rock-hewn
Sphinx rises the genius of human liberty, and the trum
pets of the Exodus throb with the defiant proclamation of
the rights of man.
Consider what Egypt was. The very grandeur of her
monuments, that after the lapse, not of centuries, but of
milleniums, seem to say to us, as the Egyptian priests said
to the boastful Greeks, "Ye are children !" testify to the
enslavement of the people— are the enduring witnesses of
a social organization that rested on the masses an immov
able weight. That narrow Nile valley, the cradle of the
arts and sciences, the scene, perhaps, of the greatest tri
umphs of the human mind, is also the scene of its most
abject enslavement. In the long centuries of its splendor,
its lord, secure in the possession of irresistible temporal
power, and securer still in the awful sanctions of a mys
tical religion, was as a god on earth, to cover whose poor
carcass with a tomb befitting his state hundreds of thou
sands toiled away their lives. For the classes who came
next to him were all the sensuous delights of a most lux-

12 Moses
urious civilization, and high intellectual pleasures which
the mysteries of the temple hid from vulgar profanation.
But for the millions who constituted the base of the social
pyramid there was but the lash to stimulate their toil, and
the worship of beasts to satisfy the yearnings of the soul.
From time immemorial to the present day the lot of the
Egyptian peasant has been to work and to starve that
those above him might live daintily. He has never re
belled. The spirit for that was long ago crushed out of
him by institutions which make him what he is. He knows
but to suffer and to die.
Imagine what opportune circumstance we may, yet to
organize and to carry on a movement resulting in the
release of a great people from such soul-subduing tyranny,
backed by an army of half a million highly trained soldiers,
requires a leadership of a most commanding and consum
mate genius. But this task, surpassingly great though it is,
is not the measure of the greatness of the leader of the
Exodus. It is not in the deliverance from Egypt, it is in
the constructive statesmanship that laid the foundations of
the Hebrew commonwealth that the superlative grandeur
of that leadership looms up. As we cannot imagine the
Exodus without the great leader, neither can we account
for the Hebrew polity without the great statesman. Not
merely intellectually great, but morally great — a statesman
aglow with the unselfish patriotism that refuses to grasp
a scepter or found a dynasty.
The lessons of modern history, the manifestations of
human nature that we behold around us, would teach us to
see in the essential divergence of the Hebrew polity from
that of Egypt the impress of a master mind, even if Hebrew
tradition had not testified both to the influence of such a
mind, and to the constant disposition of accustomed ideas
to reassert themselves in the minds of the people. Over
and over again the murmurings break out; no sooner is

Moses 13
the back of Moses turned than the cry, "These be thy gods,
O Israeli" announces the setting up of the Egyptian calf;
while the strength of the monarchial principle shows itself
in the inauguration of a king as quickly as the far-reach
ing influence of the great leader is somewhat spent.
It matters not when or by whom were compiled the
books popularly attributed to Moses; it matters not how
much of the code there given may be the survivals of more
ancient usage or the amplifications of a later age ; its great
features bear the stamp of a mind far in advance of peo
ple and time, of a mind that beneath effects sought for
causes, of a mind that drifted not with the tide of events
but aimed at a definite purpose.
The outlines that the record gives us of the character
of Moses — the brief relations that wherever the Hebrew
scriptures are read have hung the chambers of the imag
ination with vivid pictures — are in every way consistent
with this idea. What we know of the life illustrates what
we know of the work. What we know of the work illum
ines the life.
It was not an empire, such as had reached full develop
ment in Egypt or existed in rudimentary patriarchal form
in the tribes around, that Moses aimed to found. Nor was
it a republic where the freedom of the citizen rested on the
servitude of the helot, and the individual was sacrificed
to the state. It was a commonwealth based upon the indi
vidual — a commonwealth whose ideal it was that every
man should sit under his own vine and fig tree, with none
to vex him or make him afraid ; a commonwealth in which
none should be condemned to ceaseless toil; in which, for
even the bond slave, there should be hope, in which, for even
the beast of burden there should be rest. A commonwealth
in which, in the absence of deep poverty, the manly virtues
that spring from personal independence should harden into
a national character — a commonwealth in which the family

14 Moses
affections might knit their tendrils around each member,
binding with links stronger than steel the various parts
into the living whole.
It is not the protection of property, but the protection
of humanity, that is the aim of the Mosaic code. Its sanc
tions are not directed to securing the strong in heaping up
wealth so much as to preventing the weak from being
crowded to the wall. At every point it interposes its bar
riers to the selfish greed that, if left unchecked, will surely
differentiate men into landlord and serf, capitalist and
workman, millionaire and tramp, ruler and ruled. Its Sab
bath day and Sabbath year secure,, even to the lowliest, rest
and leisure. With the blast of the jubilee trumpets the slave
goes free, the debt that cannot be paid is canceled, and a
re-division of the land secures again to the poorest his fair
share in the bounty of the common Creator. The reaper
must leave something for the gleaner; even the ox cannot
be muzzled as he treadeth out the corn. Everywhere, in
everything, the dominant idea is that of our homely phrase
—"Live and let live !"
And the religion with which this civil policy is so close
ly intertwined exhibits kindred features  from the idea
of the brotherhood of man springs the idea of the father
hood of God. Though the forms may resemble those of
Egypt, the spirit is that which Egypt had lost. Though
a hereditary priesthood is retained, the law in its fullness
is announced to all the people. Though the Egyptian rite
of circumcision is preserved and Egyptian symbols reap
pear in all the externals of worship, the tendency to take
the type for the reality is sternly repressed. It is only
when we think of the bulls and the hawks, of the deified
cats and sacred ichneumons of Egypt, that we realize the
full meaning of the command: "Thou shalt not make to
thyself any graven image !"
And if we seek beneath form and symbol and command

Moses 15
the thought of which they are but the expression, we find
that the great distinctive feature of the Hebrew religion,
that which separates it by such a wide gulf from the re
ligions amid which it grew up, is its utilitarianism, its rec
ognition of divine law in human life. It asserts, not a God
who is confined to the far-off beginning or the vague fu
ture, who is over and above and beyond men, but a God
who in His inexorable law is here and now; a God of the
living as well as the dead; a God of the market place as
well as of the temple; a God whose judgments wait not
another world for execution, but whose immutable de
crees will, in this life, give happiness to the people that
heed them and bring misery upon the people who for
get them. Amid the forms of splendid degradation in
which a once noble religion had in Egypt sunk to petrifica
tion, amid a social order in which the divine justice
seemed to sleep, I AM was the truth that dawned upon
Moses. And in his desert contemplation of nature's flux
and reflux, the death that bounds her life, the life she
brings from death, always consuming yet never consumed
— I AM was the message that fell upon his inner ear.
The absence in the Mosaic books of any reference to
a future life is only intelligible by the prominence into
which the truth is brought. Nothing could have been more
familiar to the Hebrews of the Exodus than the doctrine
of immortality. The continued existence of the soul, the
judgment after death, the rewards and punishments of the
future state, were the constant subjects of Egyptian
thought and art. But a truth may be hidden or thrown
into the background by the intensity with which another
truth is grasped. And the doctrine of immortality,
springing as it does from the very depths of human
nature, ministering to aspirations which become stronger
and stronger as intellectual life rises to higher planes
and the life of the affections becomes more intense,

16 Moses
may yet become so incrusted with degrading supersti
tions, may be turned by craft and selfishness into such
a potent instrument for enslavement, and so used to
justify crimes at which every natural instinct revolts,
that to the earnest spirit of the social reformer it may
seem like an agency of oppression to enchain the in
tellect and prevent true progress; a lying device with
which the cunning fetter the credulous.
The belief in the immortality of the soul must have ex
isted in strong forms among the masses of the Hebrew
people. But the truth that Moses brought so prominently
forward, the truth his gaze was concentrated upon, is the
truth that has often been thrust aside by the doctrine of
immortality, and that may perhaps, at times, react on it in
the same way. This is the truth that the actions of men
bear fruit in this world, that though on the petty scale of
individual life wickedness may seem to go unpunished and
wrong to be rewarded, there is yet a Nemesis that with
tireless feet and pitiless arm follows every national crime,
and smites the children for the father's transgression ; the
truth that each individual must act upon and be acted upon
by the society of which he is a part, that all must in some
degree suffer for the sin of each, and the life of each be
dominated by the conditions imposed by all. It is the in
tense appreciation of this truth that gives the Mosaic in
stitutions so practical and utilitarian a character. Their
genius, if I may so speak, leaves the abstract speculations
where thought so easily loses and wastes itself, or finds
expression only in symbols that become finally but the
basis of superstition in order that it may concentrate atten
tion upon the laws which determine the happiness or mis
ery of men upon this earth. Its lessons have never tended
to the essential selfishness of asceticism, which is so prom
inent a feature in Brahminism and Buddhism, and from
which Christianity and Islamism have not been exempt.

Moses 17
Its injunction has never been, "Leave the world to itself
that you may save your own soul," but rather, "Do your
duty in the world that you may be happier and the world
be better." It has disdained no sanitary regulation that
might secure the health of the body. Its promise has been
of peace and plenty and length of days, of stalwart sons
and comely daughters.
It may be that the feeling of Moses in regard to a fu
ture life was that expressed in the language of the Stoic:
"It is the business of Jupiter, not mine" ; or it may be that
it partook of the same revulsion that shows itself in mod
ern times, when a spirit essentially religious has been
turned against the forms and expressions of religion, be
cause these forms and expressions have been made the
props and the bulwarks of tyranny, and even the name and
teachings of the Carpenter's Son perverted into supports
of social injustice — used to guard the pomp of Caesar and
justify the greed of Dives.
Yet, however such feelings influenced Moses, I cannot
think that such a soul as his, living such a life as his — feel
ing the exaltation of great thoughts, feeling the burden of
great cares, feeling the bitterness of great disappointments
— did not stretch forward to the hope beyond ; did not rest
and strengthen and ground itself in the confident belief
that the death of the body is but the emancipation of the
mind; did not feel the assurance that there is a power in
the universe upon which it might confidently rely, through
wreck of matter and crash of worlds. Yet the great con
cern of Moses was with the duty that lay plainly before
him; the effort to lay the foundation of a social state in
which deep poverty and degrading want should be un
known — where men released from the meaner struggles
that waste human energy should have opportunity for in
tellectual and moral development.
Here stands out the greatness of the man. What was

18 Moses
the wisdom and stretch of the forethought which in the
desert sought to guard in advance against the dangers of
a settled state, let the present speak.
In the full blaze of the nineteenth century, when every
child in our schools may know of common truths things of
which the Egyptian sages never dreamed; when the earth
has been mapped and the stars have been weighed; when
steam and electricity have been pressed into our service,
and science is wresting from nature secret after secret —
it is but natural to look back upon the wisdom of three
thousand years ago as the man looks back upon the learn
ing of the child.
And yet for all this wonderful increase in knowledge,
for all this enormous gain of productive power, where is
the country in the civilized world in which today there is
not want and suffering — where the masses are not con
demned to toil that gives no leisure, and all classes are not
pursued by a greed of gain that makes life an ignoble
struggle to get and to keep ? Three thousand years of ad
vance, and still the moan goes up: "They have made our
lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and
in all manner of service !" Three thousand years of ad
vance ! and the piteous voices of little children are in the
moan. Standing as I stand, where modern ideas have had
fullest, freest development ; in the newest great city of the
newest great nation; by the side of that ultimate sea,
where ends the westward march of the race that has cir
cled the globe, and farther west meets farthest east, the
cool shades and sweet waters whose promise has so long
lured us on seem dissolving into mocking mirage.
Over ocean wastes far wider than the Syrian desert
we have sought our promised land — no narrow strip be
tween the mountains and the sea, but a wide and virgin
continent. Here, in greater freedom, with vaster knowl-

Moses 19
edge and fuller experience, we are building up a nation
that leads the van of modern progress.
And yet while we prate of the rights of man there are
already among us thousands and thousands who find it
difficult to assert the first of natural rights — the right to .
earn an honest living; thousands who from time to time
must accept of degrading charity or starve.
We boast of equality before the law; yet notoriously
justice is deaf to the call of him who has no gold and blind
to the sin of him who has.
We pride ourselves upon our common schools ; yet after
our boys and girls are educated we vainly ask, "What shall
we do with them?" And about our colleges children are
growing up in vice and crime, because from their homes
poverty has driven all refining influences.
We pin our faith to universal suffrage; yet with all
power in the hands of the people, the control of public af
fairs is passing into the hands of a class of professional
politicians, and our governments are, in many cases, be
coming but a means for robbery of the people.
We have prohibited hereditary distinctions, we have
forbidden titles of nobility; yet there is growing up among
us an aristocracy of wealth as powerful and merciless as
any that ever held sway.
We progress and we progress, we girdle continents
with iron roads and knit cities together with the mesh of
telegraph wires; each day brings some new invention;
each year marks a fresh advance — the power of produc
tion increased, and the avenues of exchange cleared and
broadened. Yet the complaint of "hard times" is louder
and louder, and everywhere are men harassed by care and
haunted by the fear of want. With swift, steady strides
and prodigious leaps, the power of human hands to satisfy
human wants advances and advances, is multiplied and
multiplied. Yet the struggle for mere existence is more

20 Moses
and more intense, and human labor is becoming the cheap
est of commodities. Beside glutted warehouses human
beings grow faint with hunger and shiver with cold ; under
the shadow of churches festers the vice that is born of
want. Trace to its root the cause that is thus producing want
in the midst of plenty, ignorance in the midst of intelli
gence, aristocracy in democracy, weakness in strength —
that is giving to our civilization a one-sided and unstable
development, and you will find it something which this
Hebrew statesman three thousand years ago perceived and
guarded against. Moses saw that the real cause of the
enslavement of the masses of Egypt was what has every
where produced enslavement, the possession by a class of
the land upon which and from which the whole people must
live. He saw that to permit in the land the same unqualified
private ownership that by natural right attaches to the
things produced by labor, would be inevitably to separate
the people into the very rich and the very poor, inevitably
to enslave labor — to make the few the masters of the many,
no matter what the political forms; to bring vice and
degradation, no matter what the religion.
And with the foresight of the philosophic statesman
who legislates not for the need of a day, but for all the
future, he sought, in ways suited to his times and condi
tions, to guard against this error. Everywhere in the
Mosaic institutions is the land treated as the gift of the
Creator to His common creatures, which no one has the
right to monopolize. Everywhere it is, not your estate, or
your property, not the land which you bought, or the land
which you conquered, but "the land which the Lord thy
God giveth thee" — "the land which the Lord lendeth thee."
And by practical legislation, by regulations to which he
gave the highest sanctions, he tried to guard against the
wrong that converted ancient civilizations into despotisms

Moses 21
— the wrong that in after centuries ate out the heart of
Rome — that produced the imbruting serfdom of Poland
and the gaunt misery of Ireland, the wrong that is already
filling American cities with idle men, and our virgin states
with tramps. He not only provided for the fair division
of the land among the people, and for making it fallow and
common every seventh year, but by the institution of the
jubilee he provided for a re-distribution of the land every
fifty years, and made monopoly impossible.
I do not say that these institutions were, for their ulti
mate purpose, the very best that might even then have
been devised, for Moses had to work, as all great con
structive statesmen have to work, with the tools that came
to his hand, and upon materials as he found them. Still
less do I mean to say that forms suitable for that time and
people are suitable for every time and people. I ask not
veneration of the form, but recognition of the spirit.
Yet how common it is to venerate the form and to deny
the spirit. There are many who believe that the Mosaic
institutions were literally dictated by the Almighty, yet
who would denounce as irreligious and "communistic" any
application of their spirit to the present day. And yet
today how much we owe to these institutions ! This very
day the only thing that stands between working classes and
ceaseless toil is one of these Mosaic institutions. Nothing
in political economy is better settled than that under con
ditions which now prevail the working classes would get no
more for seven days' labor than they now get for six, and
would find it as difficult to reduce their working hours as
now. Let the mistake of those who think that man was
made for the Sabbath, rather than the Sabbath for man,
be what it may; that there is one day in the week that
the working man may call his own, one day in the week on

22 Moses
which hammer is silent and loom stands idle, is due,
through Christianity, to Judaism— to the code promulgated
in the Sinaitic wilderness. And who that considers the
waste of productive forces can doubt that modern society
would be not merely richer but happier, had we received as
well as the Sabbath day the grand idea of the Sabbath year,
or adapting its spirit to our changed conditions, secured
in another way an equivalent reduction of working hours.
It is in these characteristics of the Mosaic institutions
that, as in the fragments of a Colossus, we may read the
greatness of the mind whose impress they bear — of a
mind in advance of its surroundings, in advance of its
age; of one of those star souls that dwindle not with
distance, but, glowing with the radiance of essential
truth hold their light while institutions and languages and
creeds change and pass.
That the thought was greater than the permanent ex
pression it found, who can doubt? Yet from that day to
this that expression has been in the world a living power.
From the free spirit of the Mosaic law sprang the in
tensity of family life that amid all dispersions and perse
cution has preserved the individuality of the Hebrew race;
that love of independence that under the most adverse cir
cumstances has characterized the Jew; that burning pa
triotism that flamed up in the Maccabees and bared the
breasts of Jewish peasants to the serried steel of Grecian
phalanx and the resistless onset of Roman legion; that
stubborn courage that in exile and in torture held the Jew
to his faith. It kindled that fire that has made the strains
of Hebrew seers and poets phrase for us the highest exalta
tions of thought ; that intellectual vigor that has over and
over again made the dry staff bud and blossom. And pass
ing outward from one narrow race it has exerted its
power wherever the influence of the Hebrew Scriptures
has been felt. It has toppled thrones and cast down hier-

Moses 23
archies. It strengthened the Scottish Covenanter in the
hour of trial, and the Puritan amid the snows of a strange
land. It charged with the Ironsides at Nasby; it stood
behind the low redoubt on Bunker Hill.
But it is in example as in deed that such lives are help
ful. It is thus that they dignify human nature and glorify
human effort, and bring to those who struggle, hope and
trust. The life of Moses, like the institutions of Moses, is
a protest against that blasphemous doctrine, current now as
it was three thousand years ago — that blasphemous doc
trine preached ofttimes even from Christian pulpits — that
the want and suffering of the masses of mankind flow
from a mysterious dispensation of Providence, which we
may lament, but can neither quarrel with nor alter. Let
him who hugs that doctrine to himself, him to whom it
seems that the squalor and brutishness with which the very
centers of our civilization abound are not his affair, turn
to the example of that life. For to him who will look, yet
burns the bush ; and to him who will hear, again comes the
voice : "The people suffer, who will lead them forth ?"
Adopted into the immediate family of the supreme
monarch and earthly god; standing almost at the apex of
the social pyramid which had for its base those toiling mil
lions ; priest and prince in a land where prince and priest
might revel in all delights — everything that life could offer
to gratify the senses or engage the intellect was open to him.
What to him the wail of them who beneath the fierce
sun toiled under the whips of relentless masters? Heard
from granite colonnade or beneath cool linen awning, it
was mellowed by distance to monotonous music. Why
should he question the Sphinx of Fate, or quarrel with des
tinies the high gods had decreed? So had it always been,
for ages and ages; so must it ever be. The beetle rends
the insect, and the hawk preys on the beetle; order on or
der, life rises from death and carnage, and higher pleas-

24 Moses
ures from lower agonies. Shall the man be better than na
ture? Soothing and restful flows the Nile, though under
neath its placid surface finny tribes wage cruel war, and
the stronger eat the weaker. Shall the gazer who would
read the secrets of the stars turn because under his feet a
worm may writhe?
Theirs to make bricks without straw; his a high place
in the glorious procession that with gorgeous banners and
glittering emblems, with clash of music and solemn chant,
winds its shining way to dedicate the immortal edifice
their toil has reared. Theirs the leek and the garlic, his
to sit at the sumptuous feast. Why should he dwell on the
irksomeness of bondage, he for whom the chariots waited,
who might at will bestride the swift coursers of the Delta,
or be borne on the bosom of the river with oars that beat
time to songs ? Did he long for the excitement of action ?
— there was the desert hunt, with the steeds fleeter than
the antelope and lions trained like dogs. Did he crave rest
and ease ? — there was for him the soft swell of languorous
music and the wreathed movements of dancing girls.
Did he feel the stir of intellectual life? — in the arcana
of the temples he was free to the lore of ages ; an initiate
in the select society where were discussed the most en
grossing problems; a sharer in that intellectual pride that
centuries after compared Greek philosophy to the bab
blings of children.
It was no sudden ebullition of passion that caused
Moses to turn his back on all this, and to bring the strength
and knowledge acquired in a dominant caste to the life
long service of the oppressed. The forgetfulness of self
manifested in the smiting of the Egyptians shines through
the whole life. In institutions that moulded the character
of a people, in institutions that to this day make easier the
lot of toiling millions, we may read the stately purpose.
Through all that tradition has given us of that life

Moses 25
runs the same grand passion — the unselfish desire to make
humanity better, happier, nobler. And the death is worthy
of the life. Subordinating to the good of his people the
natural disposition to found a dynasty, which in his case
would have been so easy, he discards the claims of blood
and calls to his place of leader the fittest man. Coming
from a land where the rights of sepulture were regarded
as all important, and the preservation of the body after
death was the passion of life; among a people who were
even then carrying the remains of their great ancestor,
Joseph, to rest with his fathers, he yet conquered the last
natural yearning and withdrew from the sight and sympa
thy of men to die alone and unattended, lest the idolatrous
feeling, always ready to break forth, should in death ac
cord him the superstitious reverence he had refused in life.
"No man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day." But
while the despoiled tombs of the pharaohs mock the vanity
that reared them, the name of the Hebrew who, revolting
from their tyranny, strove for the elevation of his fellow-
men, is yet a beacon light to the world.
Leader and servant of men ! Law-giver and benefac
tor ! Toiler toward the promised land seen only by the eye
of faith ! Type of the high souls who in every age have
given to earth its heroes and its martyrs, whose deeds are
the precious possession of the race, whose memories are
its sacred heritage! With whom among the founders of
empire shall we compare him ?
To dispute about the inspiration of such a man were to
dispute about words. From the depths of the unseen such
characters must draw their strength; from fountains that
flow only from the pure in heart must come their wisdom.
Of something more real than matter; of something higher
than the stars; of a light that will endure when suns are
dead and dark ; of a purpose of which the physical universe
is but a passing phase, such lives tell.

THE CRIME OF POVERTY

The Crime of Poverty
Poverty is a crime. I do not mean that it is a crime to
be poor. Murder is a crime; but it is not a crime to be
murdered ; and a man who is in poverty I look upon not as
a criminal in himself so much as the victim of a crime for
which others, as well, perhaps, as himself, are responsi
ble. That poverty is a curse, the bitterest of curses, we
all know. Carlyle was right when he said that the hell
of which Englishmen are most afraid is the hell of
poverty; and this is true, not of Englishmen alone, but
of people all over the civilized world, no matter what
their nationality. It is to escape this hell that we strive
and strain and struggle ; and work on oftentimes in blind
habit long after the necessity for work is gone.
The curse born of poverty is not confined to the poor
alone; it runs through all classes, even to the very rich.
They, too, suffer; they must suffer; for there cannot be
suffering in a community from which any class can totally
escape. The vice, the crime, the ignorance, the meanness,
born of poverty, poison, so to speak, the very air which
rich and poor alike must breathe.
I walked down one of your streets this morning, and
I saw three men going along with their hands chained
together. I knew for certain that those men were not
rich men; and, although I do not know the offense for
which they were carried in chains through your streets,
this, I think, I can safely say, that, if you trace it up you
will find it in some way to spring from poverty. Nine-

An address delivered in the Opera House, Burlington, Iowa, April
1, 1S85, under the auspices of Burlington Assembly, No. 3135, Knights
of Labor. 31

32 The Crime of Poverty
tenths of human misery, I think you will find, if you
look, to be due to poverty. If a man chooses to be poor,
he commits no crime in being poor, provided his poverty
hurts no one but himself. If a man has others dependent
upon him ; if there are a wife and children whom it is his
duty to support, then, if he voluntarily chooses poverty,
it is a crime — aye, and I think that, in most cases, the men
who have no one to support but themselves are men that
are shirking their duty. A woman comes into the world
for every man ; and for every man who lives a single life,
caring only for himself, there is some woman who is
deprived of her natural supporter. But while a man who
chooses to be poor cannot be charged with crime, it is
certainly a crime to force poverty on others. And it
seems to me clear that the great majority of those who
suffer from poverty are poor not from their own particular
faults, but because of conditions imposed by society at
large. Therefore, I hold that poverty is a crime — not an
individual crime, but a social crime; a crime for which we
all, poor as well as rich, are responsible.
Two or three weeks ago I went one Sunday evening
to the church of a famous Brooklyn preacher. Mr.
Sankey was singing, and something like a revival was
going on there. The clergyman told some anecdotes con
nected with the revival, and recounted some of the rea
sons why men failed to become Christians. One case he
mentioned struck me. He said he had noticed on the out
skirts of the congregation, night after night, a man who
listened intently, and who gradually moved forward. One
night, the clergyman said, he went to him, saying, "My
brother, are you not ready to become a Christian?" The
man said, no he was not. He said it, not in a defiant tone,
but in a sorrowful tone. The clergyman asked him why,
whether he did not believe in the truths he had been hear
ing? Yes, he believed them all. Why, then, wouldn't he

The Crime of Poverty 38
become a Christian? "Well," he said, "I can't join the
church without giving up my business ; and it is neces
sary for the support of my wife and children. If I give
that up, I don't know how in the world I can get along.
I had a hard time before I found my present business, and
I cannot afford to give it up. Yet, I can't become a Chris
tian without giving it up." The clergyman asked, "Are
you a rum-seller?" No, he was not a rum-seller. Well,
the clergyman said, he didn't know what in the world the
man could be ; it seemed to him that a rum-seller was the
only man who does a business that would prevent his be
coming a Christian; and he finally said, "What is your
business ?" The man said, "I sell soap." "Soap !" ex
claimed the clergyman, "you sell soap? How in the world
does that prevent your becoming a Christian?" "Well,"
the man said, "It is this way ; the soap I sell is one of these
patent soaps that are extensively advertised as enabling
you to clean clothes very quickly ; as containing no dele
terious compound whatever. Every cake of the soap that I
sell is wrapped in a paper on which is printed a statement
that it contains no injurious chemicals, whereas the truth
of the matter is that it does, and that though it will take
the dirt out of the clothes pretty quickly, it will, in a little
while, rot them completely. I have to make my living
in this way ; and I cannot feel that I can become a Chris
tian if I sell that soap." The minister went on describing
how he labored unsuccessfully with that man, and finally
wound up by saying, "He stuck to his soap, and lost his
soul." But, if that man lost his soul, was it his fault alone?
Whose fault is it that social conditions are such that men
have to make that terrible choice between what con
science tells them is right, and the necessity of earning a
living? I hold that it is the fault of society; that it is the
fault of us all. Pestilence is a curse. The man who

34 The Crime of Poverty
would bring cholera to this country, or the man who,
having the power to prevent its coming here, would make
no effort to do so, would be guilty of a crime. 'Poverty is
worse than cholera; poverty kills more people than pesti
lence, even in the best of times. Look at the death sta
tistics of our cities; see where the deaths come quick
est; see where it is that little children die like flies — it is
in the poorer quarters. And the man who looks with care
less eyes upon the ravages of this pestilence, the man who
does not set himself to stay and eradicate it, he, I say, is
guilty of a crime.
If poverty is appointed by the power which is above
us all, then it is no crime; but if poverty is unnecessary,
then it is a crime for which society is responsible, and for
which society must suffer.
I hold, and I think no one who looks at the facts can
fail to see, that poverty is utterly unnecessary. It is
not by the decree of the Almighty, but it is because of our
own injustice, our own selfishness, our own ignorance,
that this scourge, worse than any pestilence, ravages our
civilization, bringing want and suffering and degradation,
destroying souls as well as bodies. Look over the world,
in this hey-day of nineteenth century civilization. In
every civilized country under the sun you will find men
and women whose condition is worse than that of the
savage; men and women and little children with whom
the veriest savage could not afford to exchange. Even
in this new city of yours, with virgin soil around you,
you have had this winter to institute a relief society.
Your roads have been filled with tramps, fifteen, I am told,
at one time taking shelter in a round-house here. As
here, so everywhere, and poverty is deepest where wealth
most abounds.
What more unnatural than this? There is nothing in
nature like this poverty which today curses us. We see

The Crime of Poverty 35
rapine in nature; we see one species destroying another;
but as a general thing animals do not feed on their own
kind; and, wherever we see one kind enjoying plenty, all
creatures of that kind share it. No man, I think, ever
saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the
great majority lean. No man ever saw a flock of birds,
of which two or three were swimming in grease, and the
others all skin and bone. Nor in savage life is there
anything like the poverty that festers in our civilization.
In a rude state of society there are seasons of want,
seasons when people starve; but they are seasons when
the earth has refused to yield her increase, when the rain
has not fallen from the heavens, or when the land has
been swept by some foe  not when there is plenty; and
yet the peculiar characteristic of this modern poverty of
ours is, that it is deepest where wealth most abounds.
Why, today, while over the civilized world there is
so much distress, so much want, what is the cry that
goes up ? What is the current explanation of the hard
times ? Over-production ! There are so many clothes
that men must go ragged; so much coal that in the bitter
winters people have to shiver; such over-filled granaries
that people actually die by starvation ! Want due to over
production ! Was a greater absurdity ever uttered ? How
can there be over-production till all have enough? It is
not over-production, it is unjust distribution.
Poverty necessary ! Why, think of the enormous pow
ers that are latent in the human brain ! Think how inven
tion enables us to do with the power of one man, what
not long ago could not be done by the power of a thou
sand. Think that in England alone, the steam machinery
in operation is said to exert a productive force greater
than the physical force of the population of the world,
were they all adults. And yet we have only begun to in
vent and discover. We have not yet utilized all that has

36 The Crime of Poverty
already been invented and discovered. And look at the
powers of the earth. They have hardly been touched.
In every direction as we look, new resources seem to open.
Man's ability to produce wealth seems almost infinite —
we can set no bounds to it. Look at the power that is
flowing by your city in the current of the Mississippi
that might be set at work for you. So in every direction
energy that we might utilize goes to waste; resources
that we might draw upon are untouched. Yet men are
delving and straining to satisfy mere animal wants; wo
men are working, working, working their lives away, and
too frequently turning in despair from that hard struggle
to cast away all that makes the charm of woman.
If the animals can reason, what must they think of
us ? Look at one of those great ocean steamers plough
ing her way across the Atlantic, against wind, against
wave, absolutely setting at defiance the utmost power of
the elements. If the gulls that hover over her were
thinking beings, could they imagine that the animal that
could create such a structure as that could actually want
for enough to eat? Yet, so it is. How many even of
those of us who find life easiest are there who really live
a rational life? Think of it, you who believe that there
is only one life for man — what a fool at the very best is
a man to pass his life in this struggle to merely live ? And
you who believe, as I believe, that this is not the last of
man, that this is a life that opens but another life, think
how nine-tenths, aye, I do not know but ninety-nine
hundredths of all our vital powers are spent in a mere
effort to get a living; or to heap together that which we
cannot by any possibility take away. Take the life of the
average workingman. Is that the life for which the hu
man brain was intended and the human heart was made?
Look at the factories scattered through our country.
They are little better than penitentiaries.

The Crime of Poverty 37
I read in the New York papers a while ago that the
girls at the Yonkers factories had struck. The papers
said that the girls did not seem to know why they had
struck, and intimated that it must be just for the fun of
striking. Then came out the girls' side of the story, and
it appeared that they had struck against the rules in
force. They were fined if they spoke to one another,
and they were fined still more heavily if they laughed.
There was a heavy fine for being a minute late. I visited
a lady in Philadelphia who had been a forewoman in
various factories, and I asked her, "Is it possible that
such rules are enforced ?" She said it was so in Philadel
phia. There is a fine for speaking to your next neigh
bor, a fine for laughing; and she told me thai the girls in
one place where she was employed were fined ten cents a
minute for being late, though many of them had to come
for miles in winter storms. She told me of one poor girl
who really worked hard one week and made $3.50, but the
fines against her were $5.25. That seems ridiculous; it
is ridiculous, but it is pathetic, and it is shameful.
But take the cases of those even who are comparatively
independent and well off. Here is a man working hour
after hour, day after day, week after week, in doing one
thing over and over again, and for what? Just to live.
He is working ten hours a day in order that he may sleep
eight, and may have two or three hours for himself when
he is tired out and all his faculties are exhausted. That
is not a reasonable life; that is not a life for a being pos
sessed of the powers that are in man, and I think every
man must have felt it for himself. I know that when I
first went to my trade I thought to myself that it was in
credible that a man was created to work all day long
just to live. I used to read the Scientific American, and
as invention after invention was heralded in that paper, I

38 The Crime of Poverty
used to think to myself that when I became a man it would
not be necessary to work so hard. But, on the contrary,
the struggle for existence has become more and more in
tense. People who want to prove the contrary get up
masses of statistics to show that the condition of the
working classes is improving. Improvement that you
have to take a statistical microscope to discover does not
amount to anything. But there is no improvement.
Improvement! Why, according to the last report of
the Michigan Bureau of Labor Statistics, as I read yes
terday in a Detroit paper, taking all the trades, including
some of the very high priced ones, where the wages are
from $6 to $7 a day, the average earnings amount to $1.77,
and taking out waste time, to $1.40. Now when you con
sider how a man can live and bring up a family on $1.40
a day, even in Michigan, I do not think you will conclude
that the condition of the working classes can have very
much improved.
Here is a broad general fact that is asserted by all who
have investigated the question, by such men as Hallam,
the historian, and Professor Thorold Rogers, who has made
a study of the history of prices as they were five centuries
ago. When all the productive arts were in the most prim
itive state, when the most prolific of our modern vegeta
bles had not been introduced, when the breeds of cattle
were small and poor, when there were hardly any roads
and transportation was exceedingly difficult, when all man
ufacturing was done by hand — in that rude time the condi
tion of the laborers of England was far better than it is
today. In those rude times no man need fear want save
when actual famine came, and owing to the difficulties of
transportation the plenty of one district could not relieve
the scarcity of another. Save in such times no man need
fear want. Pauperism, such as exists in modern times,
was absolutely unknown. Every one, save the physically

The Crime of Poverty 39
disabled, could make a living, and the poorest lived in rude
plenty. But, perhaps, the most astonishing fact brought
to light by this investigation is that at that time, under
those conditions, in those "dark ages," as we call them,
the working day was only eight hours. While, with all our
modern inventions and improvements, our working classes
have been agitating and struggling in vain to get the
working day reduced to eight hours.
Do these facts show improvement? Why, in the rud
est state of society, in the most primitive state of the
arts, the labor of the natural bread-winner will suffice to
provide a living for himself and for those who are de
pendent upon him. Amid all our inventions there are
large bodies of men who cannot do this. What is the most
astonishing thing in our civilization? Why, the most
astonishing thing to those Sioux chiefs who were recently
brought from the Far West and taken through our manu
facturing cities in the East, was not the marvelous inven
tions that enabled machinery to act almost as if it had
intellect; it was not the growth of our cities; it was not
the speed with which the railway car whirled along; it
was not the telegraph or the telephone that most aston
ished them, but the fact that amid this marvelous devel
opment of productive power, they found little children at
work. And astonishing that ought to be to us; a most
astounding thing !
Talk about improvement in the condition of the work
ing classes, when the facts are that a larger and larger
proportion of women and children are forced to toil.
Why, I am told that, even here in your own city, there
are children of thirteen and fourteen working in factories.
In Detroit, according to the report of the Michigan Bu
reau of Labor Statistics, one-half of the children of school
age do not go to school. In New Jersey, the report made
to the legislature discloses an amount of misery and

40 The Crime of Poverty
ignorance that is appalling. Children are growing up
there, compelled to monotonous toil when they ought to
be at play; children who do not know how to play; chil
dren who have been so long accustomed to work that they
have become used to it; children growing up in such
ignorance that they do not know what country New
Jersey is in, that they never heard of George Washing
ton, that some of them think Europe is in New York.
Such facts are appalling; they mean that the very founda
tions of the Republic are being sapped. The dangerous
man is not the man who tries to excite discontent; the
dangerous man is the man who says that all is as it
ought to be. Such a state of things cannot continue;
such tendencies as we see at work here cannot go on
without bringing at last an overwhelming crash.
I say that all this poverty and the ignorance that flows
from it is unnecessary ; I say that there is no natural rea
son why we should not all be rich, in the sense, not of
having more than each other, but in the sense of all having
enough to completely satisfy all physical wants ; of all
having enough to get such an easy living that we could
develop the better part of humanity. There is no reason
why wealth should not be so abundant, that no one should
think of such a thing as little children at work, or a
woman compelled to a toil that nature never intended her
to perform; wealth so abundant that there would be no
cause for that harassing fear that sometimes paralyzes
even those who are not considered "the poor," the fear
that every man of us has probably felt, that if sickness
should smite him, or if he should be taken away, those
whom he loves better than his life would become charges
upon charity. "Consider the lilies of the field, how they
grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." I believe that
in a really Christian community, in a society that honored
not with the lips but with the act, the doctrines of Jesus,

The Crime of Poverty 41
no one would have occasion to worry about physical needs
any more than do the lilies of the field. There is enough
and to spare. The trouble is that, in this mad struggle,
we trample in the mire what has been provided in suf
ficiency for us all; trample it in the mire while we tear
and rend each other.
There is a cause for this poverty, and if you trace it
down, you will find its root in a primary injustice. Look
over the world today — poverty everywhere. The cause
must be a common one. You cannot attribute it to the
tariff, or the form of government, or to this thing or
to that in which nations differ; because, as deep poverty
is common to them- all, the cause that produces it must
be a common cause. What is that common cause? There
is one sufficient cause that is common to all nations; and
that is, the appropriation as the property of some, of that
natural element on which and from which, all must live.
Take that fact I have spoken of, that appalling fact
that, even now, it is harder to live than it was in the
ages dark and rude five centuries ago — how do you
explain it? There is no difficulty in finding the cause.
Whoever reads the history of England, or the history of
any other civilized nation (but I speak of the history
of England because that is the history with which we
are best acquainted) will see the reason. For century
after century a Parliament composed of aristocrats and
employers passed laws endeavoring to reduce wages, but
in vain. Men could not be crowded down to wages that
gave a mere living because the bounty of nature was not
wholly shut up from them; because some remains of the
recognition of the truth that all men have equal rights
on the earth still existed; because the land of that coun
try, that which was held in private possession, was only
held on a tenure derived from the nation, and for a rent
payable back to the nation. The church lands supported

42 The Crime of Poverty
the expenses of public worship, of the maintenance of
seminaries, and the care of the poor; the crown lands
defrayed the expenses of the civil list; and from a third
portion of the lands, those held under military tenures,
the army was provided for. There was no national debt
in England at that time. They carried on wars for hun
dreds of years, but at the charge of the landowners. And,
more important still, there remained everywhere, and you
can see in every old English town their traces to this
day, the common lands to which any of the neighbor
hood was free. It was as those lands were enclosed;
it was as the commons were gradually monopolized, as
the church lands were made the prey «of greedy courtiers,
as the crown lands were given away as absolute property
to the favorites of the king, as the military tenants
shirked their rents, and laid the expenses they had agreed
to defray upon the nation in taxation, that bore upon
industry and upon thrift — it was then that poverty began
to deepen, and the tramp appeared in England, just as
today he is appearing in our new States.
Now, think of it — is not land monopolization a suffi
cient reason for poverty? What is man? In the first
place, he is an animal, a land animal, who cannot live
without land. All that man produces comes from land,
all productive labor in the final analysis consists in work
ing up land; or materials drawn from land into such
forms as fit them for the satisfaction of human wants
and desires. Why, man's very body is drawn from the
land. Children of the soil, we come from the land, and
to the land we must return. Take away from man all
that belongs to the land, and what have you but a dis
embodied spirit? Therefore, he who holds the land on
which and from which another man must live, is that
man's master; and the man is his slave. The man who
holds the land on which I must live can command me to

The Crime of Poverty 43
life or to death just as absolutely as though I were his
chattel. Talk about abolishing slavery — we have not
abolished slavery — we have only abolished one rude form
of it, chattel slavery. There is a deeper and more in
sidious form, a more cursed form yet before us to abol
ish, in this industrial slavery that makes a man a virtual
slave, while taunting him and mocking him with the name
of freedom. Poverty ! want ! they will sting as much
as the lash. Slavery ! God knows there are horrors
enough in slavery; but there are deeper horrors in our
civilized society today. Bad as chattel slavery was, it did
not drive slave mothers to kill their children, yet you may
read in official reports that the system of child insurance,
which has taken root so strongly in England, and which
is now spreading over our Eastern States, has perceptibly
and largely increased the rate of child mortality ! — What
does that mean?
Robinson Crusoe, as you know, when he rescued
Friday from the cannibals, made him his slave. Friday
had to serve Crusoe. But, supposing Crusoe had said,
"Oh, man and brother, I am very glad to see you, and I
welcome you to this island, and you shall be a free and
independent citizen, with just as much to say as I have —
except that this island is mine — and, of course, as I can
do as I please with my own property, you must not use it
save upon my terms," Friday would have been just as
much Crusoe's slave as though he had called him one.
Friday was not a fish, he could not swim off through the
sea; he was not a bird, and could not fly off through the
air; if he lived at all, he had to live on that island. And
if that island was Crusoe's, Crusoe was his master through
life to death.
A friend of mine, who believes as I do upon this
question, was talking a while ago with another friend of
mine who is a greenbacker, but who had not paid much

44 The Crime of Poverty
attention to the land question. Our greenback friend
said, "Yes, yes, the land question is an important ques
tion; oh, I admit the land question is a very im
portant question; but then there are other important
questions. There is this question, and that question, and
the other question ; and there is the money question. The
money question is a very important question; it is a
more important question than the land question. You
give me all the money, and you can take all the land."
My friend said, "Well, suppose you had all the money in
the world and I had all the land in the world. What
would you do if I were to give you notice to quit?"
Do you know that I do not think the average man
realizes what land is? I know a little girl who has been
going to school for some time, studying geography, and
all that sort of thing; and one day she said to me: "Here
is something about the surface of the earth. I wonder
what the surface of the earth looks like?" "Well," I
said, "look out into the yard there. That is the surface
of the earth." She said, "That the surface of the earth ?
Our yard the surface of the earth? Why, I never
thought of it!" That is very much the case not only with
grown men, but with such wise beings as newspaper
editors. They seem to think, when you talk of land, that
you always refer to farms ; to think that the land question
is a question that relates entirely to farmers, as though
land had no other use than growing crops. Now, I should
like to know how a man could even edit a newspaper
without having the use of some land. He might swing
himself by straps and go up in a balloon, but he could not
even then get along without land. What supports the
balloon in the air? Land; the surface of the earth. Let
the earth drop, and what would become of the balloon?
The air that supports the balloon is supported in turn

The Crime of Poverty 45
by land. So it is with everything else men can do.
Whether a man is working away three thousand feet
under the surface of the earth, or whether he is working
up in the top of one of those immense buildings they
have in New York, whether he is ploughing the soil or
sailing across the ocean, he is still using land.
Land ! Why, in owning a piece of ground, what do
you own? The lawyers will tell you that you own from
the center of the earth right up to heaven ; and, so far as
all human purposes go, you do. In New York they are
building houses thirteen and fourteen stories high. What
are men, living in those upper stories, paying for?
There is a friend of mine who has an office in one of
them, and he estimates that he pays by the cubic foot
for air. Well, the man who owns the surface of the land
has the renting of the air up there, and would have if
the buildings were carried up for miles.
This land question is the bottom question. Man is a
land animal. Suppose you want to build a house; can
you build it without a place to put it? What is it built
of? Stone, or mortar, or wood, or iron — they all come
from the earth. Think of any article of wealth you
choose, any of those things which men struggle for,
where do they come from? From the land. It is the
bottom question.
The land question is simply the labor question; and
when some men own that element from which all wealth
must be drawn, and upon which all must live, then they
have the power of living without work, and therefore,
those who do work get less of the products of work.
Did you ever think of the utter absurdity and strange
ness of the fact that, all over the civilized world, the
working classes are the poor classes ? Go into any city
in the world, and get into a cab, and ask the man to
drive you where the working people live; he won't

46 The Crime of Poverty
take you to where the fine houses are; he will take you,
on the contrary, into the squalid quarters, the poorer
quarters. Did you ever think how curious that is?
Think for a moment how it would strike a rational being
who had never been on the earth before, if such an
intelligence could come down, and you were to explain to
him how we live on earth, how houses, and food and
clothing, and all the many things we need were all pro
duced by work, would he not think that the working
people would be the people who lived in the finest houses
and had most of everything that work produces? Yet,
whether you took him to London or Paris, or New York,
or even to Burlington, he would find that those called
working people were the people who lived in the poorest
houses. All this is strange — just think of it. We naturally
despise poverty ; and it is reasonable that we should. I
do not say — I distinctly repudiate it- — that the people who
are poor are poor always from their own fault, or even
in most cases ; but it ought to be so. If any good man
or woman had the power to create a world, it would
be a sort of a world in which no one would be poor unless
he was lazy or vicious. But that is just precisely the
kind of a world that this is; that is just precisely the
kind of a world that the Creator has made. Nature
gives to lai or, and to labor alone; there must be human
work before any article of wealth can be produced; and,
in the natural state of things the man who toiled honestly
and well would be the rich man, and he who did not
work would be poor. We have so reversed the order
of nature, that we are accustomed to chink of the working-
man as a poor man.
And if you trace it out I believe you will see that the
primary cause of this is that we compel those who work
to pay others for permission to do so. You may buy a coat,

The Crime of Poverty 47
a horse, a house; there you are paying the seller for labor
exerted, for something that he has produced, or that he
has got from the man who did produce it; but when you
pay a man for land, what are you paying him for? You
are paying for something that no man has produced; you
pay him for something that was here before man was, or
for a value that was created not by him individually, but
by the community of which you are a part. What is the
reason that the land here, where we stand tonight, is
worth more than it was twenty-five years ago? What is
the reason that land in the center of New York, that
once could be bought by the mile for a jug of whisky, is
now worth so much that, though you were to cover it with
gold, you would not have its value? Is it not because of
the increase of population? Take away that population,
and where would the value of the land be? Look at it
in any way you please.
We talk about over-production. How can there be
such a thing as over-production while people want? All
these things that are said to be over-produced are desired
by many people. Why do they not get them? They do
not get them because they have not the means to buy
them; not that they do not want them. Why have not
they the means to buy them ? They earn too little. When
great masses of men have to work for an average of
$1.40 a day, it is no wonder that great quantities of goods
cannot be sold.
Now, why is it that men have to work for such low
wages? Because, if they were to demand higher wages,
there are plenty of unemployed men ready to step into
their places. It is this mass of unemployed men who
compel that fierce competition that drives wages down
to the point of bare subsistence. Why is it that there are
men who cannot get employment? Did you ever think
what a strange thing it is that men cannot find employ-

48 The Crime of Poverty
ment? Adam had no difficulty in finding employment;
neither had Robinson Crusoe; the finding of employment
was the last thing that troubled them.
If men cannot find an employer, why can not they
employ themselves? Simply because they are shut out
from the element on which human labor can alone be
exerted. Men are compelled to compete with each other
for the wages of an employer, because they have been
robbed of the natural opportunities of employing them
selves; because they cannot find a piece of God's world
on which to work without paying some other human
creature for the privilege.
I do not mean to say that, even after you had set
right this fundamental injustice, there would not be many
things to do ; but this I do mean to say, that our treatment
of land lies at the bottom of all social questions. This I
do mean to say, that, do what you please, reform as you
may, you never can get rid of widespread poverty so
long as the element on which, and from which, all men
must live is made the private property of some men. It
is utterly impossible. Reform government — get taxes
down to the minimum — build railroads ; institute co-oper
ative stores; divide profits, if you choose, between em
ployers and employed — and what will be the result? The
result will be that the land will increase in value — that will
be the result — that and nothing else. Experience shows
this. Do not all improvements simply increase the value
of land — the price that some must pay others for the priv
ilege of living?
Consider the matter. I say it with all reverence, and I
merely say it because I wish to impress a truth upon your
minds — it is utterly impossible, so long as His laws are
what they are, that God Himself could relieve poverty —
utterly impossible. Think of it, and you will see. Men
pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty

The Crime of Poverty 49
comes not from God's laws — it is blasphemy of the worst
kind to say that; it comes from man's injustice to his
fellows. Supposing the Almighty were to hear the
prayer, how could He carry out the request, so long as
His laws are what they are? Consider — the Almighty
gives us nothing of the things that constitute wealth;
He merely gives us the raw material, which must be
utilized by man to produce wealth. Does He not give us
enough of that now? How could He relieve poverty
even if He were to give us more? Supposing, in answer
to these prayers, He were to increase the power of the
sun, or the virtues of the soil? Supposing He were to
make plants more prolific, or animals to produce after
their kind more abundantly? Who would get the benefit
of it? Take a country where land is completely monopo
lized, as it is in most of the civilized countries — who
would get the benefit of it? Simply the landowners.
And even if God, in answer to prayer, were to send down
out of the heavens those things that men require, who
would get the benefit ?
In the Old Testament we are told that, when the
Israelites journeyed through the desert, they were hun
gered, and that God sent down out of the heavens —
manna. There was enough for all of them, and they all
took it and were relieved. But, supposing that desert had
been held as private property, as the soil of Great Britain
is held; as the soil even of our new States is being held.
Suppose that one of the Israelites had a square mile,
and another one had twenty square miles, and another
one had a hundred square miles, and the great majority
of the Israelites did not have enough to set the soles of
their feet upon, which they could call their own — what
would become of the manna ? What good would i^ have
done to the majority? Not a whit. Though God had
sent down manna enough for all, that manna would have

50 The Crime of Poverty
been the property of the landholders; they would have
employed some of the others, perhaps, to gather it up
in heaps for them, and would have sold it to their hungry
brethren. Consider it: this purchase and sale of manna
might have gone on until the majority of the Israelites
had given all they had, even to the clothes off their
backs. What then? Well, then they would not have
had anything left with which to buy manna, and the
consequences would have been that while they went hungry
the manna would have lain in great heaps, and the land
owners would have been complaining about the over-pro
duction of manna. There would have been a great har
vest of manna and hungry people, just precisely the phe
nomenon that we see today.
I cannot go over all the points I would like to try; but
I wish to call your attention to the utter absurdity of
private property in land ! Why, consider it — the idea
of a man selling the earth — the earth, our common
mother. A man selling that which no man produced
A man passing title from one generation to another.
Why, it is the most absurd thing in the world. Did you
ever think of it? What right has a dead man to land?
For whom was this earth created? It was created for
the living, certainly not for the dead. Well, now, we
treat it as though it was created for the dead. Where do
our land titles come from? They come from men who,
for the most part, are passed and gone. Here, in this
new country, you get a little nearer the original source;
but go to the Eastern States, and go back over the Atlan
tic. There you may clearly see the power that comes from
landownership. As I say, the man that owns the land is the master
of tho$e who must live on it. Here is a modern instance:
you who are familiar with the history of the Scottish
Church know that in the forties there was a disruption in

The Crime of Poverty 51
the church. You who have read Hugh Miller's work on
The Cruise of the Betsey know something about it; how
a great body, led by Dr. Chalmers, came out from the
Established Church and said they would set up a Free
Church. In the Established Church were a great many
of the landowners. Some of them, like the Duke of
Buccleugh, owning miles and miles of land on which no
common Scotsman had a right to put his foot save by
the Duke of Buccleugh's permission. These landowners
refused not only to allow these Free Churchmen to have
ground upon which to erect a church, but they would
not let them stand on their land and worship God. You
who have read The Cruise of the Betsey know that it is
the story of a clergyman who was obliged to make his
home in a boat on the wild sea, because he was not
allowed to have land enough to live on. In many places
the people had to take the Sacrament with the tide
coming to their knees — many a man lost his life worship
ping on the roads, in the rain and snow. They were not
permitted to go on Mr. Landlord's land and worship
God, and had to take to the roads. The Duke of Buc
cleugh stood out for seven years, compelling people to
worship in the roads, until finally relenting a little, he
allowed them to worship God in a gravel pit; whereupon
they passed a resolution of thanks to His Grace-
But that is not what I wanted to tell you. The thing
that struck me was this significant fact: as soon as the
disruption occurred the Free Church, composed of a
great many able men, at once sent a delegation to the
landlords to ask permission for Scotsmen to worship God
in Scotland and in their own way. This delegation set
out for London — they had to go to London, England, to
get permission for Scotsmen to worship God in Scotland
and in their own native home !
But that is not the most absurd thing. In one place,

52 The Crime of Poverty
where they were refused land upon which to stand and
worship God, the late landowner had died and his estate
was in the hands of the trustees, and the answer of the
trustees was that, so far as they were concerned, they
would exceedingly like to allow them to have a place to
put up a church to worship, but they could not con
scientiously do it, because they knew that such a course
would be very displeasing to the late Mr. Monaltie !
Now, this dead man had gone to heaven, let us hope; at
any rate he had gone away from this world, but, lest it
might displease him, men yet living could not worship
God. Is it possible for absurdity to go any further?
You may say that those Scotch people are very ab
surd people, but they are not a whit more so than we
are : I read only a little while ago of some Long Island
fishermen who had been paying as rent for the privilege
of fishing there, a certain part of the catch. They paid
it because they believed that James II., a dead man cen
turies ago, a man who never put his foot in America, a
king who was kicked off the English throne, had said
they had to pay it, and they got up a committee, went to
the county town and searched the records. They could
not find anything in the records to show that James II.
had ever ordered that they should give any of their fish
to anybody, and so they refused to pay any longer. But
if they had found that James II. had really said they
should, they would have gone on paying. Can anything
be more absurd?
There is a square in New York — Stuyvesant Square —
that is locked up at six o'clock every evening, even on the
long summer evenings. Why is it locked up ? Why are the
children not allowed to play there ? Why because old Mr.
Stuyvesant, dead and gone I don't know how many years
ago, so willed it. Now, can anything be more absurd?*
* After a popular agitation, the park authorities since decided to
leave the gates open later than six o'clock.

The Crime of Poverty 53
Yet, that is not any more absurd than our land titles.
From whom do they come? Dead man after dead man.
Suppose you get on the cars here going to Council Bluffs
or Chicago. You find a passenger with his baggage
strewn over the seats. You say, "Will you give me a
seat, if you please, sir?" He replies, "No; I bought this
seat." "Bought this seat? From whom did you buy it?"
"I bought it from the man who got out at the last station."
That is the way we manage this earth of ours.
Is it not a self-evident truth, as Thomas Jefferson
said, that "the land belongs in usufruct to the living,"
and that they who have died have left it, and have no
power to say how it shall be disposed of ? Title to land !
Where can a man get any title which makes the earth
his property?
There is a sacred right to property — sacred because
ordained by the laws of nature, that is to say, by the
law of God, and necessary to social order and civiliza
tion. That is the right of property in things produced
by labor; it rests on the right of a man to himself. That
which a man produces, that is his against all the world, to
give or to keep, to lend, to sell or to bequeath; but how
can he get such a right to land when it was here before
he came? Individual claims to land rest only on appro
priation. I read in a recent number of the Nineteenth
Century, possibly some of you may have read it, an article
by an ex-Prime Minister of Australia, in which there was
a little story that attracted my attention. It was of a
man named Galahard, who, in the early days, got up to
the top of a high hill in one of the finest parts of Western
Australia. He got up there, looked all around, and made
this proclamation: "All the land that is in sight from the
top of this hill I claim for myself: and all the land that
is out of sight I claim for my son John."

54 The Crime of Poverty
That story is of universal application. Land titles
everywhere come from just such appropriation. Now,
under certain circumstances, appropriation can give a
right. You invite a company of gentlemen to dinner,
and you say to them, "Be seated, gentlemen," and I get
into this chair. Well, that seat, for the time being, is
mine by the right of appropriation. It would be very
ungentlemanly, it would be very wrong, for any one of the
other guests to come up and say, "Get out of that chair,
I want to sit there !" But that right of possession, which
is good so far as the chair is concerned for the time,
does not give me a right to appropriate all there is on the
table before me. Grant that a man has a right to appro
priate such natural elements as he can use, has he any
right to appropriate more than he can use? Has a guest,
in such a case as I have supposed, a right to appropriate
more than he needs, and make other people stand up?
That is what is done.
Why, look all over this country — look at this town
or any other town. If men only took what they wanted
to use we should all have enough ; but they take what
they do not want to use at all. Here are a lot of English
men coming over here and getting titles to our land in
vast tracts ; what do they want with our land ? They do
not want it at all; it is not the land they want; they have
no use for American land. What they want is the income
that they know they can in a little while get from it.
Where does that income come from? It comes from
labor, from the labor of American citizens. What we are
selling to these people is our children, not land.
Poverty? Can there be any doubt of its cause? Go
into the old countries — go into western Ireland, into the
Highlands of Scotland; these are purely primitive com
munities. There you will find people as poor as poor can
be — living year after year on oatmeal or on potatoes, and

The Crime of Poverty 55
often going hungry. I could tell you many a pathetic
story. Speaking to a Scottish physician who was telling
me how this diet was inducing among these people a
disease similar to that which from the same cause is
ravaging Italy (the Pellagra), I said to him: "There is
plenty of fish; why don't they catch fish? There is
plenty of game. I know the laws are against it, but
cannot they take it on the sly?" "That," he said, "never
enters their heads. Why, if a man was even suspected
of having a taste for trout or grouse he would have to
leave at once." There is no difficulty in discovering what
makes those people poor. They have no right to any
thing that nature gives them. All they can make above
a living they must pay to the landlord. They not only
have to pay for the land that they use, but they have to
pay for the seaweed that comes ashore and for the turf
they dig from the bogs. They dare not improve, for any
improvements they make are made an excuse for putting
up the rent. These people who work hard, live in hovels,
and the landlords, who do not work at all — oh ! they
live in luxury in London or Paris. If they have hunting
boxes there, why, they are magnificent castles as com
pared with the hovels in which the men live who do the
work. Is there any question as to the cause of the poverty
there ?
Now, go into the cities, and what do you see? Why,
you see even a lower depth of poverty; aye, if I would
point out the worst of the evils of land monopoly I would
not take you to Connemara ; I would not take you to Skye
or Kintyre — I would take you to Dublin, or Glasgow or
London. There is something worse than physical de
privation, something worse than starvation; and that is
the degradation of the mind, the death of the soul. That
is what you will find in those cities.

56 The Crime of Poverty
Now, what is the cause of that? Why, it is plainly
to be seen; the people driven off the land in the country
are driven into the slums of the cities. For every man
that is driven off the land, the demand for the produce
of the workmen of the cities is lessened; and the man
himself, with his wife and children, is forced among
those workmen to compete upon any terms for a bare
living and force wages down. Get work he must or
starve — get work he must, or do that which those people,
so long as they maintain their manly feelings, dread more
than death, go to the almshouse. That is the reason,
here as in Great Britain, that the cities are overcrowded.
Open the land that is locked up, that is held by dogs-in-
the-manger, who will not use it themselves and will not
allow anybody else to use it, and you would see no more
of tramps and hear no more of over-production.
The utter absurdity of this thing of private property
in land ! I defy anyone to show me any good from it,
look where you please. Go out in the new lands, where
my attention was first called to it, or go to the heart of
the capital of the world — London. Everywhere, when
your eyes are once opened, you will see its inequality
and you will see its absurdity. You do not have to go
farther than Burlington. You have here a most beautiful
site for a city, but the city itself, as compared with what
it might be, is a miserable, straggling town. A gentle
man showed me today a big hole alongside one of your
streets. The place has been filled up all around it, and
this hole is left. It is neither pretty nor useful. Why
does that hole stay there? Well, it stays there because
somebody claims it as his private property. There is a
man, this gentleman told me, who wished to grade an
other lot, and wanted somewhere to put the dirt he took
off it, and he offered to buy this hole so that he might
fill it up. Now, it would have been a good thing for

The Crime of Poverty 57
Burlington to have it filled up, a good thing for you all —
your town would look better, and you yourself would
be in no danger of tumbling into it some dark night.
Why, my friend pointed out to me another similar hole
in which water had collected and told me that two
children had been drowned there. And he likewise told
me that a drunken man some years ago had fallen into
such a hole, and had brought a suit against the city which
cost you taxpayers some $11,000. Clearly it is to the
interest of you all to have that particular hole I am
talking of filled up. The man who wanted to fill it up
offered the hole-owner $300. But the hole-owner refused
the offer, and declared that he would hold out until he
could get $1,000 ; and, in the meanwhile, that unsightly and
dangerous hole must remain. This is but an illustration of
private property in land.
You may see the same thing all over this country.
See how injuriously in the agricultural districts this thing
of private property in land affects the roads and the
distances between the people. A man does not take what
land he wants, what he can use; but he takes all he can
get, and the consequence is that his next neighbor has
to go further along, people are separated from each other
further than they ought to be, to the increased difficulty
of production, to the loss of neighborhood and compan
ionship. They have more roads to maintain than they
can decently maintain ; they must do more work to get the
same result, and life is in every way harder and drearier.
When you come to the cities, it is just the other way.
in the country the people are too much scattered; in the
great cities they are too crowded. Go to a city like
New York, and there they are jammed together like
sardines in a box, living family upon family, one above
the other. It is an utterly unnatural and unwholesome
life. How can you have anything like a home in a tene-

58 The Crime of Poverty
ment room or two or three rooms? How can children be
brought up healthily with no place to play ? Two or three
weeks ago I read of a New York judge who fined two little
boys five dollars for playing hop-scotch on the street —
where else could they play ? Private property in land had
robbed them of all place to play. Even a temperance
man, who had investigated the subject, said that in his
opinion the gin palaces of London were a positive good in
this, that they enabled the people whose abodes were dark
and squalid rooms to see a little brightness, and thus pre
vent them from going wholly mad.
What is the reason for this overcrowding of cities?
There is no natural reason. Take New York, one-half
its area is not built upon. Why, then, must people
crowd together as they do there? Simply because of
private ownership of land. There is plenty of room to
build houses, and plenty of people who want to build
houses, but before anybody can build a house a blackmail
price must be paid to some dog-in-the-manger. It costs,
in many cases, more to get vacant ground upon which
to build a house than it does to build the house. And then
what happens to the man who pays this blackmail and
builds a house? Down comes the tax-gatherer and fines
him for building the house.
It is so all over the United States — the men who
improve, the men who turn the prairie into farms, and
the desert into gardens, the men who beautify your
cities, are taxed and fined for having done these things.
Now, nothing is clearer than that the people of New
York want more houses; and I think that even here in
Burlington you could get along with more houses. Why,
then, should you fine a man who builds one? Look all
over this country— the bulk of the taxation rests upon
the improper; the man who puts up a building or estab
lishes a factory, or cultivates a farm, he is taxed for it;

The Crime of Poverty 59
and not merely taxed for it, but I think, in nine cases out
of ten, the land which he uses, the bare land, is taxed
more than the adjoining lot, or the adjoining 160 acres
that some speculator is holding as a mere dog-in-the-
manger, not using it himself, and not allowing anybody
else to use it.
I am talking too long; but let me, in a few words,
point out the way of getting rid of land monopoly, secur
ing the right of all to the elements which are necessary
for life. We could not divide the land. In a rude state
of society, as among the ancient Hebrews, giving each
family its lot, and making it inalienable, we might secure
something like equality. But in a complex civilization
that will not suffice. It is not, however, necessary to
divide up the land. All that is necessary is to divide
up the income that comes from the land. In that way
we can secure absolute equality; nor could the adoption
of this principle involve any rude shock or violent change.
It can be brought about gradually and easily by abolish
ing taxes that now rest upon capital, labor, and im
provements, and raising all our public revenues by the
taxation of land values; and the longer you think of it
the clearer you will see that in every possible way will it
be a benefit.
Now, supposing we should abolish all other taxes
direct and indirect, substituting for them a tax upon
land values, what would be the effect? In the first place
it would be to kill speculative values. It would be to
remove from the newer parts of the country the bulk of
the taxation, and put it on the richer parts. It would be
to exempt the pioneer from taxation, and make the larger
cities pay more of it. It would be to relieve energy and
enterprise, capital and labor, from all those burdens that
now bear upon them. What a start that would give to
production ! In the second place, we could, from the

60 The Crime of Poverty
value of land, not merely pay all the present expenses
of the government, but we could do infinitely more. In the
city of San Francisco, James Lick left a few blocks of
ground to be used for public purposes there, and the
rent amounts to so much, that out of it will be built the
largest telescope in the world, large public baths, and
other public buildings, and various costly works. If,
instead of these few blocks, the whole value of the land
upon which the city is built had accrued to San Fran
cisco, what could she not do ?
So in this little town, where land values are very
low as compared with such cities as Chicago and San
Francisco, you could do many things for mutual benefit
and public improvement did you appropriate to public
purposes the land values that now go to individuals.
You could have a great free library; you could have an
art gallery; you could get yourselves a public park, a
magnificent public park, too. You have here one of the
finest natural sites for a beautiful town that I know of,
and I have traveled much. You might make on this site
a city that it would be a pleasure to live in. You will
not, as you go now — oh ! no ! Why, the very fact that
you have a magnificent view here will cause somebody
to hold on all the more tightly to the land that commands
this view, and charge higher prices for it. The State of
New York wants to buy a strip of land so as to enable
the people to see Niagara, but what a price she must
pay for it. Look at all the great cities; in Philadelphia,
for instance, in order to build their great city hall they
had to block up the only two wide streets they had in the
city. Everywhere you go you may see how private prop
erty in land prevents public as well as private improvement.
But I have no time to enter further into details. I
can only ask you to think upon this thing, and the more
you will see its desirability. As an English friend of

The Crime of Poverty 61
mine puts it, "No taxes and a pension for everybody;"
and why should it not be? To take land values for public
purposes is not really to impose a tax, but to take for
public purposes a value created by the community. And
out of the fund which would thus accrue from the com
mon property, we might, without degradation to anybody,
provide enough to actually secure from want all who were
deprived of their natural protectors, or met with accident ;
or any man who should grow so old that he could not
work. All prating that is heard from some quarters about
its hurting the common people to give them what they do
not work for is humbug. The truth is, that anything that
injures self-respect, degrades, does harm; but if you give
it as a right, as something to which every citizen is enti
tled to, it does not degrade. Charity schools do degrade
children that are sent to them, but public schools do not.
But all such benefits as these, while great, would be
incidental. The great thing would be that the reform I
propose would tend to open opportunities to labor and
enable men to provide employment for themselves. That
is the great advantage. We should gain the enormous
productive power that is going to waste all over the coun
try, the power of idle hands that would gladly be at work.
And that removed, then you would see wages begin to
mount. It is not that everyone would turn farmer, or
everyone build himself a house if he had an opportunity
for doing so, but so many could, and would, as to relieve
the pressure on the labor market and provide employment
for all others. And as wages mounted to the higher levels
then you would see the productive power increased. The
country where wages are high is the country of greatest
productive power. Where wages are highest there will
invention be most active; there will labor be most intelli
gent ; there will be the greatest yield for the expenditure
of exertion. The more you think of it the more clearly

62 The Crime of Poverty
you will see that what I say is true. I cannot hope to con
vince you in talking for an hour or two, but I shall be
content if I shall put you upon inquiry. Think for your
selves; ask yourselves whether this widespread fact of
poverty is not a crime, and a crime for which everyone of
us, man and woman, who does not do what he or she can
do to call attention to it and to do away with it, is re
sponsible.

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