The fact must not be
shirked that in preaching thrift, hygiene, morality, and religion to the
dwellers in the courts and alleys of our great cities, we are sowing
seed upon a barren ground. Certain isolated cases of success must not
blind us to this truth. Take, for example, thrift. It is not possible to
expect that large class of workers who depend upon irregular earnings of
less than 18s. a week to set by anything for a rainy day. The essence of
thrift is regularity, and regularity is to them impossible. Even
supposing their scant wage was regular, it is questionable whether they
would be justified in stinting the bodily necessities of their families
by setting aside a portion which could not in the long run suffice to
provide even a bare maintenance for old age or disablement. To say this
is not to impugn the value of thrift in maintaining a character of
dignity and independence in the worker; it is simply to recognize that
valuable as these qualities are, they must be subordinated to the first
demands of physical life. Those who can save without encroaching on the
prime necessaries of life ought to save; but there are still many who
cannot save, and these are they whom the problem of poverty especially
concerns. The saying of Aristotle, that "it is needful first to have a
maintenance, and then to practise virtue," does not indeed imply that we
_ought_ to postpone practising the moral virtues until we have secured
ourselves against want, but rather means that before we can live well we
_must_ first be able to live at all.
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