1. "Moral" View of the Causes of Poverty.--Our diagnosis of "sweating"
has regarded poverty as an industrial disease, and we have therefore
concerned ourselves with the examination of industrial remedies, factory
legislation, Trade Unionism, and restrictions of the supply of unskilled
labour. It may seem that in doing this we have ignored certain important
moral factors in the problem, which, in the opinion of many, are all
important. Until quite recently the vast majority of those philanthropic
persons who interested themselves in the miserable conditions of the
poor, paid very slight attention to the economic aspect of poverty, and
never dreamed of the application of economic remedies. It is not
unnatural that religions and moral teachers engaged in active detailed
work among the poor should be so strongly impressed by the moral
symptoms of the disease as to mistake them for the prime causes. "It is
a fact apparent to every thoughtful man that the larger portion of the
misery that constitutes our Social Question arises from idleness,
gluttony, drink, waste, indulgence, profligacy, betting, and
dissipation." These words of Mr. Arnold White express the common view of
those philanthropists who do not understand what is meant by "the
industrial system," and of the bulk of the comfortable classes when they
are confronted with the evils of poverty as disclosed in "the sweating
system." Intemperance, unthrift, idleness, and inefficiency are indeed
common vices of the poor. If therefore we could teach the poor to be
temperate, thrifty, industrious, and efficient, would not the problem of
poverty be solved? Is not a moral remedy instead of an economic remedy
the one to be desired? The question at issue here is a vital one to all
who earnestly desire to secure a better life for the poor. This "moral
view" has much to recommend it at first sight. In the first place, it is
a "moral" view, and as morality is admittedly the truest and most real
end of man, it would seem that a moral cure must be more radical and
efficient than any merely industrial cure. Again, these "vices" of the
poor, drink, dirt, gambling, prostitution, &c., are very definite and
concrete maladies attaching to large numbers of individual cases, and
visibly responsible for the misery and degradation of the vicious and
their families. Last, not least, this aspect of poverty, by representing
the condition of the poor to be chiefly "their own fault," lightens the
se