is proper to conclude that the causes
commonly to be assigned to poverty are both subjective and objective,
or individual and social. It was formerly customary to throw most of
the blame on the poor themselves, to charge them with being lazy,
intemperate, vicious, and generally incompetent, and it is useless to
deny that these appear to be the direct causes in great numbers of
instances, but as much of the negro and poor white trash in the South
was found to be due to hookworm infection, so very many of the faults
of the shiftless poor in the cities are due more indirectly to lack of
nourishment, of education, and of courage. Over and over again, it may
be, has the worker tried to get on better, only to get sick or lose
his job just as he was improving his lot. The tendency of opinion is
in the direction of putting the chief blame upon the disposition of
the employer to exploit the worker, and the indifference of society to
such exploitation; it is the discouraging conditions in which the
working man lives, the uncertainty of employment and the high cost of
living, the danger of accident and disease that constantly hangs over
the laborer and his family, that devitalizes and disheartens him, and
casts him before he is old on the social scrap heap.

Summing up, it is convenient to classify the causes of poverty as
individual and social, including under the first head ignorance,
inefficiency, illness or accident, intemperance, and immorality, and
under the second unemployment, widowhood, or desertion, overcrowding
and insanitation, the high cost of living versus low wages, and lack
of adjustment to environment.

Poverty is one of those social conditions that appear in all parts of
the country, even in the smaller villages, but it is more dreadful and
wide-spread in the great cities. In smaller communities the cases are
few and can be taken care of without great difficulty; to the larger
centres have drifted the poor from the rural regions, and there
congregate the immigrants who have failed to make good, until in large
numbers they drain the vitals of the city's strength. Yet the problem
of poverty is not new. It would be difficult to find any ancient city
that did not have its rabble or mediaeval village without its
"ne'er-do-weel"; and in every period church or state or feudal group
has taken its turn in providing relief. In recent years the principle
of bestowing charity has been giving way to the principle of
destro