[127] Professor John R. Commons (Publications of the American Sociological Society, vol. ii, p. 141) estimates 2,000,000 members of unions out of 6,000,000 wage-earners “available for class conflict.” [128] George Herbert. CHAPTER XXVI POVERTY THE MEANING OF POVERTY—PERSONAL AND GENERAL CAUSES—POVERTY IN A PROSPEROUS SOCIETY DUE CHIEFLY TO MALADJUSTMENT—ARE THE POOR THE “UNFIT”?—WHO IS TO BLAME FOR POVERTY?—ATTITUDE OF SOCIETY TOWARD THE POOR—FUNDAMENTAL REMEDIES. The most practical definition of poverty is that now widely adopted which relates it to function, and calls those the poor whose income is not sufficient to keep up their health and working efficiency. This may be vague but is not too much so to be useful, and is capable of becoming quite definite through exact inquiry. At least it indicates roughly a considerable portion of the people who are poor in an obvious and momentous sense of the word. Being undernourished, the poor lack energy, physical, intellectual and moral. Whatever the original cause of their poverty, they cannot, being poor, work so hard, think so clearly, plan so hopefully, or resist temptation with so much steadfastness as those who have the primary means of keeping themselves in sound condition. Moreover, the lack of adequate food, clothing and housing commonly implies other lacks, among which are poor early training and education, the absence of contact with elevating and inspiring personalities, a narrow outlook upon the world, and, in short, a general lack of social opportunity. The poor are not a class in the sense of having a distinct psychical organization. Absorbed in a discouraging material struggle, or perhaps in the sensuality and apathy to which a discouraging outlook is apt to lead, they have no spirit or surplus energy adequate to effectual coöperative endeavor on their own initiative, or even to grasping the benefits of existing organization. As a rule they get far less from the law and its administration, from the church, the schools, the public libraries and the like, than the classes more capable of self-assertion, and this is particularly true in a _laissez-faire_ democracy, such as ours, which gives rights pretty much in proportion to the vigor with which they are demanded. It is this lack of common consciousness and purpose that explains the ease with which, in all ages, the poor have been governed, not to say exploited, from above. And if they are getting some consciousness and purpose at the present time, it is largely for the very reason that they are less inveterately and hopelessly poor now than in the past.