When the poor man, with a bare living wage, fails to keep a decent home, drinks, or spends his money foolishly, he is ruthlessly condemned as thriftless and intemperate. But who is setting him the example of thrift and abstemiousness? Anyhow, not the rich man, to whom the very words are meaningless. If he drops out from incompetence, from weakness, or from viciousness, if destitution becomes his lot, his nature becomes crippled, his character warped, his mind embittered, and he finds himself dragged down lower still and trodden under by his fellow-men in their thoughtless and brutal stampede for lucre. Truly, “the destruction of the poor is their poverty.” The general pressure of the multitude is downward and destructive, not because there is any inherent depravity in their nature, either individually or collectively, but because of the narrow confines of the course into which they are driven and because of the oppression to which they are subjected. There is no time to stop, pick up, and shield those who have started on the journey with the hideous handicap of disease and incompetence created by degraded and disgraceful homes; these unfortunates must go to the wall, because the potential energy and pressure of society is not concentrated on the uplifting of the feeble and the recovery of the outcasts, but on the rush forward with the rich in the forefront as leaders--a desperate rush towards some seductive dream of prosperity, some purely selfish satisfaction of animal appetites and material pleasures. The slow and often discouraging expedients of relief, restoration, and help are passed over when success, conquest, and triumph are in sight.