“And a still sadder feature of it is, that each year increasingly large numbers of this vast army of people, our fellow-beings, are, unwillingly on their part and in the face of almost superhuman efforts to keep out of it till the last moment, dropping into the pauper class—those who are compelled to seek or to receive aid from a public, or from private charity, in order to exist at all, already in numbers about four million, while increasing numbers of this class, the pauper, sink each year, and so naturally, into the vicious, the criminal, the inebriate class. In other words, we have gradually allowed to be built around us a social and economic system which yearly drives vast numbers of hitherto fairly well-to-do, strong, honest, earnest, willing and admirable men with their families into the condition of poverty, and under its weary, endeavour-strangling influences many of these in time, hoping against hope, struggling to the last moment in their semi-incapacitated and pathetic manner to keep out of it, are forced to seek or to accept public or private charity, and thus sink into the pauper class. “It is a well-authenticated fact that strong men, now weakened by poverty, will avoid it to the last before they will take this step. Many after first parting with every thing they have, break down and cry like babes when the final moment comes, and they can avoid it no longer. Numbers at this time take their own lives rather than pass through the ordeal, and still larger numbers desert their families for whom they have struggled so valiantly—it is almost invariably the woman who makes her way to the charity agencies. The public and private charities cost the country during the past year as nearly as can be _conservatively_ arrived at, over two hundred million dollars. “Moreover, a strange law seems to work with an accuracy that seems almost marvellous. It is this. Notwithstanding the brave and almost superhuman struggles that are gone through with, on the part of these, before they can take themselves to the public or private charity for aid, when the step is once taken, they gradually sink into the condition where all initiative and all sense of self-reliance seems to be stifled or lost, and it is only in a rare case now and then that they ever cease to be dependent, but remain content with the alms that are doled out to them—practically never do they rise out of that condition again. Talk with practically any charity agent or worker, one with a sufficiently extended experience, and you will find that there is scarcely more than one type of testimony concerning this. And as this condition gradually becomes chronic, and endeavour and initiative and self-respect are lost, a certain proportion then sink into the condition of the criminal, the diseased, the chronically drunk, the inebriate, from which reclamation is still more difficult.”