Poverty! Did you ever think of the full meaning of that word? The
curse of poverty is the cowardice which it breeds, cowardice of body
and soul. Many a man who would in full possession of his faculties,
pour out his life-blood for a friend, or even for a stranger, will,
when it becomes a contest for a crust of bread,--for the last means
of a bare subsistence,--steal that crust from the very lips of his
starving friend, and would, were it possible, drain the last life-drop
in the veins of another, in order to keep life in his own wretched
carcass. The savage, starving in the snow, in the center of his
desolate prairie, knows nothing of the poverty of the civilized savage,
much less of that poverty, which takes the man or woman of refined
education, and kills every noble faculty of the soul, before it does
its last work on the body. Poverty in the city, is not mere want of
bread, but it is the lack of the means to supply innumerable wants,
created by civilization,--and that lack is slow moral and physical
death. Talk of the bravery of the hero, who, on the battle-field stands
up to be shot at, with the chance of glory, on the one hand, and a
quick death on the other! How will his heroism compare with that brave
man, who in the large city, year after year, and day by day, expends
the very life-strings of his soul, in battling against the fangs of
want, in keeping some roof-shelter over his wife and children, or those
who are as dependent upon him as wife and children? Proud lady, sitting
on your sofa, in your luxurious parlor, you regard with a quiet sneer,
that paragraph in the paper (you hold it in your hand), which tells
how a virtuous girl, sold her person into the grasp of wealthy lust
for--bread! You sneer,--virtue, refined education, beauty, innocence,
chastity, all gone to the devil for a--bit of bread! Sneer on! but
were you to try the experiment of living two days without--not your
carriage and opera-box,--but without bread or fire in the dead of
winter, working meanwhile at your needle, with half-frozen fingers for
just sixteen pennies per day, you would, I am afraid, think differently
of the matter. Instead of two days, read two years, and let your trial
be one of perpetual work and want, that never for a moment cease to
bite,--I am afraid, beautiful one, were this your case, you would
sometimes find yourself thinking of a comfortable life, and a bed of
down, purchased by the sale of your body, and the damnation of your
soul. And you, friend, now from the quiet of some country village,
railing bravely against southern slavery, and finding no word bitter
enough to express your hatred of the slave market, in which black men
and black women are sold--just look a moment from the window of your
quiet home, and behold yonder huge building, blazing out upon the
night from its hundred windows. That is a factory. Yes. Have you no
pity for the white men, (nearer to you in equality of organization