Book Description

Excerpt from Progress and Poverty And so, many who have been most anxious for the enrich ment of the poor, if necessary even at the expense of therich, are compelled by sheer common sense to own themselves and' all philanthropy and statecraft helpless. Their helplessness has been enormously self-compensating. Their conviction of the impotence of the State, or, of money'to lift out of their poverty the recurring generations of the very poor has filled them with more pitying inventive many-sided personal zeal. The characterist1c of those who have been most prominent and energetic and self-sacrificing of late in attempts to cope with the masses of poverty has been a certain hardness. Hardness has become the religion of philanthropists, and every. Religion has its phrases which degenerate into cant on the lips of some of its devotees. No pauperising. Has become a second N o Popery, shriek. Is there a market for you has been the successor of Are you saved? Yet no one who knows them for a moment doubts that there has been a nobility and heroism and tenderness and stem martyr-like self-repression about many who have seemed hard as flint in their dealings with the poor. They have been merciless as the gentlest warrior may be merciless in some dreadful critical battle, upon whigh hangs the fate of unseen homes and unborn babes. And the very voices that have cried alike to kid gloved alms givers, whose ready hands were in their well filled pockets. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.