that these results are now realized from any general and permanent cause, and that the laboring class are already entering on the long and hopeless period which such reasoning holds out before them. Our exigency is temporary, and the suffering which we have witnessed is, to a considerable extent, due to the too sharp competitive spirit which we deprecate. We have seen wave after wave of competition sharper than that which exists in other countries-sharper than any which could exist in our own, if the true principles of competition were generally taught-sweep over the industrial classes, beginning with retail dealers, and extending itself to wholesale dealers and manufacturers, until it has reached the laboring class, and spent its accumulated strength upon them. Competition may be due to legitimate causes; but the fierceness of this competition, and its peculiarly disastrous consequences are largely due to the commercial animus of our people. Such a spirit needs to be restrained, not by law as yet, but by an enlightened public sentiment, which should always precede law and render it effective. Some laws we have had for the regulating of interest, of wages, and of the price of food; and while it is unintelligent to denounce such legislation as utterly wrong in principle, it is to be conceded that it has not been as effective as it may at some time be, in practice. Such laws have originated in the interests of a class, not in a general sense of right in the entire community. What is to be desired is not the abandonment of attempts in this direction, but the securing of conditions in which the attempts may be made successfully. Given, a general belief that a thing is right, and laws to define and enforce the belief will be legitimate and successful.

The ideal of Political Economy is not unrestricted competition, but competition that is truly free, because controlled by justice and by law. The distinction between freedom and license needs to be preserved in this department of political philosophy. With that distinction clearly maintained, we may still retain, in economics as in politics, our beautiful watchword, liberty. It is the function of moral influence to separate true liberty from false, by imposing restraints on competition. These restraints are not fixed, but indefinitely progressive, and at present are far from having reached their maximum limit.

The progressive character of these restraints affords the needed key for the solution of the difficult economic problems of the present; though they were weak as yet, which they are not, the fact that they are growing relatively to the forces that oppose them would prove them capable of accomplishing indefinitely large results. A sufficient advance in this direc tion would revolutionize the industrial system; a comparatively small advance would improve the system, by removing the worst evils that exist within it. The suppression of the harshest forms of competition would not at once stop the downward tendency of wages, which Ricardo has shown must exist under certain conditions; but it would check its rapidity, and substitute a different minimum. The bottom line would not be a death line. Wages would fall, not until they could go no lower, because the laborers would otherwise perish, but until they would be allowed to go no lower, because farther reduction would be a wrong. Present dangers would be largely averted, and the gloomy future prospect would be brightened by an element of hope.

ARTICLE II.—THE MINISTRY TO THE POOR.*

By the poor I understand those who are wholly, or in part, destitute of all or some of the necessaries of life,-food, shelter, and clothing,—and whose lives, in their general condition and tendency, are marked by unwise management and low, gross forms of wrong doing.

I

The first of these characteristics is the result of a want of judicious instruction in regard to a wise ordering of life; the second marks the absence of correct Christian teaching. shall treat of the poor in this double sense, as alike destitute of moral and material good. By so doing I narrow the subject but little and practically treat of the mass of the lower classes. This appears: 1, From facts observed in the experience of charitable individuals and societies, and from the statistics of alms-houses and prisons; 2, From the tendency in the condition and surroundings of the poor to the impairment of character.

1. In numerous instances those of the general public who from time to time relieve the applicant for charity at their doors find that their charity and good offices have been bestowed upon those whose misery is equaled only by the depravity of their lives. This is the evidence of those whose knowledge of the actual condition of the poor is limited, and whose opportunities for investigation are few. It is, also, the testimony of charitable societies and their agents, eye-witnesses of the circumstances and lives of the pauper class, that generally speaking, poverty and vice exist together. Seventy-five per cent. of the inmates of poor houses are degraded in character. An equal per cent. of the criminals confined in prisons belong to the poorer classes. 2. The tendencies natural to a life of poverty are towards the impairment of character. Consider the loss of self-respect resulting from a low social position and dependence

* It may be well to mention that the author of this Article has had unusual opportunities for becoming acquainted with the condition of the poor, and that the suggestions which he makes have been practically tested in his own experieace.-EDS. NEW ENGLANDER.

upon others; the demoralizing home surroundings of the close tenement where often one room and one bed must suffice for a large family; the temptation to supply destitution from the abundance of others, and to forget want and sickness, the miseries of the present and the forebodings for the future in the dram shop; and the absence of sound, moral, and religious teachings, counteracting the force of these surroundings. If we consider these influences, we must admit that the tendency of a class of people living under them will be to a loss of character. The statement, therefore, has reasonable grounds, and will be accepted by those who examine it carefully in the light of these two arguments; the vast majority of the poor are destitute in the double sense indicated. It must not be understood that all the poor are such as these, neither that sympathy should not exist for them. The vice and the ill-management are misfortunes equally with the poverty. They may and do result mainly from wrong or no teaching. It is a false idea that crime must be dealt with harshly and that its recognition presup poses the absence of pity. It is doubly false and hurtful that when found in connection with and resulting from destitution it should be pitilessly dealt with. The second element in my characterization of the poor is insisted upon, not from a lack of sympathy or from a desire to remove the evils of their condition by severe measures, but because truth demands it; because a right solution of the great problem of how the poor shall be elevated, and the increase of poverty be turned to a decrease, demands it; because I believe that ignoring it does and will prove fatal in every effort to uplift the masses; since it is the cause, in a great degree, of poverty, and blocks the way in all attempts to remove the evil. The physician must know the disease, no matter how painful and disgusting its features, if he would effect a cure.

I pass now to a consideration more in detail of the condition of the poor and the difficulties which oppose all successful labor for them.

The worker among them finds first that they are poor,-in need of food, shelter, or clothing, or of all these; poor today, to-morrow, this week and next, this year and next year. The task of caring for them promises to be as long as their

lives. Assistance-something for nothing-is given; at once all efforts to help self cease; charity becomes a resource for sloth. To encourage this is to encourage crime. The applicant for charity has been fed, but in this very act he has become degraded. Better that the body be destroyed than the soul.

Such a method of relieving want being rejected as unwise and injurious, it is determined to furnish work for the aid. given. Immediately the multitude crowd in from all directions, not only from one district or city, but from all the surrounding country. Who shall obtain employment for these vast numbers ? But if employment be found, the pauper laborer, in most cases, works poorly and slowly. He is perhaps unreliable; must be watched; he may steal, and withal he expects a trifle more pay than the ordinary workman. "Jist a bit in charity, if yer plases.' Many employers, with experience of this kind, would prefer to contribute liberally to a charitable fund, and employ men who work well and faithfully. It is impossible to relieve the destitute by supplying work.

How then shall their distress be relieved? I ask this question not with the intention of answering it in this place. I do not venture to assert that I can answer it. In the proper place, however, I shall make an attempt. It is only desired here to emphasize the fact that the poor are poor, and that he who would wisely relieve their poverty undertakes a most difficult task.

In the second place, the worker among them finds that some are intemperate. All efforts for relief of their poverty are futile, so long as this habit exists. Again, some are without self-respect, have no true idea of manhood or womanhood. They grovel at the feet of a fellow-being with the brutishness of beasts. They are unclean, reveling in filth. Many are liars, persistently adhering to the most apparent falsehoods,—an evil as destructive to character as it is difficult to eradicate. Many are petty thieves; petty because they have not the abil ity, daring, or opportunity for greater crimes. Many of the women and young girls, children,-victims of pauperism,are low class prostitutes, while the more intelligent and attractive of them become mistresses and inmates of brothels. Some