All kinds of relief, charitable or other, doubtless tend to
perpetuation of pauperism, inasmuch as paupers are thereby kept
alive; and living paupers unquestionably propagate their unthrifty
kind more diligently than dead ones. It is not true, though, that
relief interferes with Nature’s beneficent law of the survival of the
fittest, for the power to excite sympathy and obtain relief is a kind
of fitness. I am still a devotee of the homely primitive doctrine
that mischance, disability or even unthrift, is not a capital crime
justly and profitably punishable by starvation. I still regard the Good
Samaritan with a certain toleration and Jesus Christ’s tenderness to
the poor as something more than a policy of obstruction.
Who is more truly “deserving” than an able-bodied man out of work
through no delinquency of will and no default of effort? Is hunger to
him and his less poignant than to the feeble in body and mind whom we
support for nothing in almshouse or asylum? Are cold and exposure less
disagreeable to him than to them? Is not his claim to the right to live
as valid as theirs if backed by the will to pay for life with work?
And in denial of his claim is there not latent a far greater peril to
society than inheres in denial of theirs? So unfortunate and dangerous
a creature as a man able and willing to work, yet having no work to do,
should be unknown outside the literature of satire. Doubtless there
would be enormous difficulties in devising a practicable and beneficent
system, and doubtless the reform, like all permanent and salutary
reforms, will have to grow. The growth, naturally, will be delayed by
opposition of the workingmen themselves—precisely as they oppose prison
labor from ignorance that labor makes opportunity to labor.
It matters not that nine in ten of all our tramps and vagrants are such
from choice, and are irreclaimable degenerates as well; so long as one
worthy man is out of employment and unable to obtain it our duty is to
provide it by law. Nay, so long as industrial conditions are such that
so pathetic a phenomenon is possible we have not the moral right to
disregard that possibility. The right to employment being the right
to life, its denial is, in a sense, homicide. It should be needless
to point out the advantages of its concession. It would preserve the
life and self-respect of him who is needy through misfortune, and
supply an infallible means of detection of his criminal imitator,
who could then be dealt with as he deserves, without the lenity that
finds justification in doubt and compassion. It would diminish crime,
for an empty stomach has no morals. With a wage rate lower than the
commercial, it would disturb no private industries by luring away their
workmen, and with nothing made to sell, there would be no competition
with private products. Properly directed, it would give us much that we
shall not otherwise have.
It is difficult to say if our laws relating to vagrancy and vagrants
are more cruel or more absurd. If not so atrocious they would evoke
laughter; if less ridiculous we should read them with indignation. Here
is an imaginary conversation:
THE LAW: It is forbidden to you to rob. It is forbidden to you to
steal. It is forbidden to you to beg.
THE VAGRANT: Being without money, and denied employment, I am compelled
to obtain food, shelter and clothing in one of these ways, else I
shall be hungry and cold.
THE LAW: That is no affair of mine. Yet I am considerate—you are
permitted to be as hungry as you like and as cold as may suit you.
THE VAGRANT: Hungry and cold, yes, and many thanks to you; but if I
go naked I am arrested for indecent exposure. You require me to wear
clothing.
THE LAW: You’ll admit that you need it.
THE VAGRANT: But not that you provide a way for me to get it. No one
will give me shelter at night; you forbid me to sleep in a straw stack.
THE LAW: Ungrateful man! We provide a cell.
THE VAGRANT: Even when I obey you, starving all day and freezing all
night, and holding my tongue about it, I am liable to arrest for being
“without visible means of support.”
THE LAW: A most reprehensible condition.
THE VAGRANT: One thing has been overlooked—a legal punishment for
soliciting work.
THE LAW: True; I am not perfect.