Commonsense Socialism

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. 77/(? Moral Condition of t/ie People.?Extravagance, Drink, Idleness, A NY one who follows with interest the social movements of '' our time must be struck by the earnest endeavours which are directed to the moral improvement of the people. It is one of the most consolatory signs of the period...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. 77/(? Moral Condition of t/ie People.?Extravagance, Drink, Idleness, A NY one who follows with interest the social movements of '' our time must be struck by the earnest endeavours which are directed to the moral improvement of the people. It is one of the most consolatory signs of the period that so many of the best men and women are devoting their energy and their money, in some instances one might almost say their lives, to this task, leaving the leisure and pleasure which wealth can procure them for the hardships, anxieties, and disappointments connected with work amongst the poor. These men and women, whose intentions and actions deserve the highest appreciation, are not as a rule led to this activity by reflections upon the deeper social problems, but by the promptings of a generous nature which revolts at the scenes of misery enacted on all sides in public and traceable in many cases to vice or excess of some description. They see the drunkard fuddling himself with intoxicating drink, they see his haggard wife and starving children deprived of the first necessaries and driven to careers of shame and crime by the bread-winner's intemperance. They find men steeped in poverty and held there by the chains of their own idleness, who might emerge from the slough of despond, if they could summon the energy for an effort. They note these facts with rage and pity, and they determine to do what in them lies to diminish the amount of suffering by curing the vice from which they see it flowing. An immense field of useful activity opens before them; the closer they survey the area, the farther it seems to extend. They hear the magistrates declaring that nine-tenths of the crimes committed in the land are due to the influence of drink, and they get into the habit of...