ad room and work
enough, we provided education before alms, and, especially among our
native-born population, have checked pauperism, as it never was checked
before in any civilized community.

No one can imagine, who has not been familiar with the lowest classes,
how entirely degraded a character may become, where there is an
uncertain dependence on public and organized alms. The faculties of the
individual are mainly bent on securing support by other means than
industry. Cunning, deception, flattery, and waiting for chances, become
the means of livelihood. Self-respect is lost, and with it go the best
qualities of the soul. True manhood and true womanhood are eaten away.
The habit of labor, and the hope and courage of a self-supporting human
being, and the prudence which guards against future evils, are almost
destroyed. The man becomes a dawdler and waiter on chances, and is
addicted to the lowest vices; his children grow up worse than he, and
make sharpness or crime a substitute for beggary. The woman is sometimes
stripped of the best feelings of her sex by this dependence. Not once or
twice only have we known such a woman steal the clothes from her
half-starved babe, as she was delivering it over to strangers to care
for. There are able-bodied men of this kind in New York who, every
winter, as regularly as the snow falls, commit some petty offense, that
they may be supported at public expense.

When this disease of pauperism is fairly mingled in the blood of
children, their condition is almost hopeless. They will not work, or go
to school, or try to learn anything useful; their faculties are all bent
to the tricks of a roving, begging life; the self-respect of their sex,
if girls, is lost in childhood; they are slatternly, lazy, and
dissolute. If they grow up and marry, they marry men of their own kind,
and breed paupers and prostitutes.

We know of an instance like this in an Alms-house in Western New York. A
mother, in decent circumstances, with an infant, was driven into it by
stress of poverty. Her child grew up a pauper, and both became
accustomed to a life of dependence. The child--a girl--went forth when
she was old enough to work, and soon returned with an illegitimate babe.
She then remained with her child. This child--also a girl--grew up in
like manner, and, occasionally, when old enough, also went forth to
labor, but returned finally, with _her_ illegitimate child, and at
length became a common paupe