as economically beneficial, is quite another question.
Great confusion and consequent error is produced by allowing these two
questions to become entangled in the discussion. Especially we shall
need to notice the attempts to apply legislative methods of reform to
the ills which belong to the order of Nature.

There is no possible definition of "a poor man." A pauper is a person
who cannot earn his living; whose producing powers have fallen
positively below his necessary consumption; who cannot, therefore, pay
his way. A human society needs the active co-operation and productive
energy of every person in it. A man who is present as a consumer, yet
who does not contribute either by land, labor, or capital to the work
of society, is a burden. On no sound political theory ought such a
person to share in the political power of the State. He drops out of
the ranks of workers and producers. Society must support him. It
accepts the burden, but he must be cancelled from the ranks of the
rulers likewise. So much for the pauper. About him no more need be
said. But he is not the "poor man." The "poor man" is an elastic term,
under which any number of social fallacies may be hidden.

Neither is there any possible definition of "the weak." Some are weak
in one way, and some in another; and those who are weak in one sense
are strong in another. In general, however, it may be said that those
whom humanitarians and philanthropists call the weak are the ones
through whom the productive and conservative forces of society are
wasted. They constantly neutralize and destroy the finest efforts of
the wise and industrious, and are a dead-weight on the society in all
its struggles to realize any better things. Whether the people who mean
no harm, but are weak in the essential powers necessary to the
performance of one's duties in life, or those who are malicious and
vicious, do the more mischief, is a question not easy to answer.

Under the names of the poor and the weak, the negligent, shiftless,
inefficient, silly, and imprudent are fastened upon the industrious and
prudent as a responsibility and a duty. On the one side, the terms are
extended to cover the idle, intemperate, and vicious, who, by the
combination, gain credit which they do not deserve, and which they
could not get if they stood alone. On the other hand, the terms are
extended to include wage-receivers of the humblest rank, who are
degraded by the combination. The reader wh