ndividually had debts exceeding one hundred
dollars.--Reports of Committees, First Session, Twenty-fourth Congress,
Vol. II, Report No. 732:3.

[52] In his series of published articles, "The History of the
Prosecution of Bankrupt Frauds," the author has brought out
comprehensive facts on this point.

[53] The eminent merchants who sat on this committee had their own
conclusive opinion of what produced poverty. In commenting on the growth
of paupers they ascribed pauperism to seven sources. (1) Ignorance, (2)
Intemperance, (3) Pawnbrokers, (4) Lotteries, (5) Charitable
Institutions, (6) Houses of Ill-Fame, (7) Gambling.

No documents more wonderfully illustrate the bourgeois type of
temperament and reasoning than their reports. The people of the city
were ignorant because 15,000 of the 25,000 families did not attend
church. Pawnbrokers were an incentive to theft, cunning and lack of
honest industry, etc., etc. Thus their explanations ran. In referring to
mechanics and paupers, the committee described them as "the middling and
inferior classes." Is it any wonder that the working class justly views
"charitable" societies, and the spirit behind them, with intense
suspicion and deep execration?

[54] Documents of the Board of Assistant Aldermen of New York City,
1831-32, Doc. No. 45:1.

[55] House Executive Document, No. 13, Twenty-fifth Congress, Third
Session; also, House Report, No. 313.

[56] Report for 1821 of the "Society for the Prevention of Pauperism."

[57] "New York Gazette and General Advertiser", Aug. 5, 1797. The
rewards offered for the apprehension of fugitive apprentices varied. An
advertisement in the same newspaper, issue of July 3, 1797, held out an
offer of five dollars reward for an indented German boy who had
"absconded." The fear was expressed that he would attempt to board some
ship, and all persons were notified not to harbor or conceal him as they
would be "proceeded against as the law directs". That old apprentice law
has never been repealed in New York State.

[58] The Government reports bear out Barrett's statements, although in
saying this it must be with qualifications. The shippers engaged in the
East India and China trade were more favored, it seems, than other
classes of shippers, which discrimination engendered much antagonism.
"Why," wrote the Mercantile Society of New York to the House Committee
on Manufactures in 1821, "should the merchant engaged in the East India
trade, who i