iness is slack they are the first to be laid
off the pay-roll, and they help to swell the ranks of the unemployed.
Because of the American system of compulsory education they are not
absolutely illiterate, but their ability is small; they leave school
early, and what little education they have does not help them to earn
a living. They do not usually choose an occupation, but they follow
the line of least resistance, taking the first job that offers, and
often finding later that they never can hope for advancement in it.
Frequently they are the victims of weak will and inherited tendencies
that lead to intemperance, vice, and crime. Thousands of them are
living in the unwholesome tenements that lack comfort and
attractiveness. There is no inducement to cultivate good habits, and
no possibility of keeping the children free from moral and physical
contamination. As a class they are continually on the edge of poverty
and often submerged in it. They know what it is to feel the pinch of
hunger, to shiver before the blasts of winter, and to look upon coal
and ice as luxuries. They become discouraged from the struggle as they
grow older, often get to be chronically dependent on charity, and not
infrequently fall at last into a pauper's grave.

227. =The Degenerate American.=--Many of these people are Americans,
swarms of them are foreigners who have come here to better their
fortunes and have been disappointed or, finding the difficulties more
than they anticipated, have settled down fairly contented in the city.
Many persons think that it is the alien immigrant who causes the
increase in intemperance and crime that has been characteristic of
city life, but statistics lay much of the guilt upon the degenerate
American. There are poor whites in the cities as there are in the
South country. The riffraff drifts to town from the country as the
Roman proletariat gravitated to the capital in the days of decadence.
A great many young persons who enter the city with high hopes of
making a fortune fail to get a foothold or gradually lose their grip
and are swept along in the current of the city's debris. Illness,
accident, and repeated failure are all causes of degeneration.

Along with misfortune belongs misconduct. Those causes which produce
poverty like intemperance, idleness, and ignorance, are productive of
degeneracy, also. They render the individual unfit to meet the
responsibilities of life, and tend not only to incompetence bu