ABSTRACT
Deriding middle-class ideas that poverty was a result of an individual’s improvidence or lack of work ethic, this newspaper article makes the argument that poverty was systemic and had to be dealt with through a thoughtful and consistent governmental apparatus. The Times supposes the ‘respectable rate-payer’ to say that these things need not be, or that they cannot be helped. They need not be, because a starving person should apply for relief as ‘casual poor;’ they cannot be helped, because ‘in so vast a population instances must of course occur of persons who will carefully hide their shame and their wants from every eye, until they sink down exhausted in some lone spot to die’. Production is the source of all national wealth—Production made to keep pace with population—Production kept in a condition that it shall be accessible to all—Production so distributed that it shall first and assuredly produce the necessaries of life.
