Essay 6

IV. The fourth position which I undertook to controvert, is, that

"Taxes for the support of the poor, and aid afforded them by benevolent societies and "charitable individuals, are pernicious; as, by encouraging the poor to depend on them, they foster their idleness and improvidence, and thus produce, or at least increase, the poverty and distress they are intended to relieve."

If I have proved, as I hope I have, satisfactorily, that there are classes of people, male and female, whose dependence is on their hands for support, and whose wages, when fully employed, are not more than sufficient for that purpose; that when unemployed, they must be reduced to penury and want; and that there are classes of females, whose wages are inadequate for their support, even when constantly employed; it follows, of course, that the poor rates, the aid of benevolent societies, &c., far from producing the pernicious effects ascribed to them, are imperiously necessary, and that without them, numbers would, as I have stated, actually perish of want, or would have recourse to mendicity; and mendicants impose a far heavier tax on a community than the same number of paupers supported by poor rates. The support of 549 out-door paupers of Philadelphia, in 1830, averaged 461/4 cents per week—or less than 7 cents per day. Some of them received only a quarter of a dollar a week. I submit a statement of the whole number, with the pittance they respectively received:—

If these had been strolling mendicants, as, by the abrogation of the poor laws, and the annihilation of benevolent societies, they would have become, the average, instead of seven cents per day, would more probably have been 25 or 30 cents; thus increasing the burdens on the community three or four fold. Many of them, with a woe-begone appearance, whether real or fictitious, calculated to excite sympathy, would probably have realized 50 cents, and often a dollar a day.

Those of our fellow-citizens who complain of the oppression of our poor laws, will learn with surprise, that of the 549 out-door paupers, there were no less than 390 above 60 years of age, and 6 above 100. Almost all of these were in a state of superannuation, 50 of them were blind, and 406 of the whole number, as I have already stated, were widows. I annex a statement of their respective ages.

Of the whole number, 381 had 935 children, of whom 372 were at home with their parents. I have been unable to procure a statement of the ages or characters of the tenants of our alms-house—but presume that they were somewhat similar to those of the out-door paupers.

Philadelphia, July 4, 1833.