Library Collections: Document: Full Text
![]() |
The Disease Of Mendicancy
|
![]() |
||
5 | The one fact which we wish to impress upon the people, and upon legislators, in this article, is, that the evil which we are describing and commenting upon is not one that will cure itself, -- is not one that will be cured by returning national prosperity, -- is not one that will be cured by driving tramps from one State into another, -- and is a hopelessly demoralizing mental disease. It must be taken hold of vigorously, and handled efficiently and wisely. There is not a month to be lost. Thus far in the history of the country we have been singularly free from any pauperism but that which we have imported from the great European repositories of pauperism. But matters have changed. The tramps are not all foreigners. They are, to a very considerable number, our own American flesh and blood, and unless we are willing to see the country drift into the condition of the older peoples of the world, where mendicancy has grown to be a gigantic burden and curse, and pauperism a thing of hopeless heredity, we must do something to check the evil, and do it at once. |