Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER HI. THE CAUSES OF POVERTY. Tht: Apparent Cause of Poverty—Is it the Real Cause?—Definitions —Value—Utility—Rent—The Law of Rent—Labor and Laborer —Wealth—Capital—Wages—The Three Partners in Production— The Demands of Land must be met—Other Causes of Poverty— Sickness—Intemperance—The Division of Labor—Monopoly—' Taxation—Extravagance—The Cure for Poverty is Christianity. Industrial progress has apparently produced in our country the class distinction between the rich and the poor, capitalists and operators, wage earners and wage payers. And these distinctions are growing deeper and more marked. Thirty years have made a great difference in our country. In 1858 there was work for nearly all, and living without work for very few. In 1888 there is a large class that is supported without working, and a larger class that can hardly live by working. The end is not yet. The forces that have created riches and poverty are working with greater energy. The backwoods districts where land is very cheap, where there is neither luxury nor beggary, are rapidly disappearing. Asland becomes more useful and more valuable, as the reaper supplants the cradle, the factory the hand loom, the railroad the dirt road, the telegraph the mail boy, the "commercial emporium" the cross roads store, equality disappears, and some are rich and others poor; some dress in silks and some in rags; some eat foreign delicacies and some go hungry. As material development goes on, the differences between the rich and the poor increase and become more permanent. Is industrial progress indeed the cause of this separation of society into the rich and the poor? Does invention, while increasing enormously the fruits of toil, rob some toilers of bread? Is our civilization a car of juggernaut for the worshipp...