{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_46786/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_46786","id":"gutenberg_46786","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46786","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Biographies","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Poverty","Success"],"text":"Produced by Chuck Greif (This file was\nproduced from images available at The Internet Archive)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                       WHY I BELIEVE IN POVERTY\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n                      The Riverside Uplift Series\n\n               WHY I BELIEVE IN POVERTY. By EDWARD BOK,\n\n                  THE AMATEUR SPIRIT, By BLISS PERRY.\n\n           THE GLORY OF THE IMPERFECT, By GEORGE H, PALMER.\n\n           SELF-CULTIVATION IN ENGLISH. By GEORGE H. PALMER.\n\n             TRADES AND PROFESSIONS. By GEORGE H. PALMER.\n\n               THE CULTIVATED MAN. By CHARLES W. ELIOT.\n\n                          WHITHER? ANONYMOUS.\n\n                  CALM YOURSELF. By GEORGE L. WALTON.\n\n                         Each, 50 cents, net.\n                       HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY\n                          BOSTON AND NEW YORK\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\n                       WHY I BELIEVE IN POVERTY\n\n           AS THE RICHEST EXPERIENCE THAT CAN COME TO A BOY\n\n                                  BY\n\n                              EDWARD BOK\n\n                          BOSTON AND HEW YORK\n\n                       HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY\n\n                               MDCCCCXV\n\n             COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY\n\n                    COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY EDWARD BOK\n\n                       ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 1915\n\n\n\n\n                              A FOREWORD\n\nTHE article in this little book was published in _The Ladies' Home\nJournal_ for April, 1915. Much to the surprise of the author, the call\nfor copies was so insistent as to exhaust the edition of the magazine\ncontaining it. As the demand did not appear to be supplied, the article\nis now reprinted in this form. It is sent out with the hope of the\nauthor that it may still further fulfill its mission of giving the\nstimulant of encouragement wherever it is needed.\n\nE. B.\n\n_October Nineteen hundred and fifteen_\n\n\n\n\n                       WHY I BELIEVE IN POVERTY\n\n           AS THE RICHEST EXPERIENCE THAT CAN COME TO A BOY\n\nI MAKE my living trying to edit the \"Ladies' Home Journal.\" And because\nthe public has been most generous in its acceptance of that periodical,\na share of that success has logically come to me. Hence a number of my\nvery good readers cherish an opinion that often I have been tempted to\ncorrect, a temptation to which I now yield. My correspondents express\nthe conviction variously, but this extract from a letter is a fair\nsample:--\n\nIt is all very easy for you to preach economy to us when you do not know\nthe necessity for it: to tell us how, as for example in my own case, we\nmust live within my husband's income of eight hundred dollars a year,\nwhen you have never known what it is to live on less than thousands. Has\nit ever occurred to you, born with the proverbial silver spoon in your\nmouth, that theoretical writing is pretty cold and futile compared to\nthe actual hand-to-mouth struggle that so many of us live, day by day\nand year in and year out--an experience that you know not of?\n\n                   *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"An experience that you know not of\"!\n\nNow, how far do the facts square with this statement?\n\nWhether or not I was born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth I\ncannot say. It is true that I was born of well-to-do parents. But when I\nwas six years old my father lost all his means, and faced life at\nforty-five, in a strange country, without even necessaries. There are\nmen and their wives who know what that means: for a man to try to \"come\nback\" at forty-five, and in a strange country!\n\nI had the handicap of not knowing one word of the English language. I\nwent to a public school and learned what I could. And sparse morsels\nthey were! The boys were cruel, as boys are. The teachers were\nimpatient, as tired teachers are.\n\nMy father could not find his place in the world. My mother, who had\nalways had servants at her beck and call, faced the problems of\nhousekeeping that she had never learned nor been taught. And there was\nno money.\n\nSo, after school hours, my brother and I went home, but not to play.\nAfter-school hours meant for us to help a mother who daily grew more\nfrail under the burdens that she could not carry. Not for days, but for\nyears, we two boys got up in the gray cold winter dawn when the bed\nfeels so snug and warm to growing boys, and we sifted the cold ashes of\nthe day-before fire for a stray lump or two of unburned coal, and with\nwhat we had or could find we made the fire and warmed up the room. Then\nwe set the table for the scant breakfast, went to school, and directly\nafter school we washed the dishes, swept and scrubbed the floors. Living\nin a three-family tenement, each third week meant that we scrubbed the\nentire three flights of stairs from the third story to the first, as\nwell as the doorsteps and the side-walk outside. The latter work was the\nhardest: for we did it on Saturdays with the boys of the neighborhood\nlooking on none too kindly, or we did it to the echo of the crack of the\nball and bat on the adjoining lot!\n\nIn the evening, when other could sit by the lamp or study their lessons,\nwe two boys went out with a basket and picked up wood and coal in the\nneighboring lots, or went after the dozen or so pieces of coal left from\nthe ton of coal put in that afternoon by one of our neighbors, with the\nspot hungrily fixed in mind by one of us during the day, hoping that the\nman who carried in the coal might not be too careful in picking up the\nstray lumps!\n\n\"An experience that you know not of\"! Don't I?\n\nAt ten years of age I got my first job: washing the windows of a baker's\nshop at fifty cents a week. In a week or two I was allowed to sell bread\nand cakes behind the counter after school hours for a dollar a\nweek--handing out freshly baked cakes and warm, delicious smelling\nbread, when scarcely a crumb had passed my mouth that day!\n\nThen on Saturday mornings I served a route for a weekly paper, and sold\nmy remaining stock on the street. It meant from sixty to seventy cents\nfor that day's work.\n\nI lived in Brooklyn, New York, and the chief means of transportation to\nConey Island at that time was the horse car. Near where we lived the\ncars would stop to water the horses, the men would jump out and get a\ndrink of water, but the women had no means of quenching their thirst.\nSeeing this lack I got a pail, filled it with water and a bit of ice,\nand, with a glass, jumped on each car on Saturday afternoon and all day\nSunday, and sold my wares at a cent a glass. And when competition came,\nas it did very quickly when other boys saw that a Sunday's work meant\ntwo or three dollars, I squeezed a lemon or two in my pail, my liquid\nbecame \"lemonade\" and my price two cents a glass, and Sundays meant five\ndollars to me.\n\nThen, in turn, I became a reporter during the evenings, an office boy\nday-times, and learned stenography at midnight!\n\nMy correspondent says she supports her family of husband and child on\neight hundred dollars a year, and says I have never known what that\nmeans. I supported a family of three on six dollars and twenty-five\ncents a week--less than one half of her yearly income. When my brother\nand I, combined, brought in eight hundred dollars a year we felt rich!\n\nI have for the first time gone into these details in print so that my\nreaders may know, at first hand, that the\n\nEditor of the \"Ladies' Home Journal\" is not a theorist when he writes or\nprints articles that seek to preach economy or that reflect a\nhand-to-hand struggle on a small or an invisible income. There is not a\nsingle step, not an inch, on the road of direst poverty that I do not\nknow or have not experienced. And, having experienced every thought,\nevery feeling, and every hardship that come to those who travel that\nroad, I say to-day that I rejoice with every boy who is going through\nthe same experiences.\n\nNor am I discounting or forgetting one single pang of the keen hardships\nthat such a struggle means. I would not to-day exchange my years of the\nkeenest hardship that a boy can know or pass through for any single\nexperience that could have come to me. I know what it means, not to earn\na dollar, but to earn two cents. I know the value of money as I could\nhave learned it or known it in no other way. I could have been trained\nfor my life-work in no surer way. I could not have arrived at a truer\nunderstanding of what it means to face a day without a penny in hand,\nnot a loaf of bread in the cupboard, not a piece of kindling wood for\nthe fire--with nothing to eat, and then be a boy with the hunger of nine\nand ten, with a mother frail and discouraged!\n\n\"An experience that you know not of\"! Don't I?\n\nAnd yet I rejoice in the experience, and I repeat: I envy every boy who\nis in that condition and going through it. But--and here is the pivot of\nmy strong belief in poverty as an undisguised blessing to a boy--I\nbelieve in poverty as a condition to experience, to go through, and then\nto get out of: not as a condition to stay in. \"That's all very well,\"\nsome will say; \"easy enough to say, but how can you get out of it?\" No\none can definitely tell another that. No one told me. No two persons can\nfind the same way out. Each must find his way for himself. That depends\non the boy. I was determined to get out of poverty because my mother was\nnot born in it, could not stand it, and did not belong in it. This gave\nme the first essential: a purpose. Then I backed up the purpose with\neffort and a willingness to work, and to work at anything that came my\nway, no matter what it was, so long as it meant \"the way out.\" I did not\npick and choose: I took what came, and did it in the best way I knew\nhow; and when I didn't like what I was doing I still did it well while I\nwas doing it, but I saw to it that I didn't do it any longer than I had\nto do it. I used every rung in the ladder as a rung to the one above. It\nmeant effort, of course, untiring, ceaseless, and unsparing, and it\nmeant work, hard as nails. But out of the effort and the work came the\nexperience; the upbuilding; the development; the capacity to understand\nand sympathize; the greatest heritage that can come to a boy. And\nnothing in the world can give that to a boy, so that it will burn into\nhim, as will poverty.\n\nThat is why I believe so strongly in poverty, the greatest blessing in\nthe way of the deepest and fullest experience that can come to a boy.\nBut, as I repeat: always as a condition to work out of, not to stay in.\n\n                          The Riverside Press\n\n                       CAMBRIDGE\u00b7 MASSACHUSETTS\n\n                                U.S.A.","title":"Why I Believe in Poverty as the Richest Experience That Can Come to a Boy","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":1889}