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Show Asserts That Poverty Is Punished as Crime It Is a common cant phrase among the comfortable classes that poverty is not a crime. Like most cant phrases, It is a lie. Poverty Is a crime, or the world would not punish it so severely. Any man who has been poor I do not mean "hard up" or short of money, but actually poor, and born among the poor, as I was has something of the resentment felt by a man who has been in prison. For he has suffered ! as much as any man who commits a ! serious crime against society. But ; with the difference that he does not j know what offense he has committed. j I received the first punishment early i I In life, ar.d it was some time before I could discover that my offense was poverty and humble birth. There is , no relief for that suffering. So long as boys born among the poor dare to have brains and fine feelings and a desire to escape from mean streets, so long they shall be made to pay the J price of their daring. Thomas Burke. I in Hearst's International-Cosmopoll- tan. |