For it is
just as true to say that a man becomes vicious because he is unhappy.
Want is the strongest poison for the human body and soul. It is the
fountain head of all inhuman and antisocial feeling. Where want spreads
out its wings, there the sentiments of love, of affection, of
brotherhood, are impossible.
Take a look at the figures of the peasant in the far-off arid Campagna,
the little government employee, the laborer, the little shop-keeper.
When work is assured, when living is certain, though poor, then want,
cruel want, is in the distance, and every good sentiment can germinate
and develop in the human heart. The family then lives in a favorable
environment, the parents agree, the children are affectionate. And when
the laborer, a bronzed statue of humanity, returns from, his smoky shop
and meets his white-haired mother, the embodiment of half a century of
immaculate virtue and heroic sacrifices, then he can, tired, but assured
of his daily bread, give room to feelings of affection, and he will
cordially invite his mother to share his frugal meal. But let the same
man, in the same environment, be haunted by the spectre of want and lack
of employment, and you will see the moral atmosphere in his family
changing as from day into night. There is no work, and the laborer comes
home without any wages. The wife, who does not know how to feed the
children, reproaches her husband with the suffering of his family.
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