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The fact that sickness, unemployment, and moral defect tend to recur in a definite order and proportion is more clearly shown in Table VII., in which 31,637 cases are arranged and averaged in the same way as in Table VI. and compared with Professor Warner's averages from 7225 cases of the same class.

We notice first that all causes definitely reflecting the character of the individual vary only between 23.3 and 25.1. The most important of these, drink, averages 14.6, going as low as 7.2 in Baltimore and as high as 21.7 in Boston. Nearly, but not quite so important, is shiftlessness and inefficiency; it ranges between the relatively narrow limits of 6.1 and 9.5. The lack of normal support has, too, a tolerably constant influence of 6.3 to 8.3.

The causes grouped under the heading "matters of employment" account for a third of the destitution dealt with by American societies. The percentage for Boston is lowest and for New York highest, but the results for New York show the effect of the five years, 1893-1898, following the panic, which are only partially covered by the figures for Boston and Baltimore.

Under incapacity, insanity and physical defect exert a minor but quite constant influence. The small though constant percentage attributable to old age is probably due to the fact that these societies are for the most part dealing with people who are still struggling against pauperism, or are at any rate still mixed with the ordinary population of the cities where they live.

So far as Table VI. and Table VII. show, the most constant causes of poverty, everywhere, at all times, and according to all investigators, are sickness and unemployment. The percentage of sickness falls to 17.6 in New York and reaches 26.0 in Boston -- the average is 22. This is one of the most significant results from these tables. It was not anticipated by the author when the collection of the statistics began; but it has been confirmed and reconfirmed, not only by Professor Lindsay's later table, but in so many other ways, that the conclusion seems inevitable that the figures must approximately set forth the facts. Personal acquaintance with the destitute classes has deepened the conviction that most of the causes of poverty result from or result in weakened physical and mental constitution, often merging into actual disease.

TABLE VII. -- Causes of Poverty: Charity Organization Society Records.

(40) Taken from Table VIII., Warner's "American Charities," 1st ed.

TABLE VIII.
13,252 Dependent Children in German Cities.
(Bohmert, pp. 115-116 and 127-128.)

Nearly all of the causes named might furthermore be grouped under the general heading "incapacity." Those indicating misconduct can be so classed if we are willing to include under the term infirmities of character as well as of body. The causes which indicate lack of normal support may also be said to show that the dependents are personally incapable of self-support, and that, through fault or misfortune on the part of their natural guardians, they have been left to themselves. The close relation between defects of character and the failure of support is illustrated by Bohmert's analysis of the causes of dependence in children.

The four causes grouped as "matters of employment" in Table VII. would seem at first to be of a different nature, and to indicate that capable persons may suffer from enforced idleness to the extent of becoming paupers. There are, of course, such instances; but those who have undertaken the work of finding employment for the unemployed, and who are intimately acquainted with the people about whom information is given in these tables, know that most of those out of employment are not capable in any complete sense of the term. They may be able-bodied, but they are not able-minded. They may lack one thing or another, but they almost always lack something; it may be skill, or strength, or judgment, or reliability, or even-temper. Often the incapacity seems to consist in nothing more than a lack of ingenuity, which prevents the person from fitting himself into the industries of the time. Give him a set task requiring little skill, and he will do it gladly. But such set tasks are very few in modern industry, and the result is that the individual is unemployed. If one wanted thoroughly efficient help, male or female, he would hardly expect to find it among the "out-of-works" with whom the charitable societies deal. Back of the cause "lack of work," ordinarily and in ordinary times, will be found some perversion of character, or some limitation of capacity.