塞缪尔·斯迈尔斯：节俭·摘录 116

The intense selfishness, thriftlessness, and folly of these highly paid operatives, is scarcely credible. Exceptions are frequently taken to calling the working classes "the lower orders;" but "the lower orders" they always will be, so long as they indicate such sensual indulgence and improvidence. In cases such as these, improvidence is not only a great sin, and a feeder of sin, but it is a great _cruelty_. In the case of the father of a family, who has been instrumental in bringing a number of helpless beings into the world, it is heartless and selfish in the highest degree to spend money on personal indulgences such as drink, which do the parent no good, and the mother and the children, through the hereditary bad example, an irreparable amount of mischief. The father takes sick, is thrown out of work, and his children are at once deprived of the means of subsistence. The reckless parent has not even taken the precaution to enter a Provident or a Benefit Society; and while he is sick, his wife and children are suffering the pangs of hunger. Or, he dies; and the poor creatures are thrown upon the charity of strangers, or on the miserable pittance wrung from the poor-rates.

出处： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14418
定位：Excerpt 116 · 核对日期：2026-10-19 · 核验：短摘录

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