Chapter Three:
Four More Reasons to Establish Economic Security


A. Improve Working Conditions and Stimulate the Economy

Enacting economic security as the law of the land will also lead to improvements in working conditions for workers. Perhaps most importantly, workers will no longer be compelled to accept employment at dangerous worksites to avoid poverty, for they will always be able to find a living-wage job elsewhere.

The twenty-five workers in Hamlet, North Carolina who died in a chicken-factory fire in 1991 because they were reluctant to complain about the exits being locked (to reduce employee theft) would probably still be alive. So would many of the some 300 people who die every day due to workplace injuries or diseases caused by their working conditions. As former The New York Times labor correspondent William Serrin reported:

Yet not only do workers continue to die in staggering numbers but they often perish in the most wretched ways: asphyxiated in silos and trench cave-ins, electrocuted installing or repairing lines or equipment, blown up in refineries or mine explosions, chopped up in grinding and cutting machines, scalded and burned to death in iron and steel explosions. Others die after being sick for years with black lung, brown lung, cancer or chemical or radiation poisoning. Still others are disfigured or disabled by the loss of a finger, an arm, a leg, their sight, or through paralysis, their mobility.
Serrin concluded, "For many today, job safety is far less important than simply having work - any work."

According to a study by the Government Accounting Office, "Every year an estimated 1.7 million workers suffer disabling on-the-job injuries (and) 390,000 cases of occupational illnesses are diagnosed." No doubt, under any conditions, some employers will always pay enough to attract employees to work in dangerous conditions. But guaranteeing living-wage employment will greatly reduce deaths due to high-risk working conditions, for all workers will have other options and will be confident that they will have options in the future as well. Consequently, many employers will choose to make working conditions less threatening to the health and safety of their employees.

Employers will have to treat their employees with greater respect to attract and keep them, for workers will be able to easily find work elsewhere. Workers will no longer be forced to accept oppressive management to avoid poverty. More meaningful jobs with a greater voice in the workplace will result.

The widespread practice of illegally paying workers as independent contractors and denying them unemployment, disability and Social Security benefits will diminish. In 1987, the Internal Revenue Service estimated that 3.7 million employees were being treated as independent contractors in violation of the law. According to The New York Times, the I.R.S. now says that "the number has ballooned since then following large layoffs by corporations and Government agencies."

Wages in general, especially those at the lower end of the wage scale, will increase, for many employers will be forced to boost their wages to keep current employees or attract new workers with similar skills. Decent benefits, including substantial paid vacations, will become more common. Taking leave from work or even quitting a job to deal with unexpected problems at home will be done more easily.

A survey of employees commissioned by private companies found that about 40 percent of workers often or very often feel "used up at the end of the workday (and) tired when (they) get up in the morning and have to face another day on the job." A 1992 report found that the average employee strongly desires more free time. In 1997, Barry Bluestone and Steven Rose reported that on average each year workers between the ages of 25 and 54 worked 140 hours more in 1995 than they did in 1982. The proportion of the workforce holding down two jobs increased from 5.2 percent in 1970 to 6.3 percent (or eight million workers) in 1997. Of those, only 16 percent said they did so because they enjoyed the second job. Compared to an average of eight to nine-and-a-half hours of sleep in the 1800s, people today average only six to eight hours, resulting in significant sleep deprivation for 30 to 50 percent of the population, according to sleep specialist James Walsh .

Enacting economic security will enable many of these ordinary workers to enrich their lives. Going to night school or engaging in self-study to improve one's life will be more available to people who currently must work two jobs to survive. More people will be better able to engage in creative activities, spiritual development, and social involvement of all sorts.

Economic growth will be stimulated because those who are now poor will have money to buy goods and services and the sellers of those goods and services in turn will have more income with which to buy other goods and services, producing what economists call a "multiplier effect" as new money circulates throughout the economy and passes from one set of hands to another. Henry Ford is renowned for having pointed out the obvious: there's no point to making automobiles if auto workers can't buy them. Wall Street financier Felix Rohatyn only slightly over-stated the case himself: "A democracy cannot flourish half rich and half poor, any more than it can flourish half free and half slave." Recent studies by economists have found that extreme income inequality suppresses economic growth. But even before the computerization of what is now a global economy, Bertrand Russell pointed out: "Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else."

With guaranteed economic security, the economy will no longer suffer from lowered productivity caused by poverty-induced personal problems among the workforce. With better schools, health care, child care, housing, and community centers, workers will be better educated, healthier, and less stressed-out and therefore more productive. Productivity will also be enhanced by the fact that employers will be forced to rely less on intimidation which breeds resentment, and more on positive incentives that nurture loyalty and extra effort - such as workplace democracy and profit-sharing. Many workers will also be encouraged to start worker-owned cooperatives and to buy out their employers with employee-ownership plans.

The general boost in personal incomes will enable many families that are stretched financially to avoid having to dig deep to help relatives and friends in dire need. In 1988, eight million adults, about five percent of the total, gave $24 billion to twelve million persons living in other households, about half of whom were parents or adult children. Although the income levels of the providers of support is not known precisely, it can be safely assumed that many were forced to sacrifice to provide financial assistance. Assuring every household the means to self-sufficiency will minimize the need for such sacrifice.

B. Eliminate the Hardships of Poverty

Establishing economic security will also, of course, directly benefit the poor. The National Opinion Research Center provides statistical evi-dence in support of the conviction that "poverty demoralizes," as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it so succinctly. In one recent survey, the center found that only 21 percent of respondents with incomes below $15,000 considered themselves "very happy," compared to 45 percent of those with incomes above $75,000 who described themselves in those terms. In addition, 21 percent of the low-income people said they were "not too happy," compared to only 6 percent of the wealthy. Improved personal finances among those who currently struggle to cope will surely lead to improved personal attitudes about life in general.

Guaranteeing everyone a living-wage job opportunity will enable most of the poor to provide for themselves and their families, thereby avoiding the humiliation and self-hatred associated with welfare and charity. Homeless people will move off the street, away from the trauma and debilitation caused by not having adequate food and safe shelter. And the number of people forced to search through garbage for food or to sleep in doorways exposed to attack will be greatly reduced.

The nation's children, many of whom are subjected to severely damaging conditions due to poverty, will be nurtured with greater care. Currently, more than one of every five children live in what is officially defined as poverty. About one-half live in impoverished households with incomes near the official poverty line.

In 1994, a blue-ribbon panel of thirty experts funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York issued a far-reaching report based on a three-year study. This report concluded that poverty is a principal reason "millions of infants and toddlers are so deprived of medical care, loving supervision and intellectual stimulation that their growth into healthy and responsible adults is threatened" - in part because stress activates chemicals in the brain that interfere with memory and learning. The lack of stimulation in the environments of neglected children may even irreversibly stunt the growth of the brain by the age of three. This study led ABC News to report that for many children, "Head Start may be too late," referring to a popular preschool program for disadvantaged children. In early 1995, two federally funded studies reported finding higher than average rates of mild mental retardation among the poor and concluded that most, if not all, of this retardation is preventable.

Establishing economic security will greatly alleviate these problems. Millions of children will no longer be forced to go hungry because their parents are unable to put food on the table. According to the Food Research and Action Center, one of every twelve American children suffers from hunger. Improved nutrition will prevent many personal and social problems that currently plague poor children.

Low-income students will no longer go to school profoundly demoralized because they know that the odds are stacked against them - that they too, like their parents and grandparents before them, will probably end up poor. All children will know that, as adults, at the least, they will be able to live with a minimum of decency, so long as they are willing to work. These improved expectations will help liberate the natural desire to learn, enhanced by parents better able to devote more time to helping their children with learning. Holding down two jobs or otherwise struggling to survive will less frequently interfere with parents providing the care they want for their children.

Ending poverty will thus help overcome the fact that, largely because of poverty, poor children at age five score lower on IQ tests than do non-poor children. This deficit appears to be due to poverty, not other factors such as family structure or the mother's education level. "Family income is a far more powerful correlate of a child's IQ at age five than maternal education, ethnicity and growing up in a single-parent family," reported Greg J. Duncan to the Society for Research in Child Development .

Guaranteeing adequate employment for adults will also lessen pressures to force children under eighteen to work. Child labor, after almost disappearing in this country, has been increasing since 1982. Some six million children are now employed. About one-third of these are employed illegally, often in dangerous jobs. One study in Massachusetts found that injury rates for child workers is more than three times that of adult workers.

Alienation and isolation, a problem throughout society, is even more severe among the poor. Michael Dawson and Cathy Cohen, in a study of African Americans in Detroit, found that where more than thirty-one percent of the residents of a particular neighborhood were below the official poverty line, political attitudes were markedly different from those of more affluent African Americans. In addition to expressing more support for black nationalism, the residents of these particularly poor neighborhoods were 17 percent less likely to discuss politics with their families and 12 percent less likely to attend a meeting dealing with political issues. They also found that many signs of social isolation, including lower participation in churches. "Families in such neighborhoods may have what they perceive to be more immediate and important issues" to deal with, Dawson concluded.

Ending poverty will diminish these and related problems among the poor, including substance abuse, domestic violence, child abuse, and other forms of violence which tend to be more extreme in poor communities. A 1995 Gallup Poll found that sexual abuse of children in families earning less than $20,000 a year was seven times more frequent than in families earning at least $50,000. Physical abuse, defined as "punching, kicking or throwing the child down, or hitting the child with a hard object on some part of the body other than the bottom," was three times as common.

Two-parent families will be less likely to break up if both parents are able to provide significant financial support to the family. A recent Census Bureau study found that poor two-parent families were about twice as likely to dissolve as were two-parent families not in poverty. Separation rates were particularly high in families with both parents unemployed. A study released in 1995 by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that from 1969 to 1993, the percentage of men twenty-five to thirty-four years old earning less than what was needed for a four-person family to avoid (officially defined) poverty doubled, and so did the number of single-mother households. The increase in single-parent households is a complex phenomenon and cannot be explained by any one factor. But surely the increase in unemployment and the decline in average wages among males is one major reason for this trend. "Men with low incomes are much less likely to become married and, if they are in a married couple," foundation staff William O'Hare reported, "they are much more likely to be divorced."

It is important to avoid stigmatizing single-parent families, who can raise children properly with adequate support. Nevertheless, most parents prefer living with at least one other adult to help with the care of children. Individuals who earn a living wage are better able to share child-rearing responsibilities than are those who are unable to make ends meet. Ending poverty will liberate more parents to form the kind of household they prefer, including shared housing with several adults and same-sex marriages.

About nine of every 1,000 infants die in their first year of life in this country, which in 1989 ranked 24th in the world in its infant-mortality rate. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attributes this statistic largely to poverty, including limited access to health care. Commenting upon this study, Dr. Vincente Navarro pointed out that:

the diets of poor people often are inadequate due to financial pressures;

many live in overcrowded conditions that enable disease to spread more easily;

poverty-related stress can lead directly to a variety of health problems.

In another study, the same center found that African Americans are about twice as likely as whites to die in the prime of life and estimated that about one-third of these premature deaths were due to "lack of money for basic medical care." Using standard statistical methods to calculate the effect of various factors, National Cancer Institute researchers found that poverty in combination with its negative effects on education and lifestyle is the principal reason why African Americans are almost 10 percent more likely to get cancer than are whites. The abolition of poverty will greatly reduce the number of these premature deaths.

About one of every six children under six-years-old - three to four million in total - suffer from lead poisoning, which is most common among low-income families who live in old, run-down housing with peel-ing lead-based paint. Federal officials have recently concluded that even small amounts of lead "once thought to be safe can cause mental retardation, learning disabilities, stunted growth, hearing loss and behavior problems in children." Expanded affordable housing, increased personal incomes, and guaranteed access to health care, as called for by any viable economic-security program, will result in significantly reduced exposure to lead among the nation's children.

Simply guaranteeing everyone access to health care will not eliminate the differences in illness and death rates between the rich and poor, which widened considerably from 1960 to 1986. Even in countries with universal health care, growing poverty is causing the poor to die at an earlier age. Dr. Gregory Pappas at the National Center for Health Statistics attributes this trend to "increasing inequalities in income, education and housing and a falling standard of living for a large segment of the ... population." By 1986, Americans with annual family incomes below $9,000 had a death rate more than three times greater than those with annual family incomes of $25,000 or more.

Deaths caused by stressful living conditions will be greatly reduced when poverty is eliminated. Knowing that they can always find a living-wage job and be assured a non-poverty retirement income, lower-income people will be more secure and not so deeply torn by anxieties that undermine physical health and often lead to death.

Eight of the ten states with residents who report being in the worst health rank among the bottom fifteen in per capita income, whereas six of the ten states with residents in the best health are among the top fifteen in per capita income. Among Medicare recipients, 39 percent of those with incomes below $10,000 report "fair/poor" health, whereas only 8 percent of those above $50,000 do so. These correlations correspond with common sense: it's bad for your health to be poor.

Moreover, with a viable economic-security program in place, parents who want to care for their infants and toddlers at home will not be stigmatized and humiliated by an oppressive welfare system. Instead, they will qualify for in-home caregivers' grants and other support as needed to raise their very young children at home. Single mothers with low incomes, who are now much more likely to experience deep, prolonged sadness, or "depression," will be less prone to suffer in this manner under these conditions.

Poor senior citizens will not be imprisoned in tiny hotel rooms in high-crime neighborhoods, afraid to leave the building, as they are now, for their social-security payments will enable them to obtain decent housing. And minimal non-poverty incomes will enable disabled persons to obtain the basic necessities to which all citizens are entitled. People who have been deeply discouraged by the historic lack of employment opportunities, severely shaken by the trauma of being homeless, or struggling to overcome a substance abuse problem will more easily participate in support services to help them to get their lives together, for the expansion of public-service employment will include increased funding for peer-counseling programs and other relevant services. The new, genuine economic opportunities afforded by the abolition of poverty will give participants in such programs added incentives to participate fully. In addition, a federal economic-security program will increase funding for peer counselors to provide support and on-the-job training for people entering or re-entering the job market in need of such assistance.

In all of these ways, those who are now poor will directly and immediately benefit from implementing economic security for all. Many of these benefits will reduce pressure on unnecessary public expenditures. As reported in Dollars & Sense:

According to estimates by Dr. Harvey Brenner of Johns Hopkins University, each additional percent of unemployment translates into an additional 3,300 commitments to state prisons, 4,000 commitments to state mental hospitals, 920 suicides, and 37,000 deaths (20,000 of those from heart attacks).
The entire society pays the price for these "side-effects," not just the poor.

C. Facilitate Positive Cultural and Political Change

Ending poverty will also cultivate positive cultural change. Greed, ruthless competition and relations based on domination, all of which are fueled by economic insecurity, will diminish. A foundation of economic security will encourage a culture rooted in cooperation, mutual respect, and the natural tendency toward sympathy with others.

In 1883, Henry George wrote, "...the fear of want stimulates the lust for wealth, and the rich thief is honored while honest poverty is despised." The situation today is much the same, as a deep-rooted selfishness permeates our country. Children learn that their "success" is dependent on the "failure" of others, only a few will "make it," and everyone else will "lose." Our schools still distribute grades according to the infamous "bell curve," which is based on an assumption that some natural law determines the distribution of quality throughout the universe, even though test questions are routinely changed to manufacture the predetermined "natural" distribution.

Authority figures, including a current rash of pop-psychology gurus, psychiatrists, psychologists, and all sorts of New Age Teachers who preach one form of self-development or another, legitimize this self-centeredness. Their strategies generally reduce love to "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours," or "when you learn to love yourself, then you can love others." These formulas ignore the profound gratification associated with serving others unconditionally while at the same time taking care of oneself.

Self-absorption and ruthless competition promote severe anxiety and a widespread lack of self-confidence, for under this scheme everyone is always inferior to someone. This competitiveness feeds a downward spiral of increasing self-centeredness throughout society. Many Americans seem stuck in a brittle defensiveness trying to protect themselves from facing their own weakness. A preoccupation with appearances, being accepted by others, making lots of money, shopping, and "having fun" has become the focus of life.

The existence of poverty, unemployment, and homelessness contribute greatly to the underlying insecurity that fosters this self-absorption. Economic insecurity brings out the worst in people. Ending poverty will make it easier to bring out the best in people and make possible the transformation of American society. A foundation of economic security will encourage cooperation, compassion, community, and natural human support. The dignity of all beings will be affirmed throughout society, as people learn to treat one another with greater respect. Guaranteeing basic economic security will facilitate a stronger appreciation for diversity and an increased understanding of our interdependence with one another and the environment. By securing universal access to basic material necessities, abolishing poverty will liberate society to pay closer attention to non-material concerns such as the quality of life, personal and spiritual development, and human service. We can then more easily dedicate our lives to "the pursuit of truth, beauty, and justice," as Emerson phrased it.

We must begin now to spread these alternative values. A substantial degree of personal and cultural transformation is a necessary prelude to political and economic transformation. But so long as poverty persists as a constant threat to personal security, this new culture will be suppressed.

Insuring economic security will also expedite positive change on a number of closely-related political issues. There will be less pressure to exploit the environment or to go to war "for the sake of jobs," for everyone will at least be able to avoid poverty. A diminished demand for jobs will also subdue the bidding war between local and state governments for new industries in order to create jobs. This "race to the bottom" has led to offering tax breaks to lure new businesses, thereby undercutting the ability to raise needed revenues for vital public services.

Both urban and rural environments will be cleaned up and improved by people who are now unemployed or underemployed. Tree planting, urban gardens, wetlands restoration, and family farming will be expanded. Small towns and rural economies will be strengthened and rendered more sustainable, which will enable many people to leave crowded cities to develop new, smaller-scale communities in rural areas.

Once economic security is established in this country, it will also be much easier to stop the exploitation of other countries and instead aid them to eliminate poverty in their own countries. Closing the gap between rich and poor nations will reduce the chance of war between nations, just as reducing inequality in our own country will reduce violent crime, riots, and other forms of domestic conflict. When others do the same in their own countries, we can abolish poverty world-wide and bring within reach the age-old dream of peace on earth.

D. Do the Right Thing

As considered above, there are many self-interested reasons for ending poverty, from the direct self-interest of the poor to the "enlightened self-interest" of the wealthy. As Seneca put it almost 2,000 years ago: "Our relations with one another are like a stone arch, which would collapse if the stones did not mutually support one another." Establishing economic security will benefit everyone.

But there is another reason to end poverty: it is the right thing to do. It is not enough to feel sympathy for the victims of poverty. One must act. In the words of William Wordsworth, "Worse than idle is compassion/ If it end in tears and sighs." If one sees a baby drowning in a river, one is compelled to try to save it. If one sees several babies floating downstream, one is compelled to go upstream to try to stop the monster who is throwing the babies into the river. As the Trappist monk Thomas Merton commented, when one encounters suffering, one is "summoned to self-judgment before the bar of conscience to see whether, in fact, some choice or some neglect ... has had a part in this suffering."

Helping individuals, one-by-one, to cope is noble, but insufficient. Doing all that one can to eliminate the cause of needless suffering is also necessary. "America loves a child in the spotlight of tragedy and pain," commented Burt Harvey, past president of the American Academy of Pediatricians. "But America doesn't really care for children as a whole." To truly care about economic insecurity involves wanting to change governmental policies that limit economic opportunity. "The paradigm example of moral behavior is behavior that prevents cruelty," Avishai Margalit has written in The Decent Society, in which he argues "a decent society in one that eradicates abuse." Surely depriving human beings of the means to live decently constitutes a form of cruelty that any decent society should aim to prevent.

Whenever action to change public policy is possible, concern for human suffering requires that we make the effort. "We are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act," wrote Martin Luther King. "One day the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life."

All of the world's religions affirm compassion and the sharing of material resources. A concern for one's neighbors is a natural part of being human. In the private sphere of one's home, the joy of giving is easy to see. The challenge is to extend that love to one's neighbors, indeed, to all life. Genuine love is all-inclusive and unconditional. It asks for nothing in return.

As reported in the Bible, the early Christians adopted the teachings of Jesus strictly: "No one said that any of his belongings was his own, but they all shared with one another everything they had." This precedent need not be followed literally to lead a moral life. But the example of Jesus and the early Christians stands as a standard calling the modern world to avoid an excessive concentration of wealth that imposes poverty upon large numbers of people.

After advocating "social action to restore violated rights to the oppressed, to create work for the workless, so that the hungry may eat and that everyone may have a chance to earn a decent wage," Merton wrote:

It has unfortunately been all too easy in the past for the man who is himself well fed to entertain the most laudable sentiments of love for his neighbor, while ignoring the fact that his brother is struggling to solve insoluble and tragic problems. Mere almsgiving is no longer adequate, especially if it is only a gesture which seems to dispense from all further and more efficacious social action.... The individual gesture, however commendable, will no longer suffice.
A life dedicated to serving all humanity can be more rewarding than merely serving oneself, one's family, or one's country. Universal love goes beyond these artificial, arbitrary boundaries. There is no self, family, or country apart from the web of life. It is not possible to truly love a part of life without loving all life. One either loves all life or one does not truly love; exclusive love is no love at all. All human beings are unified in that they all come from a common source. To help or harm another human being is to help or harm oneself.

Most people recognize these realities and share in common a sympathy for suffering wherever they see it. And they would like to support effective efforts to establish justice for all. Unfortunately, the prospects for positive action are usually so dim, discouragement often sets in. People resign themselves to only taking care of themselves, their family, and a small circle of friends. The challenge today is to allow inspiration to fill our spirits so that the goodness of humanity can be fulfilled. We cannot find hope though will power, but we can be open to it finding us. Nor can we know the results of our action. But we must do all that we can, one day at a time.

"There but for the grace of God go you or I" reflects a recognition that differences between the poor and the nonpoor are superficial compared to their common humanity. The tendency to be judgmental toward the poor and to blame them for their condition disappears when one acknowledges that one's good fortune is largely a matter of luck. The humble awareness that each person is no more than a leaf on a tree leads to a respect for others and compels us to support their right to basic necessities. The more people who are not poor let go of pride and arrogance and the mistaken belief that they deserve to be comfortable because they have earned their comfort, while the poor deserve to be poor because they are lazy and irresponsible - the more ordinary Americans overcome these deeply ingrained attitudes which are imbedded in people by the entire society, the more we will allow our hearts to guide us to do what is right: guarantee economic security.

Though we need to be willing to act without knowing the consequences, we still need to make our best effort to be successful. We must do our homework and carefully devise the best possible strategy to maximize our chances of success. Toward this end, we need to understand the nature of economic insecurity in the United States as fully as possible - the subject of the next chapter.



Sources for this chapter included the following, in order of appearance.
For more specific references, contact Wade Hudson at whudson@igc.org
.

Sharon Cohen, "Workplace Dangers," Associated Press, 6 September 1991, Compuserve on-line edition. - ->

William Serrin, "The Wages of Work," The Nation, 28 January 1991, 80-82.

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David Cay Johnston, "Workers Paid as Contractors: A Widespread Abuse Is Cited," The New York Times, 16 August 1995, A1.

Lisa Genasci, "Working Folks Say They're Burning Out," San Francisco Examiner, 3 September 1993, A1.

Witold Rybczynski, "Americans Aren't Lazy, They're Just Tired," Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 23 March 1992, 33.

Peter T. Kilborn, "Even in Good Times, It's Hard Times for Workers," The New York Times, 3 July 1995, A1.

Nanci Hellmich, "Wake-up Call for the Sleep Deprived," USA Today, 25 May 1995, D1/D2.

Felix Rohatyn, "Ethics in America's Money Culture," The New York Times, 3 June 1987, 17.

Bertrand Russell, "The Science to Save Us from Science," 1950.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, 1844.

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Richard Russo, "Feeding Body and Soul," The New York Times, 1 November 1995, A17.

Spencer Rich, "Poverty Alone Lowers IQ of Children, Study Says," San Francisco Chronicle, 27 March 1993, A8.

"Poverty Separates African Americans," Sun Reporter, 18 August 1993, 3.

Tamar Lewin, "Parents Find Child Abuse to Be More Common," The New York Times, 7 December 1995, A17.

US Bureau of the Census, "Census Bureau Census Bureau Report Suggests Link Between Economic Conditions and Family Break-up," press release, January 15, 1993; Mary Kane, "Divorce Rate Jumps When Jobs Disappear," San Francisco Examiner, 13 January 1993, A18.

Steven A. Holmes, "Low-Wage Fathers and the Welfare Debate," The New York Times, 25 April 1995, A7.

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Susan Okie, "Another Warning Sign of Cancer," Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 22-28 April 1991.

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William Wordsworth, "The Armenian Lady's Love," 1830, stanza 4.

Thomas Merton, Love and Living, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985, 152.

Burt Harvery, quoted by Dr. William A. Holmes in a sermon at Metropolitan Memorial Church, Washington DC, 14 May 1995.

From Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom, quoted on the cover of: Mohandas K. Gandhi, Nonviolent Resistance, Shocken Books, 1951.

Acts 4:32, New Testament.

Merton, Love and Living, 138-9.



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