What a difference a century makes.
Betty Smith's marvelous 1943 novel "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" opens in the early 1900s and details the struggles of an impoverished but determined New York family.
Destitute and frightened after the father's death, mother and children alike pitch in to make ends meet and to get the youngsters educated. And despite a level of want that the generally well-fed, air-conditioned, car-driving, cable television-equipped poor in modern America could scarcely imagine, the family survives and ultimately thrives.
One of the most remarkable facets of the book, given its themes of intense poverty, is the family's rejection of unearned assistance. Even when it comes to feeding her family, the mother cannot abide the thought of outside help.
"I don't want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back to get more charity food," she says. And it presumably would have been inconceivable to her that taxpayers had a legal obligation to furnish her with welfare benefits.
That gritty attitude wasn't just the stuff of novels. It was generally understood for much of this country's history that families had a duty to work and support themselves and that aid was reserved for those who genuinely could not help themselves. America owes much of its success as the greatest nation in history to that approach. Yet it is a view that is disappearing in rapid order today. There is an all-too-common eagerness to let somebody else pay for one's keep if the alternative is a regular work schedule that might cramp one's style.
Read more: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/jul/23/a-tree-withers-in-dc-chattanooga-free-press/?opinionfreepress
Betty Smith's marvelous 1943 novel "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" opens in the early 1900s and details the struggles of an impoverished but determined New York family.
Destitute and frightened after the father's death, mother and children alike pitch in to make ends meet and to get the youngsters educated. And despite a level of want that the generally well-fed, air-conditioned, car-driving, cable television-equipped poor in modern America could scarcely imagine, the family survives and ultimately thrives.
One of the most remarkable facets of the book, given its themes of intense poverty, is the family's rejection of unearned assistance. Even when it comes to feeding her family, the mother cannot abide the thought of outside help.
"I don't want to live to get charity food to give me enough strength to go back to get more charity food," she says. And it presumably would have been inconceivable to her that taxpayers had a legal obligation to furnish her with welfare benefits.
That gritty attitude wasn't just the stuff of novels. It was generally understood for much of this country's history that families had a duty to work and support themselves and that aid was reserved for those who genuinely could not help themselves. America owes much of its success as the greatest nation in history to that approach. Yet it is a view that is disappearing in rapid order today. There is an all-too-common eagerness to let somebody else pay for one's keep if the alternative is a regular work schedule that might cramp one's style.
Read more: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2012/jul/23/a-tree-withers-in-dc-chattanooga-free-press/?opinionfreepress
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