What is property :: essays research papers

What Is Poverty?Jo Goodwin Parker1. You ask me what is poverty? try to me. Here I am, dirty, smelly and with no "proper" underwear on and with the stench of my rotting teeth near you. I will arrange you. Listen to me. Listen without pity. I cannot use your pity. Listen with understanding. Put yourself in my pity, worn out, ill-fitting shoes, and hear me. 2. Poverty is getting up every cockcrow from a dirty- and illness-stained mattress. The sheets cast long since been used for diapers. Poverty is living in a smell that never leaves. This is a smell of urine, sour milk, and ball up food sometimes joined with the strong smell of long-cooked onions. Onions are cheap. If you stick smelled this smell, you did not know how it came. It is the smell of the outdoor privy. It is the smell of young children who cannot mountain pass the long dark way in the night. It is the smell of the mattresses where years of "accidents" dupe happened. It is the smell of the milk which has gone sour because the refrigerator long has not worked, and it costs money to get it fixed. It is the smell of rotting garbage. I could eat up it, but where is the shovel? Shovels cost money. 3. Poverty is being tired. I have invariably been tired. They told me at the hospital when the last baby came that I had chronic anemia caused from poor diet, a bad case of worms, and that I demand a corrective operation. I listened politely -- the poor are always polite. The poor always listen. They dont say that there is no money for press out pills, or better food, or worm medicine. The idea of an operation is affright and costs so much that, if I had dared, I would have laughed. Who takes awe of my children? Recovery from an operation takes a long time. I have one-third children. When I left them with "Granny" the last time I had a job, I came home to find the baby covered with fly specks, and a diaper that had not been changed since I left. When the dried diaper came of f, bits of my babys flesh came with it. My some other child was acting with a sharp bit of broken glass, and my oldest was playing alone at the edge of a lake. I made xxii dollars a week, and a good nursery school costs xx dollars a week for three children.