The tale is a familiar one. It’s about three “spirits” who visit a businessman on three successive December nights in London and, in the course of those visits the gentleman re-considers his views on Christmas, on the poor, and on the manner in which he has lived his life.

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843, with that businessman being Ebenezer Scrooge. One later writer called the novel “the second greatest story ever told”, the first being of course the chronicle Jesus, his birth in Bethlehem, his ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection. Dickens was credited with helping to re-institute many of the secular trappings of the holiday celebration… “Making merry”. Those trappings, popularized in Great Britain, soon found their way to America.

Dickens said that he had initially planned to write a pamphlet critical of “the British government changes to the welfare system known as the ‘Poor Laws’.” A destitute applicant, as a last resort could go to a Poor House where he was required to work on a treadmill. That contraption was not an exercise device, although the user burned plenty of calories. The treadmills, going in continuous circles, ground grain or pumped up water.

Saying that the worker “burned calories”, however, would be misleading since not a lot of food was provided to create them. The government, evoking that convenient human logic called ‘rationalization’, did not wish for the Poor House to be more attractive then other alternatives and so the amount of food and other necessities was deliberately limited. Nor could the resident accept outside aid. Throw in a little graft and greed on the part of the administrators of these institutions and the living and working conditions were harsh. According to historical reports, many people, despite being poor, did not resort to this alternative, not that this meant the situation was necessarily any better for them elsewhere. Private and religious charities along with trade unions, then as now, attempted to help.

A Christmas Carol, it’s also been stated, “was an indictment of 19^th Century capitalism.” Prior to the crafting of the book, the Luddite Movement had come and gone. This was an effort by many English workers, mainly tradesmen in the wool and textile industries, to stop the development of industrialization in the early 1800s. They did so by destroying or sabotaging the machines. The reaction by these workers was fueled in part by the loss of their trades, the deteriorating working conditions in the factories, low wages, and the unwillingness of the government to help them. British justice was swift and merciless. Several were hung while others were deported to the penal colonies.

The 1840s was also the tail end of the ‘Parliamentary Enclosure of the English Commons’. While this process of creating private ownership of land from areas that had previously been shared by everyone in the rural villages had been occurring in spurts since the 1500s, it accelerated after the mid-1700s. It was a shift from communal to individual agriculture (those individuals being mainly already well-off landowners who, in turn, utilized tenant help) and, with this privatization,  the abolition of grazing and planting rights to common lands. Motivating this trend were advances in labor-saving farming equipment and the introduction of crop rotation and other science-based applications that improved yields.

The end result was that subsistence farming gave way to a more efficient, profitable process that created surplus commodities yet needed fewer workers. But, at the same time, many well-connected landowners, including the aristocracy and gentry became even richer, while many ordinary folk, having had this right to the commons taken away and no longer needed as agricultural workers, “left the rural areas to move into the cities where they became laborers in the Industrial Revolution.”

In addition, aiding and abetting these social changes was the growth of the British Empire where Great Britain imported raw materials from its colonies or zones of influence, created manufactured goods, and shipped them back to those colonies and elsewhere in the world. The British army maintained order in those far flung locales while the British Navy protected the sea lanes from other nations and pirates. As noted, some of the displaced population ended up in these colonies, the younger men were conscripted into or joined the military, and others manned the growing industrial complex. The surplus in food maintained the population level, at first, and later sustained a steady growth in the British population. A concern of some British intellectuals, most notably Thomas Malthus, was that there were not enough resources, particularity land and food, to maintain “a surplus population.”

The economy, then as now, operated in cycles of boom and bust. That was even more noticeable with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Back in the early 1800s when the factories shut down or laid off workers, without much of a safety net in place, the workers had to fend for themselves. Throw in the facts that vagrancy (the lack of a home) was a crime and the inability to pay your debts could land you in debtor’s prison (which had happened to Dickens’ father) along with the situation of many people no longer able to produce their own food, and ‘Merry Old England’ during that time period was not a pleasant place to reside without work or some other means of support. The British government’s remedy, as noted, was the Poor House where the meals were meager and the day spent working on the treadmill.

Dickens wanted his readers “to recognize the plight of those whom the Industrial Revolution (backed by wealthy capitalists and the power of government enforcement) had displaced and driven into poverty and (he felt) the obligation of society to provide for them humanely.”

“Failure to do so,” Dickens implies through the personification of Ignorance and Want as ghastly children, will result in an unnamed ‘Doom’ for those who believe their wealth and status qualify them to sit in judgment of the poor rather than to assist them.”

Great Britain did not suffer ‘Doom’, in part because the wealthy are resourceful at protecting themselves, but more so because the treatment of the poor became (as Dickens hoped) more just and because the workers were able to share some of the wealth created by the growth of a manufacturing economy. In Great Britain this segment of the population is called the working class, while in this country we prefer the term ‘middle class’.

THE CURRENT SITUATION IN MICHIGAN for those who are out-of-work and find themselves slipping into poverty and for those who have always struggled for various reasons to scrounge up enough money to feed and shelter themselves and provide other living expenses is not one as dire and desperate as what Dickens depicted in his famous story. But the attitude about money and the antipathy towards the poor and the displaced have familiar echoes.

In place of the Industrial Revolution, we have Globalization. While there are benefits to this emerging world economy and free flow of trade, a definite ill effect for our state has been the loss of tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs. This loss has taken place due to companies deciding it was more efficient and profitable to relocate their operations in other counties where labor is much cheaper, union protection of workers is non existent, environmental concerns are ignored, and taxes that help provide social amenities and protections for the citizenry are lower.

The loss of jobs has also been due to the steady use of automation with highly-technical machines replacing manual labor and, of course, the ‘bust’ cycle (economic recession) that took place for much of the past decade and had a crippling effect on Michigan. It could be argued, borrowing that line from Dickens, that the state has “a surplus population” given this situation of currently having many more would-be workers than existing jobs and jobs with skill requirements that these workers do not yet possess.

What has been occurring in Lansing during the past few months, since the arrival of a new legislative majority after the last general election has been a shrinking and altering of the social service programs that were designed to help and assist those who find themselves in dire circumstances. The cuts and curtailments are not necessarily major, unless you are the person or family being cut and curtailed. Some of the changes, in fairness, are prudent. Some of them will not occur in the immediate future. Still, the overall trend is to push people out of these protective programs and to withdraw such help from future would-be recipients or severely limit their eligibility. The restrictions, either already approved or proposed, include food stamps, financial assistance, unemployment benefits, and worker’s compensation.

What can also occur is the slow dulling of the sensibilities about the plight of the poor or disadvantaged, a coarsening of compassion, and a loss of empathy. The realization that “there but for the grace of God go I” gives way to the Social Darwinism of “survival of the fittest” in the competition for available resources. The inclination becomes that of blaming people for their dire situation rather than to take into account possible circumstances that caused it. This can be seen in the comments of legislators who defend the changes with comments that “We don’t want welfare to be a lifestyle”, implying that the poor enjoy being poor, and “Extensions of unemployment benefits encourages people not to seek a job”, insinuating that many laid-off workers prefer life without a job.

It’s an attitude akin to that shown by Scrooge when he was asked by the two gentlemen, early in the story, to donate to charity.  Scrooge asked, “Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses? Are they still in operation” The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigor then?”

The gentlemen answered, “Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”

To which Scrooge retorted, “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

From Dickens’ point-of-view, government policy, in league with great wealth, was both ignoring and victimizing those less fortunate. Money and its accumulation, for Scrooge and his real-life 19^th century counterparts, was more important then the well being of their fellow men and women.

Certainly there are deadbeats who would rather be on the public dole than work. Certainly there are loopholes in Michigan’s system that allow or have allowed some people to take advantage and obtain money and help that they are not qualified to get nor should be getting. Certainly the goal is to help get individuals and families off of this assistance and to become more self-sufficient and not make it “a way of life”. But this is only one side of the coin and the examples of abuse and misuse are more anecdotal then symptoms of a widespread and systematic problem.

Making “ends meet” in our modern American society is not a cheap or easy proposition. Food, housing, transportation, gas, insurance, clothing, medical care, and all of the odds and ends of day-to-day living add up. Couple that difficulty facing many families with an official unemployment rate that is over 10 percent and an actual one that, experts tell us, is substantially higher, plus numerous instances where a lot of the unemployed and under-employed are a single mothers with young children and it’s hard in my mind to support a policy that takes away or shrinks protection and assistance rather than buttresses this public help.

We hear the constant trumpet call of lower taxes and cutting government spending and the need to make Michigan more “business friendly.” That’s all well and good. Encouraging business and private enterprise is indeed important to our economic well-being. Over burdensome government, multi-layered government, bloated government… whatever you wish to call it, does exist to some extent.  It seems to be human nature, in its civilized form, to create institutions along with rules and regulations that are overly complex. Yet government, as we’ve established it in this nation and in this state, is as Lincoln reminded us, “Of the people, By the people, and For the people.” It is “us”, not an enemy, not a parasite, and not simply ‘the problem’.

Over the long decades government has been found as the best means to educate the young, build roads and necessary public infrastructure, protect us from criminals and malcontents, defend us from foreign enemies, regulate the rules of trade, aid and abet economic development, help us survive and recover from natural disasters, and assist the widow and orphan as well as the elderly, the physically and mentally handicapped, the sick and infirm, and “yes” even the poor and temporarily displaced. There are different terms to describe these various roles, including safety net, social welfare, and public works but perhaps the most appropriate is the Constitutional language of “providing the common defense and promoting the common good.”

The ‘Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future’ were not the only visitors Scrooge had on that long ago Christmas season. His old partner Marley, dragging a length of chain, was the first one to appear. He came to warn Scrooge that their obsession with money was a mistaken priority. Marley spoke of “life’s opportunity missed” and “regret” and said, “My spirit never walked beyond our counting house—mark me—in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole.”

When Ebenezer observed with a bit of affection, “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” the ghost cried out in his now well-known reply,

“Business. Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

A Christmas Carol is a story of redemption and re-direction and a reminder of what truly is the important business of life and living. And while the plot may be set in a now long-ago time and place, its message is as important and compelling and fresh as today’s headlines. People, those around us, are not the means to an end; that end being the making of money, the accumulation of wealth, and a dog-eat-dog struggle to remain on top of the economic heap. People should not be viewed or treated as cogs in the machinery, some beast of burden used to turn the treadmill. Mankind is our business… the common welfare of not just you or me and not just for those who are well off and more fortunate, but of all.

“God bless us,’ Dickens wrote in the book’s final line, “Every One!”