Those who can save without encroaching on the prime necessaries of life ought to save; but there are still many who cannot save, and these are they whom the problem of poverty especially concerns.

The saying of Aristotle, that "it is needful first to have a maintenance, and then to practise virtue," does not indeed imply that we _ought_ to postpone practising the moral virtues until we have secured ourselves against want, but rather means that before we can live well we _must_ first be able to live at all.
Precisely the same is true of the "inefficiency" of the poor.

Nothing is more common than to hear men and women, often incapable themselves of earning by work the money which they spend, assigning as the root of poverty the inefficiency of the poor.

It is quite true that the "poor" consist for the most part of inefficient workers.

It would be strange if it were not so.