"In the 1950s this America worried about itself, yet even its anxieties were products of abundance.... [T]he nation's problems were no longer a matter of basic human needs, of food, shelter, and clothing. Now they were seen as qualitative, a question of learning to live decently amid luxury.

While this discussion was carried on, there existed another America. In it dwelt somewhere between 40,000,000 and 50,000,000 citizens of this land. They were poor. They still are.

To be sure, the other America is not impoverished in the same sense as those poor nations where millions cling to hunger as a defense against starvation.This country has escaped such extremes.That does not change the fact that tens of millions of Americans are, at this very moment, maimed in body and spirit, existing at levels beneath those necessary for human decency.If these people are not starving, they are hungry, and sometimes fat with hunger, for that is what cheap foods do.They are without adequate housing and education and medical care.

The Government has documented what this means to the bodies of the poor . . . .But even more basic, this poverty twists and deforms the spirit.The American poor are pessimistic and defeated, and they are victimized by mental suffering to a degree unknown in Suburbia."

Michael Harrington, fromThe Other America, 1962

1. Briefly describe the point of view about poverty in America expressed by the text excerpt.
2. Briefly explain the relationship between the chart data and the War on Poverty.
3. Briefly compare the War on Poverty of the 1960s to the New Deal of the 1930s.