[PapaBear3625]

Of course, in both cases the writers had the advantages of middle class habits, education, smarts, and personal skills. The absence of middle class thinking and virtues is a better explanation for persistent poverty than that somehow the poor are just unlucky people who have been overwhelmed by problems.

A hundred years ago, if you were poor you could become a live-in servant in the home of some upper-class family. Although a low-status position, it had several benefits: you were in the company of people with good values, you could see day by day how they lived and solved their problems, and you were isolated from other members of the underclass, who would not be reinforcing bad habits.

[Rockingham]

Faith was and is the usual motive and conduit for the transmission of good values. Take a look at "How Dagger John Saved New York’s Irish" about Archbishop John Hughes:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_2_a2.html

As the article mentions, the Irish in New York were not readily employable as domestics until they were trained and certified to be trustworthy and of good character. Hughes created the programs to do that, as well as the Catholic school system. In a generation, Hughes transformed New York's Irish.