Lawmakers need to concentrate on finding more jobs, not on making it more difficult for the unemployed.

The famed anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked what marked the first sign of civilization in a given culture. The questioner expected the answer to be some tool or craft or art form. But Dr. Mead’s answer surprised everyone.

“A healed femur,” the renowned anthropologist responded.

She explained that no healed bones were found where the law of the “survival of the fittest” reigns. Why?

A healed bone shows that someone had to do the injured person’s hunting and gathering until the injury could mend. Someone had to care enough to provide for the wounded and hurt so that the individual could heal.

Compassion, Dr. Mead said, is the first sign of civilization.

Where is the compassion in Augusta right now for unemployed workers? A bill before the Legislature, LD 1725, would make it more difficult for workers to collect unemployment insurance.

As too many Mainers know, when you are laid off, you wonder fearfully what comes next. You calculate how to cut back, how to stretch your savings into weeks and months, how to find a job that pays your bills. You try to figure out how your family will cope if you aren’t lucky enough to get back on your feet quickly. And you are thankful for the unemployment benefits that pay your rent, or your groceries, or your utility bill.

But that isn’t how Gov. Paul LePage sees the state’s economic crisis. To the governor, fixing the jobs crisis and putting Mainers back to work takes a back seat to squeezing pennies out of unemployed workers.

Now, he is pushing LD 1725, a bill that weakens laid-off workers’ access to the lifeline of unemployment benefits.

We believe that this is not only an economic injustice, it is a moral injustice.

We may not have as much control over the economy as we’d like, but we do have control over how we treat our neighbors who are the most down on their luck. One way is to build a system that supports those workers and helps them find their feet again through training and assistance.

The other way — the one proposed by LD 1725 — is to set up a harsh system that punishes people for things that are often not within their control.

When people are laid off, unemployment insurance is a godsend in helping them make ends meet. We have a hard time understanding why anyone would make it more difficult for people to get unemployment benefits in this economy.

Debra Kendall of Livermore knows better than anyone. She worked at the Otis Mill in Jay for 25 years until 2009 when she was laid off, along with more than 200 other workers. Workers who had spent years at Otis were laid off through no fault of their own, and many had earned vacation pay on the books.

Those workers were punished by having their unemployment delayed because they had unused vacation pay at the time of their layoff. Their unemployment was delayed week-for-week for every week of vacation pay they had on the books. They had earned that vacation pay just like any other wage, and it was completely unfair that their unemployment benefits were delayed.

Getting laid off in this economy is devastating. Two of the workers who were laid off from Otis in Jay put in applications to more than 100 places before they found work. There are others who are still trying to find jobs.

It adds insult to injury to think that elected officials would make it more difficult for people who have worked all their lives to access unemployment insurance when they finally need it.

We have a moral responsibility to our workers and our community. Instead of punishing people who are laid off through no fault of their own, we should focus on two things: creating jobs and reinvesting in our work force so that we have the right skills for today’s economy.

Gov. LePage is wrong to paint ordinary Mainers as thieves and criminals.

The bottom line is that people want to work, earn a fair family wage, and know that they’ll have something to fall back on when they get sick and when they retire.

Lawmakers need to concentrate on finding more jobs in this state, instead of worrying about how to weaken unemployment and making it more difficult for those down on their luck to keep body and soul together.

Debra Kendall of Livermore worked at the Otis Mill in Jay for 25 years and worked as a peer support worker at the Wilton CareerCenter following the closure to help others search for jobs. The Rev. Francis Morin serves the St. Michael’s Catholic Parish in Augusta. He has served as a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland for almost 39 years in several Maine parishes, including St. Joseph’s in Lewiston.