In former days Susan thought well of charity, as she had been taught. Old Tom Brashear gave her a different point of view. One day he insulted and drove from the tenement some pious charitable people who had come down from the fashionable hilltop to be good and gracious to their "less fashionable fellow-beings." After they had gone he explained his harshness to Susan:
"That's the only way you can make them slicked-up brutes feel," said he, "they're so thick in the hide and satisfied with themselves. What do they come here for! To do good! Yes—to themselves. To make themselves feel how generous and sweet they was. Well, they'd better go home and read their Russia-leather covered Bibles. They'd find out that when God wanted to really do something for man, he didn't have himself created a king, or a plutocrat, or a fat, slimy church deacon in a fashionable church. No, he had himself born a bastard in a manger."
Susan shivered, for the truth thus put sounded like sacrilege.
Then a glow—a glow of pride and of hope—swept through her.
"If you ever get up into another class," went on old Tom, "don't come hangin' round the common people you'll be livin' off of and helpin' to grind down; stick to your own class. That's the only place anybody can do any good—any real helpin' and lovin', man to man, and woman to woman. If you want to help anybody that's down, pull him up into your class first. Stick to your class. You'll find plenty to do there."
"What, for instance?" asked Susan. She understood a little of what he had in mind, but was still puzzled.
"Them stall-fed fakers I just threw out," the old man went on. "They come here, actin' as if this was the Middle Ages and the lord of the castle was doin' a fine thing when he went down among the low peasants who'd been made by God to work for the lords. But this ain't the Middle Ages. What's the truth about it?"
"I don't know," confessed Susan.
"Why, the big lower class is poor because the little upper class takes away from 'em and eats up all they toil and slave to make. Oh, it ain't the upper class's fault. They do it because they're ignorant more'n because they're bad, just as what goes on down here is ignorance more'n badness. But they do it, all the same. And they're ignorant and need to be told. Supposin' you saw a big girl out yonder in the street beatin' her baby sister. What would you do? Would you go and hold out little pieces of candy to the baby and say how sorry you was for her? Or would you first grab hold of that big sister and throw her away from beatin' of the baby?"
"I see," said Susan.
"That's it exactly," exclaimed the old man, in triumph. "And I say to them pious charity fakers, 'Git the hell out of here where you can't do no good. Git back to yer own class that makes all this misery, makes it faster'n all the religion and charity in the world could help it. Git back to yer own class and work with them, and teach them and make them stop robbin' and beatin' the baby.'"