Thus pauperization is a vast and thriving industry. It is said, and there is no reason to doubt it, that there are several hundred families on Manhattan Island—enough to populate a small city—that have lived well for years wholly upon charity, no member of them ever doing any work beyond writing begging letters or patrolling begging routes. In addition there are thousands of families supported in large part by relief got from rich men and rich women. And the same state of affairs is found wherever the very rich, living exclusive and aloof lives, have built their palaces.
To play Lord or Lady Bountiful is such a self-gratifying part. It is the traditional, the conventional part of the very rich toward the very poor. Beggars are so voluble in thanks. It sounds so well to talk of “my worthy poor,” of what “I am doing for charity.” So many hours that would otherwise be boresome can be filled with receiving and patronizing cringing, slathering paupers or with nosing about tenements, receiving on every floor noisy showers of blessings in exchange for less than the price of a supper after the theatre.
The whole business lessens the vanity-disturbing doubts that sometimes will arise even among the very rich as to the validity of the distinctions in this Democracy between “upper class” and “lower classes.” In some cases the motive is higher. In many cases there is an admixture of the higher motive. But the persistence of the very rich in face of the plain showings of the harm they do makes it impossible entirely to acquit large numbers of them.
The pauperization plants of plutocracy fall into three classes—the public, the semi-public and the private.
The politicians have expanded, where they have not out and out established, the public plants. Instead of making the people realize the truth—that these plants are their property, paid for out of their wages and giving service to them not as charity, but as their hard-earned, paid-for right, the politicians turn them into favor-distributing centres, centres for the distribution of alms in exchange for political power. The semi-public plants for the manufacture of paupers are the gifts of very rich men, usually men who made their own money; after the first generation the very rich do not as a rule go in for large public gifts. It is never profitable or just to examine deep into motives; sufficient to say that, with a few exceptions, these semi-public philanthropic institutions for giving something in exchange for nothing are avoided by all but such of the poor as don’t mind thinking themselves paupers or being looked on and treated as paupers.
Finally, there are the private pauperization plants. From them might be excepted those of the rich men and the rich women who have gone into the relief business in a systematic way and operate through thoroughly organized, carefully and competently conducted bureaus. Their theory of helping is not exactly consistent with the old American idea of “root hog or die,” but neither is it wholly exploitation of their own personal vanity without any regard to the merits of applicants. They give relief, but they try to make sure that relief is, according to their very liberal notion of necessity, needed.
Probably all but a very few of the families that are famous throughout the country for wealth have organizations of this kind. But there are upward of ten thousand millionaires concentrated in a few cities, several hundred of them multi-millionaires. The overwhelming majority of these go in for philanthropy, not on the carefully organized system, but more or less haphazard giving, with never thorough investigation, often with no investigation whatever.
It seems impossible to make people in the habit of keeping themselves clean believe that dirt is not necessarily or even frequently a proof positive of poverty overwhelmed by adversity against which it has made an honest struggle. And the rich people who like the “Bountiful” pose refuse to believe that almost all honest destitution is relieved by its neighbors and relatives, that nine out of ten cases of destitution are fraudulent, that all the street beggars are liars, that no one need go hungry or shelterless or cold if he will apply to the public or semi-public institutions ready to relieve. So, we have Lord and Lady Bountiful relieving grown people of the necessity of “hustling,” and, worst of all, encouraging them to bring up their children as paupers and beggars.
So scandalous has this industry of pauper-making become that in every city’s highways there are now children openly begging, telling their whining lies of various more or less ingenious kinds, pretending to sell newspapers or pencils or shoe-strings to give a color of respectability to their shamelessness, or, rather, to the shamelessness of their parents.
The passing generation—the rustling, hustling, money-grabbing generation—is usually rather shrewd in its philanthropies, as well as generous. The “old man” was a car-driver, or a brakeman, or a plow-boy, or a peasant’s son. He has poverty’s sympathy with poverty, but also poverty’s suspicion of the cause of poverty. Thus, our cities have got and are getting libraries, hospitals, free dispensaries, free technical schools of various kinds, model tenements, and the like. Millions on millions are given annually by “self-made” men, most of it as wisely as giving can be.