JUSTICE
There are many earnest souls occupied in trying to do people good.
There are nine million societies, more or less, organized to improve and to ameliorate.
There are preachers, missionaries, evangelists, reformers, exhorters, viewers-with-pride, and pointers-with-alarm without number wrestling with sinners.
All forms of industry are booming these days in the U. S. A., but the uplift business is still several laps ahead.
It seems ungracious to say a word to any enthusiastic person who is engaged in so laudable an enterprise as that of rescuing the perishing, feeding the hungry, and healing the sick.
And yet, when you take time to think right through to the bottom of things, you must come to the conclusion that there is but one real, radical and effective way to help your fellow-men, and that is the way called justice.
If I want to redeem the world I can come nearer my object, and do less harm, by being just toward myself and just toward everybody else, than by “doing good” to people.
The only untainted charity is justice.
Often our ostensible charities serve but to obscure and palliate great evils.