Committee on Waste for the Waif.
The latter committee may well study the history of sacrifice in times of war and other emergencies and learn that these seasons of deep and common interest have often inspired the putting away of useless ornament and luxury, and the saving of careless waste in the interest of a patriotic cause, and that the sacrifice has been a means of positive pleasure that indifference or neglect cannot carry with them.
For instance: The most careful persons, in times of relaxed attention, waste not less than one cent in every dollar expended, and think nothing of it. One cent in one dollar is one one-hundreth of one's income, an inconsiderable amount, a trifle indeed! and yet, one one-hundreth of the incomes of half the people would support a Perfect Social Quarantine; cut off the supply of material for criminals; add largely to the productive efficiency of the community; decrease taxes; give more pleasure to the contributors and active workers than any other pursuit; lead to sanitary and filth eradication; do away with the constant terror of burglars that every sound in the dark now creates; take away the discomfort of that typically American disease called catarrh, by cleaning up the dust-producing quarters of neglect; and create a rational and civilized environment to take the place of one which now produces much worry, snuffling and unhappiness; and, within a brief season of time whose days would pass with pleasant acceleration in the joyous consciousness of usefulness, efficiency, progress, hope and happiness.
Efficiency lies chiefly—necessarily—in the aim, and if the aim be definite and complete, it will be found easier of accomplishment than any number or any strength of partial and detached efforts.
Of course, the first and last aim of our proposition is Strict and Perfect Social and Sanitary Quarantine, but the separate aims of committees should be to get one-half of each community, at least, to register as quarantinists, and volunteer to save, at least, a sum equal to one one-hundredth of their income from some inconsequential waste, and devote it to the consequential use of prevention of the propagation of the various seeds of unhappiness.
The movement would aim to arraign people under the head of quarantinists, by approval, or under the head of neglectists, by inference of indifference.
By pledging one one-hundredth of one's income, at least, the contribution would in no wise be a revelation of the amount of one's income, while all subscriptions would be equalized according to the means of each; little children not being debarred from helping their less fortunate fellows who are come from the same Source of Life, but who have been less lucky in their introduction into the world.