It is as if we were under water, looking at the hidden hull of this civilization. Evil growths cling to it—houses of prostitution, sweat-shops which employ the poor in their bitter need at less than living wages, stores that sell them rotten food and shabby clothing at exorbitant prices, horrible rents, and all the tragi-comic manifestations of Organised Charity.
Every person of intelligence and humanity who has seen the workings of Organised Charity, knows what a deadening and life-sapping thing it is, how unnecessarily cruel, how uncomprehending. Yet it must not be criticised, investigated or attacked. Like patriotism, charity is respectable, an institution of the rich and great—like the high tariff, the open shop, Wall street, and Trinity Church. White slavery recruits itself from charity, industry grows bloated with it, landlords live off it; and it supports an army of officers, investigators, clerks and collectors, whom it systematically debauches. Its giving is made the excuse for lowering the recipients' standard of living, of depriving them of privacy and independence, or subjecting them to the cruelest mental and physical torture, of making them liars, cringers, thieves. The law, the police, the church are the accomplices of charity. And how could it be otherwise, considering those who give, how they give, and the terrible doctrine of "the deserving poor"? There is nothing of Christ the compassionate in the immense business of Organised Charity; its object is to get efficient results—and that means, in practise, to just keep alive vast numbers of servile, broken-spirited people.
I know of publishers who refused this book, not because it was untrue, or badly written; but because they themselves "believed in Organised Charity." One of them wrote that "there must be a bright side." I have never heard the "bright side." To those of us who know, even the Charity organisation reports—when they do not refuse to publish them—are unspeakably terrible. To them, Poverty is a crime, to be punished; to us, Organised Charity is a worse one.
John Reed.
CONTENTS
| The Stove—A Parable | [3] |
| My First Impression | [6] |
| The Second Day | [20] |
| At Work | [26] |
| Watch Their Mail | [49] |
| The Roller Skates | [59] |
| The Test | [69] |
| Scabs | [80] |
| Saving Him | [86] |
| "Too Good to Them" | [90] |
| Robbers of the Peace | [101] |
| The Sign at the Door | [106] |
| What is Done in His Name? | [118] |
| The Picture | [121] |
| The Price of Life | [131] |
| Air—From Fifth Floor to Basement | [139] |
| The Investigators | [145] |
| The Children of the Poor | [150] |
| Mother and Son | [161] |
| Clipping Wings of Little Birds | [167] |
| The Orphan Home | [174] |
| Why They Give | [185] |
| The Kitchen | [192] |
| Chocolate | [196] |
| Out of Their Clutches | [199] |
| "The Home" | [202] |
| "Bismarck" | [209] |
| Twenty-one Cents and a Quarter | [213] |
| Visiting Day | [223] |
| Employment Agencies | [225] |
| My Last Week in the Waiting Room | [231] |
| Tuesday | [244] |
| Wednesday | [253] |
| At Night | [258] |
| Thursday | [264] |
CRIMES OF CHARITY