Crimes of Charity

by Konrad Bercovici

"I make more," she said. "I—do make more."

As I knew that she was receiving charity I did not believe her and told her she would have to prove that she made more than she needed. She walked up to a chiffonier, searched a drawer, and to my great astonishment brought forth a bank book which showed that she had one hundred and thirty-five dollars accumulated in the last two years.

"Will that prove that I earn more than I spend?" she said triumphantly.

I looked at her in astonishment. A mother who lets her children starve to put money in the bank! What wild animal would neglect its offspring to such an extent! I called her into the next room and told her what I thought of her and who I was. She cried bitterly under my lashing, and then told me the following story:

"I should not tell you this, but as you think that I am an unnatural mother I must explain myself. My husband died four years ago. He was a cloak operator and earned good money when I married him. After the second child was born his wages did not suffice to keep us as well as he wished. It was a very busy season. He worked overtime every night, until one and two o'clock in the morning. When the season ended we had three hundred dollars in the bank. But soon he got sick. Six months he lay sick at home. When all the money was gone we had to send him to the hospital. A month later he died, and two months after his death I gave birth to the third child. While I lay in bed there was nobody to take care of the children and there was no bread for them either. A neighbour wrote to the charities and told them all about us, and our plight. Two days passed. A woman came, looked around, questioned me and went away. They sent a nurse and money to feed the children. When I was out of bed they called me to the office and informed me that they had decided to give me two dollars a week and pay my rent. But, I ask you, could I live on two dollars a week? I had to do something. I went out washing and scrubbing floors. I got sick. The charities got to know that I worked. They immediately informed me that if I worked they would not give me anything. What could I do? Live on the two dollars? That was an impossibility. Work? I did not earn enough to get along without their support. Little by little I began to sell tea and coffee in the hours when the children were in school. But the investigator was informed by the grocer and butcher that I spent more than two dollars a week. Again I was called to the office. They questioned me, tortured me, accused me of being a bad woman. Where did I get the money? In despair I lied to them. Told them that the grocer and butcher had given wrong information, that they did not know; they had no proof and had to give me the pension.

"Still I could not get along on their money. My children were hungry. I was hungry. I went out again and sold tea and coffee and whisky, and under my coat I would bring an additional piece of meat and bread. Soon the neighbours knew that we had meat every day and some of them told the investigator. By this time she had made it a habit to spy on my every move. She reported me to the office. Again I was called and questioned and again I lied and cried. I could not get along on their two dollars a week and could not get along on my work alone. But when I got home I was wiser, and since then, instead of buying bread and meat, I have to put the money in the bank. This one hundred and thirty-five dollars is the meat and bread of my children, their health and their life. Yes, I am a bad mother. I am a bad mother," and wept anew.

The next day I went to the office and gave a report of my work. The case of Miriam D. I reported more extensively than the others, insisting that the children were starved while the woman had one hundred and thirty-five dollars in the bank, accumulated not from surplus but from what she was forced to deprive her children of. Mr. Lawson immediately called in the Manager and showed him my report. They congratulated me on my ability and I felt that they would tell their investigators that they must not persecute the woman and the orphans by spying. The Manager pronounced me a second Sherlock Holmes and announced that Mrs. D.'s pension would be cut off.

I was dumbfounded. So this was the result of my work! To take the bread out of the mouths of the three orphans. I accused myself of stupidity and could look no one straight in the face. Through treachery I learned the truth, and instead of using it for her good I had used it to help the investigators be more cruel, more questioning than before. What could the woman do? Had she not told me that she could not live on what she earned? Was the one hundred and thirty-five dollars enough for her to support her children? And I imagined them all starved and sick, dying in hospitals. All through my fault. I should have known that they would not reform their investigating system because of my report. How I hated myself. How I hated the whole world. At night when I went home I was ashamed to kiss my children, for I had committed a crime. As I thought of the inscriptions on the doors: "For the poor of the land shall never cease;" "Let thy hand give freely to the needy," etc., I remembered Dante's "Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch' entrate."

In disgust and despair I walked the streets the next day without being able to do anything. Like a criminal who returns to the scene of his crime I walked around the house. I felt a strong call to go in and beg forgiveness for her undoing. I have since learned that it has not done any harm. On the contrary, deserted by the charities the woman redoubled her energies. The cousin she was waiting for arrived a few days later, bringing some money with him. They bought a grocery store and she is earning her living. But at that moment I thought myself guilty of the greatest crime. I made many decisions, but stuck to the last, namely, to take notes of all the evil that organised charity was doing and at the first opportunity give them out for the benefit of the world.

I understood that the welfare of the poor did not concern the men at the head of the charity organisation; that it has become a business for them. A business they were managing, just as others manage factories. Their concern was to reduce the cost, to economise, just as the manufacturers try to produce the greatest amount of product with the smallest amount of outlay. And if hunger, starvation, sickness was the by-product, well, so much the worse for the poor.