It reminds me of Colonel Sellers in Mark Twain's story. He proposes a partnership to a young man for the manufacture of a certain eye-water, a special preparation to heal sore eyes, and when the young man becomes enthusiastic about it—he will heal sores!—Colonel Sellers tells him: "This is not the object, my boy. From the first fifty thousand bottles we sell we open another branch in Calcutta or Bombay—there are millions of sufferers there." Again the young man thinks of the good work, but Colonel Sellers continues: "And from there we establish warehouses in Alexandria, Smyrna and Buenos Ayres, twenty million bottles a year is our output, with a net profit of two hundred thousand dollars a year." By this time the young man too has been influenced to look away from the real object, the sick, the sufferers. Two hundred thousand dollars a year is a good prize. But Twain had something in his sleeve and Colonel Sellers delivers his last blow.
"Do you think that a man like me would be satisfied with a paltry two hundred thousand dollars a year? There's millions in it, my dear boy." The real business now only begins. "We will form a stock company with a capital of twenty-five million dollars, etc., etc."
This was the real business. The sick and poor and the medicine were only an incident, a necessary ingredient to the whole scheme to give it an appearance of something. There are enough Colonel Sellers in the charity institutions. They are there only for a fraction of time before they get the real thing—before they form the stock company. Incidentally the sore eye preparation, namely, the poor, play a rôle.
The charity institution—it is the Stock Exchange of suffering.
I have just described one form of the "Test." When I once spoke about it to some one who has been connected with another one of these institutions for years, expecting him to be horrified, he simply took a note of the details in his book. "And how does it work?" he asked me. I explained that a good many, driven to the brink, have squirmed out by some by-path, while others shift for themselves as best they can.
"Well, well," he thought aloud, "I'll have to try it myself." And incidentally I learned a good many other tricks of the trade, as he called them, from him.
"There was one particular woman," he told me, "whose mouth I had to open with my fist so that she would tell us where her boy was. He had run away from the place we had found for him. We wanted him to learn a trade and a glassblower gave him a chance. But the boy would not stay with his boss. I argued and argued and argued. He did not like the trade, he told me, but in reality it was work he did not like. The last time he ran away I decided that it was about time to show my authority and I found a reason to have him arrested. The mother having told me that he had not given her his pay I wanted her to get a warrant issued and put him away for a few months in a house of correction, just to teach him a good lesson, but the mother would not tell me where he was. When I saw that I could not make her say anything by persuasion—well, I had to use force."
"What of the boy?" I inquired.
"He was no good. He was six months in the house of correction, but it did not help. He is now a gang leader of very bad reputation," he finished, with devout eyes. This stupid ass in charge of the poor, who walks six miles to get a certain brand of cigar, would not understand that a boy may not like one trade and be very willing to learn another. This spiritual hog wanted to show his authority by compelling a mother to give up her child to gaolers—used force to do it—to the Glory of the Almighty and Jesus Christ. And he wondered that his "case" had become a gang leader! I wonder that the boy did not repay him for his splendid service to humanity.