Crimes of Charity

by Konrad Bercovici

Says the President of this institution in his Twentieth Annual Report:

"The object of this Society is to loan money to those in need, instead of giving alms, and thus assist respectable people, whose character and self-respect will not permit them to receive alms, etc., etc."

So, none of the people who apply for charity are respectable people or have any self-respect! This is the spirit of all the charity workers toward an applicant. Once a man or a woman has applied for help he is no longer respectable, he has lost his self-respect. He is a "derelict." It speaks ill for humanity that there has not yet been one poor person who has taken revenge for all the injustices and insults heaped upon his brethren! It shows how degraded they are through hunger. Not that they are inherently coarse. Oh, no! but weakness, physical weakness to which all those who apply to charity are reduced before they ever come to the office. Once in the mill they are ground. I will leave the investigators for a while and show how the "derelicts" are treated in the office.

I must not forget to mention that they are frequently called to the office at nine A. M. and left in the waiting-room until five P. M., when they are again told to come to-morrow, as the committee before which they were called to appear has departed. Meanwhile, they had to sit there and hear the insults to which the others are subjected, and stay without food. Mr. Cram once told me that this sitting in the waiting-room was a very good "test" of real want, for it has happened that many of them never came back when they were again called.

"Once they pass through the waiting-room they are easy to manage," he assured me. "They get their education."

The waiting-room is the school. I wonder how many of those who could not stand the "test" turned the gas jet on. How many of them jumped into the river! How many went to the street. Too bad we cannot know all the crimes of charity.

A woman, Bertha S., about thirty years old, still good looking, despite the misery she has passed through, is called before the Manager. She has two small children whom she has left with a neighbour. She has been called for nine A. M. As it is her first experience with the charities she is at the doors at eight-thirty A. M. When the doors swing open at nine-ten she is almost frozen. She had been waiting a full half hour. She shows her letter of admission and is allowed in the building. The whole day, until four-thirty P. M., she stands in the waiting-room, sometimes walking around and crying, at other times sitting nervously twisting her hands in despair and calling the names of her two children.

At four-thirty, she and all the other women were told that on account of the cold weather the committee would not meet that day and they should come the next day. The office boy who brought the news to them meanwhile permitted himself a joke, saying "The show is off for to-night. If you like it, tell your friends."

The next day the building was so overcrowded with applicants that more than fifty had to stand the whole day. Bertha S. looked to be the most unfortunate of all. Her nervousness was painful. At three-thirty P. M., the manager began to call the applicants into his room. Every time the door swung open she hoped or feared that now was her turn, and when she saw each time that another was called she became more and more nervous. Finally, at five, she was called in. From a side door I entered the room. With the Manager sat a few other men. They looked her up and down, measuring her from her toes to her head, as though she had committed some crime. Then one of the men, a well fed, red-faced, thick-bellied brute, looked in a record purporting to be the investigator's report and the third degree, the most inhuman one I have ever witnessed, started: