An Experiment in Altruism

by Margaret Pollock Sherwood

This was not true of every member of the associations. There were certain women who possessed a gift of practical kindness, and were philanthropists by divine right. And surely the effectiveness of an organized body means the effectiveness of the individuals composing it.

But different attitudes were represented. Side by side with these women who were quick to help and slow to condemn, were others who allowed their respect for the ten commandments of the Old Testament to keep them from obeying the one command of the New. They pronounced judgment on the unfortunate with the most impressive finality, as if wrong-doing were doubly wrong in the East End. As I listened to them I sometimes thought that the ethical standard which the rich try to preserve for the poor is very high.

I liked to watch these charitable women, and to wonder why they were doing this work. Some, whose faces had been made sweet by sorrow, were striving only to find expression for sympathy with human pain. Some, who looked eager, restless, dissatisfied, were trying, I thought, to find in the lives of others the absorbing interest they had missed in their own. A few, I feared, had espoused the cause of the needy for the sake of social distinction. An interest in the poor was one of the really important things, like the cut of one’s sleeves, or one’s knowledge of Buddha.

I discovered a new species of benevolent woman, unlike the old-fashioned Saint Elizabeth who encouraged pauperism by indiscriminate distribution of loaves. A call that I made on a fellow-Almoner (for in an interval when my Cause did not keep me busy I had rashly joined this body) made me hope that the old Lady Bountiful armed with pity will never quite give place to this new Lady Bountiful armed with views.

I had given my friend this name because she looked so sympathetic. She was a blithe little woman, very wealthy and very charitable. On this occasion I found her just going out. As she came smiling to meet me, in her light cloth gown with gloves and gaiters of the exact shade, I thought how charming she was.

My Lady Bountiful had principles. She always performed her full social duty, and she told me, before I introduced the subject I had come to discuss, how tired she was. Dinners and receptions and the theatre had tired her out. Yet she had given up none of her charity work. Her maid did all the necessary visiting for her.

When I set forth the object of my visit she looked disapproving. I wanted to change the policy of our Board, of which she was a director, to meet the distress caused by a sudden financial crisis. But My Lady interrupted my description of the misery of the unemployed in the East End.

“I do not believe in voting special relief for these people,” she said. “Their suffering will be a lesson to them. When they have work they are improvident; when it stops they starve. They must learn thrift and economy, even if it has to be taught them in this severe way.”

It was a strange situation,—Dives in his purple and Lazarus in his rags again. But Dives played a new rôle, no longer standing aloof, but coming near enough the gate to study Lazarus, and then intimating that his character was not all it should be.

My Lady went on to speak of work, of how noble it is, and how little common people appreciate its sacredness. I watched with a certain feeling of curiosity the dainty figure against the rich background of the beautiful house. The fingers that were emphasizing the panegyric of work had never been guilty of a half-hour’s honest toil.