If I knew this doctrine to be true, I should still insist that men should be charitable on their own account. A man without pity, no matter how intelligent he may be, is at best only an intellectual beast, and if by withholding all assistance we could finally people the world with those who are actually self-supporting, we would have a population without sympathy, without charity—that is to say, without goodness. In my judgment, it would be far better that none should exist.
Mr. Van Norden takes the ground that the duty of the church is to save men's souls, and to minister to their bodies incidentally. I think that conditions have a vast deal to do with morality and goodness. If you wish to change the conduct of your fellow-men, the first thing to do is to change their conditions, their surroundings; in other words, to help them to help themselves—help them to get away from bad influences, away from the darkness of ignorance, away from the temptations of poverty and want, not only into the light intellectually, but into the climate of prosperity. It is useless to give a hungry man a religious tract, and it is almost useless to preach morality to those who are so situated that the necessity of the present, the hunger of the moment, overrides every other consideration. There is a vast deal of sophistry in hunger, and a good deal of persuasion in necessity.
Prosperity is apt to make men selfish. They imagine that because they have succeeded, others and all others, might or may succeed. If any man will go over his own life honestly, he will find that he has not always succeeded because he was good, or that he has always failed because he was bad. He will find that many things happened with which he had nothing to do, for his benefit, and that, after all is said and done, he cannot account for all of his successes by his absolute goodness. So, if a man will think of all the bad things he has done—of all the bad things he wanted to do—of all the bad things he would have done had he had the chance, and had he known that detection was impossible, he will find but little foundation for egotism.
Question. What do you say to this language of Mr. Van Norden. "It is best to teach people to rely upon their own resources. If the poor felt that they could get material help they would want it always, and in this day, if a man and woman cannot get along, it is their own fault"?
Answer. All I can say is that I do not agree with him. Often there are many more men in a certain trade than there is work for such men. Often great factories shut down, leaving many thousands out of employment. You may say that it was the fault of these men that they learned that trade; that they might have known it would be overcrowded; so you may say it was the fault of the capitalist to start a factory in that particular line, because he should have known that it was to be overdone.
As no man can look very far into the future, the truth is it was nobody's fault, and without fault thousands and thousands are thrown out of employment. Competition is so sharp, wages are so small, that to be out of employment for a few weeks means want. You cannot say that this is the fault of the man who wants bread. He certainly did not wish to go hungry; neither did he deliberately plan a failure. He did the best he could. There are plenty of bankers who fail in business, not because they wish to fail; so there are plenty of professional men who cannot make a living, yet it may not be their fault; and there are others who get rich, and it may not be by reason of their virtues.
Without doubt, there are many people in the city of New York who cannot make a living. Competition is too sharp; life is too complex; consequently the percentage of failures is large. In savage life there are few failures, but in civilized life there are many. There are many thousands out of work and out of food in Berlin to-day. It can hardly be said to be their fault. So there are many thousands in London, and every other great city of the world. You cannot account for all this want by saying that the people who want are entirely to blame.
A man gets rich, and he is often egotistic enough to think that his wealth was the result of his own unaided efforts; and he is sometimes heartless enough to say that others should get rich by following his example.
Mr. Van Norden states that he has a typewriter who gets two dollars a day, and that she dresses better than the lords and ladies did of olden times. He must refer to the times of the Garden of Eden. Out of two dollars a day one must live, and there is very little left for gorgeous robes. I hardly think a lady is to be envied because she receives two dollars a day, and the probability is that the manner in which she dresses on that sum—having first deducted the expenses of living—is not calculated to excite envy.
The philosophy of Mr. Van Norden seems to be concentrated into this line: "Where people are poor it is their own fault." Of course this is the death of all charity.