ORGANIZED CHARITIES.
I HAVE no great confidence in organized charities. Money is left and buildings are erected and sinecures provided for a good many worthless people. Those in immediate control are almost, or when they were appointed were almost, in want themselves, and they naturally hate other beggars.
They regard persons who ask assistance as their enemies. There is an old story of a tramp who begged a breakfast. After breakfast another tramp came to the same place to beg his breakfast, and the first tramp with blows and curses drove him away, saying at the same time: "I expect to get dinner here myself."
This is the general attitude of beggar toward beggar.
Another trouble with organized charities is the machinery, the various methods they have adopted to prevent what they call fraud. They are exceedingly anxious that the needy, that those who ask help, who have been without fault, shall be attended to, their rule apparently being to assist only the unfortunate perfect.
The trouble is that Nature produces very few specimens of that kind. As a rule, men come to want on account of their imperfections, on account of their ignorance, on account of their vices, and their vices are born of their lack of capacity, of their want of brain. In other words, they are failures of Nature, and the fact that they need help is not their own fault, but the fault of their construction, their surroundings.
Very few people have the opportunity of selecting their parents, and it is exceedingly difficult in the matter of grandparents. Consequently, I do not hold people responsible for hereditary tendencies, traits and vices. Neither do I praise them for having hereditary virtues.
A man going to one of these various charitable establishments is cross-examined. He must give his biography. And after he has answered all the supercilious, impudent questions, he is asked for references.
Then the people referred to are sought out, to find whether the statements made by the applicant are true. By the time the thing is settled the man who asked aid has either gotten it somewhere else or has, in the language of the Spiritualists, "passed over to the other side."