I would like to have all corporal punishment abolished, and I would also like to see the money that is given to charity distributed by charity and by intelligence. I hope all these institutions will be overhauled.
I hope all places where people are pretending to take care of the poor and for which they collect money from the public, will be visited, and will be visited unexpectedly and the truth told.
In my judgment there is some better way. I think every hospital, every asylum, every home for waifs and orphans should be supported by taxation, not by charity; should be under the care and control of the State absolutely.
I do not believe in these institutions being managed by any individual or by any society, religious or secular, but by the State. I would no more have hospitals and asylums depend on charity than I would have the public school depend on voluntary contributions.
I want the schools supported by taxation and to be controlled by the State, and I want the hospitals and asylums and charitable institutions founded and controlled and carried on in the same way. Let the property of the State do it.
Let those pay the taxes who are able. And let us do away forever with the idea that to take care of the sick, of the helpless, is a charity. It is not a charity. It is a duty. It is something to be done for our own sakes. It is no more a charity than it is to pave or light the streets, no more a charity than it is to have a system of sewers.
It is all for the purpose of protecting society and of civilizing ourselves.