Many other omissions I have made purposely. There are the drinking and the gambling clubs, the betting clubs, haunts, and dens, if one choose to consult the police and to hunt them up, which would enable one to finish this chapter with a lurid picture. Where there are so many men and women there will always be found a percentage of the bad, the worse, and the worst. It is the hopeful point about East London that wherever the better things are offered they are accepted by the better sort; not by a few here and a few there, but by thousands who are worthy of the better things.
XII
THE HELPING HAND
XII
THE HELPING HAND
THE work that lies before us in every city waiting for the Helping Hand—the human wreckage, bankruptcy, age, sickness, poverty, which must always be forming anew however we may meet it and find alleviation—will certainly not decrease as the years roll on. The point for us to consider here is not the volume and variety of the forces which cause this wreckage, but the attempts which are now being made to find this alleviation and, if possible, a remedy.
The Helping Hand has a history, and it is very simple:
1. First of all it threw a penny to the beggar because he was a beggar.
2. Secondly, it offered free meals and free quarters in every monastic house to every beggar because he was a beggar.