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people who are ailing. They might not be; deserving people, and unscientific
giving is the ciirse of true charity. Give your money to us so our trained
investigators can expend it scientifically."
. And yet, this organization which demands this monopoly of charity' is
appealing to the people, of Chicago for $125,000, which it says must be
raised in ten 'days! ' '
In that appeal lies a confession of failure. And if the United Charities
are so signally failing in their attempt to monopolize the needs of the suf
fering poor ot .Chicago on which they depend for their capital, why does,
not the organization turn over the cases of some of the widowed mothers it
claims -to be supporting, to the state? r
What was the.Mothers' Pension law passed for, with its broad, human
itarian provisions designed to care for. the future citizens of the state?
Why does not the United Charities call upon the state to carry outkthe
implied promise made by the state to suffering mothers in that act?
Why does the United Charities fight the turning over of these cases '
to the state, saying that they themselves are better able to handle them in
their "scientific" manner? 5
If the United Charities fell $125,000 short of what it needed' for this
winter it is not better able to handle these cases it isn't able to., handle
them at all.
And in the name of the Lowly Carpenter, can't we have, a little lessof
this talk of "science" in the work of the United Charities; this talk of re
lieving the hunger of the "deserving" only?
Who are the "deserving" anyway? Is a woman, who, byvsome fortune
in the circumstances of her bringing up, -has abetter constitution than an
other so that she is able to stand starvation, better .both physically and
mentally, more deserving than a woman whom a brutal, "scientific" world
has so crushed and broken on its "scientiflc,, -wheel that she is scarcely in
her right mind?
Is the epileptic, the production of a society which allows men and '
women to -be- cooped up in reeking holes of tenements in whicli good
farmers would not housetheir pigs, less deserving thana. man or woman in .
better physical condition? "
If Christ were in Chicago today would He stop to ask if that shivering
epileptic crying aloud for bread and clothes were worth helping? -
- Would He stop to ask a starving' mother if' her husband were a good
man, -and would He deny her plea if He found out the woman were mar ,
ried to some hulking, drunken brute of a man?
Would He turn away from children because society had allowed them
to be born and brought up in the cesspool of a modern city?
Would. He draw away from a broken, diseased, helpless woman because
society had forced her to break the moral iaw? , '
Or would He throw wide His arms, and say as He said once long ago:
"Come unto Me all.ye weary and I wUT give; you rest?"
1 Ah, let the United Charities stop talking of "science" ana "scientific"
treatment, and the necessity for finding out whether, a, "caseJ'Js "deserv
ing" before, relieving suffering! "
Or, if the United Charities cannot do that, then let them drop the name
of -charity, the name that once was a synonym, for love, but has become
the. bitterest word in the English language to the poor.-and the down
trodden, the ones who have been crushed into the-"yery valley of humilia
tion and despair and soul-sickness by those from whom the United Chari
ties gets its money! ' x " 'if
