ALTRUISM ECONOMICALLY CONSIDERED. 61 



I. Relief of the Poor. — This class does not include the sick, 

 the dependent children, nor the insane, but simply those who are 

 more or less of the time idle, who receive but small wages when 

 they work, and who ask, or do not ask but seem to need, financial 

 assistance. 



So many have been willing to lend to the Lord (i. e., give to 

 the poor), believing that it was a safe and dividend-paying invest- 

 ment, that for eighteen hundred years this has been the usual 

 mode of relief. 



Everybody knows that this has not diminished the number. 

 It was very unfortunately said, eighteen hundred years ago, " The 

 poor we have always with us," because the saying of it has helped 

 to make it true. Assuming that we are to have the poor always 

 with us, we shall do little to lessen their number. Had it been 

 said upon the same authority, " Under the beneficent sway of wis- 

 dom the poor shall cease to exist among you," as it was said, " The 

 wolf and the lamb shall lie down together," by this time we should 

 have been far nearer the realization. 



Early Athens — pagan Athens, if you choose — could boast of 

 having no citizen in want, " nor," says the Grecian historian, " did 

 any disgrace the nation by begging." This should have been our 

 motto. With all the resources of this nation, its realization would 

 have been easy had the proper course been pursued. In such a 

 country as ours it is not necessary, but it is a shame and disgrace, 

 to have the poor always with us — that is, poverty which needs 

 relief. In the presence of millionaires, men owning but a single 

 cottage are poor by comparison. We ought always to have such 

 poor among us, but these are self-respecting and happy men. 

 They mtist never be confounded with those who through defect- 

 ive character sometimes require food, coal, or shelter to be pro- 

 vided for them. The latter are intended when allusion is made 

 to the poor. 



Now, if anything of social and economic value has been demon- 

 strated in this century it is that giving food, coal, and money to 

 the poor from public funds or even by private charities pauperizes 

 and degrades them. Henry George says that " the poor are grow- 

 ing poorer." If so, to nothing is it more attributable than to the 

 multiplication of charities. "A city of charities and a city of 

 paupers " is the designation of one of our Eastern municipalities. 



How charity becomes the cause of pauperism may easily be 

 understood. The problem has been well worked out, especially in 

 England. Henry Fawcett, Professor of Political Economy in the 

 University of Cambridge, in " Pauperism : its Causes and Reme- 

 dies," published in 1871, says: "Those get the largest share of 

 charity — not who suffer most, but — who can excite the greatest 

 sympathy. Hence securing charity becomes an art; begging, a 



