62 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



profession. Hypocrisy and lies are the principal tools. Those 

 who acquire skill in it frequently obtain greater incomes than 

 those who. labor.'^ 



A case in Washington, D. C, illustrates this : * In August, 1885, 

 a boy of about fourteen years was found regularly begging on 

 Pennsylvania Avenue. His mother, healthy and reasonably intel- 

 ligent, lived in a neat house on a pretty street within three blocks 

 of the Capitol. There was no sign of poverty or of distress about 

 the house, inside or out. The boy had, during the sessions of Con- 

 gress, sold papers at the Capitol, reaping a rich harvest. He limped 

 about with a crutch. People gave him five, ten, or twenty-five 

 cents for a paper, and asked no change. When Congress ad- 

 journed, he could still have supported himself well by selling 

 papers on Pennsylvania Avenue; but people there did not pay 

 over five cents for papers, as a rule. Still, they did give to beg- 

 gars, especially to those with crutches. It easily appeared that 

 the boy could make more money by begging than by selling 

 papers, and so he begged. Even after he had been taken into 

 police court twice, he returned to the street to beg. It was only 

 with great difficulty that the writer succeeded in stopping this 

 imposition upon the public — the sweet, confiding public, which is 

 ever seeking to give to strangers, because "some have thereby 

 entertained angels unawares " — yes, a public which is too lazy to 

 investigate the effects of its alms-giving, and which deserves to 

 be imposed upon. 



Now, let no one express horror at the character disclosed in 

 this child, or rather in his mother, who was the real actor. She 

 was no better and no worse than the average citizen. She simply 

 exercised business sagacity in getting money apart from moral 

 considerations. So do Wall-Street brokers; so do many men 

 who endow colleges, build churches, and send missionaries to " the 

 heathen." 



The solution of this economic problem is of the simplest. Make 

 begging unprofitable, and we never need lecture beggars about 

 their loss of self-respect. When the getting of something for 

 nothing becomes impossible, and never till then, will men cease 

 to endeavor to get something for nothing. When you and every 

 one of you completely discontinue giving alms, except to those 

 whose circumstances are perfectly understood, self-respect and 

 other moral qualities will develop in those people without even a 

 word being said to them upon that point. In giving to them, you 

 degrade society far more than they degrade it by asking. This 

 kind of altruism is a curse in the world. Fawcett said of it, 

 " England was brought nearer the brink of ruin by the old poor- 



* I made the investigation of it in person, and prosecuted it in the police court before 

 Judge W. B. Sncll. 



