156 HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN PROBLEMS 



and the Foundling Hospital in London give a 

 faint indication. 



(f) Indiscriminate giving. — When to other con- 

 tributory causes of pauperism is added the indis- 

 criminate giving of the charitable, it ceases to 

 be a wonder that there are so many paupers, 

 and only seems strange that there are not more. 

 Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, of the Charity 

 Organization Society of New York, in a paper 

 read before a club of that city, charged the 

 Christian churches with direct responsibility for 

 a large part of pauperism. Indiscriminate giv- 

 ing leads paupers to reckon on the doles of the 

 benevolent as a regular source of revenue irre- 

 spective of merit or genuine need. "The com- 

 mittee appointed in Bristol, England, a few 

 years ago, to inquire into the condition of the 

 poor, reports : * No remedy can be found for the 

 pauperism and mendicancy of Bristol till a higher 

 tone exists in regard to the sin of inconsiderate 

 dispensation to the poor.' 'Careless almsgiving,' 

 says Mr. William Low, ' produces, directly, such 

 vices as imposture, improvidence, drunkenness, 

 servility, religious pretence.' " Twenty years 

 ago one in every eighteen in London was a pau- 

 per. Charity organization followed upon knowl- 

 edge of this fact; and, as a result, pauperism, at 



