7 a6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



gated, more specialized. A whole class of people in cities those, 

 I mean, of considerable wealth with a few noble exceptions 

 (which, however, in our greater cities, thank God, are becoming 

 daily less rare), live in profound ignorance of the condition of 

 their fellow-citizens. Now and then, by some sharp reverse in the 

 financial world or some national recurrence of " bad times," they 

 are made aware that large numbers of their neighbors are out of 

 work and starving. And, at all times, they are no less reminded 

 that there is a Considerable class how appallingly large it is grow- 

 ing to be in New York Mr. Coler has told us who need help, 

 or think they do, and who, at any rate, more or less noisily demand 

 it in the street, at the door, by begging letter, or in a dozen other 

 ways that make the rich man understand^ why the prayer of Agur 

 was, " Give me neither poverty nor riches." 



Well, something must be done, they agree. What shall it be? 

 Shall the State do it, or the Church, or the individual? If only 

 they could, as to that, agree! But it has been one of the most 

 pathetic notes of our heedless and superficial treatment of a great 

 problem that, here, there has not been from the beginning even 

 the smallest pretense of a common purpose or any moderately ra- 

 tional course of action. Undoubtedly it is true that there is no 

 imaginable mechanism that could relieve any one of these agencies 

 from responsibility in the matter of relief to the unfortunate, nor 

 is it desirable that there should be. Sometimes it has been the 

 Church that has undertaken the relief of the poor and sick, some- 

 times it has been largely left to the individual, and sometimes it 

 has been as largely left to the State. But, in any case, the result 

 has been almost as often as otherwise mischievous, or corrupt and 

 corrupting. For, in fact, the ideal mode of dealing with the prob- 

 lems of sickness, destitution, and disablement should be one in 

 which the common endeavor of the State, the Church, and the in- 

 dividual should be somehow unified and co-ordinated. But, in- 

 credible as it ought to be, the history of the best endeavors toward 

 such co-ordination has been a history of large inadequacy and of 

 meager results. As an illustration of this it is enough to point 

 to the history of the Charity Organization Society in New York, 

 which, I presume, is not greatly different from that of similar socie- 

 ties elsewhere. Antecedently it would have seemed probable that 

 such a society, which aims simply to discourage fraud, to relieve 

 genuine want, and to protect the community from being preyed 

 upon by the idle and the vicious, would have the sympathy of that 

 great institution, some of whose teachings are, " If any man will 

 not work, neither shall he eat " ; " Stand upright on thy feet " ; 



* Proverbs xxx, 8. 



