Whatever are our subject's merits otherwise, as a man and an officer,
and extreme though was his patriotic zeal during the late civil war,
and to which he gave practical expression in the wisest and noblest
ways, all these has he eclipsed, and rendered comparatively unworthy of
note, by his career since the war as a Good Samaritan, a practical
"Home Missionary" (if it be not derogatory to apply to him a
designation, however kindly, which usually signifies but little more
than a sectarian proselyter of one school or another). Always
interested in social problems, Officer McWatters is too intelligent not
to fully understand that the fragmentary reforms and the ordinary great
charities of the times can never subdue the evils which his heart would
abate and banish from society forever. Indeed, it is the opinion of the
writer, (however little this may accord with Officer McWatters' views,
or however opposed he may be to so radical sentiments, for herein the
writer speaks for himself and no one else), that the availability of
charity towards abolishing evil is but pitiable at best. Giving the
beggar an old coat, only to be called on by some other beggar for a
like coat, and never seeking to abolish beggary and its attendant
sufferings by some judicious means of abolishing beggars themselves, by
destroying the causes which create them, is unscientific, paltry, and
in every way unwise at best.
It is only about nineteen hundred years since the advent of
Christianity; and perhaps not over two hundred and fifty millions of
people at the present time profess to be Christians, and belong to some
of the symbolized divisions of the church, while may be not over three
hundred millions more profess to be Christians in spirit; and not much
of good could well be expected to grow up in so short a time, and with
so few advocates to encourage it; yet the writer confesses that, in
some of his weaker moods, he is astonished after all that something has
not been done by Christian people to abolish the proximate and fruitful
cause of nearly all the crimes and sufferings, namely, poverty. The
sufferings of the poor in New York, for example, are terrible to
contemplate; and the much-boasted great charities of the metropolis are
directed only to temporary relief of the sufferers. This is their
highest aspiration even. They proclaim no desire to do more, at best,
than to smooth the bed of the sick, and procure "places" for children
(to grow up and work for others in), or situations for this woman or
that poor man out of employment.
The right of these children and these poor men and women to live at
all, and the duty of society to guarantee to the individual the
enjoyment of that right, are wholly ignored by them. Year after year
they perform their patchwork charities with a patience which would be
commendable in the pursuit of science, and which, while it astonishes
the writer at its stupidity, nevertheless commands from him, as he
cheerfully confesses, a sort of respect, if not admiration; for many of
these charity-doers are really the best of people at heart, and would
doubtless, if they knew how, do better, act more wisely. But they are
ignorant of better means than they use; and, in fact, it has never
occurred to them that better and wiser means ought to be, or could be
taken than those they employ, to assuage human suffering.
With his study and understanding of sociology, Officer McWatters must
necessarily see, we think, and painfully feel, how meagre and pitiful
are the amends which charity makes to those victims whom society has
robbed of their rights; and his sense of this must constantly operate
to weaken his courage and chill his enthusiasm in the cause of petty or
"patchwork" charities. Yet withal so abundant is his good nature, so
sensitive his sympathies, that years do not seem to abate his zeal
therein at all; and here is the wonder. He keeps on in his good works,
though the institutions of society multiply the sufferings he would
abate, and bring to his door ten new sufferers _because_ he has just
aided one old one. As long as such souls as McWatters' continue doing
their good deeds, so long will the rapacious and extortionate thank
them, and continue to create victims for them to practise their
humanity upon. The landlord, whose tenant is poor and sick, is very
grateful, of course, to the "charitable society" which helps his tenant
to pay the rent; and it is a question with the writer, sometimes, if it
were not better that the kind and tender-hearted benefactors of the
poor were less numerous; for if the poor were goaded on by suffering a
little further, they might, dispelling the mists of ever-fallacious
"hope" from before their eyes, come to see their rights, and demand
them.
It is to the advantage of the master to feed his chattel-slave
sufficiently well to keep him in good strength for work. Charity, under
direction of the masters in society, feeds the working classes only up
to the point of usefulness as wages-slaves. It is cheaper for a given
present time to keep a poor man in a working condition than it is to
let him starve to death, and so incur the expense of burying him. That
expresses the _morale_ of the master-classes' "consideration" of the
subject-classes; and here in the United States the "tender love" of the
strong for the weak is just as marked as in other lands, perhaps; but,
alas! no more so, notwithstanding our boasted love of "liberty and
right."
But we remarked that Officer McWatters must understand all this, and
yet pursues his constant course of charities. Not for the wisdom (or
the lack of it, as the case may be) which prompts or permits him to do
the thousand acts of benevolence for which he is noted, is it that he
commands so much of our admiration, but for that tireless sympathy and
wondrous vitality of benevolence (so to characterize it) which ever
bestir him, notwithstanding his clear understanding that he will, and
can alone, only mitigate effects, and not cure causes; that he is
"carrying coals to Newcastle" all the while, or is putting one brick on
a pile, only to see a dozen fall therefrom; and this, though he repeats
it day after day.
As we have before remarked, Officer McWatters is not a rich man, save
in his own good nature and the affection of his multitudinous friends;
and _his_ charities mean something to his purse, drawing from it
constantly whatever he can find time or opportunity to place there;
for, if the writer is correctly informed, Officer McWatters has never
received a cent for his multifarious labors in connection with any of
the several organized charities to which he is attached. As a member of
the Metropolitan Police he received his salary, rendering therefor his
full duty; and this was all he had to support himself and family upon;
and that was constantly depleted by his benevolence, as we have
remarked before. In view of these facts, Officer McWatters is elevated,
in our esteem, to the rank of the Howards, and the other marked
philanthropists of the world.