Up to now I have said so much about the heartlessness of the
investigators that naturally the question arises: "If they were
good-hearted women, and if the men in charge of the charities were
better men, would that solve the problem of charity?"
No. It's not their fault. The system of organised charity is such that
they must inevitably become as they are after a few months' work. Almost
all of the women investigators and other employés of the institutions
are recruited from the impoverished middle class. To obtain a position
what is commonly called "pull" is absolutely necessary. As a rule these
people have never known any want--real privation. At first, when they
see poverty in all its ugliness they get excited, run to the office and
make a terrible report, advising relief in heartrending sentences. They
imagine that their will will immediately be carried out and that their
mission is a very high one. But when the Manager calls them into his
office and proves to them that they have been lied to and deceived; that
the pauper is a habitual liar; that you cannot believe a single word
they say; when he tells them that if they do not prove more adroit the
next time their position is not suited to them, then they look at the
poor with other eyes. He or she is no more a subject for pity, a wreck
that has to be pulled ashore. It is bread and butter for herself. If she
allows herself to be deceived by an applicant she endangers her own
position.
All the investigators fear poverty, fear it because they know how
terrible it is, _that it is a crime_. Not a word of the poor is
believed. Her next report will be a tissue of lies and accusations,
viz.:
"The family has rich connections from whom they get help. From the
grocer, butcher and baker I have learned that the family spends more
than is necessary." If the applicant is a widow and young she inserts
that neighbours doubt her morality; that she stays out late at night,
etc., etc., and she closes her report with the observation that the
applicant is unworthy and undeserving of charity. This she does because
she has learned that she is not to advise to give, but that she is paid
to find out reasons and excuses why help should not be given.
It is true that in the course of the work the investigators find cases
where the organisations are deceived, but this makes them so suspicious
that if one were to take their word for it help would never be extended
to an applicant.
Then, another reason for her stony-heartedness is the continual sight
of poverty. After a time she gets so accustomed to it that nothing
shocks her. It is like a surgeon in a hospital who becomes so hardened
that the amputation of an arm or leg is nothing--a trifle.
The poor represent so much material. One sews aprons and shirtwaists for
a living; she, the investigator, visits the poor. The hangman too makes
a living! It's all business. There can be no love in such work. The men
and women in charge of it have not chosen it because they want to devote
their lives to succouring the suffering widow or orphan. They are not
sisters of mercy. They are paid to do the work. They make a living so.
If the investigators were superior beings things would be somewhat
different; but superior beings go into business nowadays. It pays
better. Some investigators only get thirty to forty dollars per month.
I have known investigators who left their own children at home without
food. They trembled lest a mistake cost them their positions. They did
all in their power to find out a reason why the applicant should not
receive money to buy bread for her children. One might fancy that were
they investigating their own cases they would still find reasons.
Think of an investigator moving a consumptive family from the fifth
floor to the basement, she who lectured on tuberculosis: "Light and air
are the best cure for consumption." This is how she spoke, this is what
she believed, but in practice! When a woman has to climb stairs from
morning to night, then her only thought is how to make her own work
easier; how to make a living easier.
Yes, but it costs the lives of women and children. And does the owner of
mines think of that? And does the manufacturer think of that? And does
the milkman, a devout church-goer, who baptises his milk, think of the
children he is killing, of the future generations he is crippling? And
does the canner think of that when he allows rotten meat to go into his
cans? No. They are all making a living and do not believe that animals
should be killed for food.
I knew a young lady who got a job as investigator--a nice young,
sentimental girl. After a few months' work she was the terror of the
poor and the pet of the Manager. She had reduced by half the list in her
district. From a hundred applications she investigated not ten got
relief. She would visit them day and night to find a reason why they
should be cut off. The neighbours for ten blocks around would know that
Mrs. So and So had applied to the institution. And when one day I told
her she was not fit for such a position because she had no heart, and
advised her to get a job at something else, she showed me her right
hand. She had lost her fingers in an accident at an embroidery machine
and she had to make a living!
Another young woman, who was engaged to marry a friend of mine and who
got the position through me, lost the affection of her fiancé.
"She has entirely changed in the last few months," he told me. "She is
suspicious, hard, cold and cynical. Her face has changed, she never
laughs, never smiles."
Poor chap! He did not know the cause. I did.
The work, the surroundings, the system of organised charity, unfits them
for anything, and among all the crimes of charity the one that stands
out pre-eminently is that it ruins the lives of all the men and women
who work in it. Only a God and an angel could remain good. But the gods
are in the heavens and the angels are crucified.