The promoter of organized charity protests against “the wasteful
and mischievous method of undirected relief.” He means, naturally,
relief that is not directed by somebody else than the person giving
it—undirected by him and his kind—professional almoners—philanthropists
who deem it more blessed to allot than to bestow. Indubitably much is
wasted and some mischief done by indiscriminate giving—and individual
givers are addicted to that faulty practice. But there is something to
be said for “undirected relief,” quite the same. It blesses not only
him who receives (when he is worthy; and when he is not, upon his own
head be it) but him who gives. To those uncalculating persons who,
despite the protests of the organized charitable, concede a certain
moral value to the spontaneous impulses of the heart and read in the
word “relief” a double meaning, the office of the mere distributor is
imperfectly sacred. He is even without scriptural authority, and lives
in the perpetual challenge of a moral _quo warranto_. Nevertheless
he is not without his uses. He is a tapper of tills that do not open
automatically. He is almoner to the uncompassionate, who but for
him would give no alms. He negotiates unnatural but not censurable
relations between selfishness and ingratitude. The good that he does is
purely material. He makes two leaves of fat to grow where but one grew
before, lessens the sum of gastric pangs and dorsal chills. All this is
something, certainly, but it generates no warm and elevated sentiments
and does nothing in mitigation of the poor’s animosity to the rich.
Organized charity is an insipid and savorless thing; its place among
moral agencies is no higher than that of root beer.
Christ did not say, “Sell that thou hast and give to the church to
give to the poor.” He did not mention the Associated Charities of the
period. I do not find the words, “The Little Sisters of the Poor ye
have always with you,” nor, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least
of these Dorcas societies ye have done it unto me.” Nowhere do I find
myself commanded to enable others to comfort the afflicted and visit
the sick and those in prison. Nowhere is recorded God’s blessing upon
him who makes himself a part of a charity machine—no, not even if he
be the guiding lever of the whole mechanism.
Organized charity is a delusion and a snare. It enables Munniglut to
think himself a good man for paying annual dues and buying transferable
meal tickets. Munniglut is not thereby a good man. On the Last Great
Day, when he cowers in the Ineffable Presence and is asked for an
accounting it will not profit him to say, “Hearing that A was in want,
I gave money for his need to B.” Nor will it advantage B to say, “When
A was in distress I asked C to relieve him, and myself allotted the
relief according to a resolution of D, E and F.”
There are blessings and benefactions that one would willingly
forego—among them the poor. Quack remedies for poverty amuse; a real
specific would kindle a noble enthusiasm. Yet the world would lose much
by it; human nature would suffer a change for the worse. Happily and
unhappily, poverty is not abolishable: “The poor ye have always with
you” is a sentence that can never become unintelligible. Effect of a
thousand permanent causes, poverty is invincible, eternal. And since we
must have it let us thank God for it and avail ourselves of all its
advantages to mind and character. He who is not good to the deserving
poor; who knows not those of his immediate environment; who goes not
among them making inquiry of their personal needs; who does not wish
with all his heart and strive with both his hands to relieve them—is
wasteful and improvident.