periods of history, it has been true. Sometimes this impulse toward
charity and reform, which grows out of real personal study of the
problems of poverty, goes very far toward saving a nation from ruin.
No student of political economy can afford to ignore this impulse
toward charity, and sweep it away as most thoughtless writers to-day
are inclined to sweep it away, as though it were merely a conscious
effort on the part of the rich to buy their way into the kingdom of
heaven, to escape the accusing finger of the poor, and to avoid the
payment of a debt to humanity long overdue. One must recall that, in
the twenty years from 1742 to 1762, an impulse toward charity, based
really on conditions very similar in their nature to our own, went
far toward saving the nation of England from almost certain ruin. The
rich at that time had forsaken religion, had plunged into immorality
far deeper and far more general than the wealthy classes in the United
States to-day, and come to sneer at purity and fidelity to the marriage
vow, and openly boasted of their profligacy. The poor, on the other
hand, had sunk to depths of ignorance and brutality absolutely unknown
in this land of ours. The tremendous growth of manufacturing towns was
the cause that widened the rift between these two classes. It was, in
fact, exactly our phenomenon, differing only in degree. Society had
come to live in deadly fear of the masses, so that the statute books of
the land were filled with laws dealing death upon the poor for the most
trivial of offences. It was a capital crime to cut down a cherry-tree;
it was a capital crime to steal.
Mark well the sequel: Society was forced in its own defence to begin
the study of the problem of wealth and poverty. Men and women who,
through all their earlier years, had been carefully and sedulously
trained to regard the poor as a different species, and to look with
scorn and indifference upon their suffering, went into the streets of
the industrial cities to learn. Ministers of God who had seen their
churches empty year by year went out into the lanes and alleys of
England to seek their flock. Hence sprung Whitfield and John Wesley,
and hence the Methodist Church, which, whatever any one may think of
its doctrine, could have justified its existence in the world by the
work it did in the first twenty years of its lifetime.
A very little later, as a result of this same impulse of charity,
growing out of a fight for life on the part of the higher classes,
Mr. Raikes, of Gloucester, founded in England his system of Sunday
schools, the very beginning of popular education. Hannah More, a
noble woman of the time, devoted the better part of her life to
laying bare the horrible conditions of agricultural labour. Out of
the same movement came Clarkson and Wilberforce with their tremendous
anti-slavery campaign that was in the end to lead England to a peaceful
if expensive emancipation. Before that era John Howard was a quiet
country gentleman, wealthy and happy, and blindly ignorant of poverty
and crime. At the end of it he took his place at the top of the list of
the world’s great reformers; and the prisons of England, from that day
to this, have never sunk to the depths of ignominy and shame in which
they lay when John Howard first was moved to study them. Hospitals
sprang up all over the land. Organized charity began in England. The
poor of England, from that day to this, have at least been considered
human beings, instead of mere beasts that perish.
Therefore, let me repeat, it is fatuous to dismiss the present
tendency toward charity and reform as if it were mere time-serving.
It may be, indeed, that it is one of the greatest economic facts in
America to-day. It may be that, as it spreads and grows and brings
into the battle thousands upon thousands of devoted men and women,
hundreds of millions of dollars of hoarded wealth, social reform upon
social reform, it will act as a check and an offset to the tremendous
industrial discontent that is spreading over the country. It may be
that, as in England, it will bridge the chasm between the rich and the
poor, or, at the worst, prevent its widening to the point of open war.
I hesitate to undertake any extensive review of the great charities
and reforms that have sprung out of this new impulse that has moved
the rich to study the poor. I hesitate not because there is dearth of
material, but because of my own knowledge. I know that the facts of
record are but a very small part of all the facts in the case. The
tremendous benefactions of a Rockefeller, a Carnegie, a Mrs. Sage, do
not begin to measure the organized and unorganized charities that have
been inaugurated by the wealthy within the past ten years.
Personally, I do not think very much about the forms of charity that
are to-day most prevalent amongst the wealthy. Millions of dollars
every year are poured indiscriminately into all sorts of hoppers here
in New York, in the vain hope that they will help to bring about
better conditions. Money-charity, if I may call it so, seems to me a
beautiful thing if it is really done in a spirit of helpfulness--but,
alas, how vain it is! I do not know but that, in the case of more
than half the recipients of charity of this indiscriminate sort, it
does more harm than good. This I do know, that, according to the best
estimates obtainable, from eighteen per cent. to twenty-five per cent.
of the people of New York State accept charity every year. This is
a matter of record. How many more are the recipients of unrecorded
charity I do not know, but I should not be surprised if forty per
cent. of the population of the greatest state of the Union are the
beneficiaries of charity, of one sort and another, in such a year as
1908, for instance.
Professor Bushnell, in an estimate made some years ago, estimated
that nearly two hundred million dollars a year was spent upon the
maintenance of abnormal dependents in the United States. Think, then,
of the amount of money that must be lavished upon the thousand and one
indiscriminate charities extended to people who cannot be classed as
dependents at all.
Charity, beautiful as it is in many instances, is a hopeless answer to
the questions of the day. The wonderful growth of it in the past three
or four years in the social world to which I belong is hopeful, not
because of the actual good it has accomplished or can accomplish, but
simply because it is another index of the times, another indubitable
sign that the wealthy men and women of Society are really throwing
their hearts and minds into the mighty problem of adjusting the
relationship between the classes which are so rapidly drifting apart.
Of all the charities I know, I think that the sanest, the most
far-sighted, and the most surely pregnant with good is the Sage
Foundation. Perhaps my opinion is little more than conceit. I myself
have given so much time and effort to studying the causes of the growth
of poverty in this country that perhaps an institution founded with
a tremendous fund of money behind it to carry on an exhaustive and
scientific research into the causes of poverty strikes me as the most
intelligent of all the charities I have ever seen, merely because it
fits in with my own personal ideas, and is the very charity I myself
would have founded had I had the disposition toward charity and the
means to put it into effect.
I cannot speak with authority of the actual work that the Sage
Foundation is doing; but I fancy, if one could to-day take an inventory
of actual results accomplished, he would find that the foundation has
barely been begun, and that these artisans of the millennium have not
yet even drawn tentative plans for the superstructure. I have, however,
read with extreme interest a report made by the trustees as the result
of an investigation of the living conditions in families in New York
City, and I do not hesitate to say that, in the compilation of that
report alone, the Sage Foundation has accomplished a work of great
practical utility.
People of my class, when they read a book, seldom write to the author
and give him their impressions. In all human probability the compilers
of this report do not know whether any one in the wealthy class of
New York Society has read the book. I can assure them that it has
been excellently read. One night, in a company of about a dozen, I
mentioned it. All but two in the party had read extracts from it in the
newspapers, two had read it in full for information, and one raised a
laugh by saying that his secretary had tried in vain to buy it at four
book stores.
This work, in my opinion, will bear a tremendous crop of fruit. We
need facts, and we need them very badly. Frankly, we are afraid of
such estimates as those contained in Mr. Robert Hunter’s “Poverty,”
full as it is of vague, loose, and inaccurate statements, academic
estimates in round millions, and glittering generalities of all
sorts. We cannot find knowledge in the Socialist libraries, for we
distrust the Socialist propaganda intensely. We must have sane, clear,
dispassionate analysis of the situation, or we shall stumble blindly on
as we are stumbling to-day, wasting our millions on foolish charities,
debauching honest men and women by unnecessary gifts, pandering to
laziness, and actually increasing in this land of industry the army
of dependent paupers. I hope that the time will come when the Sage
Foundation will be, as it were, a guiding light upon the sea of charity.
I can hardly pass from this subject without a word of praise for
the work in behalf of the public health. The active, intelligent
labour of such men as Professor Irving Fisher on the propagandist
side, and Doctor Flexner and Doctor Stiles on the practical side,
cannot be praised too highly. It is made possible by charity. Both
Messrs. Rockefeller and Morgan, admittedly two of the greatest of
our capitalists, have given millions to this work. Every year other
uncounted millions pour into it from men and women in every city in the
land. The work is spreading, growing wider, drawing into itself better
medical talent, greater surgical skill, and deeper and deeper devotion
on the part of its backers. Help of this sort does not debauch the
masses, for it does not lessen the self-respect of its recipients. The
hospitals that are springing up all over the land, built and supported
by private capital, are milestones in the march of progress, and I
would give full honour to the men that plant them.
In my own circle I know a good many people who think that they are
charitable; and I know a few charitable people. It is a habit of my
mind to ridicule the fads and fancies of my class; and I am sorry to
be obliged to admit that, in the vast majority of cases with which
I come personally in contact, the charity of my class is one of two
things: it is either simply a fad, with little real genuine spirit of
helpfulness behind it, or else it is, as it were, a sop to fear. A
good many people seem to think that it is up to the rich to distribute
largess to the poor, whether the poor want it or not. They ignore the
economics of the matter, if indeed they know them. They have come to
be afraid of the growing pressure from below, and they think that by
indiscriminate charity they can lessen it.
So they give ships of corn to the masses. You remember, perhaps, that,
in the later plutocracy of Rome, after the triumph of Sulla, it came to
be a regular habit, when frenzied mobs of Romans or would-be Romans
threatened death and ruin to the plutocrats, for various and sundry
men to buy shiploads of corn in Egypt and distribute them gratis to
the Roman _plebs_. It is true that, in all human probability, the
plutocracy of Rome prolonged its life for more than half a century
by just such means. If a mob of slaves is hungry, and you give them
something to eat, they will go home and eat it; and, in the meantime,
if you happen to be a Roman senator with plenty of money, your hired
thugs may be able to find the leaders of the delayed revolution and put
them beyond any possibility of raising further trouble.
You forget, when you try the process in America, that the _plebs_ of
America are not slaves, and that their leaders, of whom there is a
host, are pretty nearly as well educated, are certainly as shrewd,
and are probably as strong, legally, as you are. I fail to see how in
this land charity of this sort can have any real effect. I am sorry
to say that there is far too much of it. Let me pass on to the second
weapon of defence. High society is becoming a rampant reformer. It will
reform anything on a moment’s notice. When I read in the papers, and
heard in the club, that a dozen women of great wealth were standing
along Broadway handing bills and encouragement to the girl shirt-waist
strikers of last winter, I was not a bit surprised. It is just what you
might have expected. Nowadays I can hardly go to a reception or a ball
without being buttonholed by somebody and led over into a corner to be
told all about some wonderful new reform. It is perfectly amazing,
this plague of reform, in its variety, in its volume, and in the
intensity of earnestness with which it is pushed.
Not long ago a professor of economics in a great university, lecturing
on “Social Reform,” openly advocated almost every imaginable variety of
labour legislation. I do not believe he understood exactly what he was
saying when he gave as a reason for such advocacy that the support of
such legislation by the wealthy classes would tend to check the spread
of certain vague but dangerous movements amongst the people, which he
did not describe in detail, but which, to any intelligent man, simply
meant the widespread Socialistic movement. I wonder, does that college
professor really think that the enactment of all sorts of legislative
reforms for labour would have any such tendency?
Give Lazarus crumbs, and he will crawl for them. Give him nothing,
and he will demand bread, and then a steady job. After a time we will
be visited by Mr. Lazarus, walking delegate of the labour union,
requesting an eight-hour day and higher wages for his constituency.
Dives will probably answer by building a church and a museum for
Lazarus, and forcing Mrs. Lazarus to turn over her garbage to the
public scavenger. After that you may be sure of the result. Every
Lazarus in the land will demand to be made a co-partner in the business
of the nation. That college professor may know quite a bit about
economics, but he couldn’t hold a job for a week handling a bunch of
half a dozen railroad navvies on a construction job.
It is the same old story. There are too many among the idle rich who
jump at the first obvious conclusion. They see the strange phenomenon
that I have noted as arising out of our industrial evolution, and they
say to themselves; “The nation, indeed, faces a crisis. We are in
danger of falling. The world should continue as it is. It is pleasant
to be booted, spurred, and in the saddle. No oats for the horse, and
we shall be thrown down. The mob must be appeased. Feed the hungry and
we shall be saved. Cure Society of its most evident disorders and the
public mind will forget the rest.”
So said the plutocrats of Rome. So argued the hangers-on of Louis of
France. So Charles the First of England fell. You may find a good
many other illustrations, if you like, in Athens, Italy, and Russia.
I challenge any gentleman to instance a single case in history where
petty reforms and petty charities thrown indiscriminately to the mob
have ever established any permanent betterment of social conditions, or
failed to be followed in the end by a terrific reckoning.
It is true that, amongst the wealthy, many men to-day are honestly
advocating and honestly working for real, deep-planted, permanent
reform.
It is almost astounding to read a paragraph like the following signed
with the name of Andrew Carnegie:
Whatever the future may have in store for labour, the evolutionist,
who sees nothing but certain and steady progress for the race, will
never attempt to set bounds to its triumph, even to its final form
of complete and universal industrial coöperation, which I hope is
some day to be reached.
By industrial coöperation Mr. Carnegie explains that he means the
slow process of selling or giving actual ownership of manufacturing
industries to the workmen. He claims that they began this experiment in
this country when the Carnegie Steel Company took in from time to time
forty odd young partners, none of whom contributed a penny of money,
the company taking their notes payable only out of profits.
A dozen other instances could be adduced, beginning with the United
States Steel Corporation itself, the giant among the trusts. There
is no doubt whatever that this reform is spreading. What is more, I
believe it is an honest reform, and that most of the men who have
introduced it into their companies have done it from an honest belief
that it would elevate the workingman and solve in each separate
instance the most dangerous of our industrial problems.
I am not myself a manufacturer, and I do not feel competent either
to praise or to criticize this particular solution of particular
industrial problems. I know that John Stuart Mill in his “Political
Economy” vaguely hints at some such ultimate evolution of the
wage-worker; and I know also that in many cases the coöperative idea,
in actual practice, has succeeded very well indeed. In my own mind,
knowing the habits of a plutocracy, I cannot help doubting whether
widespread coöperation between wage workers and capital, particularly
between the lower orders of the wage workers and the larger masters
of capital, would not simply afford to dishonest, disreputable, or
unprincipled captains of industry a fuller opportunity than they now
enjoy to hold down the wages and profits of wage workers.
Yet I would but express this doubt as a personal feeling of my own,
rather than as a conviction founded upon research or upon broad
knowledge of the subject. It is not germane to my theme to enter upon
a detailed discussion either of this possible reform or of any other.
I would simply point out as illustrations two or three of the greater
reforms that I hear month by month discussed more and more among the
people of my class.
Personally, I am a bit tired of reform; for Society, as I have said,
will plunge _en masse_ through any door that has a reform label
sticking on it anywhere. Often, as I think of the long list of reforms
advocated by distinguished individuals, churches, educators, civic
associations, politicians, and societies, I wonder what would happen if
they all succeeded. I won’t be here to find out; but if, in some future
existence, no matter what my destination, I hear that it has come to
pass, I am quite sure that I shall be glad to be away.
In passing from this subject I cannot refrain from reiterating the note
of warning contained in an earlier paragraph. To my charitable friends
of the upper classes whose heads are full of reforms and alms-giving I
would say, give not at all if, in giving, or in supporting reforms, you
hope or expect thereby to gain the favour of the mob. Remember that in
Rome the masses were a race of parasites who could be fed or crushed as
the occasion demanded. In America, on the contrary, the masses are the
producing elements of the nation, and you are the parasites. Between
the cry of the Roman multitude for coin and the demand of the working
American for wages there is an intensity and seriousness as much
different as between the humming of the mosquito and the thunder of an
earthquake.
“_When the public deliberates concerning any regulation of commerce
or police, the proprietors of land never can mislead it, with a
view to promote the interest of their own particular order; at
least, if they have any tolerable knowledge of that interest. They
are, indeed, too often defective in this tolerable knowledge. They
are the only one of the three orders whose revenue costs them
neither labour nor care, but comes to them, as it were, of its own
accord, and independent of any plan or project of their own. That
indolence, the natural effect of the ease and security of their
situation, renders them too often not only ignorant, but incapable
of the application of mind necessary in order to foresee and
understand the consequences of any public regulation._”
--ADAM SMITH.
_Chapter Nine_
THE SOCIAL NEMESIS
I have shown, in the previous chapter, how futile and empty are most
of the struggles toward charity and reform carried on by the wealthy
class. This brings me, in my train of thought, to one of the most
melancholy reflections that can be conceived. It has come to me very
often, under all sorts of circumstances.
The fact of the matter is that wealthy Society in America, as
everywhere else, is pursued by a demon of futility. It does not matter
what we do, whether we work like any other man or woman, whether we
play like normal men, whether we study, whether we idle, or whether
we work as other men, or fritter away our time in idleness; whether we
spend our money on charity and reforms, or throw it away in the pursuit
of pleasure; whether we study hard and seriously, or merely regale our
minds and appetites with frivolous novels and salacious plays; whether
we play or whether we don’t--nothing seems real, nothing seems earnest,
nothing has any result. Too often our lives are empty of anything
permanent, anything honest, anything simple and human.
We live in a world of dreams, peopled with passing phantoms--men
and women that come and go and leave in our hearts no trace of real
affection, no honest, sincere, and heart-felt impulse of friendship, no
lasting shadow of reality. It all seems sham and pretence. It cloys in
time, and often in sheer desperation we plunge into extremes for which
we have no genuine taste, no real desire, no inborn impulse at all.
But of all the futile things in the world none is more futile than
wealth itself. If you rest on the things you have won, and set yourself
down in idleness to enjoy them, they turn to ashes on your lips. They
are flat, tasteless, like fruit picked long ago. I remember an incident
in which I took a part, not very long ago, that showed me the opposite
results in all its horrid semblance.
I was at a very brilliant social function in the London social world.
I met at that reception a woman whose name I had heard as a household
word in Society for many years. She was esteemed a brilliant woman;
she was reckoned a leader in the most splendid Society of the world.
She was wealthy beyond all human need. She occupied a powerful place
in a political world where everything human had its part. She was a
companion of princes and the equal of peers. We were talking alone,
immediately after our introduction, when she said:
“Oh, Mr. Martin, you are an American. You are a Wall Street man. You
could help me to get some of your American gold!”
I was astounded, and I showed it in my answer:
“Why, my dear lady, surely you have gold enough. If I am not mistaken,
you rank amongst the wealthiest women of the nation. Why should you
want gold? Moreover, you have social standing and are famous throughout
England. Of what possible use could more gold be to you?”
I can still see the haggard face, the quivering lips, the blazing eyes
of this great Society woman as she answered me.
“Oh, Mr. Martin, you do not know me--I am almost ashamed to confess the
truth. I dream night and day of gold. I want to have a room at the top
of my house filled with it--filled with gold sovereigns. I would like
to go into that room night after night, when every one else is asleep,
and bury myself in yellow sovereigns up to my neck, and play with them,
toss them about, to hear the jingling music of the thing I love the
best!”
Think of it! Picture a woman, wife of a man, mother of splendid
children, born with the beautiful instincts innate in her sex, sinking
to such a depth as that! Think of the awful shallow emptiness of a life
and a training that bore such fruit as this!