The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1886-06-11
oENTEEL REooINo.
A Nuisance which Has Had Phenomenal
Growth in This Country.

Growth in This Country.
There is some chance for escape from
the professional mendicants who assail
people on the streets, crowd into their
houses and often interrupt men in their
places of business. They are outside
the pale of the law; they can be handed
over to policeman if they become i'm
pertinently importunate as they often
do; but they are a severe tax upon both
the time and means of the charitabIy
inclined. A few who thus appear as
common beggars are worthy objects of
benevolence. and the fear of withhold
ing from the few who merit aid, often
resolves the doubts of busy men in
favor of the always cunning appeals of
the criminal idlers, who ply their voca-
ton as beggars while prospecting fo1
new opportunities for crime.
But the grave and steadily growing
evil in the begging line is the genteel
or quasi-genteel beggar, who would be
mortally offended if regarded as one of
the begging class. They come from
almost every condition of life, and in
wade the counting room. the office, the
store, the shop, the home; indeed every
place seems to be regarded as the tenn
pie of genteel beggars and all seasons
are their own. Most of them do not
consider that they are begging at all.
On the contrary, they appear to regard
their presence and solicitation as a favor
to the person whose time they waste
and whose means they seek to obtain.
They represent every thing and every
phase of invention that cultivates
idleness, from the book-agent that
sells his or her own book as an escape
from want, to the countless fairs and
the innumerable benefits and testimo-
malls down to ten-cent election tickets
on the contest between Miss Smith and
Miss Jones for a cream mug or sugar
tongs or a silver dart for the back hair.
There is not place of business at all
accessible to these genteel beggars that
is not invaded every day by them, and
valuable time must be given them to
determine the merits of the appeal or
the victim must choose between giving
olindly without thanks or giving
offense for life. There are many men
and women of liberal means who would
give away more than their whole in
come or earnings before noon every day
if they gave a 1.-THE of what is demanded
and confidently expected of them by the
genteel begging fraternity.
This large and rapidly growing class
of genteeI beggars must not be con-
founded with the thoroughly reputa-
bic, honest and earnest representatives
of our well-governed and deserving
charities. They are known, properly
accredited and their labors are so well
appreciated by charitable citizens that
it is generally a pleasure to contribute
to RETROSPECTIVE organizations. There
are very many generous citizens who
ever welcome the representatives of
our deserving charities, glad to give
them money to the extent of
their ability while others are giving
their time and labor to temper the
sorrows and misfortunes of the world.
Those who unselfishly devote their
efforts to gather and disburse the will
ing contributions of busy citizens are
on an entirely different plane from the
genteel beggar. They are not beggars
in any sense. They do not impOrtune
when people are unable or unwilling to
pay. They present the needs of the
helpless they aim to aid, and there
their mission ends. They proffer the
opportunity for each to give as his or
her abundance will justify, and their
visits are not regretted, as a rule, even
if their appeals can not be favorably re-
sponded to; but the genteeI beggar,
who literally begs for what neither
charity nor generosity would reason
ably feel bound to give, is mandatory
or persuasive as circumstances dictate,
and when successful the giver often re-
grets the questionable necessity that
forced the gift much more than the
amount and time involved.
The growing drift into habits of idle
ness has much to do with the increase
of what is kindly called genteel beg
ging. Idleness begets every shade of
vice, and one of its first lessons is to
get what you need without earning it,
whether honestly or dishonesty. Its
grade down to actual crime is not
steep and the descent is seldom sud-
den. It begins by exhaustive invention
to live in some apparently decent
way on the earnings of others. Its fol-
lowers call upon friends and acquaint-
ances and extort money from them in
the flimsiest guise of business, when
both well know that it is simply
strike for so much money without
meeting any need or wish of the giver.
1t is not called begging, but it is none
the less begging, and, in point Of fact,
even less genteel and honest than if
the truth were told and the contribu-
ton asked for and given without the
deceit that vexes the giver more than
the loss of the money that is known to
be wasted. 1t is this presumably gen
teel begging that now intrudes upon
and harnesses every place of business
and every home, and it has become a
nuisance of fearful magnitude. 1t not
only exacts largely from the time and
means of citizens, but it is spreading
idleness and Generalization, discour-
aging honest industry and is rapidly
multiplying crime, as idlers once on
the drift of deceit, logically gravitate
downward until there is hardly per-
ceptible line between genteel begging
and criminal fraud. 1t is a pestifer-
Gus nuisance to all who seek to earn
money before they spend it, and it can
be halted in its growth only by a we'll
enforced public sentiment branding it
as disreputable. Let the genteel beg
ging trade be stamped out htyadet
pbjG Times.
LABOR AND MACHINERY.