The Arizona champion., 1890-12-27
CHILDREN OF ISHMAEL.
IndiScriminate AlmSgiVing
 Encourages Vice.
THE UEWISBuM OF TIE CHARITABLE.
A Chart Which Illustrates Social Deg
 radation.-Prevention.

The children of Ishmael are still with us. They are not the rowing Indians or reckless cowboys of the western plains, nor the desperate "moonshiners" of the Tennessee mountains. They live near us in New York, or wherever our homes may be- Their garments touch ours in the public places. Strangest of all, we may be responsible in one sense for the lsh- maelitish madness in their blood; and yet, if we recognized that responsibility, we would complacently count it to ourselves for righteousness. For we consider aims giving cardinal virtue, while we are too short sighted to estimate the effect of much indiscriminate almsgiving in en- eouraging moral fabbiness and mental and physical inertia, in increasing pauper ism and crime, in multiplying the number of the children of Ishmael throughout our land
 This is one of themost suggestive topics treated at the national conference of charities and correction recently hold in, Buffalo, aud elsewhere considered at some length. The speaker, Rev. Oscar C. Me CuIloch, of Indianapolis, illustrated his study in social degradation by 0 chart showing the social condition of thirty families through five generations. This meant some illustration of the life history of 1,692 individuals. Their history had been followed for fifty years. There had been several murderers in the group, and thieves without number. The ma jority lived by begging or petty thieving. The children died young Licentiousness characterized all the men and women. From this came mental and physical weak ness, general incapacity to work, and in certain cases, hopeless idiocy.
 MORBID HEREDITARY TENDENCIES.
 This study of hereditary morbid ten dencies is most interesting, but it pre- sents nothing absolutely new. Maudsley, of England, and Charcot, of Paris, have naturally included the subject in their study of mental pathology. In fact, in the present century-and especially since Galton developed the study of heredity into science-hereditary influences of all kinds have received the most careful consideration, not only by medical stu dents of pathological states of the mind and body, but also by novelists. We need recall but one instance, the Rougan- Macquart series of Zola, in which that uncompromising realist has essayed to do precisely what MT. McCulloch did upon the chart-that is, trace the development buQ GllOCGb Ol I6UOOuCleS generation to generation.
 But Mr. McCulloch himself has used this study of heredity merely as an illus tration of his striking declaration that the tendencies to mental weakness and general incapacity which he describes are met and encouraged by the benevolent public with unlimited public and private aid, which is practically an incentive to I and x~ia ool,, -ol Ek,% our elaborate systems of public charities are in a large degree. responsible for the perpetuation of this idle and vicious complish private benevolence supple mented. 1.-The so called charitable people who give to begging men and women and children have large sin to answer for" The remedy indicated by the speaker was to close up official outdoor relief, check private indiscriminate charity, and get hold of the children The last is an ad- mirable suggestion There is no practical way of restricting private almsgiving, save by educating people to the idea that unwise aims foster pauperism and the bringing of more paupers into the world. It would be impossible to do away with the great public charities of New York even if 1t were desirable. But the ten dency of charitable work can be modified and turned toward prevention rather than cure. Children who are early taught a spirit of independence and self reliance will not become paupers. If public char ities encourage this spirit and rigidly in sist that nothing can be had without working for it, if work is possible, their evils will be reduced to a minimum Frank LeDlies