The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-01-21

calm and rest as any in the kingdom. To
look at it you would not believe it the seat
of a dread disease.
Harmful Charity.
But, alas! a good man in centuries gone
by planted the germ of a cancerous
growth which is eating into the root and
stock of the neighborhood vitality. This
well-meaning citizen of one of the earlier
Georgian reigns left TO the village a small
tract of ground for the pas of ten
cows, whose milk was to DO pint
at a time, to the deserving f-~. Of the
place. In time the COWS died, ana the vi
car of that day, who had the charity in
his control rented the land as a pasture
for the COWS of his neighbors, who paid
him 10 shillings, or $3.50, each year for
each cow that grazed there.
Thus it came about that money instead
of milk began to be dispensed to the So
called poor. Why there should have been
poverty to any considerable extent in a
village of twenty or twenty-four houses
in England's days of profitable agricul-
ture, or whether there would have been
any but for this premium that was put
upon it there-who shall say? But time
went on, and not very long ago the rich
men of some busy manufacturing towns
near by turned covetous eyes upon the
beautiful village and began to buy land
on which to put up villas there They
bought the pasture land, piece by piece,
until at last, it was all bought up, and
in it's place the poor of the village looked
to a sum of something like 100000 well
and safely invested.
The reader may be sure that the poor
multiplied prOportionately TO the growth
Of this charity. Sadder tales than those
of the wrecks of manhood who flung them
selves upon or were sucked in by this
charity could scarcely be conceived Farm
- se
low the former farms the earth began to
yield rich mineral store, and work was
made for people threefold as numerous as
the population of the original farming vii
lage. Cottages sprung up in rows, even
10 The forming of new street or two, and
earnest, honest men came there to labor.
To-day many of these families have sue
cumbed to the temptation of the local
charity.
To-day there is in that little village
squalor to match the worst in London.
Honest households have been transformed
into families of parasites, loafers and
drunkards, who will not work because
aims money comes more easily than
wages. The charity must be distributed.
If it is withheld to-day it viii be bigger
and more harmful later on The kindly
man who is in charge of it at present
has no alternative except to dole it out to
whosoever asks for it. Unfortunately, he
is too credulous, too kindly, too much alb
sorbed in other work, too honest to com
preheud the wickedness Of the people who
cringe to him for aims and laugh In their
sleeves as they take them. To-day these
parasites go TO him with any story they
can invent when they merely want tie
means for a deDauch. tale of a sick
wife, lie about a foreclosed mortgage or
about a police court fine, or fiction about
an accident to a limb-lios out of whole
cloth seven times in ten-suffice to get
them an order for any sum between 10
shillings and Is.
And what. then, thinks the reader? They
sell he orders TO the shopkeepers-the
largest beneficiary of the charity because
he operates as a broker cashing the orders
for as little as he thinks The holders will
accept Two shillings on 5-shiliing Or
der, or Il for f5 am told is how he dis
counts these tenders. With what he gives
they get drunk. This awful tale of the
poisoning of a community may partly ex-
plain how Il was possible that a modern
''king OF finance found several communi-
ties wiling to let him dole out weekly
sums in aims. right and left IN the couu-
try which he aspired to represent in Par
iiameni Hundreds took his gifts as reg
ularly as If they were wages, and TO many