The Savannah morning news., 1904-03-06
WOMAN'S WORLD

ana missionary bazaar, and tea, and
are supposed by people on the outside
10 be lavish giVers, yet they never
contribute a cent of their own money.
Let case of restitution be known,
ana such woman claps on her bon
net and is out collecting food and
Clothing for the sufferers from her
neighbors. but it never occurs to her
TO supply their needs from her own
store room. Let a church fair be start
ed, and she gives herself nervous pros
tratlon rushing around soliciting con-
tr1butlons from merchants, but YOU
never hear of her digging down into
her own pockets and fishing up a
cent. Her generosity which is laud-
ed in the papers, and heralded through
the community, is purely vicarious, and
consists in holding up other people
and making them give.
1t is pleasant to be charitable when
1t doesn't cost you anything, and one
OF the reasons that women are so
easily touched is because they expect
to touch somebody else for the price
OF their sympathy. l have a SUSPICION
that there would be about a million
fewer causes" in the world if wom-
en- had to support them themselves.
instead of making other people do the
contributing. AS it is, every woman
you know has two or three pet chart
ties that she depends on running nv
holding up her friends. When the
, time for annual contribution comes
around she never thinks of such a
tnlng as raising the money by doing
without new gown. or a piece of
furniture she wants. Instead she in
dulges herself in whatever she desires.
and raises the money she needs by the
simple eXpedint of levying black-mail
upon her friends.
or course. it is done decently, and
under the guise of an amateur con-
cert, or a reading, or recital by an
| impecunious young genius to which
you are compelled to buy tickets I'M
der penalty of forfeiting her friendship.
VI course, she knows it is a hold-up,
and that nobody ever goes to an anna
teur concert of their own accord, but
she justifies herself to her own con-
science by saying that you ought to
give anyhow, and she actually and
honestly feels herself an intrument of
grace in forcing you to contribute to
the Pug Dog Hospital, or the Home
| for SuDerannuated Cats or, whatever,
form her charitable fad takes.
Naturally men are worst sufferers
from this form of proxy giving. The
| same sort of honor among thieves that
| makes each confidence man work MS
own side of the street. keeps women
from trying to hold each other up for
| many contributions, but men, and es-
pecially unmarried men, are the help
less victims of the female philanthro-
phists who expect other people to put
up for the generosity. This makes Lent
truly time of fasting, and self-denial,
and dust and ashes for the average
young man. Every mail brings him
notes from Mrs. This, That and the
Other One, bullying with tickets that he
is expected to buy to help some charity
in which he has no interest, and sus-
tain some cause that he has neither
money or the desire to aid. 1t isn't
easy for man to refuse these subscrip-
tions for they come from women whose
houses he has visited, and of whose
hospitality he has partaken. In real
ity, they are a civil dun for dinners and
dances, and if he refuses to make good
his welcome is frosty one the next
time he goes to call on Mrs. Proxy G.
Samaritan. If only one woman did this
it would be small matter, but when
tickets come in shoals, as they do dur
ing the time when women are being
vigorously generous in Lent, they send
the young man to the free lunch coun-
ter for food, and cause him to use Ian
guage about this particular form of
philanthropy that it would do the la
dies good to hear.
There isn't any use, of course, in
trying to make women see that it is
better to be good yourself than to make
somebody else perfect. They will go on
to the end of the chapter, plucking the
mote out of their brothers eyes while
their own are full of beams, but this
particular form of ticket sending null
sance ought to be abated. 1t is humil-
iating and exasperating to be forced to
maintain other peoples charity, and
unless woman means to support her
own philanthropies she should keep out
of them, and in a still wider charity re-
frain from holding up her friends. The
best sort of goodness is individual
goodness, and that doesn't do good by
proxy. Dorothy Dix.