The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-11-28

The Metropolitan Magazine asserts that no less than a billion dollars is now ex- pended annually in charities which do not lessen but rather increase the conditions of poverty.
 And such is a fact. which needs at tention and consideration, for not one penny of this billion of dollars has reached deserving poor.
 A deacon of a Baptist church was asked How much have you given to charity?' He replied that he responded only to the appeals of the deserving poor, and when asked who were the deserving poor he answered those who never ask for assistance.
 No one except God has heard their silent prayers.
 And as for the many associated chari- ties throughout the country, they are not able to take care of those now in that rut that must accept charity. It is a shameful fact that 60 cents on the dollar is being used to maintain these institu- tions, judging from their own reports, and that they are working overtime for that one great object of separating the professional beggar from the 'willing-to-
  not care to take on extra burdens looking after those that are too proud to beg.
 Logically, man without 8 job or a lady who has self-respect and pride will not enter any place that Is placarded charity association"
 The great majority of the working class detest the word charity. Give them their rightful share of honest toll and that is all they ask.
 But when society fails to furnish work and insists upon maintaining expensive associated charities, it is then that so- ciety forces selfrespecting men and wom- to throw their pride to the winds and no one but society is to blame for the army of paupers now on hand.
 Mind you, l cast no reflection on insti- tutions for the blind, feeble-minded, old men and women's homes, orphans asy- lums and the like. but what do protest against is an institution that increases the conditions of poverty by dishing out char ity to able bodied men and women.
 A prominent charity worker once said to me that the Bible stated that of faith, hope and charity the greatest of these is charity. l told him didn't think so. I figured out that hope was the better of the three. and that to the able-boded
 
 hilton of charity" was the most hateful thing in the world. He said, Smiling, that perhaps, since I differed from the Bible In this matter l was in favor of a new Bible for today. I told him that what the workingman needed was not new Bible, but new interpretation of the old one-an interpretation which should introduce into the business world of to- day Christ's idea of the brotherhood of man.
 Shelley speaks in one of his poems of the Tears of charity" which turned into millstones as they fell and crushed the poor.
 The sins of charity are many For in- stance the case of Mrs. Charles Ormsby of Chicago. She had gone down into the valley of the shadow as demanded by motherhood seven times. Her three babies were suddenly made seven by an ordeal In which she bore four babies at birth.
 She was poor. Her husband deserted her three months before the four were born. So she went to theatres and amuse- ment parks and exhibited herself and her four babies" The Ormsby Quads." as the slang of the day called them, for money. Starving Is an inconvenient thing.
 The authorities stopped her. Somehow. the tender morals of society which felt no compunction at her poverty, were scandalized by the exhibition of her strange fate.
 The Ormsby Quads dropped out of sight and society quieted down. About a year ago, however, this ter rible woman who had four babies at & 1 birth and dared to be poor, was found with her flock in a squalid shanty. 1n- stead of dolls with eyes that really shut | these babies were playing with rags, tin I cans and other treasures"
 In a dirty corner was g. dirty bed In which the seven little Ormsbys slept. In the oven four plump kittens were housed and chickens roasted on the rickety 1 chairs
 1 Society in the form of the Chicago l juvenile court, drew up it's immaculate skirts. This would never do! There were | 'homes' and industrial schools where these mites of humanity would be so | much better off.
 The morals of the babies were not looked after. Johnny, aged 8. wiped tho tears from his dirty face and said to the policeman: You let my ma alone, gol darn you.'
 So the seven were taken away from l Mrs Ormsby. They went to spick and span institutions, where their morals might be looked after and Mrs. Ormsby went back to her hovel to ind the rags and tin cans with no dirty little hands to fondie them; to hear tho kittens ery