The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1919-02-21
SOFT JOBS AND GRAFTERS


that some of the charitable move
ments of the people have been affiliat-
ed with professional press agents
grafters and soft-job seekers. 1t is
both a pity and shame.
The movements are all right and
the motives that carry them on are the
| highest that the human heart can
know. But there are those who make
profession of organizing these move
ments solely for their own profit. And
it is time that they are put out of
business.
If they are not to be put out of the
business then charity is sure to suf-
I fer. The American people will not
stand for the CRATER and the soft
job seeker, no matter in what guise
they may appear.
| No man will 60 down into his pock-
ct so quickly and so willingly as the
American man to help any good
cause but the minute he finds out that
somebody is making a business of get
ting his money away from him he
quits.
He has given to everything that has
come along for the past two years and
more, and he wants to go on giving,
but he will stop short when he finds
out that lot of his money was given
only to find an easy job for some dis
charged newspaper reporter who
might find some other job.
What the givers want to do is to
give both Of their time and their
monev. And when they do that they
feel that they have right to expect
that everybody else will do the same.
If charity isn't conducted on that
basis, then it ceases to be charity; it
is then matter of business, and char
ity and business are two things as
different as the head and the heart
are different.
When it comes to the point, there
fore, that charity must pay a COM
mission and brokerage, to be taken
out of the funds contributed before
charity itself can get penny, then
charity puts on disguise
And when, as recently happened in
Paris, the paid soft-job holders of
great charitable institution put into
their own pockets $4,000 of the mon
a far-reaching scandal.
There have been deep murmurs of
discomfort and ill-disguised dissatis-
faction on account of these things, al
though little has been said openly
about them. 1t was for fear that the
cause Of the needy might be harmed
that everybody kept silence. No de-
cent man wants to hurt worthy
cause. Sooner than do so he will ev-
en- go as far as to suffer an outright
imposition on himself.
Yet, unless somebody speaks, and
that soon, there will be an end to char
ity. The world will be a world of
cynics.
Wherefore, is it not better for some
one to speak right out now before ir-
reparable harm is done and charity
itself shall stand as the most forlorn
and friendless of all things on earth?
And why should anybody fear to
speak? If man is in danger of dis
ease, his friends do not hesitate to
give him a warning. When the very
existence, therefore, of so high and SO
holy a thing as charity is threatened
should not it's friends and well-wishers
counsel with one another and advise
together?
Well, then, the plain, blunt truth is
that charity today is suffering from
barnacles. She is afflicted with par
asites. Leeches have fastened upon
her and are sucking her very life's
blood away.
\ Nobody wants the death of charity.
The worst thing that could befall this
world would be to take charity out of
it. Such world would not be worth
living in.
II no man cared whether another
man were cold or hungry or sick, if
no man would lift a hand to help a
fellow-man to raise up the fallen raf-
tiers of his house; if it were every man
for himself and "the devil take the
hindmost," better for US all that we
had never been born.
And, that the world is not just that
very kind of world is because there
is charity in it-that divine impulse
Of the heart which leaps to broth
er's need, succoring his helplessness at
any cost, wrapping him in his own
mantle to shield him from the storm
of adversely.
The world cannot afford to see char
ity slain. 1t cannot afford to permit
the parasites to feed upon it.
1t is a strange thing to contemplate
that there are people so constituted
that they will invariably prefer the
devious way to the straight path. And
it is an even stranger thing that there
are people who would rather make
dollar ghoulishly than naturally.
We are inclined to think that this
business of promoting charity for the
soft jobs and the money there is in it
is an entirely modern idea.
Surely the idea is new, else it
would have persisted long ago. A
thing like that could not last. 1t can't
last now. 1t is impossible to fool all
the people all the time.
Charity will last, please God; but
those who exploit it for their own per-
sonal gain-they can't possibly last.
They must go, and they must go at
once.
The proposition is as plain as day.
And it is this: If anyone is to work for |
charity for nothing, then everyone
must work for it for nothing. Which
is to say that when these huge money
raicino prniactc fnr oh a r;fxy ara cot