Year: 1859

Christmas and New w-Year's-the season. of fes-
tiyty and enOyment-are the season also OF the
severest and most forbidding desttuiiOn and suffer-
ing. The wealthy and fortunate sit down to daily
feasts combining all that can crafty the palate
with all that may nourish the frame, while thou
sands of the young and innocent pace the streets
from day to day in anxious quest Of even the dryest
crust, and at length go hungry to what must serve
them as an apology for bed Thousands of youth
of both sexes will this Winter take their first lessons
in depravity and crime under the impulse of desti-
tuition and despair.


This is fearful truth; but it is an equally inn
portant fact that Alms-giring ,ciH Nerer cure the
eril. If there were ten times as much of what
is vaguely termed Charity as there is, we doubt
that the aggregate of human wretchedness would
be sensibly diminished. For it must never be for
gotten that while there are thousands of sufferers
utterly guitIess and nobly deserving yet improvi-
dence is the general cause of destitution. Some,
indeed lack the capacity the faculty essential
to finding work and earning a livelihood in a great
city; but Incidence, inefeiency, waste of time, pro-
dgality, intemperance, debauchery, lie at the root
of most declensons into utter pauperism. The





artisan or mechanic in some factory village who
has lost good situation by drunken SPREE and
thereupOn plunged into great city to obtain work,
complains that he can get nothing to do, when he
had no right to expect anything in this quarter.
An Indian might as reasonably come to city and
complain of the dearth of game there, as a white
man or youth thrust hmselfintO a city and murmur
at finding no work there. There is almost always,
but especially at the beginning of Winter, an enor
nous oyerplus of labor seeking employment here;
he who don't know and calculate on this knows far
too little to qualify him for gaining livelihood in
our city. If two or three millions will insist on
living within sight of Trinity steeple, they must
stare each other out-that is to say one half of
them must starve out the other-for there is no
practicable alternative.


Far be it from us to stay the hand of Charity.
There win and must be Alms.giving; we do not
think there is too much of it, but we could wish it
more carefully, discreetly bestowed You can hard
ly do man greater wrong than to make him
think he can beg living or dollar more easily
than he can earn one. Our experience with beg
gars is toerably expensive; and is sad convic
ton that majority of the dollars given do real
good to the receiver nor to any one else. All who
have anything that they can spare should give lber
ally for the relief of the suffering; but be very
careful of gyiBg to strslling beggars. The best
way is to compute your income or available means,
purge away all needless outgOes, aud then Judge
how much you can fairly afford to contribute
toward the relief of the needy and suffering Hay-
ing decided this point, divide the sum among such
well-managed public charities as you have most
faith n-the Society for the Relief of the Poor, the
Home for the Friendless, the two Orphan Asyums,
&c, &c-saving fraction to be given personally
in cases of pressing want where there IS reasonable
assurance against impOsture.


But the truest and highest manifestation OF
charity is not made through Ans-gying. 1t is that
which teaches and helps the destitute to help them
selves. He who should plan and erect gigantic
workshop, wherein every one who could do anything
whatever would ind tempOraye employment at low
remuneration, would do more for the Poor than all
the John W. Farmers that ever established or sus-
aimed soup-houses. What We most urgently need
o-day is the nearest possible approximation to this
end. A workshop wherein each child Of ten years
could earn even ten cents per day, each robust
woman twenty FIVE, each man thirty to fifty, beng
paid the exact value of their labor or product a: the
close of the days work, would be worth ten soup
houses, no matter how gigantic; though the soup
house might be good thing combined with the
wOrk-hOuse, supplying nOurishing bowl at bare
cost to all who by labor had earned it. For the
great mass of our unfortunates are as devoid Of In