Think of an investigator moving a consumptive family from the fifth floor to the basement, she who lectured on tuberculosis: "Light and air are the best cure for consumption." This is how she spoke, this is what she believed, but in practice! When a woman has to climb stairs from morning to night, then her only thought is how to make her own work easier; how to make a living easier.
Yes, but it costs the lives of women and children. And does the owner of mines think of that? And does the manufacturer think of that? And does the milkman, a devout church-goer, who baptises his milk, think of the children he is killing, of the future generations he is crippling? And does the canner think of that when he allows rotten meat to go into his cans? No. They are all making a living and do not believe that animals should be killed for food.
I knew a young lady who got a job as investigator--a nice young, sentimental girl. After a few months' work she was the terror of the poor and the pet of the Manager. She had reduced by half the list in her district. From a hundred applications she investigated not ten got relief. She would visit them day and night to find a reason why they should be cut off. The neighbours for ten blocks around would know that Mrs. So and So had applied to the institution. And when one day I told her she was not fit for such a position because she had no heart, and advised her to get a job at something else, she showed me her right hand. She had lost her fingers in an accident at an embroidery machine and she had to make a living!
Another young woman, who was engaged to marry a friend of mine and who got the position through me, lost the affection of her fiancé.
"She has entirely changed in the last few months," he told me. "She is suspicious, hard, cold and cynical. Her face has changed, she never laughs, never smiles."
Poor chap! He did not know the cause. I did.
The work, the surroundings, the system of organised charity, unfits them for anything, and among all the crimes of charity the one that stands out pre-eminently is that it ruins the lives of all the men and women who work in it. Only a God and an angel could remain good. But the gods are in the heavens and the angels are crucified.