Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/136

126 Still, the idea of an orphan asylum, managed by a society of ladies, is a very taking one. It will make room for a lady president, two or three lady vice-presidents, a lady secretary, a managing committee of ladies, and, of course, lady visitors. So the asylum is ushered into existence. Though modest in its beginnings, it is still beyond the real wants of the locality. The few known orphans are gathered in; and then the ladies, hungry for objects of benevolence, look round for more; rather than have empty rooms and a half-employed matron, they "rope in," on one pretext or another, children who are not orphans at all. Then they challenge public attention by annual reports and annual collections. Of course, every man in the community who wants to be credited with even a fragment of a soul must subscribe to the orphan asylum. It would be as much as one's social existence was worth to so much as hint a doubt as to whether an institution with a name so redolent of charity was really performing a useful office in the community. So the funds come in freely. The ladies, finding how prompt is the response to their benevolent appeals, conceive large and daring schemes. They are going to have a building now that will be a credit to the town, and that will not only rob orphanage of half its terrors, but widely advertise the willingness of the community to shoulder everybody's private burdens in the matter of children needing protection through the loss of parents. So a ridiculously large building goes up, to the infinite pride and satisfaction of the lady managers, and the silent wonderment of the meditative citizen with a gift for arithmetic and averages, but perhaps no experience as to how the orphan business like other businesses can be "boomed."

Now, the hard, bottom fact is, that fuss and vanity enter very largely into many of these schemes of so-called charity. They reek with sentimentality; and therefore it is no wonder that those who work them content themselves with reports at once jejune and nauseating—jejune in facts, nauseating in phraseology. The best possible way to check these flabby imitations of real charity would be to summon them somewhat peremptorily to give such facts as might furnish material for a really scientific study of their operations. They could not in decency refuse the demand, if made by a certain number of their respectable supporters; and yet we are convinced that, to comply with the demand in anything like an honest and thorough fashion, would be to show that their work was, in part at least, hollow and even hurtful. We believe that a vast amount of harm is being done, not only by thoughtless private charity, but by ill-organized, ill-directed, and over-ambitious corporate charity. However, let scientific thinkers, men who have taken to heart all that is implied in the great truth that two and two make four, settle right down to work on the reports of some of these pretentious concerns; and, where they find information lacking that ought to be given, quietly ask for it. The world would be none the worse for the puncturing of a few of the bubbles blown by vanity and floated by sentimentality; and the way to puncture them is to bring the "scientific method" to bear on their very unscientific operations.

"We are glad to see that the views expressed in these columns a year ago, in regard to the inexpediency of giving Federal aid to education in the South or anywhere else, are gaining ground among the most intelligent representatives of public opinion. The "Boston Herald," one of the most progressive papers in the country, which at one time favored the scheme, now opposes it. There is altogether too strong a disposition in certain quarters to bring the Federal Government into play for