Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/319

Rh It is a difficult thing to bestow a charity in such a way as not to do harm to the beneficiary. In so far as it is practicable, there ought to be some kind of quid pro quo; aid granted should take the form of payment for some kind of service rendered, even if the service be of no value to the donor.

The city of Providence is moving in this direction. No donations are made to transient mendicants. Vagrants, tramps, and beggars are taken in charge by the police. Food and temporary lodging are provided by the city. A certain amount of labor is demanded of each able-bodied recipient of relief in payment of his entertainment, and the result is that that city is shunned by the professional pauper as if it were a pest-house.

Illustrative of another manner in which charities become perverted from their originally beneficent purpose, I would refer briefly to a report as to the London guilds, made by the City Companies Commission, published not long since in the "Pall Mall Gazette." These guilds or societies were originally benefit societies or charitable associations, and were under the care and protection of the city. In process of time they become the trustees of various bequests made for securing an annual income to some charitable institution or purpose. The guilds were simply trustees of this property, never its owners. As years passed by, the operation of natural causes enormously increased the value of the properties under their care, so that they are now estimated to be worth from S75,000,000 to $100,000,000, and the annual profits about 84,000,000. But the guilds as trustees only pay over to the charity funds the income on the original value of the bequests. As, for instance, where the rental of a certain realty was at the time the bequest was taken in charge by the guild $100, it is now $10,000; the guild, however, pays over to the charity the $100 and pockets the $9,900. Not a member of these guilds is entitled to a penny of this money; yet, by a system of "payment of privileges," which is a polite way of saying "the purchase of a right to steal," these guilds, besides spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of these trust-funds in banquetings and entertaining their friends in a sumptuous manner, pocket annually a handsome income for themselves.

The members of the guilds are, by virtue of said membership, invested with the municipal franchise, and are permitted to vote either in person or by proxy, and thus are admitted to the very select number who control the affairs of this immense metropolis. Mr. Gladstone not long ago characterized these guilds as associations for the cultivation of gastronomy, which occasionally gave a five-pound note to charity.

In a number of instances like provision was made for the support of churches and schools in particular localities. The changes caused by the demands of trade long ago deprived both churches and schools of their constituency. But the farce of maintaining religious worship