Konrad Bercovici - Crimes of Charity

CRIMES OF CHARITY

CRIMES OF CHARITY

WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY JOHN REED

NEW YORK ALFRED A. KNOPF MCMXVII

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To my Naomi

There is a literary power which might be called Russiana style of bald narration which carries absolute conviction of human character, in simple words packed with atmosphere. Only the best writers have it; this book is full of it. I read the manuscript more than a year ago, and I remember it chiefly as a series of vivid picturesa sort of epic of our City of Dreadful Day. Here we see and smell and hear the East Side; its crowded, gasping filth, the sour stench of its grinding poverty, the cries and groans and lamentations in many alien tongues of the hopeful peoples whose hope is broken in the Promised Land. Pale, undersized, violent children at play in the iron street; the brown, steamy warmth of Jewish coffee-houses on Grand Street; sick tenement rooms quivering and breathless in summer heatstarkly hungry with the December wind cutting through broken windows; poets, musicians, men and women with the blood of heroes and martyrs, babies who might grow up to be the world's greatstunted, weakened, murdered by the unfair struggle for bread. What human stories are in this book! What tremendous dramas of the soul!

It is as if we were under water, looking at the hidden hull of this civilization. Evil growths cling to ithouses of prostitution, sweat-shops which employ the poor in their bitter need at less than living wages, stores that sell them rotten food and shabby clothing at exorbitant prices, horrible rents, and all the tragi-comic manifestations of Organised Charity.

Every person of intelligence and humanity who has seen the workings of Organised Charity, knows what a deadening and life-sapping thing it is, how unnecessarily cruel, how uncomprehending. Yet it must not be criticised, investigated or attacked. Like patriotism, charity is respectable, an institution of the rich and greatlike the high tariff, the open shop, Wall street, and Trinity Church. White slavery recruits itself from charity, industry grows bloated with it, landlords live off it; and it supports an army of officers, investigators, clerks and collectors, whom it systematically debauches. Its giving is made the excuse for lowering the recipients' standard of living, of depriving them of privacy and independence, or subjecting them to the cruelest mental and physical torture, of making them liars, cringers, thieves. The law, the police, the church are the accomplices of charity. And how could it be otherwise, considering those who give, how they give, and the terrible doctrine of "the deserving poor"? There is nothing of Christ the compassionate in the immense business of Organised Charity; its object is to get efficient resultsand that means, in practise, to just keep alive vast numbers of servile, broken-spirited people.

I know of publishers who refused this book, not because it was untrue, or badly written; but because they themselves "believed in Organised Charity." One of them wrote that "there must be a bright side." I have never heard the "bright side." To those of us who know, even the Charity organisation reportswhen they do not refuse to publish themare unspeakably terrible. To them, Poverty is a crime, to be punished; to us, Organised Charity is a worse one.

John Reed.

CRIMES OF CHARITY

CRIMES OF CHARITY

There was once a man with a merciful heart who had a large fortune, and when he died he left much gold to his brother to use as he wished, and an additional amount in trust, to succour the poor. In his will he wrote:

"Build a big house and put therein a big stove and heat the stove well. On the door thou shalt put a sign in red letters that shall read: 'Ye poor of the land, come in and warm your bodies; ye hungry of the land, come and get a bowl of warm wine and a loaf of bread.' This will be my monument. I want no tombstone on the grave wherein my body will lie. Dust unto dust descends, but my soul will be alive in the blessings of the poor."

Peacefully the man died. They buried him in a lonely place under a tree.

Then the brother brought masons and carpenters and built a big house of stone, as was written in the will, and when the house was finished he called a painter and had painted in letters, red and big, so they could be seen from very far, the words his brother had written: "Ye poor of the land, come in and warm your bodies; ye hungry of the land, come and get a bowl of warm wine and a loaf of bread." And every one admired the good deed and many other rich men prepared their wills so as to provide help for the poor, that they might live eternally in their blessings.

The next day, when the stove, the big stove, was put in, the brother of the dead threw the doors open for a feast to the rich. And they all blessed the dead because of his goodness to the poor.

On the third day the doors were opened to the poor, and it so happened that the locusts had eaten up the wheat on the fields that year, so that there were many without bread and who had to seek shelter in other places. They passed by the red sign and came in to warm themselves and eat, and though busy with their own sorrows they blessed the dead one.

Many were the bowls of wine and loaves of bread given to the poor. But the brother was greedy and wanted all for himself, so day and night his constant thought was how to comply with the will of his brother and the sign on the door and yet not give bread and wine to the poor. He read the will again and the devil fastened him to the word "stove," and the devil within him said: "Stovestovethe stove will save you."