Organized charity scrimped and icedIn the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.
Organized charity scrimped and icedIn the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.
Organized charity scrimped and iced
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.
"Never mind about the statistics;they only mean that these people are doing business on a larger scale than did the good people who could carry all the details in their heads. What I want you to notice is the way in which the scientific interest does away with that patronizing pity that was the hardest thing to bear in the old-time charities. These modern experts go about mending broken fortunes in very much the same way in which surgeons mend broken bones. The patient doesn't feel under any oppressive weight of obligation, he has given them such a good opportunity to show their skill. And the doctors have caught the spirit, too. Instead of looking wise and waiting for people to come to them in the last extremity, they have enlisted in Social Service.You should see them going about opening windows, and forcing people to poke their heads out into the night air, and making landlords miserable by their calculations about cubic feet, and investigating sweat-shops and analyzing foodstuffs. It's their way of bringing in a Merry Christmas.
"And the Spirit of Democracy will take you to workshops, where you may see the new kind of Captain of Industry in friendly consultation with the new kind of Labor Leader. For the new Captain is not a chief of banditti, interested only in the booty he can get for himself, and the new Leader is not a conspirator waiting for a chance to plunge his knife into the more successful bandit's back. These two are responsible membersof a great industrial army, and they realize their responsibility. They have not met to exchange compliments. They are not sentimentalists, but shrewd men of affairs who have met to plan a campaign for the common welfare. They don't take any credit for it, for they do not expect to give to any man any more than his due; yet there are a good many Christmas dinners involved in the cool, business-like consultation.
"Afterward, the Spirit of Democracy will take you to a church where the minister is preaching from the text, 'Ye are all kings and priests,' as if he believed it; and you will believe it too, and go on your way wondering at the many sacred offices in the world.
"You will hurry on from the church to shake hands with the new kind of politician. He is not the dignified 'statesman' you have read about and admired afar off, who has every qualification for high office except the ability to get himself elected. This man knows the game of politics. He is not fastidious, and likes nothing better than to be in the thick of a scrimmage. He has not the scholar's scorn of 'the aggregate mind.' He thinks that it is a very good kind of mind if it is only rightly interpreted. He has the idea that what all of us want is better than what some few of us want, and that when all of us make up our minds to work together we can get what we want without asking anybody's leave. He thinks that what all of uswant is fair play, and so he goes straight for that without much regard for special interests. It is a simple programme, but it's wonderful what a difference it makes.
"There never was a time, Scrooge, when the message of good-will was so widely interpreted in action, or when it took hold of so many kinds of men. Perhaps you wouldn't mind my reading another little bit from St. Augustine: 'Two are those to whom thou doest alms; two hunger, one for bread, the other for righteousness. Between these two famishing persons thou, the doer of the good work, art set. The one craves what he may eat, the other craves what he may imitate. Thou feedest the one, give thyself as a pattern to the other,so hast thou given to both. The one thou hast caused to thank thee for satisfying his hunger, the other thou hast made to imitate thee by setting him a worthy example.'
"It is this hunger for simple justice that is the great thing. And there are people who are giving their whole lives to satisfy it. What we need is to realize what it all means, and to get that joyous thrill over it that came to you when you found for the first time that life consisted not in getting, but in giving. It's a wonderful giving, this giving of one's self, and people do appreciate it. When you have ministered to a person's self-respect, when you have contributed to his self-reliance, when you have inspired him to self-help, you havegiven him something. And you are conscious of it, and so is he, though you both find it hard to express in the old terms. All the old Christmas cheer is in these reciprocities of friendship that have lost every touch of condescension. We need some genial imagination to picture to us all the happiness that is being diffused by people who have come to look upon themselves not as God's almoners, but as sharers with others in the Common Good. I wish we had a new Dickens to write it up."
"If you are waiting for that, you will wait a long time," said Scrooge.
"Perhaps so, but the people are here all the same, and they are getting on with their work."
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A