Thus
she had no opportunity to judge for herself whether there was
any truth in the prejudice of the girls against these few and
feeble attempts to mitigate the miseries of a vast and ever
vaster multitude of girls. Adding together all the
accommodations offered by all the homes of every description,
there was a total that might possibly have provided for the
homeless girls of a dozen factories or sweatshops--and the
number of homeless girls was more than a quarter of a million,
was increasing at the rate of more than a hundred a day.
Charity is so trifling a force that it can, and should be,
disregarded. It serves no _good_ useful service. It enables
comfortable people to delude themselves that all that can be
done is being done to mitigate the misfortunes which the poor
bring upon themselves. It obscures the truth that modern
civilization has been perverted into a huge manufacturing of
decrepitude and disease, of poverty and prostitution. The
reason we talk so much and listen so eagerly when our
magnificent benevolences are the subject is that we do not wish
to be disturbed--and that we dearly love the tickling sensation
in our vanity of generosity.
Susan was compelled to the common lot--the lot that will be the
common lot as long as there are people to be made, by taking
advantage of human necessities, to force men and women and
children to degrade themselves into machines as wage-slaves.
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