Charity or Justice

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 18, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 36.

Charity or Justice.

A recent communication in the Boston Transcript takes up very briefly the controversy which has been recently opened on this subject, and makes the plain and blunt inquiry, Why are there so many people who are subjects of charity? What is the real occasion of the so innumerable and extensive charitable institutions? It asks if they are generally from the laboring classes; and if they are indeed honest and hard-working people, what is the reason of their poverty and their necessity for help? The writer asserts of his own knowledge that they are not unfortunates, crippled, incompetent, incapacitated for self-support. He says he knows that the great majority are able-bodied, constant, and life-long toiling producers. Then why are they in need? He asks us to look at the great building just completed for the working-women of Boston, the Young Women's Christian Association Building. Why, he inquires, are not these girls paid self-supportingly for their labor? Why are they so poorly remunerated as to be in need of such benevolence, and why should there be any occasion for it? He reminds us of the old maxim, "Justice before generosity," and says with stinging truthfulness that the wealth that is bestowed as charity would, if it were paid in decent wages, be immeasurably better and more just for all concerned. The charities increase; the institutions by that name multiply; and the demand is constantly for more. Meanwhile poverty is on the increase. The monster grows by what it feeds upon. And yet the source of the evil is not touched. Evidently it will not be until justice comes before charity.