Title: The Project Gutenberg eBook of Crimes Of Charity, by Konrad Bercovici.
Headings: CRIMES
of
CHARITY
BY
KONRAD BERCOVICI

CRIMES of CHARITY
BY KONRAD BERCOVICI
INTRODUCTION
CONTENTS
CRIMES OF CHARITY
CRIMES OF CHARITY
THE STOVE—A PARABLE
MY FIRST IMPRESSION
THE SECOND DAY
AT WORK
WATCH THEIR MAIL
THE ROLLER SKATES
THE TEST
SCABS
SAVING HIM
"TOO GOOD TO THEM"
ROBBERS OF THE PEACE
THE SIGN AT THE DOOR
WHAT IS DONE IN HIS NAME?
THE PICTURE
THE PRICE OF LIFE
AIR—FROM FIFTH FLOOR TO BASEMENT
THE INVESTIGATORS
THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR
MOTHER AND SON
CLIPPING WINGS OF LITTLE BIRDS
THE ORPHAN HOME
WHY THEY GIVE
THE KITCHEN
CHOCOLATE
OUT OF THEIR CLUTCHES
"THE HOME"
"BISMARCK"
TWENTY-ONE CENTS AND A QUARTER
VISITING DAY
EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES
MY LAST WEEK IN THE WAITING ROOM
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
AT NIGHT
THURSDAY
ONE OF OUR BIGGEST INDUSTRIES

Content: Like patriotism, charity is respectable, an institution of the rich and great—like 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 results—and 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."