eir duty is to expose "bogus charities."
Of the latter there are only too many in this city. Numerous lazy
individuals make lucrative livelihoods by gathering funds for charities
which only exist on paper. These swindlers could be best exposed and
prosecuted by a "State Board."

CHAPTER XXXII.

HOW BEST TO GIVE ALMS?

"TAKE, NOT GIVE."

We were much struck by a reply, recently, of a City Missionary in East
London, who was asked what he gave to the poor.

"Give!" he said, "we never give now; we take!" He explained that the
remedy of alms, for the terrible evils of that portion of London, had
been tried _ad nauseam_, and that they were all convinced of its little
permanent good, and their great object was, at present, to induce the
poor to save; and for this, they were constantly urgent to get money
from these people, when they had a little. They "took, not gave!"

So convinced is the writer, by twenty years' experience among the poor,
that alms are mainly a bane, that the mere distribution of gifts by the
great charity in which he is engaged seldom affords him much
gratification. The long list of benefactions which the Reports record,
would be exceedingly unsatisfactory, if they were not parts and branches
of a great preventive and educational movement.

The majority of people are most moved by hearing that so many thousand
pairs of shoes, so many articles of clothing, or so many loaves of bread
are given to the needy and suffering by some benevolent agency.

The experienced friend of the poor will only grieve at such alms, unless
they are accompanied with some influences to lead the recipients to take
care of themselves. The worst evil in the world is not poverty or
hunger, but the want of manhood or character which alms-giving directly
occasions.

The English have tried alms until the kingdom seems a vast Poor-house,
and the problem of Pauperism has assumed a gigantic and almost insoluble
form. The nation have given everything but Education, and the result is
a vast multitude of wretched persons in whom pauperism is planted like a
disease of the blood--who cannot be anything but dependents and idlers.

In London alone, twenty-five million dollars per annum are expended in
organized charities; yet, till the year 1871, no general system of
popular education had been formed.

This country has been more fortunate and wiser. We h