ntellectuality and business ability; but it is a view quite
honestly held by many poor people who are obliged to receive charity
from time to time. In moments of indignation the poor have been known to
say: "What do you want, anyway? If you have nothing to give us, why not
let us alone and stop your questionings and investigations?" "They
investigated me for three weeks, and in the end gave me nothing but a
black character," a little woman has been heard to assert. This
indignation, which is for the most part taciturn, and a certain kindly
contempt for her abilities, often puzzles the charity visitor. The
latter may be explained by the standard of worldly success which the
visited families hold. Success does not ordinarily go, in the minds of
the poor, with charity and kind-heartedness, but rather with the
opposite qualities. The rich landlord is he who collects with sternness,
who accepts no excuse, and will have his own. There are moments of
irritation and of real bitterness against him, but there is still
admiration, because he is rich and successful. The good-natured
landlord, he who pities and spares his poverty-pressed tenants, is
seldom rich. He often lives in the back of his house, which he has owned
for a long time, perhaps has inherited; but he has been able to
accumulate little. He commands the genuine love and devotion of many a
poor soul, but he is treated with a certain lack of respect. In one
sense he is a failure. The charity visitor, just because she is a person
who concerns herself with the poor, receives a certain amount of this
good-natured and kindly contempt, sometimes real affection, but little
genuine respect. The poor are accustomed to help each other and to
respond according to their kindliness; but when it comes to worldly
judgment, they use industrial success as the sole standard. In the case
of the charity visitor who has neither natural kindness nor dazzling
riches, they are deprived of both standards, and they find it of course
utterly impossible to judge of the motive of organized charity.

Even those of us who feel most sorely the need of more order in
altruistic effort and see the end to be desired, find something
distasteful in the juxtaposition of the words "organized" and "charity."
We say in defence that we are striving to turn this emotion into a
motive, that pity is capricious, and not to be depended on; that we mean
to give it the dignity of conscious duty. But at bottom we distru