on of distress in good times, when there is
the less poverty there is the more need of charity, rightly
understood; for charity would strive to promote the right use of wage,
as the best means of preventing distress and preserving the economic
well-being of the family.

Charity and socialism.

The theory of charity separates it entirely from socialism, as that word
is commonly used. Strictly socialism means, in questions affecting the
community, a dominant regard for the common or social good in so far as
it is contrary to private or individual advantage. But even so the
antithesis is misleading, for the two need not be inconsistent. On the
contrary, the common good is really and ultimately only individual good
(not advantage) harmonized to a common end. The issue, indeed, is that
of old Greek days, and the conditions of a settlement of it are not
substantially different. Using modern terms one may say that charity is
"interventionist." It has sought to transform the world by the
transformation of the will and the inward life in the individual and in
society. It would intensify the spirit and feeling of membership in
society and would aim at improving social conditions, as science makes
clear what the lines of reform should be. So it has constantly
intervened in all kinds of ways, and, in the 19th century for instance,
it has initiated many movements afterwards taken up by public
authorities--such as prison reform, industrial schools, child
protection, housing, food reform, &c., and it has been a friendly ally
in many reforms that affect industry very closely, as, for instance, in
the introduction of the factory acts. But it has never aimed at
recasting society itself on a new economic plan, as does socialism.
Socialism indeed offers the people a new state of social security. It
recognizes that the _annona civica_ and the old poor-law may have been
bad, but it would meet the objection made against them by insisting on
the gradual creation of a new industrial society in which wage would be
regulated and all would be supported, some by wage in adult life, some
by allowance in old age, and others by maintenance in childhood.
Accordingly for it all schemes for the state maintenance of school
children, old age pensions, or state provision for the unemployed are,
like municipal trading, steps towards a final stage, in which none shall
want because all shall be supported by society or be dependent on it
industria