Читать книгу Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World - Clifton R. Wooldridge - Страница 71

Charity covers a multitude of sins, almost as many backs, and quite a bit of graft.

Thoughtless giving is almost a crime. It serve to encourage idleness, and idleness is at the bottom of more crime than any other one thing, unless it is poverty.

Here is a story, given in the words of the man himself, which shows how the charity graft is worked in a number of ways. It covers several fields, and is so dramatic that it is given as the best example of all-round charity grafting:

"In experience in charitable work last summer I discovered some of these truths. It was the first time in all my life that I ever engaged in any charitable enterprise, and the needy that I sought to relieve was myself.

"Any one will beg, borrow, or steal in the name of charity. They may be as personally honest as a trust magnate—and they would be horrified at the idea of begging or stealing for themselves, but charity makes them respectable. At least this is the theory I worked on.

"I was broke and far from home. I decided that I would starve or steal rather than beg. Then a fellow I met accidentally put me on to a way of making a living.