Established by Edward L. Youmans
APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY
EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS
VOL. LV
MAY TO OCTOBER, 1899
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899
Copyright, 1899,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
WILLIAM PEPPER.APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
OCTOBER, 1899.
THE HELP THAT HARMS.
By the Right Reverend HENRY C. POTTER.
The analogies between the life of an individual and that otherorganism which we call civilized society are as interesting asfor any other reason because of their inexhaustible and ever-freshvariety. The wants, the blunders, the growth, the perils of theindividual are matched at every step by those other wants anddangers and developments which rise in complexity and in varietyas the individual and the social organism rise in intelligence, innumbers, and in wealth. It ought to interest us, if it never has,to consider from how much that is mischievous and dangerouswe should be delivered if we could revert from the civilized tothe savage state; and it is undoubtedly true that serious mindshave sometimes been tempted to question whether civilization isquite worth all that it has cost us in its manifold departures froma simple and more primitive condition.
Such a question may, at any rate, not unnaturally arise whenwe ask ourselves the question, What, on the whole, is the influenceupon manhood—by which I mean, here and for my present purpose,the qualities that make courage, self-reliance, self-respect,industry, initiative—in fact, those independent and aggressive characteristicsby which great races, like great men, have climbed upout of earlier obscurity and inferiority into power, leadership, anddistinction; what is the influence upon these of conditions whichtend, apparently by an inevitable law, to beget or to encourage indolence,inertia, parasitic dependence?
One can not but be moved to such a question by either of twopapers which have recently appeared in these pages: I mean that[Pg 722]entitled Abuse of Public Charity, by Comptroller Bird S. Coler;and that by Prof. Franklin H. Giddings, of Columbia University,on Public Charity and Private Vigilance. The community whosecapable and efficient servant he is has reason to be thankful that,in the person of a public official intrusted with such large responsibilities,it has a thoughtful and far-seeing student of problemswhose grave importance he has so opportunely pointed out. Itneeds the courage and the knowledge of such a one to affirm that"it is easier for an industrious and shrewd professional beggarto live in luxury in New York than to exist in any other city inthe world," which, if any social reformer or minister of religion ormere critic of the social order had said it, would probably havebeen denounced as an atrabilious and unwarranted exaggeration.
Concerning the comptroller's indictments of certain charitablesocieties and organizations as expensive mechanisms for the consumptionof appropriations or contributions largely spent up