Preparations made for giving employment to the poor.
Difficulties attending that undertaking.
The measures adopted completely successful.
The poor reclaimed to habits of useful industry.
Description of the house of industry at Munich.
But before I proceed to give a more particular account of the
funds of this institution, and of the application of them, it
will be necessary to mention the preparations which where made
for furnishing employment to the poor, and the means which were
used for reclaiming them from their vicious habits, and rendering
them industrious and useful subjects. And this was certainly the
most difficult, as well as the most curious and interesting part
of the undertaking. To trust raw materials in the hands of
common beggars, certainly required great caution and management;
--but to produce so total and radical a change in the morals,
manners, and customs of this debauched and abandoned race, as was
necessary to render them orderly and useful members of society,
will naturally be considered as an arduous, if not impossible,
enterprize. In this I succeeded; --for the proof of this fact I
appeal to the flourishing state of the different manufactories in
which these poor people are now employed,--to their orderly and
peaceable demeanour--to their cheerfulness--to their industry,--
to the desire to excel, which manifests itself among them upon
all occasions,--and to the very air of their countenances.
Strangers, who go to see this institution, (and there are very
few who pass through Munich who do not take that trouble,) cannot
sufficiently express their surprise at the air of happiness and
contentment which reigns throughout every part of this extensive
establishment, and can hardly be persuaded, that among those they
see so cheerfully engaged in that interesting scene of industry,
by far the greater part were, five years ago, the most miserable
and most worthless of beings,--common beggars in the streets.
An account of the means employed in bringing about this change
cannot fail to be interesting to every benevolent mind; and this
is what has encouraged me to lay these details before the public.
By far the greater number of the poor people to be taken care of
were not only common beggars, but had been up from their very
infancy in that profession; and were so attached to their
indolent and dissolute way of living, as to prefer it to all
other situations. They were not only unacquainted with all kinds
of work, but had the most insuperable aversion to honest labour;
and had been so long familiarized with every crime, that they had
become perfectly callous to all sense of shame and remorse.
With persons of this description, it is easy to be conceived that
precepts;--admonitions;--and punishments, would be of little or
no avail. But where precepts fail, HABITS may sometimes be
successful.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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