To play Lord or Lady Bountiful is such a self-gratifying part. It is the traditional, the conventional part of the very rich toward the very poor. Beggars are so voluble in thanks. It sounds so well to talk of “my worthy poor,” of what “I am doing for charity.” So many hours that would otherwise be boresome can be filled with receiving and patronizing cringing, slathering paupers or with nosing about tenements, receiving on every floor noisy showers of blessings in exchange for less than the price of a supper after the theatre. The whole business lessens the vanity-disturbing doubts that sometimes will arise even among the very rich as to the validity of the distinctions in this Democracy between “upper class” and “lower classes.” In some cases the motive is higher. In many cases there is an admixture of the higher motive. But the persistence of the very rich in face of the plain showings of the harm they do makes it impossible entirely to acquit large numbers of them. The pauperization plants of plutocracy fall into three classes--the public, the semi-public and the private. The politicians have expanded, where they have not out and out established, the public plants. Instead of making the people realize the truth--that these plants are their property, paid for out of their wages and giving service to them not as charity, but as their hard-earned, paid-for right, the politicians turn them into favor-distributing centres, centres for the distribution of alms in exchange for political power. The semi-public plants for the manufacture of paupers are the gifts of very rich men, usually men who made their own money; after the first generation the very rich do not as a rule go in for large public gifts. It is never profitable or just to examine deep into motives; sufficient to say that, with a few exceptions, these semi-public philanthropic institutions for giving something in exchange for nothing are avoided by all but such of the poor as don’t mind thinking themselves paupers or being looked on and treated as paupers. Finally, there are the private pauperization plants. From them might be excepted those of the rich men and the rich women who have gone into the relief business in a systematic way and operate through thoroughly organized, carefully and competently conducted bureaus. Their theory of helping is not exactly consistent with the old American idea of “root hog or die,” but neither is it wholly exploitation of their own personal vanity without any regard to the merits of applicants. They give relief, but they try to make sure that relief is, according to their very liberal notion of necessity, needed.