The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 — John Shaqi
The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3Various
General
The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3
Various
American periodicals
In her fascinating book, _Twenty Years at Hull House_, Miss Jane Addams
tells of a visit to a western state where she had invested a sum of money
in farm mortgages. "I was horrified," she says, "by the wretched
conditions among the farmers, which had resulted from a long period of
drought, and one forlorn picture was fairly burned into my mind.... The
farmer's wife [was] a picture of despair, as she stood in the door of the
bare, crude house, and the two children behind her, whom she vainly tried
to keep out of sight, continually thrust forward their faces, almost
covered by masses of coarse, sunburned hair, and their little bare feet so
black, so hard, the great cracks so filled with dust, that they looked
like flattened hoofs. The children could not be compared to anything so
joyous as satyrs, although they appeared but half-human. It seemed to me
quite impossible to receive interest from mortgages upon farms which might
at any season be reduced to such conditions, and with great inconvenience
to my agent and doubtless with hardship to the farmers, as speedily as
possible I withdrew all my investment." And thereby made the supply of
money for such farmers that much less and consequently that much dearer.
This is quite a fair example of much current philanthropy.
We may safely assume that, however much this action may have lightened
Miss Addams's conscience, it did not lighten the burden of debt upon the
farmer, or make the periodic interest payments less painful, and it
certainly did put them to the trouble and contingent expenses of a new
mortgage. The moral burden was shifted, to the ease of the philanthropist,
and this seems to exhaust the sum of the good results of one well
intentioned deed. Do they outweigh the bad ones?
So, doubtless, there are among our friends persons who, upon proof that
factories in which they have been interested pay starvation wages, have
withdrawn their investments. And others who, stumbling upon a state
legislature among the productive assets of a railway corporation, have
sold their bonds and invested the proceeds elsewhere. It is a modern way
of obeying the injunction, "Sell all thou hast and follow me." And not a
very painful way, since the irreproachable investments pay almost, if not
quite, as well as those that are suspect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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