A fellow-worker from Chicago reviews the work of that city’s United Hebrew Charities, German Aid Society, and Salvation Army and says, “to hell with charity!”

‘Charity is a Gross Insult’ from Industrial Worker. Vol. 2 No. 40. December 22, 1910.

A FEW CRUMBS FROM THE MASTER’S TABLE

(By an Observer.) Christmas–the old pagan holiday of solstice; the turning of the sun-stolen by the Christians to serve in their interest; Christmas, the time of official and unofficial “charity,” will soon be upon us again.

Every capitalist dope sheet from the so-called “respectable” to the most downright yellow sheet of the Hearst type, will overflow with charity and good will to the poor and destitute in the name of the so-called lowly-born Jesus, that mythical personality in whose name more blood has ben shed than for any other cause, and whose existence is proved by as much or less historical evidence than that of Robinson Crusoe, Santa Claus or Pied Piper.

All charity to be given will be advertised sufficiently and all the dope sheets of the country will call on those who are a little slow to come and help give the poor one meal, or perhaps two if there is enough left.

The Salvation Army and other grafting, lying and thieving organizations which go under the name of charity and in the cloak of religion, will call on the people to send them money, eatables and other things for distribution among the “deserving” poor; and the dudes and dames of “society” will give “charity balls” to show the art of dressmaking and how little a parasitic female of the “better class” needs to wear to pass muster for those entertainments of the cream of “our” country’s population.

Now, all organized charity is a fake and a fraud, whether that old woman (charity) goes around in the cloak of religion, nationality, race or so-called humanity.

One–and a very plain–proof of it is that all charity organizations are connected with employment offices to furnish cheap labor to those who gives a few dollars a year for charity.

Here are some of the writer’s own observations with such charity organizations in Chicago:

The Christmas and other religious people and humanitarians say that there is more pleasure in giving than in receiving, and, as the writer–who, by the way, is only a common working stiff–is not a very pleasure-loving person. He is willing to let the others have all the pleasure of giving and he is satisfied with what little pleasure there might be in doing the receiving.

We will take up three of those charity organization which are typical of all the rest of them.

I. The United Hebrew Charities.

This is supposed to be the best of all charity organizations and generally supposed to help all, the poor Jewish people for the sake of their religious beliefs and they all being members of the same race.

That is not true. The Jewish capitalist has as much love for the Jewish wage slave as the other capitalists have for the wage slaves who are of their so-called religious beliefs.

There is more red tape with this so-called “charity” organization than with any other fake of like character, with the possible exception of the so-called local charity organizations. The purpose is to make you so disgusted with that bunch that you give up all hope of ever getting anything and leave them alone. They can tell the newspapers that there were “only” a few applications tended, which proves that we had a year of great prosperity, and the starving wage slaves could not or would not recognize how good they were off.

All it is good for is to furnish a few arrogant men with easy, good paying jobs and some well-known charitable persons with a poor excuse, such as: “I give to all charity organizations and you have to go to them for any assistance. Besides, I don’t know you. Goodbye.” Which is a piece of charity of a well-known, supposed to be progressive Jewish preacher (rabbi) of the city of Chicago; a man who looks decent at a long distance, but proves to be a false alarm when examined at close range.

More money is spent in paying the administrative and distributing expenses than for charity itself.

The employment office of that organization is like the rest of them. The wages for jobs to be had there are from $7.50 to $10.00 per week, and if there would be a job which would pay the magnificent sum of $2.00 for 10 hours or hard work I think those poor Jews would fight one another for it.

But, with all those faults, it is the best of the bunch, as it has the most money to distribute and comparatively the smallest number of applications for assistance.

As they are only dealing with Jewish people they are not as big a scab-herding concern as the Salvation Army, which is such a downright fraud that it makes one wonder how anybody can be such a numskull as to call the Salvation Army a charitable institution.

II. German Aid Society.

Another false alarm is the so-called German Aid (sic) Society. This society has an employment office, where you have to go if you want any assistance whatsoever. They have a German speaking policeman at the office to arrest you if you don’t behave nice as becomes a poor down and out wage slave.

The jobs are mostly farm work, and nobody who knows the least little bit about the small German farmer wants to work for him. Hard work, long hours, wages $15 and $20 per month and board, miserable treatment and possibly no money at all, as many of those farmers are dead beats. “Nothing but farmers—those who don’t want it can go away; office, clean out the office.” That is the stereotyped talk repeated about a half dozen times a day. And the office is open only from 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. every day, except Sunday, because those who come in the afternoon don’t want to work anyhow; as the old man says who tends the job-seeking bunch.

Next to the farmers’ jobs are the saloon porter and lunchman jobs. Those famous–or per week and fodder–no room–for 12 and 13 hours of daily work, and Sunday six and seven hours as a “day off.”

Grub insufficient, treatment sometimes as good as that of a day, but very often worse.

A little incident connected with the G.A.S. occurred two years ago. A female telephoned to the office for a janitor, who understood firing a steam boiler. Wages $4.00 a week and room, but nothing to eat. The old man in the office told her that no man could work for such low wages, as he would need all the money to eat on and would have nothing left for clothes, shoes and laundry. The female answered he should not eat so much. That was too strong even for the German Aid Society and the old man got quite wrought up about it. Charity!

Sometimes they want some tradesmen, as carpenters, painters, tailors, etc. The wages are about one-third the regular wages, and they exploit good mechanics who cannot as yet speak English sufficiently to work for any but German bosses or join the American Separation of Labor, where they are good Americans, who don’t want the d– foreigner, anyhow not before he can talk English to some extent.

There is less red tape in the German Society than in the so-called Jewish charity organization, but people who went up there only to seek employment got insulted at the office.

III. Salvation Army.

Of all the contemptible frauds in the name of charity and religion the Salvation Army is the limit.

It is itself one of the lowest, dirtiest exploiters of labor, the cheapest scab-herding concern and most barefaced hypocrite of which the human being could conceive.

Religion for them is the cloak to cover up theft, lying, embezzlement and life of the worst type and crookedness which would make politician blush, if such a thing were possible. To belong to the Salvation Army means to have reached the lowest station of degradation and to be below a yellow cur.

It is pestilence itself.

The writer of this went to the Starvation Army and by some miracle got something out of them without going to their meetings once or sleeping in their own lodging house, but got the money for a bed in some other lodging house.

One little incident which is typical came to his notice two years ago this winter.

A woman in this town gives a Christmas basket to the Salvation Army every year. For that great “charitable” act she gets people from there to work in her three-story flat as janitor and steam boiler tender. He has to clean stairs and halls and windows and tend to the 10-pound steam boiler in the basement. He gets for this work as wages $9 a month and a dirty hole in the basement to sleep in. He has to eat on the 30 cents a day he is getting, which is about 5 cents an hour, as he has about six hours of work every day, Sunday included.

But the woman is a “charitable” one and, if possible, she will beat you out of your wages, too, because she is a dead beat. One of her sons belongs to the Young People’s Socialist league.

If you refuse to accept such jobs you can starve before the Salvation (?) Army gives you anything, because you are too lazy and a bum who does not want to work.

The men who stand as Santa Clause on the street corners of this town collecting money for the Starvation Army get $1.00 a day. And the Starvation Army preys upon the poor; they live off the money given to them for distribution among the poor, and if it were not for those poor, miserable wretches what would become of the Salvation army?

The Salvation Army does not help the poor, but the poor uphold the Salvation Army. And such a fraud in called a “charity organization.” Charity is degrading for the receiver; he has to be a liar and a hypocrite to get anything; if he happens to be an Atheist he will get nothing unless he confesses to be a Christian; if the charity distributor–not the giver, because you do not know the giver, only the distributor–is an American patriot he–the applicant–has to make believe that he thinks this is the best country in the world, if not in the whole universe.

It makes sneaks, liars, hypocrites instead of men and women, out of the human beings who are forced to get in contact with this old prostitute called charity.

A poor workingman who works for small wages and who goes and pays for a meal or a bed for a fellow workingman who is penniless is more charitable than all charity organizations put together.

But to offer charity to the workingmen is adding insult to injury. The so-called charity organizations of the capitalists are like a highwayman who, after robbing his victim of everything he had, offers him 10 cents for a meal.

Charity is the gift of the master to the slave. How long will the workingmen stand for charity? How long until they will organize and get what they produce, hold the product of their toil and not ask the masters’ fake “charity”, organizations for a bone to be thrown to them if they are good slaves. Organize in the Industrial Workers of the World and fight for better conditions in the shops, mills, mines and factories, use direct action and sabotage like our French fellow-workers, the Syndicalists do, and tell the masters to take their fake “charity” and go to h– with it.

The Industrial Union Bulletin, and the Industrial Worker were newspapers published by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) from 1907 until 1913. First printed in Joliet, Illinois, IUB incorporated The Voice of Labor, the newspaper of the American Labor Union which had joined the IWW, and another IWW affiliate, International Metal Worker.The Trautmann-DeLeon faction issued its weekly from March 1907. Soon after, De Leon would be expelled and Trautmann would continue IUB until March 1909. It was edited by A. S. Edwards. 1909, production moved to Spokane, Washington and became The Industrial Worker, “the voice of revolutionary industrial unionism.”

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