Classic Audiobook Collection - The Beggars of Paris by Louis Paulian ~ Full Audiobook [history]

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

The Beggars of Paris by Louis Paulian audiobook. Genre: history In The Beggars of Paris, Louis Paulian turns a hard, clear eye on a side of the city most polite society prefers not to see: begging as an organized trade. Writing from firsthand investigation, Paulian explains how he was drawn into the question of mendicity and then follows his inquiry into the streets, doorways, and church porches where appeals for alms are staged. He distinguishes the truly destitute from the practiced impostor, showing how convincing costumes, rehearsed stories, and carefully chosen locations can turn pity into steady income. With a reporter's attention to detail, he maps the working life of the professional beggar, from the roaming 'active service' to the fixed posts of the 'sedentary service,' and sketches the recurring 'mendicant types' the public is trained to recognize - and misread. The book's central tension is practical as much as moral: how can ordinary people help suffering without financing exploitation? Paulian critiques charitable societies and proposes concrete reforms, including replacing coins with tickets, organizing aid through work, and reshaping the role of police and poor-law administration. Part social anatomy, part policy argument, this is a provocative study of compassion, deception, and responsibility in modern city life. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 00 (00:01:39) Chapter 01 (00:50:04) Chapter 02 (01:20:27) Chapter 03 (02:16:33) Chapter 04 (03:04:21) Chapter 05 (04:08:29) Chapter 06 (05:01:40) Chapter 07 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

the beggars of paris paris quimandie translated from the french of m louis paulain by lady hirschol preface i venture to translate this book by m louis because it seems to me to be an eminally useful as well as an interesting work on a subject which is of no less moment in england than in france here is in france begging is made a profession and it is very important that the public should realize the fact that thoughtless almsgiving instead of relieving misery, promotes mendicity. The author of Paris-Cleanantees speaks with the experience of one who has put the question of mendicity to a personal test, and who has beaten the beggar in the various branches of his own trade. No one, therefore, is a better authority on the subject, and M. Louis-Poulain's experiences will, I am sure, be welcome in England. Good work has been done in the direction indicated by M. Pauline,

by the charity organisation and mendicity societies, and as regards, infants suffering by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, but much remains to be accomplished. Professional beggars still abound in England, and too ready in the area is lent to their appeals. A.A.H. End of Preface. Section 1 of The Beggers of Paris by Louis Pauline. This is a Librevox according. All Librevox recordings in the public domain. For more information on a volunteer, please visit Librevox.org.

Recorded by Leon Harvey. The Beggars of Paris Chapter 1 How I was led to become a beggar Ten years ago, putting into practice advice often given by M. Jules Simon, I resolved upon an undertaking which, at first sight, did not seem to be a very complicated one. I tried to ascertain the total sum which passes every year in Paris, by way of voluntary gifts, from the pockets of the so-called rich into the pockets of the so-called poor. Do you comprehend the nature of this undertaking?

i left to one side the budget de la assistance public which is so important i took no heed of all the sums voted by parliament the general council of the scene or the municipal council of paris in aid of extreme destitution i wished only to find the total amount given voluntarily to the poor whether in the shape of a ten franc piece representing the subscription of a member of a charitable society or ten cent times given to a peg over the street It is now ten years since I began to make this calculation, and I have not yet been able to finish it, because not a week passes, scarcely indeed a day, in which I am not made aware of the existence of new charitable society. Consequently, I find fresh figures before me to add to my son, and yet if I were to conclude my calculations now, it would be easy to prove, particulars in hand, that the sum exceeds ten million francs, ten millions renewed year by year, and which, as those who give

it suppose is destined to relieve misery in Paris. It would seem that with this enormous sum, added to the 50 millions of the assistance public, there ought not to be, I do not say, one poor man, there will always be rich and poor, as there will always be people with intelligence and those of weak intellect, but one miserable being deserving of pity to whom society could not immediately give the necessary relief. I do not know whether real destitution is greater today than it was 15 or 20 years ago, but it is quite certain that the number of beggars who ask alms in the streets from passers-pie has never been so great, and so in proportion as it receives intended to alleviate distress increase, the distress itself seems to develop.

In face of this surprising fact, I find myself in the same situation as the engineer who, having constructed a channel to bring water from its source to a town, discovers with surprise when his work is completed, that all the water that rushes in full volume into one end of his conduit only few drops arrive at the town. Certainly it must have found a means of escape, the engineer remarks. The same idea occurred to me, and during several years I have sought to find a leakage by which the water of Parisian charity runs out and is lost. This leakage I believe I have found. My purpose is to make a known, and to propose a means of preventing it, for as long as the leakage exists, though private charity may do all in its power to fill the pipe, and the

few drops of the beneficent water will arrive at their destination. The leakage, as everyone can guess, is represented in the present case by those who fain poverty, by those who live upon what a writer has charmingly called paupericulture, by those whom a Belgian magistrate has termed the aristocrats of modicity, by those in fact whom are called by their true name the robbers of the poor. It occurred to me that it would be well to study minutely these pretended poor. In order to do this, I began by interrogating competent authorities. I consulted the police officials who arrest beggars, the magistrates who convict them, the governors of jails under whom the sentences carried out, the members of the benevolent societies who assist them as they

leave the prison. The arminers, of all creeds who tried to elevate them, the members of the charity boards or of private charitable societies who afford them relief, and the doctors of the hospitals where they cared for when ill. I paid many visits to the prefecture of police, to the tribunal of the Seen, and to the house of detention. In a word, I've exhausted all the means of information, which are at the disposal of man who is inquisitive and determined to solve the problem he has set himself. This vast inquiry had not produced the result I expected. I decided to have recourse a personal experience, and just that I had before become a rag-picker in order to study the habits of the rag-pickers, so one fine day I became a beggar to study the habits of the beggars.

Thanks to special protection, and why should I not acknowledge it? Thanks to certain subterfuges, I succeeded at the outset and getting myself officially inscribed at the prefecture of police on the list of organ grinders and street seniors. Then, little by little, as my experience grew, I enlarged a circle of my acquaintance, I made friends for myself in the most questionable quarters. I frequented taverns to the lowest description, and having finished my education, I was able during months together to trade with impunity on public charity in the streets of Paris. By turns crawling cripple, blind, street singer, carriage door operator, mechanic at work, unemployed professor, paralytic, deaf and dumb. I have had every infirmity, and have practised every kind of deceit.

Success always intended me, and once only was I molested by the police. That happened one day at noon when I was begging under the port to the Church of St. Germandie Press, and the policemen, who they arrested me, acknowledged directly afterwards that my rest was entirely due to the exaggeration of my disguise. The result of the personal inquiry I have alluded to is embodied in this book. I believe that its publication will be a really useful work. my aim is both to expose an evil and to suggest a remedy the majority of the Parisian press have approved of their campaign have undertaken and i thank them sincerely some journals have however accused me of want of heart they have alleged they sought to dry up the sources of private charity and that i advise the citizens to keep their pence that is a mistake i never said cease to give i say give differently if i may judge from the threatening letters which anonymous mendicants send me I have every right to think that the remedy I propose will be Ephesus.

It is for my readers to judge. Chapter 2. The False and the True Poor Everyone knows that the articles from 274 onwards of the Penal Code Punishment Dicity. Begging is forbidden, and there is begging in every street. In 1828, M. Debellime, prefect of police, in a circular address to his commissioners, recommended them to apply the law. with the perseverance equal to the persistence of the mendicants.

Alas, the perseverance of the police has lamentally failed. On the other hand, the persistence of the mendicats has only increased, and we greatly fear that, in spite of all the praiseworthy efforts that have been made for some time by the prefect of police to repress mendicity in the public thoroughfares, in this struggle between the administration and the mendicats, the latter have had the upper hand. In fact, the police agents are in despair, and how can it be otherwise? Three-fourths of the men who they arrest are set at liberty either at once, by the prefecture of police or by the examining magistrate, or have committed for trial by the courts. Ask a policeman why he does not take into custody that beg her on the boulevard who intercepts every passerby, holding out his hand more persistently the more he receives.

He would answer, I have already arrested him five times, nay, ten times, and he always begins again, and the policeman is only telling the truth. Does it follow that the police authorities or the courts are to blame? By no means. They are the victims of a condition of things for which they are not entirely responsible. They are powerless when they have to deal with the professional beggar, and they have not the means of helping those who are really in want, and who only beg when they are starving. I have more than once witnessed the examination of mendicants,

who, after having been arrested in a public thoroughfare and having been detained by a police commissioner, are sent to the house of detention of the prefecture. The magistrate or his subordinate proceeds with their examination and arrests with this functionary to determine whether the culprit shall be immediately set at liberty or whether he shall be committed at trial. The detention generally lasts for 24 hours.

During that time, the investigation is being completed. The magistrate has before him the papers relating to the accused with the particulars of the case. The report of the agent who made the arrest and the facts collected by the police. Then the beggar is brought in. He is an old hack. His name is Louis-René-Pasquare. He is 60 years of age and has been 54 times convicted. Another is called Hubert Nekuludat, 68 years of age, with 56 convictions.

Another of the name of Kulul, 67 years old, has been convicted 38 times. These are men who absolutely refuse all work and a voice lived upon society. It is useless to preach to them. He has useless to preach to them. to try to find them work. Their mind is made up. Say what you will. Do what you will. These wretched creatures intend to live without working, and they are candid enough to tell you, so plainly. The Chef Tuttson, Bureau de la Prefecture de police, there's no opinion but to refer their cases to the court. And they are condemned to the maximum penalty of six months' imprisonment. There's the severest penalty which can be imposed.

Here is another beggar. This time it is a woman. She acknowledges the fact that alleged against her. She was begging at the time she was taken up. This is not her first appearance before the magistrate. She is there for the fourth, the fifth, a, the sixth time. She does not deny it, but she proceeds to explain her position. She has three children, she is a widow, or she is deserted by her man. She pleased that she is without work, and no one will employ her because of her three children. She is quite ready to accept any kind of employment they may be given her, and finally she has never been convicted. Must she then go and throw herself into the scene?

The magistrate examines the papers, and finally says that all her assertions are accurate. This woman is honest and unfortunate. What is he to do? Is he to commit her for trial? Is so what will become of the three children, and what will become of the mother herself when she comes out of prison? Is he to set her at liberty, as he has already done five or six times? in that case who could doubt that the woman would be inevitably doomed to return to begging. This is just one of those very numerous cases which daily torture the kindhearted men at the prefecture of police

who perform there the delicate functions I've just mentioned. One must see them at work to understand the numberless difficulties, but practical impossibilities which arise to defeat their kind intentions. This woman's case, you would say, is rather one for the assistance public than for a prison. plainly it is so, but the assistance of public which finds itself already overworked is obliged to submit to definite rules in dispensing relief. It requires certain conditions of age, nationality and dormicile, and if our beggar does not fulfill those conditions, should apply at the office of this great organization in vain. Oh, for an institution which would provide honest work and which would receive anyone at any hour, whether men, women or children, French men or foreigners, young or old. The prefecture of police could then say that, woman, go to such place.

They will make you work. Yes, and work hard, but in exchange they will give you and your children food and lodging. Of the simplest, it is true, but you will be able to leave the institution when you have found work that is more remunerative. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, this kind of hospitable institution does not exist. There are very few charities which assist in offering work. Some only receive men, some only receive women or children. How are mothers to be separated from the children? their children. The head officer of the pre-fetral police may procure immediate relief for this poor

beggar, sometimes indeed helping her from his own pocket for the fund at his disposal is very limited, and then set her at liberty. But in two days of gratuity will be spent and the woman will reappear again before the magistrate, who will in the end commit her for trial. Go to the law court so you may witness the repetition of the same scene. I should almost quote the same drama, because whatever may be this sentence pronounced by the court, it will lead to a final catastrophe. Supposing the woman is acquitted, she will return to the public highway to beg. In this case, the denouncement is only postponed. If, on the contrary, the woman is convicted, then harm is done.

It irrevocable harm, for this woman has three children, the anger still in arms. There she is in prison with her child. During a fortnight or a month she suffers a penalty of the law in the worst possible company. She will live amongst thieves, foreigners and fallen women, and while she watches the infant at her breast wasting away, she will want her actually what has become of her two other children, whom she has left alone in the little lodging. Anxiety will give place to terror of those children are girls. At the end of a month the prison door is opened, and the poor woman comes out embittered against society, branded in the eye of employers of labour, who henceforth will refuse to give her occupation,

physically, innovated, morally, contaminated, without a farthing in her pocket, and perhaps without a single human being to help her. Society reproached her for not working, and to correct her instead of listening her difficulties, it is augmented the number of obstacles which she will have to surmount before she can be in the way to do well. Society believes it has done its duty. I do not share that opinion, and I will point out in the second part of this work, the remedy which my humble judgment is prescribed both by justice and by the interests of society. I could multiply infinitely these examples and prove that today in France, the father of the family, ill and overwhelmed with a number of children, the mother recovering from her confinement,

with no strength to gain her living, the consumptive, the blind and the old, are in many cases abandoned to themselves. Society seems to say to them, I admit that you are not able to work. I'm not a position to help you, but I forbid you to beg and will remind you that suicide is a crime in the side of God. And yet France is the most generous country in the world. There is no country in which the rich better to understand the charitable duties towards the destitute. Private chariots exist in every form. It's a heart for every misfortune. He is endowed with gigantic resources and yet is powerless. Why is this? Just because the millions of francs

which are distributed instead of serving to relief real want are devoured by the false poor who are thus enabled not only to live without working, but sometimes even to make a for with the money intended for the really destitute. Chapter 3. Starting a career An English bishop, who was a man of large heart and much common sense at the end of his career, and just before his death, addressing the friends who were present at the solemn hour, I said, I do not think I can reproach myself with having ever given a father into a beggar in the street, and with the money which I thus saved, I started useful works, which I urge you to continue by the same means.

These simple words deserve to be remembered by all those who are occupied in repressing mendicity, for they suggest at once the evil and the remedy. It annoys us to see the Paris streets full of beggars. We accuse the administration of weakness and of incapacity, while we fail to discover that all, members of Parliament, magistrates, municipal councillors, members of charitable societies, and private individuals, are doing as much as is humanly possible to encourage, develop, and subsidise mendicity. To pass by, that poor tattered creature, shivering with cold and with chattering teeth,

that poor mother who was seated on her porch nursing her child, that crawling cripple, who, with difficulty, drags himself through the street, that epileptic who falls down in a fit before the door of a great hotel or of a well-frequited pastry-cook shop. All these beggars, in a word, who, with beseeching voice, implore your charity, seem to be miserable people who deserve pity and assistance. Und deceive yourselves then. Ten times out of twenty, these wretched people are traitors who practice a profession, and a profession which is often lucrative.

I say profession, and I use the word designerly, for it would be an error to believe that in order to become a real mendicant, worthy of the name, you need do no more than stand with your back against the war and hold out your hand to those who pass you. That was a primitive beggar. when the art was in its infancy. But today Mendicity, like all other professions, has made progress, and, just as there are elementary and finishing schools for every branch of human industry,

so there are apprenticeship and finishing schools for those who wish to make a career in Mendicity. The trade, too, is improving day by day, and the mendicants, who have already in Paris their restaurants, their clubs, and their registry officers, will perhaps before long fall themselves into a syndicate, so as to be able better to defend the interests of the corporate. and when that happens they will not look in vain for someone who will come for to defend before the public authorities what he will term their just rights if poverty is a situation said alphonscar mendicity is a position alphonscar was right and to prove it i need only place before my readers different types of bevers to show how in the good town of paris a nearer do well may each drink and sleep at his ease by practising the profession of begging I begin by introducing to you the recruit of this trade, a fine, powerfully built young man of twenty.

He could work, but he is lazy in a drunkard. The discipline of the workshop or the manufacturing is distasteful to him. Besides, to get into either a workshop or manufactory, to find work, he must seek it, he must stir himself, he must be ready at times to accept very hard conditions, he must have pluck and prove his goodwill. But pluck and goodwill are wanting him, and work instead of seaming a wholesome necessity. to which all men are subject is a drudgery to be afforded at all costs. Do not trouble yourself to tell him that work elevates a man, that it brings him happiness, that it constitutes the only guarantee of his liberty and self-respect,

and that there is no money more precious, more sacred, and that one treasures more than that which has been earned by hard labour. You will only waste your time and not be understood. More than once already, after having missed work on Monday and even on Tuesday also, the man has to work on Wednesday weary, out of condition and without a farthing in his pocket. The employer to whom he has applied has refused to engage him for the good reason that all intelligent and honest employers must prefer a sober, regular, efficient worker to one who, to use the same expression, a unemployed done's the main, that is to say, objects to working. A nooness Isler goes to the public house for his midday mail,

by the public housekeeper who knows this customer, and who has long waited for the payment of an old account, seeing that the man, instead of bringing an installment of his debt, comes to ask him to add to it, refuses point-blank to give him food. It is in vain that the fellow insists, it is in vain that he promises to mend his ways by beginning to work, and that he will bring the full amount of the money due within a fortnight.

The public housekeeper knows better than any one, one else, the value of these drunken promises. For two months, he says, I have already allowed you credit. Every fortnight I have had to threaten you to get you to pay a small installment. That is at an end. I prefer losing what you were made to continue to have to do with such a customer. The day before is a day, you receive a fortnight's wages, and instead of coming to settle your account here, you spent on your pay at another public house. Today you have not a penny left and you were hungry, all the worse for you. I tell you, you have nothing more on credit.

I have said it, and said it once for all. You can go away. I have witnessed such a scene as this more than once. You will say this of no importance, but you are mistaken, greatly mistaken. The scene may be described in a sentence. Here is a man overboard. When at sea the terrible cries heard. A man overboard.

Everyone vies with his neighbour in courage and sometimes heroism in trying to rescue the comrade who is battling with the way. from all sides friendly hands are stretched out to the shipwrecked mariner in this case however no one will come to the rescue of the drowning man it is for him and him alone to get himself out of his difficulties yes the refusal of the public housekeeper to harbour any longer a lazy good-for-nothing fellow is for this man nothing short of a shipwreck for remember the public housekeeper is the last lose all patience and before taking advantage of him the workman spoken of has taken advantage of his parents his friends, his employer, and everyone else. The public housekeeper alone has remained faithful to him, and this fidelity has lasted only so long as he hoped to realize some profit. But now this hope has vanished.

A workman is societally a bad customer, who gives more trouble than he brings profit, and the public housekeeper turns him out of the house. Once more, I repeat, he was a man overboard. How shall he escape from the catastrophe? With courage and fortitude, this drowned, man might reach the shore, raise himself and return at work. Unfortunately, ten times out of twenty, instead of appealing to such normal sentiments,

he prefers to take his chance in another line. He finds myself at two o'clock in the afternoon, hungry and without money, and perhaps without shelter. Why, he argues, should I not try begging? What, you, at the age of twenty? You are strong, you possess, you are ten fingers, and you would go and beg? The idea will perhaps bring the blood to the man's face. This is a critical moment. A struggle takes place in the depths of his conscience.

If he rises victorious from the struggle, he is saved. If he succumbs, he is lost for a river. The unfortunate man succumbs. Watch him. He passes quickly through the well-frequent streets and directs his steps to the boys de Blon. He seeks deserted avenues, looking anxiously round him like one who is contemplating a crime. He scrutinizes the faces of the passers-by. suddenly here coasts one of the people he meets on the road probably a woman or an old man he takes off his cap and with shame holds at his hand saying in an embarrassed voice madame sir i am a labourer out of work i am hungry give me a piece of bread

the lady passes him without giving anything the gentleman answers perhaps you lazy fellow are you not ashamed to beg at your age this is a hard word and yet it may prove a blessing for sometimes it will act like a lash of the whip under which the exhausted horse makes a last effort but a man has felt the insult without flinching he has gone in his way and he's held out his hand to ten twenty thirty people and has received arms he may well pity him for that man is lost he is drowned It is all over with him. He is only twenty, and to the end of his days he will live at the expense of others. The critical moment has passed. All the efforts you may make to raise him will be futile. Society counts one bigger more, and all you who work have another mouth to fill at your cost. The next day, as you may well suppose, it is not to a workshop that our friend will direct his steps.

What is the use of working when one can get money without fatigue? A man who was held at his hand and received arms is like one who has taken some lottery tickets and gained a prize. Both are lost because both are on the road that leads to an abyss. Both have forgotten that the only way to live and even get rich is to work. So this man has enrolled himself in the corporation of beggars. But he does not yet understand the trade. He is ignorant of its tricks. He will have to begin at the beginning and,

Tyroly Paird de Bridge. Terrar-le-peered divich means to pull the bell-rope in rather isolated quarters, where the bell handle is often a hind's foot. Our apprentice will make his debut at Nivelli, for instance. After choosing the street, he wanders down it, ringing at all the doors. I am a poor workman without work, he mumbles. I have had nothing to eat for two days. In these unfrequited streets, houses have not always a concierge. It is a cook who opens the door, and the cook is a kind heart.

all the more generous as she does her charity with her master's money. She gives a penny or a piece of bread with some scraps of meat. In the course of a morning, a beggar will have rung at 200 doors, and as statistics of which we shall speak later in which have the more weight as they are the work of the beggars themselves, show that there is a good door in every four. For every 200 doors at which our beggar rings, he will have received arms at 50, either in money or kind, by about two o'clock the day. day is over. With the bread and the meat he can make a good enough breakfast and with the 12 or 15 pence produced by this begging from house to house he will go and spend

the evening in some low place of entertainment in the Rue de Iglese or the Rue St. Maccourt. Where on fivepence worth of casset-poitri or of Tord-Boyot, a man can easily get drunk while in a well-worned hall he is a spectator of a variety entertainment in which strolling singers, wonderful women, and fortune-tellers take by turns the first part. Towards Middard our beggar will retire to rest in a lodging, where he will lose no time in making the acquaintance of a comrade, who will perhaps become his partner, and bring into the business his local knowledge, his protection, and his influence.

The next day they will begin again in another quarter. If it happens to be a wide avenue in one of those streets where the houses have six stories and are guided by a concierge, the work must be somewhat. somewhat altered. Here it is useless to ring the bell, for the concierges are quick in distinguishing a beggar from a needy person, and are not easily taken in. What is to be done? It is very simple. Instead of ringing at the doors of houses, they go into the shops. Look at that beggar who walks zigzag crossing the street continually. He visits all the

beggars, and all the butcher's begging a piece of bread for God's sake. How could a beggar's wife, whose shop is filled with bread of all shapes and sizes, or a butcher displays his shop-front lodgings of beef and legs on mutton, refuse a piece of bread, or a penny to an unfortunate man who pretends he is dying of hunger, whose expression is not always reassuring, and who in a day of riot might very well remember the refusal he had met with. After all, that small charity will not cost them much. The beggars adopted the habit of adding it in advance to the customer's bill. For a long time now in Paris The two-pound loafers weighed only 900 grams

It is you and I who pay in advance for the beggar As to the butcher he repays his generosity By adding a little more coarse meat to your broth So you see that an avenue day is worth as much As a day of the door bell ringing A father often goes out begging with one or two children He stands under an entrance porch with some empty bags The children with a basket on their arms

scote begging from shop to shop. When the basket is full they empty it into the bags and set to work again. At the end of some hours the bags overflow and the bread you believe has gone to appease some poor child's hunger who pretended not to have eaten since the previous day is sold to breeders of chickens and rabbits and to the coachment of middle-class families who use it to give a showy appearance to their master's horses. At the end of six weeks a beggar will have entered his apprenticeship. Now you're you passes as a journeyman. The moment has arrived for him to choose his line of business. He is fitles on the ladder, and he has entered upon a career. It is for him to choose between active and sedentary service, but it is to say to become a strolling beggarer or a beggar stationed

at a fixed place. Chapter 4. The Active Service Active Service, as a name sufficiently indicates, consists in begging at people's houses. Sedentary Service, on the contrary, oblige as those who charge. choose it to select a good spot at some point on a public thoroughfare and to stay there to the end of their lives. In the first case, the beggar goes to seek a client, in the second he waits for him after placing himself in his path. Active service demands youth, intelligence and often instruction, and to succeed in the trade one must know not only how to lie shamelessly, but also to preserve an impassive countenance, and always to act one's part. While the uninitiated beggar will ring at every

door, the old hand only rings at the likely doors, at those where he is certain to succeed, for remember, this beggar is a traitor, and to him time is money. But it is not sufficient to know the likely doors. He must also know how to make the best possible use of them. That is the art. No doubt if you ring at a good door, the cook or the footman will give you the habitual gratuity, a penny or a piece of bread. But if you know how to evade the eye of the concierges, and by stepping past the servants to reach the masters and interest them in your wretched condition. Why? Then the trade becomes lucrative, for it is no longer pence but francs and sometimes pieces of gold that you reap. To interest the citizen in his wretched condition is a difficult

problem that has to be solved. Here we see the first perfected wheel of that great machine, when to the name of mendicity, aims at exploiting the kind public. This wheel is the big game and the little game. here we are before a fine mansion. The property of this mansion is no doubt a well-to-do man who will not refuse a retuity to a poor wretch. But, says a beggar to himself, if I could find out this man's weak point,

I should certainly deal with him more easily. To present oneself in the Rue de Lille at the house of a clerical reactionary, whose estate was destroyed by the commune, and to say to him I am a former communist, I was transported to New Caledonia. I have letters in my pocket from the late Felix B. whose friend I was would not be in a good way of starting business.

But to appear before at this time reactionary in the guise of a good father of a family who committed a fault in his youth and he wishes to repair it by legalizing a union that the church has not blessed would probably be the means of gaining a better reception. Bedgers who are philosophers have realised and have said to themselves that just as there is a buttin for men of commerce and a tilt Paris for men of the world, it would be very useful to have an almanac of addresses. for the mendicants use. This new kind of botan has been started under the title of the Little Game and the Big Game. The Little Game costs three francs. It gives you the names and addresses of hundreds of charitable people. The Big Game costs six francs, naturally is more complete. Not only does it contain a larger number of addresses, but each name is added to a small biography,

the name and address of the charitable person, the hour at which one may call his religion, political opinions, habits, nothing is forgotten. Thanks to this valuable book, the beggars part is much simplified, for he can ascertain even the small peculiarities of the person at whose daughter he is going to knock, and how he should present himself. Let us open the big game at random. This is what we read.

Mr. A, rich proprietor, readily gives her five-franc piece, pays the rent divinely rejected. Mr. B, never gives money, ask for clothes. Mr. C, widow, only concerns herself about children. Ask for a lay-out for the baby and some line and for the money.

one can also obtain a ticket for sealed milk for the baby by saying it is ill. Mr. D, Religious House. He is interested in legalizing irregular marriages, favors baptisms and first communions. Get yourself reclothed from head to foot. Mr. E. Protestant. Dresses children to send them to school. Gives tickets for shoes and clothes, demands the beggar's address and sends for particulars. Arrange with a friend to give the address of an honest house. Mr. R. F. Old radical Rews.

Republican, very rich, one may describe oneself as a victim of the reactionaries, and Clujie, et cetera, et cetera. With this key, the problem is soon solved. I beg of a call in the rue de lille, cleanly but miserably dressed, and as soon as he is in the presence of the master of the house, he will tell his story, with imperturbable confidence. A professor, an ex-Mindicant retired from business, has previously given him some lessons, and has taught him the tone to use in reciting his part. The man has profited by his lesson, for the pupil recites as well as his master. He says he has not come with any intention of asking arms. Thank God his work so farces to make both ends meet, if nothing unusual happens.

Unfortunately, just at this moment he is in a difficulty, and is precisely because of that difficulty that he has come to ask a vice-in-ster-ex whose kind-heartedness is well-known in the That is all. And our beggar tells how he has a wife and two children and our happy years in his home. But the union has not been blessed by the church any more than it has been sanctioned by the Marrier. He wishes to make this state of things, which troubles him regular, and to have a word of recommendation from Monsua di Cure, who, besides his blessing, will procure for him the necessary clothes that he may appear decently in church. The story has its variations. Sometimes there are children who have been baptized,

however it is not a want of religion. It is misfortune that has caused this. A baptism is expensive. A robe is necessary for the baby and some clothes for the parents. Besides on that day one does not work, and is the custom to invite the godfather and godmother, if not to breakfast, at least to drink a glass and break a crust. In a word, one is obliged, if one has any proper pride, to do things decently, or not to do them at all. Therefore, a poor workman cannot afford the luxury of her baptism. The charitable and religious gentleman, who listens to this tale, is naturally touched.

He praises the unfortunate workman for its worthy sentiments. I will, he says, at once attend to you and your children. He will receive a visit from a priest who is a friend of mine. Do not worry yourself about clothing. My wife and daughters will dress your children. Meanwhile, here is something for you. The next day a servant rings at the door of the poor lodging where our beavers live. He brings Leighet for the baby and some old clothes to the parents.

A five-franc piece accompanies the present. The Curay arrives some seconds later and finds the house empty. The honest father of the family is proceeding to drink away the layet, the clothes and the five-franc piece. Naturally, however, he plays his part to the end and takes his children to church. One day in La Femme and Kulut, at Clinchy, I was talking with an old rag-becker who described to me the efforts that were being made by the good kouris and worthy pastures to evangelise the population of that slum.

Every Monday, said the rat picker, we receive a visit from a gentleman in a long fock-coat. He gives books to the children and asks us to have them baptized in the Protestant Church. Saturday is the day for M. Lecure and the good nuns who distribute pictures and bonbons amongst the children. The nuns urge us to have our children baptized at the Roman Catholic Church. and who we ask is the most success amongst you, the courier of the pasturuo. That depends on the parents, sir. And your own children, have they been baptized in the Catholic or Protestant Church? This is a direct question, and the woman hesitates a minute, then in a somewhat careless tone.

To tell you the truth, she answers, my child has been 12 times baptized in the Protestant and 14 times in the Catholic Church. And, as I seemed surprised at this avowal, the woman, by way of explanation, adds, the winter has been so severe, sir, every baptism brings me in twenty sous and a clean dress. The baptism trick is one of the most productive, but there are many others. The big game will indicate them. It is for the beggar to know how to work them. We find there, for instance, the rent trick. Some night in January, when there are ten degrees of frost and your drawing room is well warmed, a woman in floods of tears presents herself at your house. She is the mother of a family,

as four children. Her husband has just come out of a hospital, and she shows your hospital ticket on which you read, fractured the right leg. This husband, oh, he's an excellent workman, but he fell from a scaffolding, and he was not ensured, and his employer has not given him anything. With this incident of misery entered the lodging. They have sent everything to the pawn shop, and this very night the landlord will turn the mother and children out of the door unless he gets 10 francs. You ask the woman where she lives, without hesitation, she indicates her street in Homo. That street always happens to be at the other end of Paris. If you live in the chumps, Silesis, the beggar lives in Vincennes, and if you live at Vincennes, she lives at Cordbevoy.

You give your ten franc. The next day you send to inquire, and know that the woman and children are unknown at the address given. As to the hospital ticket, they can get as many of them as they please for about two francs at the wine shops, in the neighbourhood of the hospital. Then there are the beggars who trade upon professors in schools. They call the free schools and are capable of hiding out a professor living on the fifth floor of an almost empty house. To play this trick, a certain amount of education is necessary.

But amongst beggars, there is no lack of bohemians. I have known some graduates who lived by this craft. The essential thing is to wear worn out linen, and to be dirty enough to make it impossible for anyone to propose to employ. you. That master, the professor, to whom he applies, never refuses to what he sues to aid an unfortunate brother. There is now on the Paris streets a young man who alleges that he is a graduate and who goes to call at all the houses of all men of letters. He leaves an envelope with the coin's urge and says he will call for the answer in the evening. The envelope contains a letter

in a piece of poetry, some verses which are in truth far from bad. In the letter the poet complains that is hungry, and begs you to leave with your concierge a simple piece of bread which will be received with gratitude and devout with delight. Here is the letter. Paris, November 8, 1887. Sir, hunger brings me again to your door, not wishing, however, to abuse your kindness, which is extraordinary. I shall not again take the liberty of asking for money, a simple piece of bread will be received, and eaten likewise with enthusiasm. Will you be kind enough to have it left with a concierge on whom I will call again this afternoon. You will find and close some original verses,

which of course only read if you have a lesser in inclination. If you find them in all tolerable, it will be so far hopeful. Dying to accept my respects, with which I have the honour to be, Sir. Your very grateful servant, Gustav M.

52 Rudy Levy's Hotel Normand. The verses begin thus. Pan Amnostrum. In October, Dernier, Longuant Le Parc-Mont-Catel. Jiu is some grand concert prayers, de la Pistiel,

Dixmi lexicants, Sheffre impostant and Siez-Sombole and Leviant-on-Tutti, de unmervalu, and samba, etc., etc., and c'ra. You will say, perhaps, that write 200 lines in verse for a piece of bread seems to you a hard lot, but it is not so.

To begin with, the verses are always the same. The public contains himself of making money copies and taking them to different addresses. And then, too, he knows by experience, that is, but rarely that the man of letters and whose story he has just called will merely give you the piece of bread for which he has asked and live with the concierge. Men of letters have hearts. Many of them have known life's difficulties before reaching a fortune, or even a condition of ease. Every one of them will give money instead of bread. Often it will be a piece of gold, and their kindness will go so far as

return the poet his manuscript. If I may judge from the condition of the specimen which I now hold in my hand, these verses before reaching me must have been read by more than one man of letters and must have bought no little money to their author. Sometimes a beggar will work on a large scale. He arrives at a furnished apartment with his wife and two or three children. He's liked to consist solely of paper, pens and ink, the big game, and an autographed list of all the marriages that are to be celebrated during the week. Then he sets to work. He writes, or rather he copies out a series of letters in which he solicits your charity. Letters intended for Protestants end with these words,

Your brother in Jesus Christ, letters intended for Roman Catholics, contain a post-group assuring you that, a poor destitute won praise for you, and for the repose of the souls of all who are dear to you. It is not a bad plan for the beggars' wife and children, each armed with a certain number of letters, due the district. at night or the family meet again in lodging in a different district.

If the result has been good, they rest for some days. If it has been bad, they begin again the next day. At times the beggar works especially for the newly married. Such is the case which one named Deseréji, whose repertoire contains as many acrostics as there are Christian names in the Roman calendar. If his autographed list of marriages announces the engagement of a Miss Margaret X, immediately Desire G sends her a pretty shade of pink paper ornamented with flowers and doves. The verse is in his catalogue answering to the word Margaret.

Homish to Mademoiselle Marguerite C. Gracious, irondel, amiable messagery. Vivers la Francius et lures chage et lest mespleuers. Both lure superquette, sir ton, hill ligare. Tera, tzerra. Marguerite, acrostic. But plume hurried in chenched in Los Angeles, and if you're going to us per sear

was transmitted us with you miss-vox. Rises vuzeless, this guless, it's sues the aal de sangis. Goides to Jules for the pastons the sentiers'urro. Anna-pose, the bent-tort-partier, for trevy.

In the way, metes, to-jur's, for too-mait, vought two. Reigness Siduus quesimire and would you come

vie. Il fort what seamen this is heremin those donne leponier. Tene's

em me isat and is past them abien jivus pities

who you viz Ceres Tesery In the evening When Mademoiso Marguerite

X receives her friends at the Le Mardelli restaurant, or at the Hotel de Lure, she'll be handed the visiting card of the complimentary poet, who comes to claim its gratuitous. It is the time of champagne or the merry, dancing will soon begin, and do you think the fiancé will refuse a small donation to a poor poet who hides his tears and who predicts that she will be happy? There would be to reckon without human nature and without superstition. My dear, the fiancé will say to her future husband, we must gives something to this born man who is perhaps hungry that will bring us happiness.

So they give ten francs to the poet who getting back into his trap hurries to the neighbouring restaurant where he has a Josephine or not led to compliment. I know a complimentary poet whose office resembles a homeopathic chemist shop. On all sides against the walls are small drawers, and on the drawers instead of the names of the medicine is the name of some saint or other. in every drawer is a little provision of acrostics all ready for use. You see, sir, the beggar said to me one day, you know trade unforeseen things happened.

One must always be ready beforehand. No doubt there are names such as Mary and Margaret which come more often than others, but every name is wanted sooner or later, and if I had not some connegonne, Perpetin, Monique, and Petronil, written up beforehand. I should, in a busy time, such as a Saturday, risk losing my gains. By taking care to keep his stock of acrostics always complete, our man never misses his fee. But it's not only the fiancés who believe that giving to a beggar

will bring good luck to themselves, or those two who are under the influence of deep emotion conform to the same superstition. Beggers know it well. Go to the sword born, when the bachelor's degrees are given, at the moment when the young students, the dictionary under their arm, are going to make some famous Saturn verse on the success of which all their future depends, a swarm of beggars bears down upon them. A penny, sir, a piece of bread, it will bring you good luck. If the student passes without giving anything, it will be plucked, sir. This sinister prediction always produces its effect. The student takes a penny from his pocket and gives it to the beggar. At the hotel de Ville on the days of examination for certificates, the same thing is repeated.

Here the return is always good. The kind mothers of families are so over. come. And when there are no examinations, what did the beggars do then, you will ask? They go to the razors and trade upon the gamblers there. A half-penny would bring you luck, sir. The gambler is even more superstitious than the youth, and all to get good luck, he gives arms. All their methods are excellent for moving you to pity. There are some beggars who, doing an epidemic of smallpox, croup or a woken cough, call at houses where they know there are small children and say, I live close by, my child has just died of crop. Give me a sheet to bury it in. It's quite certain that the born mother,

where the mere mention of crop, trembles for her own children, will not go to see whether the man is speaking the truth. She will hasten to give an old sheet and to shut her door again. To find all these means of cheating the public, they need only consult the big game, which, as I said, cost but six francs, and which is always up to date, for the man of genius who devised this original buttin, understood that it must necessarily. be kept up to date, and he entrusted this work to the beggars themselves. Each time that a beggar has discovered the address of a charitable person who gives donations and whose name does not figure in the big game, he brings it to the administration of the

mendicants, Bhutan, which at once centers it in the list and gives 50 cent times to the informant. And thus it is that the good old town of Paris, the beggars, whose lot moves many to pity, know how well to live at our expense. End of Section 1 Section 2 Of the Beggers of Paris By Louis Paulaine This is at Librevox recording

All Librevox according is in the public domain For more information or volunteer Please visit Librevox.org Recorded by Leon Harvey Chapter 5 The Sedentary Service Active service As its name sufficiently indicates

Demands a certain amount of labour One must be always on the move must come and go, change one's quarters, often do the tourist, and cover several miles. That is a regime which does not please everybody. Not a few medicants, therefore, after having finished the apprenticeship of the trade, adopt by preference the sedentary service. It is less tiring and at times exceedingly lucrative. Amongst the beggars in the sedentary service, we must begin with those on the retired list. These are the clever ones of the corporation. They are persons who...

By dint of intrigues, lies and pretences has exceeded in exciting the pity of a certain number of families of charitable societies, of associations, and thus procuring for themselves subsidies, which by their regularity and importance constitute very good incomes. There is nothing more curious than the budget of one of these beggars. Everybody contributes to the receipts except the beggar, who contends himself with spending them. The charitable society furnishes bread. The cure or the pastur, sometimes both at once. Give soup. The school funds the children. The dispensary supplies the household linen.

The Society for Providing Lawgings pays the terms rent. The nuns say that they have small luxuries. College students and polytechnic pupils, members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, will-to-do families of the district. Big commercial houses, newspapers, organizers of charitable entertainments, the mayor, the prefect, the Minister of the Interior, members of Parliament, supply them with money. I know that some mendicant families who in a single day receive more than 10 or 12 visits

from charitable persons or from delegates of philanthropic societies, all of whom come well laden with gifts. Visit one of these dwellings, make a police raid upon it, search the furniture, and you will be astonished to see you with what admirable genius they have turned to their own account of public charity, which is so generous in Paris. Look at that cupboard in front of you. It is, they tell you, the cupboard which contains the children's few clothes. Do not rely upon their words.

Open the cupboard, put out the linen, ransack every little corner, and you will not be long in discovering the secret hiding-place. What a marvellous provision of tickets of all kinds. Of papers, of printed matter, of letters meets your eyes. Tickets for cooking utensils. Tickets for bread. Tickets for milk. Tickets for chocolate.

Given by Mr. Rothschild. Letters for members of Parliament. announcing the allotment of a grant from the public funds designed for extreme destitution. Letters from the commissioner of police, from the Pasteur, from the curate, from the rabbi, giving the addresses of charitable persons, letters from the charity of us, a list of all the charitable entertainments for the month, a memorandum of the marriage is announced, and of the restaurants at which the wedding breakfasts will take place. In truth, those beggars are thoroughly cognizant of the resources of Parisians' charity,

and can tell you much better than the manager of the public assistance how a clever beggar can live and become a capitalist without either working or infringing the penal code. How cleverly they turn to account the slightest infirmity. If a child be rickety or scrophilus, what a win-fall! That child will serve to excite the pity of visitors, and it will ensure an abundance of bottles of wine and good meat. Is a woman particularly thin and trifled? that tourist equality there must be turned to account. She will devote herself to begging in omnibuses. The business is lazy, little fatiguing, and has the advantage of presenting no danger.

Even if the police commissioner himself were to get into the omnibus, his press would not in any way act as a check upon this little trade. Indeed, the law forbids begging, it is not forbid either sighing or crying, and the ominous beggar does nothing else. She begins with the sigh. you look at her and naturally you notice her wrinkles and her pallor. You say to yourself, That woman cannot be very happy. You look at her more attentively. She notices it,

she sees that the critical moment has arrived, and lets fall a tear. Your heart is touched. You discreetly lean forward and ask, Are you suffering, madame? Ah, yes, sir, I have no work for three weeks. Some was promised me this morning at the shop of the Louvre. I spent her last sixpence in paying the omnibular.

us for I cannot walk as my legs are swollen. And they told me that this week they had no work to give me. Yes I am very miserable. You put your hand into your pocket and take out a silver coin, while four or five other people follow your example and the trick is played. If you were to consult the old conductors of the line between the Hotel de Ville and the Port Mellot, they would tell you what a lucrative game that is in the journey from the champs-eliz is.

No doubt to play this role, you must start with an appearance that will lend itself to the part. But all infirmities can be made use of. An eye missing, a wooden leg, a rupture, varico's veins. These are all, to the clever Beko, Campbell that can be made productive. A beggar friend of mine, who has greatly helped me in my nocturnal searches through the slums of Paris, said to me one day. My neighbour is in luck, he has his military medal, a rupture and Varico's veins. What, is he an old soldier?

Oh dear no. How, then, has he got his military medal? Why, sir, a rupture in varico's veins. Do you still not understand me? Well, I will explain the puzzle. The military medal brings the soldier who possesses it an income of 100 francs. In the American world, do have the military medal, means to have an income of 100 francs. It is a question for making this income by means of a rupture and varicose veins.

Do you take it in? Not yet. Are you not aware that in the Paris hospitals they furnish materiously trust bandages and elastic stockings for those suffering from varicose veins? The beggar, by giving false addresses, is enabled to present himself at various Paris hospitals, at each of which elastic stockings and trust bandages are given him. On coming out of the hospital, he goes to a second-hand dealer, who buys his stockings from him for five, and the bandages for four francs. What is more, the certificate itself stating that the man has a rupture easily finds a purchaser also. It is an asset which generally sells at two francs, and which is in much request by strolling beggars.

The orthopedic apparatus, in spite of being stamped with the mark of the assistance public, will find a purchaser nonetheless easily, and I could cite a specialist of C.R. Street, who offers for sale in the front of his shop a series of bandages and elastic stockings that have come from hospitals and bear the stamp of the assistance public there are in Paris besides the Croix Rouge

and the assistance public several charitable societies which provide mechanical arms and legs for the maimed the most important of these private societies is the assistance to the maimed poor whose secretary and founder is the comte de Beauvoir these societies no doubt do a great deal of good, but for want of a general understanding amongst themselves, they are at times

shamefully abused. I know some beggars who have lost an arm or leg, who get mechanical apparatus given them worth 50 or 60 francs, and then sell them for 10 or 12 francs at a second-hand shop. I could tell you of a telegraphist, who, doing the lapse of a single year, has sold secondhand six jointed arms. If the societies would adopt the plan, which I suggest in the second part of this work, they would avoid these trickeries and would render frauds impossible. Medicines, too, distributed in the hospitals after gratuitous consultations,

are very often sold by the sick people, who willingly exchange half a pint of cod liver oil for a glass of absinthe. For some time past, the assistance public, made aware of this traffic, has been more a charity of its gifts. For instance, it gives scarcely any more quinine wine, wine in which the sick person immediately transformed into Amnipakur, but it still gives a series of tickets for alkaline and sulfurous baths. These tickets are very much sought after by really sick people,

modest poor and wretched ones in faded frock coats, with too much self-respect or too feeble to stand in a line doing two or three hours before hospitals, who prefer buying the tickets at a reduction at the wine shop, where the beggar has himself exchanged him for two pints, at 14 sous. Six tickets sell for two francs. The old hospital doctors are well aware of it,

and they try to put an end to this abuse by turning the professionals out of the house. If from curiosity you had been present during the late Dr. Desperry's visit to the charity, you would have seen how he received the beggars for bath tickets. Ah, you wish to have some baths. I know you, you will not deceive me a second time. It is in the Rue Jacob that you sell your tickets. I know your game. Be off with you. The sick person hurries off in search of a doctor less clear-sighted.

It is certainly not to Dr. Desperres that he will present himself. Dr. Desperes is well-versed on the subject of mendicity. He knows the tickets, and seldom allows himself to be taken in. He is even invented for those who resell the bath tickets, a sovereign remedy that has done wonders. One fine dire beggar who by selling salt for bath tickets, had been making a fine income presents himself to Dr. Desperters. Good morning, doctor.

What does it matter, my good man? I have come for some bath tickets. I have constant pain in my legs. And why do you wish to take baths? Because it relieves me very much. You gave me tickets for six months, and I am much better for them. Listen to me, says the doctor, and try to follow my argument. Rheumatism is caused by moisture.

Just so, I live in a room that is terribly damp. do let me speak rheumatism is caused by moisture now baths produce moisture and will give you something else and turning to his pupils students exclaims the doctor apply twelve hot nails to this gentleman the beggar at the suggestion of this new treatment vanishes and since that time his rheumatism and that of his coordinates in the surrounding district have completely disappeared most of the main beggars far from whiching to disguise their refirmities are more inclined to exaggerate them by exposing them in the public highways. I know a little hunchback who has such a clever way of tucking up his legs and sitting upon them, he could swear that you were looking at a man deprived of his two legs. Nine times out of ten, when you notice a beggar who exhibits two infirmities, you may be sure, with no risk of being mistaken, that one of the two infirmities is a sham. Thus, for instance, the one-on-man generally wears a blouse.

He sits upon one leg and stretches out the other, so that the passer-by is saying, only one arm and one leg believes that the unfortunate cripples deprived of two members. Sometimes the cripple enjoys such good health as leaves nothing to be desired. A newer man at the newly fair, 60 years of age, who wore a pea jacket with brass buttons and a sailor's cap. He was seated on a chair, his legs and his chest were wrapped in a thick woolen rug under which he hit his hands. A large picture propped upon his knees represents a naval combat. gentlemen ladies said the beggar behold the work of a poor paralytic wooded in defending his country in a great naval engagement in spite of yourself you looked at the rather childish painting and you felt your heart softened by the thought of this old sailor who had been wounded crippled for life in defending his country and should be reduced to holding at his hand like a common beggar for my part i never passed before my paralytic without leaving a penny in his cup one summer night about eleven o'clock i was returning to newly when i came across a solid strapping fellow who with the firm quick step was going towards paris he was dressed in a coat with brass buttons and a sailor's cap

on his back was a commissioner's hook on the hook was the famous picture of the naval engagement firmly tied with string and well covered by the wooden rug that i had so often noticed on the beggar's knees tell me my good man are you not the paralytic of the portmellot yes sir but your paralysis does not prevent you walking? Not in the least in this world. But then you were not paralysed, certainly not. And yet you ask arms as if paralysed. Not at all. I never said that I was paralysed. I say, behold the work of a poor paralytic

wounded in defending his country in a naval engagement. The paralytic is the artist who made the picture. I only show it. And what about the coverlet in which you wrap your legs and chest in the middle of the month of July? It is the coverlet that I used to wrap my pitcher in at night in case of rain. During the day I must put it somewhere, so I put it on my knees. This man, you will tell me as a swindler, so I think, but his swindles does not come within the grasp of the penal law,

which no more forbids anyone to wrap his legs in a blanket than forbids weeping women to sigh or cry in an omnibus. This is a small industry, for which ten francs a day can be gained. There are some real cripples who get the pay of a member of Parliament, that is to say, 25 francs a day. The regular strollers on the boulevard know the letterboxwoman, who competes so successfully with a posteristante. The letterbox woman is a beggar who stages herself always in the same place. When passing her, you notice her infirmity, and of course hasten to give her a small gratuity. But while your right hand feels in your pocket for a few sous, which you seem unable to find, with your left hand you slip a letter into the beggar's hand saying to her,

and this letter to a lady who will pass between eight to nine o'clock, and who was giving you sixpence will say, pray for me. Very well, answers the beggar, you give her a frank, and the thing is done. No comment is necessary. And what shall we say to the man who, at the moment, when people are leaving the Eden theatre, or the Foulez Bergeres, rolls on the ground in an epileptic fit firming at the mouth? you hurry to help the poor unfortunate you tend to him and when the crisis is over you have him taken home in a hackney carriage after making a present to his companion who collected the donations

you think perhaps you have done a charitable act whilst you have really been cheated by a false epileptic who simulated all the horrors of an epileptic by sucking a piece of soap the companion who made the collection is needless to say was an accomplice M. Maxim Ducamp has told a story which shows to what lengths the mendicant's ingenuity is sometimes bullish. On Sunday, August 28, 1887, at the time when people were thronging the quays near the chumselezes, a badly dressed man uttered a cry of despair, and threw himself into the sand, near the armor bridge. The crowd pressed forward and saw the unfortunate man reappear on the surface of the water, which he was beating with meaningless gestures, and then sink again, as a sudden. He had gone down. At this instance another man dressed like a workman threw himself into the river, swam vigorously,

seized the drowning man, and with great efforts brought him to the bank. Everybody came up and surrounded the rescuer and the half-drowned man, who seemed to be recovering from unconsciousness, and was exclaiming, What have you done? Why did you not let me die? I have no work, and I have not eaten anything for three days. He rose and was going to rush towards the river. the river, but they held him back while he struggled with them.

Let me go. Let me die. Here his rescuer intervenes and fumbles in his pocket, pulling out sixpence. Take this, it is all I have left. I shall only have to go without my dinner today. These two poor fellows fell into each other's arms, embracing a devouted brotherly fashion. How I ask would be unmoved by such a spectacle. All hearts are touched and eyes moist, and everyone puts his hand into his pocket. Pence, silver paces, two gold paces, are given to this poor man who has fastened for three days. The two cromrots go off, helping each other along with slow steps as long as they are on the quays.

A little quicker when they get near Shalot, briskly enough as soon as they believe themselves to be out of sight. Two police agents, sceptics by profession in nature, had witnessed the incidents of this adventure. They soptitiously followed the acolytes and went to a tavern where a company of no very edifying appearance was awaiting them. They spread the money they had collected on the table. Without shouts of joy, the two actors shake them swell, says wet dogs would shake the water from their coats, and then laughing at the stupidity of those brutes of citizens, they order a Balthazar. Three hours later, the two bath companions, still damp but dead drunk, were arrested by the police who lay and wait for them and were taken to the police station whence they had not far to go to reach the police

court. These ingenious persons were liberated convicts who want to make a good meal at the expense of compassionate people. I have myself had occasion to witness a fraud of the same nature, and cannot resist the temptation to generate the story. It was March 1889, between 6 and 7 o'clock in the evening. I just got into the omnibus going from the place St. Mattel to the St. Lazare Station, when a miserably dressed woman in a far advanced state of pregnancy took a place in the same omnibus. and sat down opposite me. Immediately after the omnibus had left the station, the woman who appeared not to be able to bear the least jolting of the vehicle,

sighed and showed signs of discomfort and suffering which everyone recognized and apprehended the result. All of a sudden the woman utters a cry and all eyes turned towards her. The lady's approach with whispered questions. Oh poor woman, how pitiful to see such things! Is it reasonable to go out in an omnibus in that condition? What did she say? That she has had nothing to eat since yesterday,

and that she was going to seek work when she was suddenly seized with pains. But something must be done for this poor creature. Stop, conductor, we are going to send this woman in a cab to her home. The same passed before my own eyes. As for me, I sat still in a corner, and you may suppose my indifference had the effect of revolting many a tender heart. For a lady addressing herself to her neighbour, said aloud, if that gentleman had any kindness, he could help us.

That is very true, remarked the rest of the pastures by and chorus, to whom I must have seemed a very heartless man. Ladies, what can I do? You might help this woman to get into a cab and take her home. We will pay the cab. And immediately, one lady gave fifty cent times, another two francs, another five francs. The mother it is to be put the result of this collection into a pocket, and leaning heavily on my arm, she got out of the honour of the honourable.

Where do you wish to be taken? To Bellevue, sir. But at which street? What number? To Bellevue, sir. I understand quite well to Bellevue, but in what street? I am suffering too much to answer. Very well.

I took a cab, and after carefully settling my poor patient, I seated myself beside her. Driver, go towards Belleville, I shouted. The good one was dumbfounded, but I soon reassure her. Do not let my presence in convenience you, madame, I am a doctor And I will give you every attention That your condition requires Sir, do not come near me

Do not come near me If you approach me, I shall scream and call for help Come now, calm yourself And tell me first where you live I am suffering too much, sir But it seems to me that since you can say I am suffering too much You should say such a street and such a number

No, sir, then I shall take you to the hospital I will not go to the hospital Well then to the maternity No sir leave me Get out of the cab row or call for help And the woman began to yell In truth I began to weary of my Imposed task

I opened the door and got out of the cab Saying to the driver The women will direct you where to stop A week later annually Bulevade Mallot Before a rich Jewish banker's residence A woman was seated on the ground In the pains of childbirth

I happen to be told of it I hastened to the spot and I found the same woman. What? Is it you again? Decidly, this childbirth appears to be very hard labour. Last week I offered to take you to your home and I could not induce you to give me your address. I often take you to the hospital or to the maternity and you refused. This time I shall take you to a place where they will at once relieve you of all your pains. Let us go to the prefecture of police.

At these words a good woman springs up as if she had to be. been shot. She takes the front of her figure and puts it to the back and brushes off at full speed to the bustle-belong. The protuberance was made of cardboard. That is a trick by means of which you may make a good living, and also does the deaf and dumb man, who, at the entrance of the centre of the Cilatir station, sells you for tens and times the deaf and dumb alphabet of the Abbe and who is possessed of a more voluble tongue than either you or I. I knew one of these deaf and dumb men It was to be seen in a large glass hall

Which leads into the waiting rooms For the suburban trains For years and years This good man spent all his days there In going from one ticket office to another Offering to all the passengers' little sheet of blue paper On which was written Gentlemen and ladies

In accepting this alphabet So easily acquired to teach you the dumb language So useful to know You will oblige your servant who is deaf and dumb It costs only ten cents and times. I confess I have often in former times done like others, that is to say, I have more than once given away my two soos to the poor deaf and dumb man. In happening one evening coming out of the Chamber of Deputies,

as I was passing before, the Maca Zindu Printeps, accompanied by one of my colleagues, to notice a considerable crowd of people. I approached and found the cause of it was a quarrel. two men were disputing and were flinging the coarsest epithets in one another's faces the one who shouted the loudest was actually my deaf and dumb friend

a policeman was vainly trying to put a stop to the dispute allow me to do it I said to him they're going up to the deaf and dumb man I whispered in his ear these simple words I longed to the police and I know you you deaf and dumb hypocrite

you had better be offered once or I will arrest you my man did not need to be told a second time, and to the great astonishment of the passers-by, and or the policeman, he vanished at once. Since then, my deaf and dumb man has given up his trade, but he's not left the neighbourhood to the St. Lazare Station, where he distributes today prospectuses for a neighbouring restaurant. Every time I pass him he makes me a profound bow, but at the bottom of his heart he thoroughly detests that vile policeman, who forces him to trudge up and down all day to earn three francs,

when, by playing a deaf and dumb man in the vast railway station, through which 30,000 travellers sometimes pass in a few hours, he might easily in the afternoon swindle five or six francs out of the compassionate people. I'm far from pretending that there are not in Paris, many really blind and deaf and dumb beggars, but I maintain that among the blind and deaf and dumb who hold out their hands to us, there are many sham ones,

who possess excellent eyes and who can speak as well as you or I. just as father antoine whose history i will give further on had him monopolized the begging at the doors of several churches so certain contractors organize mendicity for their own profit in different quarters of the capital This particular class of contractors hire false or true cripples and provide their outfits. I may say the necessary disguise. They keep in stock or the implements which beggars could need. They have barrel organs for the healthy, crutches for the lame, alphabets for the deaf and dumb, fortune telling for the old men, poodle dogs and pictures for the blind. These pictures are of infinite variety. There is a picture on which you need father of a family, blind from amyrosis.

The picture which contains a certificate of a doctor or the Parisian medical faculty, or else the famous picture representing a formidable explosion. A house is blown into the air and under the ruins you discover a poor workman covering his face with his hands to screen it from the surrounding flames. A gentleman whose eyes had been attracted by a picture of this kind stopped one day before the blind man had questioned him in these words. Tell me now, my good friend, where the explosion took place that is represented in this picture. I do not know, sir, answered the blind man. I bought this picture at the Hotel Dorot. An English journalist, Mr. Volz, told me a story of the same kind.

He was walking in London Street when he met a blind man who begged arms of him. Mr. Vowl, feeling in his pocket, for some small money, let a penny fall on the ground. Immediately the blind man thanked him in, picking up the penny, puts it in his pocket. For a blind man, Mr. Vowl, said to him, you see very well. Sir, said the blind man, I am not blind. And that placard which you were in your chest, blind from birth? Why my master have blundered this morning in distributing the placards, he gave me, by a mistake, the one belonging to the blind man.

I am one-handed. These master contractors are more numerous than one imagines. The power is due to the fact they have good places at their disposal. They know how to monopolise a defender against any competition in the most advantageous places by which the largest number of people pass. They turn into account the approaches to churches, to stations, to cafes. They hold the bridges, the porches, or the places, in fact, where there is a chance of making a large amount. They excelled the art distributing these lays, and the doors of ironworks then store the blind man,

victim of boiler explosion. The Parisian workman is good-hearted, he is very generous, and especially on his payday, he will give largely to an unfortunate comrade. The children take their stand before the party cooks, the little girls offer flowers to the frequenters of the cafes, or the organ grinders will be given a manuscript list of certain ill-faint public houses used by the military school, where they are sure to make a good sum,

provided they have some polkers and waltzes in their catalogue. There is nothing more scandalous than those balls which I have witnessed, but in which I will not enlarge out of respect for my readers, and because I wish my book to be fit for all readers. Medicans hired in this way conform them all readily to the directions of their patrons because they are thus unable to learn their trade. After a few months of apprenticeship,

they will become masters in their turn. They will know both the good places and their good tricks and will astonish you, perhaps, by the degree of perfection to which they have attained. Last year, when the police commissioner of newly had organised a raid upon the beggars, he found a man wearing at the end of his armour jointed a apparatus most elaborately made, and in which he concealed his hand.

All he knew this beggar were persuaded that he was one-handed. He needed the clear perception of a clever police officer to detect the fraud. I know some false cripples who have been arrested and who have remained at the house of detention two or three times without their fraud being discovered. One day at a prison in the west of France, the prison van arrived, bringing two Spanish beggars who pretended to be deaf and dumb. It was found crawling in a little vehicle as if a cripple, but one of the beggars had already betrayed himself

by attacking with his crutch the watchmen who arrested him. The governor of the prison had doubts as to the infirmities of the other prisoner. He put him through a searching examination without obtaining any result. The beggar always triumphed over the trap set for him. He kept his legs tucked under him and only uttered inarticulate sounds. The governor was still not convinced, and he ended by imparting his suspicions to the doctor of the establishment. What do you think the doctor did? He took the beggar and chloroformed him.

The operation over, they laid the false cripple flat on his bed and found no difficulty in assuring themselves the absence of any defect. On waking and find himself stretched out and betrayed, the crawling cripple, forgetting that he was deaf and dumb, threw himself into a fight and rage. cursed in Spanish the doctor and his assistance. The Confederates were condemned to do months imprisonment, and the doctor was very proud of having effected such a marvellous cure. Confederates of this kind swarm in the streets of Paris. Why? Because in Paris, the clever beggar is well off, lives at his ease, and sometimes reaps in income,

such as the small citizen or the modest clerk in frock-coat, who daily takes a penny from his pocket to give in charity, will never possess. End of Section 2 Section 3 of The Beggers of Paris by Louis Paulaine This is a Librevox according or Librevox Accordings on the public domain

For more information on a volunteer Please visit Libravox.org Recorded by Leon Harvey Chapter 6 The Mendicant Type When you closely study the question of mendicity One of the things which strike you at once Is the existence of a mendicant type even

What is it type? It consists of all the distinctive characters of a race or a profession taken together. To acquire the type of a profession, one must have practiced it for some time, and have been subject to its requirements, its habits and its consequences. Take an ecclesiastic or a military man, who during many years has followed his vocation and worn a particular costume, and make him put on the coat of a civilian. In spite of his disguise, you will easily recognize him. So then, if mendicity were merely induced by poverty, especially transient poverty, it would

seem that the unhappy man ought to preserve beneath his rags the type of the calling to which he belongs. On the contrary, by what do you recognise a beggar in the street? Is it by the miserable state of his clothes? No, indeed. For every day you meet workmen whose clothes from the nature of their work are in tatters and extremely dirty, and yet it would never occur to you to offer arms to those workmen, for they bear in their faces the look of pride in independence which honest work alone can give. Take a thousand of these workmen and place a single beggar amongst them.

You would know him at once. And why? Because a beggar has a special type which is like no another. This simple observation ought to be enough to convince you that mendicity is a profession. The man who practices it must have begged for a long time to have attained to the mendicant type. Thus it happens that, by a strange anomaly, this type which always always has been a man who has been, to put us on our guard against the beggar constitutes on the contrary the most powerful motive which decides us to give the arms he begs for. A man comes up to us in the street, he holds at his hand, we look at him, he is of the mendicant type, that is enough we straight

away conclude that he is an unfortunate individual, that he is suffering, and that is worthy of our charity. And so the beggars who are aware of this false reasoning of which we are daily the dupes, endeavour by every means in their power to approach as nearly as possible to this ideal type, which is sure to inspire the pass through by with profound pity and procure good income for themselves. To make believe that one is suffering, and if the suffering is real too exaggerated, that is the problem they have to solve. In this enlightened age, when scientific discoveries are made it possible to imitate all products of human industry, mendicants have not lagged behind. They have succeeded in simulating distress its

An English member of Parliament, wanting to find out how much the physique of the beggars influenced the purses of passers-by one day made a curious experiment. He went into the street miserably but cleanly dressed, leaned with his back against the wall and held at his hand. He stayed in that position all one afternoon, but he got nothing. After having dressed himself in a costume composed entirely of shapeless rags, he put five or six pieces of bread into his pocket, and wooded up and down in an out of the way street. As soon as he saw a well-to-do person likely to give arms, he took out a piece of bread, hid it in his hand, and in a favorable moment unseen threw it before him in the mud.

Then suddenly, as he had discovered a treasure, he rushed at the piece of bread, seized it, and, wiping it carefully on his trousers, appeared to be devouring it with avidity, and continued his walk without begging anything. The passer-by invariably turned round, looked at him an instant then retracing steps gave him money i have thus tried more than fifteen people said this member and not one has failed me each one of his own accord without being solicited made me his offering some gave me gold the sum total was splendid footnote my vaulted in my addresses related this anecdote i related it to put the public off their guard against the trickeries of the false poor

I do not know if it has served to convince the public to whom I spoke, but it is certain that it has not been lost upon everybody. For instance, on May 9, 1893, I was dining opposite the Terminus Hotel, on the Terrence of the Scossa restaurant, where I had purposely planned myself to study the types of the false pore who swarm in that quarter, when a man had a shabby long coat, with a black beard, glasses on his nose, and a regular bohemian type, plants himself before me and looks fixedly at my plate. the contents of which he seemed to covert. In my turn I look at my beggar, who, the moment I look up,

darts under my table, and picking up a tiny piece of bread brushes the dust from it and eats it voraciously. Two tables further on, the same maneuver begins again, and I noticed that the piece of bread picked up is just as small as that at which the poor fellow had found at my feet. I once paid for my dinner and follow the man, who before every restaurant,

and there are numerous in that street, goes through the same pantomime. I soon discover that he holds in his hand the tiny piece of bread that he pretends to pick up from the ground. I once approached the beggar. I question and threaten him, and ended up by discovering that the famous piece of bread is a guillot biscuit, an almost entire pack of which is found in his pocket. My object in telling this story has been to enlighten the good people who freely give arms in the street. Shall I perhaps only have been the means of imparting a new trick?

Why does this experience show, but that the public has been to the public. always allows his pity to be excited by a beggar's wretched appearance. It is surprising, then, if the beggar uses great skill in cultivating such an appearance, as will allow him to reap a good harvest. And when he has succeeded in creating a type to suit his convenience, a type which has stood the test, which has proved successful, is it surprising that he should keep to it and improve upon it? All those who have made a close study of the night's shoulders know

what difficulty one often finds in persuading certain medicants to accept the bath that has offered them, and such are their attentions to that person as consist in cutting the hair and cleansing the beard. A bath, said one day in my presence, a beggar who had just arrived at a terrible house where labour was provided. What is the use of a bath? Does not perspiration wash one? The truth is that, in cleansing this man, in mending his clothes, in giving him an appearance

of respectability, you destroy his type and deprive him of his stock in trade. Last winter a beggar came to call in my house who was barely clothed. He said, I am a workman without work, literally dying of cold. Could you not give me clothing of some kind to cover me? Following my usual practice, I offered the man some work, which he accepted. I made him sweep in my street. And an hour later, finding it impossible to watch him any longer, I dismissed him after having give him in a jacket very warm and in good condition, seeing that the day before I'd worn it myself.

A few days later I met my man in Paris. He was begging again and was wearing the garment I had given him, but the garment was unrecognizable, so dirty patched him a misshapen was it. I was curious to know how in four or five days this beggar had been able, thus, to wear out a garment which, to my mind, ought to have done long service. I approached the beggar and renewed acquaintance with him. I spoke kindly to him and pitied his condition, and to make him believe that the feelings I expressed were really from the bottom of my heart.

I offered to give him something to eat. He naturally accepted my offer, and he went together into an eating-house, where I had him served with the meal. While my beggar was eating, I examined my former garment. No, I was not mistaken. It was indeed my jacket. But good heavens, what spots, what a mess of mud, what a transformation. The braid that bounded had completely disappeared,

and what was still more surprising, another braid that bound the sleeves, which at any rate could not have been worn out, was also absent. In the back a large patch of black cloth sewn on my grey jacket gave the garment a shabby appearance which grieve me. To have thus worn out my jacket, this man must have slipped in the open air. I put some questions to him, and he told me that since the day when he came to my house, he had constantly slipped in the night's shoulder, never having been able, in spite of his efforts to find any work. In short, the worn-out condition of my garment was becoming inexplicable.

I carefully examined the patch which I'd so regretfully noticed, and I discovered that the patch did not cover a hole or conceal any rent. But, my good man, tell me, now why, you have stuck that patch on your back? The beggar seemed to first embarrassed, then little by little he ended by acknowledging that the jacket was too good for him. If he'd worn it in the state in which I gave it to him, he could not have begged any more. People would not have believed, sir, that I was destitute, and I had to pay it. a woman two sous to alter it for me. And who is that woman, I asked. Oh, she is a woman who leads a blind man about,

and who, when she has time, arranges garments for beggars. How many charitable ladies of my acquaintance, how many good mothers of families, in spite of their multifarious occupations, and sometimes of their exceedingly slender means, take care of always to repair old garments before giving them to the poor, so that, as they say, they may wear longer.

They have no suspicion that a maker of patches for the beggars will come and render all their work and trouble useless. And do not suppose that the story I tell is an isolated case. I could multiply examples and prove them. Thanks to the permission of several prefects of police, I have paid long and numerous visits to the first bureau of the second division of the prefecture of police. All beggars pass through this bureau, as well as other persons who arrested in Paris under any kind of accusation. The head of the bureau proceeds with a summary examination and collects the information which will afterwards be considered by the magistrate.

Whenever the beggar happens to be more unfortunate than culpable, the functionaries of this office, who are fully acquainted with the different charitable agencies that are at work in Paris, tried to help and save him by getting him admitted into a charitable establishment of one kind or another. One day with M. Portet, deputy superintendent of that bureau, and certainly one of the most intelligent and zealous officers of the prefecture of police. I was present at the examination of a series of beggars when a particular dossier was put before me. These dossiers are constructed in such a practical way that a miracle glance is sufficient to take in the hole at once. Marks of different forms indicate the number of arrests, of consignments to the house of detention, of condemnations, in such a way that as to say, by merely handling the dossier, you can tell it once if you have to do with the beggar whose first offence it is, or with an old hack.

This particular dossier concerned an old hack of great experience, 70 times convicted for mendicity and vagrancy. I carefully examine one by one all the papers, and I notice that the old offender belongs to a very honest family. He has himself received some education, and yet he has passed half his life in prison, without having ever committed either a crime or a very grave offense. I ask to see this man.

He is bored to me, and I question him. I find before me an old man of energetic and intelligent appearance. He is educated, and in spite of the rags that cover him, he is an air of superiority rarely meant with in the common vaeuvre. Everything about him tells me of the most profound misery. Garmin's selted elbow, a complete absence of linen, neglected beard and disordered hair. I asked the man how it happens

that he has been convicted 70 different times for mendicity and vacancy. Would it not be more interesting to work than to spend your whole life in prison, I ask? It seems to me that to procure for yourself a condition preferable to that of imprisonment, you need not make such a very great effort. So, the vagrant answers,

I am a victim of the mendicity law. I once held out my hand. I was sentenced to you. imprisonment. I came out more wretched than I went in. No one would have anything more to do with me, and for thirty years I have been fated to return from the street to the prison and from the prison to the street. How can you expect that with such a miserable dress? I could get myself hired as a labourer in a workshop. No one has ever come to my assistance. But you have some very rich relations, a brother and an uncle in good positions. They have disowned me. They have disowned

since the day I was sentenced by imprisonment. But there are societies to help the discharged prisoners. I do not know what them. I am surprised at that. If, on coming out of prison, I'd receive some clothes and forty sous, I should certainly have got out of my difficulties, and the public would count one beggar less and one honest man the more. All beggars say the same thing, and when you try to help them by giving clothing or money,

nine times out of ten you find you have been cheated. Oh, sir, I have often had that answer. It is the good who suffer for the bad. I have received in my life plenty of advice, but have rarely been given any practical assistance. I think that there are so many millionaires in Paris, and that not one of them has enough heart to risk five francs to save a man. Come, are the feelings you express quite sincere? I swear it, sir, upon all that is most sacred.

will listen to me i will try to effect the salvation of which you speak i will look after you and will request that you shall be immediately set at liberty i will stand surity for your repentance and for your honesty in future i will give you all that is necessary to gain your bread in a word i will be entirely answerable for you and i hope i shall not have to repent it the next day my man is set at liberty i haven't given a bath i dress him from head to foot in the bureau of the prefecture itself i give him from head to foot in the bureau of the prefecture itself i give him a small sum of money, and what is more valuable, a ticket of admission into the chattel house in the Rue Clavel. For a fortnight, I tell him, you will be lodged, fed, and taken care of in this house. You will have all your mornings free to look for work. In the afternoon, you will make small bundles of faggots. That will be the return for the hospitality shown you. At the end of a fortnight, if your conduct is irreproachable, and if you're not found an employment of some sort, I undertake to get you employed in a workshop.

The beggar is profus in his thanks, and he leaves the prefecture of police completely transformed. He is entered in rags, conducted by two constables. He left it dressed almost as a gentleman, and absolutely free. For the first time for 30 years, he walks the streets of the city without attracting attention to his person. You were taking for a clerk going to his office. I follow him at a certain distance, wondering anxiously whether the small sum of money I had given him, and which I had recommended him to keep carefully as a precious treasure, would not take him to the cabaret. But no, the beggar directs his steps towards Belleville, and without stopping anywhere,

goes and calls at Pasteur Robbins' hospitable house. I go back to him, put it, proud of the rescue I defected, and I thank him for the help he is being good enough to give me. The next day I write to Pasteur Robbins' new pensioner. I tell him that I followed him. I congratulate him on not having spent little sum he had in his pocket at the wine shop. I encourage him to persevere in the right way, so as to not be accused of giving only good counsel. I enclose two francs in my letter. For three days my man works fairly well, but on the fourth, wearied by such unusual effort,

he leaves a hospital house in the rue Clavel, hits his small savings, sells his garments, redresses himself in his rags, and resumes his medicant character, thanks to which he can go again hold out his hand to excite pity from the passers-by and so get living. But, you will say, after some weeks or some months of this life, the prison will already capture the man. That is certain. The beggar knows it will, but he infinitely prefers to run the chance of some months in prison rather than to devote himself to regular work. Everything and anything but work. And why should he work? Since in order to live, he need only hold at his own. hand to inspire compassion. To gain this end and excite pity any methods of vice, and the beggar

will have recourse to lies, to acting, to simulating an infirmity of some kind, and at times even to crime. Professors, alter-tied beggars, teaching the art of working upon the feelings of the passers-by. Many people refuse to believe that there are professors of mendicity, and yet the fact is certain. Just as in looking at a picture, the connoisseur can indicate the school to which it belongs. So by attentively watching a beggar, you can guess the master's lessons he is followed. Take the street singers.

A class of beggars, I have very closely studied. I've often stored myself at the windows of various houses, into the yards of which the concierges allow strolling singers to penetrate, and the first thing I noticed was that the repertoire is always the same. It comprises altogether

five or six songs. The best known is, Lies of Lévrez-roses, to which they sing to the tune of La Poverre Abandoni Listen to the beggar Whether he be young or old With a man and woman The proceeding is always the same

He sings three couplets Not one more, not one less He receives nothing he goes away If he give him any money he has a fourth For such a couplet his voice quivers For such another The intonation is different evidently he is the same master who has taught the same song to all of them.

I have had the curiosity to procure the exact words of the beggar songs. This commission I gave to the concierges of the houses of which I had spoken. I said to them, When a beggar comes here and when he has finished singing, ask him to give you in exchange for a twenty-sue's piece the words of his songs. My instructions were followed, and I thus procured a large number of manuscript, Copies of Lizox-Levelace roses.

Here is the first verse. Danzun to Swery, Ouse ergerite one parver-eckuer, Jevoias blimed cheri, De sel, who fud monheur. Jevoias,

Lizo-Ox-Lifters-Ros, me revenant parron bioshoer, and me dissent in Luzich-ozes, who rendiant my cure Plient disboer. Well, in the beggars-co, I find in this one verse

nine faults in the spelling, and these nine faults are exactly repeated in all the manuscript copies which thus reached me. Is not that a proof that all these songs come from the same manufactory? I have questioned a great many of these beggars. Why do you sing

instead of working? Because I've lost my husband and have children to provide for. Very well, but who taught you, Lizos de Vres roses. It is a song that I knew. Ask 50, 100, 200 street singers All will give you the same answer. Not one of them could acknowledge

where she had learnt the words and music of her song. Not one of them would give the address of the manufacturing where the street beggar is made. But this manufacturing really exists and the professor who conducts it gives his lessons in the public houses that surround the marketplace. It is there that, for a frank,

the singer learns in five lessons, the words, the music and the quivering voice. if from the street singer we pass into the same beggar the same phenomenon may be noticed with what art they exhibit their infirmity with what care they expose their sores it had repeated the beggar's pose is never natural it is studied calculated proposed here is a man who has lost a leg he is certainly unfortunate and as compared with the sound man is manifestly less able to gain his bread but is it an absolute impossibility evident and is it an absolute impossibility evident and is a very unfortunate and as compared with the sound man is manifestly less able to gain his bread but is it an absolute impossibility evident and certain for him to undertake some kind of work to earn something towards his own support no one would venture to assert it i know men deprived of a leg who are coachmen messengers sweepers shoemakers newspaper vendors concierges but to fill any of these places it isn't necessary to work and the beggar has a horror of work so here he is in the street how can he win pity from the passers-by If this man had a wooden leg He would not produce the desired effect

And so he replaces the wooden leg by a crunch And by this means he can produce a more tragic effect Notice that figure Who has been stationed in the Rue Abur for years And whose portrait figures at the beginning of this book Leading with his back propped against the wall Is a flat extended In his right hand which is stretched out towards the left

He holds five pencils And the unfortunate man stays right hours in this position. This fakir is one of my old acquaintances. I have often talked to him. He once made me some of bowels. At one time he was a jeweller's workman and earned five francs a day, but he was obliged to arrive at the workshop at a fixed time to work for 12 hours and constantly had the monkey, the master, at his back. Since I became a beggar, I have made from 110 to 120 francs a month, but I work only 5 or 6 hours a day, and when it rains or snow, when the wind blows, I stayed home, where I read my favourite authors, Socrates, Sick, and Paul

Decoq. So the figure sits on his crutch, because it makes a good picture and protects him from the damp. One day a beggar who was lost to leg conceived and the idea of doing without any help, either cane, crutch or stick. So is the better to attract attention from the passers-by. I marvel at the practice and training this man must have gone through to be able, thus, stand upright and walk for hours together with only one leg. This new role has succeeded. Professors have established themselves, pupils have arrived, and today a fresh class of single-footed is fledged.

Another beggar, deprived of a leg, has thought of a still more clever trick. He sits at pastry cook's doors and entirely blocks away with his wooden leg. How could you, going into a pastry cook's, to treat yourself to a luxury, refuse a gratuity to this poor wretch over whose body, so to speak, you have to walk. If this new trick succeeds, and so far it seems to succeed, in a few years in order to enter a pastry cook, you will have to scale a hedge of wooden legs. Everybody, however, is not maimed.

But what does that matter? To create a good appearance as a beggar, it is not necessary to have infirmities. Look at the church beggars. They are seldom cripples, but as a substitute, to give themselves local colouring. They continually tell their bead. What a sad brood they are.

I have been told such extravagant stories about church beggars that for several years I was possessed with the desire to study them more closely. I must say that of all the tasks I've undertaken, this was the most arduous. I communicated with the prefecture of police. Their answer was that the church beggars were almost outside their jurisdiction because they did not station themselves in a public place, but in a building the supervision of which belongs to the church officials, there's to say to the vergers.

Then I had turned to the clergy. I consulted vigorous, curries, and even a bishop, Mr. Frippel. No one could answer the question I put to them, which was couched in these words, who authorizes beggars to beg in a church porch, and what inquiries are made before bestowing this covert of privilege? For in truth, I find it difficult to believe that a curé

curé should not know the amount of attacks levied at the church door by this army of beggars who addresses it, and sometimes insult the worshivers. And if he knows it, if he be aware of the importance of the amount taken, how is it that it does not take the necessary precaution to prevent these arms being bestowed upon undeserving persons, or on those able to support themselves by regular work? Well, it seems that the church has nothing to do with this trade, which she regrets, but which she tolerates because she is powerless to suppress it. No begging license is given by the Kurei.

It is the beggars who give it to themselves. A certain number of them have taken possession on the porches of the different churches in Paris and by rights of the first occupant take upon themselves to expel even by force or newcomers who have the audacity to compete with them. I discovered this when I tried, in my turn,

to go and beg at St. Salpice or at St. Ustesh. The receptioner received from a lot of regamars, was of a nature to destroy my taste for experiments of that kind. I acknowledged with all humility that I had to make myself scarce before my competitors. Nevertheless, I did not despair, and thanks to the intervention of M. DeVert, mayor of the 6th District, and of the Curay of Saint Germain Desprez, I was able on May 24, 1891, to install myself under the porch of that church. The beadle, if I should happen to be much ill-used, was to be to be used, was to be

render me assistance. Five women made a hedge in front of the door, when covered with rags, my right hand paralyzed, my body doubled in two, my head covered with a huge wig. I came to take a place in my turn on the steps of the church. It would not be easy to describe the effect produced by my appearance. I was greeted by a volley of mocking jests, coarse language, and abuse of which it would be difficult to give you an idea. Just look at that man there, said one of the beggar women to a neighbour. Is he not ashamed to come and take out bread? Perhaps he has killed his father and mother, said the other, and the villain dares come to the church.

You would be much more in your place in prison than here, for Elbrut, as a third, passing in front of me and consigning me to the second row. The threats went on increasing, and I believed that had I had not shown by a quick gesture that my falsely paralysed hand was capable, of a speedy cure when it was necessary to defend my person. These old hags would have torn me into pieces. A lady arrives. Have pity on a poor father with seven children, and two of them infants I whine. The lady puts her hand in her pocket, takes out a sou and gives it to me. The second lady enters the church.

This one is a charming person of my acquaintance living at number ten, Rue Descent Pettes. I had invited her to come and witness my experiment. She gives me a sue and does not even have a suit. and look at my neighbours, far too much occupied in repressing the burst of laughter that my disguise provokes in her. A schoolboy, following his mother, takes out a few sous which he distributes amongst the women, and puts a ticket for fuel into my hat. A cook gives me two sous. Here comes a senator. He knew me very well when he was a member of the National Assembly. He is far from supposing that the old paralytic holding out his hand is the former secretary of that assembly. He passes without

giving me anything. At last I say to myself, here at any rate is one who hold sound principles. Several other persons passed before me, and hearing me repeat that I am a poor father of seven children do not hesitate to give me arms. My neighbour shoot angry glances at me. They are exasperated at my competition with them. I suddenly noticed that they were plotting something against me, and I was not mistaken. In two seconds they had proposed, disgust and adopted. an important resolution to get me arrested. Indeed, their tactics were very simple. Each time the policeman on duty in the square passed before the church,

my five women all turned around and stared at me as one would stare at a wrongdoer. The policeman, puzzled by this unusual manoeuvre, presently eyes me in his turn. Just at first he looks at me with an assumed air of indifference. My beggars to notice his glance, then make a sign with their heads that seem to say, ah, happily the policeman understands that there is something for him to do. The worthy representative of authority looks at me, this time more narrowly, then suddenly accosts me, what are you doing there? I am begging, as you see. How so, begging, and you dare acknowledge it? Oh yes, I beg, as all the women do. Come to camp, or I will lock you up.

Mr. Policeman, I wish you to observe that I am not on the public road, but under the church porch. and you have no right to arrest a beggar stationed here no arguments i say decamp seeing that the policeman is very determined to make me move off i tried to parlay with him and in a mysterious voice whisper of these words in his ear look will at me if you know who i was you would not arrest me the policeman does not understand he lays hold of me by one arm and shakes me like a plum-tree he shakes me so hard that my wig a wick a ladrish bin hired from deyodoran he lays hold of me by one arm and shakes me like a plum-tree he shakes me so hard that my wig a wig ala rich bin hired from de The hairdresser in the rural Richelio flows off. What is that? said the policeman in a tragic tone. It is a wig. How so a wig. Yes, a wig.

I have the right to wear a wig as I am bored. This is too bad. I shall go and fetch the sergeant. And my good policeman leaves a church, crosses the square, looking around twice, no doubt to assure himself that I had not left my post. At this moment an omnibus arrives, of which I take advantage. using it as a screen, and with the help of a friend who had assisted me during this little comedy, I hide behind the omnibus, take with my wig and the band that was hiding my beard,

and make with all haste towards the rue Christine, where the novel writer Begaret lives. The author of so many charming novels, who had been good enough to offer me hospitality for the purpose. In haste, I wash myself and change my clothes. I substitute a good frock coat for my dagger's jacket, a silk hat for my crumbled felt hat, and taking my stick and overcoat, I returned to the church. My policeman was just off duty. He was going towards the police station of the Rue de St. Piers. I address him. Tell me then, just now you were going to arrest a beggar under the church porch? Yes, sir, but he escaped me. I was at beggar. The astounded policeman exclaims,

What do you mean, sir? I mean that the beggar was myself. Explain to me then why you wish to arrest a under a church porch. You, sir, are no doubt a police comment, sir? No, indeed, but be good enough to answer me. How did it come that you were going to arrest a beggar under a church porch, who reminded you that he was not in the public road? How I say that you belong to the secret police? Not at all.

But once more, do answer me. I thought that person's station at church doors were never interfered with. You are perhaps Mr. Paulane, sir? Who is that gentleman? he is a gentleman i read off in the petit journal who begs for his amusement sick well yes i am the gentleman you read of in the petite journal have no fear my good man i will not bring you into any trouble on the contrary i have the honour of knowing the prefect of police and i shall tell him that you did your duty but just explain how it happens that of the six beggars that were at the church door you only interfered with one myself I did not wish to be disagreeable to you, sir, answered the policeman, but you were so peculiar. And so it was not because I was begging, but because I was peculiar that I was arrested.

I had stayed according to my watch, 14 minutes on the steps of Saint-Germain-des-Pez, and had received 13 sous. After deducting the two sous given me by the lady I mentioned, and which I naturally do not count in my son. A little longer, and I should probably have been as successful as my neighbours, of whom I had made 59 sous and the other three francs and two sous, and high mass had not yet begun. At the hour of Vespers in the afternoon I again passed before the church. My five women had disappeared, but four other beggars had taken their place. The rotation is affected with the greatest regularity. Each one takes his watch as on a ship. a captain surely must command that force.

A few months ago, Father Antoine was buried in Paris. He was a poor hunchback who had begged their church doors for 15 years, but instead of doing only his watch, he begged the whole day. In the morning at St. Etienne Dumont, at 10 o'clock at St. Augustine, and in the afternoon at St. Sulzbis. He was so old, so broken and so wretched, that he was welcomed everywhere by his colleagues. And then what a holy man he was.

He prayed for morning to night and never melt but on the cold flagstone. The older he grew, the more bent he became. The frequenters of the church pitied him and seldom refused him arms. One fine day Father Antoin disappeared. He is dead, said his comrades, and no more was heard of him. But suddenly a nephew of Father Antoine presented himself before the authorities and requested that a post-mortem examination should be made off the hump on his back. They deferred to the wish of Eusea presumptive.

They made an investigation and discovered that Father Antoine's hump was nothing but a strong box in which the beggar kept his savings, and his savings amounted to the sum of 96,000 francs. Only they had disappeared at the same time as a hump. The search was continued and ended in the discovery of the 96,000 francs in the hands of a Mr. M. Gruliman, a friend and neighbor of Father Antoin. the eleventh court of the same tribunal before which all these facts were proved condemned to gilliman to two years imprisonment and had this petty little fortune refunded to the old mendicant's hair father antonine was one of my old acquaintances i had been presented to him at a time when in company with a woman named cotilde brilliant another rich church beggar he carried on his calling at st augustine and did the rich funerals at the medalline

Father Antonine's real name was Pusiorelli, and on several occasions he had fallen into the hands of the law. He was imprisoned at Nimes, and was actually serving a term of five years imprisonment, when some of his relations, very respectable people, succeeded in interesting, on his behalf a deputy of the right, Mr. Le Provost de Genoa. The deputy, before taking any steps in the matter, wished to get correct information. He wrote to the prisoner-director to seek his advice. the reply was that the convict had suffered half his penalty and that he had shown signs of amendment and repentance and that he was in a fit state to benefit by a measure of mercy mr le provost di lorne drew up a request for pardon and sent it to the minister of justice by whom it was favourably received pussy arreilly was sent to liberty and came to paris to thank his benefactor sir he said you have given me back to my family i wish to prove to you my gratitude by behaving henceforth as an honest man Will you place me in a position of trust, and I assure you that you will be well satisfied with my fidelity and devotion.

Mr. Leiprovost did join you, deeming that the record of a previous sentence is not the best recommendation for obtaining an employment of trust, put the man off by recommending him to seek to gain his bread in a more modest fashion. Not being able to attain that place of trust to which he dreamt, Pussy had really entered the service of the honour of his company in the character of a conductor. One was supposed that he found this occupation too out of us. For the end of a few months he left the company to try to get married to a cook, for whom he stole 5,000 francs, and whom he did not marry, for the very good reason that he was himself already married.

The little error cost him three months imprisonment. On regaining his liberty for the second time, because he rarely decided to become a church beggar. He had already studied the trade while he was paying his court to the cook, and he knew how to bring it to perfection. For the beggars stationed near him in the three churches which he patronised were his employees, whom he protected against all possible rivals did Dutty a commission on their gains. In 18 years, Pussy rarely amassed 96,000 francs, thanks to his hunchback, his fine white beard, and his deep pity,

thanks, in a word, to the type he had known how to create. But it is not given to everyone to know how to wear so forlorn an appearance, and thus many beggars have found it a simple means of enlisting pity and inspiring belief in their own suffering to make children suffer. The use of children by beggars is to my mind the most abominable of all crimes, and yet that crime is neither prevented nor punished by law. Article 309 of the Penal Code punishes with imprisonment every individual who has willfully wounded or assaulted another if illness or incapacity for work during more than 20 days results from such violence. But to make a child ill, and even to kill it,

no one need to have resources to blows or to violence. We've all seen in winter, and in the most rigorous cold, women stationed for whole hours together on bridges, holding two, three, and sometimes four infants in their arms. Those poor little beings have waned faces, pinched noses, and the whole of their body is frozen. Tomorrow, perhaps, they will be dead. But what matters this detail?

to the unnatural mother if the display of this misery brings more sous into a wooden bowl. Besides, often enough the children do not belong to her. They have been hired from the wretched horns in the Fayelle Estrepeede, or Magadert Streets in the Bore Charity Passage, or in the St. Margaret Street, where for thirty sous a day they will entrust a child to you, with a promise to exchange it if an accident should happen to it. all these facts are known and yet no remedy is found our legislators pass over the bridge of la concord every day to get to the houses of parliament they can see there as i have seen a woman who for fifteen years has been nursing her child and yet has never been interfered with a parish doctor m de caesian wished to study the effect produced upon the health of small children by these long exposures on the highway so he devoted one wet and snowy night to an investigation in his neighbourhood

He traversed the Grinnell, St. Goulogne, Bach, Verene, Babylon, Monsieur, Fennell and Channellélyle's streets, and counted 48 women engaged in this kind of begging. He was able to gather pretty accurate particulars about 27 of them and about their families. Twenty-four of them were forced by their husbands to beg. Three begged their own free will. Ten had four children, eight had three, and nine had two. The ages of these women arranged from 24 to the three. 35 years, 17 had some calling. The rest had none. All but two had drunken husbands, and two of them depend upon the results of begging for the support of their homes. The 26 children

used for begging purposes were from 6 to 13 months old. They were all brought up by hand, except 2. 11 had slight bronchitis, 3 had pneumonia, 1 whooping cough, 2 measles, and one an internal complaint. I repeated this experience myself and without having the honour of being a doctor, but with a natural intuition of the father of a family, who loves children, and has brought up a large family. I remarked on several occasions that many of these little creatures whom beggars held in their arms in the winter were more dead than alive. Offer these beggars to give you the charge of their children, so that you may put them into a creche. They will reject your proposal. Without children, how are they to win sympathy

from the passers-by? In a night refuge in St. Jack's, I knew a woman named Osolf, who had four children, and begged in the street to get a living for her poor little ones. But instead of getting a living for them, by perpetually exposing them to rain and snow, the nirational mother dispatched her four children successfully into the next world. And now she's alone. What do you think she does? She borrows a fifth child so as to be able to continue her trade and society so generous and so charitable in its dealing with infants. That society which protects the little creatures and occupies itself about them even before they are born

is powerless to prevent this and to punish the criminal use of children, who only ask to live and who, when they escape death, adunned by this use of them to fall into vice or crime. Just think of what is likely to become of these children. As soon as they are four or five years old, they are sent to work all alone under the care of an elder mother or sister. The mother or father taxes them, adds it so much a day, the little company is obliged to bring back to the lodging a night two, three or four francs,

if not let them beware of a flogging. One night when the thermometer stood at ten degrees, a patrol of police found a child of 12 years old under a doorway, fast asleep, holding his little sister of eight months old in his arms. Both of them were half frozen. They were taken to the police station, warmed and brought back to life. The court will question the child kindly. Have you a father? Yes. Have you a father? Yes. Have you a mother?

mother, yes, where do you live, in St. Margaret Street, at such a number. How does it happen that you did not go home last night? The poor little fellow, after much hesitation, ends up explaining that he is weary of being mercilessly beaten, and had done all he could to get four francs. He still needs forty-five centimes, and he had not the courage to go home, knowing what awaited him. Many will be touched when reading this story, and will say to themselves, what a pity of I did not happen to be there.

Do come across that little boy. How willingly would I have given him the 45 centimes he lacked? They are wrong. If you had given this child the 45 centimes they were wanting to make up the sum of four francs, the next day the unnatural mother would have increased the sum, and would have taxed a child at four to francs, 50 centimes. How many children are there in the evenings on the boulevard, offering us flowers, pencils or newspapers?

We experience a feeling of pain. seeing these tender beings wandering in the streets at a late hour of the night, and we give them a sue or two. We do not perceive that instead of relieving their necessities, we only encourage vice by subsidizing the most odious of practices. The more we give, the more greedily of these gains will the employer of these poor children become. There is today a child in the boulevards who sometimes begs, sometimes sells their swery newspaper. This child is stationed between the Madeline and the Opera. He is between nine and ten years old. He is lame, having lost one leg, and his father, isn't his father,

has given him a crutch that is not as high as it should be, said the child in leaning on the crutch appears to be still more of a cripple than he is, by having his body bent to one side. The poor little being is on duty from 12 to 14 hours, in rain, wind and snow, and is ever at his post. He is such a sweet face and seems so interesting with one leg cut off at the thigh that those who pass him give abundant arms. The frequenters of the cafe are on the lookout for him to buy the swear newspaper.

Instead of giving him 15-sum times, many give him 20. Instead of the child realizes a sum of from 8 to 12 francs, and three times a day a man comes and empties his pockets, leaving him with barely a few sous to buy himself bread. Let us look forward in thought a few years. What will have become of all these little boys who will have known neither work nor school nor the family earth? What will have become of all those little girls

who have been made to wander all night alone about the doors of certain cafes under the pretext of selling flowers? At one time Paris has overrun with Italian children who under the pretext of little music developed themselves to begging in the streets. We've known some Padroni in the Pantheon quarter who made use of companies for 15 to 20 little children

At the end of about 10 years These employers have made a fortune And returned to their own country to live upon the money they had So honourably gained But as to the children They seldom see their country sky again Generally speaking the girls end at St. Lazare While the boys are stranded in prison

At the end of a vigorous campaign led by an Italian deputy, the Honourable M. Gerozoni, the government at Rome, seconded by the French administration, had put an end to these abuses. Have we suppressed the little Italian beggars merely by replacing them by little French beggars? For in truth, this trading with children is still going on. It is obvious to everyone. All are witnesses of it, and no one troubles himself about it. Here and there, perchance the child is taken up for begging, but the system as a whole is allowed to flourish. Yet the government knows of the evil. It knows not only that there are people who live by little children's begging, but that

there are manufactories, establishments, where they purposely maim the children to make them more interesting. On March 26, 1887, M. Goblet, president of the council and minister of the interior, addressed a circular to all the prefects, circular number 28, in which he called their attention to this criminal industry. In this circular, the minister begins by a circular. the minister begins by recalling the fact that in the springtime of each year, France is invaded by individuals of foreign nationality, victims of every kind of deformity, who trade upon the charity of passers-by.

The spectacle, says the minister, is contrary to the laws of sound government. It should not under any pretext be tolerated. Everwood only for the sake of public order, measures should be taken to prevent it. But these exhibitions do not only affect public order, the cripples exposed a public view are introduced into the country by regular contractors who hire their services to practice medicity for their own benefit. Arms given in charity in the streets of these wretched creatures do not go towards their maintenance or to the alleviation of their sufferings, but to procuring a living for a shameless individual who in this way turns to his own profit the resources intended

for the indignant. This trade involves to Criminal Acts. It was as attained by an inquiry undertaken during my administration that crawling cripples have often been rendered infirm from their childhood by artificial means which have to form their limbs doing violence to nature. To tolerate mendicity in this form is to encourage an inadmissible industry and acts for which the authors ought to be handed over to the courts. There is urgent need that steps should be taken without loss of time to put an end to this disorder and the minister ends by urging the prefects to have the leaders of these beggar gangs found and to expel them from the

country if they're not Frenchmen. Alas, this circular has not had any more effect than the preceding ones. Gypsy still continue to invade the country, while crawling beggars, more or less of foreign origin, more or less genuine, ply their trade in the towns. Parliament has enacted a custom house tariff, in which all possible produce has been included. Bread itself has to pay a tax before crossing the frontier, only beggars come in free, probably because they have been considered as the raw material of that gigantic. organic industry called trading upon public charity. The public opinion has taken the wrong direction.

It is no use blinding ourselves to the fat. It favours medicity. Let a policeman arrest a woman in the streets, holding little children in her arms, and immediately the crowd takes the sigh to the poor mother of that wretched woman, who is perhaps the most inveterate of vixens, who brings up these children from infancy to lying and disemulation. year, M. Dumae, a working man member, received a visit from a woman who came to solicit relief of some kind. Members of Parliament are overwhelmed with visits of this description. M. Dumae cross-examines the petitioner. He takes down her name and address, gives her a small

sum of money and a recommendation note to the Bureau D. by in Faisance, with a request that she may receive some relief. The woman has scarcely gone when M. Dumae, who, who is kind-hearted and is well acquainted with the distress of the working classes, begins to think over the story that he has just heard. If the poor woman told the truth, and her whole tone was such as to lead one to the belief that she was sincere, she must be very miserable. The sum given her by the deputy will be spent very soon, and perhaps the help from the Bureau de Bois Faisantz will be a long time coming.

I did wrong, says Mr. M. Dumay to himself, in merely giving an ordinary note of recommendation. Ode to have given this woman a stronger recommendation and begged more urgent relief for her. If trouble comes of this, I shall be morally responsible for it. This idea makes such an impression on M. Dumais's mind that the Honourable Member can stand no longer, but takes his hat and stick and goes to the address given him

so as to find his beggar and to recommend her more strongly to the President of the Bureau of De Blaine Fissants. After a quarter of an hour's walk he reaches the street indicated and the beggars lodging. He questions the concierge. Mrs. X lives here? Yes, sir, number 36 on the fourth floor. She is in great distress? Oh sir, she is in the most abject misery.

Very well. The deputy climbs to the fourth floor and looks for number 36. The door is half open. The woman has just come back and is occupied in her household work. suddenly a little boy who was on the stairs runs into the room and asks for something to eat. Mother, says he, I am hungry. Give me a piece of bread. Alas I can't, my poor little darling, replies the mother. There was only a very small piece of bread left in the house, and I am keeping it for your father,

who, if he has not found work, will be very hungry when he comes in tonight. M. Dune was affected to tears. How fortunate that he had taken the trouble to come and see for himself. Could anyone have imagined such destitution? The member enters a poor woman's room gives another pace of money and writes the most urgent letter to one of his friends, president of a bureau de Bayanfaisance. My dear friend, he says to him, I direct her attention to a heartening case. I have investigated it myself. Give assistance to the woman X, and above all give quickly for her children are literally without bread. M. Domey goes home, his heart comforted having done a good action.

Two days afterwards he receives the answer from the chairman or the Bureau of D. By Infusance. It was to the following event. My dear deputy, you have been scandalously robbed. You say that you made the investigation yourself. In that case, you heard a child cry out, Mother, I am hungry, give me some bread. And the mother answer, I can't, my poor darling. There is only a very small piece of bread left in the house, and I'm keeping it for your father.

who, if he has not found work, will be very hungry when he comes in to-night. The child is brought up to play this comedy. He stays a whole day on the staircase, and as soon as he sees a gentleman or lady arrive at the fourth floor, he plays his part, which consists in asking for a piece of bread. If I were not afraid of tiring my readers, I could produce an infinite number of examples of this kind. Only one more, this will be the last. One Sunday in the place Victor Hugo At the time when many ladies troop out to the church Saint-honoree

Di Eliloh A woman dressed in black fell into the basin of the fountain Which is in the middle of the square There was a rush to her rescue And whilst a gentleman pulled her out of the water A lady picked up a prayer book and chaplet Which the woman had let tumble on the ground in her fall A crowd gathers

several ladies offer their services and they conduct the victim of the accident into a porter's lodge where they make her drink some cordial while dry clothes are being procured for the poor woman they question her and ask if she has heard herself if she wishes them to take her home the woman in the wet clothes does not answer she is hunting for some object

which she seems to care very much about what are you looking for madame my prayer book and chaplet here they are oh thank heaven i thought i'd lost them i value them so much and the unhappy woman states that she is a widow that she was going to church to give the last piece of twenty sous she possessed to have a mass said and that a son who only son a soldier in tonkin might be speedily restored to her you can easily guess the effect produced by this story upon the hearts of all and especially upon the purses of all the ladies coming out of church soon a collection is made they had about fifty-five years of the effect produced by this story upon the hearts of all and especially upon the purses of all the ladies coming out of church soon a collection is made they had about fifteen francs to the good woman they give her clothing and have her taken back to a home and a carriage that is charity well bestowed do you say i should have thought so too unhappily a week later the same accident occurs in the ornamental water in the champs a leases a woman falls into the water her prayer-book and chaplet are found on the edge of the basin they get her out and have her clothes dried they learn by question her that the unfortunate

woman was going to have a mass said at the Medellene, that her son, a soldier in Tonkin, might be quickly restored to her. The following week the fountain St. Michael becomes a theatre for an accident of the same kind, and at last the prefect of police discovers that a woman called Louise Buffett, always the same, as found this ingenious means of making a small income for herself. May these numerous examples of Swindling put the public on their guard against the medicant type. End of Section 3. Section 4 of The Beggars of Paris by Louis-Polene. This is a Librevox according, or Libravox Accordings in the public domain.

For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librevox. At all, recorded by Leon Harvey. Chapter 7 Charitable Societies, There are Defects. A few years ago in Russia, a district was afflicted with a singular calamity. The country was suddenly invaded by an army of rats that ravaged all before them. The local administration of their country, having cognizance of the system employed in France, where country councils often vote sums of money to allow gratitudes to schoolchildren for destroying cockerchiefers,

passed a resolution by which they promised to give a certain number of copex to all persons who should have destroyed 12 rats, as they could not compel them to bring the carcasses of these rats to their main royalty. they decided that the number of rats killed should be proved by their tails being brought to them. The children are once said to work at their task. Very soon the parents, tempted by the reward, followed the children's example, and a frightful massacre of rats ensued. When several months had elapsed, the administration had spent a considerable sum in the shape of Kopex, and yet judging by the havoc made every day by the rats,

their number appeared not to have sensibly diminished. The administration in this rural district considered that in the face of such a calamity or should put their hand to the plough and personally work at the enterprise. They charged one of their number to undertake the purchase of a certain number of municipal traps to be placed in all the public buildings. The delegated councillor set himself at once to the task. He ordered the traps and himself chose a spot where each was to be placed. The next day at dawn, this functionary, full of Z-hall,

went to them a royalty to judge for himself of the success of this experiment. He took up a trap, and to his great joy discovered that it contained eleven prisoners. The idea had certainly been a happy one, and the councillor was about to go announce the good news to his colleagues. When examining the rats more closely, he discovered to his horror that they were all, or nearly all, tailless. One sees a once what had happened. The good villages who earned three or six copics for a dozen dead rats were not long in understood, that if they really killed the rats, there would very soon be no more occasion for the reward, and not wishing to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Each time that they caught a rat, they'd carefully cut off its tail to get the price, and then set the animal at liberty that the race might not diminish, so that the order given by the Russian administration, instead of ending in the destruction of rats, and only the result of developing a larger culture of them. Well, in France, the example of these Russian administrators has for a long time been followed, but only instead of applying their system to the cultivation of rats, it is applied to the cultivation of beggars, and we spend every year millions and millions of francs to prevent the beggar race from becoming extinct.

It is the fashion of the day with certain people to accuse the upper and middle classes of indifference to the sufferings of the people. So do men set to work to exasperate the people. If a calamity falls upon a district, these men are at once upon the scene. Instead of preaching patience, courage, work, agreement, justice, the insider strike, a revolt, pillage, incendiary acts, and in the manual di Parfeit and archiste. They indicate the best recipe for explosives by means of which they may blow up the property of the citizens and perhaps kill hundreds of innocent people in the streets. It is no doubt to these mob leaders that Franklin alluded when addressing the people he said to them,

he who pretends that any can enrich themselves otherwise than by working and saving corrupts them. If those who suffer could count the devoted men who bestow their money, their intelligence, their time and efforts in a word, all the powers of their heart and soul to improve the condition of the disinherited of this world, but would feel how I just are the accusations of these false friends of the people, I would find that, on the contrary. There is not a country in the world where charity is more largely practiced than in France, and particularly in Paris.

If selfishness produces at times frightful scandals, good works and charity offer, on the other hand, numerous and consoling examples. Paris, said Count Morley, is the place of arms giving. There was never a more just definition. never was praised more merited, for in Paris charity has not overlooked any kind of distress. Take a man at any period of his life, and in any condition, enumerate all the calamities that could overtake him, and he will see that for every ill private charity has striven to afford relief. A child is scarcely born before society begins to occupy itself about it.

The alletiment maternal, and the innumeral institutions whose aim it is to secure a woman in their confinement, are ready to look after both mother and child. Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Freemasons, vie with one another in making the greatest efforts, the heaviest sacrifices, so that the arrival of the newly born in a poor man's house should not be the beginning of a fresh trouble. One will give milk, another baby linen,

another will pay for the doctor and the medicines, and payment will be provided for the necessary expenses of baptism, and later on of confirmation. The association des Meres di Famil, at the head of which figures the name of Madame Karnot, whom we are accustomed to see patronising and assisting all good works, will ensure to the young mother the payment which she is not able to earn at the workshop during her illness. Then there are the creches. They will shelter the child while the parents are at work.

The dispensaries, where the best doctors will give their advice gratuitously, the infant school where competent teachers will awaken its young, intelligence, the free school fund, which in a delicate and unanimous form, will provide it with clothes and the books it needs, and sometimes will even provide it with food. When the child is grown up, there is that long list of professional schools, orphanages, societies for apprentices, and for the protection of apprentices and children employed at manufactories. Then there is the care of the stunted and scrofueless.

There are the marioness hospitals, the society for providing holidays, and for providing holidays, advantages and the society for the protection of women and young girls. If the parents are bad characters, there is a society for the rescue of children, the society for the protection of infants, and the numberless institutions with the same object in view which will separate the young from all bad influence, will adopt them, and some cases will approach even the threshold of the courts to rescue a child more unfortunate than guilty. Certain education, at once intelligent and generous, may transform it into an honest citizen. If from the child we pass to the man, what admirable provisions we find,

of which we may well be proud, the rent society and the cheap lodging society to which M. Siegfried has attached his name. The charity clothing club, the Lone Society, cheap bakeries, the sending back shipwrecked sailors and aliens to their own country, the night shelters, the assistant by work, refuges, industrial schools, the office of the Miserichord for the modest poor, Masonic lodges, free dinners, scraps of bread, society of St. Vincent DuPol Public warming places, free baths, assistance for the blind, the deaf and the dumb, the mutilated, for the aged, homes of the little sisters, the poor, arms houses for the aged, etc. even the convict on leaving prison may find help and protection a single society the discharged prison aid society of which m senator berenja presides distributes amongst them eighty thousand francs a year

private charitable societies in paris that devote their efforts to relieve in distress may be counted by hundreds their annual expenses amount to several million francs and yet accusations against the selfishness of the employers with no bowels of mercy of the overfed middle classes, Jew bankers, protestant hypocrites, continue to be the foundation of speeches by which the professional agitators seek to incite the passions of all the poor creatures who with difficulty gain their bread from day to day by hard labour. You must break into M.D. Rothschildrude's cash room, says one.

You must divide fortunes, says another. And an honest author in a newspaper, which is read by workmen, does not hesitate to write the following words. In principle we do not condemn And we do not find it amiss that the disinherited in this life Should remind with importunity The world to do of the too easily forgotten duties of Christian Brotherhood

But let them name a single country Where the world to do better understand the duties of Christian brotherhood French generosity Why it is before your eyes You need only go into the streets to see at every step A hospital and asylum a school, a creche, a refuge, industrial school, an institution of some kind intended to relieve distress, and due to the generosity of a Rothschild, a L'Ambract, a lorbsbin, a Baron Schickler,

a Dolvis, a Heriot, a Furtadoheon, a Bococat, or of some businessman who has made a fortune. I have seen people, said Montesquillo, with whom virtue was so natural that did not even make itself felt. They adhered to their duty without effort and undertook it as by instinct. Well, the name of these people in France today is Legion. High or low, all who are well to do seek to benefit the poor, and from their struggle to do has arisen a new aristocracy, the aristocrity of charity, to which all religious or secular try to belong in these days.

At it we must acknowledge that in spite of all these millions spent annually, in spite of all these good works, each one more touching than the other. The number of beggars, the number of those who, rightly or wrongly, ask relief, is growing every day. I do not hesitate to say, and to say empathetically, that what we want to relieve distress is not money, it is organisation. The sums gathered for the poor are sufficient, but the manner which they are distributed is vicious. to the last degree. The channel of private charity has a leak, is to the stopping of this leak that we must devout all our attention. Works of private charity have all been induced

by the manifestation of human suffering. Each society, only concerning itself for the special evil for which it seeks to find a remedy, tries to collect all the funds it can, but not one of them absolutely attains his object, which should be to give only to the needy. or with that exception are more or less taken advantage of

by the false poor they seem to be ignorant of the fact that a good deed misplaced is misdeed and that assistance given to a man who does not want it so far from alleviating distress only tends to encourage vice how can you suppose that a man will work 12 or 14 hours a day to earn a salary of four francs

when with little falsehood and little audacity he can by calling at the office of a charitable society society, at once obtained these four francs, even he does not succeed in getting a larger sum allowed him. As long as societies are managed as they are managed today, they will not only lose nine-tenths of their resources, but in granting assistance to the false poor, they will maintain the leprosy of mendicity. The true way of helping the poor is to place them in a position in which they can do without

help," said Benjamin, Tlessert. Owing to the way in which almsgiving is managed today, it is to the intrad to the false poor to retain this title of poor all their life, for that alone suffices to bring them every kind of relief. In short, we give much money, we do little good, and the robbers of the poor, the aristocrats of mendicity, the clever ones who know how to wheedle us out of our arms, are the first to laugh at our credulity. I was going to say it our stupidity. There was a one-time at Versailles, an old priest, excessively charitable, called Le Abe gerard he has not shared the theories of the english bishop to whom i spoke at the beginning of this book of that bishop who at the moment of death boasted that he had never given a penny to a bored person in the street

le abe gerard gave to all who held out their hand to him and has said that more than once having neither a sue nor a centaim in his pocket he was seen to give the very close of his back happily the faithful who knew their acuity his generosity were ready to be ready to be but he was seen to give the very close of his back happily the faithful who knew their curate's generosity were ready to refill his purse one christmas day after vespers the good abe gerard saw one of the richest and most charitable of his parishioners come into the vestry once was le curie she said i was much touched by your beautiful sermon this morning about christian brotherhood and to prove that i understood your counsel i have brought you a small donation for the poor and that they put a one hundred franc note into his hand the abe gerard overwhelmed her with thanks and admittedly thought over the best way of employing this money after much reflection he decided to go and pay a visit to a poor workman whom he had helped for many years without having yet succeeded in getting him out of his troubles the workman lived at the other extremity of the town on the fifth floor of an old house it was six o'clock in the evening great flakes of snow were falling and the good abe gerard was out of health anyone else in his place would have put off taking this trouble until the next day but the abe gerard was one of those to whom duty stands before everything you doubled the value of help he often said by giving it quickly so off he said after walking for half an hour he arrived at his protege's luching he slowly ascended the dark stairs stopping to take a breath on each landing when arriving at the fifth floor he heard himself addressed amid crimes of joy by rough voice shouting,

Here, turn round, Gerard. The worthy Abe, much surprise, listened attentively, and twice over he heard the same voice repeat the same words. Turn round then, Gerard. The old ecclesiastic, more and more perplexed, pushed the door of his portageous dwelling half open, and what was his stupefactionate seeing all the family and a few friends surrounding a superb turkey

which they were busy roasting, and to which, in gratitude and irony, the workman had given the name of the Abe Gerard, his protector and his dupe. And so it will be, as long as charity continues to be dispensed as it is dispensed today, as long as charitable institutions will not take the necessary steps to prevent the sham poor from simultaneously applying toward charitable societies being inscribed at once on all the lists, and by these fortunate means obtaining for themselves resources superior to those earned by the honest laborer who, working from morning to night, often finds it difficult to procure the necessary bread for his family.

To prevent this abuse, to give only to those who need, in this lies all the remedy. Two years ago, I took part in the International Congress, Centwerp, a Congress in which the question of mendicity and vagrancy was fully discussed by very competent men belonging to different nationalities. He had the great honour of being elected the chairman on this question, and the observations I made at the Congress were at a conference. which followed the Congress. I was led to speak of the fords by which the false beggars in Paris know how to procure an excellent income. When I told some of the anecdotes which I have related in this volume, I noticed that more than one

person in my audience seemed to believe that my words were stamped with a certain amount of exaggeration. You think I exaggerate, I said. Well, I give you the opportunity of testing my assertions. Come and live in Paris. Come two, four, six of you. I offer all hospitality. You may accept my invitation with the less scruple in as much as this hospitality will cost me absolutely nothing. I detect to give you bored and lodging to clothe you, to give you your return ticket, and I will sufficiently furnish your purses to enable you to indulge in many small luxuries. And all this, I repeat, will not cost me some time,

because you will provide everything for yourselves, absolutely everything necessary merely by begging. My Belgian audience did not accept my invitation, but I was true to my wager, and before witnesses I proved that by begging you may meet all your needs just as well as by working. My experiments have been made openly, and although the campaign I have undertaken has already had the effect of putting my reader on his guard against the false bore, I'm quite ready to begin them again, and I guarantee beforehand their success. That is to say, I undertake to get 15 or 20 francs a day by begging only. One night I put my hand upon a very precious document. It referred to letters addressed by different people to Madame Horny, the intelligent and devoted directoress of the Women's Night's Shelter in the Rue Saint-Chucks. There is every kind of thing in these letters by which it is sought to extort some kind of assistance from Madame Horny.

There are even proposals of marriage. Excellent individuals, small shopkeepers, well known and established in their locality, wishing to made happy one of those creatures whom fate has treated. Dill address themselves to Madame Horny, who know if among her pensioners she has not a worthy victim of misfortune who would wish to marry an honest tradesman. The signer of one of these letters, a small shop cabo, in the Rue Geland, declares that if he applies to the night-shoulder to find a wife, is because he cannot leave his premises every day in search of one.

To prevent any doubt as to his identity, this suited writes his request on the back of a black-edged letter a few months old, in which he informs his friends of the death of his wife. Among some proposals of marriage addressed to the night's shelters, I've noticed several coming from beggars especially blind men. These last one can better understand. The blind man especially requires a companion, and the physique of his future wife is of small importance to him. Provided she is good-tempered and does not rob him too much. That is all he asks. That is why the blind in their offers of marriage are very laconic as to the qualities they wish to meet with in their future wife.

But on the other hand, they dilate with satisfaction upon their own qualifications. No doubt I am blind, says one, but I am strong enough to bring up a family. I never drink, says another, and I gain eight francs a day. I gain eight francs a day. There is an admission that should be noted, for it is of the first importance. A blind man, if he learned a trade, as is well known that the society at whose head is a great philanthropist, Baron Schichler, has succeeded in transforming the blind into excellent workmen, would earn from two francs fifty to three francs a day, by begging he will get eight francs a day. I knew a young blind woman, who was stationed for a long time in the Rue de Harre, before the Le Seer-Contorset. This woman had a very interesting face,

which suffice to attract the nurse that passes by and to secure her a good living. One day this beggar, the better to arouse the sympathy of the charitable, got a child of three or four years old to accompany her, and as the poor little creature ran the risk of being crushed by passing vehicles, he were left at liberty in the street,

the blind woman fastened a string so much as long round his waist, so that the child was kept near its mother. Can you picture a human being condemned in this way to remain motionless for whole days together? If a shopkeeper were to think of fastening a dog in such a brutal fashion to his shop door, an agent of the society for the protection of animals would at once intervene. But let it be a child, and no one protests. It needed a public denunciation to put its stop to this scandal, which allowed the woman to coin money by torturing a child though it was probably not her own.

After this, he will not be surprised that blind people boast of gaining eight francs a day and that we learn constantly from the newspapers that a police officer called to verify the death of a beggar has discovered a small fortune in the dead man's mattress. In order to arrive at an absolute proof of a use made of public charity, I was not satisfied only to show up all these abuses, one by one, to unmask these frauds and to denounce these crimes. I wish to try for myself and to see what an inexperienced man could get by holding out his hand in the street. I say inexperienced because if I pretend to know thoroughly the world of beggars,

my readers will readily admit that, on account of my social position, out of my education and habits, I should necessarily meet with difficulties, and be hampered by a repugance unknown to professional beggars. Well, in spite of these difficulties, I repeat that a day spent in begging has always brought me in comparatively important sums. By begging I have obtained for myself tickets for bread, meat, chocolate and milk. I've procured clothing, medicaments, money for my rent, and railway tickets. Name any kind of object. An armchair, a violin, a pair of spectacles, a wooden leg, a child's cradle, a banquet of flowers to adorn your table, and immediately I will get them offered to me before your eyes by a charitable society.

for you know that there exist societies or charitable persons in Paris that give sofas to the paralyzed, societies which give musical instruments to unfortunate artists, societies which give spectacles to the short-sighted or to the long-sided, societies which give cradles to the newly born. There even exists an association of young Protestant girls who have had the kindly idea of joining together and subscribing to buy flowers, which they take to poor young girls who are ill. If these flowers went only to the poor sick girls, how hardly I should applaud the effort. Unfortunately, you need only have lived a little in the beggar world to know that this is not the case.

As soon as the association of which I speak became known, they were formed by the side of it and naturally unknown to it, another association whose mission it was to trade upon the first. And so it comes about that flowers destined to cheer the garret of a poor sick girl or to adorn the tomb of the little child are sold in the evening at the doors of night restaurants by young girls some homes under 15 years of age and who till 2 o'clock in the morning

roam about the boulevards if the young Protestants who founded the flower mission could take part in the inquiry to which I have devoted myself if it were possible for them to penetrate where I've penetrated they might more than once have recognised amongst the beggars offering flowers

to those at suburb the sick girl whom they went to visit in the morning in her garret. The pale face and interesting expression, that ensemble of size denoting suffering would serve in the daytime to attract the young prostinate girl's sympathy, will serve a night to attract the nurse of those at supper. Ah, young ladies, the object of the eminently charitable task you have imposed upon yourselves is not always obtained. Generally speaking, their charity passes today beside those for whom it is intended. It is to prove this assertion, that my experiences have been of service.

As I said before, a lie cleverly uttered, or a simple disguise suffices to recur for you by begging all that you can require. I was playing the part of a professor without pupils one night, about nine o'clock before the Troy Quartier's shop. In a single hour I received two francs fifty. At half-past ten I installed myself as a paralytic in the Rue Poiseer de Anglese, and I gained twenty sous. at midnight i opened the cab doors at the entrance to the montagnus rissuus and i took one franc tens and times i came myself for whole days alioel as the beggars say the receipt is very simple and you can try it

if you want some soup you are only embarrassed in the choice every morning certain big restaurants on the boulevards make a great distribution of soup at their doors by this act of charity the heads of these establishments find a way of at a toning for the sins they have committed in fleeting their clients. Go to the door of one of these restaurants, place yourself at the end of the line, and you will soon receive your portion. If, like many beggars, you are in the habit of getting up late, and if you prefer to have your first meal in the middle of the day, you have only to present yourself at the door of the barracks. I especially recommend to you the quarters of the Guard-Republican at the Palais de Justice. this. I went there one day. I installed myself upon the bench in front of the gate and the foot of the clock, and there I was served in a tin box, with which I had previously provided myself a full

measure of excellent suit, as well as a piece of bread. I know men employed by the town in sweeping streets, clearing gutters and others, who have for long been regular customers for this suit. Why should they go and pay twenty-five cent times at the eating house opposite for a dish of soup of a questionable quality when their soldiers, with a smile upon their faces, gratuitously offer them appetising soup enough to maintain a man's strength for half a day. Should you wish for a more complete meal, then you have the Boucher de Paine and the restaurants of the Rue des Grants Carries, where you will find charitable persons who without asking either your name or address, without troubling themselves to know whether you are poor or a

near-do-well, will provide you with food and drink gratuitously as they did myself. Should you prefer a cup of tea or a biscuit, there are eight or ten lecture halls where you can find this tea, with a religious sermon into the bargain? But you will say, that is a very frugal. These meals are very unempting. Do you think, then, that the meals are very sumptuous, which a poor, honest fellow who depends on the appointees hands for living pays for? Do you think that the ordinary meal of that poor mother of a family is very appetising, who in the winter, when it freezes hard, passes half the night? in breaking the ice of a stream to earn two francs. Upon these two francs, she may often have to live. She and her little children and to pay her lodging and dress herself.

Besides, in speaking of soup distributed at barrack doors, and the meals obtained at the boucher's de pane, I wish only to cite the means of getting food which are within the reach of all. To not be uneasy, the beggar who knows his craft scorns those meals as he scorns the tickets for the soup's kitchen. les brutes des phoenol festins noisubons palafinthropy offers suvacabons the blind man on the bridge the paralytic the crawling cripple the workman are of work who has had nothing to eat for three days the child whose father is in the hospital and his mother is without work all these starving people who would often be much embarrassed if you ask them to eat a piece of meat before your eyes all these false poor are very particular about their food and only eat at a good food only eat at good places. Look about in the Rue de Fulburek, Saint-Wan-Are, and you will find there

a restaurant frequented by small clerks and government offices who devote themselves every day to a careful study of the menu, in order to succeed in making a meal which shall not cost more than one franc 25,000 times. These clerks work, they know that the month is long and that money is hard to earn. It is all the harder to earn, since they are not allowed to undertake a multitude of small accessory works by which they might augment their income. Were you to see the principal clerk of a minister keeping the accounts of the coal merchant opposite? What into courum? The administration do not consider whether the unfortunate clerk has a wife and children to provide for.

No, they do not enter into these details. The one matter of importance is a man's tenure, and that is often a very cruel word in their mouth. and the poor little clerk often contends himself with a breakfast at 40 cent times in a cup of coffee with the bread the small decanter of wine the napkin and the tip to the waiter the meal soon amounts to the sum of from one franc ten times to one franc twenty-five centimes but go through this same room in the restaurant about ten o'clock a night what a different picture the customers then no longer choose the cheapest things on the bill for fare they select what pleases

them most. Small decanter is replaced by a sealed bottle of wine, dishes succeed dishes, and the dinner ends with coffee, which is again followed by a glass of liquor. These gentlemen who were dining are the beggars. All the cripples and pretended cripples of the rich Mendelaine district are there, consuming the day's gains, and I beg you to believe that their bills are larger than that paid in the morning by the government clerk. I know a beggar who has lost both his legs, from a professional point of view, that is what is called a fine infirmity. This unfortunate creature is condemned to walk on his knees. I petic him with all my heart, and I acknowledge that he is in the category of the infirm for whom a

livelihood should be provided at the expense of society, but in some other way than by authorising him to beg. I will indicate in the second part of this volume the assistance which I suggest should be given to cripples and to the infirm. Meanwhile, this man begs, and his fine infirmity allows him, no doubt, to realize important sums. I have dined more than once next to him, and I frankly acknowledge that if I allowed myself to follow his example and to model my meals on his, there would soon be a deficit in my budget.

I am often obliged by my occupations to get my meals away from home. I breakfast or dined frequently in the neighbourhood of the St. Lazare Station. I know nearly all the restaurants of that part of the town and their prices. At one time I occasionally breakfasted in the neighbourhoods of the town, the Rue de Amsterdam at an English restaurant. The cooking there was excellent, but the price was rather beyond my purse. I left the establishment, but one fine day to my great astonishment I saw a blind man go in there who regularly begged at the Port Maliot, and who, twice a week, took the eleven o'clock train, went to the restaurant in the Rue de Amsterdam, breakfasted

there for four francs, and read the Figuero. For my blind man, though the victim of a bad-eye disease saw well enough there to read his newspaper. The blind usually get a good income, and that is intelligible. Their infirmity is so appalling. One day I was invited to dine with the family of beggars, whose address, an eminent artist, a friend of mine, had given me. The family consisted of four persons, the husband formerly a model, simulated paralysis, and played his part admirably. The wife who enjoyed excellent health professed to be a workwoman out of work. The daughter used the baby as a means of begging, and lastly the fourth person was blind. Of course it was as a beggar that I made the acquaintance of the head of this family,

who always believed and believed still that I am by profession a strolling musician. If presence maintained friendship, in the bigger world, treating to a drink creates and develops it with surprising rapidity. In a fortnight, thanks to a few moistenings, the false paralytic and I were quite intimate. accordingly one day he invited me home to dinner. We had, besides, to talk over business. I accepted and went to Goslin. To say that the dinner was appetising would be to exaggerate, but I assure you it was without bounds abundant.

At dessert a good bottle was uncorked my honour. As I expressed surprise at this luxury, the false paralytic exclaimed, You will be able to pay us back for this when you know you'll trade better and take larger sums. Besides, you need not scruple to accept it, for it is a blind man who is treating us. He lives with us, paying for board and lodging six francs a day. I've already said that I would undertake, as a beggar, to procure every imaginable thing.

One must, of course, know how to beg, because I repeated, mendicity is a profession, I might always say a science. Some months ago I wrote to the surgical aid society asking for a wooden leg for an inhabitant of the Adelpes Mattertimes. who really had had a leg epitanted and was deserving a pity the principal secretary of this society with a promptitude for which i was profoundly grateful paid immediately attention to my request and gave a wooden leg to my protege my declaration was sufficient to obtain this result well this is precisely what i criticise my declaration is quite enough to certify that the man in whom i am interested is deprived of a leg but there is nothing to prove that this man has not already taken advantage of his his misfortune by securing for himself relief a very description there is nothing to prove that this man has not thus gained the military medal what I oppose and want to prevent what I should be certain in a large measure to prevent by the system I am going to purpose is nothing else than the multiplication of charitable relief to an individual certainly

to carry on the business of wooden legs one must begin by having one's leg amputated and everyone has not this misfortune but without having the slightest and firmness you can secure for your charities of considerable value. Suppose that a native of Nice, living in Paris, wishes to travel to his native country without the necessity of paying his railway fare. The means are very simple. He goes to a deputy or to a senator of his department,

and once in his presence, he tells him he is very unfortunate. That he finds himself without work, that he knows no one in Paris to help him, in short that he wishes to be sent back to his own country, and he asks this deputy to recommend him to the prefect of police. The deputy, too happy to get out of the difficulty so cheaply, takes a sheet of paper stamp with the address of the chamber, of which there is always plenty on his desk, and writes a note to the prefect of police in which he recommends the man X to his notice, who is in all

respects worthy of his benevolence. The man X goes to the prefecture, where he shows his letter of recommendation. There they think it is to the interest of everybody to get rid of an indignant fellow who has not be able to find work in Paris, and who if he stays in the capital, will end by being supported by public assistance, or perhaps even in prison, so they give him at once an order for the railway ticket. If the man, X, is an intelligent fellow, he will have taken care to go to the prefecture dressed in rags and nearly barefoot. As soon as he has received his railway ticket, he will see the clerk, but you see my miserable condition, I am shoeless,

I have noticed in time in my pockets and I am hungry. The compassionate clerk will see that he is provided with a loaf of bread and a pair of boots and money varying from one to three francs for refreshment on his journey. The man can please himself as to whether he uses the railway ticket or sells it. For the administration which is so generous in the matter of restoring people to their own country forgets the essential thing. That is, it neglects to have the indignant man

who is asked to be sent back to his home at the expense of the taxpayers accompanied to the train. If this very simple precaution were taken, people would not be seen at all the stations, who offer you railway tickets at an absurdly low price which they have procured in this way, and for which the companies will obtain repayment from the department's transverse.

The clever beggar very often, instead of going to the prefecture of police to ask to be sent home, will go to an influential person connected with the railway company and get a permit to travel half price. Armed with this permit, he goes to the senators and deputies of his own or the adjoining departments to charitable people or societies to the curde or the pastur. If necessary, he calls at the association of former pupils of the lessee, and there he asks them to give him the money necessary to pay his half-fair.

What deputy is there who is not being the object of this kind of solicitation? Of course the ticket is never used. In the beggar's hand, it serves as a letter of introduction, or even as a certificate of poverty, thanks to which he may take in people. I had a conversation one day with the prefect of police about this traffic in tickets. In these days, I said, a man who knows Paris can procure a railway ticket at a very low rate, just as easily as anyone walking in the boulevards, in spite of your laws and your agents, can get, at all hours, playing cards of a particular kind,

or the photographer, how shall I express it, very decoulete, of any dancer, of the Moulin Rouge, or even the photographer, always very decoulete, of more than one actress belonging to a certain class of theatres. You prohibit this kind of photograph, I know, but that does not prevent there being sold everywhere. To procure them, you must know the likely places, and must know how to inspire confidence in the spiller when you present yourself. Well then, it is just the same with the railway tickets,

and I know ticket officers, where they sell them at a reduction. The prefect seemed to think I was exaggerating, but as I wished to prove that I knew what I was talking about, I set to work at once, and a few days afterwards I sent to the prefecture of police a ticket from Paris to Porto, which I bought at the Orleans station for six francs and a half, which bought the signature of the prefeit of police. It was a ticket delivered in pursuance of an order given on the recommendation of some deputy

to a so-called indignant person, who, after having received two francs for his support during the journey, sold his bread, his pet of shoes, and his ticket, and procured thus in one day nine or ten francs, without counting the pence he perhaps picked up at the station by begging of the passengers. But it will be said, to procure these tickets, these clothes, and this assistance, you must work very hard. You must go here and there, see deputies or senators, all will have the Paris in every possible direction. Indeed, your beggars day appears harder than that of any worker.

That is also my opinion. No doubt if some beggars gain large sums, many would find it more advantageous to work regularly than to beg for public charity, just that it would be more to the assassin's interest to behave honestly than to. to commit the crime that will bring him to the scaffold. A very interesting work might be written on this subject, the assassin's craft. George's Montau-Guriel once touched upon it in one of his articles in the Eclare. He informs us that very often the advantages realized by assassins condemned to death or imprisonment are less than the amount earned in a day's work of the most humble description.

At times the crime has cost more than it has realized. Let me quote from this article. A band of ruffians is just now making its way into country houses. They do the plate with incredible dexterity. Em Gauron was talking of this to a thief who was brought to his office, a man whose 50th robbery it was, and who said to him, One swir leave chief de la Soreterre. You would not believe how we thieves are robbed.

We carry off the silver dish from a house, say it is worth 20,000 francs. The receiver of stolen goods awaits us. His furnaces are ready heating for melting down. He gives us at once 1,500 francs for it. And the thief added, calling upon Mr. Gordon to bear witness to this denial of justice, do you consider that honest? The magistrate and audience could scarce repress a smile

when Dutilil, for the jury, gave his word of honour that he was speaking the truth. The same Dutilul, who was acquainted with the trickeries of a assassin, records in his memoirs the following circumstance. They'd murdered a poor old woman at the house of Akude. They had knocked her on the head and burned her alive, and then had looked for the money while she'd smoldered.

They managed to collect 20 francs in Cobbers. One louis for a work that had required preparatory study, no small expense, and I'd spent out of doors an act of dangerous violence, not to mention the consequences, which for one of them was hired labour, and for the other. and for the other death. There were two of them, that made ten francs each. Did that pay?

Dutaloo was a mason. The day's work for mason averages six francs, and night work counts double. That particular day, if he had kept to his own work, he would have gained twice as much, would still have been a respectable man and would not have gone to prison. Is it then a paradox to say

that it is more profitable to be a mason than an assassin? The assassin's trade has never made a living for anyone but the hangman. And G. Monturguel goes on to enumerate a series of crimes, which are brought in to their authors in average of from 28 to 30 francs, and some is nothing at all. Crimes for 20 francs, he says, for 100 sous, for three sous, for a cup of copy for nothing. What a lucrative profession. Can one understand old Mrs. Burland, having placed her son in the assassin's profession,

when apprentices are acquired everywhere, earning money at once? I vile lot with sad returns. Oh, no, it certainly is not a trade to teach a child. No, it is not a trade to teach a child, and yet, as G. Montaguil also said, it is very noticeable that while so many workmen are striking, assassins with stain from following their example. The venerable Abbe Croziers,

the former chaplain to those condemned to death, who was attended the last moments of so many rich people whose end towards the scaffold, said to me one day, they commit murderer from two motives only, for revenge you to get money. Go and say to a man who hopes by breaking into a safe and by killing a bank clerk to realize a fortune that will allow him to live comfortably to the end of his days, my friend it would pay you better to earn four francs a day than to risk going to the scaffold.

No doubt it would be more to his interest to work honestly, but if he takes the risk of the crime, the reason is that he is persuaded that he will not be discovered. and that he was succeed in getting a good round sum. To make his fortune, that is his one idea, with the beggar, the one idea is to do no work. There are people so set against all work that they prefer the most miserable existence to tying themselves to any regular occupation. On the quay of the port of Naples, you ask a Lazaron who has just had his dinner to carry your portmanteau. He will tell you about your business, saying, I have dined.

From this point of view, as soon as a man has satisfied himself with food, he has no further need to work. What a number of Lazzaroni we have in Paris! Lazzaroni living not in the glorious sun of Naples, but in the mud, the snow and the dirt, sleeping in summer in the underwood of the boys de Boulon or beneath bridges, and in the winter besides plaster kilns, and at times even in the gutters. Arrhus, by the Lyons or Ordeans line, take a cab, put your trunk on it and say to the driver, Take me to Newley,

and one of the Lazaroni will immediately start and follow your cab. He will run hard seven, eight, nine kilometres in the hope of being able, when he has arrived at Newley to help you to unload your trunk in this way to earn a few sous. Off this poor man regular work in a manufactory or workshop and he will refuse it. He is a professional beggar, a sworn enemy to work, and prefers to live the most miserable life rather than submit to the discipline of a workshop. That kind of beggar is a habitual client of night shelters and of the depot.

He regularly claims the barrack soup. He picks up ends the cigars on the boulevards. He sells transparent cards, and when seized with hunger, he runs behind cabs to unload the luggage. If there should be an old lady in the cab, and if the old lady wishes to be taken to a rather deserted street, of which there are many in the park d'inoulli, you may be sure that the expedition will not have been unremunitive. The beggar, after having taken down the trunks, will ask three francs, and if the old lady demur is, thinking there some absurd,

the beggar will insist that it was at her invitation that he followed the cab. You beckoned me, madame, I have run high for nine kilometres, and you say that I do not deserve three francs? Well, let us go to the police station. So the lady will give him three francs, for you may be sure the driver will remain neutral during this discussion. There is no danger of hives taking the old lady's part. He knows that these cabronets belong to an association with which it is just as well to keep on good terms. It's quite time to put an end toward these abuses.

It's quite time to end this traffic and public charity. It's quite time to understand, at any rate, the money intended for the needy is sacred money, which, to the last in time, should serve to relieve real distress and not to maintain the indolent and the vicious. The tithe, appropriated out of public charity, by the false poor, nearly swallows up the whole sun. A stringent remedy is necessary. It is this remedy which, I humbly purpose to suggest, with the deep conviction that it will have the happiest practical results. End of Section 4. Section 5.

Of the Beggars of Paris by Louis Paulain This is a Librivox recording, or Librivox According to the Public Domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org, recorded by Leon Jaime. Part 2. The Remedy In order to avoid all ambiguity, we will begin by distinctly stating what the evil is that needs to be remedied. To abolish mendicity certainly does not mean to abolish pauperism. The abolition of pauperism is one of those dreams that may have haunted the brimidivism. of the tender-hearted, but it is only a dream.

No doubt there is much to be done with regard to social reforms. I believe that, without being a partition of state socialism, one might according to M. Baudrillert say that society should be kind-hearted, but as another economist, M. Frederick Passy has remarked. Society must not, under pretext of being kind-hearted, give way to thoughtless sensitiveness, and with a view of relieving distress, adopt means the only effect of which will be to aggravate the evil. There are some politicians who, by way of helping those whom they termed the working classes, make constant appeals to state authority and to statutory regulations.

They forgot that in placing humanity in every case under guardianship, the state will become, as Mr. Bentham says, an institution of children's nurses for the use of grown-up people. The state has the right to intervene to ensure safety to the labourer in the factory or the workshop. It has a right to intervene to protect women and children. It is its duty to encourage, and if necessary, to promote the creation of works and mutual assistance, of forethought and of economy. But without forgetting that in these cases individual initiation can alone ensure a final success,

because it alone is capable of throwing heart and soul into the work to which it has its self-given birth. France may be said not to be behind other nations in these ideas. In latter years, immense progress has been affected, and since the day when Mr. M. Flouquet, president of the council, created at the Ministry of the Interior, a department for the general management of la Assistance Public on all sides, under the influence of enlightened philanthropists, the charities societies, the societies for mutual help, cooperative societies for production and consumption, for retiring pensions and tontains. In a word, all associations whose object it is to help the weak and the insignificant

have lately obtained a position most successful and encouraging. But whatever is done, there will always be human waste. There will always be the indignant and the needy, who by reason of a lack of energy or a foresight, of some infirmity, of want of work, or even of a fault or intervener advice, provide themselves at some time without work, without bread or shoulder. An appeal to charity for all of these unfortunates is it just right. To come to the relief of all whose suffer is a social obligation,

for a charity is not only a Christian virtue, is besides a civic duty. The state, wrote Montesquillo, owes to all citizens the right to subsistence, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man says, Public assistance is a sacred debt. Society owes subsistence to unfortunate citizens, either providing work for them or by finding the means of existence for those who are incapable of work. La Roussufocourt-Liencourt, in the statement he made to the constituent assembly of the principles that had inspired members of the Committee of Public Assistance, said, Hitherto assistance has only been regarded as a favour.

It is a duty, and this duty can only be fulfilled when the assistance supplied by society promotes the general well-being. If a man has the right to say to society, give me the means of living, society has equally the right to say to him, give me your work. This then is the problem put shortly. Those who can work should gain their bread by the sweat of their brow. That bread will be proportioned to their effort or to their intelligence. As of those incapable of work, it is the duty of society to guarantee their means or subsistence,

but no one has the right, when able to gain his living by work, to expect to be supported by his fellow creatures. The right to eat has, as its choleroy, the duty of work. The question is how, to put these principles into practice, and how to distinguish the once the real from the false poor. Chapter 1. The first reform, the first necessary reform, without which it will never be possible to diminish the number of the poor, consists in the total, absolute and radical suppression of arms giving in the streets. This reform, I do not by myself to the fact, will be the most difficult to effect

of all those I shall have to point out, for in this case, instead of addressing myself to skilled persons to reasonable men who know the weak-sided charitable works. I address myself to the public, to the masses, and the public does not reason. It allows itself to be guided by its feelings. It will be very difficult to make it understand that in giving two suits to a poor person in the street, it is doing a bad action. It is just because I am aware of this difficulty, that I have multiplied anecdotes and examples in my book, and that in a series of lectures delivered in different places I have tried to begin a crusade against evil which is called arms giving in the street. We have just acknowledged that we should only give to those

who are wont, to those who cannot work or who being able to work are for the time being without employment. Who can say that the man who holds out his hand up to us in the streets is in this situation? Do not the examples I have cited in this book and the experiences I have undergone and which I declare upon my honour are all authentic. Strike you as being conclusive on this point? We have here a man of the world who sets himself to study carefully from life the Parisian beggars.

During ten years, not allowing himself to be discouraged either by personal distaste or by threats, he affiliates himself toward the rack of muffins of the capital. He visits night's shoulders. He eats barrack soup. He stations himself at church doors. He penetrates into the most infamous slums in the most dangerous haunts.

By turns blind, deaf and dumb, paralytic, crawling cripple, organ grinder, cab door opener, he trades upon charity in all its forms and always returns with his pockets full. He makes these experiments in the light of day and before witnesses. He obviously tried them again if required. Is not that enough to satisfy you?

What more do you need to convince you that most of the people who hold out their hand to you in the street are treading upon your good nature, and when this same man has just told you that, after having taken part in the orgies of the false poor, he has seen the really poor die of want and hunger. The modest poor, the honest workman, burdened with a family or broken down with illness. All those who struggle on that last moment never venturing to hold out a hand to pass us by, and not even allowing their neighbor to guess the fightful circumstances with which they struggling. Do you not feel that in continuing to give to these adventurers the money with which you might

help the really enriched? You are committing more than a fault? You are committing a crime, for you become an accomplice of an evil that you might prevent. Ah, I know what answer I shall get. No doubt I shall be told, we know well enough that in giving two soos in the street to a man who pretends he has had nothing to eat for three days, we may nine times out of ten be scandalously deceived, but we have also a chance of doing good. Perhaps the wretched man speaks the truth in protesting that he has not eaten for three days. We continually read in the newspapers of men, women, who with strength, all spent and worn out with suffering, have tried to end their lives by jumping into the scene.

Are you sure that the beggar who implores your charity is not one of these, and that the two sues which you denounce us so harshly forgiving him will not have the result of saving him from suicide. Alas, the contrary is the truth. For the cobras that you so liberally distribute in the streets amount to millions, which only serve to encodeonious and vice, whereas I would have them employed in relieving real want. But the argument is not without force. The human heart does not reflect. When we find ourselves confronted by what we believe to be real want,

we feel bound to help the victim and it seems to us that in giving a few copies to the unfortunate being who implore as a charity we are really doing a good action how many times it has happened to me in order to find our water-becker gains to pass the whole night sitting on a bench in front of a cafe restaurant or concealed in a carriage occupied and watching the mother of the family nursing an infant and holding out her hand to passers-by when i saw a sue dropped into the beggar's receptacle i was reminded of a man at a hurry getting out of his cabot cafe who orders a meal for the driver in return of having bought him quickly to his destination. The horse suffers, the driver gets the refreshment. It is the same with the beggar. It is the baby who suffers and shivers with cold, who gets bronchitis or inflammation of the lungs. It is the baby who, by his poor, of pinched face, although eyes and shivering, excites the commiseration of passers-by.

And for the sake of the child, two sous are given to the mother, which she will often go and spend and drink at a wine shop. But you say, you do not mean to maintain that amongst all the beggars there is not a single needy one? By no means. I admit that there are some rare exceptions. Yes, the charity you give in the street may sometimes fall into the hands of the really indignant, and the remedy I'm going to propose will enable everyone to satisfy his conscience.

Chapter 2 Substitution of Tickets for Money This remedy consists in replacing the two sous, or even the scrap of bread, by special tickets. Here again an explanation is necessary. The kind of ticket which I propose is nothing in common with the tickets for bread, meat or vegetables which are distributed by soup kitchens. The idea of giving these tickets was certainly a step in advance, but we must not forget that in the matter of charity, each time that progress is made, the professional beggar also progresses on his side,

with the object of rendering illusory, the precautions of charitable persons. it was thought that as the beggar often transforms the penny which is given him for the purpose of buying himself bread or meat into wine or absinthe it would be wiser to replace the money by tickets for bread or meat unfortunately the beggars who wish for money and not for bread or meat are quite equal in selling their tickets you needily go to place morbert or to the quays of the scene or to any place where the collectors of oriflinds sell the produce of their harvest and you will find there a veritable method of tickets for bread, soup, meat, coal, etc. Those for which you paid a penny are sold again at a reduction, according to the market, so that, with this system, you do not prevent the evil you wish to suppress. You need besides only notice, with what contempt the beggar accepts your ticket to convince you of the truth of what I say, and you will easily understand this contempt now that you know that your scrap of cardboard really represents only four cents and times to the bear.

The system which I wish to see organized is very different, for its effect would be to give the beggar a ticket that would be personal and which would not be sold. That is the system which has been inaugurated by the union de assistance of the 16th district. This charitable association presided over by Mr. M. Leonce and which is administered by a council at the head of which is M. D. Cresignoy, former councillor of state, has, in a very simple way, got over the difficulty which had to be surmounted. When people wish to be able to give immediate relief to destitute persons whom they meet in the street, they can buy tickets for bread, meat or soup for tens and times at the UND assistance. A beggar comes and tells you he is hungry, you give him one or two of your tickets. The beggar, furnished with a card, goes at once to the main royalty of the district,

where the agent of the charitable society is always to be found. fancy his ticket, which is taken from him, and in exchange they give him an order available for that day only. A baker's shop and an restaurant are to be found opposite the mail row, which forthwith give bread and soup that the man must consume on the premises. With this system, the really hungry beggar need only go a few steps to get out of the place where he can eat his bread and soup, but before eating it, he will have to show himself to the society's agent, who will in a few days know the faces of all this.

his clients. Suppose a man should have procured 25 or 30 tickets. He could only exchange four or five of them in a day, and so, to use up his 30 tickets, he would have to appear six times for the same clerk, who, if he perceived that he had to do with a professional, would refuse him the stamp, without which the ticket is valueless. If, and this will happen to you not unfrequently, the wretched man who employs your charity, be only a professional beggar. He would take good care not to appear at the mayoralty where he is known. In this case, the ticket is lost so far as he is concerned. But it will not be a loss to the society, which will in this way have in hand tense and times, which may be employed in helping the really

needy. The union due assistance of the 16th district has had the happiest results. All the intelligent people of Passier have taken part in the schemes, and at church doors, as well as in the street, the penny is replaced by a personal ticket, and the professional beggar, Lee's Passy, where henceforth he will find nothing to do. He is not worthwhile to beg all day for a piece of bread and a plate of soup merely. He is only the really needy who accept such relief, and he is accepted more readily, knowing that the union de-assistance of the 16th District has other means in addition for relieving those who are worthy of their interest.

Let there be formed in every quarter of Paris, an analogous institution, to the one existing in Passy, and charitable people who have only few copies to dispense in charity who have their satisfaction of knowing that that penny will really represent a piece of bread or a plate of soup, and that in no case it can be transformed into absence or tobacco. Chapter 3 Organization of Assistance by Work It is evident that one cannot expect to save a man from distress by giving him a piece of bread or a plate of soup. The relief we shall henceforth give in the form of a personal job.

ticket is only intended as a preliminary help to those who are starving. But in the majority of cases to render real service to one who solicits our charity, we must do more and put her hands deeper into our pockets. He is here that we introduce assistance by work. A man stops you at the corner of a street. It tells you he has a wife and children, and that he has no money and is hungry, and that those belonging to him have eaten nothing since the day before. What is to be done? You were tempted to give this poor man a franc, or two or three francs. This would be an excellent thing to do if the man who receives it has told the truth. But if this man lies, if he has neither wife nor children, if instead of dying of hunger,

as he pretends, he has one or two hundred francs in his pocket, and if he goes to a wine shop in the rue di Angles or the rue harvey, and drinks the two francs you gave him, you will agree with me that your cherry will have had a result diametrically opposite to that, which you intended. What can we do to ascertain whether this beggar speaks the truth? How, in a word, to distinguish the genuine

from the professional beggar? Well, there is a complete remedy. One which is known and proved, and is infallible. The remedy is work. Work is a touchstone which will enable us immediately and certainly to test our man, for the beggar may be thus defined.

He who has vowed never to work. This definition reminds me of an anecdote I read, the other day in the Memorized Secrets. During the last century, M.D. Manavow was in a carriage and attendance upon someone when a man from 18 to 20 years of age, fat and well-nourished, where the fresh, ruddy complexion, came to the carriage door asking alms. M.D. M. M. de Manavau, struck with the contrast between the young man's action and his appearance, turned to him and said,

Are you not ashamed, a wretched fellow, young as you are, and the picture of health, to demean yourself by begging the bread that you became by all. honest work. The young man abashed by this rebuke, answered, scratching his ear and half sobbing, Ah, sir, if you only knew how lazy I am. M. D. Marevo took six pounds from his pocket and gave them to him. Laziness was a fault he ever gave, and the man's frankness deserved a recompense. Mendegans of today resembled their ancestors and everything but their candor. All are lazy, but not one will acknowledge it. Some years ago, a society was started in Paris under the name of Le Ureux de Comer de Comercants.

The members of this society agreed mutually to refrain from giving arms, but at the same time, they decided that anyone in distress, recommended to them by the manager of any charitable society, should be immediately employed during three whole days at four francs a day, and even kept longer if it were possible. Here are the results of this experiment, narrated, I think, by M. Maxim Ducamp. 727 applications were followed by 727 offers of employment at four francs a day.

Out of these 727 applicants, 312 only accepted the letter of recommendation that would have found them work, and 174 went to call the houses indicated to them. So out of 727 soliciting help, and professing to be ready to accept no matter what employment, 553 deserted immediately when it was proposed that they should work. at four francs a day. The 174 who persevered were admitted to the houses to which they were sent. 37, having worked half a day, claimed their two francs to go and get their midday mail and did not return. 68 had the courage to work until the evening, gaining their four francs and never reappeared. 51 were he awoke enough to work for two days, but such an unusual exertion having exhausted

energy they were seen no more. 18 victoriously stood the test and stayed in the houses where they had been temporarily employed. Thus out of 727 individuals who begged from passers-by, there were only 18 who deserved that others should interest themselves in their welfare. The remaining 709 were volunteers of wilderness who lived by trading upon charity. Now supposing that the 709 professional beggars had each rip to harvest and sous of two francs day. That makes 1,418 francs, which means a sufficient sum to enable those 18 really unfortunate

persons whose only request was for work to live for 20 days. It would be difficult to lay too much stress upon examples of this kind, because they confirm the proposition I have always maintained, that what we lack for the purpose of relieving distress is not money, but organisation. We have enough money, but we distribute it badly. Instead of giving it to the needy who are incapable of lying, we give it to adventurers, who in order to cheat us, every course to every means and every infamy. So then, work will enable us to unmask all these robbers of the poor. At Mulhouse in Switzerland, at Paris, at Lyons, everywhere where societies are organised to replace money given in the streets by assistance given in work, the same happy

results have followed. Offer work, and the false beggars will disappear. I have long made the experiment in my house. A beggar rings at my bell. I am a poor workman out of work. You are welcome, my friend, come in. You have arrived at the right moment. You were looking for work, and I was just wanting someone who would work. Do you see that pump at the garden? Yes, sir. Very well. You will first pump, and then water the lawn. I will pay with a rate of forty-s and times an hour. But, sir, it is freezing. So much the better, you will make yourself warm. Oh, it is not for myself that I say that, I am concerned about your lawn, water will injure it. You need not trouble yourself about that, set to work bravely.

Forty-send times an hour, that is agreed. The beggar takes off his waistcoat, moistens the palms of his hands, and begins the bump. Here's started work. How long will it last? From five minutes to a quarter of an hour, according to the individual, I've rarely known them to pass the quarter of an hour. generally speaking the beggar profits by the near vicinity of the door to escape without asking for the few cent times which are due to him for the small amount of pumping he has done the man will never come to me again yes my pump is well known in my neighbourhood it preserves a justly merited reputation and renders me incalculable service one of my friends who lived in the same street as myself at newly doing a summer season said to me one day i noticed something i cannot account for beggars who are so numerous in this district go down a street zigzag ringing at all the doors but always missing yours one would suppose that they knew you they know my pump my dear friend and that is enough for them

One day, however, Abaker revenged himself upon my system in a somewhat intelligent fashion. It was winter. It was piercingly cold, and the pipes saw the water company were frozen. A beggar rings at my doorbell. I am a workman out of employment, since yesterday I have not very well understood come in. Here, my good man, nothing is given that has not worked for. Do you see that pump? Go and draw forty buckets of water.

Where shall I put the water? I will show you. Here is the child's bath. You will fill it. Then I had all the jugs in the house brought out, and everything for holding water that I possessed, and set them in a line in the garden. You will fill all these with water, and also little reservoir in the kitchen. When you are finished, he'll be given 20 sous, a plate of soup, and a glass of wine.

It will take you two hours. Will that suit you? My man sets to work. I watch him from my study, and upon my word I find that he works well. I say to myself, here is a man who want to try to. her help. By the end of an hour and a half, he has finished his task. The cook gives him a plate of soup, a piece of bread, a glass of wine, and a 20-soup piece, and, being a good-hearted woman, who did not share my opinions about begging, she adds a cup of coffee to this frugal meal. The beggar eats his soup of good relish. He eats his bread, drinks his wine and coffee, and puts

the 20-suits in his pocket. Then take in a bucket of water. your ape, says he, the ape was myself, took me for an idiot, I will teach him that I am more generous than he. He asked me of 30 buckets of water, here are 31, this one is for full measure. And as coolly as possible, in the presence of the horrified cook, he pours a full bucket of water into my porta fuel, and into all the sauce pans in which my dinner was cooking. I had given work to this man, the work irritated him, and he took his revenge. Wherever charitable institutions for assistance by work have been organized, the same phenomenon has been noticed. Everyone knows Pashto Robbins' labour home.

M. Robin is a philanthropist who is very quietly and wisely created a most useful institution, which serves today as a model for all establishments of the kind. Persons affiliated with this good work received tickets bearing the address of the home, with a peculiar number of figures. These figures take the place of the name of the person affiliated. You meet a man in the street who begs arms of you. Why do you beg? Because I have no work.

Very well, here is a ticket which will admit you into a labour house. In this house, where you can stay for a fortnight, you will be given bored and lodging and you're washing. You will be warmed and cared for. From 7 o'clock in the morning until 12, you will be free, and it can use your liberty by going to seek employment in a workshop of some kind. had known you will return to the home where you will breakfast then he will work until seven o'clock in the evening this work you will give and return for the hospitality shown you what an excellent system all the unfortunate people who are received into pasture robin's institution are helped out of their difficulties if they possess a little energy or a little good-will they will soon be on their feet again for each beggar that you send into the home he will owe one franc fifty by means of the sum once given you are assured that your protege will be able to see that your protege will receive

of board and lodging for a fortnight, for the work to which the man will be subjected in the afternoon will suffice to make up the cost. I am one of the associates of this work, and what do you think I have proved? That five times out of ten the beggar refuses my ticket on one pretext or another, and when he accepts it, he generally does not use it. By the end of a month I have distributed ten or twelve tickets, and when the clitor of the institution calls on me, instead of claiming ten or twelve times, one franc fifty, he asks payment of a scarcely more than one or two tickets. On January 9, 1892, a man knocked at my door and left with the maid the following letter, which I copy word for word. Sir, I take the liberty of writing you this letter,

for I understand that you give cards for admission into a house where work is procured for the unemployed. Sir, I do not come as a beggar pleading poverty, but as an honest workman out of work, who comes to ask it or views of favour, for his nearly two months in the I have been able to find any, which makes me wretched, and is certainly very bad for me, for I shall soon have nothing left and shall have to sleep in the open air, which seems very hard, as will be for the first time. I come then, sir, to beg you to give me a card of admission into this good house where the wretched are made happy, for giving work, is the best possible charity.

So I shall call again myself to fetch the answer, unless you send it to me, but to save you the cost, as I have, unfortunately, time I will come back. Awaiting your answer, I have the honour to be, sir, your respectful and devoted servant. George R. Does not this seem to be an interesting man? He does not beg. He asks for work, and so thoughtful is he that even says he will call again for the answer, so to save me the cost of a postage stamp.

He is one of those unhappy men to whom you will have given a twenty-su piece. But I give him a ticket for a labour home. and send to him. With this ticket, you are assured of being lodged and boarded for a fortnight. Go to the address I give you, and if at the end of a fortnight you have not succeeded in finding yourself work somewhere, you may come back to me, and I will occupy you at my house doing another fortnight. At the same time, I wrote to Pasteur Robin to recommend my protege specially to his notice. This happened on January 9 at midday. On the 11th, the superintendent of the home wrote to me, Sir, I regret to inform you that your protege, George R, has not appeared at the labour home.

On January 13 comes a further letter from Pasteur Robbins' representative, and runs thus. Sir, your protege, George R. has at last come to the house. He had supper and went to bed. Yesterday morning he came in for breakfast, but when it was a question of doing some work, he took himself off. Do not think that this was an exception, for I might cite hundreds of examples of the same, kind. On April 28, 1893, a man brought the following letter to my house, which was badly expressed and badly spelt. M. Pauline, I beg that you will forgive me if I take the liberty of writing you a few lines. I have just been in the hospital 44 days, and I am without work

or any kind of resource. I beg, sir, that if you should know of something to give me to do, or be able to send me as a waiter to run a rands, as I shall get into a good place, the first fortnight in July. Meanwhile, I will do what I've confined, so as to give bread to my children. I tell you, sir, that they have turned us out of our house because we owe 16 francs for the broom, and they keep from us the little liner we have,

and we can't change. My poor wife sleeps with some friends, waiting for better times. Sir, I beg you to take pity upon our sad condition. I thank you a hundred times in advance. Your most humble and devoted servant for life, Winter Elephonse Mechanic Please answer to

Monseuor I make this man come in and cross-examine him I soon perceive that I have a professional to deal with A few days before this he had quartered my house And they had unfortunately given him two francs He naturally returns to the house where he had received arms He asks him to show me some papers to prove his identity He takes from his pocket a leather case

And let's fall a small notebook which I pick up It was the little game, or at least containing some addresses of charitable persons. I am much distressed at finding my own name on the list. I at once definitely make up my mind and give my beggar a one-franc ticket for the Union de Assistance of the 16th District. The next day, but one, I received the following note from the Union de Assistance. The man named Winter to whom you gave a one-fran ticket has done no work. It is always the same story.

the professional burgo complaints have been without work. He is in reality without work only because he refuses to work. Shall I give more examples? In 1890, we had a terribly hot winter. The government, by way of helping the destitute, of whom there must have been very many that year, conceived the unfortunate idea of establishing in the general exhibition buildings in the champ's demise a large night refuge. They began by admitting people for the night,

then they took them in both day and night, Then they gave them soup, their uncharitable ladies brought them warm clothes, and p.s ladies distributed religious tracts. The rumour very soon spread to the world of beggars that they had only to protect themselves to the champs demas to be lodged clothes and fed. Regular gangs of people who numbered in their ranks more strapping fellows than old or decrepit ones invaded the refuge of the champs de mowers, where, doing whole weeks together,

hundreds of men were seen passing their days in playing with corks, and smoking cigarettes in the manufacture of which, for want to the proper paper, they employ the leaves of religious tracks. At last the government began to wander, not with that anxiety, how they were going to get rid of all these idlers. I could not have believed, said a member of the government, in the lobby of the chamber des dubutes, that there were so many destitute people in Paris.

Destitute people, I replied, what a mistake, sir. Call them sluggards, and you will give them their right name. What passed afterwards proved that I was right. One day there were 700 individuals in a single refuge in the Champs Tamaris. Pestua Robin offered cards for his labour home to these 700 individuals. You have no work, he said to them, Come to me, you'll be free all the morning to seek employment.

In afternoon, you will make for me small bundles of firewood, and in exchange, I will give you board and lodging. Do you suppose that all these unfortunate people thankfully accepted Pasteur Robbins' offer? Not at all. There were only 100 who accepted, and out of this number nearly half were not long in repenting of their good impulse,

for only 55 candidates came to M. Robbins' home. After two days' work, these 55 were reduced to 11. 700 men out of work received relief in the Champs-Demaris. To these 700 unemployed workmen, an occupation is offered. a means of earning their bread by work which is neither too long nor utterance and only eleven candidates except this proposal. Is not this enough to prove that these men pretending to be out of work were beggars by profession, incodrigal vagabonds, idle fellows, antagonistic to all work and discipline, victims of that particular disease which Dr. Benedict calls claustrophobia,

and which we may more clearly designate as abhorns to a regular work. These people require air, space, perpetual movement from one place, to another, the unforeseen absolute independence and the most complete idleness. During the same winter of 1890 in the same champ's demise, while hundreds of men out of work were playing with corks in a gallery of an exhibition, a well-known French artist M. Henry Mott was painting in an improvised studio over their heads his beautiful decorations for the Moscow exhibition, which a few months later were to win for him the cross of the Legion of Honor.

An immense studio was necessary for painting these long pieces of canvas, and that was why the administration of the fine arts had authorized the artist to install himself in the champs de Marr's gallery. One day, M. M. M. M. M. To judge of the effect of his colors, wanted to spread out his painting before him. He needed the help of a dozen, 15 or 20 men during an hour or two. Below him, he sees his crowd of unemployed and idle men. He goes down and asks who are willing to help him. There are 20 sous to be earned for a work of an hour or two. Who will come? No one answers. The artist renews his offer two, three, four times, and with much trouble he succeeds in securing three men.

Once again, do you not see that giving even a simple meal merely a piece of bread to a healthy man who can but will not work is an unwholesome action from beginning to end? And this is why there should be organisations of assistance by work in every town. and sufficient numbers to enable all the destitute whether men or women to obtain immediate relief. These organisations of assistance by work will naturally assume different forms, according to the kind of relief they propose to afford. Some will be night shelters, others workshops, others general refractories,

but all will be based upon the same principle, viz, that of replacing arms by an offer of work. I would not abolish either the night's shelter or the scrap of bread, but I will put an absolute stop to there being given Gratis. In place the sign board which might be rendered thus. Here all the idol will be lodged Gratis on condition that they say they are destitute. I would stick up a notice board on which might henceforth be read. Here all who are willing to work will be provided with board and lodging. But it is not sufficient to proclaim the principle of assistance by work.

We must know too how to put it into practice. What work shall we make them do? At what rate shall they be paid? What is to become other things that are made? Protnesians of gratuitous assistance seem to take pleasure in complicating the question. They foresee difficulties which only exist in their own imagination. To hear them talk he would suppose that we were proposing to establish national workshops without limit, out of which wood poured everyday immense quantities of manufactured products

that would tend to encumber the general market. That is not our intention. It is not a question of creating national workshops, but of giving occupation of one kind or another to those one wishes to assist, even if the work they are given be a useless one. It is necessary to make the able-body beggars understand that in this world nothing is obtained for nothing.

A man knocks at the door of all night's shelter. It is night freezing outside. The man is chilled with a cold and is suffering. You admit him, you make him warm, and give him a bed for the night. So far so good. But the next morning, why do you let this man go away without claiming payment for at least part of the hospitality he has enjoyed? Do you answer that he has no money?

I am quite aware of that, but then it is not money that I ask of him, but work of some kind, an effort, a proof of his good disposition. This man can saw wood, he can unwind old ropes, He can make paper bags You have mattresses in your night shelter And you have the wool picked every year by a regular mattress maker Who, thanks to the employment of a machine Will very soon reduce your wool to small shreds

Why do you not every morning have two or three mattresses handpicked by the pensioners of the house But these mattresses have covers The beds have sheets and blankets Might not all these things be cleaned in the establishment? If necessary could you not have had to be cleaned in the establishment? If necessary could you not have the floors washed with soap and water? Could you not get the windows cleaned in such a way as to make each pane of glass shine like the windows of a house in Holland? All this will not bring in very much, I know,

but this obligatory work will suffice to keep away professional beggars from your shoulder, and it will have the very great advantage of enabling you to distinguish between well-disposed persons and uncroticable idlers, who consider your shoulder a hostelery, which one may enter without a buy-your-leave, and for which one may depart without a thank you. It often happens that a scheme of assistance by work will take the form of a factory or workshop, as, for instance, Pasture Robbins Labor Home, or the factory of the Béignoros Montseille, Society for Assistance by Work, presided by such good men as M.M. Lelance, Gophres, and Bompard. In that case, it will be dispensable to grant pensioners, their full liberty in the mornings,

so as to allow them to look for work. The occupation to which these assisted are subjected should be of the simplest character, so as not to necessitate any apprenticeship, but it must be made hard enough not to tempt the pensioner to wish not to stay too long in this shelter, which is not to be only a temporary refuge.

Some directors of philanthropic works displayed to their visitors with satisfaction the luxury of their establishment. This luxury is a fault. the bed of the night's shelter should be hard. The meal of the charitable home should be frugal. Not only luxury, but even comfort, should be banished from these establishments. It must not be forgotten that we have to do it, in this instance,

neither with the sick nor the impotent. Of these I shall speak later, but with the able-bodied who professed to be in want, and who often owe their poverty to nothing but their misconduct and carelessness. It would be supremely unjust, if under pretext of charity, The man who does not work, or who works only irregularly, should be better treated than the honest workman who never takes a holiday. It is possible, it may be said, that you consider that people are too well treated in the night's shelters. Yes, they are too well treated. That astonishes you, but is a fact.

I can imagine my reader's surprise, and it is natural, when I think that, though everybody in France takes an interest in the poor, very few people have the opportunity of studying them from life. The very name seems to denote a melancholy abode, and whose heart would not be touched in passing the woman's refuge in the Rue's St. Jucks. How much those wretched women suffer when, as night falls they come to knock at that door? I do not object to that. The night shelter ought to evoke in every mind the idea of suffering, abandonment, despair. Understand well that the sign of this philanthropic house should move your deepest pity. I admit for the moment that all the pensioners of the night's shelters are worthy of your compassion But there are also in the same city of Paris in the evening

Hone to support people who, having worked bravely all day, have their notably rest nothing better than a dirty pallet Compared with the bed of the night's shelter in an unheard of luxury There are men who, having swept the streets all day in the rain or snow are by evening wet through and numb with cold these poor men very often do not possess a change of clothing. To all themselves they must get into bed and as a bed with sheets and blankets is expensive these poor riches are obliged to be satisfied with half or a quarter of a bed.

Go into the St. Maguette Street and he will find there a furnished lodging of this description. In a moderate-sized room there are five or six beds placed against the wall and each bed three places. A large black line. made on the wall with coal shows of space allotted to each individual. At all hours of the night the customers arrive.

The man is exhausted with his labourers. By the light of a smoky lamp hung to the ceiling, he undresses himself and puts his wet clothes on the floor in the midst of all kinds of filth. Then he lies on the bed by the side of a sleeper whom he does not know, and who may happen, being thus suddenly awakened to receive the newcomer with kicks and thumps. Enter one of these crowd of brooms at 2 o'clock in the morning, when fully occupied, try to stay there a few minutes without becoming asphyxiated, and, leaving there, go into a night's shelter where all the belts are clean, all the sheets very white, all the blankets carefully

disinfected. The lamp that lights this large dormitory allows you to notice that the walls are whitewashed and the floor well scrubbed. Each man before going into the dormitory has to submit to a complete change of clothing, and while he sleeps, the clothes that he will put on in the morning are dried and cleansed. And here the hospitality costs nothing. You must acknowledge that all these poor creatures must be endowed with a strong sense of pride. We refer to the gratuitous and comfortable nightshelder.

The third of a bed at twenty-some times in the den of the St. Margaret Street. But take care. If you multiply indefinitely the number of gratuitous night shelters, it will multiply indefinitely at the same time, they class a destitute folk who find it quite natural to sleep in the night shelter and to feed at the barrack doors. With regard to charity there is a line very difficult to draw, but within which we must keep, at whatever cost, if we are not to do more harm than good. It is that the condition of the man obtaining relief should not be a subject of envy to the man and work. If not the poor man who is struggling with all his strength to gain his bread, will end by thinking that begging is more poverty.

and easy than working. Some institutions for assistance merely give occupation to the poor during the day. That is the case in the workshops, where they give neither food nor lodging, but where they simply provide work that can be done in the shop itself. That is the kind of work which best suits the poor who are not alone in the world. The woman who has a child that she cannot leave alone, the man who has a family to support, in this case the wages are paid of money, but here however, ties submitted,

constantly to repeat the same thing, we recommend that the wages should be fixed at a rather low rate, so that all those who come to the establishments should be induced to employ all their energy and capacity in finding more renewative employment. These workshops sought also to be as small as possible, so as to harbour only a limited number of persons. It is a primary importance to avoid the accumulation of large masses, which immediately compels the application of a severe discipline, and requires on the part of the managers' qualities, which is not always, is easy to find amongst the humble class of persons employed. And then again in the interest of the poor people,

it is much better to have a number of workshops distributed over a large area than of a big central one which necessitates changes of residence, often very difficult and troublesome. One of the workshops of this kind, which, it seems to me, would be a good model, is that of Javel. Situated number 129, Bizz, of the St. Charles Street in the 15th Theron Desert. in a most unpretentious house. This workshop has nothing in its appearance to make it attractive. And yet since it was started, in the space of a year,

it has provided 14,945 hours of work to 90 workmen. The workshop is open every day from 12 to 6 o'clock, excepting on Sundays and holidays. Women who are nursing their children are allowed to bring them to the workshop. Work is paid for at the rate of 20s and times an hour. The women are given as much soup as they wish for. From time to time a distribution of line and clothes is made amongst them, chiefly of shirts. One day of the week, the workmen are authorized to bring their own things to the workshop,

and this work of mending and keeping in repair is paid for like the work done for the manufactory. Here is an excellent plan, well calculated to raise labour in the eyes of the poor seamstresses, who complain often wrongly, but also sometimes we must acknowledge, rightly of bring, unduly made use of by the middlemen who get orders from the large shops. It's not paying them for repairing their own things the way to make them understand, in a most practical way, the philanthropic character of the institution. Whilst at the same time, it allows them to do something for their own welfare. A woman carrying a child begs arms of you.

If you consider her a deserving case, you may give her a 20 sous piece. If so, it will be at least three chances to one, you will be cheated. That is to say that you will give to someone who is undeserving. On the other hand, if you are an advocate of assistance by work, and you give this woman at a mission ticket for Javel's workshop, how different the results will be. In giving you a charity through the workshop, you will have saved the child the suffering and danger of being kept out in the street, and you will certainly not have been cheated. For the poor woman who begs of you, will have to work for five hours before receiving your arms.

Money thus earned will not be squandered, whereas money given in the street is very often spent at the wine shop. During one winter, 220 tickets of admission into Javelle's workshop were distributed. Only 90 were used. Out of the 220 petitioners, there were one hundred and thirty who lied. It was that large-hearted woman, Madame Ferdinand Therifis, who at her own expense, and with the help of few relatives and friends,

founded and put into working order Chavelle's workshop. For some years, we may have taken a more and more attractive part at Congresses, in which the great social problems are discussed. We must rejoice at seeing them take their share in those dry tasks, which until now are seen to be reserved for men's consideration. For this cooperation has affected some practical results of the greatest value. It was on returning from the Congress in Antwerp, whereas she had followed all the discussions both the committees in public meetings

that Madame Ferdinandrefus started her workshop, thanks to which much real want has been relieved. How many other good works could I cite which have been thus inspired in a kind-hearted women owing to their having taken part in a Congress of one kind or another? Labour institutions, like workshops intended for men, must be located somewhere and consequently buildings have to be rented, and the cost of fitting them up is often very burdensome. One need only look at the accounts of all charitable undertakings of this kind

to see how often a large part of the receipts is required for the general expenses, such as rent, firing, lighting, furniture, etc. Impressed by this fact, some people have thought of employing the destitute in street work, sweeping, carrying away the snow, clearing pavements, before shops, collecting the refuse in the streets, etc. The institution for assistance of the 16th District has organised this service in a very practical way. The associates of this institution always carry in their pocketbooks small tickets in the form of half-penny letter cards. Small diagrams displayed on the page of a ticket when opened and ticket when closed.

A poor man stops you and asks arms. You believe after having questioned him that this man is deserving of your consideration. You decide to give him one, two, three francs and his sum you please. Instead of giving to him in money, you fill up one of these tickets and write on it the date on which you gave the ticket. The beggar's name, his address and the sum you intend to have. You need not sign this card and so make yourself known to the beggar. For your personal number, which is marked on the lower left-hand corner the ticket and which is known by the society, will serve instead of your signature. The order number which stands at the lower right-hand corner serves to show you the number of tickets.

you have given. The ticket is garmed. You need only moisten the editors to shut it up. You give this new kind of check to the beggar, saying, go to the mayor-reltie of the 16th district between 2 and 4 o'clock, and you will receive such a sum in return for a few hours' work. The beggar goes to the mayor-reelty. There he is received, not by a mere clerk, but by the manager of the office, a man chosen with great care. The manager opens the ticket, verifies the number that stands for your signature, puts to your debit the amount of the check, and says to the beggar, I am told to give you a certain sum,

he will begin by working so many hours that I will pay you the money due to you. Thanks to the kindness of M. Bepinit, civil engineer of the district, people both men and women chosen by this agency, are employed in sweeping the public roads under the direction of the principal road surveyors of the town. These voluntary street sweepers are not dependent for your new, emigration upon the town. They were paid by the charitable person who has signed the ticket. By the principal surveyor superintends them and the work being ended signs the paper for them, on presenting which every beggar receives his wages. That is the organisation. Would you care to know now

what results it has produced? Listen to MD Kresenoy, chairman of the organising committee. In a work such as ours one cannot expect to achieve the desired end in a day or two. We need time and perseverance. And yes, as regards the struggle against professional mendicity, the results surpassed our anticipations. Those members of the association who had been, the most part, beset by importunate beggars of every description are now entirely free from them. One of their number, formerly traded upon by a gang of beggars inhabiting a part of the pantheon, has since not been a single one of them. A doctor assailed in his consulting room by persons who, under pretext of illness, came to him in painful stories and invariably ended by begging for assistance,

as radically cured this new form of epidemic by a generous dose of your tickets. One of your members, specially exposed by his position, to the assaults of the professional beggar, noticed that half the tickets given by him had not been taken to the office. The selection in this case was made by the beggars themselves. At the beginning of September, a young man giving the name of a son. celebrated lawyer who had been dead some years brought us a close ticket. He said he had two children, infants, that he and his wife had been out of work for several months. He only asked for work. He was told he might call again, and it was discovered that he

had given a false name, was not married, and lived by begging. He applied, of course, without success, to several of our societies, but probably to more purpose to other inhabitants of the neighbourhood. The agency had received on February 29, 1892, 2,738 tickets, of which 300 were closed tickets. Of the 300 closed tickets, 74 had not been paid, the bearers having given false addresses or false information, or having been considered unworthy of receiving help. To this number must be added all those that the bearers do not care to bring to the agency, having understood what was meant by it. It is the same with the soup or bread tickets.

The mere obligation of going to an office of the mayor orality or giving his name and address and the impossibility of selling these tickets at a public house singularly depreciates them in the eyes of mendicants. Every three months and often are if necessary, the members receive the account of the expenses incurred by the payment of tickets that have been distributed. As each ticket is provided with a different order number, the member, on receiving his account, can I once say which tickets have been presented at the office

in which had been scorned by the pecker? What a number of deceptions are brought to light by the study of this account? Suppose you are affiliated to the institution at Passy. You have laid in a store of 20 tickets numbered from 1 to 20. You have distributed these 20 tickets, each of the value, I suppose, of 2 francs, and you find after some weeks that only 3 or 4 tickets have been brought to the mayor royalty. Amongst your 20 poor, there were 16 professional beggars, who rather than work three or four hours,

preferred to destroy the two-framed ticket you had given them. If you had given your charity in kind, that money would have been lost to you and would have encouraged the bigger advice. Thanks to the organization of charity at Pazzi, you will save that amount which you can use in helping the really needy. This really needy person, the institution, will easily point out to you. by putting all applicants to the test of obligatory work, it would easily distinguish the good from the bad. The bad will be discouraged. In the Society's account for 1893, I noticed that 74 men and 119 women, after calling at the Union the assistance with tickets, refused to work.

Of course, they were not given the value of the tickets which amounted altogether to 600 francs, so there were 600 francs saved, with which some really poor persons could be helped. This is what the Unity Assistance has done, which during the years succeeded in placing out 231 persons without counting 88 others whom they aided either by direct assistance or by measures or recommendations, which, in a certain number of cases, have effectively helped them out of their difficulties. The object of the UND Assistance for the 16th District was to assist the poor of that district, but in proportion as other similar works were stated, a general understanding was arrived at, thanks to which the members of each union can send their beggars into any workshop.

The Central Committee of Work Institutions directed by Dr. Boulombe already give tickets which allow those who receive them to be admitted either into Pasture Robbins Charitable Home, 36, Rue Fassant, formerly Rue Clavel, or that of the Bethecunlis Monicale 17, Rue Selenuve. or the unionistice of the 16th district in the St. Germain Market, or that to the Mary de Pasi. In this way, the beggar can choose the workshop nearest to his abode and avoid waste of time and useless fatigue. If the movement of which we are interested continues, we might hope that in a few years every district of Paris will be furnished with several workshops in which all who complain of being in want could be temporarily received. When that days arrived,

Those will be much to blame who prefer to give their charity of money to giving help through work whenever they have accomplished to help an able-bodied beggar. Here's four manufacturers, members of the charitable societies, representatives on elected bodies, for all who belong to the upper and middle classes to urge forward and to bring into existence in their neighbourhood a work of this description. They should know that wherever gratuitous help has been replaced by assistance through labour, The same heavy result has been noticed. At Lyons, Pasteur as Shaman Jun founded a temporary home for work. He took as his model Pasteur Robbins' home, and he succeeded in lodging and feeding his pensioners at the cost of 19 centimes ahead per day.

The produce of the work nearly suffice to balance the cost. It is not quite time to give up the gratuitous night shelters and charity in the shape of arms that is often expended upon vagabond's unworthy of interest, even when it is not expended upon small capitalists. A woman came one evening in tears to the door of the night shelter in the St. Jack's Street. They took her in, comforted her, and gave her a bed. The manager asked her to take off her clothes that they might be dried. The woman refused.

They insisted but in vain, and, alas, they discovered that under her dress, in a small pocket, the poor woman had hidden a considerable sum in banknotes. You may be sure that if she had known that the next day she would be obliged to work to pay the price of the hospitality she had received, the weaving woman would have gone to sleep in a hotel, and the bed she undeservedly occupied at the night's shelter would have been given to some poor soul more worthy of it, who perhaps passed the night in the streets.

The third reform that I propose then is very simple. It consists in requiring work of some kind from every able-bodied person who complaining have been without work as either relief in money or refuge in a night shelter or a meal in a free dinner establishment or soup kitchen. It has always been understood by men of good sense that is by work not by creditories that we should help able-body beggars.

But how is this work to be offered if there are no establishments at our disposal such as those of Bentignolles or Passy. In the month of November 1876, accompanied by M. La Roche Gilbert, the older deputy for La Charent. I was walking along the road which lies between the castle and the Versailles station.

Em La Roche Gilbert was a great manufacturer and a politician. He had the good fortune uncommon and often these days to be beloved by his work people and to be respected by his political opponents. The reason being that everybody, one knew that his name was synonymous with good works. But Mr. Melodos Gilbert did good in his own fashion, that is to say, with intelligence. He had original ideas with regard to mendicity and armsgiving, to which he attached great importance.

He maintained that charity should never be given in the street, in which he was right, but he believed that any man who in the middle of winter wore shoes that were in halls must necessarily be want, in which he was perhaps mistaken. Moreover, Emla Rosh Chilbert was very fond of children. On the evening in question it was very cold. We were leaving the Chamber of Deputies, where we had been extremely hot, and we were quickly buttoning our overcoats to protect us from the blizzard that was raging out of doors. When a child of from 12 to 15 years of age came up and begged arms,

I never give in the streets, Emla Rosh Chilbert answered with severity, but sir, I'm hungry. Emlarus Schubert scans the child and sees that he is nearly barefoot In such cold he says to himself this child's boots are in shreds He must indeed be in want Emlar Ruis Schubert puts his hand to his waistcoat for a piece of money But soon hesitates arms giving in the street is against his principles What shall he do? He is undecided

Then he suddenly takes off his overcoat Folds it together and throwing it over the child's arm says to him follow me and carried the overcoat to the station. All this took place in a few seconds. When he arrived at the station, Emila Oshilbert took back his overcoat and taken from his pocket 20 sous, gave them to the boy, saying,

I never give money to beggars. I give you 20 sous for yourself because you have worked for it by doing this for me. A minute ago you were a beggar and I despised you. Now you are a worker and I shake hands with you. The child was dumb with astonishment. I only then understood what had passed in the mind of this excellent man. What you did just now is all very well,

Emneros Chilbert, I said to him, but you know you have risked getting inflammation of the lungs. It is possible, he answered, but I have perhaps turned a beggar into a worker, and that is well worth inflammation of the lungs. I have never forgotten that incident, which made a great impression on my mind, and which engraved itself deep in my heart.

If I venture to relate it now, is because I consider that it can only do honour to the memory of the man who was the hero of it. But now, happily, progress has been made, and charitable people who wish to substitute for blind arms giving assistance by work need not risk getting inflammation of the lungs in order to reconcile their acts and their principles. They need only to buy a few labour tickets. They may dress themselves to M. Bombard, General Secretary of the Betignorz-Montcourt Institution, 17 Rue-Zal-Uve, and for six francs they will obtain a certain number of tickets, thanks to which they may do their charity with discretion.

Menducity, as was said, by M. Gophers at the inauguration meeting of the Bagtignor's Moncar workshops. Mendicity is as much a calamity as a fire. You insure against the letter, but by paying a premium, you must insure against Mendicity by buying a few laboured tickets. that everyone spends six francs a year on the tickets, and the number of professional bearers will soon sensibly diminish. Arms giving the street acts upon mendicity, like those chemical manures so much in vogue in the present day, which double the produce of the harvest.

The more of that is given, the greater the harvest. Unfortunately, in this instance, the harvest is beggars. It is time to put into practice the well-known saying, the true way of helping the poor is to place them in a condition to do without help. is to impose labour upon them. End of Section 5. Section 6 of The Begglers of Paris by Louis Paulone.

This is a Librevox according, or Librevox Accordings in the public domain. For more information or volunteer, please visit Librevox.org, recorded by Leon Harvey. Chapter 4. Reform of the Police Department and of the poor law. The prefecture of police could by its own authority, and with a mere stroke of the pen, pulled into operation in the matter of mendicity a series of reforms easily realized. The happy results of which would not be long in making themselves felt. I will briefly enumerate them.

What would you do, an eminent magistrate once asked me, if you were pre-fet of police? If I were prefetched of police, I would begin by instituting a special brigade employed solely for the repression of mendicity. Everyone knows that in Paris police agents are appointed for special purposes. One brigade will be occupied with anarchists, another will keep a watch upon card-sharbers and cland-designed gaming houses. Certain agents will be charged to enforce the laws relating to public morals, others only occupied

with those who steal goods exposed to sale. This specialisation is very wise, for if there is an institution where the division of labour is more needed than any other, it is certainly the prefecture of police, which requires of its agents, aptitudes differing according to the crime that needs to be suppressed, and even according to locality in which they have to act. If the ordinary policeman had to interfere every time that certain misdemeanors of a special kind were committed in a public street, the illegal arrests chronicled in a year would be numbered by thousands. The agent concerned with offences against public morality sometimes makes a mistake.

How would it be if the ordinary policemen were expected to distinguish between the honest woman and the prostitute. There are more cases than one, in which his mistake would be excusable. A quick intuition is needed for this undertaking, and a habit which can only be acquired by devotion to this special work and constantly frequently the same place in meeting the same people. This may also be said with regard to card chubbers who ply their trade in railway trains. Commissioned the ordinary policeman to suppress this offence, their chances are so ten to one

that instead of putting his hand upon the card sharper, he would arrest a good citizen or a small clerk of the government, who every morning, going from Saint-Germain to Paris, plays his little game of cards with one of his friends. So it is with good reason that a special brigade has been established. Why not create a special brigade called the Mendicity Brigade? Probably because it has been considered that mendicities and offense easily recognized. This is a gross error, which has been the source of all the evil. What is a beggar in the eyes of the law? not everyone who holds out his hand, for there are cases in which the penal code unwinnly concedes that to those incapacitated through poverty or want of work

should preserve the most humble of all rights, viz, that are holding out the hand to passers-by. Macarrier lays down the principle and effect that the penalty is only just so far as the offence is inevitable. In places where no mendicity agency exists, the decrepit may beg of passers-by will see able-bodied is only punished when he makes a practice of begging. How can a policeman know whether the man he says begging his habitual beggar? This policeman's duty is to look after a street or district. He has no right to go outside his bait. To judge of a beggar he ought to be able to follow him at Paris for a whole day, perhaps

even for a week. But this means alone, would it be possible for him to know whether he has to do with the false poor or the professional beggar? Empty the Roshvukhold, Linokut, in the Constituate Assembly, thus defying the poor. He whose needs are greater than his resources. It follows that in order to know if the man is poor, one must first know what are his resources. And the chief of all these resources is the produce of work. There is necessity of discovering whether the man works, and the case where he does not work,

the reason why he does not work. it because he cannot or because he will not. These simple observations suffice to show that the offence of indicity is not so easily discovered, as is generally supposed. But further, there is this beggars, and these are the most dangerous, who beg without ever asking for anything. They conceal their begging by the practice of some kind of trade. One will sell flowers, another boot-laces, though it are pencils and key rings.

Better still, I know beggars who know they ask nor sell anything. who merely walk on the boulevard and who thus find ample means of living. Place herself on the boulevard or the meddling between midday and one o'clock before the Trois Quater's shop. You will see a man and woman arm in arm passed before you. The man carries a toolbox on his back and which there are no tools. The woman leans on his shoulder with a feverish movement. Aquinas and fighters' dance that shakes all her limbs.

These two worthy old people clothed in miserable garb seem to be devotedly attached to one another. They have never been seen one without the other. They remind you of Philemon and Borges. They go slowly up the boulevard, mutually supporting one another, and they never beg. By the wretched condition and the woman's nervous trembling, the husband's white beard, are eloquence itself. When they pass, purse strings are loosed, and many pens find the way into their pockets.

I photographed that particular group, and I showed. assure you that as soon as a woman found herself before my camera, she had no more nervous trembling. The policeman who sees these good people, pass says nothing, and can say nothing. Yet the special brigade of which I have spoken existed, the man and woman would long ago have been arrested. For years and years the prefecture of police and the public prosecutor have mutually reproached to one another for not having done their duty. Do arrest the beggars, says the public prosecutor. When I arrest them, you set them free, answers the prefecture.

Yes, the greater number of beggars arrested by the police agents are set at liberty by the public prosecutor or acquitted by the tribunal, and why is this? Because those arrests have been wrongly made. Go to the sitting of the 8th Chamber and listen to the depositions of the police officers. When you have heard one, you will know them all, for all are framed on the same model. The President Police Officer Make your disposition Police officer On such and such a day

At such an hour Being on duty in such a place I saw the accused in the act of begging The president Did you see him receive anything Police officer Yes two or three times And there it ends

A man begs He receives one, two or three sous That is sufficient The policeman arrests him Would you have the court condemn him? Little children with pale and pitiful faces are bought before the court. These children are quite young and incapable of earning their bread. No one troubles himself about them. They were hungry and begged. Would you have the court

and sentenced them to imprisonment? I have only the police acted differently. Instead of bearing witness to the fact they would show the cause, things would wear a different aspect. I would have the police officer commissioned with the repression of mendicity study every beggar individually, just as the police officer study each car chubber of a gang of players. I know more than 50 beggars in Paris whose names and ages I can give, as well as their addresses. I know their antecedents, their infirmities, real or simulated, I know where they feed, where they pass their evenings, what they gain, what they spend, and why should not a police officer know as much. It would be put as simple matter to divide Paris into a certain number

of districts, each of which should be placed under the supervision or the responsibility of a special officer. Whenever a beggar is observed, the officer would follow him, study him, study him, or to make an investigation, and according to the result of the investigation, would determine whether he should be arrested. If that were done, he would no longer see the same beggar station during 25 years on the same bridge were at the corner of the same street without ever been interfered with, while sometimes a poor wretch is taken up for having received of simple sue. If the police officer, instead of proving the material fact of begging,

would it institute such an inquiry, as I suggest, in most cases, it would not be the beggar he would arrest, but the author of his begging, there's to say, his employer. That is what would happen every time in the case of little children. If instead of bringing before the tribunal those suffering and sickly little children

of whom I spoke just now, who are reproached for having held out their hand in the street, the police were to bring to the bar, the scoundrel, whom excuse the child, and taxes it at the rate of three or four francs a day and says, you will either bring me so much, or you shall be flogged.

in a police were to bring to the same bar the woman who hires children and the woman who procures them. If they arrest the professor of begging and the man who, for the sake of gain, forms a band of strolling singers and teaches them the art of deforming their members and simulating infirmities, I am very sure that the magistrates would change their attitude, and instead of acquitting they would impose severe penalties. I maintained this opinion before a meeting of jurists and had the satisfaction of saying that such men as M. Petit, counsellor in the Court of Cassation,

and M. Cresson, former president of the Order of Advocates, supported my proposal to create a special brigade for the repression of mendicity. The police might do more. They might forbid begging under entrance porches, which they allow today under the pretext that the man's station there is not on the public highway. They ought equally to forbid begging at church doors. In 1833, M. Gisgit, prefect of police, said, According to law, beggar's station at church doors might be arrested.

The toleration shown them is based only upon considerations of convenience and opportunity. This toleration should be maintained so far as no abuse results from it, and so long as it is in accordance with the wishes of the ecclesiastical authorities. Very well then. It seems to me that the abuse does exist. On days of big ceremonials, First Communions, marriages, funerals, the church doors are literally obstructed by bands of beggars who, in an imperative tone, demand alms. As to the opinion of the ecclesiastical authorities, it is well known.

Beggers of that kind, the curate of a big church in Paris at the doors which I had begged wrote to me, rarely deserved a pity they met with. That is, the opinion of all the ecclesiastics I have questioned on the subject. all declared that they would be glad to see driven away from the church doors those professional beggars who inspire them with no interest and who draw away money they might be better employed in relieving real distress why do they not take action at once and what is to be said of the display of those horrible sores and those revolting infirmities thanks to which they gain the pity of passers-by is there not here to something to be done they receive into the home at nantere men in the full tide of their strength profess to be without work and ought the man who is the victim of an incurable infirmity to be turned away either that infirmity is real and the man so afflicted shall be receiving public assistance or is feigned in which case the culprit deserves severe chastisement the prefecture of police has only repressive functions in more cases than one it intervenes to protect the young the weak and the unfortunate but alas when it turns his hand to charity he is no more happy than when it employs repressive measures shall i give an example

The prefecture police sends back many people to their own provinces who fail to get a living in Paris and wish to return to their homes. This is managed with more generosity as the expense of the journey is defrayed by the departments passed through. It is all very well to send an unfortunate individual back to his own village who is starving in Paris, but it would be as well also to take measures to see that the man to whom they give a ticket of 20, 30, 40, 50 or even 60 francs really. profits by the ticket he has solicited and the cost of which will be borne by the honest taxpayers, who would be only too happy if they could make such a journey free of cost. Prudence demands that all those who wish to be sent home should be conducted to the railway station by police officers, and that the ticket instead of being given to themselves

should be put into the hands of the guard, whose business it should be to make certain that each man went to the station indicated on his ticket. By this simple precaution that traffic and railway tickets of which I've already spoken would be avoided. Here then is a series of reforms easy of accomplishment. Why should they not be realized? The assistance public itself should make some effort to contribute towards the great work of repressing mendicity. The assistance public is an old, rich and powerful administration which does much good,

but which might do a great deal more if, by a better employment of its funds, and especially by a more strict control, were devoted to the really poor, the really unfortunate, the large sums which the aristocrats of mendicity are allowed to steal. When I speak at the assistance public, I did not only refer to the administration of that name, which has its headquarters in Paris. I tend to include all official assistance,

whether employing the funds of the state or those of the department or of the town of Paris, or whether employing the income of the assistance public properly so called. For in order to arrive at a sound distribution of relief, the cooperation of several agencies is necessary. At present that cooperation does not exist. Each administration is occupied with a particular class of distress and devotes to this all its resources

without troubling itself to know there may not be other forms of distress or worthy of relief. How often have we not heard it said by a poor father burden with children? If I were only a thief leaving prison something would be done to help me. But I am only an honest man. and there is no money to help honest people and that workman was not altogether in the wrong for funds devoted to the relief for the discharged prisoner are sometimes larger than those destined for the relief of certain forms of distress

in saying this i do not mean to criticise the societies who assist discharged prisoners i would certainly not be guilty of such a fault i would have near every prison a discharged prisoner's aid society that i can say with truth that within the small limits of mine's strength and resources. I have helped as far as I've enabled the development of societies of this kind. But just as a discharged prisoner by right of his previous conviction has the advantage over the honest man of drawing from the funds for discharged prisoners, which moreover are augmented by state aid, the money intended for discharge prisoners, I wish that the honest man, he who is really in want, sure the advantage over dishonest persons of obtaining from the funds of institutions for public assistance, the money intended for honest but unfortunate persons. But that is not the way in which things are done at present.

Charitable relief does not go to the most deserving, to the most needy, it goes to the most crafty. How many unfortunate people there are who ought to be living upon public charity, but who in order to procure a lodging and a piece of bread are obliged to get themselves sent to prison? How many rogues there are whose right place is clearly in prison, and live by due pending, upon public charity. Take a blind man, for example. In Paris, in fact, if not by right, the blind are authorized to beg. It is a spectacle worthy of her age to see a blind man, that is to say, the most unfortunate of men, and who will be so for the rest of his life, stationed at a bridge, the whole day long, for the purpose of employing commiseration from the past was by.

By annual payment of 360 to 400 francs, the society might manage to place to place, that blind man in a country family. With that pension not only would the welfare of the blind man be secured, but also that the family to whom he was entrusted in the same way as in placing deserted children in the country, good is done both to the children and to the worthy people who undertake to bring them up. But the official assistance answers that it is not in a position

to give 400 francs to every blind person. And so the unhappy man placed himself on a bridge holds out his hand to the public and obtains 1,500, 1,800, 2,000, and at times 3,000 francs, and more from that very community which pretends to be unable to give him 400 francs. And with these 2,000 or 3,000 francs, the blind beggar is more to be pitied than any other creature in creation. It is a fashion just now to pass what are called Louis Sauvier's labour laws. the intention is to protect labour and the labourers. Every day there is legislation to regulate something.

It is even maintained that a workman of the age of 25 educated in the possession of his arms and legs who has a right to become a member of a union, who has a right to strike, and who at times has recourse to violence to secure what he calls his just claims is incapable of self-defense and that the legislature should determine advance the basis of the contract which is to bind the workman to his employer. But when it is a question of a blind man who has had no instruction, who from fiscal causes is unable to go and join a union, or to defend himself, there is no law for him, no protection. At all events, let charitable people understand this, and a blind beggar must gain five or six

francs a day in order to live even miserably, for this of all occupations is the one which others trade upon most largely. Every morning he is led to his usual place by a conductress, who comes as stated times through the day to take him away to his meals. The woman, you may be sure, does not do this out of charity. She gets paid for her services and highly paid. It is often she who lotters and feeds a blind person. How does she feed him?

With scraps brought from the plungers of big restaurants and composed of the leavings on the plates of their customers. For 15 sous a day, the contractor's feeds her man, and for his lodging, or rather his bed. For this lodger of necessity passes most of his life in the street, any holes good enough. There are commissioners to inspect factories, shops and lodgings in order to secure that all who reside in them should live in sufficiently healthy conditions. I should be curious to know whether any police officer has ever thought of saying for himself the loft, cupboard, or hole, in which many blind beggars are condemned to pass the night. Yet, as I have said before, public charity gives to the blind on the average four times as much as would be necessary for him to live at his ease. But here again, for want a sufficient organisation, the money given goes not to him but to his employer.

If you only knew the tricks these poor blind people have to devise to save a few 20 franc pieces from the clutches of their employers. You often see the blind beings led by dogs. sometimes you may see some coming alone. These are the victims of the conductress, who are sick of being preyed upon by others, have resolved to live alone and manage for themselves. Alone they go into the street. Alone they live from dawn to dark.

Alone they seek at night the room they have succeeded in hiring. But this solitude will not last long. Soon there will come a time when, after a fall or an accident of some kind, with which the conductor will perhaps have had something to do. The blind man will again have to use a god. who will consume most of his income. Again, why not give to the indignant blind

or the Bureau de Bain for Sons can help necessary for staying at an asylum, that is to say, 30 francs a month? As I said before, by placing the blind with families in the country in the provinces where a living is cheap, society would ensure the material well-being of all these unfortunate people have imposed upon itself a charge of 360 to 400 francs a year for each person thus relieved. If on the contrary the blind are left in the streets,

a charge is indirectly levied upon taxpayers to the amount of 1,500 to 3,000 francs for each blind person, the unfortunate are left to sufferer, and those who trade upon them are benefited. What I say of the blind, I say of all those miserable creatures who display their lusome infirmities before the eyes of the public.

For whom I ask are all those refuges, charitable houses, infirmies for the incurable if not for the disinhearted ones of this life, his condition makes it absolutely evidently and certainly impossible for them to gain their bread. All those unfortunate persons, I shall be told, would rather beg them be content with a pension of 400 francs. That is possible and even certain in the case of the majority of them. But neither the administration nor society need to consult them. They have each a duty to fulfil. The administration should form a list of the really needy and impudent, and of all those who are to be numbered along the custaways of this life.

It is secure to all cripples, to all these incapable ones. What? Why, simply, what is necessary, and nothing beyond what is necessary? Here is the strict duty to prevent any infirmity from becoming a source of scandalous profit, abstracted from the money intended from the poor. It is a duty of society to bear the expense. It seems to me that society does its duty It pays in the form of an obligatory tax

All that is expected of it And to the obligatory tax It adds considerable sums Representing millions of francs of private charity It is for the administration to organise It works better It should be in dispensing its relief One, relieve the infirm before the healthy

Two, prevent the open overlapping of relief Is this done at present? No, go to Nantere and establishment that cost more than 8 million francs, and where you admire the magnificent staircases and large halls with partitions of old carved oak. Whom would you find in this palace? Sick people, yes.

Old people? Yes. The helpless, yes. But besides these three classes of individuals who are in their right place, there you will find 50 to 100 healthy people of ages varying from 20 to 35 years, whom the administration itself recognizes

as idlers worthy of little consideration. They are men, young and strong. They allege that they are without work. That is enough,

that admitted into the splendid building with its fine rooms divided by petitions of old carved oak. They are lodged, fed, clothed, and cared for

and in exchange they are subjected to a pretense of work. I say pretense of work. I should say pretense of occupation. There is sometimes

at Nantere as many as 4,000 borders, and the total sum paid for their work does not amount to more than 120,000 francs a year for the 4,000 borders. This gives an average of 30 francs per head a year, or of a penny for a day's labour. It is true, that is only an average, but I cannot help observing that, if out of the population of Ontario there were only 100 men working in a normal way during six months of the year, their earnings would reach a higher figure than the whole population now receives.

It is further the duty of the assistance public to exercise a wise control over the distribution of its benefits. I have pointed out on the course of this work the traffic to which the distribution in medicines, bath tickets, orthopedic apparatus gives rise. They are all sold again, or can be sold again, even an entrance ticket to hospital and a certificate of discharge. There are professional invalids who, even in the central office, as soon as they receive the order for administration to the hospital, sell it to some poor creature whom the authorities have not been able, but want of room to admit, or to a loafer whom they have had good reason for not admitting, but who cleverer that the administration succeeds in this way with the help of 20 sous in a botany admission into the hospital and passing two or three days there. and how often it happens that the certificate of discharge from the hospital is abused there remains the question of the overlapping of official charities charity offices distribute to cards given to those who receive them the right to obtain relief

to the amount of 8, 10, 20 and up to 30 francs a month these cards bear the name and address of the persons entitled and that is all I note warns the receiver that all persons who lend this card will be prohibited from receiving any relief from the office but experience shows us that the cards are not only lent but are often sold after the death of the person entitled to them. There are some families who, from father to son, are inscribed in the list of the charity office and regularly receive monthly relief whilst drawing at the same time on the funds both of official and private charity. Would it be impossible to prevent these abuses? Would it be impossible in many cases to have the mendicaments used on the spot?

would it be impossible to inscribe on the certificate discharge from the hospital the ailment of the invalid so that the certificate could not serve as a passport of infirmity for healthy idlers? Would it be impossible to create for the purpose of dispensing relief in money as well as in kind a card of identity and a central cash office similar to that which I propose at end of this book for private works of charity? I think not. I think on the contrary that by these numerous little reforms and would be possible to prevent the abuse of multiplying relief to the same person. It only needs a little goodwill to accomplish these reforms. Chapter 5. Legislated Reforms

Has a legislator nothing to do to prevent order-suppressed mendicity? No man with any knowledge of the subject would think of maintaining this. I've shown in the course of this work that the law is often wrongly applied, but is not the law itself effective and does it not make it impossible? effectively to repress the worst kind of mendicity, while it tends to deal hardly with the man who is more unfortunate than guilty. Article 274, the Penal Code, runs thus. Every person who shall be found begging in a place for which there exists and organised public estarchement for the purpose of preventing medicity shall be subject to the penalty of three to six months imprisonment, and shall be, after the

expiration of his sentence, taken to the Medicity House of Detention. Well, I venture to say that this article, in its present form, and especially is now applied, constitutes a gross anomaly. It strikes the unfortunate, whilst its effect upon the guilty is mere mockery, and experience has proved it, it has been absolutely ineffectuous as regards to the evil is intended to combat. What is meant by the word begging the article does not say? What is meant by the expression in place for which there exists an organised public establishment for the purpose of preventing mendicity? Must this establishment be situated in the parish, in the district, or in the department where the person is found begging. This also the article fails to declare. The text is also muted on the question how long the

beggar must stay in the house of detention on coming out of prison. It leaves it to the administration to fix the term of this supplementary detention. Again I say such an enactment is an anomaly and the evil lies in the fact that the offense of begging has not been defined. Every person who is found begging shall be punished. At what right have they to forbid anyone in distress calling the attention of the public to his condition and appealing to their goodwill and generosity? If a man being firm and incapable of earning his bread or if he be healthy, but through a chain of circumstances for which he is not responsible, has fallen into the utmost destitution, may he not appeal to his fellow creatures? If not, charity would cease to exist.

well aware that the code says that it is forbidden to beg in a place for which there exists and organised public establishment for the prevention of mendicity. No doubt in the legislator's opinion there ought to be enough of those public establishments to meet all needs and they should be open to all comers. But is it so in fact? Is there everywhere an institution within reach of the beggar and has the famous inscription pulsante aperitue been marked on its door. Just the reverse is the truth. It has been said with justice that in France it is easier to obtain a declaration than to get a destitute person admitted into a municity institution. It is not only excessively difficult to get a mission into an

institution, but the number of these institutions is extremely limited. If only the code had said that all persons would be punished, you should be found begging in a parish in which there existed an establishment of open to beggars, the civilians. the law would have been reasonable, but the code speaks for the place for which there exists a public establishment. Thanks to this wording, parishes, and even departments forbidmenticity on their territory under the pretext that they have made an arrangement with an institution situated in adjoining parish, or even department, to receive their beggars. Shall I give an example? During many years, the Department of Endriette Law had an arrangement

with the medicity and institution of burgency, which agreed to receive its beggars. In consequence of this agreement, Article 274 became applicable in all the perishes of intra et laura. Suppose a man to be absolutely destitute, he is incapable of working

or is able-bodied but is without work. This man is dying of starvation. He goes into the street at Tours and asks for a bit of bread. They stop him and say, you are begging in a place for which there is a public establishment intended to prevent mendicity who therefore come within the terms of Article 274 of the Penal Code. You will have to undergo three to six months' imprisonment,

out of which you will be sent to a mendicity house, where you will be detained for one, two or three months. But, says a beggar, where is this public establishment to which are you to apply? It is at Bortensey, a distance of 87 kilometres from here. and if the unfortunate man addressing himself to the judge were to reply very well i will try to walk those eighty-seven kilometers without begging along the road as that is forbidden the kind-hearted judge could not fail to tell him it would be useless for if you presented yourself at the institution of boardency without influential recommendation they would not receive you there and so they punish a man because he does not apply to the medicity institution but they know at the same time that it is practically important possible for him to get there, and that in any case, if he got there, he would find the door closed. He will ask what should be done. Modify Article 274 of the Penal Code, and

first of all define the offence of mendicity. The man who is in want, who from one cause or another is unable to earn his living, commits no offence by asking charity of one who can help him. For as Beccaria says, an offence is only punishable when it might have been avoided. But on the other hand, the man who, having money in his pocket, asked for arms, he might but will not work, and who seeks to be supported by citizens who are toiling and economising. He who, by his wretched apparel, by means the certificates of discharge from hospitals, bought at the public house, by employing fortunate devices to inspire belief in the existence of an imaginary situation, gains the pity of the passes by. He who, after having

desert his wife and children and drunk at the public house more money than a poor workman requires to live upon, comes up to you saying that his children are dying of hunger, and that he himself has had nothing to eat for two days. All these persons are swindlers, and should be liable to the penalty due to swindlers. A man who under pretense for being an organ grinder, and that his official certificate authorises him to sing in public establishments and to be accompanied by his children over 16 years of age, takes his children to the door or into the interior of certain ill-famed establishments which i cannot name that matter commits the crime of inciting minors to debauchery and should be liable to be condemned to fire his imprisonment

who he who when there exists a kreche in his neighbourhood where he could place his children or a school to which he ought to send them exposed them during all days together to the inclemency of the weather causing disease and even death or the while appearing to love them from the bottom of his heart that man is an assassin who ought to be liable to the penalty applicable to assassination and yet all these crimes are committed and is only necessary that they should be accompanied by a little begging for the offender to evade the rigourers of the law and to escape with a few months imprisonment it is necessary then to begin by defining the offence of mendicity it does not consist in holding out the hand in the street because as i said before there are cases of which a man has the right to appeal to the charity of his fellow creatures mendicity consists in asking with any kind of deceitful device for a leaf which is not needed which might be procured by honest work hence the necessity in order effectually to repress mendicity to have the special police are content for so as to establish not the fact of having held at the hand for relief, but the circumstances which in the particular case rendered the act culpable. When mendicity has been properly defined,

it ought to be considered a swindling, which allows the application of the penalty of five years imprisonment, and a fine of from 50 to 3,000 francs. The actual penalty of from three to six months imprisonment is unjust when applied to the destitute. It is a mockery when it is inflicted upon a professional beggar during the prison, especially a prison without isolation, is, during the bad season, equivalent to staying at an inn.

I possess the dossiers of some beggars who have been sentenced to imprisonment 50 to 60 times for begging. In the summer these beggars go for the season to Vichy, Trovio, or Deip, and in the winter they get themselves sent back into the most comfortable prison. All their life will be spent at the expense of the taxpayer. And you would be shocked if you were to calculate what a man has cost society who has been convicted 60 times, as himself alone set in motion a whole army of police, as well as constables, gendarmes, police commissioners, bailiffs, magistrates and prison orders. And to think that there are beggars who, after having lived in this way by hanging onto the skirts of taxpayers, become themselves transformed one fine day into fund holders, living on the money they have thus earned?

is this money really theirs had the ninety six thousand francs of father antoine been earned or obtained by cheating i am not jurist enough to say whether when a man is convicted of having procured a fortune for himself by the swindle of begging it would be possible to confiscate it if justice alone were considered such confiscation would give rise to no difficulty books prohibited arms funds obtained by gambling are confiscated in many cases, and generally speaking things which have been used in committing an offence and even the produce of the infance, why should the sums obtained by begging not be confiscated when begging is an offence? That would be a means of restoring to the poor part of the money that has been stolen from them. In any case, if it were decided to punish mendicity, such as I have defined it, with the penalty due to swindling, that penalty would permit the infliction upon the beggar of a fine large enough to make those thieves of the poor disgorge.

When a man becomes mad, and is not possessed the necessary resources to pay his keep in an asylum, the state undertakes to pay the expense. But if, while he is detained at Charenton, the madman becomes possessed of an inheritance of any kind, the state lays hands on the inheritance so as to recoup itself the advance it is made. The lunatic is an unfortunate man. The rich beggar is a swindler. could we not apply the same law to the swindler as we apply to the unfortunate would it be contrary to sound principle whether we had to deal with a beggar in possession of a considerable sum to levy upon that capital or a part of the expense incurred by the state for his detention in a medicity institution i know beggars who have stolen and amassed enough money during their life to be able easily to pay both the expenses of their detention and a fine of from two thousand to three thousand francs

On August 12, 1890, M. Capot, manager of the Medicity House at Nantir, received the following letter from one of his pensioners. Sir, be good enough to have pity upon an unfortunate man who seeks advice from your wisdom and experience. I have been at Nantir for a month since leaving Lestante prison. When I was arrested, the following goods belonging to me were seized. 1. 4 shares to bearer of 200 francs each. 2. A share to bearer of 8,000 francs. 3. A savings bank book of 2,000 francs. 4. A banknote of money to the amount of about 800 francs.

Be good enough, I entreat you, sir, to advise me what steps to take to get possession of this money, which is the result of the labour of all my life and not the producer begging. With my sincere thanks, sir, M. Henry. August 12, 1890. I do not know whether this petty little sign. or was a produce of mendicity or not. What is certain is that the man who possessed begged and was sentenced for begging.

This man is precisely within the category of those to whom, under my system, the penalty for swindling would be applied, whereas the actual legislation only subjects him to an imprisonment, of shorted duration without any fine. As matters stand at present, when he has done his month in Antio, the beggar will calmly return to the highways, where he will recommence his trade.

Having first taken care to secure from the registry office of the prison, the money which the administration is meanwhile carefully hospited. If the coupons have become due during the man's attention, the cashier of the establishment will have duly cashed the amount for the benefit of the border, and this at the expense of the taxpayers. The law relating to the sojourn of foreigners in France and to the protection of national labour, voted by the Chamber of Deputies and inscribed on the orders that day of the Senate at the very time I am writing these lies, in posturing a fine of 200 francs upon all persons who shall knowingly employ a foreigner not furnished with

a certificate of matriculation as well as upon the foreigner who shall not have made the declaration imposed by law. It provides that the produce of these fines shall go to augment the municipal funds of the commune in which the foreigner resides. Let us institute a fine to punishmenticity and it is even provided that in certain defined cases a fine should, to the great advantage of the taxpayers, replace imprisonment. Let us devote the produce of these fines to the charity office of the commune where the beggar was arrested, and these officers will be the first to help the police in the prosecution of those aristocrats of mendicity, who are their worst enemies. The legislator, after having thus defined and severely punished the frauds of medicity,

or to make the use of children for begging purposes of special offence, at a general meeting of the Society for the Protection of Invence, which was held in the large amphitheatre of the Sordauborn. Dr. Rochard, member of the Academy of Medicine, said that out of the 253,000 children under the age of five years who die every year, 100,000 might be saved. We cannot compel birth, he exclaimed, for he can prevent death. How many amongst these 100,000 children who die early in life are killed, and killed wittingly by beggars. The code punishes

by solitary imprisonment, the woman who, at the peril of her life, and perhaps to avoid dishonour, kills her infant child. But the unnatural mother who, without exposing herself to any suffering, and not to the purpose of avoiding dishonor, but to gain money easily, matter as a little creature,

exposing it too cold, to rain, to snow, to bronchitis, to inflammation of the lungs, and finally sends it into the next world, after having a thick, on it long agony. This woman commits no offence. She need only hold two pencils or a few pairs of laces in her hand to avoid all interference. She is a beggar and nothing more. Well, just as the code makes it a special offence to beg wherever there is a mendicity office, asked that it should be made one of the grave's offences to beg in the street with children

wherever there is a crash, an asylum or an establishment of any kind of the purpose of receiving children during the daytime. The legislator of 1893, without troubling himself to find out what are the resources and needs of each workman, has provided that a woman is not to work in a factory during the latter period of her pregnancy. Would it be upset to ask him to protect the child during the first years of its life, especially when there are bound establishments, both public and private, religious and secular, intended for the succour of these children?

could not the later say to who has forbidden to women and girls night work which she considers immoral, calling to mind the verse of the poet, Maxima de Petur Pyrrhus reverentia. For a bid to young girls, all those little callings which are practiced at night at Café doors and are dangerous in a different way from working in factories, and which end by consigning those who practice them to the prison of Saint-Lisere. Why protect those who are able to insist upon their rights and neglect those who are unable to defend themselves? In that unlucky Article 274 of the Penal Code, there is another provision which should be repealed.

It is that which requires that after the beggar has served his term of imprisonment, he should be detained in a mendicity house. Instead of condemning a man to three months imprisonment and three months detention in a mendicity house, would it not be simpler to condemn him to six months imprisonment? Why this change of place, this journey? Is there any difference between the regime of the district prison and that at the Medicity House? Is there any chance the beggar finding remunerative work at the Medici House, which he failed to find in the district prison? Will he manage at the house to hoard money? Everybody knows that the savings of a beggar at the end of several months detention are not worth mentioning.

Then what is the use of this journey which cost the state considerable expense without profit? anyone. At the end of November 1890, there were at Nantir, 4,293 persons either dwelling or detained there. Of this figure, the number of beggars liberated from prison, but detained in the house by virtue of Article 274, amounted to 440. These persons lives at Nantir from 1 to 3 months, according to the decision of the administration. Thus take an average, and suppose they are there for 2 months. There would then be, every two months, a convoy of 440 persons traveling at the expense of the taxpayers. A beggar is condemned to three months imprisonment. He is shut up in the prison of Nescenti.

There he is washed and clothed. He is installed in a workshop of some kind, and with much trouble, they make him serve an apprenticeship to some trade. As soon as he begins to be accustomed to the house, to his guardians, to his work, straight away he is removed. He is made to give up the prison clothes To have to be disinfected Before passing to another His name is taken off the jailer The account of his work is settled

And the man is driven to the house At an interr There they give him Other clothes which must in their turn Be disinfected They draw up a fresh entry in the register Then they attach the beggar to a workshop And preface him into a different work

Which he will have to give up The end of a few weeks There is nothing surprising in the fact that with such a system as this, in spite of the zeal of a manager so intelligent and devoted as M. Kaplat, the produce of the work at that anterior establishment should be nil. What manufacturer with such a regime could obtain better results? Whose fault is it, if not that of the law, by virtue of which men who should be serving their five or six years in the same prison are circulated during those five or six years through all the

prisons and houses of detention in France. By doing away with the distinction between detention and mendicity houses and detention of prisons, the incessant journeys would be avoided, as well as those interruptions to work, and the great expense incurred in biting, accounting, and disinfecting the clothes, or which is pure loss. Of these mere petty economies, in the establishment in Nantere, they wash 14,000 pairs of sheets a month, 336,000 sheets a year. A deputy from Marseilles said one day in the Chamber of Deputies that one may judge of the degree of civilisation over people

by the amount of soap they use. If the formula were correct, the borders in Nanterre would be the most civilised of men. The Chamber of Deputies has just passed a law dealing with accidents to workmen. It has proclaimed the principle of trade risk and provided that all workmen injure whilst serving shall have the right to an indemnity, just as a soldier, wounded on the field of battle, has a right to a pension. By requiring the employer, or rather the industry, do provide for all victims of accident sustained while working by multiplying us and subsidising societies for mutual help intended for the support of the old and the infirm.

The latest later will, in a large measure, diminish the charges that will henceforth burden private charity. In future, most of the injured or crippled will not need to beg their bread, as there will be certain of support. But at the same time, let no mistake be made. If legislation does not take the direction of the reforms, of which I have traced the broad lies, if private charitable societies do not adopt the proposal I am going to formulate in the last chapter of this book, and which is meant to prevent reduplication of relief, the number of beggars, cripples, and false workmen out of work will not be diminished. Private charity will continue to give the same number of millions of francs that it gives at present to support the same number of idlers. The blind, deprive of sight through explosion or fire damp will rank themselves as blind from birth.

The shame one-armed man will make himself out an epileptic. Church porches will still be incumbent with beggars, and under the entrance porches of houses, mothers will continue to nurse or rather to kill their infants. when the legislator has modified the articles of the code which deal with medicity when he has created the special offences i have pointed out when he has passed laws relating to the accidents of workmen unhealthy lodgings cheap dwellings societies for mutual help and others there will still be a great and last reform for him to make there is to say to constitute if not as yet a ministry of public and private charity at least the direction general of public assistance and charity having all and concentrating in its hands or the duties relating to public health, the protection of children, the assistance for the age, the blind, the idiots and the infirm, for the unfortunate and those unable to work and having the power to impose upon the arms houses, shelters and provincial hospitals, the regulations now dictated by modern science. A country which possesses the Ministry for Commerce and Industry is under an obligation to have an administration for the dispensing of public and private charity. charged with the duty of ensuring by equitable measures and by the application of the laws forethought and economy bred to the old soldiers of agriculture commerce and industry and to all those who after having by their hard labour contributed to the riches of the country have often received but too small a share of those riches We have arrived in an epoch when in order to govern it is no longer sufficient to rely upon the unalterable principles of right.

No, it no longer suffices to base law upon justice and liberty. Charity, fraternity and even generosity must be introduced. The immense progress realized in France by those who managed the assistance public, which, thanks to the zeal and devotion of M. Manod, has organized to warfare against epidemics, against some healthy lodgings and against mendicity, and as undertaking the rescue of miserable and abandoned children, itself eloquently proves what good might be done in our country, if the autonomy were given to that governing body which it has need of,

in order to centralised with the same hands, all those official works which now belong to different agencies, of which are often counteracting instead of helping one another. It is not a question of substituting administration for personal work, or of interfering with those fruitful initiatives. It is only necessary to stimulate them, to encourage them, to help them at their start by moral and sometimes by material support. There are some places in the land where relief abounds.

There are others where it is absolutely wanting. The money spent on the relief of extreme misery, for example, represents in the Sien infidier, 11 francs, 2 cent times, for each 100 inhabitants. and eight cent times for each hundred in the lands. But what is a reason for these differences in the case of relief furnished by the funds of the ratepayers? Have roads, railways and scores only be constructed in the rich departments in France?

On the contrary, have not the rich provinces contributed to pay the expenses of the poor ones? Why should the process be different when it is a question of relieving the destitute? And is it not clear that this bad distribution of funds intended for public assistance is one of the causes of that influx into the towns of so many of the sick and idle who might with less expense be more effectually relieved in their own villages and who in the towns and combo the hospitals and the prisons let that autonomous administration for benefice and charity be created then if only to take an inventory of these colossal and at times unproductive riches due to the heart the intelligence, the generosity, and the charity of France,

and approved demonstratively to those who suffer, and to those who malign us, that the French who talk so readily of their vices would have the right to talk a little of their virtues. End of Section 6. Section 7. Of the beggars of Paris, by Louis Paulaine. This is a Librevox according. All Librevox According to the public domain.

For more information on a volunteer, please visit Librefox.org. by Leon Harvey Chapter 6 Reform of the domain of charitable societies At length I arrive for the last reform I have to propose That which will be at the same time the easiest to accomplish And the most fruitful and practical results In the course of this work when seeking the remedy

For the evil which we always to rectify I've addressed myself in terms to the public To the government and to the legislator To the public I said give no more arms in the street no doubt many persons will follow my advice but it will need time before one can succeed in making the masses understand that thoughtless arms giving far from leaving distress promotes begging to those who administer the laws i have shown the necessity of modifying its ways and customs but it is not easy to reform the administration he is accustomed to criticism will it take any notice of that which i have humbly taken the liberty of applying to it Of the legislator, I demand the revision of several articles of the Penal Code. I know by experience, since for 22 years I have had the honour, in the capacity of Secretary,

of being present at all the sittings of the Chamber of Deputies, how slow parliamentary procedure is, and how difficult is to accomplish the modification of an article of the Penal Code, especially when that modification is suggested by an outsider. In order to realise the last reform I propose, the object of which is to prevent the accumulation of relief upon individuals, I do not require the help either of the legislator, the administration, or the public. I only want to cooperate of about 30 of the most skilled people, the cooperation of the presidents of the principal charitable works of Paris, whether they be men or women. The numerous anecdotes I have related in this book, the experiences I've gone through,

proven the most evident, the way that in Paris there exists thousands of individuals who live plentifully, I may say sumptuously upon public charity. In order to procure subsidies from the administration or from private sources, it is not of the primary importance to be destitute. It is above all things necessary to be clever. I have shown how an idle fellow can procure 30 francs a month from the Bureau de B.N. Fiescence. Can get his rent paid by M. D. D. Rothschild at the House rent institution. can get relief from three different churches professed it to be at the same time

Catholic Protestant and Jew can receive supplies from 20 charitable societies provide his home with meat milk chocolate linen furniture medicaments books and flowers can travel at the expense of the state live plentifully without working and give a comfortable dowry to his daughters

from the accumulation of arms extorted from the charity of honest people there is no minister of religion No police commissioner, no administrator for dispensing charity, no chairman of a charitable society who cannot, from this point of view, cite in neural conclusive examples. What can we done to prevent this evil which everyone recognizes? By the side of those beggars to whom henceforth assistance by work will be offered, there are those poor creatures who cannot or who never could work.

There are fathers burdened with large families. There are the old and the sick. There aren't a word that is inherited of this. life, fatally contempt to live completely or partially at the expense of society. It is for these unfortunate people that all those charitable institutions have been created, of which Paris may with good reason be proud. It is necessary to give the society's power to do as much as possible, taking care that the relief which they distribute is not in addition to the relief already allotted by other societies. How is this accumulation of relief upon

individuals to be prevented? Many systems have been tried. M. Mammuz, whose work is well known has achieved great progress. He has organised a vast bureau of information about all the beggars in the capital. The idea would be an excellent one if it could be completely carried out. But a thorough investigation of all the circumstances relating to a beggar is a most difficult thing and one which requires, on the part of the Commissioner making the inquiry, many qualities which it is almost impossible to meet with a single person. The Commissioner making the inquiry ought to be absolutely honest and impartial.

That is a matter, of course. He ought to be intelligent, young, active, and indefatigal. He ought to be able to overcome all sense of disgust, but he will have to penetrate into the dirtiest, to the lowest, and at times the most dangerous places. The Commissioner, making the inquiry, must know intimately the life for the Parisian beggar. For him there must be no mysteries in the night shelters, the hospitals, the hovels, and even the prisons.

He must know by heart the manual of the chariote. works, so as to be able to know it once, when in the presence of a professional beggar the source of the different objects he sees in the house. He should by simply inspecting the beggars lodging be able to say, that is a cradle which has been given you by the Society for the Protection of Infants. That is a blank which comes from a charitable institution. That is a bottle of condensed milk which you did not buy, but which is being given you by such a dispensary. There is a ticket, a document, a letter which proves that you are already being helped. by the St. Vincent de Port Society,

by the Curie or the Bureau di Bianfiscence. The commissioner must in a word be able, at a single glance, to unmask all the tricks and recognize all the frauds. Where is the ideal inquiry commissioner to be found? He does not exist, he cannot exist, for it were possible to find men who, through enthusiasm or love of work, were ready to give themselves up to these minute inquiries. It would be impossible to find a body of functioning,

or clerks who would throw into their occupation the necessary zeal talent and enthusiasm without which, in such a matter, no result can be arrived at. And the inquiry commissioners of M. Mammuz, however carefully chosen, can only be salaried agents. You ask one of these agents to investigate the case of some beggar living at such a place. How will he proceed? He will go to the address given him and question the concierge, the neighbours, the tradespeople. then he will penetrate into the beggar's abode and will see that there is no fire in the grate, that the children are half-naked and that everything breathes of wanton misery.

But what will he do to know whether this scene represents the truth, or if it is merely part of a play? And what reliance can be placed upon the opinion of the concierge, the neighbours and the tradespeople? You know well that all these people are interested in the beggar receiving as much as possible. There are in Paris only two kinds of concierges, whose am I ability is proverbial. They are the beggar's concierges and those of certain women. Why?

Because they are interested in their lodger's business. It is very probable then that the inquiring commissioner's report will be inexact. But I will go further, and suppose the report to be absolutely according to the truth. It assures me that the beggar about whom I have asked information is worthy of interest. He is, for instance, the father of a large family. Very well, I will send a trifle to this poor father. I will give him his quarters rent and tell many of my friends about him. But if I went to all these recommendations, the beggar receives more relief than ought in justice be allowed him,

if four or five, six persons pay the same rent that I have myself already paid, how am I to know it? A few weeks ago a neighbour came to recommend, to my notice a woman who, without being exactly destitute, and wanted some old line and address her wounds. The illness with which this woman was afflicted necessitated a large consumption of linen. I let several people in several societies know this fact at different times and one Sunday I myself took to her abode a parcel of old shirts.

We thank you most sincerely, they answered me, but through your kind recommendation so many people have helped us that we have no further need of anything we have plenty of linen. These were honest folk, very honest folk, and that is why they answered as they did. But if my charity had been offered to a professional beggar, you may be very sure that the beggar would never have said that they had plenty of linen in his house, for he would have turned that linen into money. The information, therefore, is a step in the right direction, but it cannot solve the problem which may be thus stated.

To find a practical means of preventing beggars from abusing the relief given to them, Hembleyth-Buewer created the Central Office of Charitable Works. What is the Central Office of Charitable Works? Is it a means of giving direct assistance? No, it is an institution intended to serve as a link between all charitable works and the public. Centre to study, information and reference. It is ready to be immediately between the want-to-the-sixth effectual relief and the charity which seeks to distribute his assistance are right. Its ambition would be to increase tenfold the forces of charity

by create a common centre for that admirable network of institutions with which the capital is filled, a heart whose pulsations will carry throughout activity and life. Here again we find great progress. The central office not only instructs the public as to the existence and working of different charities, but it has also succeeded in establishing more charities thanks to the generosity of different subscribers and notably Emily Compt de Lobesvin. But will this prevent the accumulation of charity upon individuals?

Once again, no. and we agree with those who think that if there are semi-destitute people without relief, it is not because funds are wanting, but because they are wrongfully distributed. Is it possible to arrive at the exact amount of relief that each needy person receives from charitable societies as a whole? It is not only possible, but it is even easy. It is only necessary to create a central office for private charitable works. I will explain myself. To my mind, it is not necessary to interfere with private society.

I would, on the contrary, scrupulously inspect their absolute autonomy and independence, which is an essential condition of their success. Each society will continue to act as it does today. This one attending to Catholics, this one are Protestants, to Jews or to Freemasons, another to the sick, to the old, to children, or the maimed. The administrators will manage their funds, as they have done hitheroe. They will continue to be sole judges of the reason for which they allow relief of any kind to whoever applies to them. But when they have decided to allow this relief, instead of giving the individual the money, or whatever else is intended for him, they will give him a ticket payable at a central office. This central office will be precisely like a bank.

The poor person will come to the cashier provided with his check or ticket and would immediately receive what is due to him. Only the office before paying will do two things. It will make sure of the identity of the applicant, and will enter his name for the sum of the sum of the money or what else is given him. In this way each poor person will have his account kept up to date, for which at any moment the money that has been paid him by no matter what society can be ascertained. How will the offer satisfy itself as to the identity of the beggar? It will require the relief order to be on a card which it will itself furnish, just as the assistance public gives out cards for relief.

On this card there will be the photograph, and perhaps saving the anthropomorphic description of the beggar, in order to prevent any abuse. Do you then, it will be said, wish the beggar to be treated like a criminal? My answer is that I do not see what there can be in the Bertillion system to wound anyone. In the passport or gun licence, is not the traveller's signature taken, and has everyone ever complained that his dignity was assailed if they noted the shape of his nose or the colour of his eyes? eyes. That is all M. Bertillion does. Instead of indicating the shape of the nose he marks his length, and for a portrait that is often little resemblance to his subject, he substitutes a photograph. Instead of a description that might hurt the feelings, he puts a number that has the advantage of being mathematically exact. The burger, therefore, could have nothing to

complain of before giving him relief the particulars referred to were required. When a man wishes not a gift but a loan of a certain amount, an officer's guarantee a mortgage on his house, is he not bound to prove that the house belongs to him to show his family papers, his marriage contract, and it may even happen at times to give details that he could have preferred not to reveal to anyone? And would this same man, when he asked for money,

giving warning beforehand that he will not pay it back, feel humiliated because he is asked to prove that he is the man for whom he is the man for whom he is. as some is intended. Really such an objection can not be seriously urged. Let us suppose now that my central office is established. I have to pay the checks and the orders drawn upon me, whether by assistance societies or by charitable persons,

of course I don't play the part either of M. Memoirs or of M. Lef Buer, nor that of the managers of societies for assistance by work. I make no investigations, I obtain no information, I give no advice, I supply no work. work. I contend to pay on account of my correspondence, but is it not quite clear to all that my office book will be the best, the most accurate, the truth is the most complete of all sources of information. A man calls on my office with a ticket for 20 francs, which has been given him by the Society for Payable Rents. I pay it, and on his card which I retain, I write this summer

20 francs. The next day he comes back with a cheque for 20 francs from Madame Carnot or from M. de Rothschild, with a ticket for clothing that M. Jewel Simon, with a cheque for 30 francs from Baron Shikler. I again pay it, unless Madame Connaught M. Shikler, Jules Simon or Rothschild, knowing the character of my office, have given me the order to pay conditionally, and you can guess what this condition is, it may be worded thus. Pay unless the state of the beggar's account proves that I am being mistaken. It will be seen at once that my system is of the simplest character. and its sufficiency would be absolute if all societies came to me.

And why should they not come? Does the proposal I make and tell any expense upon them? No, it allows them, on the contrary, to realize a sensible economy by combining together so as to have only one cashier. This economy would become considerable if, besides combining together in order to have only one cashier, they combine together so as to have only one establishment situated in the centre of Paris, and with all the conditions desirable in the case of an institution of that kind.

During the ten years that I have been studying this question, I looked at the problem from every point of view, and in its smallest details. I dream of the creation in Paris was something analogous to the Institute of Literate Societies. In this institute, every charitable society would have its office and its clerk, but all the work that could be done in common would be centralized. The central office which would pay the expenses could take the receipts, the library and the records could be used by every society, which instead of calling to give their adherence a great expense at one time at the Hotel Continental, and another of the Hotel de Lourg would receive them instead at the Central Institute of Charitable Societies. Take the balance sheet of private societies which exist in Paris. Look there for the sum that each of them is obliged to spend in rent.

firing, lighting, its office expenses, its general meetings, its secretariat, and it will soon be persuaded that by adopting my system it will be possible, with much less expense, to create the institution, and once magnificent and practicable, which I have seen in my dreams, and which will, I hope, surely become a reality. I call upon all who are willing to help me. I appeal to the charitable societies in Paris, whether religious or secular, by combining together none of them will lose an atom of their interoperate. and all will realize a considerable saving and will prevent through the action of the central office that accumulation of relief on individuals which is their ruin. Lastly, I appeal to women, with matters of charity, know so well how to ally the feelings with practical good sense. Lambertine said that at the source of all great works there is a woman. The work which I have in view is a great one. I call upon French women to help it forward. I am persuaded that this appeal we listened to, and then, thanks to the union of all our efforts,

everyone may boast of having striven for the realization of their great sense of humanity, which as much as two centuries ago, Louis XIV, dreamt of accomplishing, when he wrote in his instructions or doffin. If God gives me grace to put in execution all I have in my mind, I will try to bring about a state of things in which I did not say there shall no longer be in all my kingdom, either poor or rich. for fortune industry and intellect will forever leave this distinction between men but at least there shall no longer be seen either indigence or mendicity i mean persons however wretched they may be who cannot be sure of subsistence either by their labour or by systematic and well-regulated relief the end of section seven and end of the beggars of paris by louis