Tue letter from the Rev. Gilbert Reid to the Chinese Times, which we reprinted in another column, touches on very important subject. We have constantly urged that the mere distribution of money among the distressed in China is as fruitless as indiscriminate charity has been over and over again roved to be at home. The tender-carted man with some small change in his Pocket may know perfectly well that he is doing no real good by giving some of it to a casual beggar, that he
a profession, but even against his reason isin fact helping to keep up begging as he yields to the appeal. Famine Committees in China should know equally well that they are doing no permanent good by distributing 1,000 cash apiece to thousands of starving Chinamen who if relieved this year will probably be in the same condition next year, and who are induced by this very relief to stay in localities where they are always subject to these calamities, instead of emigrating to less precarious places. Mr. Sie, the energetic agent in Shantung of the native famine relief committee here, is perfectly conscious of" this, and of the wastefulness of the preset system. He and his colleagues ave been doing their best to get the lands, but they are gamblers by in-'
ple to move from the. threatened stinct. The land is rich and easily cultivated, and they will do well if the flood does not come; if it does come, it is the decree of Heaven, and there is vernment and foreign relief to fall k upon. When the flood does come and the crops are ruined and the people starving, it is impossible for the mise sionaries in the vicinity to say 'We told you so,' and to turn blind eyes to the suffering before them; they must give relief to the extent of their ability, and when that fails they must ask the foreign residents in China and foreigners abroad to come to their assistance. If a sufficient interval occurs between two such calamities, the experience of the former one is forgotten, and the purses of the charitable all over the world respond nobly to the new appeal. lections that it is the duty of the Chinese government to take measures to prevent these calamities as fay ax they are preventible, and to haya some. system for saving the lives of its people. when they do occur, are @sowned in the cries of the sufferers and the appeals for assistance; but when the brunt of the struggle is over, and there is time for consideration, even some of those who have been engaged in the collection and distribution of relief funds in to doubt whether their charity has been altogether wise.
Thus far we refer only to the distribution of relief in money: when it comes to the employment of the distressed, at the expense even of charity, on relief works of permanent utility, it is a very different matter. Indeed if the Government relief took this form as it should, there would be no objection to the foreign distributors giving money to families of whom there was no member capable of earning wages at the wages to families in which there was an public works, or iopplementing these
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.