And the Moral Is?
In reading Lillian Wald's Windows on Henry Street I came across this accounting:
"I am not oblivious of the fact that men and women sometimes are thought to give time or money to philanthropic enterprises in part, at least to further social ambitions. There is no circle to which that practice is confined.
The telegraph 'boy' who once brought a message late at night I recognized as a friend of long ago. He tarried to tell me of the family we had once known....All was well with my brother-in-law till he was ruined by charity. It just began this way. We moved to Chicago, and he had a little business which he knew how to run; and everybody in the family helped him. And then he gave some money to charity and the charity people asked him to go on a committee, and he worked something fierce for that committee. And then they asked him to go on another and he was very proud, and would you believe it, they asked him to go on a third. He gave a little money to each committee, and that was all right. But he neglected his business. Now he has only two people working for him instead of seven, and he don't make much, and that's how charity ruined him."
And the moral is ?