THE NEWEST BORZOI BOOKS
ASPHALT
By Orrick Johns
BACKWATER
By Dorothy Richardson
CENTRAL EUROPE
By Friedrich Naumann
RUSSIA'S MESSAGE
By William English Walling
THE BOOK OF SELF
By James Oppenheim
THE BOOK OF CAMPING
By A. Hyatt Verrill
THE ECHO OF VOICES
By Richard Curle
MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY
By Alexander Kornilov
THE RUSSIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING
By Alexandre Benois
THE JOURNAL OF LEO TOLSTOI (1895-1899)
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SUPER-TRAMP
By William H. Davies
Preface by Bernard Shaw
CRIMES of CHARITY
BY KONRAD BERCOVICI
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY JOHN REED
NEW YORK ALFRED A. KNOPF MCMXVII
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To my Naomi
INTRODUCTION
There is a literary power which might be called Russian—a style of baldnarration which carries absolute conviction of human character, insimple words packed with atmosphere. Only the best writers have it; thisbook is full of it. I read the manuscript more than a year ago, and Iremember it chiefly as a series of vivid pictures—a sort of epic of ourCity of Dreadful Day. Here we see and smell and hear the East Side; itscrowded, gasping filth, the sour stench of its grinding poverty, thecries and groans and lamentations in many alien tongues of the hopefulpeoples whose hope is broken in the Promised Land. Pale, undersized,violent children at play in the iron street; the brown, steamy warmth ofJewish coffee-houses on Grand Street; sick tenement rooms quivering andbreathless in summer heat—starkly hungry with the December wind cuttingthrough broken windows; poets, musicians, men and women with the bloodof heroes and martyrs, babies who might grow up to be the world'sgreat—stunted, weakened, murdered by the unfair struggle for bread.What human stories are in this book! What tremendous dramas of the soul!
It is as if we were under water, looking at the hidden hull of thiscivilization. Evil growths cling to it—houses of prostitution,sweat-shops which employ the poor in their bitter need at less thanliving wages, stores that sell them rotten food and shabby clothing atexorbitant prices, horrible rents, and all the tragi-comicmanifestations of Organised Charity.
Every person of intelligence and humanity who has seen the workings ofOrganised Charity, knows what a deadening and life-sapping thing it is,how unnecessarily cruel, how uncomprehending. Yet it must not becriticised, investigated or attacked. Like patriotism, charity isrespectable, an institution of the rich and great—like the hig