A Picture Every Month: A Remedy... But Not the Whip!

Once — only once — did I wish my pen had been broken...

And once — only once — did I regret a letter I had made; and the occasion is told in the following story:

I had published a report on the beggars who fill the streets of the capital, every corner of them, and take you by surprise with their abject hands and their imploring eyes — like whips aimed at your back and raining down on your face, paralyzing your thought if you are a person of feeling, or delaying your steps a few paces if you are one of those walking human machines...

I remember that I called on the responsible authorities to concern themselves with these lost souls — to remove them from the street after securing them work by which to earn an honest living; for idleness is the root of evil in this universe — idleness of whatever kind: idleness of mind leads to servitude; idleness of feeling leads to perversion; hands left empty of work to warm them are led down the road to paralysis... and an empty pocket burns up whatever nerves existence has left...

A day went by, and I was returning from my work, struggling to cut myself a path through a crowd of the sort you ordinarily find only before the doors of the cinema, when suddenly I heard a scream that distracted the throngs even from thinking of the heroes of the screen. Everyone strained to listen, and their eyes traced the source of the sound... and I hurried over to see what the news was...

It was the voice of a woman crying for help — and a woman's voice tears at the strings of my heart, for in it I hear weakness: her weakness, which has weighed for ages upon the breast of humanity... And there, in the heart of the street, I saw her running like one demented, fleeing, and I saw a policeman pursuing her — and at last I understood...

She was one of the vagrants I had spoken of, and the police department's jeep hunts down her kind; and if they do not bow to the strict orders, the whips rain down upon their heads...

Her scream might have come from my own breast — and for the first time I regretted what I had written.

I do not blame the policeman, for he was doing his duty, even if in a mechanical way in which human feeling had no part... And I am grateful for the police department's concern, in that it has turned its attention to sheltering these people, if only for a day or an hour... But what I cannot endure is to see our problems solved in this negative fashion...

Neither the whip, nor the temporary shelter, nor the policeman's voice, is the solution... The solution lies in setting the idle hands to work, in strangling the voice of unemployment. Do you hear, O doers of good?...