Little Works of Uplift for Needy Women

How to Take Money from Those Who Have a Great Deal and Pleasure from Those Who Have Little

JAMES L. FORD

I. Luncheons for Serious Thinkers

THE woman of intelligence who wishes to uplift herself from poverty to competence should consider the possibilities of the luncheon club business and its irresistible appeal to the serious thinkers of her sex. These are to be found in every city and town.

Let her begin by calling herself by some imposing name like The Woman's Society for the Diffusion of Earnest Thought and then cast her eye about for the celebrities who will serve as bait for the earnest thinkers. She may then send cards to every well dressed woman, requesting her company at a luncheon to be given at some fashionable hotel in honour of, let us say, the distinguished English poet, Mr. Blank. Tickets $4.00.

If she has chosen for herself a name that looks and sounds as well as the one I have suggested, and obtained suitably engraved cards, she will receive quick replies from such thinkers as are willing to pay for the privilege of thinking. In choosing her celebrity, there will come into play a judgment similar to that by which a sportsman selects the artificial fly most likely to allure and deceive his prey. In both cases appearance counts more than intellectual or moral worth, and it is essential that the celebrity as well as the fly should look the part for which it is designed.

Thus the apostle of owlishness must look funny in order to impress his audience with the belief that his discourse on the Psychology of Soul-Mating is really an effort of the mind. A ravenous appetite will rob the poet of every vestige of the melancholy charm that is his chief stock in trade, and it is better and cheaper to feed him beforehand than to allow him to bolt his food in the presence of his audience and look hungrily about for more. The myth of the dainty, poetic appetite must be preserved. A velveteen coat, such as no artist ever wore, is a material aid to a lecture on the renaissance of something or other. If, to keep pace with a surfeited taste, it becomes necessary to offer a double or triple bill, the celebrities must be kept apart at the table. If they sit together they are apt to nudge one another and laugh. That will spoil the whole business.

It must not be expected that this form of uplift will add to the material or intellectual wealth of the community. Nor will the real uplifting take place until the luncheon is over and the celebrity has pocketed his fee and departed. Then the organizer of the affair will pay the hotel proprietor half of the four dollars paid to her by each of her guests, and uplift her own finances with the other two.

II.The Rescue Business

AMONG the many callings open to the needy woman, that of rescuing somebody from something stands pre-eminent. It can do more uplifting to the dollar of capital invested than any other similar industry of the day. Moreover, it carries with it its own reward in the shape of the glory with which it invests whomsoever is known to be "devoted, heart and soul, to rescue work".

Only those engaged in this admirable calling realize how many persons there are who should be rescued or how many willing hands will go down into well lined pockets to help along the good work. It is quite as popular as its allied craft, reform—that is to say, it is popular with its promoters, for the person who wishes either to be rescued or reformed has yet to be found.

She who undertakes this variety of uplift work will find in personal notoriety a strong help to her efforts. As a heroine of the divorce court or of a sensational poisoning case, she is well prepared to launch herself as a perpetual rescuer. Then an ever-complacent press will announce that she who was recently triumphantly acquitted of the charge of poisoning her two children will devote her remaining days to the rescuing of young girls or boys, or almost anybody that ought to be rescued.

She must of course be careful to choose a good medium for her work; nor should the real needs of the class to be rescued weigh too heavily on her judgment. It would be impossible to raise a cent for the rescue of stockbrokers. Neither would the rescue of those who play faro or the stock market or bet on prearranged horse races and prizefights yield a dollar of revenue to the promoter.

The rescue of young girls, however, is a scheme of deep and universal appeal to the sympathetic heart. Therefore the uplifter has but to announce the beginning of a two-milliondollar drive, and pocketbooks, even those tightly closed against other insidious appeals, will fly open at the touch of canvassers working on a fifty-fifty basis, while earnest women will canvass their friends without thought of compensation. And nobody will ever dream of asking how such a sum can be used in saving young women from destruction or whether it is feasible to hire them to be rescued. The only uplifting that mere money will do is to lift its possessor from the Socialistic to the Capitalistic class, both in fact and sentiment, and it will do this without anybody's help.

The uplifter must not expect to get the full amount of her drive, but her receipts should be sufficient to afford the salary that will keep her going amiably and comfortably at her happy task. Authorities have disagreed as to the exact percentage of financial profit to the uplifter, but the usual figure is somewhere about twenty per cent.

III.Choosing Plays for Grandma

NOT one of the great fortunes in this country has been amassed by this scheme, but by careful management it can be made to yield a modest graft, unlimited theatre tickets, and the privilege, more highly prized than water from the River Jordan, of occasionally going behind the scenes and meeting actresses.

It is founded on the broad rock of keen interest in the doings of our neighbours which is one of our national traits. It is true that one half does not know how the other half lives and it is equally true that each half loves to tell the other how it should live. In no respect do our individual tastes and prejudices manifest themselves more strongly than in our choice of the plays that we wish to see, but we have also a lively interest in the selection of those that other people should see, and, as we are noted the world over for our deference to the aged, the uplifter will have no difficulty in organizing a society that will provide wholesome amusement for the grandmothers of the nation.

As the wealth and power of the country are the result of individual effort on the part of its ablest citizens, the belief is widespread that nothing of lasting good can be accomplished except by societies composed of persons with a known record for incapacity. To this class of believers the uplifter must look for backing, when she organizes the society that is to teach her grandmother how to suck from the theatrical egg the entertainment best suited to her years.

The number of cheques that will come at her call will truthfully indicate the popular faith in the efficacy of organized beneficence.

Those politicians who have a firm faith in the phantom leadership of oft-photographed suffrage-workers, are not a whit more credulous than theatrical managers, whose opportunities for acquiring worldly wisdom are quite equal to their own. Hence, when the uplifter exhibits her abnormal estimate of the number of playgoing grandmas who will eat out of her hand, she will have no difficulty in arranging for her own seats and a rebate on those sold to her society.

The rest is easy. She will of course select the plays herself in company with an escort, likely to entertain her at a fashionable restaurant, and whom she can bind to herself still more closely by occasional visits to the avant scene. There is very little money in the grandma business, but it will provide a delightful season of theatregoing, suppers and cheerful male society and, perhaps, pave the way for some remunerative enterprise in the line of reform or civic betterment. For fame has now been commercialized and is a power that can be stored like electricity and applied to all kinds of work, including uplift. Therefore, she "who has accomplished so much for well-to-do playgoers" will find support when she tries to rid the country of something or other, or to inflict on it some other curse equally bad.