Other speakers were Miss Jane Addams, who told how "Social Regeneration" might be brought about by individuals interesting themselves in the actual needs of their neighbors instead of one giving alms in a spirit of pity; Ernest P. Bicknell, general secretary of the bureau of charities; J. E. Otis, and the Rev. Z. B. Phillips.
"As regards charitable work, you occasionally quiet your consciences by giving a little money to some mendicant," said Miss Addams. "Let me tell you, your act is as unpraiseworthy as that of the beggar to whom the money is given. You are lessening the man's sense of moral responsibility.
"Thousands of poor, little, half-starved mites of humanity are living in this city in such squalor and misery and filth as you can never conceive, with no impulse of good, no glimpse of the ideal or beautiful, no hope of anything except the misery and poverty in which they drag out their poor little joyless lives. These little ones are schooled in lives of vice and crime from the first dawning of their intelligence. Girls less than 15 years old are drawn into the maelstrom and lost."
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