It is an infamous reproach upon this country that there are hundreds of thousands of people who subsist themselves upon individual charity.
Victoria C. Woodhull
The Public Record
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be president if elected.
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I say it is a burning shame, requiring immediate curative steps.
The indigent and helpless classes are just as much a part of our social body as the protected and the rich are, and they are entitled to its recognition.
Society must no longer punish and compel suffering and death for its own wrongs.
It must evolve such a social system as shall leave no single member of the common body to suffer.
When one member of the body suffers, the whole body sympathizes.
So, also, when a member of the social body suffers, does the whole body suffer.
And yet we have pretended philanthropists and Christians who have never grasped that truth.
Our civilization and our Christianity have been made too much a matter of faith in, and devotion to, the unknowable, divorced from all human relations.
Thank Heaven, however, the day has come when such libels upon the name of God are rapidly merging into the gray twilight, to soon sink in blank, unfathomable oblivion.
Already its divine notes have pierced some of the dark places of earth, making glad the hearts of their oppressed children, shedding light and truth and joy into their souls.
Charity, with its long cloak of justice escaped, has long enough covered a multitude of sins.