The Royal Surgical Aid Society, I observe, is holding its
annual meeting at the Mansion House on Monday, with a galaxy of the eminent to grace its platform. The charitable purpose of the society is admirable, and it would deserve general and increasing support—if it could bring itself to change its methods. For at present, based as they are on the letter-of-recommendation system, they are frankly pernicious. What in fact happens? Subscribers to the society secure the right, in proportion to the amount of their donations, to recommend, or nominate, some necessitous person for benefit (consisting of an artificial limb, a truss, a set of false teeth, or some other indispensable ersatz). If a necessitous person applies to the society it does nothing for him (or her) direct. He can buy a list of subscribers to the society for Is. and then set to work writing letters to as many of them as he can find stamps for (at zid. each). If he is industrious enough, or can afford stamps enough, he may be able to collect enough recommendation-letters to get him in ahead of someone else whose physical need or impecuniousness may be far greater. There is no nonsense about " to each according to his need " here. It is to each according to his importunity, or his good fortune in possessing influential friends. The defence of the system, I believe, is that people are more likely to subscribe if they can have the satisfaction of conferring a boon personally. As it is conferred in nine cases out of ten without any personal investigation of the urgency of the case, and practically no other charitable society feels it necessary to depend on such sensations of benevolence as an attraction to subscribers, I do not abandon all hope that the Surgical Aid Society may yet raise its methods
to the level of its aims. * * * *
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