{"id":"01KG8AK9AC9ZA3QVZZHDJQT6AP","cid":"bafkreidyus65mjaxnt7e2evjtdqdlfoytf6u6yiscfpshlzrlbc4y3wy6y","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":1918,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:57.722Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 4","source_file":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","start_line":1868,"text":"seat, footboard, and arms, the most restless body, the body most racked,\r\nnay, I had almost added the most tormented conscience must, somehow and\r\nsomewhere, find rest. Believing that I owed it to suffering humanity to\r\nmake known such a chair to the utmost, I scraped together my little\r\nmeans and off to the World's Fair with it.\"\r\n\r\n\"You did right. But your scheme; how did you come to hit upon that?\"\r\n\r\n\"I was going to tell you. After seeing my invention duly catalogued and\r\nplaced, I gave myself up to pondering the scene about me. As I dwelt\r\nupon that shining pageant of arts, and moving concourse of nations, and\r\nreflected that here was the pride of the world glorying in a glass\r\nhouse, a sense of the fragility of worldly grandeur profoundly impressed\r\nme. And I said to myself, I will see if this occasion of vanity cannot\r\nsupply a hint toward a better profit than was designed. Let some\r\nworld-wide good to the world-wide cause be now done. In short, inspired\r\nby the scene, on the fourth day I issued at the World's Fair my\r\nprospectus of the World's Charity.\"\r\n\r\n\"Quite a thought. But, pray explain it.\"\r\n\r\n\"The World's Charity is to be a society whose members shall comprise\r\ndeputies from every charity and mission extant; the one object of the\r\nsociety to be the methodization of the world's benevolence; to which\r\nend, the present system of voluntary and promiscuous contribution to be\r\ndone away, and the Society to be empowered by the various governments to\r\nlevy, annually, one grand benevolence tax upon all mankind; as in\r\nAugustus Cæsar's time, the whole world to come up to be taxed; a tax\r\nwhich, for the scheme of it, should be something like the income-tax in\r\nEngland, a tax, also, as before hinted, to be a consolidation-tax of all\r\npossible benevolence taxes; as in America here, the state-tax, and the\r\ncounty-tax, and the town-tax, and the poll-tax, are by the assessors\r\nrolled into one. This tax, according to my tables, calculated with care,\r\nwould result in the yearly raising of a fund little short of eight\r\nhundred millions; this fund to be annually applied to such objects, and\r\nin such modes, as the various charities and missions, in general\r\ncongress represented, might decree; whereby, in fourteen years, as I\r\nestimate, there would have been devoted to good works the sum of eleven\r\nthousand two hundred millions; which would warrant the dissolution of\r\nthe society, as that fund judiciously expended, not a pauper or heathen\r\ncould remain the round world over.\"\r\n\r\n\"Eleven thousand two hundred millions! And all by passing round a _hat_,\r\nas it were.\"\r\n\r\n\"Yes, I am no Fourier, the projector of an impossible scheme, but a\r\nphilanthropist and a financier setting forth a philanthropy and a\r\nfinance which are practicable.\"\r\n\r\n\"Practicable?\"\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 4"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJJRSD8D6KH52EB3K3B42","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AK9ACJ0XNJ0ZJCJRXSYBA","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AK9AC3VDDWAEQ70XD0ZRM","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:59.308Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:06.927Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}