DEUT802 In 1949, the New York Times, which has been running an annual "Neediest Cases" fund raising campaign since 1919, made the editorial decision to stop distinguishing between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor. As the paper explained: "What a bleak world it would be if we helped only those who were thoroughly blameless. A good many of us make our own bad luck, and we suppose that some of the people represented in the Neediest Cases would not be in trouble now if they had managed their lives differently. It may even be appropriate once in a while, when help is asked, to recall Lord Chesterfield's words: 'Do not refuse your charity, even to those who have no merit but their misery.'" [Cited in Julie Salamon, Rambam's Ladder, pages 75-76. Salamon, in her discussion of this action by the New York Times, notes a conservative critique of this position: "The elite once held the poor to the same standards of behavior that it set for itself: moral character determines the strength of a person's claim for assistance. Those who worked and struggled and yet were overwhelmed by adversity deserved help; the idle and dissolute did not. Over time, though, elite opinion came to see the cause of poverty not in individual character and behavior but in vast, impersonal social and economic forces that supposedly determined individual fate. In response, need became the sole criterion for aid, with moral character all but irrelevant" (Heather MacDonald, The Burden of Bad Ideas).] Julie Salamon, author of Rambam's Ladder, cites a man she interviewed, Paolo Alavian, a successful immigrant to the United States who had long regarded beggars with contempt: "Now I realize that not everyone can make it. Now I see he may be young and look like he could work, but when you get close you see he has many problems--drugs, alcohol, disease, and bad habits." (Salamon, Rambam's Ladder, 14). Realizing that such behavior will always characterize some people might be behind the Bible's belief that "there will never cease to be needy ones in your land" [this verse].