{83}

Another hindrance to the proper education of the children is the habit of keeping them from school to run errands, to carry their fathers' dinners, or to help with the housework. The girls are often taken away from school very early for trivial reasons.

Recent developments in child study show that many of the moral and mental obliquities of children may be traced to physical defects. In dealing with wayward and dull children, the visitor should bear this fact in mind, and, either by observation or by the help of a physician, discover wherein the child is defective. The sooner a defect is discovered, the easier it will be to cure it, and for this reason the visitor should learn to apply simple tests for defective sight and hearing.

In a very instructive article, which every visitor should read, on "Child Study," [5] Professor Krohn says that "dull" children suffer from defective hearing in ninety-nine out of one hundred cases. He tells of one girl in a class who failed to answer correctly, and was said by the teacher to be the most stupid child in the {84} school. "After the class was dismissed, I told the teacher that I did not believe that the little girl was intellectually stupid; that there was probably some physical defect clogging the pathway to her active little brain; and I requested an opportunity to talk to the child at recess, when I found that she could not hear my stop-watch tick until it was within nine inches of her right ear, and eleven inches of her left ear. The average child, under the same local conditions, can hear the same watch tick at a distance of twenty-one feet. How could the poor child answer correctly when she could not hear what was asked? Every answer was a mere guess. After a time any child would become stupid under such conditions, believing it of no use to attempt to answer at all. This little girl was, at my suggestion, given a seat not far from the teacher's desk and especial pains was afterward taken to speak distinctly to her. . . . She has since manifested such marked improvement that, at the close of the last school year, she ranked second in her class."

In puzzling cases of waywardness, the visitor {85} should seek the advice of the agent of the local children's aid society, who is often an expert, and glad to help one who is in earnest in such work. The Report of the Boston Children's Aid Society for 1896,[6] cites two cases of truancy due to physical defects. One was a girl of ten years, whose eyes were found to be defective. After fitting her with proper glasses, the Society's agent had her returned to school. Another was a boy of eight, with a slight impediment in his speech. No one had noticed that his schoolmates teased the child, until he told the agent. After the boy's teacher had been seen, there was no more laughing and no more truancy.

Massachusetts has an excellent system of placing juvenile offenders on probation for a first offence. This same report contains illustrations of the work of the Children's Aid Society's probation officer. "A boy, fifteen years of age, already on informal probation, and apparently doing fairly well, was suddenly brought into court, charged with breaking and entering his employer's shop at night. On {86} account of his past good character, he was put on probation by the court under our agent's care. He told Mr. Lawrence that he got into this criminal state of mind by bad reading and by attending low theatrical performances. With the aid of the boy's Sunday-school teacher he has been encouraged to do his best, and is now working regularly, taking good books from the Public Library, and is doing very well."

The charitable are only beginning to discover the importance of such personal and preventive work among children, founded upon an intimate knowledge of their habits and character. Such work must be done in large measure by volunteers, and the friendly visitor's relations to poor families render him specially fit for the service. The illustration just given emphasizes the importance of guiding a child's reading. It is not enough to teach the children to use the Public Library; we should know what they are reading and teach them to enjoy the right books. An admirable system of lending libraries having this object in view has been established by the Boston Children's Aid Society. These little Home Libraries in small {87} hanging book cases are placed in certain homes in poor neighborhoods, and the visitor in charge of a library meets at regular intervals a group of children of the neighborhood who form the library circle, explaining the books to them, playing games, and getting well acquainted. A friendly visitor might easily establish such a library in any poor neighborhood; the details of the plan may be had upon application to the Children's Aid Society.

Training in citizenship must not be overlooked. Our boys and girls should know more about our country than their parents can teach them. The publications of the Patriotic League, 230 W. 13th St., New York, will be found very useful. The League issues a Young Citizens' Catechism and a monthly journal, "Our Country." The Sunday-school is another help to the visitor, and it is well to know not only the public-school teacher, but the Sunday-school teacher, whose cooperation should be sought in any plans for the children's welfare. One Sunday-school is a help, but two or more Sunday-schools for one child are thoroughly demoralizing, and we {88} should do our best to discourage any child in whom we are interested from going to more than one.

It too often happens that children are sent by their parents to several churches with the deliberate purpose of making profitable charitable connections. This habit of thrusting the children forward to excite sympathy, of sending them to ask help of teachers, clergymen, and charity agents, is so obviously bad for the children that one wonders how the charitable can ever have permitted it to become so general. Children should never be permitted to deliver begging notes and messages from a family in which there is an able-bodied adult.

Of all charitable practices that help to manufacture misery and vice, the practice of giving to child-beggars on the street is the most pernicious. One boy who has become a skilful beggar teaches another, and first the money goes for candy and cigarettes, then for gambling and low theatres. The next step is petty thieving, the next burglary, and then follow commitment to a {89} reformatory, which often fails to reform, and, later, a criminal career. I have seen children travel this road so often that it is difficult to speak without bitterness of the unthinking alms that led them into temptation. Sometimes parents connive at child-begging, but often they know nothing of it until the children have grown incorrigible. A strict enforcement of the laws against child-begging is very difficult until every one is convinced of the cruelty of giving money to unknown children on the street or at the door.

It sometimes becomes the visitor's painful duty to protect children from cruelty, criminal neglect, or immorality by legal removal from their parents' control. Here a society for the protection of children will often render valuable assistance. Such a society is likely to be hampered in its work by the unwillingness of charitable visitors to tell what they know in court. Sometimes this is due to timidity, and sometimes to a fear of losing influence in the neighborhood. Clergymen have been known to refuse their testimony for this latter reason. The friendly visitor, {90} whose interest is centred in only one family in the neighborhood, need not be so cautious, and his continuous visiting, extending over many months, makes his testimony very valuable. No fear of losing influence with other members of the family should prevent him from speaking out where a child's future is at stake. Just a few months more in evil surroundings may mean moral death to the child, and neighbors are notoriously unwilling to tell what they know.

It is impossible to enter here upon the vexed question of the relative merits of boarding-out dependent children, of placing them without pay in country homes, or of committing them to the care of institutions, though I cannot refrain from quoting, in passing, the opinion of Miss Mason, for twelve years an English government inspector of boarded-out children, that "well carried out, boarding-out may be the best way of caring for dependent children; ill carried out, it may be the worst." There is a very foolish saying that the worst home is better than the best institution, but no one who knows how bad a home can be {91} or how good an institution can be will venture beyond the statement that, other things being equal, a home is certainly better than an institution. The friendly visitor should make himself familiar with what has been written on this subject, and should be prepared, in any given case, to make the wisest selection of a home that local conditions make possible, always remembering, of course, that his responsibility does not end here; that he should continue to visit the child, if it be placed within visiting distance.

The visitor should also be familiar with the local laws for the protection of children. These usually include laws against child-begging; against selling liquor and tobacco to minors; against the employment of children as pedlers, public singers, dancers, etc.; against the employment of children under a certain age for more than a specified number of hours (or prohibiting their employment entirely); and against the abduction or harboring of female minors for immoral purposes.

What, above the mastery of all these details, {92} should be the visitor's clear aim? To see to it that the children are better off than their parents were, and are saved from the pitfalls into which the latter have fallen; that the boys are better equipped to become breadwinners, and the girls to become homemakers. The training given in our public schools will often seem very inadequate, and some of us look forward to the day when every boy and girl between the ages of six and sixteen shall be trained to use hand and brain, when manual training shall be part of the daily instruction of every school course. Until this day comes, the visitor must make use of such aids as evening classes in boys' and girls' clubs, people's institutes, and Christian associations. A child's capabilities should be studied and every encouragement given to his small ambitions.

But the best help, after all, is in the personal influence that the visitor can acquire over the growing child. When we think what personal influence has done in our own lives, how it has moulded our convictions, our tastes, our very manner of speech, even, we should not despair of the children, if we can {93} attach them to us and give them a new and better outlook upon life. The time when we can be of the greatest help to them is during the disorganized period that comes between the school days and the settling down in life. Many a young life has gone to wreck for lack of a guiding hand at this time, for lack of a friend to make suggestions about employment, companions, amusements, and home relations. The failure of philanthropy to make any adequate provision for this critical period accounts, in part, for the large number of married vagabonds in our great cities.



Collateral Readings: On care of infants see leaflets of local Boards of Health. "The Working Child," Florence Kelley in Proceedings of Twenty-third National Conference of Charities, pp. 161 sq. "The Working Boy," the same in "American Journal of Sociology," Vol. II, No. 3. "Child Labor," W. F. Willoughby and Clare de Graffenreid in publications of American Economic Association. "Influence of Manual Training on Character," Felix Adler in Proceedings of Fifteenth National Conference of Charities, pp. 272 sq. "Children of the Road," Josiah Flynt in "Atlantic," January, 1896. "Family Life for Dependent and Wayward Children," Homer Folks, volume on "Care of Children" in Proceedings of International Congress of Charities at Chicago, pp. 69 sq. Story of "The Child's {94} Mother," in Mrs. Margaret Deland's "Old Chester Tales." "The Wisdom of Fools," Mrs. Margaret Deland (see, for difficulties in reclaiming girls, the story entitled "The Law and the Gospel"). Reports of Conventions of Working Girls' Societies at Boston, 1894, and Philadelphia, 1897. For pamphlets on School Savings Banks apply to J. H. Thiry, Long Island City, N.Y.



[1] Proceedings of Fifteenth National Conference of Charities, 1887, p. 152.

[2] Miss Z. D. Smith.

[3] Proceedings of International Congress of Charities, Chicago, 1893. Volume on "Care of Children," p. 7.

[4] Proceedings of Twenty-third National Conference of Charities, 1896, p. 164.

[5] "Charities Review," Vol. VI, pp. 433 sq.

[6] pp. 13 sq.



{95}

CHAPTER VI

HEALTH

About one-fourth of all the poverty that has come within the scope of charitable investigation is directly caused by sickness. "In both American and English experience," writes Warner, "the percentage attributable to this cause sinks but once slightly below fifteen and never quite reaches thirty. The average is between twenty and twenty-five. This is one of the most significant facts brought out by these tables [of the statistical causes of poverty]. It is not one which the author anticipated when the collection of statistics began; and yet it has been confirmed and reconfirmed in so many ways that the conclusion seems inevitable that the figures set forth real and important facts. Personal acquaintance with the destitute classes has further convinced him that most of the {96} causes of poverty result from or result in a weakened physical and mental constitution, often merging into actual disease." [1]

This fact gives added importance to all the efforts of modern charity to secure improved dwellings, open spaces, cheap baths, and better municipal sanitation for the poor. But improvement in these matters cannot come entirely from without; "the model tenement implies a model tenant." As a London authority puts it: "The condition of the house may degrade its occupants. The careless life and habits of the occupants will spoil the house, and make it filthy and unhealthy." The friendly visitor should try to make the family healthily discontented with unsanitary surroundings, and so prepare them for better quarters. Removing families from unfit tenements is not enough, however, if these tenements are almost immediately reoccupied. Their condition should be reported to the Board of Health, and, if condemned, we should see that no one else is permitted to move into them.

I have often noticed that charity agents, {97} who work habitually in poor neighborhoods, get so accustomed to bad sanitary conditions that they hardly notice them. Volunteer workers are not so likely to fall into this error, though it is possible for volunteers to be very unobservant. They often feel that things are all wrong, without being able to state the specific difficulties. An observant visitor will learn the condition of the cellar, walls, yard, plumbing, and outhouses; will learn to take the cubic contents of a room in order to find out the air space for each sleeper; will learn the family method of garbage disposal; will see how the rooms are ventilated; and will learn all these things without asking many questions. Dampness is a very common cause of sickness; when the children cough it is a very simple matter to ask about the cellar, and even get permission to see it.

The prejudice against fresh air, especially night air, is a difficult one to overcome. One mother, who kept her children scrupulously clean, could never understand the value of fresh air until a visitor explained to her how air was polluted by the soiled air that we {98} breathed out, just as water was polluted when we washed our hands in it. When the children breathed this soiled air in again it made them "dirty inside"; and this homely statement left such an unpleasant picture in the mother's mind that her rooms were always well ventilated afterward.

It is difficult to ventilate a small room without making a draft, but, next to the chimney, the upper sash is the simplest ventilator, and should not be immovable, as it is in many small houses. A board about five inches wide under the lower sash will make a current of air between the upper and lower sashes, and, better still, two pieces of elbow pipe with dampers, fixed in the board, will throw a good current of air upward into the room. Another ventilator can be made by tacking a strip of loosely woven material to the upper sash and to the top of the window-frame. When the upper sash is dropped, the stuff is drawn taut over the opening, and, while permitting air to pass through, breaks the current.

Equal in importance with fresh air inside the house is exercise out of doors. I was {99} shocked some years ago to find that, of six Sunday-school boys who went with me on a little trip to our largest city park, five had never been there before. This had not been due to lack of time or money, though they had very little of either; but its sole cause had been lack of enterprise.

There is an impatient and popular saying that soap and water are cheap; like many other popular sayings, it is only half true. Personal cleanliness is rather expensive when one takes into account the time, energy, and frequent changes of clothing required to keep the body daintily clean. Visitors should realize this in any effort to introduce a higher standard of personal neatness, and should not be impatient when they do not immediately succeed. Cleanliness and health are so nearly related, however, that the effort is very well worth making. A visitor who hesitated to complain to a mother about her little girl's neglected condition, borrowed the child to spend the day, and brought her home at night sweet, clean, and rosy, with her hair well brushed and curled. The hint was taken.

{100}

It would be very unfortunate for the visitor to be an alarmist, for there are imaginary invalids among the poor as well as elsewhere, but more frequently the poor neglect the earlier symptoms of sickness altogether, or else dose themselves with patent medicines. The quack doctors who advertise in the daily papers draw much of their custom from the very poor, who are also large consumers of cure-alls and proprietary medicines. We have seen how children's physical defects can pass unnoticed at home, and this is the case in a less degree with the defects and ailments of adults. The very cheap grade of medical service that is sometimes given by regular practitioners in poor neighborhoods has a tendency to discourage the poor from taking sickness in time. The visitor can help them to procure better medical service at reasonable charges or, when necessary, without charge. The grade of service in dispensaries varies greatly, but the medical advice and directions given there with the medicines can be made far more useful if the visitor will go with the patient and see that the directions are understood and carried {101} out. Often no adult in the family can spare the time to go with a sick child to the dispensary. Here, too, the visitor's service will be helpful. In cases of contagious disease, see that the Board of Health is notified promptly.

Other things being equal, an acute case of illness can usually be better and more economically cared for in a hospital than in a poor home. In fact, although hospitals were intended originally for the destitute sick, the practice of sending well-to-do patients there is rapidly spreading. The prejudice against hospitals, still so general among the poor, is a survival from a time when hospital care was far less humane than now. If the visitor has ever been a patient in a hospital, and can tell his own experience or the experiences of friends, or if he happens to know some of the doctors or nurses, and promises to see them about his poor friend, the prejudice can often be overcome. The dread of the untried and the unknown is natural enough, and yet it will happen now and then that hospital care is so clearly the best thing that nothing can take the place {102} of it, and suffering and loss will be entailed upon the family by their refusal to let the sick member go. In such cases charitable people may be justified in helping the family to a right decision by withholding all relief.

The prejudice against hospitals is strong in the negro race. In the first family I ever visited the mother, a colored woman, had been bedridden for thirteen months. According to her own account she had been "conjured," and at first the mention of a hospital made her hysterical. She consented to let a doctor, who was a friend of mine, see her, and he pronounced her disease sciatic rheumatism. He said she could never get well at home with four small, noisy children, and, besides, the walls of her house were damp. After two months of persuading, I got the mother into a hospital and the family moved into a dry house. Among the arguments that won her were my own acquaintance with the hospital nurses, and my promise to visit her frequently while there; and my further promise to see that the children were well cared for while she was away. But the argument that tipped the scale was the {103} promise to take her away to the hospital in a carriage with two horses.

Among the cases in which hospital care is not practicable are those of chronic invalids, of patients too sick to be moved, and of patients able to be treated as "out-patients" in the dispensaries. Confinement cases, where there are children in the family who must be placed temporarily in institutions if the mother leaves home, are best treated in the home. There are societies that provide a nurse and baby-linen at such times. Some families are so degraded that they look forward to times of confinement as times of plenty (see family cited on p. 55), and in these cases nothing but hospital care should be offered, while we place the children temporarily in institutions or with neighbors. For the destitute sick outside of hospitals, district nurses are now provided in many cities. When these nurses are careful to instruct well members of the household in the care of the sick, their influence is especially helpful, and they are often able not only to relieve suffering, but to raise the standard of living in the home. Diet kitchens, supplying food specially {104} prepared for the sick either free or at a nominal cost, are also found in many of our cities.

With all the charities provided for the sick, there is still need of better provision in this country for convalescents, who are sent from the hospitals too weak to resume work, and still needing rest, good food, and pure air to effect a complete cure.

Two classes of invalids remain to be mentioned in this condensed summary. First, accident cases, in which the visitor must be careful to see that legal redress is obtained when the case is one for damages, and must, at the same time, protect the victim from lawyers who are glad to take a sure case for "half the proceeds." Second, incurables, for whom homes are provided requiring an entrance fee, or for whom, more often, nothing remains but the almshouse. The visitor can sometimes secure the cooperation of friends and charities interested, and so raise enough money to provide the fee for such an invalid, when, without cooperation, as much money and more would be spent and the patient remain in the end unprovided for. Charitable people often {105} get tired; they will do a great deal for a while, and will then get interested elsewhere, and grudge the help that is still needed. In view of this failing, it is much better, in making plans for incurables, to secure a lump sum that will make adequate provision, than to depend upon the continued interest of a number of people.

The migration of invalids is the last point upon which I shall attempt to touch under this head. Any one who has visited California, Florida, Colorado, or any other part of our country where climatic conditions are supposed to be favorable for invalids, will realize the irresponsible way in which charitable people are accustomed to send the sick where they do not belong. The worst of it is that the sudden change of climate and the impossibility of securing proper care, so far from effecting a cure, in many cases hasten death. "The saddest thing about the life of a Denver minister," writes Rev. Samuel A. Eliot, "is the number of lonely funerals that he is called upon to attend. Often I have been hastily summoned to say a prayer over some poor body at the undertaker's {106} shop, where there would be present just the undertaker and the minister, with perhaps the keeper of the boarding-house where the lad died or an officer of the Charity Organization Society. I look at the youthful victim of ignorant good-will borne to his neglected grave, I imagine the mother and sisters in the farmhouse on the New England hillside, whose tenderness might have soothed his last hours, and I think with bitterness of the well-meant but misdirected charity which condemned him to a miserable exile and a forlorn death." [2]

It must be remembered that change of climate is helpful only in the earlier stages of disease, and only then when the patient is able to live in comparative comfort, free from worry and anxiety. To send invalids to a strange place in the name of charity, without providing them with the means of subsistence, is the refinement of cruelty.



Collateral Readings: Publications of local Board of Health. Proceedings of International Congress of Charities, Chicago, 1893, volume on "Hospitals, Dispensaries, {107} and Nursing." "Instructive District Nursing," M. K. Sedgewick in "Forum," Vol. XXII, pp. 297 sq. "The Feeble-minded," Dr. George H. Knight in Proceedings of Twenty-second National Conference of Charities, pp. 150 sq. See also discussion in same volume, pp. 460 sq. "The Care of Epileptics," William P. Letchworth in Proceedings of Twenty-third National Conference of Charities, pp. 199 sq. "Industrial Education of Epileptics," Dr. William P. Spratling in Proceedings of Twenty-fourth National Conference of Charities, pp. 69 sq. "Destitute Convalescents: After Care of the Insane," Dr. Richard Dewey in the same, pp. 76 sq. See also discussion on pp. 464 sq.



[1] "American Charities," p. 40.

[2] Proceedings of the Nineteenth Conference of Charities, Denver, 1892, pp. 91 sq.



{108}

CHAPTER VII

SPENDING AND SAVING

There is a new school of philanthropists that are inclined to make light of thrift, and to class both industry and thrift among the merely "economic virtues." To this school must belong the settlement worker who spoke of thrift as "ordinarily rather demoralizing." [1] But another objection to thrift which has been made by settlement workers is that it was only good for the working classes "until their employers discovered that there was a margin to their employees' wages."

Is it true that industry and thrift are merely economic virtues? We instinctively feel that they are something more. One has only to think of a lazy man to get an impression of something essentially contemptible and {109} cowardly. On the other hand the man that loves work and throws himself into it with energy is winning more than material rewards. The thriftless and the extravagant, whether rich or poor, are often mean and self-indulgent, lacking the first quality of the unselfish in lacking self-control. In teaching industry and thrift, therefore,—though these virtues, like others, have an unlovely side,—we may feel that we are dealing with two of the elements out of which not only character but all the social virtues are built.

Nor will the pessimistic theory that the worker must spend as much as possible on indifferent food and housing in order to keep up the rate of wages, bear the light of common sense. It is true that the man who merely hoards for the sake of hoarding, developing no new and higher wants, no clearly defined aims, will still be almost as helpless as the most thriftless. But no one is more helpless against the encroachments of employers than the man who lives from hand to mouth, whose necessities press ever hard upon him, crippling him and crippling those {110} with whom he competes in the open market. Then again, successful cooperation is impossible to the thriftless. The lack of self-control, the lack of power to defer their pleasures, unfits them for combined effort and makes it more difficult for them to be loyal to their fellow-workmen. Visitors can advocate thrift, therefore, for both economic and moral reasons.

There is a use of the word "thrift" that may help us to realize its best meaning. Gardeners call a plant of vigorous growth a "thrifty" plant. Let us bear this in mind in our charitable work, and remember that anything that hinders vigorous growth is essentially unthrifty. Thrift means something more than the hoarding of small savings. In fact, saving at the expense of health, or training, or some other necessary preparation for successful living, is always unthrifty. It is unthrifty to live in damp rooms to secure cheaper rent; it is unthrifty to put aside money for burial insurance when the children are underfed; it is unthrifty either to buy patent medicines or to neglect early symptoms of disease in order to save a doctor's bill; above all, it {111} is unthrifty to take young children away from school and force them to become breadwinners. Thrift, therefore, includes spending as well as saving.

Charity workers often complain that, in the poor families known to them, thrift is impossible, because there is nothing to save. More often than not this means that their relations with the poor have ceased as soon as acute distress is past, and that they have stopped visiting at the very time when improved material conditions have made the best friendly services possible.

Any attempt to divide the poor into classes is to be deprecated, because human beings are not easily classified. But, speaking roughly, and using the classification merely as a temporary convenience, charity workers will find that the thrift habit divides the poor into three classes. First, those who are very thrifty, and this is a large class. Misfortune may overtake the most provident during long periods of industrial depression, or they may become temporarily dependent through sickness or some unforeseen accident. The second class includes {112} those who are willing to work when work is plentiful, but who have little persistence or resourcefulness in procuring work. In the busy season they spend lavishly on cheap pleasures and soon become applicants for relief in troubled times. Debt has no terrors for them, and, from their point of view, it is useless to save because they cannot save enough to make it seem worth while. In the third class we find the lazy and vicious, who shirk work, and, living by their wits, are better off in bad times than in good. "It is with the second class that the charitable may work lasting harm or lasting good. To let them feel that no responsibility rests with them during the busy season, and that all the responsibility rests with us to relieve their needs when the busy season is over, rapidly pushes them into the third class. To teach them, on the other hand, the power and cumulative value of the saving habit, and so get them beforehand with the world, is to place them in the first class and soon render them independent of our material help." [2]

{113}

A characteristic of the second class is the habit of buying on credit. The book at the corner grocery not only tempts the purchaser into buying unnecessary things, but the prices are higher than the market rate for inferior goods. A student in a university laboratory, who is also a friendly visitor, had occasion to use some sugar in one of his experiments, and, being hurried, purchased it from the nearest corner grocery, paying more than the usual price. It proved to be badly adulterated, and the user has been more careful since in advising his poor friends about purchasing provisions. The credit system is the natural outcome of uncertain income, and for that reason is hard to avoid, but in a number of instances it is continued long after the necessity that caused the buyer to ask credit has ceased to exist.

Another and less excusable form of the credit system is buying household goods on the instalment plan. The poor are often teased into this by glib agents. An old woman, whose income was not sufficient to keep her alive, contracted to buy a clock on the instalment plan for $8.00 because she needed one when she {114} occasionally had a day's job of cleaning. When her visitor remonstrated that a dollar clock would have done quite as well, she replied triumphantly, "Yes, but this one is only 25 cents a week!" When payments cannot be made, and the purchaser is threatened with the loss of the goods, it is possible to be too hasty in rushing to the rescue. The Fifteenth Report of the Boston Associated Charities records such an experience. "A family had purchased furniture upon the instalment plan, when the husband was suddenly deprived of his job. The furniture was about to be seized, when generous sympathizers came to the rescue, and redeemed the articles. Scarcely had the donors time to realize what a financial relief they had been able to give to the troubled family before the same bit of folly was repeated, and 'parlor furniture' was added to the inventory of goods and chattels to be paid for by the week." [3] When instalment men threaten seizure, it is well to find out whether they are acting within the law. They have been known to take advantage of ignorant clients. But the system {115} itself is bad in that it encourages the purchase of unnecessary things, and at a great advance upon cash prices.

When the poor man would borrow, he is often exposed to the impositions of a class of unscrupulous money lenders, who violate the laws against usury, but hope to escape punishment or loss through the ignorance of their customers. The pitiful part of it is that the self-respecting poor often fall into their traps. A family in pecuniary straits for the first time is naturally attracted by the specious advertisements of the chattel-mortgage companies, which offer to lend money on goods that the borrower keeps in his possession, and promise that all negotiations shall be strictly confidential. This seems an easy way out of present difficulties without loss of self-respect or any painful publicity. But the terms of the contract are far from easy in reality. Through a system of bonuses, extra fees, or monthly payments for "guaranteeing" the loan, interest amounting to from 100 per cent to 200 per cent a year is wrung from the borrowers. Bled dry at last, and unable to pay {116} such extortionate interest and the principal too, their goods are seized, and the members of the household become objects of charity. Whereever these chattel-mortgage companies gain any foothold, many of their victims are applicants for relief. The law usually furnishes ample protection, but the companies flourish through the poor man's ignorance of the law.

As soon as a visitor learns that the goods of a poor family are mortgaged, he should, at once, whether the company is pressing for payment or not, learn the terms of the contract, and get an opinion as to its validity from some friend who is a lawyer. The usual form of contract in Maryland is a six months' mortgage, bearing 6 per cent interest, with the legal charge for recording deducted from the amount advanced to the borrower. But, in addition to this, notes for from $2.00 upward, according to the size of the loan, are made payable monthly to some third party who is supposed to guarantee the loan. Lawyers advise no payments on these notes, and that principal and legal interest be offered at the expiration of the mortgage. If this offer {117} is refused, the company renders itself liable to damage proceedings in seizing the furniture. In each case, however, it is better to have a lawyer's advice, as the contracts vary, and ignorant men, who thought they were signing a six months' mortgage, have been known to sign a one month's mortgage instead.

The law against usury can protect those who know enough to apply it, but the poor man remains unprovided with any satisfactory means of negotiating a loan. The legal rate of interest is too low to make loans on chattels profitable. The organization, by public-spirited business men, of companies that will be careful in taking risks, and will secure special legislation enabling them to charge not more than a reasonable rate of interest, is the only remedy. Companies like these have been organized successfully in Boston and Buffalo by philanthropists who were also business men and wise enough to realize the importance of placing such loan agencies on an equitable business basis. Several advantages are apparent from the working of these equitable loan companies. Those who cannot {118} properly negotiate a loan are discouraged from applying, because the loans are made with great care. Those who get the loans are fairly dealt with, and are helped at the right time in a way that saves them from becoming applicants for charity. Best of all, the other loan companies are forced to reduce their rate of interest, and offer fairer terms.

The habit of pawning goods has never become general among our native population, but among the foreign poor of our large cities it is the common practice; and here, too, the philanthropic pawnshop, started at the instance of the New York Charity Organization Society, has reduced the percentage charged by other pawnshops in New York.

This new interest taken by philanthropy in the poor man as borrower is still in the tentative and experimental stage, but there is an encouraging analogy between its beginnings and the early history of the savings banks. "It is seldom remembered," says Mrs. Lowell, "that the great scheme of savings banks was originally conceived and put into operation as a means of helping the poor. The two first {119} savings banks were started in Hamburg in 1778, and in Berne in 1787, and both were more or less closely restricted to the use of domestic servants, handicraftsmen and the like. The Hamburg bank was part of the general administration of the poor funds." [4]

When the poor man attempts to save, what inducements have greatest weight with him? First of all, he is likely to save for some definite and immediate object, because he cannot spend in any effective way until he has saved. In teaching shiftless families to put by small sums, therefore, it is well to keep some definite object in view. For instance, persuade the children to save to buy needed clothing, or the parents to save to buy proper clothing, bedding, etc., for the children. This strengthens family affection and leads the way to a bank account later, by showing what money can do.[5]

Next to such immediate inducements to thrift comes the dread of pauper burial, which is a far more influential motive with the poor than the dread of either dependence or privation. {120} Respectability is measured in poor neighborhoods by funerals, and, whether the neighborhood standards of morality and respectability are ours or not, we cannot afford, in our charity work, to ignore them. Extravagant funerals are an evil, and we should use our influence to discourage extravagance, even where it is rooted quite as much in affection as in vanity; but an unsympathetic attitude on the part of the charitable, an inability to understand the neighborhood point of view, has helped to encourage an extravagant form of saving, namely, burial and child insurance.

To enter into a discussion of the merits of industrial insurance, as furnished in this country to the poor, is outside the scope of this book, and the matter is treated quite fully, moreover, in another volume of this series ("The Development of Thrift," by Mary Willcox Brown), but the most enthusiastic advocates of industrial insurance can hardly claim for it that it is an inexpensive form of saving. A very large percentage of industrial policies lapse, and it is a common thing to find that those who have kept up their payments and have {121} become beneficiaries, spend everything on the funeral of the insured. "Of $200.00 insurance received by one widow, $180.00 was given to the undertaker, and the remaining $20.00 was expended for a mourning outfit for herself. The family were being aided by the Emergency Society at that time." [6] In New York, the agents of the Charity Organization Society regard the following as a typical instance: A woman's husband was insured for $136.00. When he died, she called the same undertaker that had buried a child for them. His charges on the former occasion had been moderate. The woman told him that she wanted a very inexpensive funeral with only one carriage. This was the only instruction that she gave. The undertaker asked whether the deceased was insured, and was told that he was, whereupon he offered to collect the insurance and to pay over to the widow what was left. His bill amounted to $102.50. These instances do not indicate any collusion, of course, between the undertakers and the insurance companies.

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We have seen in another chapter that sickness is one of the most persistent causes of distress, and only in rare instances does a death occur that has not been preceded by weeks and often months of sickness. The poor man needs sick benefits more than burial or life insurance, and the children of the poor stand in need of many other things besides decent burial. In fact, the money spent in child insurance, which can be of no possible benefit to the child, is often needed to protect the child's health or provide for its education. These should be a parent's first care from no sordid motive, and yet it is a legitimate view to regard children as an investment. The poor man has a right to expect support from his children when he is no longer able to work, and to neglect their best interests is to cripple his own future.

The beneficial societies and fraternal orders furnish a means of saving for sick benefits, but they are of such varying degrees of merit and trustworthiness that it is impossible to recommend them without qualification. They have not gained the same position that the {123} friendly societies hold in England, partly, perhaps, because they are not subject in America to the same legal restrictions and official inspection.

Though the savings banks are open to the objection that money is too easily withdrawn from them, and is not, therefore, always available at the time of greatest need, yet, after making every allowance for this, the savings banks remain one of the safest and best means of putting by small savings. Another way of saving, which is not open to the objection of too easy withdrawals, is the purchase of shares in a good building and loan association.

Some banks provide facilities for small savings by selling special stamps of small denominations, and, in several cities, charities have established stamp saving societies to promote the saving habit, especially among children. When $5.00 has been saved in this way, a bank account should be opened. One visitor has found that, in getting children to save, it helps to have a stamp-saving card of one's own, and show it. As a means of teaching children to save, visitors should encourage the {124} introduction of stamp savings into our public schools.

Another way to promote small savings is to send volunteer collectors among the poor, who will visit certain families weekly, and collect the five and ten cent pieces until enough has been saved to open a bank account. This work may be combined with friendly visiting, though the collector must visit at regular intervals, and in many cases it is better for the friendly visitor to visit at irregular intervals. One visitor always leaves a small bank with her family when she goes away in summer, and the unlocking of this on her return has become a family ceremony.

Saving for fuel becomes an admirable object lesson, when it is used to establish the saving habit and not allowed to stop with the mere purchase. During the summer, families can be encouraged to put by small sums weekly, and, instead of buying coal in small quantities at very high prices during the winter, can save more than half the cost by buying a ton or more early in the season.

In teaching thrift in a careless and shiftless {125} home, we can get many valuable suggestions from more thrifty families in the same neighborhood, or with the same income. To effectively advise about expenditure, one must know the family budget of receipts and expenditures, and often this is more than the family knows. Learning to take note of the items is the first lesson in thrift. The most important thing, however, is our own attitude of mind. "We must not get into the habit of saying, 'Poor things; they can do nothing.' We should rid ourselves of the habit of treating them, not as men and women, people who can look after themselves with strength in their muscles and brain-power in their heads, but as animals whom we allow to live in society along with ourselves, taking for granted that they are deprived of, or cannot exert, those faculties which go to make up the strength and fibre of men and women. I assure you, those who are inclined to take a sentimental turn have great temptations put before them to treat the poor as if they were dependent animals." [7]

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Collateral Readings: "The Development of Thrift," Miss Mary Willcox Brown. "The Standard of Life," Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet, especially the essay on "The Burden of Small Debts." Annual Reports of the Workingmen's Loan Association, Boston; the Provident Loan Association, New York; and the Provident Loan Company, Buffalo. For stamp savings, see reports of New York Charity Organization Society (Committee on Penny Provident Fund).



[1] See Report on the Questions drawn up by Present Residents in our College Settlements, p. 17. Published by the Church Social Union, Boston.

[2] Leaflet on "Summer Savings," published by the Baltimore Charity Organization Society.

[3] p. 25.

[4] "Public Relief and Private Charity," p. 109.

[5] See Fourth Report of Boston Associated Charities, p. 38.

[6] Eighteenth Report of Boston Associated Charities, p. 27.

[7] C. S. Loch in Fifteenth Report of Baltimore Charity Organization Society.



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CHAPTER VIII

RECREATION

I have said that the power to defer our pleasures is a mark of civilization. There is another mark which, in this busy America of ours, is often denied to the well-to-do as much as to the poor, and that is the power to enjoy our pleasures after we have earned them. Charity workers still underestimate the value of the power to enjoy. They are likely to regard mere contentment as a model virtue in the poor, whereas that discontent which has its root in more varied and higher wants is a splendid spur to progress. Professor F. G. Peabody quotes Lasalle in naming as one of the greatest obstructions to progress among the poor, "The cursed habit of not wanting anything." The power of enjoyment seems dead in many a down-trodden, sordid life, while in many others it wastes itself upon unworthy and degrading pleasures.

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There is a passage in one of Miss Octavia Hill's essays that throws a flood of light on this question. She says that the love of adventure, the restlessness so characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon, makes him, under certain conditions, the greatest of explorers and colonizers, and that this same energy, under other conditions, helps to brutalize him. Dissatisfied with the dull round of duties that poverty enforces upon him, he seeks artificial excitement in the saloon and the gambling den. It is useless to preach contentment to such a man. We must substitute healthier excitements, other and better wants, or society will fail to reform him. In all the forms of play, all the amusements of the people, though some of them may seem to us coarse and degrading, there is this same restless seeking to express what is highest and best in man; not only to express his love of adventure, but his love of social intercourse and his love of beauty. When we once realize that certain vices are merely a perversion of good instincts, we have taken the first step toward finding their cure.

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It has been said that a man's pleasures give us his true measure, and that to change the measure is to change the man. From this point of view, the subject of recreation is very near the heart of the friendly visitor's relation with the poor. We may have made a conscientious study of the family expenses and income, of the sanitary surroundings, of the work record and diet, but we shall not know the family until we know what gives them pleasure. One visitor says that she never feels acquainted with a poor family until she has had a good laugh with them. A defective sense of humor in the visitor is a great hindrance to successful work: poor people are no fonder of dismal folk than the rest of us. When we come to recreations, friendly visiting not only makes large demands upon what we know, but upon what we are. Our pleasures measure us quite as much as they measure our poor friends, and, unless we have kept fresh our own power of enjoyment, we cannot hope to impart this power to the poor, or to give them new and better wants.

Granting that we have them ourselves, what {130} are some of the healthy wants that we should try to pass on to the poor? Taking the simplest first, we should try to introduce simple games and a love of pure fun into the family circle. I am indebted to Miss Beale of the Boston Children's Aid Society for the following list of simple games, so arranged as to include standing and sitting games for each evening:

FIRST EVENING. SECOND EVENING.

1. Hiding the thimble. 1. Stage coach. 2. Bean bag. 2. Buzz. 3. Dominoes. 3. Elements.

THIRD EVENING. FOURTH EVENING.

1. Hot butter blue beans. 1. How, when, and where. 2. Jack straws. 2. Counting buzz. 3. Fruit basket. 3. Magical spelling.

FIFTH EVENING. SIXTH EVENING.

1. Go-bang. 1. Tea-kettle. 2. Spot on the carpet. 2. Musical chairs. 3. Throwing lights. 3. Logomachy.

SEVENTH EVENING. EIGHTH EVENING.

1. Telling a story. 1. Pigs in clover. 2. Blowing the feather. 2. I have a rooster to sell. 3. Authors. 3. Courtesying.

In teaching such games it is best to begin with the children, but the parents can {131} sometimes be induced to join in. Story-telling is also an unfailing resource in our efforts to amuse the children.

But, during a good part of the year, there are many outdoor games in which the children can be interested, and, now that the trolley cars have brought the country so much nearer, country trips for the whole family should be planned at frequent intervals. There are few things more pathetic than the dread with which many of our city poor think of the country, and to teach them country pleasures is to restore to them a birthright of which they have been robbed. A love of plants and window-gardening is another healthful pleasure. Mignonette, geranium, wandering Jew, and saxifrage grow well in small spaces. To one family, living in tenement rooms where there was no sun, a visitor gave a pot of geranium. Later, the woman said: "We have taken it out on the roof every day when it was pleasant to let the sun shine on it When I couldn't take it, Mary did; and, for fear it should get stolen, we stay and sit by it. I take the baby with me too, {132} and the baby likes the sun as well as the flower does."

With all the added interest in outdoor exercise, and the freer, healthier life of our time, we are slow to pass such advantages on to the poor. The women of the family need much urging, sometimes, to get them to take any outdoor exercise. Bicycles are becoming cheaper, and a bicycle would be a good investment in any family where all the adults are working at indoor occupations. If the visitor find a gymnasium not too far away, the boys and their father should be induced to go to it. With these added interests, a holiday will no longer be a thing to be dreaded by the wife and mother, for there will be interesting things to do, instead of mere loafing on the corner or at the saloon. One visitor helped to cure a man of drinking by getting him an accordion—a fact that has a touch of pathos, as indicating the poverty of interests in the poor fellow's life.

The pleasures of books, music, and pictures ought to touch every life at some point. Some aesthetic pleasures, it is true, are won only {133} after long study and preparation, but the best art is universal in its appeal. So far as books are concerned, our free libraries have made us familiar with this view. The visitor should know the rules of the nearest library, and should be ready to go there with some member of the family, in case it is unknown to them. The saloon-keepers in Ward 10, Boston, complain that the new branch of the Public Library opened there has interfered with their business. Beside encouraging the use of a lending library, the visitor should be ready to lend books, newspapers, and magazines, and should be glad to borrow a book from the family, when this will help to strengthen friendly relations.

The refining influence of good pictures is just beginning to be recognized by the charitable. Friendly visitors cannot always organize large loan exhibitions, such as are given in the poorer neighborhoods of London, New York, and Boston, but they can lend a good photograph or engraving, when they are going away, and can replace it, from time to time, by another picture. Such loans have {134} been known, like the Eastlake screen in Stockton's story, to revolutionize the arrangement of the household. Then, too, a picture often conveys a lesson more effectively than a sermon can. Mrs. Barnett tells, in "Practicable Socialism," [1] of a loan exhibition in Whitechapel, where Oxford students acted as guides and explained the pictures. "Mr. Schmalz's picture of 'Forever' had one evening been beautifully explained, the room being crowded by some of the humblest people, who received the explanation with interest, but in silence. The picture represented a dying girl to whom her lover had been playing his lute, until, dropping it, he seemed to be telling her with impassioned words that his love is stronger than death, and that, in spite of the grave and separation, he will love her forever. I was standing outside the exhibition in the half-darkness, when two girls, hatless, with one shawl between them thrown round both their shoulders, came out. They might not be living the worst life, but, if not, they were low down enough to be familiar with it, and to see {135} in it only the relation between men and women. The idea of love lasting beyond this life, making eternity real, a spiritual bond between man and woman, had not occurred to them until the picture with the simple story was shown them. 'Real beautiful, ain't it all?' said one. 'Ay, fine, but that "Forever" I did take on with that,' was the answer."

I have lived nearly all my life in a community where, during the last twenty-five years, there has been a great change in musical taste. George Peabody left money to found a Conservatory of Music, and a few music lovers spent time and money to keep alive an Oratorio Society. Later, the visits of Thomas' Orchestra and of the Boston Symphony Orchestra added to the strength of these local musical centres; but for many years the Peabody Conservatory was ridiculed and misunderstood, and the Oratorio Society was usually in financial straits. I mention these facts, because persons who are dependent upon the Conservatory and the visiting orchestras for all the good music they know have said to me that it must be impossible for poor people ever to appreciate good {136} music. But for the benefactions of George Peabody, and of Mr. Higginson (who made the Boston Orchestra possible), and of a few others, they themselves could never have known the pleasure of enjoying great and noble music, and, to this extent, at least, they are as dependent as the poorest; but they are quite sure that the great composers have no message for the poor. There is difficult music, of course, which only the scholarly musician can appreciate; but much of the very best music, if we once have a chance to become familiar with it, appeals to all of us. Then the artistic temperament is not a matter of either condition or race, as one of our young American musicians has pointed out. Lecturing with musical illustrations to audiences on the East Side in New York, and to audiences of negroes in Philadelphia, he is convinced that "if good music were accessible to the masses, it would be appreciated, and go far to elevate them."

"My boy," wailed a poor mother, "was that fond of music it took him straight to the bad!" And no wonder, for music—apart from the tawdriest of gospel hymn tunes—meant for {137} him the saloon and the low concert hall. We need, to counteract such influences, plenty of cheap concerts of good music; concerts following the plan of Theodore Thomas with his well-to-do audiences, who were given first the best that they liked, and then were taught gradually to like better and better selections.

All the higher recreations encroach upon the field of education, and I am tempted to mention, in passing, some of the most promising educational efforts for encouraging study among the people. The American Society for the Extension of University Teaching, which has its headquarters at Philadelphia, has conducted very successful courses of lectures in poor neighborhoods. The enormous attendance upon the free evening lectures given by the Department of Education in New York school buildings is also significant. The popularity of the educational classes in working girls' clubs, Christian associations, and people's institutes is another good sign. But I mention these here merely to emphasize their importance as tools for the visitor. In families where an ambition has been aroused, the visitor {138} should foster it by making connection with some such educational agencies.

There is a very obvious form of snobbery that we are quick enough to detect, the snobbery that looks down on people who have to work hard and wear shabby clothes. But an even more dangerous form of snobbery, because not so obvious, is the intellectual form, which claims an exclusive right to culture, and looks down upon the simple and unsophisticated. The fact is, that, save for a very gifted few, we are all of us dependent upon the gifts of others for what we know and what we enjoy. Probably there never was a neighborhood so exclusive but many were there upon whom education, refinements, and beautiful things were quite wasted; and there never was a neighborhood so poor but some were there who longed for beauty, education, and a larger and fuller life.

It will be seen in the next chapter that, when we attempt to supply the poor with the necessities of life, our path is beset with difficulties. But when we give them those things which, though not necessary to life, yet refine {139} and elevate it, we can do them only unmixed good. Gifts of books, flowers, growing plants, pictures, and simple decorations, or, as in one instance known to me, the present of several rolls of light-colored wall-paper to brighten a dark room—these help to express our friendliness, and have an added value as coming from a friend. Above all, however, we should not hesitate to share with the poor our delight in healthful and refining pleasures, and should find it natural to talk freely with them about our own interests.



Collateral Readings: "Parlor Games for the Wise and Otherwise," H. E. H. "Faggots for the Fireside," Mrs. L. P. Hale. "American Girls' Own Book of Work and Play," Mrs. Helen Campbell. "Gymnastic Games," published by Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. "Methods of Social Reform," W. S. Jevons. "Picture Exhibitions in Lower New York," A. C. Bernheimer in "Forum," Vol. XIX, pp. 610 sq.



[1] pp. 119 sq.



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CHAPTER IX

RELIEF

I have been very unfortunate if, in the foregoing chapters, I have failed to make it clear that there are many ways of assisting the poor in their homes besides the one way usually implied by the word "assistance." To one who knows the real needs of the poor, the relief of suffering by gifts of food and fuel seems only a small part of the work of charity; but the fact remains that the majority of mankind are still little moved by any needs that are not closely associated with hunger and cold. Their imaginations are sluggish, and the whole problem of poverty appears to them simpler than it really is. It seems to them no more than a sum in arithmetic,—"one beggar, one loaf; ten thousand beggars, ten thousand loaves"; and the charitable loaf is supposed to have moral and {141} healing qualities that are denied to other loaves. The truth is that charitable cash and commodities have no moral qualities in themselves; not even the good intentions of the giver can endow them with peculiar virtues. Like all other commodities, however, they may become agents of either good or evil. The way in which we handle commodities tests us at every turn; tests our sincerity, our honor, our sense of spiritual things. Material relief tests us too. If we give it believing that, in itself, it can carry any blessing to the poor, we are taking a grossly material view of human life. If, on the other hand, our knowledge of the mischief done by reckless giving makes us morbidly sceptical of all material assistance, we are losing a valuable tool; for relief at the right time, and given in the right way, may be made an incentive to renewed exertion, and a help to a higher standard of living.

When the visitor's ingenuity in developing resources within the family renders material relief from outside unnecessary, the family is fortunate; but often relief from outside is a necessity, and the question then arises, How {142} shall it be given? Everything depends upon the "how."

First of all—and this is a lesson that visitors are slow to learn—it is very unwise, especially in the first months of acquaintance, for friendly visitors to give money or commodities to the families they visit, though they may find it necessary to see that relief is sent from some other source. "If one of our visitors finds her family in dire distress, and there is no time to go to the office and have aid secured in some other way, she of course, like any one else, furnishes it at once from her own pocket. But except in these rare emergencies, our visitors do not themselves give relief to those they visit. We believe this is a wise rule, and after eight years' experience we would not change it. If a stranger offered you a gift, you would feel insulted and refuse it Suppose you were constrained by necessity to accept it—would it not make a certain bar between you and that stranger very difficult to break down? Imagine yourself of a different temper, that you wanted all you could get. Would you {143} not be likely to talk more freely or truthfully to one who you knew would give you nothing than to one from whom you hoped a plausible tale would draw a dollar? For the visitor's sake also the rule is a good one. We are apt to think our duty done if we have given money, and if we cannot do that, we are forced to use our ingenuity to find other and better ways of helping." [1]

It is eleven years since the foregoing passage was written, but the experience of almost every practical worker in charity will confirm it. Friendly visitors are human, and their task, as it has been described in this book, is not an easy one. It is so much easier to give. But the history of many volunteers in charity is that, starting out with excellent intentions, they were tempted to give relief to the families they visited. First it was clothing for the children, then the rent, then groceries, then more clothing, and the family's needs, strange to say, seemed to increase, until, finding their suggestions unheeded, and {144} the people no better off, the volunteers deserted their post, and, still worse, carried away a false, distorted idea of what poor people are like. The poor, too, learn to distrust a charitable interest that is not continuous. A little self-restraint, a little more determination to keep their purpose clearly in mind, would save the charitable and the poor from an experience that is hardening to both.

When the friendly visitor has known a family for years, and the friendship is thoroughly established, it is conceivable that he may be the best possible source of relief; but the attitude that we must guard against—creeping, as it does, into all our relations with the poor as an inheritance, an outworn tradition—is the attitude of the London church visitor, who said that she could not possibly administer spiritual consolation without a grocery ticket in her bag. It is good for the poor and good for us to learn that other and more natural relations are possible than the relations of giver and receiver, of patron and patronized.

Nothing that has been said, however, against {145} permitting the visitor to become the source of supplies should be interpreted as meaning that the visitor is not to concern himself with the way in which relief enters the home, and its effect upon the welfare of the family. Everything that concerns the welfare of its members concerns him, and that their energies should be paralyzed by a too plentiful supply of relief, or that the lack of it should cause unnecessary suffering, is a matter that concerns him vitally. To administer relief wisely one needs special training, and an inexperienced visitor should seek the advice of one who knows the charitable resources of his own particular community and the standard of living of the family's particular neighborhood. There are certain general relief principles that common sense and experience have found to be applicable everywhere, however, and, avoiding the technical language of charitable experts, I shall try to state these principles as briefly and clearly as possible, under six heads.

I. When relief is needed in a poor home, it should be given in the home without any {146} publicity, and after conference with the head of the family, who, if unable to provide the means of subsistence himself, is still responsible for procuring it. The man of the family, unless disabled, should do all the asking. This means, of course, that wives should not be sent to charity offices and private families to ask assistance, and that every charitable agency, public and private, and every church worker and every teacher should positively refuse to receive any message or appeal for relief sent by a child, except in those rare cases where all the adult members of the family are disabled. The neglect of this simple precaution has often kept children away from school, and has tempted parents to use them to excite sympathy. One sensational item in a Baltimore daily, headed "Barefooted through the Snow," was the account of thinly clad children sent to the police station for relief. Their father, upon investigation, was found to have taken their shoes off, and sent them out to do the begging for the family, after refusing a good offer of work.

{147}

This newspaper item illustrates the danger of giving publicity to individual cases of need. The poor read the papers, and when they find that sympathy is excited by sending children for relief, they are tempted to use their children in the same way. Few worse things can happen to a poor family than for their distress to excite the interest of an enterprising journalist, who publishes an account of the circumstances with name and address. It brings them an avalanche of relief sometimes, but the visits from sentimental strangers, the envy of their worst neighbors and the disapproval of their best, the excitement and uncertainty, the repeating over and over the tale of their trouble, and the destruction of all the natural conditions of family life, leave behind a train of demoralization that lasts long after the relief has been exhausted.

In a less degree, the congregating of the poor in any place for a relief distribution is to be deplored, whether the relief is given out upon presentation of an order or not. The standing in line, the jostling and waiting, the gregariousness and publicity, are demoralizing. {148} Missions, I regret to say, sometimes treat such free distributions as an advertising spectacle; but "it is of the very essence of charity that it should be private," and advertising, on the other hand, presupposes publicity. I have often had opportunities to give the poor tickets for Christmas dinners, free treats, and general charitable distributions, but, as I have come to know the poor better, and to care more for their welfare, I have learned to resent a charity that would help them in droves, as if they were cattle. A form of charitable relief that appeals to many good people in cold weather is the free-soup kitchen, where the poor come with their kettles, and "no questions are asked." The hot, steaming soup and the cold, shivering applicants make a striking contrast, and the kind-hearted citizen is very likely to think of such charity as "practical," and denounce the people who object to it as "theorists." There is nothing practical about a free-soup kitchen. It is the cheapest of cheap charity. If the weather is cold, people must have fires at home to keep them from freezing, and the gift of cooked food is {149} unnecessary. Soup is not the most nourishing food to give, moreover, and the "no questions asked" means that those who need most will get least, and that the crowd of sturdy beggars always attracted by such distributions will drive away the shrinking poor, who need help the most.

The first relief principle is that relief should be given individually and privately in the home, and that the head of the family should be conferred with on all questions of relief.

II. A due regard for the self-respect of the poor prompts us, when relief is needed, to secure it from the most natural source or sources. A family that still has credit does not need relief at all, and it is better for them to run in debt to those who still consider them a fair business risk than to receive charity instead. Next to credit, as a natural resource, come relatives. Charity weakens natural ties by stepping in, unless it is certain that relatives have done all that they can, or unless it has brought pressure to bear, at least, to induce them to do their part. Sometimes relatives have good reasons, which the charitable should {150} know and heed, for withholding relief. The next source of relief is friends, including neighbors and former employers, and a visitor who is seeking aid for a family may often discover better ways of helping by consulting with these. The tendency of indiscriminate charity is to destroy neighborliness. (See p. 27.) The next source is the church to which members of the family belong, or fraternal societies of which they may have been members. Only when all these sources fail, and it is not possible to get adequate relief from charitable individuals whom we can interest, should we turn to societies organized for the purpose of giving relief to the poor, and, even then, special societies, like the St. Andrew's Society for Scots, St. George's Society for Englishmen, and Hebrew Benevolent Society for Hebrews, should take precedence of general relief societies, which were not intended to assume other people's charitable burdens, but exist to care for the unbefriended families that cannot be relieved from any more natural source.

There remains one more source of relief for the poor in their own homes. Many American {151} cities still give public outdoor relief. This relief is called "public" because it is voted from funds collected by taxation, and it is called "outdoor" to distinguish it from indoor or institutional relief. There are several reasons for regarding this as the least desirable form of relief. In the first place, it is often administered by politicians, and becomes a source of political corruption. But, what is even more important, it is official and therefore not easily adaptable to varying needs. Private charities can undertake a large expenditure for one family, when a large expenditure will put the family beyond the need of charity; but official relief must always be hampered by the fear of establishing a precedent, and inadequate relief is often the result of this fear. Moreover, public relief comes from what is regarded as a practically inexhaustible source, and people who once receive it are likely to regard it as a right, as a permanent pension, implying no obligation on their part. Even where it is well and honestly administered, as in Boston, the most experienced charity workers regard it as a source of demoralization both to the poor {152} and the charitable. No public agency can supply the devoted, friendly, and intensely personal relation so necessary in charity. It can supply the gift, but it cannot supply the giver, for the giver is a compulsory tax rate. Some of the sources of information on this subject are noted at the end of the chapter. It is impossible to give the question any adequate consideration here, but it will be noticed that a large majority of those who have worked as volunteers in the homes of the poor, and have watched the effects of outdoor relief in these homes, are anxious to see it abolished in all our large cities, believing that private and voluntary charity can more than replace it. On the other hand, those who know the poor in another way—in public offices and from the point of view of the public official—are often stanch advocates of outdoor relief.

The fewer sources of relief for any one family the better, though it is often impossible to get adequate relief from one source. "The difficulty in giving judiciously is great, even where one person or society does the whole. But when the applicant goes from one to {153} another, undergoing repeated temptations to deceive and getting from no one what is sufficient to meet the full need, each giver feeling but a partial responsibility in the matter, one giving when another has desired that relief ought to be withheld, and thus destroying the effect of the other's action, we believe that the difficulties in the way of judicious aid are greatly increased. . . . We earnestly hope that the various relief-giving agencies may adopt the plan, so far as possible, of a division of labor, each doing all the relief-giving needed by those within its care and leaving others to do the relief-giving in other cases." [2] When, however, relief must come from a number of sources, it does most good if given through one channel.

The second relief principle is that we should seek the most natural and least official sources of relief, bearing in mind the ties of kinship, friendship, and neighborliness, and that we should avoid the multiplication of sources.

III. In deciding to give or to withhold relief, we should be guided by its probable effect upon the future of the applicant. When it is {154} conceded that we should discriminate at all in giving, the popular notion is that we should give to the worthy poor, and refuse aid to the unworthy. The words "worthy" and "unworthy" mean very little; they are mere catchwords to save us from thinking. When we say that people are "worthy," we mean, I suppose, that they are worthy of material relief, but no one is so worthy as to be absolutely relief-proof. If relief is given without plan or purpose, it will injure the worthiest recipient. On the other hand, an intelligent visitor can often see his way clear to effect very great improvement in what are called "unworthy" cases, and may find material relief a necessary means to this end. Better than any hard and fast classification, is the principle that our relief should always have a future to it, should be given as part of a carefully devised plan for making the recipient permanently better off. The only excuse for giving relief without a plan is that it is sometimes necessary to give what is called "interim relief," to prevent present suffering, until we can learn all the facts and a plan can be devised. In this, relief work is very much like doctoring a sick {155} patient. We have very little use for a doctor who does not alleviate suffering promptly, but, on the other hand, we naturally mistrust the doctor who does not ask a great many questions, or who fails to make a plan for getting his patient beyond the need of medicine as soon as possible. Our relief work is often nothing but aimless dosing. Like the doctor, too, we should stand ready to change our plan of treatment when conditions change. "In one family, where a pension was given on account of the breadwinner's illness, and continued for six weeks after his death, the daughters have been unwilling to take work offered at wages they thought too low, because they were not thrown upon their own resources at once." [3]

A plan that is not based upon the actual facts is, of course, worse than useless. Sometimes a charitable person will call at a home for the first time, will see miserable surroundings, and will feel that the circumstances are all made plain to him in one visit. Calling at a relief office, he will urge immediate relief, adding, "I have investigated the case myself." {156} The word "investigation" means very different things to different people. Here are some of the questions that, according to the London "Charity Organization Review," [4] an almoner should ask himself about any given case:

"1. Can anything be done to increase the family income? Can the number of wage-earners be added to? Can those doing badly paid work be taught better-paid work? Can they be put in the way of getting better tools or appliances?

"2. Can anything be done to make the existing income go farther than it goes now? e.g.

"(a) Is too much money paid away in rent? Could as good accommodations be obtained in the district elsewhere for less? Or could the family do with less accommodation.

"(b) Is money wasted? e.g. on medicine, or in habitual pawning, or in purchasing from tallymen, or in buying things not wanted? Do husband and children keep back an undue share of their earnings?

"(c) Is too much money spent in travelling {157} backwards and forwards to place of employment? If so, could the family move nearer to their work without increasing their rent?

"These are but a few of the questions which the almoner must put if he wishes to be thorough. In every case he must think about the problem with which he is dealing, and he must try to make those who are applying for help think also."

The best arguments for giving relief upon a definite plan are the results of haphazard benevolence that are all around us—feeble-minded women with illegitimate offspring, children crippled by drunken fathers, juvenile offenders who began as child-beggars, aged parents neglected by their children. Every form of human weakness and depravity is intensified by the charity that asks no questions.

The third relief principle is that relief should look not only to the alleviation of present suffering, but to promoting the future welfare of the recipient.

IV. It follows from the foregoing that when we relieve at all we should relieve adequately.

"Can any one really approve of inadequate {158} relief? Can any one really approve of giving 50 cents to a man who must have $5.00, trusting that some one else will give the $4.50, and knowing that, to get it, the person in distress must spend not only precious strength and time, but more precious independence and self-respect? . . .

"There are many families in every city who get relief (only a little to be sure, but enough to do harm) who ought never to have one cent,—families where the man can work, but will not work. The little given out of pity for his poor wife and children really intensifies and prolongs their suffering, and only prevents the man from doing his duty by making him believe that, if he does not take care of them, some one else will. On the other hand, there are many families who ought to have their whole support given to them for a few years,—widows, for instance, who cannot both take care of and support their children, and yet who ought not to have to give them up into the blighting care of an institution; and these families get nothing, or get so little that it does them no good at all, only serving to {159} keep them also in misery and to raise false hopes, or else to teach them to beg to make up what they must have.

"Ought not charitable people to manage in some way to remedy these two opposite evils?—to do more for those who should have more, and to do nothing for those who should have nothing, saving money by discriminating, and thus having enough to give adequate relief in all cases." [5]

By adequate relief charity workers do not mean that all apparent needs should be met. There are often resources that are hidden from the inexperienced eye, and by ignoring these we destroy them.

The fourth relief principle is that, instead of trying to give a little to very many, we should help adequately those that we help at all.

V. We should make the poor our partners in any effort to improve their condition, and relief should be made dependent upon their doing what they can for themselves. Whether we give or do not give, our reasons should be {160} clearly stated, and we should avoid driving any sordid bargain with them. For instance, it may be wise sometimes to make relief conditional, among other things, upon attending church, but to require attendance upon a church to which they do not belong because it is our church, or to let them regard relief as in any way associated with making converts to our way of thinking, is to weaken our influence and tempt the poor to deceive us.

The fifth relief principle is that we should help the poor to understand the right relations of things by stating clearly our reasons for giving or withholding relief, and by requiring their hearty cooperation in all efforts for their improvement.

VI. The form of relief must vary with individual circumstances and needs. Work that is real work is better, of course, than any relief; but there should be a prejudice among charity workers against sham work, for which there is no demand in the market. Unless such work is educational, or is used to test the applicant's willingness to work, it is often better to give material relief.

{161}

A charitable superstition that we should outgrow is the notion that it saves us from pauperizing the poor to call our gifts loans. We may know that they cannot repay, and they may know that we know it, but this juggling with words is still undeservedly popular. When the chances of their being able to repay are reasonably good, and a loan is made, we should be as careful to collect the debt as in any business transaction.

Another charitable superstition is the prejudice in favor of relief in kind rather than in money. We think that bundles of groceries and clothes, and small allowances of fuel, can do no harm, but the fact is that, where it would be unsafe to give money, it is usually unsafe to give money's equivalent. Large relief societies find it more economical to buy commodities in quantities, and so get the advantage of wholesale prices; but, so far as the poor themselves are concerned, there is no reason for giving goods rather than cash. On the contrary, many poor people can make the money go farther than we can. Money intended for temporary relief should not be used {162} for rent, however, except in cases where ejectment would seriously endanger the welfare of the family. Back rent is like any other back debt; landlords should take their chances of loss with other creditors. Nor should charitable relief be used to enable people to move from place to place in order to avoid the payment of rent.[6]

When institutional care is clearly not only the most economical but the most adequate form of relief, we are sometimes justified in refusing all other forms.

In cases where institutional care is not practicable, and relief will be needed for a long period, it is best to organize a private pension, letting all the natural sources of relief combine and give through one medium an adequate amount.

The sixth relief principle is that we must find that form of relief which will best fit the particular need.

Though the foregoing six relief principles could easily be extended to twenty, yet a {163} bookful of such generalizations would be of no value to the almoner without a detailed knowledge of the neighborhood into which relief is to go, and an intimate acquaintance with the lives of the poor. It is evident, therefore, that a beginner in charity should not decide relief questions except in consultation with an experienced worker. For instance, a new visitor going to the house of a widow supporting her aged mother and two children, may find the woman sick, and receiving only a small pittance in sick benefits from the society to which she belongs. There is no apparent suffering, but the visitor at once concludes that the income is insufficient, and applies to the nearest relief agency, asking that coal be sent. As a matter of fact, the family income is as large as the average income of the neighborhood, and the woman has never thought of asking relief; if fuel is sent, the neighbors all know it, and, immediately, there is a certain expectancy aroused, a certain spirit of speculation takes the place of the habit of thrift. There seem, to the simple imaginations of these people, to be exhaustless stores of relief, which {164} are somehow at the command of visiting ladies. Take another instance of a more difficult kind. A family has long passed the stage of receiving relief for the first time; the man is a heavy drinker, the household filthy, the children neglected. They appeal at once for assistance. The children need shoes to go to Sunday-school, the rent is overdue, the coal is out. Confronted with such misery, the beginner is very likely to give, and to compound with his conscience by giving "a little." This is the very treatment that has brought them to their present pass, and only an experienced and intelligent almoner can tell how far it is wise to let the forces of nature work a cure, and how far it is wise to prevent extreme suffering by interference.

One trouble in the past has been that the agents employed by relief societies have not always been intelligent, but there have been great advances made in this regard, and now, in many communities, the agents of charitable societies are active, intelligent men and women, who have received special training for the work. These agents are often in communication with {165} many sources of relief, and can save us from duplicating relief to the same persons—from sending it, that is, where others are meeting the same need already. There are many reasons, therefore, for doing our charitable work in consultation with an experienced almoner, and friendly visiting, where it has failed, has usually failed through the visitor's unwarranted assumption that the giving of material relief was a simple and easy matter, about which charity workers made an unnecessary lot of trouble.



Collateral Readings: "The English Poor Law," Rev. T. Fowle. "The Beggars of Paris," translated from the French of M. Paulian by Lady Herschell. "Outdoor Relief," see Warner's "American Charities," pp. 162 sq. "Economic and Moral Effect of Outdoor Relief," Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell in Proceedings of Seventeenth National Conference of Charities, pp. 81 sq. "Outdoor Relief: Arguments for and against," in Proceedings of Eighteenth National Conference of Charities, pp. 28 sq. "Relief in Work," P. W. Ayres in Proceedings of Nineteenth National Conference of Charities, pp. 436 sq. "Is Emergency Relief by Work Wise?" the same in Proceedings of Twenty-second National Conference of Charities, pp. 96 sq.



[1] Miss Z. D. Smith in Report of Union Relief Association of Springfield, Mass., 1887, p. 12.

[2] Fifth Report of Boston Associated Charities, pp. 31 sq.

[3] Eighth Report of Boston Associated Charities, p. 25.

[4] Vol. II, New Series, p. 224.

[5] Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell in Proceedings of Twenty-third National Conference of Charities, New Haven, 1895, p. 49.

[6] See Fifteenth Annual Report of the New York Charity Organization Society, pp. 44 sq., and p. 55.



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CHAPTER X

THE CHURCH

Relief agents working in our great cities usually find that, in answer to direct questions, the poor are likely to claim connection with some one of the large denominations, though further acquaintance will often reveal the fact that this connection is merely nominal. There are, of course, many poor people that are active church members, but in spite of the wonderful activity of all branches of the Christian church during the last fifty years, in spite of the multiplication of missions and the devotion of many good men and women to their upbuilding, the fact remains that many of the very poor are still outside the churches. In trying to explain this, we have to take into account certain external conditions, such as the natural shrinking of the less fortunate from social contact, and the migratory habits of the poor; {167} but another very important factor in this alienation is, I believe, the preoccupation of the church with material relief and with those who clamor for it.

Some of the very poor are ready enough to connect themselves with the church, but, attending its services and receiving its ministrations with the one idea of getting assistance, it is not too much to say of them that they are "pious for revenue only." And yet, in saying this, it is necessary to qualify it at once by the statement that the fault rests not so much with the ignorant poor as with the multiplied and rival church agencies that tempt them to hypocrisy and deceit. If the church could only have a good, wholesome, terrifying vision, and see itself as the poor see it!

"A friend of mine," writes a London charity worker, "heard two very respectable women talking. One said, 'Well, Mrs. Smith, how have you fared this Christmas?' 'Oh, very badly; I had very little relief.' The other replied: 'Well, Mrs. Smith, it is all your own fault; you will go and sit in the side aisle of the church, where nobody ever sees you. If {168} you would sit in front, you would be helped as we all are.'" Writing of conditions too common in America, Rev. George B. afford says: "Families transfer their connection from one church to another, or, with an impartiality rare in other relations, distribute their representatives among several Sunday-schools or churches, gaining by pseudo-devout arts what they can from each: Methodist clothing; Baptist groceries; Presbyterian meat; Episcopalian potatoes; Roman Catholic rent; Universalist cash, available for 'sundries,'—all are acceptable to the mendicant pensioner of religious charity. One family, now at last well advertised, in an eastern city found its numerous youthful progeny effective leeches as applied to the several Sunday-schools among which they were distributed. The 'widowed' mother underwent frequent conversion; the children enjoyed the benefit of as frequent baptism. On a certain gathering of clergymen of different churches, when one after another had told the story of his discomfiture, all joined to congratulate the single representative of the Baptist denomination present on his happy escape {169} from the imposture, under which several others had in turn baptized the children. But from him came the sad confession that he had baptized the woman herself." [1] In my own city, a family made a small child not their own a source of income by having it baptized frequently in different churches, so that three charitable members of three Episcopal churches were astonished to find, on comparing notes, that they shared the responsibility of being the child's godmothers.

But it is needless to multiply illustrations; almost every church has a collection of such experiences, and the bad effects of successful deception upon the deceivers are apparent enough. I pass to the important fact that this class of the poor, though numerically insignificant by comparison with the poor in general, are yet so much in evidence as the objects of Christian zeal, and the church wastes so much time in coddling them, that the self-respecting poor often hold aloof. It is a common thing to hear a poor man say that he is not going to attend church, and be suspected of {170} trying to get something. It does not increase his respect for Christians to find them easily deceived, and it outrages his sense of justice to see that laziness, drunkenness, and vice are rewarded by church workers. Even among tramps, the variety known as the "mission bum" is looked down upon by his fellows, and there is a lesson for the mission worker in this simple fact.

In writing thus frankly of home missionary work, I am not unmindful of all the difficulties with which Christian ministers have to contend. Many of them are as much alive to the dangers of indiscriminate relief as any one can be, and many of them have risked unpopularity and misunderstanding to lift their churches out of the tread-mill of ineffectual, dole-dispensing charities into vital contact with the needs of the poor. The difficulties of Christian ministers are twofold. Their first duty is to develop the charitable instincts of church members, to overcome the selfishness and inertia of the natural man. When they have succeeded in arousing a desire to do something for somebody else, they must also furnish ample opportunity for {171} the exercise of this newly awakened impulse. Now the charitable development of the individual follows the development of the race; the individual outgrows slowly, if at all, the sentimental and patronizing view of poverty. To carry church members beyond this phase and make them effective workers, genuine powers of leadership are needed, and it is much easier to let them follow their own devices. We have seen in the last chapter that relief work, if well done, is the most difficult of all charitable work, but nine inexperienced workers out of every ten will think it the best and easiest means of helping the poor—the only means, in fact.

A difficulty to be reckoned with, and yet one with which it is hard to have any patience, is the rank materialism that regards relief as a legitimate means of attracting people to the church. Relief as a gospel agency has done far more harm than good: you cannot buy a Christian without getting a bad bargain, and yet, competition among rival churches working in the same poor neighborhood is so sharp that even now, in these days of cooperative {172} effort, we find that the sordid appeal is made. "I call it waste," wrote the late Archbishop of Canterbury, "when money is laid out upon instinct which ought to be laid out upon principle, and waste of the worst possible kind when two or three religious bodies are working with one eye to the improvement of the condition of those whom they help, and with another eye directed to getting them within the circle of their own organization. When each of those religious bodies does so work, say upon a single large family, and, feeling quite sure of one member of the family, nourishes great hopes of the rest of the members of the family that they will become true and orthodox members of their own community, I call that not only waste—I call it demoralization of the worst conceivable kind, for a reason which the poet puts thus, 'What shall bless when holy water banes?' The demoralization produced is the worst possible, because the highest possible thoughts are used as mere instruments for low ends." [2]

{173}

One result of using relief as a bribe is that the gift no longer has for its sole object the relief of distress, or the restoration of the receiver to independence, and is likely, therefore, to be inadequate. "One clergyman with whom I remonstrated on the uselessness of giving 1s. when 20s. was needed, said it was impossible for him to do as we did and give adequate relief, as it would cause jealousy amongst both district visitors and parishioners if he gave more to one case than to another, so 2s. 6d. was generally the limit." [3]

In enumerating the natural sources of relief, I have mentioned the church after relatives, friends, and neighbors. The church is not a natural source of relief when it becomes a general relief agency, giving inadequate doles to large numbers of dependents. It is a natural source of relief for those who have sought its ministrations from religious motives; when these become dependent, it is the church's privilege to aid them privately, {174} tenderly, and adequately. Even beyond its own membership, the church can safely undertake the giving of material relief, when this is incidental to the carrying out of other plans for the benefit of the poor; incidental, for instance, to the work of friendly visiting, with a view to furthering a visitor's plans for improving a family's condition. But the gift must be free from the suspicion of proselytizing.

Protestants often criticise the Roman Catholic church for expecting the very poor to pay toward the support of the church. They criticise, in their ignorance, one of the wisest measures taken by the Church of Rome for strengthening its hold upon the people. Poor Roman Catholics are far more likely than poor Protestants to think of the church as belonging to them, as a power which exists not only for them but through them. Wherever the Protestant church has gained an equally strong hold upon the poor, it has made equal demands upon their loyalty and self-sacrifice.

After all has been said in objection to past {175} and present methods of church charity, we must realize that, if the poor are to be effectually helped by charity, the inspiration must come from the church. The church has always been and will continue to be the chief source of charitable energy; and I believe that, to an increasing degree, the church will be the leader in charitable experiment and in the extension of the scope of charitable endeavor. In the church or nowhere we must find acceptance for the methods advocated in this book. In the church or nowhere we must seek the organized devotion that shall protect the children of the poor from greed and neglect, that shall advance sanitary and educational reforms, that shall supply purer and higher amusements for the people, and shall bring to them more and more, as time goes on, of the advantages of modern life. The church has already been the pioneer in such work. In cities where kindergartens are now a part of the public school system, the first free kindergartens were supported by the churches, and large charities, now secularized, were supported by {176} churches until they had passed the stage of experiment. Secular agencies are still dependent upon the churches for workers that can bring the right spirit to charitable work.