How to help; a manual of practical charity

Preface

In the three years since this book was first offered to the public, there has been little change in the principles and methods of organized charity. More and more the emphasis has been laid on preventive work. The provision of large funds for purposes of investigation has made it possible to learn where prevention is needed and how it c^n be effected, while the growing closeness of cooperation between the different forces of philanthropy and reform has rendered practicable large social movements which ten years ago would have been regarded as purely chimerical. There has been a general and most desirable forward movement, but the stress has been laid rather on social justice than on philanthropy or charity.

Hence it has not been necessary to make material changes in the subject matter of this book. Some chapters have received considerable additions; wherever the point of view has changed the latest opinions have been given; and the book as a whole has been carefully revised. Its general character, however, has been preserved unaltered.

Now, as in the first instance, How to Help is offered as a practical handbook, serviceable alike to busy men and women who feel some responsibility for right treatment of the want which appeals to them from every side, to the volunteer worker who wishes to make his help as effective as possible, and to the professional worker who

vii viii PREFACE

feels the need both of an office manual and of a convenient summary for the guidance of inexperienced assistants and friendly visitors. To these and all others similarly engaged it is commended with the earnest hope that it may prove itself both useful and reliable, a veritable handbook for workers among the poor.

Washington, D. G, September 25, 1909.

Part I. General Principles

I. The Work — Introductory I

II. The Charity Organization Movement 7

III. The Charity Organization Movement — Con-

tinued 15

IV. Social Workers. Requirements and Qualifi-

cations 22

V. Agencies for Philanthropic Work 33

VI. Elementary Principles 41

Part II. Application Of Principles To Definite Cases

VII. The Homeless Man 56

VIII. The Homeless Woman , 77

IX. Beggars and Impostors 88

X. Care of Needy Families in their Homes : First

Steps 103

XL Care of Needy Families in their Homes : Finding Work 120

XII. Care of Needy Families: Intemperance 137

ix x TABLE OF CONTENTS

XIII. Care of Needy Families : Desertion 148

XIV. Standard of Living 162

XV. Widows with Children 185

XVI. Concerning Children 196

XVII. Care of the Aged 220

XVIII. Special Cases : Feeble-Mindedness, etc 229

XIX. Special Cases : Consumptives 241

Part III. Social And Preventive Work

XX. Penny Provident Work 252

XXI. Fresh Air and Summer Work 263

XXII. Home Library Clubs 276

XXIII. Boys' Clubs 286

XXIV. Industrial and Educational Classes 296

XXV. Club Work Among Adults 305

XXVI. Social Settlements 316

Part IV. General

XXVII. Concerning Giving 326

XXVIII. Indirect Service 342

XXIX. Some Practical Suggestions 352

PART I. — General Principles CHAPTER I THE WORK INTRODUCTORY

The history of philanthropic effort during the nineteenth century presents some curious features, and one of the most striking is the rapid change which took place during its last thirty years. If we look over the literature of the earlier part of the century we shall find a well developed tradition of what charitable effort should be. Like many other ideals of the period, it was simple and well defined. It was largely religious in origin, and in its outward manifestation contented itself with alleviation or cure, giving little thought to prevention. Miss Yonge's very human and charming heroines, for instance, help the poor because it is a religious duty to give to the weaker brethren, or, rather, to be perfectly fair, because they can best express their love for their Master by giving to these, His poor. The problem of charitable relief takes a very simple form to their eyes. They live among people of their own race whom they have known all their days. They know every detail of their lives; they understand their habits of thought and their attitude toward the world. They give with a full knowledge of how far the character of the poor is an element in their poverty, and what will be the probable effect of their gifts. Above all they are not assailed by any doubts as to whether these poor ought to be poor. The conception of social justice is as foreign to them as the term itself. They accept it as part of the divine order that some should have and some should want and no thought of altering social conditions crosses their minds.

Holding these views, they naturally found charity a word of easy definition. To be benevolent involved giving money and time and thought along certain well understood lines. The poor were to be looked after and kindly treated; schools, naturally church schools, should be established among them, that the children might learn their catechism and acquire a limited knowledge of reading and sewing; a conscientious landlord should not allow his villages to fall into notoriously unhygienic condition, nor oppress his laborers unduly. In addition, it was right to carry broths, medicines and jellies to the sick, and to give blankets and coals to the old and infirm ; to give food and shelter to the passing beggar; to make clothes for children and to give several school feasts yearly; and these efforts, with, of course, a due amount of instruction and exhortation bestowed upon all the beneficiaries, comprised the whole duty of philanthropic man.

It would be entirely inaccurate to say that this was the only conception of charity. During the period when this ideal held sway, Lord Shaftesbury was doing his magnificent work; Dr. Chalmers was perfecting his system of neighborhood help, a system unsurpassed by any later developments ; Maurice and Kingsley were calling attention to the social conditions which held thousands in enforced poverty; the absolute necessity of changes in the poor laws was forcing the problem of poverty

INTRODUCTORY 3

upon all students of public questions. Forces were at work which would in time lead to a wider and more thorough-going view of want, its causes and remedies. But the conception described above was the one which had gained the popular ear; it was set forth in novels and advocated in sermons and praised in essays, and taken for granted in appeals for charitable purposes, until it may fairly be claimed that this was the common understanding of what charity should be; and so firmly rooted was this ideal that it maintained its hold for years and years after the conditions which justified it had passed away, and after it had become actively mischievous.

In our own country a similar conception had been evolved from the conditions of rural life. The well-to-do people of the little towns knew their neighbors, root and branch. If any one were in want, every one in town knew whether it was misfortune or fault which lay back of the immediate need. The relations between rich and poor were close and personal; help could be given without patronage on the one side or humiliation on the other. And here again grew up a conception of charitable activity direct, simple, concrete. "Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away," was a more immediately practicable ideal when each man knew his neighbor, and why he needed to ask, and what he would do with the loan when secured. And like the English ideal of charity, which it closely resembled, this conception took root in literature and in the minds of the people, and held its place firmly, while economic, industrial and social conditions were undergoing the most momentous changes the world has known, and the forms of society to which it was adapted were passing utterly away.

In the early seventies the charitable people of the large cities waked up to the fact that this ideal was no longer practicable, and that the attempt to apply it to existing conditions had brought about a state of affairs among the poor which was nothing less than terrible. The exodus from the country to the city, the huge tide of illiterate immigration, then just becoming a serious problem, the reaction from the war and the period of inflation which followed it, the change in industrial methods which was substituting large companies for private employers and trusts for large companies, — all these things were filling the cities with impoverished strangers, and throwing on the charitable societies a burden for which they were totally unprepared.

No blame could be attached to these societies for their failure to meet the situation. They had been designed to carry out the ideals formed in earlier days under simpler conditions. They were wholly unfitted for this new order in which giver and receiver were strangers in the fullest sense of the word, in which the very characters and habits of thought of the newcomers were as foreign to their helpers as their language. Churches and societies and individual workers struggled bravely, but their efforts seemed lost in the huge mass of want and wrong and helplessness. No one knew what any one else was doing, unless by accident ; the poor who put themselves forward might be helped; the poor who kept their self-respect and refused to beg suffered unseen. Most of the work done was alleviative, almost none preventive. Street begging was permitted, practically encouraged. Tenements of miserable con-

INTRODUCTORY 5

struction and unspeakably insanitary, made home life a mockery for thousands. Children were growing up under conditions which inevitably sapped their physical strength and their moral fibre. Men and women made their living by beggary, and saw in each new child an added source of income, because a baby gave additional force to their plea for alms.

Discouraging as were these conditions, the situation was further complicated by frequent and barefaced imposition on the part of those seeking help. The lack of cooperation among the helpers invited deception. If two relief-giving societies in the same district had no exchange of information, it was as easy to beg from the two as from one, and doubly profitable. It was equally easy to make the rounds of the different societies successively. One of the classic stories of the period is of a family who lived for an indefinite period on the repeated baptisms of the youngest baby. The mother, miserably dressed, would present herself at some clergyman's house. She belonged to his faith, she said, and she had a baby she wanted baptized, but she was not decently dressed herself, and she had no clothes for the little one, so she could not bring it to the church ; would not the clergyman, in view of these circumstance^ come to her house and baptize it? Naturally, the clergyman would and did; and naturally, also he would be so much touched by the scene of distress and destitution there presented that he would send the workers of his church to help, giving money and clothing. Aid would be continued for weeks, and by the time the people of that church were convinced that the family were idle and drunken, and that help given them was thrown away, the mother would be ready to apply to some other clergyman, the baby would be baptized again and the whole round gone through with once more. The trick was discovered by accident, but no one ever knew how often that infant had been baptized.

Chapter II

By the early seventies the situation outlined in the last chapter had become so bad that its improvement was inevitable. The very seriousness of the problem called forth the best thought which students of public questions could give, and roused philanthropists to a determined effort to cope with its difficulties. As a result of this effort came into being what is known as the charity organization movement. This movement has so profoundly influenced all the social thought of the day that although its history cannot be traced here, some attention must be given to its development and its changing attitude toward the problems of poverty.

Primarily, this movement was an endeavor to unite the disintegrated forces of good, to substitute combined for independent and often antagonistic action, to bring into philanthropy the methods of organization and cooperation which had proved so effective in the business world, and to find new ways, adapted to the changed conditions, of applying the old principles of charity and good will. Like many another movement it has accomplished far more than its originators had in mind, and has outgrown the modest conception of its functions with which it was formed.

The original intention was not to form a new organization, but merely to unite those already existing. Delegates from the charitable societies of a given place were invited to meet and form a central board, which should be the Charity Organization Society. Under the direction of this board, rooms should be engaged and workers employed who should give all their time to serving the charitable interests of the city. To prevent duplication of effort, each society was invited to file in the central office the names of all those it was helping, and to report new applications made to it for aid. The officers and employees of the central board were to be ready at all times to investigate the circumstances of anyone applying for help, and to report the facts of the situation to the person or society making the request for investigation. If this person or society did not feel able to give the help needed, it was the further duty of the organization to strive to secure it elsewhere. Representatives of the different societies were invited to meet frequently with the central board in order to discuss the best way of meeting individual cases of need, or of dealing with problems of a general nature.

Moreover, it was understood that at the central office a careful record should be made of each case handled, with a full account of the circumstances existing when the case was first reported, together with the different methods of treatment attempted, and their success or failure. And the underlying motive of all effort on the part of the Charity Organization Society should be not merely to relieve the present want, but to find out and remove the causes leading to that want, in the hope of restoring the needy person or family to an independent position in society.

It is evident that there was nothing very startling in all this. It was merely an attempt to apply common sense and organized effort to the relief of distress. But it was so well adapted to its purpose that it met with astonishing success. Beginning, among English-speaking people, with the formation of the first Charity Organization Society in London in 1868, the movement has spread rapidly and widely. In our own country in the little more than thirty years of its existence (the first society of the kind was organized in Buffalo, in 1877), it has been adopted in something like a hundred and forty cities, scattered throughout the United States and its island dependencies. It supports magazines and papers devoted to its special interests ; it has maintained classes for training in philanthropic work, which have developed into three independent schools for such training, and have led to the establishment of innumerable courses of the kind in colleges and universities ; it has created a new profession, and has added to the sentiment of charity the science of philanthropy.

In doing all this the movement has itself been profoundly modified. Three distinct phases, which might be called the repressive, the discriminative and the constructive, are visible in its history, each developing naturally from the preceding and leading in logical sequence to the next. The development has not been equally rapid in all parts of the country, so that the different phases still exist and may be studied in actual conditions. These three stages are sufficiently important in their bearing on the present situation to merit some consideration.

Perhaps it might be well to say that the second and third phases are coexistent. In the latest development of the movement the discriminative attitude is maintained toward the individual case of need, but to this has been added the wider view which takes account of the whole social field, and strives to check the causes

IO HOW TO HELP

without himself which tend to reduce the individual to poverty.

The repressive attitude sprang directly from the causes leading to the inauguration of the charity organization movement. So much harm had been done by indiscriminate giving, the dangers of pauperizing and the evils of pauperism were so directly evident, that it was natural there should be an emphasis, even an undue emphasis, on the perils attending the giving of material relief, and an over-insistence on the need of inculcating in season and out of season self-reliance and self-dependence as the highest duties of the poor. It was so important to preach the doctrine that no help should be given without full knowledge of the circumstances that occasionally the emphasis was misplaced, and the listener gained the impression that no help should be given at all. In order to form an adequate plan of relief it was essential that all the facts possible should be learned, but the insistence upon this led some to forget the purpose, and to look upon the gathering of facts as in itself useful, to consider it an end and not a means. Moreover, it is always easier to adopt the catchwords, the technicalities of a movement than to act upon its spirit. Many took up the new phraseology and talked glibly about the need of investigation and the danger of pauperizing, with very little idea of what the one meant, or how the other was to be avoided.

These mistakes were not entirely confined to the careless and the superficial. Even among the more intelligent supporters of the new methods there were undoubtedly at times short-sightedness, a tendency to look upon the suppression of symptoms as the cure of the disease, and a failure to take the long view of an

THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT n

applicant's welfare. This was natural, for it was an arduous task which the ideal demanded from the worker. To find out the real needs of the poor, and to form and carry out a plan which, while relieving their present wants, should lead to their restoration to independence, uninjured morally or physically by the experience they had gone through, required not only patience and intelligence and a genuine interest, but practical training, constructive ability and a willingness to subordinate the immediate good to a future better. It was a far easier thing to feel that self-support is a normal condition, that whoever failed to accomplish it must be to blame, and to enforce self-reliance at the risk, as it was then said, of temporary suffering, a suffering which later knowledge showed might often cause real and lasting injury to the victim.

In view of these things, it is possible that in its earlier stages the charity organization movement merited, at times and to some degree, the familiar reproaches of hard-heartedness, of rigidity and of over systematization. Nevertheless, it had within itself two principles which saved it from going to pieces on the rock of repression and which led to the development of what we have called the discriminative phase. It insisted not only on a thorough knowledge of the circumstances of an applicant, together with a careful record of what was done for him and of the results of this course ; but it further urged the necessity of a really friendly and personal interest in each applicant as the only means through which help could be rendered intelligently and successfully, an interest which it sought to supply by the friendly visitor. These two principles worked together, reenforcing one another, and leading toward a common end. As the agent studied the record of cases extending over years, and as the friendly visitor followed the fortunes of successive families, it was inevitable that each should come to see that there are times when self-support may not be an entirely desirable condition; when, in fact, it may be purchased at altogether too high a price. To take only one illustration, they came to see by actual and painful experience that when a family is kept from the need of receiving outside aid, whether by putting the children to work at too early an age, or by so over-working the mother that she cannot make a home, or by forcing children old enough to work into injurious trades, not only the family, but the community is harmed, and the temporary independence secured by such means is apt to lead to serious poverty or wrongdoing later on. ;

This careful record of case work and close study of the individual case, formed, in fact, nothing other than an application of the laboratory method to the problems of poverty. The large city furnished the material on which the worker must, whether he wished it or not, experiment ; and as the work went on from year to year, the accumulated records of these experiments furnished the most valuable mass of sociological data ever provided for students of poverty. Studying these records, the movement passed naturally from its earlier fear of relief to the discriminative stage in which it looked upon material aid as a means to an end; important, it is true, but no more to be advocated or disapproved than a dozen other means. This attitude is equally removed from the old superficial view, beloved of the Christmas story writers, that the gift of turkeys and plum puddings and crisp ten dollar bills is all that is needed to right any social maladjustment, and the equally unfounded view which regarded money or material relief with an exaggerated fear as inevitably perilous to self-respect, and leading almost invariably to moral enfeeblement, if not to absolute pauperism.

The movement has now reached a stage in which relief is looked upon as a means, dangerous if rashly handled, but having none the less a most important place in the category of available methods. It is recognized, however, that the facility with which temporary improvement may be secured by the use of money does expose the worker to the temptation of relying too much upon it; so added emphasis is laid upon the fact that giving material aid is never in itself sufficient. More and more insistence is placed upon the close, patient study of each case, the warm personal interest in the individual, the resourcefulness which will find the best way of making the most of each member of the family group, the comprehensive view which, keeping steadily in sight the reestablishment of the family as a whole, works toward that end, using material relief as only one of the means for this purpose, never losing heart nor giving up the family as "unworthy" until the goal is attained, and the ranks of the dependent have been diminished by one more group transferred to the army of the normally and healthfully self-supporting. That and that only is the ideal proposed by the movement, in its present discriminative stage, and to attain that end it makes use of any means which may be at hand. Material relief falls into its proper place, shorn of the fictitious importance once attached to it, and the emphasis is placed on the comprehensive view which takes into account all the factors of a situation, the resourcefulness which sees the way to utilize them all, and the patience and kindly interest which will persevere until the ideal becomes the real. Given these qualities, there is small danger that material relief will be abused.

Chapter III The Charity Organization Movement Continued

The close study of the individual case, and the careful preservation of the records of hundreds of other individual cases, led inevitably to a consideration of the causes of poverty en masse. The worker who dealt only with one family, or with twenty, might honestly feel that character was the determining factor in the social condition of each one of those families, and that only through improving the individual could his situation be improved. The agent who dealt in the course of years with hundreds of families, the student who applied himself to the records of thousands, could not but observe that there were certain social conditions, various large general forces, operating to reduce people to poverty, regardless of their individual merits or demerits. Free will may prevail in the moral world, but it does not in the physical, and if a man dwells in a dark and unhealthful tenement, infected with tuberculosis, if his work keeps him in unhealthy and depressing conditions, no amount of self-respect and earnest industry will ward off from him the danger of death from consumption, or from his children the likelihood of weakened constitutions and impaired strength to handicap them in their struggle against the environment which proved too much for him.

This did not mean that the workers came to regard the people among whom they labored as merely helpless puppets. All imaginable stress, it was felt, should be laid on the personal equation, and no effort should be spared to make the individual energetic, industrious and forceful. But after all, there was an obvious short-sightedness in spending unlimited time in trying to raise families who had fallen into want above that want, while all the time nothing was done to check the causes which were inevitably year by year operating to bring more families into that same condition. Common sense demanded that while the efforts to improve the individual family were carried on unfalteringly, energy should also be directed to removing the preventable causes of want, and to stopping the stream of poverty at its source. As this ideal took form and became effective, the movement entered on its third and most important phase, which may be called the constructive stage.

It is only within a very few years that this effort to remove all preventable causes of poverty has been made on a large scale, and with much prospect of success. It manifests itself along innumerable lines. The campaign against tuberculosis, the agitation for better tenements, the fight against child labor, the insistence on summer schools and playgrounds, the provision of means of recreation, the fresh air work among children and adults alike, the careful treatment of mendicancy in the larger cities, the establishment of trade schools and manual training classes, — these are only a few of its manifestations. Some of these efforts would have been impracticable a generation ago. The problem of street begging, for instance, could not be constructively treated without the system of interurban help and information which has been established wherever charity organization societies are found. Child labor cannot be adequately treated by local methods alone, and such troublesome questions as the deserting husband and the wandering family can be solved only by the united action of many forces.

The marvelous development of this preventive work which characterizes the present stage of social activity has been rendered possible only by the growth of the principle of cooperation, which has formed so marked a feature of the charity organization movement. All over the world societies formed to study and relieve poverty are recording and exchanging the results of their efforts; national conferences, held at least annually, are bringing the leaders of the work into close and inspiring contact; magazines, pamphlets, and weekly and monthly papers are constantly bringing to the public the latest discoveries ; and the worker in the remotest town or village may have, the advantage not only cf knowing the results which have been achieved by other workers along his chosen line of research, but of securing the instant cooperation of all the other workers, through their organized bodies, as soon as his work reaches outside of his own territory. Never before has it been possible for the forces of philanthropy to present such a united and aggressive front to the forces making for want and misery. No one, of course, supposes that poverty will be eradicated; but it is believed that it may be immensely diminished, and that a large part of the suffering which is due to social conditions rather than to the individual's fault may be abolished.

Within a few years past this latest phase of the work has broadened out into a movement which transcends the limits of any definition of philanthropy with which we have hitherto been familiar, and which its supporters claim should be looked upon rather as a program of social justice. Most of the schools of philanthropy carry on as part of their courses investigations into social conditions; the settlements have undertaken a great deal of work along the same lines ; and recently the gifts of Mrs. Russell Sage and others have made it possible to conduct similar researches on a scale entirely impossible until these means were available. A study of the data thus secured has led to a growing conviction that much of our poverty, inefficiency and even criminality result from conditions for which the individual is not responsible, and which by himself he is powerless to affect. It is felt that social and industrial conditions are so adjusted that in too many cases the heaviest burden falls on those who are least able to bear it. Whole classes, it is believed, have been cut off from the equality of opportunity which democracy implies, and for the sake both of common justice and of the community welfare, these opportunities must be assured to them. To do this, the supporters of the movement admit, will require very considerable expenditures, but it is a question whether in the end there will not be a material saving. It is merely a matter of whether society chooses to spend its money in prevention or relief, in social justice or in charity and correction. Indeed, they assert, there is really no question; we cannot afford not to take such measures ; enlightened economy requires the community to check these springs of preventable want at their source, and to seek in good earnest to secure to each of its members the chance of being sound mentally and physically, properly equipped to take his part in the struggle of life, and not handicapped by social or industrial conditions which load the dice against the weaker party.