E-text prepared by Al Haines
Transcriber's note:
Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in
curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page
breaks occurred in the original book. For its Index, a page
number has been placed only at the start of that section.
Footnotes have been renumbered sequentially and moved to the
end of their respective chapters.
FRIENDLY VISITING AMONG THE POOR
A Handbook for Charity Workers
by
MARY E. RICHMOND
General Secretary of the Charity Organization
Society of Baltimore
New York
The MacMillan Company
London: MacMillan & Co., Ltd.
1907
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1899,
by The MacMillan Company.
Set up and electrotyped January, 1899.
Reprinted November, 1899; February, 1903;
February, 1906; November, 1907.
{v}
PREFACE
This little volume is intended as a handbook for those who are
beginning to do charitable work in the homes of the poor, whether as
individuals or as representatives of some church, or of some religious
society, such as the King's Daughters, the Epworth League, or the
Christian Endeavor Society. The term "friendly visitor" does not
apply to one who aimlessly visits the poor for a little while, without
making any effort to improve their condition permanently or to be a
real friend to them. Friendly visiting, as distinguished from district
visiting, originated with the charity organization societies, some of
which are indefatigable in training volunteers to do effective work in
the homes of the poor. Though I should be glad to find that my book
was of some service to these societies, it was not prepared for their
use alone, and no {vi} mention is made, therefore, of the organization
of visitors into district conferences. For inexperienced workers, who
need leadership in their charity, there can be no better training than
the meetings of a well-organized conference under a capable chairman,
and even the most experienced, by keeping in close touch with such a
conference, can do more effective work.
The suggestions herein contained are not to be taken as all applicable
to the work of any one visitor. Friendly visitors that tried to adopt
them all would have to abandon their other interests, and their other
interests make them more useful friends to the poor. Like the words in
a dictionary, some suggestions will be of service to a few workers, and
others will be found applicable to the work of many.
In addition to the standard authorities mentioned under General
References, a list for supplementary reading will be found at the end
of each chapter. These lists are in no sense a bibliography of the
subject. A handbook such as this is chiefly useful in suggesting
further inquiry, and, for beginners, I have thought best to include a
number of references out of the {vii} beaten track to stories and
magazine articles that seemed illustrative of the matter in hand.
It will be seen that I have borrowed much in direct quotation in the
following pages from those who have preceded me in writing about the
poor, but my debt does not end here. Whatever I may be said to know
about charitable work--my whole point of view and inspiration in
fact--can be traced to certain definite sources. To some of the
leaders of the Charity Organization Society of London, to Miss Octavia
Hill, Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet, and Mr. C. S. Loch, it will be evident to
my readers that my obligation is great. It will be evident also that I
have been helped by Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell and other workers in New
York, who, against such odds, are making advances in the reform of
municipal abuses; and by that group too who, under the leadership of
Miss Jane Addams, have given us, at Hull House in Chicago, so admirable
an object lesson in the power of neighborliness. But more than to any
other teachers, perhaps, I am indebted to those members of the
Associated Charities who organized Boston's friendly visitors nineteen
years ago, and have {viii} led them since to increasing usefulness.
Their reports have been my most valuable source of information. If I
do not name also my friends and fellow-workers here in Baltimore, it is
not because I fail to bear them individually most gratefully in mind.
BALTIMORE, January, 1899.
{ix}
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I PAGE
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER II
THE BREADWINNER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
CHAPTER III
THE BREADWINNER AT HOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
CHAPTER IV
THE HOMEMAKER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
CHAPTER V
THE CHILDREN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
CHAPTER VI
HEALTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
CHAPTER VII
SPENDING AND SAVING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
{x}
CHAPTER VIII
RECREATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
CHAPTER IX
RELIEF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
CHAPTER X
THE CHURCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
CHAPTER XI
THE FRIENDLY VISITOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
{xii}
GENERAL REFERENCES
Proceedings of National Conferences of Charities and Correction, 25
volumes, especially portions containing reports of sections on
Child-Saving and Organization of Charities. The Conference Reports
constitute the best American authority on charities. Special papers in
the Reports are noted in this book after the appropriate chapters.
Proceedings of International Congress of Charities, Correction and
Philanthropy, Chicago, 1893, especially volumes on "Care of Children"
and "Organization of Charities." Published by Johns Hopkins Press,
Baltimore.
"Homes of the London Poor," Octavia Hill. For sale by New York State
Charities Aid Association, 25 cents.
"Essays," Octavia Hill. For sale by Boston Associated Charities;
price, 10 cents.
"Rich and Poor," Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet.
"How to help the Poor," Mrs. James T. Fields.
"Public Relief and Private Charity," Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell.
"American Charities," A. G. Warner.
"Hull House Maps and Papers."
{1}
FRIENDLY VISITING AMONG THE POOR
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
There is a certain development in the English novel of which I have
long seemed to be vaguely conscious. At one time I hoped to set myself
the task of tracing it, though I have since relinquished all thought of
this as too ambitious. The movement--if, indeed, there be such a
movement--has always pictured itself to my mind as the march of the
plain and common people into the foreground of English fiction. I
venture to introduce the idea here, though it may appear foreign to my
subject, as illustrating another and equally important movement in the
development of charitable work.
Should any one ever turn over the pages of our two centuries' stock of
novels, with a view {2} to tracing this gradual development of interest
in the poor and unfortunate, he would find, of course, that facts have
a tantalizing way of moving in zigzags whenever one is anxious that
they should move forward in a straight line; but he would probably find
also that, in the earlier attempts of the novel writer to picture the
poor, they were drawn as mere puppets on which the richly endowed
heroes and heroines exercised their benevolence. Very likely he would
discover that, when at last the poor began to take an important part in
the action of the story, we were permitted to see them at first only
through a haze of sentimentality, so that, allowing for great advances
in the art of novel writing between the time of Richardson and the time
of Dickens, we still should find the astonishing characterizations of
"Pamela" reflected in the impossible virtues and melodramatic vices of
Dickens' poor people.
To Miss Edgeworth and Scott first, perhaps, and to George Eliot most of
all, we should find ourselves indebted for faithful studies of plain
people,--studies made with an eye single to {3} the object, and
leaving, therefore, no unlovely trait slurred over or excused, yet
giving us that perfect understanding of every-day people which is the
only true basis of sympathy with them. In America we are indebted to
such conscientious artists as Miss Jewett and Octave Thanet for a
similar enlargement of our sympathies through their life-like pictures
of the less sophisticated people of our own time.
An even more recent development would be found in what is called the
"sociological" novel. Monstrous and misshapen as this must seem to us
often, if considered as a work of art, it would have to be reckoned
with in any investigation of the treatment of poverty in fiction.
Turning to the treatment of poverty in fact, it is surely not
altogether fanciful to think that we can trace a similar
development,--the march of the plain and common people into the
foreground of the charitable consciousness. Here, too, the facts will
not always travel in straight lines, and the great souls of earlier
ages will be found to have anticipated our best thinking; but usually
the world has failed in {4} any effort to adopt their high standards.
Speaking roughly, several centuries of charitable practice, in the
English world at least, are fairly well summed up in the doggerel
verses of that sixteenth-century divine, quoted by Hobson, who
counselled his flock,
"Yet cease not to give
Without any regard;
Though the beggars be wicked,
Thou shalt have thy reward."
The spirit of the mediaeval church, too, encouraged charitable giving
in the main "as a species of fire insurance." The poor, when they were
thought of at all, were too likely to be regarded as a means of saving
the giver's soul. This view of poverty is either quite dead or dying,
but the sentimental view, which succeeded it, is still very common. We
are still inclined to take a conventional attitude toward the poor,
seeing them through the comfortable haze of our own excellent
intentions, and content to know that we wish them well, without being
at any great pains to know them as they really are. In other words,
our intentions are good, but they {5} are not always good enough to
lead us to take our charitable work quite seriously, and found it
solidly upon knowledge and experience.
But the century drawing to a close has seen two very important
developments in charitable work in England and America; developments
quite as important in their own field as the advances of the century in
the art of fiction. The first of these is the wonderful growth of the
spirit of individual service, which has found one of its highest
expressions in the work of friendly visitors in the homes of the poor.
The second is the new but vigorous growth of the spirit of social
service, which has found its best expression in social and college
settlements. It might be possible to prove that both these
developments are merely revivals, that at several stages of the world's
history the same ideas have been put forward under other names; but
never before, as it seems to me, have they found such general
recognition.
This gives us three tolerably well-defined phases of charitable
progress: the phases of indiscriminate relief, of individual service,
and {6} of social service. In the first phase, we are charitable
either for the sake of our souls or else to gratify our own emotions.
In the second, we are charitable for the sake of the individual poor
man. In the third, we are charitable for the sake of the class to
which he belongs.
Of the dangers of indiscriminate relief, it should not be necessary to
speak, for much has been written on that subject; but the dangers of
individual and social service have not been so frequently pointed out.
These two forms of service are very closely related. It is impossible
to treat the individual poor man without affecting the condition of his
fellows for better or worse, and it is impossible to deal with social
conditions without affecting the units that compose society. The
problems of poverty must be attacked from both sides, therefore, and
though I shall dwell particularly upon individual service in these
pages, we should remember that, unless this service is supplemented by
the work of good citizens, who shall strive to make our cities
healthier and freer from temptation, our school system more {7}
thorough and practical, and our public charities more effective, unless
this public work also is pushed forward, our individual work in the
homes of the poor will be largely in vain.
I have said that there were dangers in both forms of service. In work
with individual poor families we are likely to forget that these are
part of a neighborhood and community, and that we have no right to help
them in a way that will work harm to the community. We are always
inclined to think that the particular family in which we are interested
is an "exceptional case," and the exceptional treatment lavished upon
our exceptional case often rouses in a neighborhood hopes that it is
impossible for us to fulfil. Then, too, occupied as we are with
individuals, we are likely to exaggerate the importance of those causes
of poverty that have their origin in the individual. We are likely to
over emphasize the moral and mental lacks shown in bad personal habits,
such as drunkenness and licentiousness, in thriftlessness, laziness, or
inefficiency; and some of us are even rash enough to attribute all the
ills of the poor to drink or laziness. On the other hand, those {8}
who are engaged in social service often exaggerate the causes of
poverty that are external to the individual. Bad industrial conditions
and defective legislation seem to them the causes of nearly all the
distress around them. Settlement workers are likely to say that the
sufferings of the poor are due to conditions over which the poor have
no control.
The truth lies somewhere between these two extremes; the fact being
that the personal and social causes of poverty act and react upon each
other, changing places as cause and as effect, until they form a tangle
that no hasty, impatient jerking can unravel. The charity worker and
the settlement worker have need of each other: neither one can afford
to ignore the experience of the other. Friendly visitors and all who
are trying to improve conditions in poor homes should welcome the
experience of those who are studying trade conditions and other more
general aspects of questions affecting the welfare of the poor. But
they should not permit themselves to be swept away by enthusiastic
advocates of social reform from that safe middle ground which
recognizes that character is at the {9} very centre of this complicated
problem; character in the rich, who owe the poor justice as well as
mercy, and character in the poor, who are masters of their fate to a
greater degree than they will recognize or than we will recognize for
them. To ignore the importance of character and of the discipline that
makes character is a common fault of modern philanthropy. Rich and
poor alike are pictured as the victims of circumstances, of a wrong
social order. A political writer has said that formerly, when our
forefathers became dissatisfied, they pushed farther into the
wilderness, but that now, if anything goes wrong, we run howling to
Washington, asking special legislation for our troubles. Symptoms are
not lacking of a healthy reaction from this undemocratic attitude of
mind. In so far as our charitable work affects it, let us see to it
that we do our part in restoring a tone of sturdy self-reliance and
independence to the Commonwealth.
Turning from these more general considerations, it is proposed, in this
book, to treat of various aspects of the home life of the poor as {10}
affected by charity. At the very beginning, however, it may be well to
inquire, Who are the poor? If this were a study of the needs of the
rich, we should realize at once that they are a difficult class to
generalize about; rich people are understood to differ widely from each
other in tastes, aims, virtues, and vices. The great, conglomerate
class of the rich--which is really no social class at all--has included
human beings as different as Lord Shaftesbury and Mr. Barney Barnato.
But it is the very same with the poor; and any effort to go among them
for the purpose of helping them that does not frankly recognize this
wide diversity, must end in failure. The charity worker must rid
himself, first of all, of the conventional picture of the poor as
always either very abjectly needy, or else very abjectly grateful. He
must understand that an attitude of patronage toward the poor man is
likely to put the patron in as ridiculous a position as Mr. Pullet,
when he addressed his nephew, Tom Tulliver, as "Young Sir." Upon which
George Eliot remarks: "A boy's sheepishness is by no means a sign of
overmastering reverence; and while you are making {11} encouraging
advances to him under the idea that he is overwhelmed by a sense of
your age and wisdom, ten to one he is thinking you extremely queer."
The would-be philanthropist, who is very conscious of himself and only
vaguely conscious of the object of his benevolence, is likely to seem
and to be "extremely queer."
If I were writing about the rich, I should be inclined to divide them,
according to their attitude toward life, into workers and parasites,
but this classification will serve for the poor as well. The motto of
the worker is, "I owe the world a life," and the motto of the parasite
is, "The world owes me a living." When the parasite happens to be poor
we call him a pauper; but there is a world of difference between
poverty and pauperism. The poor man may become destitute through
stress of circumstances, and be forced to accept charity, but your true
pauper, be he rich or poor, has the parasitic habit of mind. When we
ask ourselves then, Who are the poor? we must answer that they include
widely divergent types of character,--the selfish and the {12}
unselfish, the noble and the mean, workers and parasites--and that, in
going among them, we must be prepared to meet human beings differing
often from ourselves, it may be, in trivial and external things, but
like ourselves in all else.
Some who are ready enough to recognize these rudimentary facts about
the poor, question our right to go among them with the object of doing
them good, regarding it as an impertinent interference with the rights
of the individual. But those who hold to this view seldom have the
courage of their convictions. When they see suffering, they are very
likely to interfere by sending help, though this well-meant
interference, unaccompanied by personal knowledge of all the
circumstances, often does more harm than good, and becomes a temptation
rather than a help. We must interfere when confronted by human
suffering and need. Why not interfere effectively? Why not do our
best to remove the causes of need?
Many earnest workers in charity feel that social conditions could be
wonderfully improved if, to every family in distress, could {13} be
sent a volunteer visitor, who would seek out and, with patience and
sympathy, strive to remove the causes of need. Such a visitor must
have the courage and self-control to confine his work to a few
families, for it is impossible to know many well, to understand all
their temptations and difficulties, and so help them effectively. To
supply every needy family with a friend may seem an impossible ideal,
but if all who are undoing each other's work to-day by doing it twice
over, and if all who now waste their time in unnecessary charities,
were seriously to put themselves in training, and confine their work to
the thorough treatment of a few families, the problem of how to help
the poor would be solved.
The introduction to such work might come in many ways. It might come
through our natural relations as employers or neighbors or church
members, or it might come through the district office of a charity
organization society, for these societies usually make a specialty of
training volunteers and of establishing friendly relations between
volunteer {14} visitors and needy families. But come as it may, an
introduction can be made for us, and we need not enter the poor man's
home as an intruder.
Much has been written about the qualifications necessary for charitable
work. It is possible to exaggerate them. Those who are unfamiliar
with the homes of the poor are likely to think it unsafe to send young
and inexperienced people into poor neighborhoods. As a matter of fact,
there are many good people in the poorest neighborhoods, and young
workers are as safe there as anywhere. In an old note-book I find that
years ago I set down the necessary qualifications of the friendly
visitor to be tact and good-will. If we consider that tact includes
knowledge, either instinctive or acquired, this may still stand. We
cannot be tactful with those whose point of view we fail to understand,
or do not even strive to understand. The best helps toward such an
understanding, and the best training for charitable work, must come
from life itself. If we take no interest in the joys and sorrows of
human beings, if we show {15} neither judgment nor energy in the
conduct of our own affairs, if life seem to us, on the whole, a flat
and unprofitable affair, then no amount of reading will transform us
into good friendly visitors. Given the tactful, kindly spirit, with a
dash of energy added, study and experience can teach us how to turn
these to the best account in the service of others. Our reading must
be supplementary to experience, of course, and can in no wise take the
place of it.
Leaving all further generalization about friendly visiting for the last
chapter, in the following pages my point of departure will be the
organization of the poor man's home rather than the organization of
charity. The head of the family as citizen, employee, husband, and
father; the wife as homemaker; the children; the family health and
recreations; the principles involved in spending and saving; the
principles of effectual relief; the relations of the church to the
poor,--these will be considered in turn. Necessarily, in a book of
this size, the attempt must be to suggest lines of inquiry and points
of view, {16} rather than to treat adequately any one part of the
subject.
Collateral Readings: "Individuality in the Work of Charity," George B.
Buzelle in Proceedings of Thirteenth National Conference of Charities,
pp. 185 _sq_. "Scientific Charity," Mrs. Glendower Evans in
Proceedings of Sixteenth National Conference of Charities, pp. 24 _sq_.
Chapters on "Scientific Charity" in "Problems of American Society," J.
H. Crooker. Papers on Social Settlements in Proceedings of
Twenty-third National Conference of Charities, pp. 106 _sq_. "The
Causes of Poverty," F. A. Walker in "Century," Vol. LV, pp. 210 _sq_.
"The Jukes," Richard Dugdale. "Tribe of Ishmael," Oscar McCulloch in
Proceedings of Fifteenth National Conference of Charities, pp. 154
_sq_. "The Rooney Family," see Charles Booth's "Life and Labor of the
People," Vol. VIII, pp. 317 _sq_. "Life in New York Tenement Houses,"
William T. Elsing in "Scribner's," Vol. XI, pp. 677 _sq_. "An
Experiment in Altruism," Miss Margaret Sherwood.
{17}