THE BREADWINNER AT HOME
We have considered the breadwinner as worker, neighbor, and citizen; we
now turn to the breadwinner as husband and father. It has been said
that the home is not only the true unit of society, but that it is the
charitable unit as well, and that when we deal with anything less than
a whole family, we deal with fractions. Much of our charitable work is
still fractional. It not infrequently happens, for instance, that the
members of one poor family will come in contact with dozens of
charitable people representing many forms of charitable activity, and
that none of these will ever have considered the family as a whole.
The Sunday-school teacher, the kindergartner, the day nursery manager,
the fresh air charity agent, the district nurse, the obstetric nurse,
the church almoner, the {45} city missionary, the relief agent, the
head of the mothers' meeting, the guild teacher, the manager of the
boys' brigade or girls' friendly,--all these will have touched the
family at some point, but will never have taken the trouble to make a
picture of the family life as a whole, and of the effect of their
charity upon it. They may have assumed important responsibilities now
and again, home responsibilities that belonged primarily to members of
the family, and helped to hold the family together; but the chances are
that they will none of them have worked continuously or thoroughly
enough to learn from their blunders or to repair their mistakes.
I have mentioned home responsibilities. Let us consider, for a moment,
what these are. They have an old-fashioned and conservative sound, but
the fundamental facts of life are old-fashioned. The man is still the
head of the normal family, and, as the head, still owes his best
endeavor to secure for the other members of the family the means of
subsistence. The wife's part in the family is to transform the means
provided into a home. The children, {46} for their part, should be
teachable and obedient; and, as their own strength waxes and their
parents' wanes, they should stand ready to provide for father and
mother both the means of subsistence and the home environment. These
are the prosaic but fundamental elements of home life, and, when they
are lacking, neither the marriage ceremony, nor the sanctions of law
and custom, can prevent the home from becoming a sham home, a breeding
place of sin and social disorder.
It is my misfortune that, in attempting to meet the needs of those who
visit the poor, I must dwell more upon the difficulties than upon the
encouragements of such work. There are many poor homes where every
essential element of home life exists. The home may be of the humblest
sort,--it may be in one room,--but, to the best of his ability, the man
is struggling to provide for his family; the woman is striving to make
the little shelter homelike; and the children are learning that, out of
the simplest elements, a certain measure of peace, orderliness and
growth may be won. The home relation is right, and, though sickness,
{47} industrial depression, accident, or some other of the misfortunes
that assail us from without may have made charitable relief necessary
for a long time, the elements of successful charitable aid are there,
because the home life _works_ with the visitor to win back health and
independence.
There is a deep satisfaction in protecting such families from the
careless, patronizing charity of the thoughtless almsgiver, whose
unsteady hand would give them a feast to-day and a famine to-morrow.
There is deep satisfaction in coöperating with such families to conquer
difficulties. There is a deeper satisfaction, however, in turning a
sham home into a real one; in teaching the slatternly, irresponsible
mother the pleasure of a cleanly, well-ordered home; in helping a man
who has lost his sense of responsibility toward wife and children to
regain it. Even at the risk of drawing a too gloomy picture, I dwell
in this chapter, therefore, upon the husband and father who is either
lazy or drunken or both.
The married vagabond has many {48} characteristics of the single
vagabond or tramp, though he is usually less enterprising. His is a
type peculiar to our large cities, where political, industrial, and
charitable conditions have helped to make him what he is. There is a
sense in which he is not responsible for his faults; but there is a
sense in which we are none of us responsible for ours, and when we are
once permanently committed to this view of ourselves, there is no
health in us. To treat the married vagabond as not responsible, is
only to increase his irresponsibility.
"One man I know who has done hardly a stroke of work for years," says
Mrs. Bosanquet; "during his wife's periodical confinements he goes off
on the tramp, leaving her to take her chance of charity coming to the
rescue, and returns when she can get to work again. I have known
fathers who would send their hungry children to beg food from their
neighbors, and then take it to eat themselves; and one I have known who
would stop his children in the street and take their shoes from their
feet to pawn for drink. The negative attitude of a man to his own
family is {49} an impossible one; if responsibility disappears, it will
be replaced by brutality." [1]
And again, from the same book: "Take a case which is constantly
recurring. A man has let himself drift into bad ways: he neglects his
work, spends his money for drink, cares less and less about his family;
the children become more and more neglected and starved. At last some
charitable agency steps in. 'The man is hopeless,' it says, 'there is
no question of relieving him of responsibility, for he has already lost
all sense of that, and matters cannot be made worse by our
interference. The children must not be allowed to suffer for their
father's sins; we will feed and clothe and educate them, and so give
them a chance of doing better than their parents.' All very well, if
this were the only family; and we should all rush joyfully to the work
of rescuing the little ones. But next door on either side are men with
the same downward path so easy before them, and to a large extent
restrained from entering upon it by the thought, 'What will become of
the children?' This restraining {50} influence will break down much
more rapidly for the knowledge that Smith's children are better cared
for since he gave up the battle, and so the mischief spreads down the
street like an epidemic." [2]
The method to be followed in dealing with the family of the married
vagabond must depend upon circumstances, but it will usually be
necessary to let him find out what the charitable community expects of
him, and this he will hardly do unless the charitable withhold all aid
except in the form of work. A visitor will not succeed in bringing
this about until he has taken the trouble to find out what sources of
relief are open to the family, and has persuaded each source to
withhold relief. Visitors often hesitate to urge this radical measure,
fearing that it will bring suffering upon the wife and children; but
the plain fact is that the family of a lazy man must suffer, that no
amount of material relief can prevent their suffering.
On this disputed point I venture to quote what I have written
elsewhere: "Let us {51} consider the chances that a married vagabond's
children have of escaping suffering in a large city. . . . They are
born into a world where the father is inconsiderate and abusive of the
mother; where cleanliness, fresh air, and good food are not assured to
them; where all the economic laws of the civilized world seem
topsy-turvy; where things sometimes come miraculously, without any
return for them in labor, and where they sometimes do not come at all.
They are born, moreover, with diseased bodies, often with the taint of
alcoholism in their veins; too often with some other inherited malady,
such as epilepsy or unsound mind, as a direct result of parental
excesses. How can we say that we 'do not let children suffer,' so long
as alms keeps together thousands of these so-called homes in our large
cities, and, worst of all, so long as into these homes thousands of
helpless, unfortunate babies are born every year? If I were one of
these same little ones, and could see what the charitable people were
about, I should feel inclined to say: 'Ladies and gentlemen, you have
supplied the doctor, and the nurse, {52} and the fuel, and the sick
diet; doubtless you mean it kindly, but I have been assisted into a
world where you don't intend to give me a fair chance. You know that
my father won't work for me, that my mother has no time to care for me,
and that my brothers and sisters must fare worse than ever, now that
there's one more mouth to feed. Moreover, my nerves are none of the
strongest, and my body none of the stoutest. Unless you intend to do a
great deal more for me, I'm sorry you didn't do less. Frankly, I don't
thank you.'" [3]
Often when a man finds that charitable people are quite in earnest,
that they really intend to place upon his shoulders the responsibility
of his own family, he will bestir himself and go to work. He is not
likely to stay and let his family starve. In fact, I have often found
that the withholding of relief from the family of the married vagabond
has the immediate effect of improving the material condition of the
family--the man has either found work or left home. This method of
being charitable requires courage, but if {53} people would only see
how wretchedness is perpetuated by the temporizing method, it would
require courage to give small doles.
In many states there are laws for the punishment of the man that will
not support his family. Some of these enactments are of very little
use, but several of the New England states have effective laws.[4]
When a complete cutting off of charitable supplies fails to bring a man
to some sense of his duty, the visitor should try to have him punished
by the courts. The evidence of one who has faithfully visited a family
for a long time is very valuable in such cases, though conviction is
often difficult to secure for lack of the wife's testimony. If the
married vagabond that has been punished is still incurably lazy and
irresponsible, the visitor should not allow his desire to reform the
man to stand in the way of the best interests of the children, born and
unborn. The wife's duty to her husband is a very sacred one, But so is
her duty to her children. When {54} all other measures fail, the home
should be broken up.
Only those who have had wide charitable experience will be likely to
consider this separation of man and wife justifiable. Says Mrs.
Josephine Shaw Lowell: "I have not the slightest doubt that it is a
_wrong_; and a great wrong, to give help to the family of a drunkard or
an immoral man who will not support them. Unless the woman will remove
her children from his influence, it should be understood that no public
or private charity, and no charitable individual, has the right to help
perpetuate and maintain such families as are brought forth by drunkards
and vicious men and women." [5]
It is unnecessary to say that the advocates of separation as a last
resort do not approve of divorce, which would only multiply sham homes.
They recognize in certain cases "the sad fact of incurability," and are
prepared to take courageous measures in order that the innocent may not
suffer with the guilty.[6]
{55}
The following history of a Baltimore married vagabond will illustrate
the need of separation in certain cases: Several years ago the
Baltimore Charity Organization Society made the acquaintance of the
family of a good-looking German shoemaker, who had married a plain,
hard-working woman some years his senior. Soon after their marriage he
began to neglect his work, and, depending more and more on his wife's
exertions for his support, he took to drink. Child-bearing often
incapacitated the wife for work, and church and charitable friends
aided at such times. When the sixth child was a year old, he deserted
his family for a while, but came back again, after having been in jail
for disorderly conduct. The Charity Organization Society, seeing no
chance of reforming the man, suggested that his wife leave him, but the
German pastor strongly objected to any separation of man and wife, and
nothing was done. A discouraging aspect of the situation was that the
man taught his children to deceive the hard-working mother. When the
seventh baby was born, and charity had supplied a registered nurse,
baby linen, {56} a doctor, fuel, and food, it was discovered that the
man had sold the fuel supplied by the relief society, and had gone on a
spree. He was a good workman, and could always have work when sober,
but even when at work he neglected to provide properly for his family.
Stung at last into active resistance, his wife had him arrested for
non-support. While the man awaited trial, the Charity Organization
Society removed his family, found work for the wife where she could
keep three of her children, placed one with a relative, and two others
temporarily in institutions. When he was released, he had no family to
attract charitable aid, and was thrown, for the first time in many
years, entirely upon his own resources.
Many good people may think that to deprive a man of family ties is to
hasten his downfall; but what downfall could be more complete than the
downfall of the man who not only permits his wife to support him, but
abuses her and his children? In making this no longer possible we are
sometimes doing the one thing that can be done to save him from {57}
spreading the contagion of his brutality, and so assuming a still
heavier burden of sin.
There are many charitable visitors to whom the very thought of strong
drink is so offensive, to whom everything connected with the saloon
seems so brutal and degraded, that they are unable to make allowance
for national, neighborhood, and family traditions in judging a man's
habits. It sometimes happens that a whole family are condemned as
"frauds" because they drink beer for dinner, or because the man of the
house has been seen to enter a saloon. On no subject, perhaps, are
charity workers so divided as on the question of how best to deal with
the drink evil. Here, if anywhere, fanaticism is excusable, perhaps;
but here, as everywhere, the friendly visitor must be on guard against
personal prejudice and a hasty jumping at conclusions. "At night all
cats are gray," says the old proverb, and it is only the benighted
social reformer that thinks of all who drink as drunkards, and of all
places where liquor is sold as dens of vice. The saloon is still the
workingman's {58} club, and, until some satisfactory substitute is
found for it, all our denunciations will fail to banish it. It is none
the less true that, of all personal habits, the drink habit stands next
to licentiousness as a cause of poverty and degeneration.
"The problem of intemperance meets us in less than half the families
that we know," says the Secretary of the Boston Associated Charities,
"but it is that half which gives us the most concern. There are many
ways of dealing with the drunkards and with their families, and the
remedy must be separately chosen for each case. Some of our friends
are impatient with all these partial remedies and will use none of
them, waiting until they can sweep out of the State the alcohol which
seems to them the whole cause of the trouble. But if it were all taken
away to-morrow, I feel sure we should find this also only a partial
remedy, and that the same want of self-control which makes men and
women drunkards would drive some of them to-morrow to other and perhaps
worse stimulants. So, while I hope and believe that slowly and
steadily the sentiment of individuals {59} is growing toward total
abstinence, and that in the course of years, generations, perhaps, it
will become the law of the State, I believe in working man to man and
woman to woman in building up and strengthening character as the chief
safeguard against so great an evil." [7]
The first thing, in dealing with an individual case of drunkenness, is
to find out its history. Is it the cause of poverty and misfortune, or
have poverty and misfortune caused it? Is there an inherited tendency
to drink, or did the habit originate in some other bad personal habit?
Is bad health the cause? Has unhealthy or dangerous employment
anything to do with it? Is bad home cooking one of the causes? Some
one has said that the best temperance lecturer is the properly filled
dinner-pail. Worry from lack of work, and the need of some warm
stimulant after exposure, are frequent causes; and they are both
removable with friendly help. A man who is honestly trying to break
himself of the drink habit {60} deserves all the patience, sympathy,
and resourcefulness at our command.
When a man is sensitive and proud, the visitor can often be most
helpful by simply showing his sympathy. "A travelling salesman who
became addicted to drink lost a good situation through this habit. He
had a wife and seven children, all the children being too young to earn
anything. The wife was very brave and supported the family as long as
she was able. When the case came to the Charity Organization Society
the rent was in arrears and the landlord threatening. We sent a
gentleman as our friendly visitor in the case, and after great
persistence and repeated failures he succeeded in keeping the head of
the family sober for a few days. The man was proud, and much hurt at
having to accept charity, but his family was suffering, and there was
no alternative. The aid was provided in so delicate a manner that the
man's heart was touched, and he became very grateful to the visitor for
his unflagging and kindly interest. They spent their evenings together
frequently. The man began to drink less, at last stopped altogether,
and {61} now has secured permanent work and is doing well." [8]
There is diversity of opinion as to the value of pledges. It would
seem unwise, however, when a man has broken a pledge, to encourage him
to renew it. Let him try a promise to himself, and prove that he can
be a man without artificial props.
In more stubborn cases the law must be invoked. Sometimes it is well
to try several remedies at once, asking the police to threaten arrest,
following this up at once with an invitation to join some temperance
society (preferably one connected with the man's church), and trying at
the same time to substitute some new interest. Milder measures
failing, it will sometimes be necessary to cut off all supplies of
relief, and, this again failing, to take steps to protect wife and
children from the brutalizing influence of the man by breaking up the
home.
There are many causes of the drink evil, as I have tried to show, but,
after every allowance has been made, the chief cause will often be
found in the selfishness of the human heart. {62} There are men who do
not care to be cured of drunkenness, who feel no shame for the misery
and degradation brought upon their families. Here again the "sad fact
of incurability" must be recognized. It is folly to let such men
discover that, through our charitable interest in their families, we
will either directly or indirectly pay their whiskey bills, or will
assume the burdens that they deliberately shirk. A Committee on
Intemperance, reporting to the Ward VIII. Conference of the Boston
Associated Charities in 1886, called attention to this aspect of the
question. "The committee, however, say that, in their opinion, the
question of moral responsibility on the part of the intemperate, and
also, in its degree, on the part of those who, by gifts or other aid,
make intemperance easy, is too much lost sight of; and they believe
that the refusal of all aid to the families of drunkards, outside the
almshouse, unless in exceptional cases, would bring about a better
state of opinion and a juster sense of responsibility. The committee
add that it will be almost impossible to make kind-hearted people
believe this, since they are more moved {63} by the sight of present
suffering than by the hope of future permanent improvement, to secure
which some measure of present suffering may be necessary." [9]
Collateral Readings: "An Adventure in Philanthropy," Edwin C. Martin in
"Scribner's," Vol. XI, pp. 230 _sq_. "Charity and Home Making," the
present writer in "Charities Review," Vol. VI, No. 2. "Married
Vagabonds," the same, in Proceedings of Twenty-second National
Conference of Charities, pp. 514 _sq_. "Drunkards' Families," Rev. W.
F. Slocum in Proceedings of Fifteenth National Conference of Charities,
pp. 131 _sq_. "The Social Value of the Saloon," E. C. Moore in
"American Journal of Sociology," Vol. III, No. 1. "Substitutes for the
Saloon," F. G. Peabody in "Forum" for July, 1896. "Law and Drink,"
Frederick H. Wines in "Charities Review," Vol. VII, Nos. 3 and 4.
[1] "Rich and Poor," p. 105.
[2] pp. 72 _sq_.
[3] "Charities Review," Vol. VI, pp. 121 _sq_.
[4] See Proceedings of the Twenty-second National Conference of
Charities and Correction, New Haven, 1895, pp. 514 _sq_.
[5] "Public Relief and Private Charity," p. 105.
[6] See on this subject the Proceedings of the Twenty-fourth National
Conference of Charities and Correction at Toronto, 1897, pp. 5 _sq_.
[7] Miss Z. D. Smith in Report of Union Relief Association of
Springfield, Mass., 1887.
[8] "Charities Record," Baltimore, Vol. I, No. 1.
[9] Seventh Report of Boston Associated Charities, p. 39.
{64}