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
coöperation 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.
{166}