The Poor.
Our fellow-men are so numerous and their conditions are so diverse that
it is necessary to consider some of the classes and conditions of men by
themselves; and to study some of the special forms which fellowship and
love assume under these differing circumstances.
Of these classes or divisions in which we may group our fellow-men, the
one having the first claim upon us by virtue of its greater need is the
poor. The causes of poverty are accident, sickness, inability to secure
work, laziness, improvidence, intemperance, ignorance, and
shiftlessness. Those whose poverty is due to the first three causes are
commonly called the worthy poor.
THE DUTY.
+Whether worthy or unworthy, the poor are our brothers and sisters; and
on the ground of our common humanity we owe them our help and
sympathy.+--It is easier to sympathize with the worthy than with the
unworthy poor. Yet the poor who are poor as the result of their own
fault are really the more in need of our pity and help. The work of
lifting them up to the level of self-respect and self-support is much
harder than the mere giving them material relief. Yet nothing less than
this is our duty. The mere tossing of pennies to the tramp and the
beggar is not by any means the fulfillment of their claim upon us.
Indeed, such indiscriminate giving does more harm than good. It
increases rather than relieves pauperism. So that the first duty of
charity is to refuse to give in this indiscriminate way. Either we must
give more than food and clothes and money; or else we must give nothing
at all. Indiscriminate giving merely adds fuel to the flame.
THE VIRTUE.
+The special form which love takes when its object is the poor is called
benevolence or charity.+--True benevolence, like love, of which it is a
special application, makes the well-being of its object its own. In what
then does the well-being of the poor consist? Is it bread and beef, a
coat on the back, a roof over the head, and a bed to sleep in? These are
conditions of well-being, but not the whole of it. A man cannot be well
off without these things. But it is by no means sure that he will be
well off with them.
What a man thinks; how he feels; what he loves; what he hopes for; what
he is trying to do; what he means to be;--these are quite as essential
elements in his well-being as what he has to eat and wear. True
benevolence therefore must include these things in its efforts.
Benevolence must aim to improve the man together with his condition or
its gifts will be worse than wasted.
There are three principles which all wise benevolence must observe.
+First: Know all that can be known about the man you help.+--Unless we
are willing to find out all we can about a poor man, we have no business
to indulge our sympathy or ease our conscience by giving him money or
food. It is often easier to give than to withhold. But it is far more
harmful. When Bishop Potter says that "It is far better,--better for him
and better for us,--to give a beggar a kick than to give him a
half-dollar," it sounds like a hard saying, yet it is the strict truth.
In a civilized and Christian community any really deserving person can
secure assistance through persons or agencies that either know about his
needs, or will take the trouble to look them up. When a stranger begs
from strangers he thereby confesses that he prefers to present his
claims where their merits are unknown; and the act proclaims him as a
fraud. To the beggar, to ourselves, and to the really deserving poor, we
owe a prompt and stern refusal of all uninvestigated appeals for
charity. "True charity never opens the heart without at the same time
opening the mind."
+The second principle is: Let the man you help know as much as he can of
you.+--Bureaus and societies are indispensable aids to effective
benevolence; without their aid thorough knowledge of the needs and
merits of the poor would be impossible. Their function, however, should
be to direct and superintend, not to dispense with and supplant direct
personal contact between giver and receiver. The recipient of aid should
know the one who helps him as man or woman, not as secretary or agent.
If all the money, food, and clothing necessary to relieve the wants of
the poor could be deposited at their firesides regularly each Christmas
by Santa Claus, such a Christmas present, with the regular expectation
of its repetition each year, would do these poor families more harm than
good. It might make them temporarily more comfortable; it would make
them permanently less industrious, thrifty, and self-reliant.
Investigations have proved conclusively that half the persons who are in
want in our cities need no help at all, except help in finding work.
One-sixth are unworthy of any material assistance whatever, since they
would spend it immediately on their vices. One-fifth need only temporary
help and encouragement to get over hard places. Only about one-tenth
need permanent assistance.
On the other hand all need cheer, comfort, advice, sympathy, and
encouragement, or else reproof, warning, and restraint. They all need
kind, firm, wise, judicious friends. The less professionalism, the more
personal sympathy and friendliness there is in our benevolence, the
better it will be. In the words of Octavia Hill: "It is the families,
the homes of the poor that need to be influenced. Is not she most
sympathetic, most powerful, who nursed her own mother through her long
illness, and knew how to go quietly through the darkened room: who
entered so heartily into her sister's marriage: who obeyed so heartily
her father's command when it was hardest? Better still if she be wife
and mother herself and can enter into the responsibilities of a head of
a household, understands her joys and cares, knows what heroic patience
it needs to keep gentle when the nerves are unhinged and the children
noisy. Depend upon it if we thought of the poor primarily as husbands,
wives, sons, daughters, members of households as we are ourselves,
instead of contemplating them as a different class, we should recognize
better how the home training and the high ideal of home duty was our
best preparation for work among them."
+The third principle is: Give the man you help no more and no less than
he needs to make his life what you and he together see that it is good
for it to be.+--This principle shows how much to give. Will ten cents
serve as an excuse for idleness? Will five cents be spent in drink? Will
one cent relax his determination to earn an honest living for himself
and family? Then these sums are too much, and should be withheld. On the
other hand, can the man be made hopeful, resolute, determined to
overcome the difficulties of a trying situation? Can you impart to him
your own strong will, your steadfast courage, your high ideal? is he
ready to work, and willing to make any sacrifice that is necessary to
regain the power of self-support? Then you will not count any sum that
you can afford to give too great; even if it be necessary to carry him
and his family right through a winter by sheer force of giving outright
everything they need.
It is not the amount of the gift, but the spirit in which it is received
that makes it good or bad for the recipient. If received by a man who
clings to all the weakness and wickedness that brought his poverty upon
him, then your gift, whether small or large, does no good and much harm.
If with the gift the man welcomes your counsel, follows your advice,
adopts your ideal, and becomes partaker in your determination that he
shall become as industrious, and prudent, and courageous as a man in his
situation can be, then whether you give him little or much material
assistance, every cent of it goes to the highest work in which wealth
can be employed--the making a man more manlike.
THE REWARD.
+Our attitude toward the poor and unfortunate is the test of our
attitude toward humanity.+--For the poor and unfortunate present
humanity to us in the condition which most strongly appeals to our
fellow-feeling. The way in which I treat this poor man who happens to
cross my path, is the way I should treat my dearest friend, if he were
equally poor and unfortunate, and equally remote from personal
association with my past life. The man who will let a single poor family
suffer, when he is able to afford relief, is capable of being false to
the whole human race. Speaking in the name of our common humanity, the
Son of Man declares, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least
of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Sympathy "doubles our
joys and halves our sorrows." It increases our range of interest and
affection, making "the world one fair moral whole" in which we share the
joys and sorrows of our brothers.
+The man who sympathizes with the sufferings of others seeks and finds
the sympathy of others in his own losses and trials when they
come.+--Familiarity and sympathy with the sufferings of others
strengthens us to bear suffering when it comes to us: for we are able to
see that it is no unusual and exceptional evil falling upon us alone,
but accept it as an old and familiar acquaintance, whom we have so often
met in other lives that we do not fear his presence in our own.
THE TEMPTATION.
+"Am I my brother's keeper?"+--We are comfortable and well cared for. We
are earning our own living. We pay our debts. We work hard for what we
get. Why should we not enjoy ourselves? Why should I share my earnings
with the shiftless vagabond, the good-for-nothing loafer? What is he to
me? In one or another of these forms the murderous question "Am I my
brother's keeper?" is sure to rise to our lips when the needs of the
poor call for our assistance and relief. Or if we do recognize the
claim, we are tempted to hide behind some organization; giving our money
to that; and sending it to do the actual work. We do not like to come
into the real presence of suffering and want. We do not want to visit
the poor man in his tenement; and clasp his hand, and listen with our
own ears to the tale of wretchedness and woe as it falls directly from
his lips. We do not care to take the heavy and oppressive burden of his
life's problem upon our own minds and hearts. We wish him well. But we
do not will his betterment strongly and earnestly enough to take us to
his side, and join our hands with his in lifting off the weight that
keeps him down. Alienation, the desire to hold ourselves aloof from the
real wretchedness of our brother, is our great temptation with reference
to the poor.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
+The reluctant doling out of insufficient aid to the poor is
niggardliness.+--The niggard is thinking all the time of himself, and
how he hates to part with what belongs to him. He gives as little as he
can; and that little hurts him terribly. This vice cannot be overcome
directly. It is a phase of selfishness; and like all forms of
selfishness it can be cured only by getting out of self into another's
life. By going among the poor, studying their needs, realizing their
sufferings, we may be drawn out of our niggardliness and find a pleasure
in giving which we could never have cultivated by direct efforts of
will. We cannot make ourselves benevolent by making up our minds that we
will be benevolent. Like all forms of love, benevolence cannot be
forced; but it will come of itself if we give its appropriate objects a
large share of our thoughts and a warm place in our hearts.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
+Regard for others as they happen to be, instead of regard for what they
are capable of becoming, leads to soft hearted and mischievous
indulgence.+--The indulgent giver sees the fact of suffering and rushes
to its relief, without stopping to inquire into the cause of the poverty
and the best measures of relief. Indulgence fails to see the ideal of
what the poor man is to become. Indulgence does not look beyond the
immediate fact of poverty; and consequently the indulgent giver does
nothing to lift the poor man out of it. Help in poverty, rather than
help out of poverty, is what indulgent giving amounts to. The indulgent
and indiscriminate giver becomes a partner in the production of poverty.
This indulgent giving is a phase of sentimentality; and the relief of
one's own feelings, rather than the real good of a fellow-man is at the
root of all such mischievous almsgiving. It is the form of benevolence
without the substance. It does too much for the poor man just because it
loves him too little. Indulgence measures benefactions, not by the needs
and capacities of the receiver, but by the sensibilities and emotions of
the giver. What wonder that it always goes astray, and does harm under
the guise of doing good!
THE PENALTY.
+Uncharitable treatment of the poor makes us alien to humanity, and
distrustful of human nature.+--We feel that they have a claim upon us
that we have not fulfilled; and we try to push them off beyond the range
of our sympathy. They are not slow to take the hint. They interpret our
harsh tones and our cold looks, and they look to us for help no more.
But in pushing these poor ones beyond our reach, we unconsciously
acquire hard, unsympathetic ways of thinking, feeling, speaking and
acting, which others not so poor, others whom we would gladly have near
us, also interpret; and they too come to understand that there is no
real kindness and helpfulness to be had from us in time of real need,
and they keep their inmost selves apart, and suffer us to touch them
only on the surface of their lives. When trouble comes to us we
instinctively feel that we have no claim on the sympathy of others; and
so we have to bear our griefs alone. Having never suffered with others,
sorrow is a stranger to us, and we think we are the most miserable
creatures in the world.
Humanity is one. Action and reaction are equal. Our treatment of the
poorest of our fellows is potentially our treatment of them all. And by
a subtle law of compensation, which runs deeper than our own
consciousness, what our attitude is toward our fellows determines their
attitude toward us. "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of
these my brethren," says the Representative of our common humanity, "ye
did it not unto me."