CHARITIES, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
CHARITY begins at home, but it is a great mistake to suppose that it
should end there. Indeed, in the last analysis, to do for one’s own
family is not charity, but a form of selfishness. The truly generous
spirit can not resist the call to help the poor and needy, the outcast
and degraded.
One’s relation to charity should not be accidental, but should form a
part of the plan of one’s life. It is not very creditable to give to
a good cause only because one is besieged to do so, or because one is
ashamed to say “no.” When the young married couple sit down together
for their first discussion of finance, of how much they shall spend
for house, for clothes, how much for food, how much for amusement
and so on, this question of what shall be done for those poorer than
themselves should have a place. No matter how small the sum possible,
something should be given to philanthropic work.
The woman of the family is very often, directly or indirectly, the
dispenser of the money devoted to charity. She is the one who decides
into what channels it shall go. She has the time for investigating the
needs of societies and of individuals. The work, too, that accompanies
gifts of charity more often falls to her lot than to a man. This is a
department of service properly belonging to her. She has natural rights
in this section of the world’s work, of which she should be proud.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: TWO KINDS OF CHARITIES]
Charities, broadly, are of two kinds, public and private; and
activity in one should not preclude activity in the other. The ideal
administration of charity would consist in every person comfortably
established, having among his real friends several poor persons or poor
families from whom he himself received a broadening knowledge of life,
as well as to whom he gave of physical necessities. In the absence
of this ideal situation, he must avail himself of the best means
open to him. He must take advantage of the splendid organization of
modern charities, but he must not forget also to be on the lookout for
individual cases of need that are not likely to appear before the board
of any philanthropic organization.
[Sidenote: BUILDING UP CHARACTER]
We hear it from the pulpit and the platform continually, yet not
too often, that organized charitable work is one of the finest
achievements of our present civilization. Narrow-minded people
sometimes say that our grandmothers got along very well without it,
and did as much good as the women of the present day. They got on
without it only because they did not have such complex conditions to
cope with. It is not possible, no matter how good the intentions of the
individuals concerned, that as valuable work can be done without modern
methods as with them. In these days, each charity of a city or town
attempts to cover one field, and to cover it as thoroughly and from as
many different points of view as possible. Wherever possible, the aim
of such organizations is to help people to help themselves. The idea is
not only to tide the beneficiaries over temporary difficulties, but to
aid them in building up character by means of self-respecting effort.
Membership in such organizations brings opportunity for action and
knowledge also of the bearings of one’s action. It makes charity
something more than a matter of sentimental impulse. The opportunity to
do good offered by these societies is not only an opportunity to help
the poor, but to help one’s self, and even in other ways than the one
generally acknowledged of broadening one’s sympathies and cultivating
one’s heart. The gain a woman derives in discipline from working in
concert with other women is of inestimable value. This discipline is
sometimes accompanied by vexations, as discipline commonly is, but,
taken in the right spirit, it is broadening.
* * * * *
Charitable societies are often made up largely of women whose ideas of
business are chaotic, whose capacity for speech is not at all equal
to their capacity for work. The time spent by such people in idle
discussion at business meetings is wearing, but it is not altogether
unprofitable. The better trained women must do what they can to improve
the situation. When they can not improve it, they must grin and bear
it. Even with the drawbacks named, organization pays. The experience of
many is a richer thing than the experience of one; and, when it comes
to action, concerted action is a more powerful thing than single and
individual effort.
[Sidenote: SELECTION OF CHARITIES]
One can not help all the causes one would like to help, or belong to
the organizations that represent them. One should select that charity
which appeals to one most or where one feels one can do the most good,
and one should make attendance upon its meetings and the other work of
the society a part of one’s regular duties. The sorrows of one’s life
often suggest the charity one cares most to aid. Women who have lost
little ones feel a drawing of the heart toward the society that helps
children. Women who have seen much of pain and suffering in their
own families wish to join a society that makes the burden of the sick
poor as light as possible. Those who have seen sympathetically the
loneliness and bitterness possible to old age, wish to help the aged
poor. And the determining personal experience makes the work of charity
so much richer and more effectual.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE SOCIAL SETTLEMENT]
One should not leave the subject of one’s duty to organized
philanthropy without a word concerning the work of the social
settlement, the greatest philanthropic movement of the day. The idea
at the bottom of settlement work, the idea that the rich or the
comfortably situated must live with the poor, must know their lives by
direct and continuous contact in order to exert any lasting influence
for good, is a noble idea in itself and one that is singularly
attractive to ardent spirits.
Unfortunately, fashion and the novelty of the life involved in the
experiment has made social settlement work attractive to many people
for somewhat selfish reasons. Such people should be discouraged from
going into it—first, because they hurt the cause. They do not know how
to get on with poor people, and often their ill-disguised curiosity
amounts to insolence and hurts those whom it is intended the work
should benefit. The second reason is that these people who, through
excitement and love of novelty, leave their homes for settlement work
are often needed at home. It is much the vogue just now for young
women just out of college to do a year of social settlement work. If
they have what Methodists name “the call,” and have no more urgent
and intimate duties behind them, this is very well. But if it means
deserting home tasks because they are dull and unexciting, it is well
enough to think twice before the mother of the family is left to face
all the disagreeable issues of home life. This is one of those cases
where charity at home is of more importance than charity abroad. Of
social settlement work, seriously and earnestly considered, it is
impossible to say too much in commendation.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: PRIVATE GIVING]
The philanthropic impulse of a generous heart is not satisfied with
giving to organizations or working for them. One must do in other and
private ways in order to satisfy one’s heart and conscience. One should
help many people through ties of service, of love or of friendship.
In time of need, one should remember those people who have lived as
domestics in one’s family, or who have been connected in some humble
capacity with the business of the head of the house. These persons, if
they have been faithful to one’s interests, one helps with a personal
enthusiasm that is, of course, lacking in the case of strangers.
Faithful or unfaithful, one knows something about them, and can figure
out easily what is the wisest as well as the most grateful manner of
doing for them.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE POOR RELATION]
Then there is the poor relation whom we have always with us and, in the
helping of whom, all the tact of which one is possessed is not too much
to use. The very fact that he or she, as the case may be, must accept
favors from one of the same blood and, therefore, in every sense but
the financial, of the same rank in life, makes the graceful bestowal of
the gift a matter that is hard to compass. To pass on the gown one has
laid aside so that there shall seem to be no condescension in the act;
to explain successfully that one sends money at Christmas because one
was uncertain what would be the proper gift to buy; in fine, to give
with a broad sympathy that, for the minute, gives the donor an insight
into the other’s disappointments and vexations—this is what is needed
in dealing with the poor relative.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: INDIVIDUAL HELP]
A flavor of even greater grace and delicacy must go into the gift
offered by the rich friend to the poor one. It is one of the privileges
of the generous rich, not only to feed the starving body but sometimes
to feed the starving soul, not only to provide bread and butter but to
minister to a starved sense of beauty and of joy. To give pictures
and books to those who love them but can not buy, to give a year at
college to some nice young fellow whose parents can not do for him, to
give pretty trinkets to a pretty young girl who lives in a house where
there is no money to spare for such things—these gifts of friendship
are one of the greatest privileges of a large income. Though not
counted commonly as charity, they come under the head of charity in its
biblical significance of love and sympathy.