PHILANTHROPY
AND
SOCIAL PROGRESS
Kordumatust
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4183
054
UNIV
སྙ

HV
4183
P54
ARTES
1817
SCIENTIA
LIBRARY
VERITAS
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
SEMURIOUS
TUEBOR
SI-QUÆRIS-PENINSULAM-AMŒENAM
CIRCUMSPICE
M.
PHILANTHROPY
ANL
SOCIAL PROGRESS
SEVEN ESSAYS
BY
MISS JANE ADDAMS, ROBERT A. WOODS
FATHER J. O. S. HUNTINGTON
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS
AND BERNARD BOSANQUET
DELIVERED BEFORF
The School of Applied Ethics
AT PLYMOUTH, MASS.
DURING THE SESSION OF 1892
WITH INTRODUCTION
BY PROFESSOR HENRY C. ADAMS
NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
!
COPYRIGHT, 1893.
By T. Y. CROWELL & CO.
1
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION. BY PROFESSOR HENRY C. ADAMS
I. THE SUBJECTIVE NECESSITY FOR SOCIAL
SETTLEMENTS. By Miss JANE ADDAMS
II. THE OBJECTIVE VALUE OF A SOCIAL SET-
TLEMENT. By MISS JANE ADDAMS
PAGE
V
1
27
III. THE UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT IDEA. By
ROBERT A. WOODS
57
IV. PHILANTHROPY — ITS SUCCESS AND FAIL-
URE. BY FATHER JAMES O. S. HUNTINGTON
98
V. PHILANTHROPY AND MORALITY.
By FATHER JAMES O. S. HUNTINGTON
VI. THE ETHICS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS. By
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS
157
203
VII. THE PRINCIPLES AND CHIEF DANGERS OF
THE ADMINISTRATION OF CHARITY. By
BERNARD BOSANQUET, M.A., LL.D.
•
•
249
145228
INTRODUCTION.
BY HENRY C. ADAMS, PH.D.,
PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY AND FINANCE IN THE UNIVERSITY
OF MICHIGAN.
THE lectures brought together in this volume
were first delivered before the School of Applied
Ethics at its summer session, 1892. The subject
treated is sufficiently important, and the lectures
themselves of sufficient interest, to claim the atten-
tion of the public without explanation or introduc-
tion; but they will lose nothing in the interest
which they have for the reader, and they may
possibly be the better understood, should a state-
ment be made of the place they occupied in the
general instruction of the school. In order to do
this a word must be said respecting the school
itself.
There is nothing new in the assertion that the
complex relations of modern life cannot be satis-
factorily adjusted except the claims of man's moral
nature be frankly and fully recognized; but this
thought has, we believe, been made the central
idea in a systematic and somewhat comprehensive
curriculum of study for the first time by those
V
vi
Introduction.
who organized the School of Applied Ethics.
There are three departments in this school. The
first of these is the department of Comparative
Religion, in which the leading principles of the
great religions of the world, and the effect of these
principles on the lives of the people who believe
them, are made the subject of special investigation.
The Science of Ethics constitutes the second
department of instruction. In this department
search is made for the fundamental basis of moral
conduct by a comparative study of the ethical
systems that have characterized the various civil-
izations, and given color to different epochs of
history. Here, also, the problem of providing ade-
quate moral instruction for the children of our
common schools, is recognized as one of the most
important pedagogical problems of our day.
The third department of instruction is that of
Economics. It was in this department that the
lectures collected in the present volume were first
delivered. Instruction in Economics, in a School
of Applied Ethics, is doubtless recognition of the
fact, that, inasmuch as the most significant changes
of the nineteenth century are industrial in charac-
ter, the most pressing of the practical questions of
right and wrong find their root in industrial rela-
tionships. It is not enough to urge right conduct
or high motives upon those who control the busi-
ness affairs of the day in order to infuse morality
into business conduct; for there is no hope of
Introduction.
vii
making moral conduct general until such legal
and social conditions are created, that he who fol-
lows a high ideal of justice in business dealings,
can hope for a fair degree of business success. It
is, therefore, essential for the economist who be-
lieves that moral sentiments should be brought to
bear on industrial life, to re-examine the funda-
mental principles of his science, and to analyze
again the social structure through which those
principles assert themselves, in order to discover
what form of business organization, or what ex-
pression of industrial rights, will call into natural
and spontaneous exercise the tremendous force of
moral character which, since the time of the old
guilds and the canon law, has lain almost dormant
in industrial life. It was this idea which induced
those who organized the School of Applied Ethics
to recognize Economics as worthy a place in a cur-
riculum of study which has for its aim a revival of
confidence in the moral dignity of man.
In the session of 1892, all the studies in the
department of Economics centred about the idea
of social progress. The lectures of the first week
traced the Changes in Economic Theory since the
Time of John Stuart Mill. It was their purpose to
leave the impression that the economist is gradually
changing his point of view, and that political econ-
omy, while ceasing to be an industrial philosophy
of a class, is coming to be a comprehensive philos-
ophy of industrial society. The second week's
viii
Introduction.
6
instruction was devoted to the Theory of Social
Progress, being a study in sociology. One lecture
of this course finds place in the present volume
under the title, "The Ethics of Social Progress.
The instruction of the third week considered 'The
Function of Law in Social Progress,' and was
devoted especially to the consideration of self-help
and legislation for promoting it. The subject for
the fourth week's instruction was Philanthropy
in Social Progress,' and it is the lectures delivered
during this week that have been collected and
are now presented in book form. The fifth week
gave a Statistical Presentation of Industrial
Problems,' and the sixth week was devoted to
'A Critical Study of the Labor and Monopoly
Problem,' it being assumed that these problems
constituted the most serious obstacle which society
encounters in further development.
•
It certainly adds something to the appreciation
of this volume to learn that its chapters were a
part of an extended investigation bearing on the
problem of social progress; it gives to the subject
a wider horizon, and brings to the discussion the
sympathy of a comprehensive purpose. And what
is especially attractive is, that all contributors to
this volume, with the exception of Professor Gid-
dings, are practical philanthropists, that is to
say, they have devoted their lives to the realiza-
tion of the principles which they advocate, and,
consequently, the views and opinions which they
Introduction.
ix
express come with the force of personal experi-
ence.
Miss Jane Addams, who writes the first and the
second chapters, is the guiding spirit of Hull
House in Chicago, probably the most influential
Settlement in this country; and when she speaks
of "The Subjective Necessity for Social Settle-
ments," she tells of her own experience and the
experience of many cultivated men and women,
her co-workers, who find that life has a new mean-
ing the moment they breathe the atmosphere of
what she so aptly calls the "renaissance of Chris-
tianity." And when, turning to the other side of
the question, she writes of the "Objective Value
of Social Settlements," it is the story of Hull
House that claims attention.
The third chapter in this volume is entitled
"The Society Settlement Idea," and is contributed
by Mr. Robert A. Woods. Mr. Woods is a recent
graduate of Amherst College, and finds in his
connection with the Andover House of Boston a
life which calls forth every faculty of the mind
and satisfies every aspiration of healthful activity.
Assuming that Social Settlements are destined to
increase in number and influence, he draws on
personal experience to answer such inquiries as
naturally present themselves to those who purpose
entering upon such work. The chapter is a most.
instructive and helpful one.
The fourth and fifth chapters are contributed by
X
Introduction.
the Rev. James O. S. Huntington, better known,
perhaps, as Father Huntington, of the Order of the
Holy Cross. In the fourth chapter he discusses
"Philanthropy - Its Success and Failure," and in
the fifth chapter he treats of "Philanthropy and
Morality." These chapters fascinate the reader,
because they tell without apology or palliation so
many things we know to be true. Who can deny
that the same rules of conduct should apply to the
rich, as the rich in bestowing their charities assume
to apply to the poor? Who does not know that
much of our so-called philanthropy tends to blunt
the edge of moral perception, and, consequently, to
perpetuate those conditions which seem to make
philanthropy necessary? Few of us care to express
truths so unpalatable, and Father Huntington has
rendered a marked service in the strong protest
which he here urges against the charities of our
day. He shows to the discerning mind that a
philanthropy which is satisfied when the cry of
the sufferer is hushed has no place among the
permanent forces of social progress.
Professor Giddings presents in the sixth chapter
of this volume a carefully considered analysis of
the Ethics of Social Progress." In the final
chapter Mr. Bernard Bosanquet, himself an active
member of the Charity Organization of London,
gives the experience of that society, under the
title, "The Administration of Charity."
Such a series of lectures ought to arouse wide-
Introduction.
xi
spread interest. Their chief characteristic is a
strongly marked vein of democratic sentiment.
Not, of course, democracy as "a form of govern-
ment,” but as a social ideal, a purpose, a feeling;
the democracy of the theorist who asserts for God
a common fatherhood, or of the humanist who
asserts for man a common brotherhood. Nor can
it be said that this feeling is pure sentiment; it
is, at the same time, a social necessity. Specializa-
tion in modern life has increased the dependencies
of men and classes to such a degree that interde-
pendence is a thing which is felt, rather than an
idea to be reasoned about. This is the explana-
tion of the unusual interest which the last quarter
of a century bestows on social and industrial prob-
lems. Society is coming to be in fact organic, and
the claim of a perfect organism that all parts
should find harmony of life in the recognition of
a common aim, shows itself in the attitude which
large numbers of persons are assuming before the
vexed problems of the day. And I doubt not that
many who find this book attractive will do so
because it expresses in vigorous and decided
language a feeling of which most of us are at least
dimly conscious. It is a privilege to introduce
such a book to the reading public.
H. C. A.
PHILANTHROPY AND SOCIAL
PROGRESS.
I.
THE SUBJECTIVE NECESSITY FOR SOCIAL
SETTLEMENTS.
BY JANE ADDAMS, "HULL HOUSE," CHICAGO.
HULL HOUSE, which was Chicago's first Settle-
ment, was established in September, 1889. It
represented no association, but was opened by two
women, backed by many friends, in the belief that
the mere foothold of a house, easily accessible,
ample in space, hospitable and tolerant in spirit,
situated in the midst of the large foreign colonies
which so easily isolate themselves in American
cities, would be in itself a serviceable thing for
Chicago. Hull House endeavors to make social
intercourse express the growing sense of the eco-
nomic unity of society. It is an effort to add the
social function to democracy. It was opened on
the theory that the dependence of classes on each
other is reciprocal; and that as "the social relation
1
2
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
is essentially a reciprocal relation, it gave a form
of expression that has peculiar value."
This paper is an attempt to treat of the subjec
tive necessity for Social Settlements, to analyze the
motives which underlie a movement based not only
upon conviction, but genuine emotion. Hull House
of Chicago is used as an illustration, but so far as
the analysis is faithful, it obtains wherever edu-
cated young people are seeking an outlet for that
sentiment of universal brotherhood which the
best spirit of our times is forcing from an emotion
into a motive.
I have divided the motives which constitute the
subjective pressure toward Social Settlements into
three great lines: the first contains the desire to
make the entire social organism democratic, to ex-
tend democracy beyond its political expression ;
the second is the impulse to share the race life,
and to bring as much as possible of social energy
and the accumulation of civilization to those por-
tions of the race which have little; the third springs
from a certain renaissance of Christianity, a move-
ment toward its early humanitarian aspects.
It is not difficult to see that although America
is pledged to the democratic ideal, the view of
democracy has been partial, and that its best
achievement thus far has been pushed along the
line of the franchise. Democracy has made little
attempt to assert itself in social affairs. We have
refused to move beyond the position of its eigh-
Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements.
со
teenth-century leaders, who believed that political
equality alone would secure all good to all men.
We conscientiously followed the gift of the ballot
hard upon the gift of freedom to the negro, but we
are quite unmoved by the fact that he lives among
us in a practical social ostracism. We hasten to
give the franchise to the immigrant from a sense
of justice, from a tradition that he ought to have
it, while we dub him with epithets deriding his
past life or present occupation, and feel no duty to
invite him to our houses. We are forced to ac-·
knowledge that it is only in our local and national
politics that we try very hard for the ideal so dear
to those who were enthusiasts when the century
was young. We have almost given it up as our
ideal in social intercourse. There are city wards.
in which many of the votes are sold for drinks
and dollars; still there is a remote pretence, at
least a fiction current, that a man's vote is his
own.
The judgment of the voter is consulted and
an opportunity for remedy given. There is not
even a theory in the social order, not a shadow
answering to the polls in politics. The time may
come when the politician who sells one by one to
the highest bidder all the offices in his grasp, will
not be considered more base in his code of morals,
more hardened in his practice, than the woman
who constantly invites to her receptions those
alone who bring her an equal social return, who
shares her beautiful surroundings only with those
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
who minister to a liking she has for successful
social events. In doing this is she not just as
unmindful of the common weal, as unscrupulous
in her use of power, as is any city "boss" who con-
sults only the interests of the "ring"?
In politics "bossism" arouses a scandal. It goes
on in society constantly and is only beginning to
be challenged. Our consciences are becoming
tender in regard to the lack of democracy in social
affairs. We are perhaps entering upon the second
phase of democracy, as the French philosophers
entered upon the first, somewhat bewildered by its
logical conclusions. The social organism has
broken down through large districts of our great
cities. Many of the people living there are very
poor, the majority of them without leisure or
energy for anything but the gain of subsistence.
They move often from one wretched lodging to
another. They live for the moment side by side,
many of them without knowledge of each other,
without fellowship, without local tradition or
public spirit, without social organization of any
kind. Practically nothing is done to remedy this.
The people who might do it, who have the social
tact and training, the large houses, and the tradi-
tions and custom of hospitality, live in other parts
of the city. The club-houses, libraries, galleries,
and semi-public conveniences for social life are also
blocks away. We find working-men organized into
armies of producers because men of executive abil-
Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements. 5
ity and business sagacity have found it to their
interests thus to organize them. But these work-
ing-men are not organized socially; although living
in crowded tenement-houses, they are living with-
out a corresponding social contact. The chaos is
as great as it would be were they working in huge
factories without foreman or superintendent. Their
ideas and resources are cramped. The desire for
higher social pleasure is extinct. They have no
share in the traditions and social energy which
make for progress. Too often their only place of
meeting is a saloon, their only host a bartender; a
local demagogue forms their public opinion. Men
of ability and refinement, of social power and uni-
versity cultivation, stay away from them. Person-
ally, I believe the men who lose most are those
who thus stay away. But the paradox is here:
when cultivated people do stay away from a certain
portion of the population, when all social advan-
tages are persistently withheld, it may be for years,
the result itself is pointed at as a reason, is used as
an argument, for the continued withholding.
It is constantly said that because the masses
have never had social advantages they do not want
them, that they are heavy and dull, and that it
will take political or philanthropic machinery to
change them. This divides a city into rich and
poor; into the favored, who express their sense of
the social obligation by gifts of money, and into
the unfavored, who express it by clamoring for a
6
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
"share - both of them actuated by a vague sense
of justice. This division of the city would be
more justifiable, however, if the people who thus
isolate themselves on certain streets and use
their social ability for each other gained enough
thereby and added sufficient to the sum total of
social progress to justify the withholding of the
pleasures and results of that progress from so many
people who ought to have them. But they can-
not accomplish this. "The social spirit discharges
itself in many forms, and no one form is adequate
to its total expression." We are all uncomfortable
in regard to the sincerity of our best phrases,
because we hesitate to translate our philosophy
into the deed.
It is inevitable that those who feel most keenly
this insincerity and partial living should be our
young people, our so-called educated young people
who accomplish little toward the solution of this
social problem, and who bear the brunt of being
cultivated into unnourished, over-sensitive lives.
They have been shut off from the common labor
by which they live and which is a great source of
moral and physical health. They feel a fatal want
of harmony between their theory and their lives, a
lack of co-ordination between thought and action.
I think it is hard for us to realize how seriously
many of them are taking to the notion of human
brotherhood, how eagerly they long to give tangi-
These
ble expression to the democratic ideal.

Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements. 7
young men and women, longing to socialize their
democracy, are animated by certain hopes.
These hopes may be loosely formulated thus :
that if in a democratic country nothing can be
permanently achieved save through the masses of
the people, it will be impossible to establish a
higher political life than the people themselves
crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion
of a higher civic life can be fostered save through
common intercourse; that the blessings which we
associate with a life of refinement and cultiva-
tion can be made universal and must be made
universal if they are to be permanent; that the
good we secure for ourselves is precarious and
uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured
for all of us and incorporated into our common
life.
These hopes are responsible for results in vari-
ous directions, pre-eminently in the extension of
educational advantages. We find that all educa-
tional matters are more democratic in their polit-
ical than in their social aspects. The public
schools in the poorest and most crowded wards
of the city are inadequate to the number of chil-
dren, and many of the teachers are ill-prepared
and overworked; but in each ward there is an
effort to secure public education. The school-
house itself stands as a pledge that the city recog-
nizes and endeavors to fulfil the duty of educating
its children. But what becomes of these children
8
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
when they are no longer in public schools? Many
of them never come under the influence of a pro-
fessional teacher nor a cultivated friend after they
are twelve. Society at large does little for their
intellectual development. The dream of transcen-
dentalists that each New England village would
be a university, that every child taken from the
common school would be put into definite lines of
study and mental development, had its unfulfilled
beginning in the village lyceum and lecture courses,
and has its feeble representative now in the multi-
tude of clubs for study which are so sadly restricted
to educators, to the leisure class, or only to the
advanced and progressive wage-workers.
The University Extension movement - certainly
when it is closely identified with Settlements
would not confine learning to those who already
want it, or to those who, by making an effort, can
gain it, or to those among whom professional edu-
cators are already at work, but would take it to the
tailors of East London and the dock-laborers of the
Thames. It requires tant and training, love of
learning, and the conviction of the justice of its
diffusion to give it to people whose intellectual
faculties are untrained and disused. But men in
England are found who do it successfully, and it is
believed there are men and women in America who
can do it. I also believe that the best work in
University Extension can be done in Settlements,
where the teaching will be further socialized, where
Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements. 9
D
the teacher will grapple his students, not only by
formal lectures, but by every hook possible to the
fuller intellectual life which he represents. This
teaching requires distinct methods, for it is true of
people who have been allowed to remain undevel-
oped and whose faculties are inert and sterile, that
they cannot take their learning heavily. It has to
be diffused in a social atmosphere. Information
held in solution, a medium of fellowship and good-
will can be assimilated by the dullest.
If education is, as Froebel defined it, "deliver-
ance," deliverance of the forces of the body and
mind, then the untrained must first be delivered
from all constraint and rigidity before their facul-
ties can be used. Possibly one of the most pitiful
periods in the drama of the much-praised young
American who attempts to rise in life is the time
when his educational requirements seem to have
locked him up and made him rigid. He fancies
himself shut off from his uneducated family and
misunderstood by his friends. He is bowed down
by his mental accumulations and often gets no
farther than to carry them through life as a great
burden. Not once has he had a glimpse of the
delights of knowledge. Intellectual life requires
for its expansion and manifestation the influence
and assimilation of the interests and affections of
others. Mazzini, that greatest of all democrats,
who broke his heart over the condition of the
South European peasantry, said: "Education is
10
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
not merely a necessity of true life by which the
individual renews his vital force in the vital force
of humanity; it is a Holy Communion with gener-
ations dead and living, by which he fecundates all
his faculties. When he is withheld from this Com-
munion for generations, as the Italian peasant has
been, we point our finger at him and say, 'He is
like a beast of the field; he must be controlled by
force.' Even to this it is sometimes added that
it is absurd to educate him, immoral to disturb his
content. We stupidly use again the effect as an
argument for a continuance of the cause. It is
needless to say that a Settlement is a protest
against a restricted view of education, and makes
it possible for every educated man or woman with
a teaching faculty to find out those who are ready
to be taught. The social and educational activities
of a Settlement are but differing manifestations of
the attempt to socialize democracy, as is the exist-
ence of the settlement itself.
XI find it somewhat difficult to formulate the sec-
ond line of motives which I believe to constitute
the trend of the subjective pressure toward the
Settlement. There is something primordial about
these motives, but I am perhaps over-bold in desig-
nating them as a great desire to share the race life.
We all bear traces of the starvation struggle which
Our very
for so long made up the life of the race.
organism holds memories and glimpses of that long
life of our ancestors which still goes on among so
Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements. 11
many of our contemporaries. Nothing so deadens
the sympathies and shrivels the power of enjoyment
as the persistent keeping away from the great
opportunities for helpfulness and a continual ignor-
ing of the starvation struggle which makes up the
life of at least half the race. To shut one's self
away from that half of the race life is to shut one's
self away from the most vital part of it; it is to
live out but half the humanity which we have
been born heir to and to use but half our faculties.
We have all had longings for a fuller life which
should include the use of these faculties. These
longings are the physical complement of the “Inti-
mations of Immortality" on which no ode has yet
been written. To portray these would be the work
of a poet, and it is hazardous for any but a poet to
attempt it.
You may remember the forlorn feeling which
occasionally seizes you when you arrive early in
the morning a stranger in a great city. The stream
of laboring people goes past you as you gaze
through the plate-glass window of your hotel.
You see hard-working men lifting great burdens ;
you hear the driving and jostling of huge carts.
Your heart sinks with a sudden sense of futility.
The door opens behind you and you turn to the
man who brings you in your breakfast with a
quick sense of human fellowship. You find your-
self praying that you may never lose your hold on
it all. A more poetic prayer would be that the
12
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
1
great mother breasts of our common humanity,
with its labor and suffering and its homely com-
forts, may never be withheld from you. You turn
helplessly to the waiter. You feel that it would
be almost grotesque to claim from him the sym-
pathy you crave. Civilization has placed you
far
apart, but you resent your position with a sudden
sense of snobbery. Literature is full of portrayals
of these glimpses. They come to shipwrecked
men on rafts; they overcome the differences of
an incongruous multitude when in the presence
of a great danger or when moved by a common
enthusiasm. They are not, however, confined to
such moments, and if we were in the habit of tell-
ing them to each other, the recital would be as
long as the tales of children are, when they sit
down on the green grass and confide to each other
how many times they have remembered that they
lived once before. If these tales are the stirring
of inherited impressions, just so surely is the other
the striving of inherited powers.
“There is nothing after disease, indigence, and
a sense of guilt so fatal to health and to life itself
as the want of a proper outlet for active faculties.”
I have seen young girls suffer and grow sensibly
lowered in vitality in the first years after they
leave school. In our attempt then to give a girl
pleasure and freedom from care we succeed, for
the most part, in making her pitifully miserable.
She finds "life" so different from what she ex-
Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements.
13
""
pected it to be. She is besotted with innocent little
ambitions, and does not understand this apparent
waste of herself, this elaborate preparation, if no
work is provided for her. There is a heritage of
noble obligation which young people accept and
long to perpetuate. The desire for action, the
wish to right wrong and alleviate suffering, haunts
them daily. Society smiles at it indulgently in-
stead of making it of value to itself. The wrong
to them begins even farther back, when we re-
strain the first childish desires for "doing good'
and tell them that they must wait until they are
older and better fitted. We intimate that social
obligation begins at a fixed date, forgetting that
it begins with birth itself. We treat them as
children who, with strong-growing limbs, are
allowed to use their legs but not their arms, or
whose legs are daily carefully exercised that after
awhile their arms may be put to high use. We do
this in spite of the protest of the best educators,
Locke and Pestalozzi. We are fortunate in the
mean time if their unused members do not weaken
and disappear. They do sometimes. There are
a few girls who, by the time they are "edu-
cated," forget their old childish desires to help
the world and to play with poor little girls “who
haven't playthings." Parents are often inconsist-
ent. They deliberately expose their daughters to
knowledge of the distress in the world. They
send them to hear missionary addresses on famines.
14 Philanthropy and Social Progress.
in India and China; they accompany them to
lectures on the suffering in Siberia; they agitate
together over the forgotten region of East London.
In addition to this, from babyhood the altruistic
tendencies of these daughters are persistently cul-
tivated. They are taught to be self-forgetting and
self-sacrificing, to consider the good of the Whole
before the good of the Ego. But when all this
information and culture show results, when the
daughter comes back from college and begins to
recognize her social claim to the "submerged
tenth," and to evince a disposition to fulfil it, the
family claim is strenuously asserted; she is told.
that she is unjustified, ill-advised in her efforts.
If she persists the family too often are injured and
unhappy, unless the efforts are called missionary,
and the religious zeal of the family carry them
over their sense of abuse. When this zeal does
not exist the result is perplexing. It is a curious
violation of what we would fain believe a funda-
mental law that the final return of the Deed is
upon the head of the Doer. The Deed is that of
exclusiveness and caution, but the return instead
of falling upon the head of the exclusive and cau-
tious, falls upon a young head full of generous
and unselfish plans. The girl loses something
vital out of her life which she is entitled to. She
is restricted and unhappy; her elders, meanwhile,
are unconscious of the situation, and we have all
the elements of a tragedy.
Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements. 15
We have in America a fast-growing number of
cultivated young people who have no recognized
outlet for their active faculties. They hear con-
stantly of the great social mal-adjustment, but no
way is provided for them to change it, and their
uselessness hangs about them heavily. Huxley
declares that the sense of uselessness is the severest
shock which the human system can sustain, and
that, if persistently sustained, it results in atrophy
of function. These young people have had advan-
tages of college, of European travel and economic
study, but they are sustaining this shock of inac-
tion. They have pet phrases, and they tell you
that the things that make us all alike are stronger
than the things that make us different. They say
that all men are united by needs and sympathies
far more permanent and radical than anything that
temporarily divides them and sets them in opposi-
tion to each other. If they affect art, they say
that the decay in artistic expression is due to the
decay in ethics, that art when shut away from
the human interests and from the great mass of
humanity is self-destructive. They tell their elders
with all the bitterness of youth that if they expect
success from them in business, or politics, or in
whatever lines their ambition for them has run,
they must let them consult all of humanity; that
they must let them find out what the people want
and how they want it. It is only the stronger
young people, however, who formulate this. Many
16
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
*
of them dissipate their energies in so-called enjoy-
ment. Others, not content with that, go on study-
ing and go back to college for their second degrees,
not that they are especially fond of study, but be-
cause they want something definite to do, and their
powers have been trained in the direction of men-
tal accumulation. Many are buried beneath mere
mental accumulation with lowered vitality and dis-
content. Walter Besant says they have had the
vision that Peter had when he saw the great sheet
let down from heaven, wherein was neither clean.
nor unclean. He calls it the sense of humanity.
It is not philanthropy nor benevolence. It is a
thing fuller and wider than either of these. This
young life, so sincere in its emotion and good
phrases and yet so undirected, seems to me as
pitiful as the other great mass of destitute lives.
One is supplementary to the other, and some
method of communication can surely be devised.
Mr. Barnett, who urged the first Settlement,
Toynbee Hall, in East London, -recognized this
need of outlet for the young men of Oxford and
Cambridge, and hoped that the Settlement would
supply the communication. It is easy to see why
the Settlement movement originated in England,
where the years of education are more constrained
and definite than they are here, where class dis-
tinctions are more rigid. The necessity of it was
greater there, but we are fast feeling the pressure
of the need and meeting the necessity for Settle-
Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements. 17
ments in America. Our young people feel ner-
vously the need of putting theory into action, and
respond quickly to the Settlement form of activity.
\
The third division of motives which I believe
make toward the Settlement is the result of a
certain renaissance going forward in Christianity.
The impulse to share the lives of the poor, the
desire to make social service, irrespective of prop-
aganda, express the spirit of Christ, is as old as
Christianity itself. We have no proof from the
records themselves that the early Roman Christians,
who strained their simple art to the point of gro-
tesqueness in their eagerness to record a "good
news" on the walls of the catacombs, considered
this "good news" a religion. Jesus had no set
of truths labelled "Religious." On the contrary,
his doctrine was that all truth is one, that the
appropriation of it is freedom.
His teaching
had no dogma to mark it off from truth and ac-
tion in general. He himself called it a revelation
- a life. These early Roman Christians received
the Gospel message, a command to love all men,
with a certain joyous simplicity. The image of the
Good Shepherd is blithe and gay beyond the
gentlest shepherd of Greek mythology; the hart
no longer pants, but rushes to the water brooks.
The Christians looked for the continuous revelation,
but believed what Jesus said, that this revelation
to be held and made manifest must be put into
terms of action; that action is the only medium
18
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
man has for receiving and appropriating truth. “If
any man will do His will, he shall know of the
doctrine."
That Christianity has to be revealed and embodied
in the line of social progress is a corollary to the
simple proposition that man's action is found in his
social relationships in the way in which he connects.
with his fellows, that his motives for action are the
zeal and affection with which he regards his fellows.
By this simple process was created a deep enthu-
siasm for humanity, which regarded man as at once.
the organ and object of revelation; and by this
process came about that wonderful fellowship, that
true democracy of the early Church, that so cap-
tivates the imagination. The early Christians were
pre-eminently non-resistant. They believed in love
as a cosmic force. There was no iconoclasm dur-
ing the minor peace of the Church. They did not
yet denounce, nor tear down temples, nor preach
the end of the world. They grew to a mighty
number, but it never occurred to them, either in
their weakness or their strength, to regard other
men for an instant as their foes or as aliens. The
spectacle of the Christians loving all men was the
most astounding Rome had ever seen. They were
eager to sacrifice themselves for the weak, for
children and the aged. They identified themselves
with slaves and did not avoid the plague. They
longed to share the common lot that they might
receive the constant revelation. It was a new
Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements. 19
treasure which the early Christians added to the
sum of all treasures, a joy hitherto unknown in the
world the joy of finding the Christ which lieth
in each man, but which no man can unfold save in
fellowship. A happiness ranging from the heroic
to the pastoral enveloped them. They were to
possess a revelation as long as life had new mean-
ing to unfold, new action to propose.
I believe that there is a distinct turning among
many young men and women toward this simple
acceptance of Christ's message. They resent the
assumption that Christianity is a set of ideas which
belong to the religious consciousness, whatever that
may be, that it is a thing to be proclaimed and
instituted apart from the social life of the com-
munity. They insist that it shall seek a simple
and natural expression in the social organism itself.
The Settlement movement is only one manifesta-
tion of that wider humanitarian movement which
throughout Christendom, but pre-eminently in Eng-
land, is endeavoring to embody itself, not in a sect,
but in society itself. Tolstoï has reminded us all
very forcibly of Christ's principle of non-resistance.
His formulation has been startling and his expres-
sion has deviated from the general movement, but
there is little doubt that he has many adherents,
men and women who are philosophically convinced
of the futility of opposition, who believe that evil
can be overcome only with good and cannot be
opposed. If love is the creative force of the uni
20
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
1
verse, the principle which binds men together, and
by their interdependence on each other makes
them human, just so surely is anger and the spirit
of opposition the destructive principle of the uni-
verse, that which tears down, thrusts men apart,
and makes them isolated and brutal.
I cannot, of course, speak for other Settlements,
but it would, I think, be unfair to Hull House
not to emphasize the conviction with which the
first residents went there, that it would simply be
a foolish and an unwarrantable expenditure of
force to oppose or to antagonize any individual or
set of people in the neighborhood; that whatever
of good the House had to offer should be put into
positive terms; that its residents should live with
opposition to no man, with recognition of the good
in every man, even the meanest. I believe that this
turning, this renaissance of the early Christian
humanitarianism, is going on in America, in Chi-
cago, if you please, without leaders who write or
philosophize, without much speaking, but with a
bent to express in social service, in terms of action,
the spirit of Christ. Certain it is that spiritual
force is found in the Settlement movement, and it
is also true that this force must be evoked and
must be called into play before the success of any
Settlement is assured. There must be the over-
mastering belief that all that is noblest in life is
common to men as men, in order to accentuate the
likenesses and ignore the differences which are
Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements. 21
found among the people whom the Settlement con-
stantly brings into juxtaposition. It may be true,
as Frederic Harrison insists, that the very religious
fervor of man can be turned into love for his race
and his desire for a future life into content to live
in the echo of his deeds. How far the Positivists'
formula of the high ardor for humanity can carry
the Settlement movement, Mrs. Humphry Ward's
house in London may in course of time illustrate.
Paul's formula of seeking for the Christ which
lieth in each man and founding our likenesses on
him seems a simpler formula to many of us.
If
you
have heard a thousand voices singing in
the Hallelujah Chorus in Handel's "Messiah," you
have found that the leading voices could still be
distinguished, but that the differences of training
and cultivation between them and the voices of the
chorus were lost in the unity of purpose and the
fact that they were all human voices lifted by a
high motive. This is a weak illustration of what
a Settlement attempts to do. It aims, in a meas-
ure, to lead whatever of social life its neighborhood
may afford, to focus and give form to that life, to
bring to bear upon it the results of cultivation and
training; but it receives in exchange for the music
of isolated voices the volume and strength of the
chorus. It is quite impossible for me to say in
what proportion or degree the subjective necessity
which led to the opening of Hull House combined
the three trends: first the desire to interpret de-
22
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
mocracy in social terms; secondly, the impulse
beating at the very source of our lives urging us to
aid in the race progress; and, thirdly, the Christian
movement toward Humanitarianism. It is diffi-
cult to analyze a living thing; the analysis is at
best imperfect. Many more motives may blend
with the three trends; possibly the desire for a
new form of social success due to the nicety of
imagination, which refuses worldly pleasures un-
mixed with the joys of self-sacrifice; possibly a
love of approbation, so vast that is it not content
with the treble clapping of delicate hands, but
wishes also to hear the bass notes from toughened
palms, may mingle with these.
The Settlement, then, is an experimental effort
to aid in the solution of the social and industrial
problems which are engendered by the modern con-
ditions of life in a great city. It insists that these
problems are not confined to any one portion of
a city. It is an attempt to relieve, at the same
time, the over-accumulation at one end of society
and the destitution at the other; but it assumes.
that this over-accumulation and destitution is most
sorely felt in the things that pertain to social and
educational advantage. From its very nature it
can stand for no political o social propaganda. It
must, in a sense, give the warm welcome of an inn
to all such propaganda, if perchance one of them
be found an angel. The one thing to be dreaded
in the Settlement is that it lose its flexibility, its
Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements. 23
power of quick adaptation, its readiness to change
its methods as its environment may demand. It
must be open to conviction and must have a deep
and abiding sense of tolerance. It must be hospi-
table and ready for experiment. It should demand
from its residents a scientific patience in the accu-
mulation of facts and the steady holding of their
sympathies as one of the best instruments for that
accumulation. It must be grounded in a philoso-
phy whose foundation is on the solidarity of the
human race, a philosophy which will not waver
when the race happens to be represented by a
drunken woman or an idiot boy. Its residents
must be emptied of all conceit of opinion and all
self-assertion, and ready to arouse and interpret the
public opinion of their neighborhood. They must
be content to live quietly side by side with their
neighbors until they grow into a sense of relation-
ship and mutual interests. Their neighbors are
held apart by differences of race and language which
the residents can more easily overcome. They
are bound to see the needs of their neighborhood
as a whole, to furnish data for legislation, and use
their influence to secure it. In short, residents are
pledged to devote themselves to the duties of good
citizenship and to the arousing of the social en-
ergies which too largely lie dormant in every
neighborhood given over to industrialism. They
are bound to regard the entire life of their city as
organic, to make an effort to unify it, and to protest
against its over-differentiation.
24
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
room.
Our philanthropies of all sorts are growing so
expensive and institutional that it is to be hoped
the Settlement movement will keep itself facile
and unincumbered. From its very nature it needs
no endowment, no roll of salaried officials. Many
residents must always come in the attitude of stu-
dents, assuming that the best teacher of life is life.
itself, and regarding the Settlement as a class-
Hull House from the outside may appear
to be a cumbrous plant of manifold industries,
with its round of clubs and classes, its day nursery,
diet kitchen, library, art exhibits, lectures, statis-
tical work and polyglot demands for information,
a thousand people coming and going in an average
week. But viewed as a business enterprise it is
not costly, for from this industry are eliminated
two great items of expense-the cost of superin-
tendence and the cost of distribution. All the
management and teaching are voluntary and un-
paid, and the consumers to continue the com-
mercial phraseology are at the door and deliver
the goods themselves. In the instance of Hull
House, rent is also largely eliminated through the
courtesy of the owner.
Life is manifold and Hull House attempts to
respond to as many sides as possible. It does this
fearlessly, feeling sure that among the able people
of Chicago are those who will come to do the work
when once the outline is indicated. It pursues
much the same policy in regard to money. It
Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements. 25
seems to me an advantage-this obligation to
appeal to business men for their judgment and
their money, to the educated for their effort and
enthusiasm, to the neighborhood for their response
and co-operation. It tests the sanity of an idea,
and we enter upon a new line of activity with
a feeling of support and confidence. We have
always been perfectly frank with our neighbors.
I have never tried so earnestly to set forth the
gist of the Settlement movement, to make clear its
reciprocity, as I have to them. At first we were
often asked why we came to live there when we
could afford to live somewhere else. I remember
one man who used to shake his head and say it was
"the strangest thing he had met in his experience,"
but who was finally convinced that it was not
strange but natural. I trust that now it seems
natural to all of us that the Settlement should be
there. If it is natural to feed the hungry and care
for the sick, it is certainly natural to give pleasure
to the young and to minister to the deep-seated
craving for social intercourse that all men feel.
Whoever does it is rewarded by something which, if
not gratitude, is at least spontaneous and vital and
lacks that irksome sense of obligation with which
a substantial benefit is too often acknowledged.
The man who looks back to the person who first
put him in the way of good literature has no alloy
in his gratitude.
I remember when the statement seemed to me
26
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
very
radical that the salvation of East London was
the destruction of West London; but I believe now
that there will be no wretched quarters in our cities.
at all when the conscience of each man is so touched
that he prefers to live with the poorest of his breth-
ren, and not with the richest of them that his in-
come will allow. It is to be hoped that this moving
and living will at length be universal and need no
name. The Settlement movement is from its
nature a provisional one. It is easy in writing a
paper to make all philosophy point one particular
moral and all history adorn one particular tale;
but I hope you forgive me for reminding you that
the best speculative philosophy sets forth the
solidarity of the human race; that the highest
moralists have taught that without the advance
and improvement of the whole no man can hope
for any lasting improvement in his own moral
or material individual condition. The subjective
necessity for Social Settlements is identical with
that necessity which urges us on toward social and
individual salvation.
Objective Value of a Social Settlement. 27
II.
THE OBJECTIVE VALUE OF A SOCIAL SETTLE-
MENT.
BY JANE ADDAMS, HULL HOUSE," CHICAGO.
IN treating of the value of the Social Settle-
ment, I shall confine myself to Hull House, and
what it has been able to do for its neighborhood,
only because I am most familiar with that Settle-
ment.
(Hull House stands on South Halsted Street,
next door to the corner of Polk. South Halsted
Street is thirty-two miles long and one of the
great thoroughfares of Chicago. Polk Street
crosses Halsted midway between the stock-yards
to the south and the ship-building yards on the
north branch of the Chicago River. For the six
miles between these two industries the street is
lined with shops of butchers and grocers, with
dingy and gorgeous saloons, and pretentious estab
lishments for the sale of ready-made clothing.
Polk Street, running west from Halsted Street,
grows rapidly more respectable; running a mile
east to State Street, it grows steadily worse, and
crosses a net-work of gilded vice on the corners of
Clark Street and Fourth Avenue,)
28
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
Hull House is an ample old residence, well built
and somewhat ornately decorated after the manner
of its time, 1856. It has been used for many pur-
poses, and although battered by its vicissitudes,
is essentially sound and has responded kindly to
repairs and careful furnishing. Its wide hall and
open fires always insure it a gracious aspect. (It
once stood in the suburbs, but the city has steadily
grown up around it and its site now has corners on
three or four more or less distinct foreign colonies.
Between Halsted Street and the river live about
ten thousand Italians: Neapolitans, Sicilians, and
Calabrians, with an occasional Lombard or Vene-
tian. To the south on Twelfth Street are many
Germans, and side streets are given over almost
entirely to Polish and Russian Jews. Still farther
south, these Jewish colonies merge into a huge
Bohemian colony, so vast that Chicago ranks as
the third Bohemian city in the world. To the
northwest are many Canadian-French, clannish in
spite of their long residence in America, and to the
north are many Irish and first-generation Americans.
On the streets directly west and farther north are
well-to-do English-speaking families, many of whom
own their houses and have lived in the neighbor-
hood for years. I know one man who is still living
in his old farm-house. This corner of Polk and
Halsted Streets is in the fourteenth precinct of the
nineteenth ward. This ward has a population of
about fifty thousand, and at the last presidential
Objective Value of a Social Settlement.
29
election registered 7072 voters. It has had no
unusual political scandal connected with it, but its
aldermen are generally saloon-keepers and its politi-
cal manipulations are those to be found in the
crowded wards where the activities of the petty
politician are unchecked.j
The policy of the public authorities of never tak-
ing an initiative, and always waiting to be urged to
do their duty, is fatal in a ward where there is no
initiative among the citizens. The idea underlying
our self-government breaks down in such a ward.
The streets are inexpressibly dirty, the number of
schools inadequate, factory legislation unenforced,
the street-lighting bad, the paving miserable and
altogether lacking in the alleys and smaller streets,
and the stables defy all laws of sanitation.
Hundreds of houses are unconnected with the
street sewer. The older and richer inhabitants
seem anxious to move away as rapidly as they can
afford it. They make room for newly arrived immi-
grants who are densely ignorant of civic duties.
This substitution of the older inhabitants is accom-
plished industrially also in the south and east quar-
ters of the ward. The Hebrews and Italians do
the finishing for the great clothing-manufacturers
formerly done by Americans, Irish, and Germans,
who refused to submit to the extremely low prices
to which the sweating system has reduced their
As the design of the sweating system
is the elimination of rent from the manufacture of
successors.
30
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
clothing, the "outside work" is begun after the
clothing leaves the cutter. An unscrupulous con-
tractor regards no basement as too dark, no stable
loft too foul, no rear shanty too provisional, no
tenement room too small for his workroom, as
these conditions imply low rental. Hence these
shops abound in the worst of the foreign districts,
where the sweater easily finds his cheap basement
and his home finishers. There is a constant ten-
dency to employ school-children, as much of the
home and shop work can easily be done by children.
The houses of the ward, for the most part wooden,
were originally built for one family and are now
occupied by several. They are after the type of
the inconvenient frame cottages found in the
poorer suburbs twenty years ago. Many of them
were built where they now stand; others were
brought thither on rollers, because their previous
site had been taken for a factory. The fewer brick
tenement buildings which are three or four stories
high are comparatively new. There are few huge
and foul tenements. The little wooden houses
have a temporary aspect, and for this reason, per-
haps, the tenement-house legislation in Chicago
is totally inadequate. Back tenements flourish;
many houses have no water supply save the faucet
in the back yard; there are no fire escapes; the
garbage and ashes are placed in wooden boxes
which are fastened to the street pavements. One
of the most discouraging features about the present
Objective Value of a Social Settlement. 31
system of tenement houses is that many are owned
by sordid and ignorant immigrants. The theory
that wealth brings responsibility, that possession
entails at length education and refinement, in these
cases fails utterly. The children of an Italian
immigrant owner do not go to school and are no
improvement on their parents. His wife picks rags
from the street gutter, and laboriously sorts them
in a dingy court. Wealth may do something for
her self-complacency and feeling of consequence;
it certainly does nothing for her comfort or her
children's improvement nor for the cleanliness of
any one concerned. Another thing that prevents
better houses in Chicago is the tentative attitude
of the real-estate men. Many unsavory conditions
are allowed to continue which would be regarded
with horror if they were considered permanent.
Meanwhile, the wretched conditions persist until
at least two generations of children have been born
and reared in them.
Our ward contains two hundred and fifty-five
saloons; our own precinct boasts of eight, and the
one directly north of us twenty. This allows one
saloon to every twenty-eight voters, and there is
no doubt that the saloon is the centre of the live-
liest political and social life of the ward. The
leases and fixtures of these saloons are, in the
majority of cases, owned by the wholesale liquor
houses, and the saloon-keeper himself is often a
bankrupt.
32
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
ナ
​There are seven churches and two missions in
the ward. All of these are small and somewhat
struggling, save the large Catholic church con-
nected with the Jesuit College on the south boun-
dary of the ward, and the French Catholic church
on the west boundary. Out of these nine religious
centres there are but three in which the service
is habitually conducted in English. This enumer-
ation of churches does not include the chevras
found among the recently immigrated Jews of the
Ashkenazite branch. The chevras combine the
offices of public worship and the rites of mourn-
ing with the function of a sick benefit and mutual
aid society. There are seven Catholic parochial
schools in the ward, accommodating 6244 children ;
three Protestant schools care for 141 children. A
fine manual-training school sustained by the He-
brews is found in the seventh ward just south of
us. In the same ward is the receiving shelter for
the Jewish refugees.
This site for a Settlement was selected in the
first instance because of its diversity and the
variety of activity for which it presented an oppor-
tunity. It has been the aim of the residents to
respond to all sides of the neighborhood life: not
to the poor people alone, nor to the well-to-do, nor
to the young in contradistinction to the old, but to
the neighborhood as a whole, "men, women, and
children taken in families as the Lord mixes them."
The activities of Hull House divide themselves into
Objective Value of a Social Settlement. 33
four, possibly more lines. They are not formally
or consciously thus divided, but broadly separate
according to the receptivity of the neighbors. (They
might be designated as the social, educational, and
humanitarian, I have added civic-if indeed a
Settlement of women can be said to perform civic
duties. These activities spring from no precon-
ceived notion of what a Social Settlement should
be, but have increased gradually on demand. In
describing these activities and their value to the
neighborhood, I shall attempt to identify those
people who respond to each form.
A Settlement which regards social intercourse as
the terms of its expression logically brings to its
aid all those adjuncts which have been found by
experience to free social life. It casts aside noth-
ing which the cultivated man regards as good and
suggestive of participation in the best life of the
past. It ignores none of the surroundings which
one associates with a life of simple refinement.
The amount of luxury which an individual indulges
in is a thing which has to be determined by each
for himself. It must always be a relative thing.
The one test which the Settlement is bound to respect
is that its particular amount of luxury shall tend
to "free" the social expression of its neighbors,
and not cumber that expression. The residents at
Hull House find that the better in quality and taste
their surroundings are, the more they contribute to
the general enjoyment.
34
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
We have distinct advantages for Settlements in
America. There are fewer poor people here than
in England, there are fewer poor people who expect
to remain poor, and they are less strictly confined
to their own districts. It is an advantage that our
cities are diversified by foreign colonies. (We go
to Europe and consider our view incomplete if we
do not see something of the peasant life of the
little villages with their quaint customs and sug-
gestive habits. We can see the same thing here.
There are Bohemians, Italians, Poles, Russians,
Greeks, and Arabs in Chicago vainly trying to
adjust their peasant life to the life of a large city,
and coming in contact with only the most ignorant
Americans in that city. The more of scholarship,
the more of linguistic attainment, the more of beau-
tiful surroundings a Settlement among them can
command, the more it can do for them.)
It is much easier to deal with the first generation
of crowded city life than with the second or third,
because it is more natural and cast in a simpler
mould. The Italian and Bohemian peasants who
live in Chicago still put on their bright holiday
clothes on a Sunday and go to visit their cousins.
They tramp along with at least a suggestion of
having once walked over ploughed fields and
breathed country air. The second generation of
city poor have no holiday clothes and consider their
cousins "a bad lot." I have heard a drunken man,
in a maudlin stage, babble of his good country
Objective Value of a Social Settlement. 35
mother and imagine he was driving the cows home,
and I knew that his little son, who laughed loud
at him, would be drunk earlier in life, and would
have no such pastoral interlude to his ravings.
Hospitality still survives among foreigners, al-
though it is buried under false pride among the
poorest Americans. One thing seemed clear in
regard to entertaining these foreigners: to preserve
and keep for them whatever of value their past life
contained and to bring them in contact with a
better type of Americans. For two years, every
Saturday evening, our Italian neighbors were our
guests; entire families came. These evenings
were very popular during our first winter at Hull
House. Many educated Italians helped us, and
the house became known as a place where Italians
were welcome and where national holidays were
observed. They come to us with their petty law-
suits, sad relics of the vendetta, with their incor-
rigible boys, with their hospital cases, with their
aspirations for American clothes, and with their
needs for an interpreter.
Friday evening is devoted to Germans and is
similar in purpose; but owing to the superior edu-
cation of our Teutonic guests and the clever lead-
ing of a cultivated German woman, we can bring
out the best of that cozy social intercourse which
is found in its perfection in the "Fatherland.”
They sing a great deal in the tender minor of the
German folksong or in the rousing spirit of the
36
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
Rhine, and they are slowly but persistently pursu-
ing a course in German history and literature.
The relationship by no means ends with social
civilities, and the acquaintance made there has
brought about radical changes in the lives of
many friendless families. I recall one peasant
woman, straight from the fields of Germany. Her
two years in America had been spent in patiently
carrying water up and down two flights of stairs,
and in washing the heavy flannel suits of iron-
foundry workers. For this her pay had averaged
thirty-five cents a day. Three of her daughters
had fallen victims to the vice of the city. The
mother was bewildered and distressed, but under-
stood nothing. We were able to induce the be-
trayer of one daughter to marry her; the second,
after a tedious lawsuit, supported his child; with
the third we were able to do nothing. This
woman is now living with her family in a little
house seventeen miles from the city. She has
made two payments on her land and is a lesson to
all beholders as she pastures her cow up and down
the railroad tracks and makes money from her ten
acres. She did not need charity. She had an
immense capacity for hard work, but she sadly
needed "heading." She is our most shining ex-
ample, but I think of many forlorn cases of Ger-
man and Bohemian peasants in need of neighborly
help.
Perhaps of more value than to the newly arrived
Objective Value of a Social Settlement.
37
peasant is the service of the Settlement to those
foreigners who speak English fairly well, and who
have been so successful in material affairs that
they are totally absorbed by them. Their social
life is too often reduced to a sense of comradeship.
The lives of many Germans, for instance, are law-
abiding, but inexpressibly dull. They have resigned
poetry and romance with the other good things of
the Fatherland. There is a strong family affection
between them and their English-speaking children,
but their pleasures are not in common and they
seldom go out together. (Perhaps the greatest
value of the Settlement to them is in simply plac-
ing large and pleasant rooms with musical facili-
ties at their disposal, and in reviving their almost
forgotten enthusiasm for Körner and Schiller. I
have seen sons and daughters stand in complete
surprise as their mother's knitting-needles softly
beat time to the song she was singing, or her worn
face turned rosy under the hand-clapping as she
made an old-fashioned courtesy at the end of a
German poem. It was easy to fancy a growing
touch of respect in her children's manner to her,
and a rising enthusiasm for German literature and
reminiscence on the part of all the family,(an
effort to bring together the old life and the new,
a respect for the older cultivation, and not quite
so much assurance that the new was the best. I
think that we have a right to expect that our
foreigners will do this for us: that they will pro-
38
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
ject a little of the historic and romantic into the
prosaic quarters of our American cities.
But our social evenings are by no means con-
fined to foreigners. Our most successful clubs
are entirely composed of English-speaking and
American-born young people. Those over six-
teen meet in two clubs, one for young men and
one for girls, every Monday evening. Each club
dispatches various literary programs before nine
o'clock, when they meet together for an hour of
social amusement before going home at ten. The
members of the Tuesday evening clubs are from
fourteen to sixteen years old; a few of them are
still in school, but most of them are working. The
boys who are known as the Young Citizen's Club
are supposed to inform themselves on municipal
affairs, as are the Hull House Columbian Guards
who report alleys and streets for the Municipal
Order League. We have various other clubs of
young people that meet weekly; their numbers
are limited only by the amount of room.
hold the dining-room, the reception-room, and the
octagon with the art-exhibit-room and the studio
each evening for the College Extension classes,
and can reserve only the large drawing-room and
gymnasium for the clubs and receptions. The
gymnasium is a somewhat pretentious name for
a building next door which was formerly a saloon,
but which we rented last fall, repaired, and fitted
up with good apparatus. A large and well-
We
Objective Value of a Social Settlement. 39
equipped gymnasium is at present being built
for Hull House. During the winter the old one
sheltered some enthusiastic athletic classes. The
evenings were equally divided between men and
women. The children came in the afternoon. It
is difficult to describe the social evenings, and
there is much social life going on constantly which
cannot be tabulated.
To turn to the educational effort, it will be per-
haps better first to describe the people who respond
to it. In every neighborhood where poorer people
live, because rents are supposed to be cheaper
there, is an element which, although uncertain in
the individual, in the aggregate can be counted
upon. It is composed of people of former educa-
tion and opportunity who have cherished ambitions
and prospects, but who are caricatures of what
they meant to be "hollow ghosts which blame
the living men." There are times in many lives
when there is a cessation of energy and loss of
power. (Men and women of education and refine-
ment come to live in a cheaper neighborhood be-
cause they lack the power of making money,
because of ill health, because of an unfortunate
marriage, or for various other reasons which do
not imply criminality or stupidity. Among them
are those who, in spite of untoward circumstances,
keep up some sort of an intellectual life, those
who are "great for books" as their neighbors say.
To such the Settlement is a genuine refuge. In
40
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
addition to these there are many young women
who teach in the public schools, young men who
work at various occupations, but who are bent
upon self-improvement and are preparing for pro-
fessions. It is of these that the College Extension
classes are composed.) The majority of the two
hundred students live within the radius of six
blocks from the house, although a few of them.
come from other parts of the city. The educa-
tional effort of Hull House always has been held
by the residents to be subordinate to its social life,
and, as it were, a part of it. What is now known
as the College Extension course, a series of lectures
and classes held in the evening on the general
plan of University Extension, had its origin in an
informal club which, during the first winter, read
"Romola" with the original residents. During
the last term thirty-five classes a week were in
existence. The work is divided into terms of
twelve weeks, and circulars are issued at the
beginning of each term. Many students have
taken studies in each of the seven terms of work
offered.
The relation of students and faculty to each
other and to the residents is that of guest and
hostess, and those students who have been longest
in relation to the Settlement feel the responsibility
of old friends of the house to new guests. A good
deal of tutoring is constantly going on among the
students themselves in the rooms of Hull House.
Objective Value of a Social Settlement. 41
At the close of each term the residents give a
reception to students and faculty, which is one of
the chief social events of the season. Upon this
comfortable social basis very good work has been
done in the College Extension courses. Literature
classes until recently have been the most popular.
The last winter's Shakespeare class had a regular
attendance of forty. The mathematical classes
have always been large and flourishing. The
faculty, consisting of college men and women,
numbers thirty-five. Many of them have taught
constantly at the house for two years, but their
numbers are often re-enforced. During the last
term a class in physics, preparatory for a class in
electricity, was composed largely of workmen in
the Western Electric Works, which are within a
few blocks of Hull House. (A fee of fifty cents is
charged for each course of study. This defrays
all incidental expenses and leaves on hand each
term fifty or seventy dollars, with which to import
distinguished lecturers.
During the last winter Hull House has been a
successful "centre" for two University Extension
courses in connection with the Chicago University.
It has always been the policy of Hull House to
co-operate as much as possible with public institu-
tions. The Chicago Public Library has an almost
unique system of branch reading-rooms and library
stations. Five rooms are rented by the library in
various parts of the city which are fitted up for
42
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
reading-rooms, and in addition to magazines and
papers they are supplied with several hundred
books. There are also other stations where public-
library cards can be left and to which books are
delivered. Hull House was made one of these
delivery stations during its second year, and when
in June, 1891, the Butler Gallery was completed,
we offered the lower floor free of rent as a branch
reading-room. The City Library supplies English
magazines and papers and two librarians who are
in charge. There are papers in Italian, German,
Bohemian, and French. The number of readers.
the first month was 1213; during the fifth month,
2454. The upper floor of the Butler Gallery is
divided into an art exhibition room and a studio.
Our first art exhibit was opened in June, 1891, by
Mr. and Mrs. Barnett, of St. Jude's, Whitechapel.
It is always pleasant to associate their hearty sym-
pathy with that first exhibit. The pictures were
some of the best that Chicago could afford, several
by Corot, Watts, and Davis. European country
scenes, sea views, and Dutch interiors bring forth
many pleasant reminiscences, and the person who
is in charge of the pictures to explain them is
many times more edified than edifying. We have
had five exhibits since the gallery was completed,
two of oil-paintings, one of old engravings and etch-
ings, one of water-colors, and one of pictures espe-
cially selected for use in the public schools. The
average attendance at these exhibits has been
Objective Value of a Social Settlement.
43
three thousand. An exhibit is open from two in
the afternoon until ten in the evening, and con-
tinues usually two weeks. The value of these
exhibits to the neighborhood must, of course, be
determined by the value one attaches to the sense
of beauty and the pleasure which arises from its
contemplation. Classes in free-hand drawing and
clay modelling are held in the studio of the Butler
Gallery. They have been very popular from the
first, and some excellent work has been done.
Every Thursday evening for three years, save
during the three summer months, we have had a
lecture of some sort at Hull House. This has
come to be an expected event in the neighbor-
hood. These lectures are largely attended by
the College Extension students, and the topics
are supposed to connect with their studies; but
many other people come to them and often join a
a class because of the interest a lecturer has awak-
ened. This attraction is constantly in mind when
these lectures are planned. For two years a sum-
mer school has been held at Rockford, Ill.,
nection with the College Extension classes. From
one-third to one-half the students have been able
to attend it, paying their board for a month, and
enjoying out-door study quite as much as the
classes. I would recommend for imitation the
very generous action on the part of the Rockford
College trustees in placing at our disposal free of
rent their entire educational apparatus, from the
in con-
44
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
dining-room to the laboratories. On the border
land between social and educational activity are
our Sunday afternoon concerts, and the Plato Club
which follows them.
The industrial education of Hull House has
always been somewhat limited. From the begin-
ning we have had large and enthusiastic cooking
classes, first in the Hull House kitchen, and later
in a tiny cottage across the yard which has been
fitted up for the purpose. We have also always
had sewing, mending, and embroidery classes.
This leads me to speak of the children who meet
weekly at Hull House, whose organization is be-
tween classes and clubs. There are three hundred
of them who come on three days, not counting, of
course, the children who come to the house merely
as depositors in the Penny Provident Fund Savings
Bank. A hundred Italian girls come on Monday.
They sew and carry home a new garment, which
becomes a pattern for the entire family. Tuesday
afternoon has always been devoted to school-boys'
clubs: they are practically story-telling clubs. The
most popular stories are legends and tales of chiv-
alry. The one hundred and fifty little girls on
Friday afternoon are not very unlike the boys,
although they want to sew while they are hearing
their stories. The value of these clubs, I believe,
lies almost entirely in their success in arousing
the higher imagination. We have had a kinder-
garten at Hull House ever since we have lived
Objective Value of a Social Settlement. 45
there. Every morning miniature Italians, He-
brews, French, Irish, and Germans assemble in
our drawing-room, and nothing seems to excite.
admiration in the neighborhood so much as the
fact that we "put up with them."
In addition to the neighbors who respond to the
receptions and classes are found those who are too
battered and oppressed to care for them. To these,
however, is left that susceptibility to the bare offices
of humanity which raises such offices into a bond.
of fellowship. These claim humanitarian efforts.
Perhaps the chief value of a Settlement to its
neighborhood, certainly to the newly arrived for-
eigner, is its office as an information and interpre-
tation bureau. It sometimes seems as if the busi-
ness of the Settlement were that of a commission
merchant. Without endowment and without capi-
tal itself, it constantly acts between the various
institutions of the city and the people for whose
benefit these institutions were erected. The hos-
pitals, the county agencies, and State asylums, are
often but vague rumors to the people who need
them most. This commission work, as I take it,
is of value not only to the recipient, but to the
institutions themselves. Each institution, unlike a
settlement, is obliged to determine upon the line
of its activity, to accept its endowment for that
end and do the best it can. But each time this is
accomplished it is apt to lace itself up in certain
formulas, is in danger of forgetting the mystery
46
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
and complexity of life, of repressing the prompt-
ings that spring from growing insight.
The residents of a Social Settlement have an
opportunity of seeing institutions from the recipi-
ent's standpoint, of catching the spirit of the origi-
nal impulse which founded them. This experience
ought to have a certain value and ultimately find
expression in institutional management. One of
the residents of Hull House received this winter
an appointment from the Cook County agent as a
county visitor. She reported at the agency each
morning, and all the cases within a radius of seve-
ral blocks from Hull House were given to her for
investigation. This gave her a legitimate oppor-
tunity for knowing the poorest people in the neigh-
borhood. In no cases were her recommendations
refused or her judgments reversed by the men in
charge of the office. From the very nature of our
existence and purpose we are bound to keep on
good terms with every beneficent institution in the
city. Passing by our telephone last Sunday morn-
ing, I was struck with the list of numbers hung on
the wall for easy reference. They were those of
the Visiting Nurses' Association; Cook County
Hospital; Women's and Children's Hospital; Max-
well Street Police Station for city ambulance;
Health Department, City Hall; Cook County
Agent, etc. We have been on very good terms
with the Hebrew Relief and Aid Society, the Chil-
dren's Aid, the Humane Society, the Municipal
Objective Value of a Social Settlement.
47
Order League, and with the various church and
national relief associations. Every summer we
send out dozens of children to the country on the
66
Daily News" Fresh Air Fund and to the Holiday
Home at Lake Geneva. Our most complete co-op-
eration has been with the Visiting Nurses' Associa-
tion. One of the nurses lives at Hull House, pays
her board as a resident, and does her work from
there. Friends of the house are constantly in
need of her ministrations, and her cases become
friends of the house. Owing to the lack of a char-
ity organization society in Chicago we have been
obliged to keep a sum of money as a relief fund.
Five bath-rooms in the rear of Hull House are
open to the neighborhood and are constantly in
The number of baths taken in July was
nine hundred and eighty.
use.
The more definite humanitarian effort of Hull
House has taken shape in a day nursery, which
was started during the second year of our residence
on Halsted Street. A frame cottage of six rooms
across our yard has been fitted up as a crèche. At
present we receive from thirty to forty children
daily. A young lady who has had kindergarten
training is in charge; she has the assistance of an
older woman, and a kindergarten by a professional
teacher is held each morning in the play-room.
This nursery is not merely a convenience in the
neighborhood; it is, to a certain extent, a neigh-
borhood affair. Similar in spirit is the Hull House
48
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
Diet Kitchen, in a little cottage directly back of
the nursery. Food is prepared for invalids and
orders are taken from physicians and visiting nurses
of the district. We have lately had an outfit of
Mr. Atkinson's inventions, in which the women of
the neighborhood have taken a most intelligent
interest, especially the members of the Hull House
Woman's Club. This club meets one afternoon a
week. It is composed of the most. able women of
the neighborhood, who enjoy the formal addresses
and many informal discussions. The economics.
of food and fuel are freely discussed. The Hull
House household expenses are frankly compared
with those of other households. There is little
doubt that "friendly visiting," while of great
value, to be complete should also include the
friendly visited." The residents at Hull House
find in themselves a constantly increasing tendency
to consult their neighbors on the advisability of
each new undertaking. We have lately opened
a boarding club for working girls near Hull House
on the co-operative plan. I say advisedly that we
have "opened" it; the running of it is quite in
the hands of the girls themselves. The furniture,
pictures, etc., belong to Hull House, and whatever
experience we have is at their disposal; but it is
in no sense a working-girls' "home," nor is it to
be run from the outside. We hope a great deal
from this little attempt at co-operative housekeep-
ing. The club has been running three months on
66
Objective Value of a Social Settlement. 49
a self-supporting basis and has thirty-five mem-
bers.
The Coffee House which is being built in con-
nection with Hull House contains a large kitchen
fitted on the New-England Kitchen plan. We
hope by the sale of properly cooked foods, to make
not only co-operative housekeeping but all the
housekeeping of the neighborhood easier and more
economical. The Coffee House itself, with its club-
rooms, will be a less formal social centre than our
drawing-room.
Helpful recourses from the neighborhood itself
constantly develop, physicians benefit societies,
ministers and priests are always ready to co-oper-
ate in any given case. Young girls from the
neighborhood assist in the children's classes, moth-
ers help in the nursery, young men teach in the
gymnasium, or secure students for an experimental
course of lectures. We constantly rely more and
more on neighborhood assistance.
In summing up the objective value of Hull
House, I am sorry we have not more to present in
the line of civic activities. It was through the
energy of a resident this spring that the fact that
the public-school census recorded 6976 school-chil-
dren in the nineteenth ward and that they were
provided with only 2957 public-school sittings was
made prominent just before the appropriations
were voted for school buildings and sites. It was
largely through her energy, and the energy of the
50
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
people whom she interested in it, that the Board
of Education was induced to purchase a site for a
school building in our ward and to save and equip
for immediate use a school-house about to be turned
into a warehouse.
During two months of this summer the reports
sent in from Hull House to the Municipal Order
League, and through it to the Health Department,
were one thousand and thirty-seven. The Depart-
ment showed great readiness to co-operate with
this volunteer inspection, and a marked improve-
ment has taken place in the scavenger service and
in the regulation of the small stables of the ward.
Hull House has had, I hope, a certain value to
the women's trades unions of Chicago. It seems
to me of great importance that as trades unions of
women are being formed they should be kept, if
possible, from falling into the self-same pits the
men's unions have fallen into. Women possessing
no votes, and therefore having little political value,
will be both of advantage and disadvantage to their
unions. Four women's unions have met regularly
at Hull House: the book-binders', the shoemakers',
the shirtmakers', and the cloak-makers'. The last
two were organized at Hull House. It has seemed
to us that the sewing trades are most in need of
help. They are thoroughly disorganized, Russian
and Polish tailors competing against English-speak-
ing tailors, young girls and Italian women compet-
ing against both. An efficient union which should
Objective Value of a Social Settlement. 51
combine all these elements seems very difficult,
unless it grow strong enough to offer a label and
receive unexpected aid from the manufacturers.
In that case there would be the hope of co-opera-
tion on the part of the consumers, as the fear of
contagion from ready-made clothing has at last
seized the imagination of the public.
That the trades unions themselves care for what
we have done for them, is shown by the fact that
when the committee of investigation for the sweat-
ing system was appointed by the Trades and Labor
Assembly, consisting of five delegates from the
unions and five from other citizens, two of the
latter were residents of Hull House. It is logical
that a Settlement should have a certain value in
labor complications, having from its very position
sympathies entangled on both sides. Last May
twenty girls from a knitting factory who struck
because they were docked for loss of time when
they were working by the piece, came directly
from the factory to Hull House. They had heard
that we "stood by working people." We were
able to have the strike arbitrated, and although
six girls lost their places, the unjust fines were
remitted, and we had the satisfaction of putting on
record one more case of arbitration in the slowly
growing list. We were helped in this case, as we
have been in many others, by the Bureau of Jus-
tice. Its office is constantly crowded with working
people who hope for redress from the law, but have
52
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
no money with which to pay for it. There should
be an office of this bureau in every ward; “down
town" seems far away and inaccessible to the most
ignorant. Hull House, in spite of itself, does a
good deal of legal work. We have secured support
for deserted women, insurance for bewildered wid-
ows, damages for injured operators, furniture from
the clutches of the instalment store. One function
of the Settlement to its neighborhood somewhat
resembles that of the big brother whose mere pres-
ence on the play-ground protects the little one
from bullies. A resident at Hull House is at
present, collecting labor statistics in the neighbor-
hood for the Illinois State Bureau of Labor. It is
a matter of satisfaction that this work can be done
from the Settlement, and the residents receive the
benefit of the information collected.
It is difficult to classify the Working People's
Social Science Club, which meets weekly at Hull
House. It is social, educational, and civic in char-
acter, the latter chiefly because it strongly connects
the House with the labor problems in their political
and social aspects. This club was organized at
Hull House in the spring of 1890 by an English
working-man. It has met weekly since, save dur-
ing the months of summer. At eight o'clock every
Wednesday evening the secretary calls to order
from forty to one hundred people. A chairman
for the evening is elected, and a speaker is intro-
duced who is allowed to talk until nine o'clock;
Objective Value of a Social Settlement. 53
his subject is then thrown open to discussion and
a lively debate ensues until ten o'clock, at which
hour the meeting is declared adjourned. The en-
thusiasm of this club seldom lags. Its zest for dis-
cussion is unceasing, and any attempt to turn it
into a study or reading club always meets with the
strong disapprobation of the members. Chicago is
full of social theorists. It offers a cosmopolitan
opportunity for discussion. The only possible dan-
ger from this commingling of many theories is in-
curred when there is an attempt at suppression;
bottled up, there is danger of explosion; constantly
uncorked, open to the deodorizing and freeing pro-
cess of the air, all danger is averted. Nothing so
disconcerts a social agitator as to find among his
auditors men who have been through all that, and
who are quite as radical as he in another direction.
The economic conferences which were held be-
tween business men and working-men, during the
winter of 1888-89 and the two succeeding winters,
doubtless did much toward relieving this state of
effervescence. Many thoughtful men in Chicago
are convinced that, if these conferences had been
established earlier, the Haymarket riot and all its
sensational results might have been avoided. The
Sunset Club is at present performing much the
same function. There is still need, however, for
many of these clubs where men who differ widely
in their social theories can meet for discussion,
where representatives of the various economic
54
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
schools can modify each other, and at least learn
tolerance and the futility of endeavoring to con-
vince all the world of the truth of one position.
To meet in a social-science club is more educational
than to meet in a single-tax club, or a socialistic
chapter, or a personal-rights league, although the
millennium may seem farther off after such a meet-
ing. In addition to this modification of view there
is doubtless a distinct modification of attitude.
Last spring the Hull House Social Science Club
heard a series of talks on municipal and county
affairs by the heads of the various departments.
During the discussion following the address on
"The Chicago Police," a working-man had the
pleasure of telling the chief of police that he had
been arrested, obliged to pay two dollars and a half,
and had lost three days' work, because he had come
out of the wrong gate when he was working on the
World's Fair grounds. The chief sighed, expressed
his regret, and made no defence. The speaker sat
down bewildered; evidently for the first time in
his life he realized that blunders cut the heart of
more than the victim.
Is it possible for men, however far apart in out-
ward circumstances, for the capitalist and the
working-man, to use the common phrase, to meet
as individuals beneath a friendly roof, open their
minds each to each, and not have their "class the-
ories" insensibly modified by the kindly attrition
of a personal acquaintance? In the light of our
experience I should say not.
Objective Value of a Social Settlement. 55
In describing Hull House and in referring so
often to the "residents," I feel that I may have
given a wrong impression. By far the larger
amount of the teaching and formal club work is
done by people living outside of the House. Be-
tween ninety and one hundred of these people
meet an appointment regularly each week. Our
strength lies largely in this element. The average
number of people who come to the House during
the week is one thousand.
I am always sorry to have Hull House regarded
as philanthropy, although it doubtless has strong
philanthropic tendencies, and has several distinct
charitable departments which are conscientiously
carried on. It is unfair, however, to apply the
word philanthropic to the activities of the House
as a whole. Charles Booth, in his brilliant chapter
on "The Unemployed," expresses regret that the
problems of the working class are so often con-
founded with the problems of the inefficient, the
idle, and distressed. To confound thus two prob-
lems is to render the solution of both impossible.
Hull House, while endeavoring to fulfil its obliga-
tions to neighbors of varying needs, will do great
harm if it confounds distinct problems. Working
people live in the same streets with those in need
of charity, but they themselves, so long as they
have health and good wages, require and want
none of it. As one of their number has said, they
require only that their aspirations be recognized

56
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
and stimulated, and the means of attaining them
put at their disposal. Hull House makes a con-
stant effort to secure these means for its neighbors,
but to call that effort philanthropy is to use the
word unfairly and to underestimate the duties of
good citizenship.
The University Settlement Idea.
57
III.
THE UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENT IDEA.
BY ROBERT A. WOODS, "THE ANDOVER HOUSE," Boston.
IN the movement toward a better social life
which is going forward nearly everywhere now,
there is a resemblance to the great changes that
took place at the end of the Middle Ages, out of
which came the nations of modern Europe. All
Europe had for the time forgotten itself in the
excitement and adventure of the Crusades. A
new and strange world, with its unusual customs.
and activities, had come into general knowledge,
and began to give men a fresh look at their old
surroundings from an altered point of view. A
great moral impulse, which united all classes of
society, and men from distant places, threw aside
the petty rule of feudal lords and made the minds
of the people open to the thought of being held
together in the larger national bond.
At present we are returning from the modern
kind of adventure, - from exploration, enterprise,
invention. Applying to the general life of men
the new conception of complex and intimate rela-
58
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
tionships which the advance of science has brought,
and the idea of unity which is the note of the phi-
losophy of the time, we are working toward vast
changes in the life of modern society, not perhaps
so visible and outward as those involved in the for-
mation of nations, but so profound as to be likely to
make over the inner and closer life of modern people.
The old bond of union was that of a political
compact; the new bond of union is that of a social
organism. It must have seemed difficult enough
for those who had known only loyalty to a local
lord to think of large numbers of duchies being
held together by the single power of one great
ruler; to think of an influence which should per-
meate into the different villages, and bring each
into a common feeling with all the rest. The prog-
ress of republican government was held back at
first, and is still greatly hindered, by the feeling
that the people as rulers can wield only an intang-
ible and ineffective force, as against the amorphous
and unwieldy mass of the people as the subjects of
government. But the idea of the nation, and of
the self-governed nation, is now a commonplace;
it is the idea of the social organism that we, in our
turn, are struggling to make real to ourselves.
Civilization is overreaching itself. Certain of
its tendencies develop rankly, before corrective
tendencies have begun to operate. The result is
congestion in some places, and atrophy in others.
We must find ways of uniting the parts of the
The University Settlement Idea.
59
social body, under the bonds of civilization, so that
its vital influence shall not linger sluggishly at
certain centres, but shall run strongly out into
every distant extremity. It is no longer the nega-
tive ends of safety and freedom that are most to be
sought for; it is as to the living out of life among
the people that we are concerned. What has been
left undone by spent forces will be accomplished
through the rising momentum of new forces. We
find ourselves compelled, to-day, in the interest of
civilization itself, to see that the influences of civili-
zation penetrate into all the ramifications of society.
The great city-the typical product of civilization
shows by multiple effects the danger of having
people cut off from the better life of society, and
breeding with phenomenal rapidity all the evils
with which society is cursed. And the difficulty
is by no means confined to the most crowded
quarters of cities. The poverty of the means of
life is felt in other sections of cities besides those
called the slums, among grades of people above
those called the working people. Factory towns.
grow quickly, and mass together a large population
with very little care that they shall live in a human
way. And country villages, cut off by distance
from elevating influences, as crowded city quarters
are by their numbers, often reached by the bad
effects of civilization far more quickly than by the
good, offer a problem almost as serious as that of
the cities themselves.
60
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
This situation, while it has always existed to a
degree, is yet distinctly the product of the present
time. Not until now could we fairly have appre-
ciated it. Only now have we means adapted to
meet it. Only modern civilization could have
brought about the difficulty; only modern civili-
zation could have understood it; only modern civ-
ilization can overcome it. The task is to make
provision so that every part of society shall not
only have a full supply for its fundamental human
wants, but shall also be constantly refreshed from
the higher sources of happier and nobler life. The
great social evil is that the resources of society are
so illy applied to the supplying of its needs.
There must be a shifting of resources to meet
needs. The forces of civilization must be mobi-
lized, and made ready for every sort of transference,
until every tenement block, every country hamlet,
may be able each in its kind to summon for its use
all that can push out the present boundaries of life
so as to make life what it is designed to be. From
the point of view of the individual, and at close
range, this is philanthropy; from the point of view
of society, this is only far-sighted social statesman-
ship. The isolated philanthropy of one generation
becomes the organized social work of the next, and
perhaps the public charge of the third. The moral
bullion of one age becomes the economic, and even
the political, legal tender of the succeeding age.
And these outward changes fully indicate that the
The University Settlement Idea.
61
new bond of union has been entered into by society;
and that in higher and higher ranges of life the
forces of civilization are having a way made straight
for them; so that more and more the best that life
can mean shall become current in the whole ex-
perience of men, and shall add some distinctive
touch to all their words and acts.
Now, apart from all general movements, politi-
cal, economic, educational, and religious, toward a
more comprehensive and more delicate organiza-
tion of social life, there is a necessity for work to
be done at many points where social evils are
intrenched so that they cannot be met, even if
they could be rightly estimated, by such agencies.
The arm of the law, public and private charity.
benevolent societies and institutions, churches, may
fulfil ever so well their particular functions; but as
yet, with a few notable exceptions, there are great.
tracts of life that are not entered, and are hardly
known of, by these existing agencies. There must
be some influence which shall enter in and take
possession of these tracts of life in the name of
what is true and pure. The lines along which
this influence shall act are varied, intricate, and
ill-defined. It must come close to the lives of the
people themselves. It must be keen and sensitive
to every sort of delicate, subtle feeling they have.
It must, in short, be a personal influence. The
person must act in a close, continued intimacy
with those to whom he comes; that is, he must be
62
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
>
a neighbor. He must join freely in the neighbor-
hood life. He must have so varied an interest in
human affairs that he shall be able to enter actively
into sympathy on some side of life with every one
of them. He must not establish a propaganda.
He must not at first even have methods. He must
not set about building up one more institution.
He must not hurry. Above all, he must not be
anxious about results. The children of this gen-
eration seek for a sign, but there shall be no sign
given them; he must be content that the genera-
tions of the future shall see his work in its true
light. This person, therefore, must have the his-
toric sense and the philosophic breadth of view.
He must love men, but deeper than all he must
love humanity. All these things mean that this
person must have drunk at the fountains of knowl-
edge. One can hardly imagine an uneducated
person coming as a true prophet to that vast region
of life which is not mapped out, divided into
departments, called by names, and embraced within
a cultus. In the sociological pantheon this wor-
ship is at the altar of the Unknown God. The
worshipper must come not only with the zeal for
service, but with that eager, inquiring mind
through which he shall be led into varied and
constantly developing knowledge and power.
Now if we are bold enough to hold that civili-
zation must do its work for the whole of society,
and for every class and every section of society,
The University Settlement Idea.
63
we must, I think, see that it is absolutely essential
that such effort as has been indicated should be
undertaken, - not that it is interesting and com-
mendable that it should be undertaken, but that
if civilization is in any large degree to do its work
for humanity, such effort is essential. It is for
this reason that one dares to believe that the uni-
versity settlements, small in number and slight in
results as yet, are destined to fill an important
place along with the many other forces which are
making for social progress. They come near to
fulfilling the conditions that have been laid down.
Their workers, like the people of the neighbor-
hood, not only work there but live there. As col-
lege men and women, they have learned to a degree
how to live the good and beautiful life. As cul-
tured persons, they believe in the saving quality
of every sort of influence which tends to make
men and women true to the human pattern. They
also take a scientific as well as philanthropic
interest in learning accurately and comprehensively
just what the state of life is their neighborhood.
They are able to compare this kind of life with
other kinds of life, and to see how each kind may
be bettered by taking up elements of the other
kinds. By their broader knowledge and sym-
pathies, they are able to originate plans for bring-
ing unused resources of society to meet its unfilled
needs, and are able to put into fuller operation
agencies that are already in one way or another
attempting to restore the balance.

64
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
A university, and a college in its measure, ought
to be the special exponent of advancing civiliza-
tion. It stands not only for a knowledge of the
whole world as it is, but for the variety of human
interests and hopes. The troubles of society ought
to be most keenly felt there. That great masses
of men and women are cut off from the better life
of society, unknown and uncared for, is, rightly
considered, a direct imputation of shame upon
the university. It means that the cause of the
university is in danger. It means, also, that the
university is falling short of its full use. The uni-
versity man or woman, that is, the truly cultured
man or woman, at the end of the nineteenth
century, is the one who ought to be able to go
everywhere through the world, filled with child-
like wonder, but never at the last capable of
being surprised. But, alas! how we find ourselves,
after our academical, and even after our profes-
sional course lost not merely in a vast body of
new facts, tha was to be expected, - but lost
in a maze of counting principles. There are
more things in life tha are dreamed of in our
history, our political economy, or even in our
philosophy. The weak idealism with which most
graduates go into their life-work makes it inevi-
table that they should be racked and torn before
they have rightly estimated the forces of evil,
which must sometimes, in the narrower view of
things, seem to be the only forces there are. Cul-

The University Settlement Idea.
65
Kam
ture has progressed by gradually imaging in itself
all that goes to make up the world's life. But
here are vast sections of mankind, whose life, for
all that is distinctive of it, is practically an undis-
covered country to those who most clearly stand
for culture. How provincial our culture is. To
how great a degree ignorant, to how great a
degree selfish. How it generalizes about men,-
the proper study of mankind is man, and calls
the result knowledge of them. How it satisfies
itself with a distant echo of feeling for them.
How often it develops effeminacy, instead of the
strong, chastened refinement of the citizen of the
world. Wrote Arnold Toynbee to his friends at
Oxford: "Our delicate, impalpable sorrows; our
keen, aching, darling emotions; how strange, al-
most unreal they seem by the side of the great
mass of filthy misery that clogs the life of great
cities."
The University Settlements, then, as the parent
movement of University Extension, stand for a
double sense of urgency on the part of the uni-
versities, the necessity of giving what they have
in abundance, and the necessity of gaining what
they need in order to be true to themselves. There
is a sort of sentimental cant which is indulged in
by those who have but slightly touched the problem
of the Settlements, which represents the university
men and women as youthful martyrs bringing all
that is illuminating into places of absolute dark-
Dules Pegt.
66
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
+
ness.
"Elevation by contact" is a phrase which
these like to use. There is also a cant of those who
have seen somewhat more of Settlement work which
represents the residents as combining together in a
sort of club for the sake of a period of romantic
existence which they in a measure justify by learn-
ing much out of the experience of their poorer
neighbors. Let us clear our minds of caut. Let
us, to begin with, simply remember that the uni-
versity and the closely populated city quarter
each need the other; and from that pass on to
consider how the representatives of each can learn
and do learn mutual helpfulness. But in judging
the work of the Settlements one does not, I think,
get the right point of view who looks at them
apart from the great social changes which they in
their measure represent. Looked at in the true
perspective, one sees that the simple fact of a group
of educated men or women taking up their resi-
dence in a poor part of a city is something of sig
nificance and value. The phrase "elevation by
contact," ill-used as it has been, contains a truth
in it. Let us not, in the endeavor to escape being
patronizing, make the mistake of standing so erect
as to lose our balance backward. The University
Settlement comes into the district from without.
It is, if you please, imposed upon the district.
The residents come first of all to help, conscious
of bringing with them resources that will be posi-
tive contributions to the life of the district. They
The University Settlement Idea.
67
should have no fond hope of galvanizing a higher
existence into the people, making it seem, by a
sort of deus ex machina illusion, as if the people
had accomplished the result of themselves. They
should continue to bring in from without the dis-
trict a variety of helpful influences. They should
abhor patronage as they abhor the curse; but they
will soon learn that their poorer neighbors detect
and despise false humility just as readily. The
true attitude for every social worker is that of a
member of a noble family, in which there is the
widest inequality, but equality and inequality are
never thought of, and greater knowledge and
strength mean only greater love and service.
It is, of course, perfectly true that, novel as is
the plan of the University Settlements, and consid-
erable as is their value for bringing about and
giving expression to the changed attitude of the
educated classes to the working classes, yet their
critical test will be whether they can justify them-
selves as establishments where men and women
under organized direction shall become trained to
do continuous, painstaking work of investigation
and action, so that each Settlement shall be accom-
plishing the improvement of its own neighborhood,
and shall, from time to time, send out skilled
workers to continue similar efforts in other sur-
roundings. This test, under a right understanding
of what a University Settlement is in its motive
and functions, every supporter of the Settlements
68
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
will heartily welcome. The only caution that need
now be made is that in the initial stages of the
movement any strictures made upon it, in compari-
son with the work of established institutions or
organizations following a few easily defined lines
and acting through specialists of long experience,
must be considered as resulting from a false esti-
mate of what Settlement work is in idea, as well
as of what, under its limitations, it must for some
years yet be in fact. For the present, the work
must be done by amateurs, for there are no profes-
sionals. It must not now and it may never be too
closely organized, because it consists so largely of
turning to social account delicate kinds of influ-
ence which cannot be borne through the channels
of organization. And too much regularity and con-
stancy must not yet be expected when those who
enter this work have so largely to live upon locusts
and wild honey, and to go clad in camel's hair.
The prime requisite in the minds of educated
men in undertaking any task is to know to a
greater or less degree the situation in which they
are to work and the material which they are to
work upon. The close, scientific study of the
social conditions in the neighborhood about a
Settlement is indispensable to its success. Of
course, careful social analysis of a neighborhood
demands the observation of months and years; but
the task should be undertaken from the very begin-
ning. The movement of the Settlements will be
The University Settlement Idea.
69
false to its promise, it will cut off its own future,
if it do not know for itself, and tell thinking
people, and by its absolute statement of facts com-
pel thinking people to hear, how the other half
lives. The residents should become familiar with
all that goes to make up the life about them,
what homes the people have, their sanitary condi-
tion, their privacy, their comfortableness, their
adornment; what food and drink the people have;
what clothes they wear; what work they do, and
all the questionable conditions that surround the
labor of men and women in these days; what wages
they receive, and how well or ill they spend their
money; what knowledge they are gaining; what
amusements they have; all the little amenities of
their lives; their cruelty, their unselfishness;
their loves, their hates, their sins, their crimes,
their hopes. Now this searching investigation can
never be made by the mere canvasser or statistician.
It comes only by long and loving acquaintance.
Science and sympathy must unite if we are to have
any living knowledge of the poor. This knowl-
edge the University Settlements offer good promise
of giving, after seeing the lives of the people
with that quickened vision which comes from a
warm heart, representing them again with the
faithfulness of the truth-loving mind. Such work
will, if it is seriously and systematically followed,
give to the residents a keen sense of what the
needs of the people are, in their just proportion
70
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
and relation, and will develop in them a selective
instinct for finding what may best be done to fill
their needs, and it will even make the situation
stand out before their minds until it shall induce
in them the thought of newer and better forms
of helpfulness.
After the study of the social statics of the neigh-
borhood comes the study of its social dynamics.
What the people are accomplishing for themselves
both in their individual and home life, and in local
organizations for whatever purpose, is a matter of
absolute importance to a Settlement before launch-
ing into its more constructive activity. Such effort
on the part of the people will indicate more truly
than anything else just where the greatest ground
for hope is. The presumption is always against
having a Settlement introduce any new institutional
scheme. It is always in favor of falling in with
the current of what is already advancing in the
neighborhood. In an enterprise of the people's
own, you find them under a kind of momentum
which can never be so well artificially aroused.
Every original aspiration for better things becomes
to the resident of a true spirit something to be
known and understood, and then fostered with
tender care. Every beginning of independent
organization has to him the interest that a rare
specimen has to a naturalist. And so, gradually
by the united efforts of the residents, the Settle-
ment, as a whole, comes to be in sympathetic touch
The University Settlement Idea.
71
with the homes of its neighbors, and with all com-
bined movements among them toward trade organi-
zation, co-operation, or thrift, or toward education
and recreation. And a Settlement is false to its
purpose if it do not take knowledge also of the
organized forces of sin that are at work in its
vicinity. Sometimes these are not to a great degree
developed out of the life of the neighborhood as
such, but are foisted upon it by persons of other
and more well-to-do neighborhoods. But even in
such a case, the neighborhood in question by no
means escapes the contagion of evil. The curse of
the poor is their poverty; often the sacred hearth-
stone of honest poverty must be within sound of
the revelry and debauchery of those to whom
society is pleased to give its greater rewards.
University Settlements must be courageous enough
and scientific enough to face the grim, inhuman
evils that flaunt themselves in what are termed
the less respectable sections of cities, the horror
of prostitution, the horror of drunkenness, and all
their accompaniments and consequences. The
time has come when the educated man and the
educated woman must no longer merely shudder
and turn away from the dark depths of life. The
educated person cares little for the words and the
ways of the sensationalist and the purveyor of arti-
ficial reforms. But he respects just as little that
form of refined selfishness which says, "These
things always have been and always will be; who
touches them touches pitch."
72
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
A Settlement must be intimately acquainted
with all other agencies which have come from
without the neighborhood, with the intention of
working for its improvement in some way or other.
From the broadest possible view of the means of
social progress, the residents ought to learn to
estimate how far these agencies do really upbuild
the people, and they ought to put themselves in
a position where they can intelligently acknowl-
edge and under right circumstances join in the
good work that is being done. I think young
graduates entering into social work are in especial
danger of being too narrowly critical of the efforts
of sagacious people who have had a different sort
of training for life than they. Their sense of pro-
portion here often fails them. It is of great impor-
tance to the whole movement of the Settlements
that other kinds of social workers shall not be
given cause to think of the residents as a group of
exquisites, who find value only in certain highly
refined methods, and condemn the rest because of
flaws they may find. Often one's judgment as to
the value of certain kinds of work is greatly modi-
fied by fuller knowledge of the situation in which
the workers find themselves. It is therefore the
business of the residents to give sympathetic study
to forms of work which are conducted with a lack
of taste and discernment, and even to those which
are undertaken from what may seem to be mis-
taken motives. They must have the sense which
The University Settlement Idea.
73
will enable them to see the value of the spirit of
service under widely various forms. The à priori
argument against any plan is almost worthless to
the social investigator. What contribution does
it make in its results to the living of life in this
neighborhood, or in what way does it hinder the
living of life in this neighborhood, are the ques-
tions for the men or women of a Settlement.
And so it ought to be a matter of deep interest
to each resident to become thoroughly conversant
with the neighborhood existence. He must have
his conversation, his citizenship, there. From be-
fore the establishment of the Settlement through
all its career, this process of acquaintance must
continue. Who can say what vast results may
come when a succession of educated men and
women return to their more regular life in the
home, in the business house, in the school and
college, in the church, knowing from a living
experience, through the daily use of all the senses,
just what the life of the working classes, and the
classes below them, actually is.
XIt is very important, for the first at least, that
the Settlements should be located with a view to
the most favorable opportunity for studying what
is distinctive of the great metropolitan poor quar-
ters. The first Settlements ought to be located
where they can be within range of the variety of
social problems which a city offers. There seems
to be a current impression that a Settlement ought
74
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
to be placed in the very midst of the most degraded
and hopeless classes, and, when Settlements are
not so situated, it is not an uncommon experience
for some who have cherished mistaken sentiment
with regard to Settlement work almost to disparage
the purpose of those at work, as if they were seek-
ing the crown without the cross. But the object
of a Settlement is distinctly to face the whole
problem of the less favored classes, and all the
different phases of it. The Settlement, therefore,
is best located where it can easily look every way,
-toward the very poor, toward the regularly em-
ployed working people, and toward the criminal
and vicious elements which are found in spots and
streaks in all degrees of outward respectability.
This is very important if the active work of the
Settlement for the improvement of the people is to
have the value of a comprehensive experiment. A
Settlement located in the midst of a slum could
deal with the people of the slum, but only as it
made over the slum by new buildings, could it
secure the interest of the better grades of working
people. The self-respecting poor are often as jeal-
ous of their social standing as a duchess of her place
in the order of precedence.
It is also an advantage for a Settlement to be
situated so as to be within easy reach of the whole
of the surrounding section of the city. In many of
our American cities there are already, or soon will
be, great metropolitan poor districts. In the midst
The University Settlement Idea.
75
of these, rather than in distant and sequestered
working-class quarters, the Settlement ought to be
placed. Often there are other parts of the city that
seem to be more needy, but they present a narrower
range of problems, and are often so far away as to
be practically separate villages or towns by them-
selves. Where the great forces of a city's common
life are steadily developing a distinctively metro-
politan poor district, even though the process has
not advanced very far, there, both for the sake of
the investigation and of the active work of social
reform, is where the University Settlement ought
to be,—if possible just out of hearing of the din
and roar of traffic, and just out of sight of the glare
of the evening promenade.
Of course, after the most casual preliminary
investigation, the question begins at once to rise,
What shall we do? And though there is danger
in Settlement work of rushing too quickly into
schemes for the improvement of the neighborhood,
yet it is for the improvement of the neighborhood,
above everything else, that the Settlement has come.
And the first thing to do is to strengthen the things
which remain. Every kind of centre of social life
in the neighborhood should become the object of
the wisest care that the Settlement can give. First
of all, the Settlement should begin by being as
nearly as possible a home. It is a disadvantage, I
think, to have, from the first, easy public access to
the house. The residents should be neighbors, and
76
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
should become acquainted in the same natural way
by which neighbors become acquainted in the sim-
pler circles of society, —that is, they must neither
intrude, after the fashion of the census-taker, nor
must they hold coldly aloof until all the forms of
introduction have been gone through. The first
and constant effort of the Settlement should be to
have its men or its women come into relations of
friendliness and intimacy with the people in their
homes. The bringing out of the possibilities of
home life among the working people is one of the
most valuable results that a group of educated men
or women could aim at; and, of course, the women
residents can accomplish far more in this direction
than the men. It is a good plan to have one resi-
dent especially to visit in each of certain groups of
houses, such as can conveniently be classified; and
then, without hurry, or the use of mechanical means,
let him become thoroughly acquainted with the
people living there, with the purpose of bringing
the resources of the Settlement to bear upon that
quarter just as fully as the circumstances, when
they become known, will allow. As time goes on,
the homes of the neighborhood will be better in
their sanitary condition, in their food, in their read-
ing, in their enjoyments, in their morals, and in
their religious life, through direction and assistance
from the Settlement. This department of the work
is capable of being systematically laid out and all
its needs provided for; and this kind of organiza-
The University Settlement Idea.
77
tion might go on as rapidly as the residents could
complete roughly the social analysis of the streets
in which they undertake to visit.
Similar careful treatment must be given the local
organizations. These will very rarely run on neigh-
borhood lines, but the residents, in so far as they
connect themselves with the organizations, ought
to do so simply upon their claims as dwellers in the
vicinity. It is even important that the residents
should remain in the background so far as official
position in such societies is concerned. In this
way they can have a better influence, as they will
remain outside of all the factional quarrels that rise
out of the thirst for prominence. The Settlement
ought to be represented, so far as possible, in every
organization which has any visible influence in the
local community, whether the object be one of vital
interest or not, the development of independent
social forms is so important. As to the secret.
orders which are so common everywhere, it is a
question whether it is worth while to take up at all
with them. It certainly would not be well at the
beginning to expend force in that way. But what-
ever trade unions, working-men's clubs, temperance
societies, and even political clubs there are, ought
to receive the sympathy, and so far as is possible
without compromise, the active support of the Set-
tlement. It is particularly important that the
leaders of these organizations, and other influential
persons of the neighborhood, should be made friends
78
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
籮
​of, unless they are unworthy of friendship. It is
perhaps needless to say that in all these relations
the residents must be frank to recognize the ability
and worth of the people whom they meet, acting
naturally, whether as learners or teachers.
A work only second in importance to the en-
couraging of the inhabitants of the neighborhood
in what they are doing for themselves is that of
co-operating with all the good forces already active
in the neighborhood which are not original devel-.
opments of its own immediate life. In these would
be included all the officers of the law, the teachers
in the schools, the agents of charitable societies,
and the clergymen in charge of the churches. In
the case of aldermen and police officials, of course,
the character of the men differs very widely. The
policy of the Settlement ought to be, first, to make
every possible effort to establish friendly relations
with these men, and through such relations to
secure a knowledge of the situation and increased
effort for its improvement; but if these means
fail, then the residents must use more forcible
methods. There are many ways in which friendly
acquaintance with the police can be of great use
to a Settlement, especially if the residents are
bound to know the whole state of their neighbor-
hood. Moreover, there are few persons in the
community more deserving of the sympathy and
support of good people than an honest policeman
located in a bad city quarter. He has to stem

The University Settlement Idea.
79
the tide of the city's moral defilement as no other
person is called upon to do; and he is almost
wholly deprived of the uplift, which nearly every
social worker now feels, that comes from knowing
of a great body of true men and women who are
glad of the work he is doing. Another class of
persons who make a valuable moral contribution
to society and receive very little moral return at
the hands of society is the school teachers. The
residents of a Settlement can be of great use both
in confirming them in what they already do well,
and in assisting them to have better purposes and
methods. The schools can be made in many ways
better factors in the social development of the chil-
dren than they now are, by the introduction of the
many new methods of instruction, by the gradual
addition of manual training to the curriculum, and
by a larger use of school buildings for combined
instruction and recreation.
The study and practice of scientific charity is a
most important line of effort for a Settlement to
undertake. Residents should join the local com-
mittees of such charities as are already organized;
and while it is doubtful whether a Settlement
should become identified with any charity to the
extent of having its local headquarters in the
Settlement house, yet certain members of the group
ought to give themselves especially to becoming
thoroughly acquainted with the state of the de-
pendent and casual classes and to the skilful

80
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
administration of relief. All organizations that
exist in the city for the care of children, for assist-
ing in special ways the worthy but unfortunate
poor, for improving the dwellings of the people,
and for increasing facilities for public recreation,
should receive regular support, for the sake of
having their benefits brought more fully into the
neighborhood.
What shall be done with regard to co-operating
with the religious forces of the neighborhood?
On this question a variety of attitudes are taken.
Some say there is so much jealousy and partisan-
ship connected with religion that a Settlement
attempting to work on broad neighborhood lines
must be absolutely neutral on matters of religion.
Some others, admitting the difficulty, still say
that they will not remove from their programme
what they consider to be of so vital importance,
but will bring in that form of religion which they
think is the best, with the hope of gaining for it
the support of a part of those who are helped by
the other work of the Settlement. I believe there
are very important reasons that both of these kinds
of Settlements should exist. There are certainly
many city neighborhoods where an avowed re-
ligious connection would very much hamper the
work of the Settlement. There are also many
men in these days, and some women, who can
work only with a non-religious Settlement. On
the other hand, there are many who can work far
The University Settlement Idea.
81
better under a definite religious standard. And
there are many places where a definite religious
allegiance is a help rather than a hindrance, as
in the case of the Oxford House urging the claims
of the Church of England in Bethnal Green, and
the Scotch Settlements under strong Presbyterian
auspices in Edinburgh and Glasgow. There is a
third attitude which a Settlement may take, and
I think it is the most just of all. This position
is, that while a University Settlement, no more
than a university itself, should be committed to a
theological and ecclesiastical propaganda, yet both
must, if they are to have a mission to the whole
of men's higher life, be ready to meet men on the
religious side of their nature. From this point of
view, a Settlement ought to undertake its work
feeling the stirring of the religious motive. It
ought to be prepared to bring to the people the
influences of a broad and free religious enthusiasm,
which shall show the insignificance of differences
compared with the unity of spirit in which every
man is in some sense religious. So that while I
am free to admit very great practical difficulties,
I cannot feel that University Settlements are loyal
to their name if they suppress the influence of the
deep and broad religion which is to so large degree
current among the college men and women of
to-day - too full of sympathy and hope to stay
with scholastic dialectic, too sure that there is
but one religion to be unduly concerned as to the
82
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
varying forms it takes. From this point of view
it is an essential part of the residents' social work
in the neighborhood to enter into friendly co-oper-
ation with the religious work that is being done
there, especially with the hope of bringing in a
greater and greater element of that religion which
is pure and undefiled.
The part of the work of a University Settlement
which to the popular mind mainly gives it its
character is really least distinctive of it. The
establishment of new centres of social activity, the
development of new forms of institutional effort,
might possibly not demand residence in the neigh-
borhood. But the work amongst the homes and
organizations of the people would be wellnigh
impossible to an outsider. Still, residents are at a
considerable advantage for the introduction of a
new program of means for social improvement,
especially if the foundation has been strongly laid
by making the Settlement first of all a hospitable
home, and by having the residents become welcome
guests in the homes of the people. But it cannot
be too forcibly stated that for a Settlement at once
to make an institution of itself is to lose nearly all
of the finer influence which it is the essence of a
Settlement to have. The motto of the University
Settlement movement is in the words of Mr. Bar-
nett to the little group of pioneers at Oxford:
"Vain will be music, art, higher education, or
even the gospel, unless they come clothed in the

The University Settlement Idea.
83
life of brother men." So much being said, the
possibilities in the way of the enlargement and
enrichment of life, such as may, in the course of
years and with the support of men and money, be
taken up by a Settlement, are so numerous and
varied that one can only touch upon them in
general outline here. As far as possible, these
lines of effort must be undertaken in the name of
the neighborhood, putting much responsibility upon
the people themselves for whatever may be at-
tempted. The principle of self-help must be im-
parted to them at every turn. Only remember
that the people must be helped to help themselves.
The first and most obvious need of the life of
every poor neighborhood is healthful recreation.
The dulness and dreariness of its life is only the
reverse side of the brutality of it. Whatever is
done among the children and youth will centre in
boys' and girls' clubs, the success of which will
depend almost wholly upon the capacity of the
persons who have charge of them. There are no
proved and tried methods for carrying on a boys'
club. The girls' club is an easier matter. But
the person to lead a boys' club is born, not made.
In dealing with boys it is almost necessary to have
a gymnasium and drill hall where they can run off
their surplus spirits and be taught physical and
moral manhood at the same time. After that, the
hope of boys' clubs lies in manual training. It is
also practically settled that the big club of boys,

84
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
managed by one or two men as with long poles,
can never accomplish what needs being done.
There are also obvious difficulties about putting
into motion all the machinery of a club to meet
nightly for ten or fifteen boys. There is a com-
promise plan of having a large club with its nightly
meeting hall, which shall be divided into congenial
groups, each group to be under the special charge
of some friend, who shall hold group meetings, and
shall endeavor to keep up a close acquaintance
with the boys of the group. The problem of
arranging meetings for the women is again much
simpler than that of providing wholesome recrea-
tion for the men. In England, where the idea of
a working-men's club, either independent or patro-
nized, is so well understood, the problem is much.
simpler than in America. Our working-men have
hardly yet dreamed of organization for the sake of
general recreation and self-improvement; nor has
any one else gone far toward suggesting such a
thing to them. But whatever is done in these
ways, the Settlement should be a centre for social
gatherings which shall, from time to time, include
the different members of each family, bringing
men and women, boys and girls, together, that
they may learn of the grace and sweetness of life.
On the educational side, a Settlement may begin
with some of the simplest and most popular forms
of study, and from that even aspire to establish a
working-men's university; and as for lectures and
The University Settlement Idea.
85
concerts and art exhibitions, it may gradually build
up a People's Palace. On the industrial side, it
can introduce experiments in the way of co-opera-
tive stores, co-operative industries, building and
loan associations, benefit and insurance organiza-
tions; it will bring working-men and university
men together, in order that they may learn from
each other about social questions; and it may, as
at Toynbee Hall they have several times success-
fully done, arrange conferences where capitalist,
working-man, and scholar may meet and review the
situation from their different points of view. On
the ethical side, it will try to bring to the people
the influence of the lives and teachings of the
world's great moral heroes. On the religious side,
if it have an acknowledged religious side to its
work, it will, in all wisdom, provide opportuni-
ties, for those who will, to advance in the better
life by refreshing the spirit of love from the springs
of faith and hope.
Thus far I have referred only to the duty of a
University Settlement to its own neighborhood;
and this its one great duty. But it has other
duties. It has duties to the general section of the
city in which it is placed, and to the city at large.
It has duties to the men or women who are its
residents and associated workers. It has duties
to the body of its supporters. And it owes it to
society at large to endeavor to secure the spread
of the principles for which it stands. For the

86
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
general district, the Settlement can mass its forces
of residents and sympathetic neighbors, and enter
into the movement for good citizenship, by urging
the support of worthy candidates for municipal
offices, by promoting measures for reform and im-
provement, and in general by organizing for action
as to public matters that closely affect the life of
the people. The large social interests of the whole
district must be felt by the residents only less
keenly than they feel the claims of their own
immediate neighborhood, and any efforts which
promise to be of benefit to the district should find
the outspoken support of the Settlement. There
will be some parts of the Settlement's regular work
in which it will be manifestly impossible and unde-
sirable to find a sufficient constituency in a single
neighborhood, so that to a degree there will be a
personal concern felt at the Settlement for many
families and homes outside of the immediate neigh-
borhood. In this way there will even be in the
relation of the Settlement to the broad district not
a little of that warmth of touch which it finds in
its relation to its nearer neighbors.
A University Settlement ought to be a stronghold
of that rising municipal loyalty which is in some
respects as noble as patriotism among the civic
virtues. The method and trend of city govern-
ment ought to be watched until it is thoroughly
known, and then patient and constant efforts made
to improve the type of officials, and the methods
The University Settlement Idea.
87
of legislation and administration. Toynbee Hall
now has its representative on the London County
Council, and two representatives on the London
School Board; and every Settlement ought to strive
to follow this example. There are many cities now
which are almost persuaded to make a beginning
upon such a splendid program of social politics
as London has undertaken; and the Settlements,
by coming in with fresh knowledge of the subject,
and without fear of being called socialist, may
have a considerable share in the great results that
are sure to come.
But a Settlement must represent a much larger
notion of a city than that of the mere political aggre-
gation. The city is one of the great nerve tracts of
the social organism. It is glowing everywhere with
a sustained community life. It is, therefore, the part
of a Settlement to recognize and assist every united
movement of the citizens which in any direction
seems likely to make broader and truer the common
life of the citizens; feeling sure that many of the
lines of effort which are now thought to be philan-
thropists' dreams will, in due time, be seen to be
public necessities.
The residents of a Settlement ought to be men or
women of some kind of liberal training. The
association of the Settlements with academical
loyalties is meant to be inclusive, but not exclusive,
-I have used the term "University Settlement
as being the original and generic one, hoping that
х
88
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
it might embrace all the similar forms of effort
which have taken their suggestion from the first
University Settlements. The objection made to the
term on the ground of patronage, is, I think, not
well founded. The colleges owe it to themselves
to remove the popular impression that they are
places where well-dressed and haughty young per-
sons live and enjoy themselves for four years. In
any case, the specific name given to the individual
Settlement may be without any semblance of pat-
ronage. The residents should live without any
mark of asceticism about them, especially not if
such things have to be artificially taken on. The
life of simplicity and frugality which includes the
usual necessities of civilized existence will be most
easily understood by the people who come to the
house. Parts of the house which are intended for
hospitable use may well have kinds of adornment
which the residents might consider too costly for
their own private satisfaction, wherever they might
be living.
X
As to the direction of the residents, there ought
to be just enough authority in the head worker to
make sure that unity and continuity are fairly kept
up in the work of the Settlement. It ought to be
possible at any time to turn the whole force of the
Settlement down a single channel. But in dealing
with the individual workers, I consider that it is
essential to the plan of having educated persons
doing intimate personal work, that the directions
The University Settlement Idea.
89
of the head worker should wholly take the form
of suggestions, except in some rare instances,
when his command or veto should be subject to
appeal to the body of residents or to the managing
council. It is not well even that the personality
of one person should overshadow the rest, unless
that person have much greater experience than they.
The general lines of action being assigned accord-
ing to the inclinations of the residents, they ought
to be expected to develop a great share of the
invention and originality which their own field of
effort demands. The head worker ought to know
everything that is being done by all the residents,
and ought to be ready to offer suggestions and
cautions whenever they seem to be needed. His
suggestions may be especially frequent and pointed
if he find any residents who are inclined to turn
Settlement work into a pastime. But, on the whole,
it is indispensable to the scheme that every resident
from the beginning should feel a possessive, crea-
tive interest in his own work; that he should feel
not merely the cheerful glow of action, but that he
should feel that lofty joy which the artist feels.
Anything that hinders the entrance of such fine
influence into the doing of the work will prevent
it from being imparted as a result of the work.
The life and soul of Settlement work is in the
charm and magic which lingers about persons,
with fetters off, and held only by a noble enthusi
asm.
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Philanthropy and Social Progress.
X Applicants for residence should be considered
both as to their fitness for social work and their
ability to work in harmony with the residents.
So far as possible, residents should give their
whole working time. In order to make sure of
this, each Settlement ought to be so financed that
scholarships should be provided for residents, and
it is a great advantage if they can pursue their
study and work under some academical connection.
In such ways, the casual, dilettante element can
gradually be removed out of Settlement work with-
out in the least removing its appeal to the imagi-
nation. The head worker should be on an allow-
ance sufficient to justify his giving a term of years
to Settlement work. It is, of course, well and
admirable for those who have means to live at
the Settlements at their own charges, but that is at
best an exceptional and temporary arrangement,
in this country at least.
The Settlements will have two classes of sup-
porters: those at the institutions of learning, and
those living in and about the city where the Set-
tlement is located. These supporters should be
organized into a body giving not only financial
support but moral support. Those who have the
true Settlement spirit do not come as envoys but
as forerunners. The colleges ought to be often
visited. Visitors ought to come often from the
colleges. The reports of the work and the results
of investigation ought to be regularly published.
The University Settlement Idea.
91
The local constituency ought to be reached through
a sort of extension bureau, which shall send out.
lecturers, organize reading clubs, and encourage
and assist persons to begin active social work in
their own neighborhoods. The Settlement ought
to be to them a centre of inspiration and instruc-
tion, not as to the delegating of their duty, but
as to doing it themselves. Thus also a body of
associate workers will be in training, who will
come regularly to the Settlement to take some
part in its work, so as to relieve the residents of
a large share of the more formal work, and leave
them free for investigation, personal intercourse,
and original experiment.
So much for the diagnosis; what of the prog-
nosis? What can the Settlements accomplish,
what future development is the idea likely to
have, and what is it worth to society as a whole?
University Settlements are capable of bringing to
the depressed sections of society its healing and
saving influences, for the lack of which those sec-
tions are to so large an extent as good as dead.
The Settlements are able to take neighborhoods in
cities, and by patience bring back to them much of
the healthy village life, so that the people shall
again know and care for each other. They will
impart a softer touch to what social powers now
act there; and they will bring streams from the
higher sources of civilization to refresh and arouse
92
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
the people so that they shall no more go back to
the narrowness and gloom, and perhaps the brutal-
ity of their old existence.
The expansion of the Settlement method will
come partly by its being taken up in greater or
less degree by churches and charitable institutions
and societies; but its greatest expansion will be
through the increase of the Settlements themselves.
These results will come as the body of trained Set-
tlement workers gradually enlarges. There ought
to be, and not impossibly will be, a University
Settlement in each considerable neighborhood of
every great city, and I do not make too bold when
I say that there ought to be two in each neighbor-
hood, one of men, and one of women. Then each
neighborhood, made keen and vital with the social
energy that has been stirred within it, would
awake to the electric touch coming from every
other neighborhood charged with the influences of
social life, and would eagerly respond to each
effort to ennoble the life of the city, until we
should have whole cities tending to become what
communities of men and women should be, places
where the things that are pure and lovely and of
good report shall become, by toil and suffering,
the common inheritance, whose homes shall never
be ignorant of what peace and love are; where
even the streets should begin to tempt and fasci-
nate boys and girls into the ways of righteousness,
instead of luring them into the haunts of sin.
The University Settlement Idea.
93
As a definite contribution to the agencies of
social progress, the Settlements stand for the fact
that there is no short and easy road to a better
society, and that for every social gain there must
be some corresponding expenditure of personal
effort. They also show not only that social work
demands a far greater number and variety of
workers than has before been understood to be
necessary, but that it demands the best type of men
and women acting under the highest motives they
can feel. Thus the Settlement movement strikes
at the root of the tree. Not contrivances, but per-
sons, must save society. And wheresoever society
at all needs saving, there persons must go in ample
number and of the best trained ability. The re-
sources of society are largely in persons. The
needs of society are in persons, and there must
be overturnings and overturnings, till everywhere
the resourceful shall be filling the wants of the
needy.
The University Settlements are a message of life
and hope to that increasing body of men and women
in these days who are stifled and crushed under
the gifts of society become impediments through
disuse. The Settlements offer, as has never before
been offered, an opportunity for the employment of
every sort of faculty and attainment, so that every
kind of person may begin to have to some degree
the joy and enlargement of life that comes from a
consciousness of power to make other life more
94
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
true to itself. How the whole of human existence
becomes ennobled, when men and women begin to
understand that everything they know, and every-
thing they are, is an image to them of what may
be modelled in the yielding clay of the lives of
others.
And this suggests how much the movement of
the Settlements may mean in the future to the col-
leges and universities, by showing them that every-
thing which makes life better at the favored centres
will add to life at the far-out extremities; that
every element of culture is a means of grace; and
that all that makes up civilization will be quickened
at its source by giving it the broad amplitude of
humanity. As a result of such influences, now
rising so fast, we shall find education taking anew
the larger measure of the world, and developing in
itself an impulse which will make its votaries no
longer merely priests at the altar, but apostles to
the world of men. And so we may expect to see
the young men and young women of the future
come out from our colleges and universities trained
in a social sense, corresponding to the growing
intenseness of social relations, having perhaps not
more varied powers and attainments than the grad-
uates of the present, but whatever sort of gift
they possess having with it a zeal for ennobling it
and themselves by using the gift in the service of
men that do not have it. The University Settle-
ment will then become an organic part of the uni-
The University Settlement Idea.
95
versity, one of its professional schools perhaps,¹
where every sort of latent or narrowly applied
power which the university develops shall be
strongly called out, and sent along lines where it
shall begin to be applied to its appropriate function
of ministering to the common life of society.
The University Settlements stand for a sublime
faith in everything that goes to make up the good
and beautiful life. I wonder if since the Renais-
sance there has been any such assertion of the life-
giving quality of culture as our simple Settlements
stand for, pledged to a belief in its message and
mission to all sorts and conditions of men, gradu-
1 The necessity of dealing with the life of the masses of the
people, which makes hospital and dispensary work so important
to the medical student, is now being felt in a marked degree at
the theological seminaries. For several reasons the work of a
Settlement of theological students must be nearly identical with
that of a general University Settlement; the only difference
being that the religious motive will always be kept prominent,
and methods of religious work will receive more particular
attention on the part of the residents. But the same compre-
hensive program must be followed. The belief in the help-
ful influence of every good thing must still be held. Nearly as
great a variety of workers can be, and ought to be, called into
service. The vast majority of the people in the depressed sec-
tions of cities who are inaccessible to direct religious effort are
as distinctly a part of the constituency of one sort of Settlement
as of the other; and they must be appealed to upon such sides
of their better nature as are sensitive to appeals. Every Settle-
ment must go patiently to work with the hope of developing
means for saving the whole of its neighborhood; for making all
the people who dwell in the neighborhood regenerated in every
part of their lives.
96 Philanthropy and Social Progress.
ally demonstrating that the things which go to
make up culture are, in the broadest and deepest
sense, humanities.
It may seem to some in a high degree over-con-
fident to trace out of this small movement of the
Settlements an influence toward so great results.
There is one thing that University Settlements have
contributed to the life of the present which cannot
be gainsaid. They have made work among the
poor interesting, which before seemed dull and
wearisome. They have shown opportunities for
intelligent men and women in such work that were
unknown before. They have cast about social ser-
vice the glamour of the moral picturesque. When-
ever such an accomplishment is made, through a
great genius or under some common inspiration of
a group of men, the hand on the dial of human
progress perceptibly moves forward. For the task
of the future is to learn to see in human life the
attraction which we now are able to see in nature;
and to work out for humanity the beauty and the
glory which the world about us prefigures and pre-
dicts. And so we shall go further than to see the
spirit of God brooding upon the face of the waters,
to feel that the hills are filled with his legions, to
find every bush a burning bush and every rock an
altar; for we dare to hope for the time when man
shall begin everywhere to visit man, his brother,
and every visitor shall be a wrestling angel, joining
with his brother in loving emulation of what is
The University Settlement Idea.
97
strong and true, making him to know the weakness
of the lower life, showing in himself, all uncon-
sciously, a vision of the better life, giving the man
a new name to express the promise of the future,
and leaving him with a heavenly benediction.
98
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
IV.
PHILANTHROPY - ITS SUCCESS AND FAILURE.
BY JAMES O. S. HUNTINgton, Order OF THE HOLY CROSS,
WESTMINSTER, MD.
FROM the first founding of the New England
colonies up to the beginning of the present century
philanthropy in this country was in its merely
rudimentary and inchoate condition. No trace is
to be found in the annals of that period of many of
our most familiar and successful charities. There
were no Fresh Air Funds, no St. Andrew's Coffee-
stands, no Day Nurseries, no Newsboys' Lodging
Houses. The principal charitable institution was
one in the neighborhood of Boston, for the instruc-
tion of Indian lads. It was called "Harvard Col-
lege." Family traditions and the anecdotes related
by our grandfathers and grandmothers make us
familiar with the social life of those early days.
Comforts were few and work was hard; many of
the very necessaries of to-day were unknown; but
the problems of pauperism and mendicancy had
not presented themselves. There were plenty of
kindly acts done for those under one or another
Philanthropy — Its Success and Failure. 99
form of temporary difficulty or need, but they
could hardly be dignified with the name of phi-
lanthropy. They were nothing but the friendly
deeds of neighbors, done as a matter of course, and
regarded as entitling the doer to no special credit
here or hereafter; in many cases they were mutual
benefactions, and the recipient of the favor this
year returned it the next. What poor people
there were,
old folks who had come into the
community late in life and had no one specially
related to them, weak-minded and imbecile persons,
chronic invalids, were provided for at the "poor-
house," generally a farm on public land under the
care of some good-natured man and his wife who
looked upon their charges simply as unfortunate
human beings, not as scientific cases. But, indeed,
the whole community held itself more or less re-
sponsible for its dependent members, and if the
inmates of the poor-house, wearying of its monot-
ony and confinement, chose occasionally in pleasant
weather to wander round a while from farm to
farm they were usually tolerated and a place found
for them at the table, perhaps even a bed in the
attic, or a shake-down in the barn. To be sure,
under such a system, or rather want of system,
there was a possibility of individuals taking advan-
tage of the open-hearted hospitality, and shifting
along without doing much for their own support;
but public opinion is a mighty force even in a
thinly-settled country, and where everybody was
100
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
""
expected to work if he could, and almost every
one was busy building up or maintaining a home-
stead, it required a good deal of independence and
of originality, or of natural "cussedness," to
do nothing. Probably in most villages there were
two or three people who fulfilled these conditions;
they are the "Sam Lawsons" and "Jerry Lanes
of New England romance; but they were endured
with a philosophic fortitude, partly, no doubt,
from a feeling that they furnished a sort of foil
to the general energy, and served some good pur-
pose in retarding the too feverish activity of society
at large.
But in the third and fourth decades of this cen-
tury a change began to make itself felt, at first, of
course, in the cities, but extending outward in
wider and wider circles, and increasing with ever
accelerating speed. The old homogeneity of so-
ciety was broken up, and a pauper class began to
make its appearance. In the 'forties we note the
rise of the tenement-house system, in New York,
and similar conditions of dirt and over-crowding
in Boston and other places.
The "new occasions" brought "new duties,"
and philanthropy advanced to meet them. The
City Mission of the Episcopal Church in New York
was organized in the year 1831, the New York
Association for Improving the Condition of the
Poor in 1843; and about this time in Boston, Dr.
Tuckerman set on foot certain efforts, afterwards
MOU
Philanthropy - Its Success and Failure. 101
known as the "ministry at large," which struggled
bravely to stem the tide of pauperism in that
city.
These and other societies undertook to direct
the efforts of charitably-disposed individuals in
seeking to relieve the miseries of the emigrants
who were coming, - from Ireland at first as from
other European countries later on, to swell the
ranks of poverty already rising on our own soil.
It may be asked, "Why was not State aid forth-
coming, sufficient to meet the wants of these people,
without the intervention of private beneficence ?"
That is a natural question. It might seem as
though it would be a great saving of time and
labor on the part of individuals to hand over the
whole matter of relieving the necessities of people
to the proper officers who either by "outdoor"
relief (aiding families with doles of money or
goods in their own homes) or by "indoor" relief
(support of individuals in alms-houses, hospitals,
orphanages, etc.), might prevent actual starvation
and assist the worthy for a time or permanently as
should be necessary. But a long and bitter experi-
ence in England had put this country on its guard.
The ruinous effect of the old Poor Law in England,
under which the income of everybody, the strong
as well as the weak, was supplemented up to a
fixed standard out of the "rates," had proved that
a great deal of suffering and distress must be left to
be met from the voluntary gifts of private charity.
?
102
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
The moment it is understood by the idle and shift-
less in a community, such as we find in one of our
modern cities, that they can, on the ground of des-
titution, claim a certain amount of support while
still remaining at large and enjoying the sweets of
liberty, the door is opened to a perfect flood of
pauperism and consequent vice. Not only that,
but a premium is at once put upon laziness, and
the wages of self-respecting workers are dragged
down by the competition of those who are eking
out their earnings by receiving public support.
Whether this is not true in large measure of private
relief, we shall have occasion to consider by and
by; the point to notice now is that it affords
entire justification for the State refusing to attempt
to cover the whole field of charitable relief, and
abandoning, as it is doing more and more, any
attempt to distribute outdoor doles.
Before leaving this subject, however, as not im-
mediately before us in the study of philanthropy
(i.e. voluntary beneficence), I would quote one
pregnant sentence from Dr. Thomas Chalmers be-
fore a Parliamentary Committee on the Poor Law
for Ireland:
"I think it is one evil of public charity that the
poor, who are not very accurate arithmeticians, are
apt to overrate the power of a public charity, so
that the real relaxation of their habits, not being
proportional to the amount given, but being pro-
portional to the amount expected, leaves them
Philanthropy -
— Its Success and Failure. 103
in greater misery than if no such public charity
were instituted.”
While there had always been a prejudice, more
or less strong, against state aid for the poor, it was
supposed that aid given by voluntary benevolent
societies would not pauperize because it could not
be claimed as a right. But, in spite of hopeful
expectations, evils very soon presented themselves.
The existence of a number of different centres of
relief created the temptation to make a living by
becoming a beneficiary of all of them. Door-to-
door begging was already in vogue; but the soci-
eties offered much wider scope for the peculiar
arts and the ready ingenuity of the "rounder."
Thus a class of professional mendicants appeared,
as far superior to the old-fashioned beggar as
the expert "boodler"
"boodler" surpasses the common
sneak-thief. Lists of the patrons of charitable in-
stitutions, even lists of pew-owners at fashionable
churches, passed into the hands of men who had
decided that the world owed them a living, and
who proposed to take it with as little trouble to
themselves as possible. There followed a stream
of letters written by people in apparent distress,
ranging from the note on delicately scented
paper, from a lady who had suddenly met with a
calamity that left her penniless among strangers,
but who would certainly receive a remittance next
week, to the blind negro clergyman who sent
round a dirty subscription paper asking for a con-
104
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
tribution to enable him to join his wife and chil-
dren in Savannah, and the man who was anxious.
to buy himself a wooden leg, though if the leg
had represented the money collected for the pur-
pose, it would have been, like the famous Miss
Kilmansegg's, of gold rather than wood.
These letters were supplemented by visits from
people who asked for money under every imagi-
nable pretext, and with varying measures of success.
Then there were bogus societies for all kinds of
purposes, and the very methods that genuine phi-
lanthropy had devised for raising funds were copied
by those who sought to divert the gifts of tender-
hearted people into their own pockets. The streets
began to be infested with a long succession of im-
pecunious persons, in every variety of seediness of
attire, down to the half-clad gamin and the man
with coat buttoned up to his chin, redolent of
alcohol but equally guiltless of shirt and soap.
Perhaps those to suffer most were the churches.
Expert solicitors for alms seemed to take a peculiar
delight in "doing the pious." They generally pre-
sented themselves in the rôle of converts, entirely
indifferent as to their temporal concerns, but fully
convinced of the faith of the congregation they
wished to join. They could usually count upon
enough sectarian jealousy and denominational
rivalry to make their pretences go down. It
became clear that something was needed to cope
with this rank growth of importunity and deceit
Philanthropy-Its Success and Failure. 105
which threatened to exhaust all the vitality of true
philanthropy. In the year 1877, the Charity
Organization Society of Buffalo was formed, the
pioneer of many societies of the same general char-
acter. The object of these associations was to
bring the various relief agencies into mutually
helpful relations with each other and with the de-
partment of the public relief, the police force, the
work-house and the schools, and so enable all the
different institutions to act harmoniously together
for the repression of fraud, the adequate provision
for the wants of those really deserving help, the
reclaiming of those pauperized by the mistakes of
the past, the encouragement by various schemes of
thrift and self-help, and the removing of social
abuses. This was a large program, and it in-
volved for its carrying out the co-operation of
many persons disposed to regard each other with
more or less suspicion. But, notwithstanding the
many difficulties to be overcome, Charity Organi-
zation Societies have been established in seventy-
three of the cities and towns in the land. These
are all in communication with each other and with
like agencies abroad. It has not proved possible
to bring all the many charities in the larger cities
into the movement, but enough have joined to make
the plan very effectual in the prevention of " over-
lapping" and the hunting down of impostors and
suspects. The New York Charity Organization
Society has a card catalogue, containing a record
106
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
As these.
of a hundred and sixty thousand cases.
reports are open for reference, by any duly accred-
ited philanthropist, and by all the other seventy-
three kindred societies from Maine to California,
it may be seen that a very extensive machine has
been created for the purpose of blocking the way
of the man or woman who tries to live by men-
dicity and mendacity. Whether the engine some-
times strikes wildly, and hits the wrong man and
maims for life, is a further question that does not
concern us now. It is a question that will be
likely to interest according as one belongs to the
class that investigates or the class that is investi-
gated.
While much of the work of the Charity Organ-
ization Society is of a detective character, it has
also established a penny savings-bank system, con-
ducted with much business ability. There are
now 20,901 depositors and $10,644.79 deposited.
The patrons of the bank are not limited to New
York City, but are found as far away as Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania.
Most of the earlier societies had for their chief
purpose the relief of bodily maladies and physical
necessities. The schools, indeed, were teaching
or trying to teach the children the rudiments
of knowledge, the three R's at any rate, and a
smattering of other things; but the schools hardly
come under the head of philanthropic institutions.
With our public-school system they are wanting
Philanthropy
Its Success and Failure. 107
in the voluntary character essential to philan-
thropy as we understand it. The churches, too,
were instructing grown-up people and children in
the dogmas of religion, and, in some measure, in
the principles of morality; but this, again, lies
beyond the compass of philanthropy in the con-
ventional sense. So that, for the most part, the
charitable societies regarded people as receptacles
for food and as requiring clothes, shelter from the
cold, and, in sickness, doctors, nurses, and medicine.
Gradually, however, a truer conception of human
nature asserted itself, and provision was made for
other than animal wants. Instruction of children
in the Kindergarten system of Froebel began to
do a gracious work in quickening the perceptions
and opening the eyes of the children of the poor.
So fully have its uses been proved, that it seems a
disgrace that the State should still leave its infants
to be taught by private beneficence. In St. Louis
there are over six thousand little children in the
eighty-five public Kindergartens as part of the
common-school system. The New York Board of
Education has just determined to introduce Kin-
dergartening in the Primary Schools of that city.
Industrial training follows naturally upon the Kin-
dergarten. This, too, is still left in many places
to the care of volunteer philanthropy, though
in Philadelphia and Chicago it plays an impor-
tant part in the regular curriculum of the schools.
To New York belongs the credit of having origi-
108
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
nated the method of kitchen-gardening that has
done so much to give back to household work its
dignity as one of the fine arts. When I was going
about among the tenement houses on the East Side
of New York, I could often tell on entering a
room that the children had been to the Wilson Mis-
sion by the neatness and brightness that reigned
there. A step beyond the cooking class, the sew-
ing school, and the whittling class, takes us to
the trade schools. The value of these in giving
to young men a wider knowledge of the principles
of their trade, than they could ever gain in a mere
apprenticeship, is not acknowledged as generally
as it should be. Especially among wage-workers
there exists the most unfortunate and childish
prejudice against them. That they do not accom-
plish all that their founders hoped for we shall
notice in due time.
In the elaboration of this system of industrial
training, philanthropy had made a distinct ad-
vance in recognizing its subjects as not only con-
sumers but at least potential producers as well.
But other powers and capacities in human nature
called for recognition. Man eats and works; so
does the ox. But man is created also to enjoy,
and his capacities for enjoyment put him into
communication with fields of being of which the
mere animal cannot faintly dream. Some of those
whose thought and care were given to the poor
felt that their work was hardly begun until they
Philanthropy — Its Success and Failure. 109
could waken into activity those distinctly human
faculties of social intercourse, of intellectual pleas-
ure and artistic delight, which for themselves made
the world so fair and life so well worth living. It
would seem as though this were a proper function
of the State-supported school system; but it will
probably take several generations yet to convince
taxpayers that it is not a waste of money to teach
the rising generation how to be simply and ration-
ally happy. On the London School Board a few
men and women fought for months to secure the
introduction of pianos into the Board schools.
They have now been withdrawn. But voluntary
effort is not hampered by the timidity of salaried
officials and the necessity of suiting oneself to
party politics. And an enlightened philanthropy
is now moving forward on to the new ground of
bringing to the people the best there is in social
pleasure, in literature and music, and science and
art. This subject has already been treated in this
volume. It is, therefore, unnecessary for me to
dwell upon it.
I would, however, add one incident as illustrat-
ing the eagerness the poor will manifest for what
is really beautiful. The Apollo Club in Chicago
numbers, among its four hundred members, some
of the wealthiest people in the city. A few winters
ago the leader, Mr. Tomlins, was conducting a
rehearsal, and was just in the midst of a chorus
that required his unswerving attention, when a
110
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
messenger-boy came in with a telegram. Mr. Tom-
lins left him waiting until the chorus was finished;
then he stepped down and begged the boy's pardon
as though he had been a young prince, and ex-
plained the reason for the delay. As he took the
telegram he happened to look in the lad's face; to
his surprise he saw that he was deadly pale, his
mouth was agape, and the tears were streaming
from his eyes. As soon as the boy could get his
breath he exclaimed, "Oh, sir, I wish you'd waited
two hours, I never heard anything like it in my
life."
Mr. Tomlins said nothing at the time but after
the rehearsal he remarked to a friend, "If there's
that kind of hunger in the people we shall have
to feed them."
So some weeks later, before the club broke up
for the summer, Mr. Tomlins said to the members,
"I want to remind you that you can never rise
to the height of Art unless you use it for the
highest purposes, unless you use it for the People.
You are intending to give four oratorios next win-
ter in the new Auditorium; you will sell season
tickets at from five to seven dollars a seat. What
I propose to you is that you repeat every perform-
ance the next night for wage-workers and sell the
tickets at fifteen and twenty-five cents." "They
wouldn't care to come," somebody said.
"Try
them," was Mr. Tomlins's answer.
When the Apollo Club met in the autumn it
Philanthropy — Its Success and Failure. 111
was decided that the suggestion of the leader
should be carried out. The first oratorio to be
given was "The Messiah." Arrangements were
made to repeat it the next night with exactly the
same care, not an instrument less. To make sure
that the tickets reached the wage-workers they
were sold at the factories. The Auditorium holds
forty-five hundred people. There was a demand
for twenty thousand tickets. I reached Chicago
the following morning. A friend met me at the
train. We had hardly greeted each other before
he began to tell me about the oratorio. "I have
heard the Hallelujah Chorus twenty-five times," he
said. "I always knew there was something in it
that I had never heard, — but I heard it last night.'
""
The plan of College Settlements and University
Extension is spoken of as derived from England;
but it is pleasant to remember that before Frederick
Dennison Maurice and his friends established the
Working Men's College in London, the forerunner
of Toynbee Hall and Oxford House, the principle
of enlisting wage-workers in the pursuit of litera-
ture and science had already found expression in
this country, and the factory-girls on the Merrimac
were bringing out the "Lowell Offering," and in
the Essex Institute in Salem mechanics and mar-
iners were making contributions to Botany and
Geology.
University Extension in East London and Hull
House in Chicago bring us up to date. They seem
112
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
to be the last venture of philanthropy, though so
unlike many of the efforts that have borne that
name that one does not wonder at their disown-
ing it.
This hurried sketch of the development of char-
itable work among us may afford a clue to the
conditions that are essential to success in philan-
thropy, to such a success as will make philan-
thropy a factor in social progress. Let us then,
in the light of the experience gathered in these
past failures and achievements, look a little more
closely into the real nature of our subject.
Philanthropy - finds its origin in sympathy or
fellow-feeling for one's kind. This, as a mere
impulse, is not found only among men.
It may
be traced also among the higher animals. Wolves
fall upon a wounded comrade and devour him.
Many domestic animals, on the contrary, show a
real pity towards one another. A well-fed dog has
been known to dig up a bone he had buried and
give it to a half-starved cur. We all remember
the story of the dog, whose leg had been bound up
by a kind stranger, bringing another dog to be
treated. But such actions are not regarded as
necessary to the nature of a brute. On the other
hand sympathy for one's fellows is by us regarded
as proper to man as man. To refuse it is looked
upon as inhuman. We reckon it as a "dictate of
humanity" to pity the wretched and to provide
for the starving and homeless. Each of us would
Philanthropy — Its Success and Failure. 113
instinctively turn out of our way to help a man in
sudden illness or distress.
But there are two ways in which such actions
may be instinctive in any particular person. First,
they may be instinctive in man much as they are in
the brute. Here there is no reflection upon the act,
it has no moral content, inasmuch as it involves
no conscious movement of the will. Perhaps if
the person were to stop and think about the kind-
ness he is moved to do to his neighbor, to become
conscious of himself as on the point of doing it, he
would leave the deed undone. He might even feel
ashamed at himself for having thought of doing it.
He may have set up for a misanthrope, and despise
himself for having been betrayed into something
for which his philosophy furnishes no justification.
Or, on the other hand, the person may be living in
such simple and right relations with the world,
that to act kindly and justly towards those round
him, seems inevitable. He does not dream of doing
otherwise. This is the first way in which philan-
thropic actions may be instinctive.
But, secondly, such actions may be instinctive as
the result of long discipline and self-mastery, the
outcome of habits established only after many a
weary battle with selfishness, of correspondence
with human relations when all the impulses of the
lower nature urged one to thrust them aside. Now,
as in the individual, so in society, both sorts of
"instinctive" benevolence may be found. There
114
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
is, first, the time of simple and primitive conditions;
after that, the period of struggle with temptation;
to a hard and unfeeling egotism, then, if humanity
is victorious in the battle, the better day of proved
virtue and self-determination towards the good,
which has been seen with ever clearer vision as
self-interest was subordinated to truth and prin-
ciple was preferred to pleasure.
But the working out on to this higher ground
demands a transformation of the unconscious or
only half-conscious fellow-feeling by the infusion
of a true rationality. It becomes a sacred duty,
therefore, not alone to do the right but to know it
as right, because it is the expression of the true.
In this lies the sole path to a real freedom. "Ye
shall know the truth and the truth shall make you
free." Philanthropy succeeds just so far as it
consciously seeks to know the truth as to the vital
and necessary relations of men to each other in
society and to act fearlessly upon them. If there
is failure it is because these relations are being for-
gotten or wilfully ignored.
In
Let us look back over the road we have travelled
and test this principle. In the healthful conditions
of our early Settlements we easily recognize the
period of unconscious and infantile good-will.
those days nothing seemed more natural than to
accord to any one, friend or stranger, the temporary
help asked for, food and drink, fire-wood, seed-corn,
the loan of tools, etc. But when this same thing
Philanthropy - Its Success and Failure. 115
is done in a city like New York under entirely
different social conditions, the act proves to be dis-
astrous in its results. Then it becomes necessary
to pass from a mere unthinking benevolence, and
use the reason to consider in what relation one
stands to the unfortunate man or woman before one,
and in what way, and by what course of conduct,
one can correspond to that relation.
This requires effort, it requires time, it requires
probably looking into dirty places and meeting
dirty people. At once a conflict ensues. Selfish-
ness says,
"Don't waste your time over the fellow;
give him a nickel and let him go." Conscience
pleads, "Something is amiss here; this man ought
not to be in such a strait that he must go about
begging, and in such a moral poverty that you
cannot give him the help he asks without making
him poorer still. This man is your fellow; you
must find out the cause of his unhappy condition,
and try and reinstate him in his manhood again.'
""
These counsels are mutually exclusive; they im-
ply two quite contrary views of the beggar before
you. According to the first you owe him nothing
but a contemptuous dole given to be rid of him or
as an act of conventional decency, given, perhaps,
with no more of pity for him than actuates saloon-
passengers on an ocean-steamer when they throw
sixpences on to the lower deck to see the emigrants
or the stokers scramble for them. Very possibly
the beggar may be much more ready that you
116
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
should treat him in this fashion than that you
should be guided by the light of conscience. He
may be as selfish as you are, and as ready to
ignore any real and personal relation between
himself and you. He may regard you as a giver
of sixpences just as you regard him as a receiver
of them. Possibly that seems to you a very sat-
isfactory arrangement on both sides. It would
be if it were true, but it is damnably false. And,
being false, it blinds and darkens and confuses
more and more, and begets other falsehoods which
blind and darken and confuse in their turn.
falsehoods do not last, days of judgment or dis-
crimination, "crises" (separations) we call them
in historical language, arrive, and then you have to
deal with men who suddenly see what they have
lost through the lie by which you have profited, and
you have Paris in July, 1789, or Homestead in July,
1892. Revelation has led to revolution.
But
But suppose we acknowledge the claims of
conscience. Then we set to work to find out how
we can really help the man. But we are not out
of the woods yet. We have recognized that some
relation exists between him and us; but is it a
human relation? "Case 15,237" has not a very
human sound. A man does not call his wife a
"case," at least it is not regarded as a complimen-
tary term. We may recognize a man as a man,
only with a qualification attached; as a member of
the genus, for example, though of a different species
Philanthropy — Its Success and Failure. 117
from ourselves. And we cannot too constantly
remember that our conduct towards him will be
determined exactly by the view we take of him.
No doubt we shall find a certain pleasure in look-
ing on him as a subject for our scientific examina-
tion, our condescending patronage, our philan-
thropic investigation. I believe we can all plead
guilty to having yielded to that temptation. I cer-
tainly do. Let no one think that I wish to condemn
others while sparing myself. If I shall seem to
criticise the methods of charity organization, I do
not wish to conceal the fact that I was one of three
to establish in the year 1878 the Bureau of Labor
and Charities in Syracuse, the eighth society of the
kind in this country. And in what I have said in
the earlier portion of this paper, I have pointed out
with some distinctness, I think, the imperative need
that existed for something to accomplish the results
aimed at by the movement of charity organization.
What I ask now is whether the system has not
failed of its highest object, "To procure work for
poor persons who are capable of being wholly or
partially self-supporting," and "To promote the
general welfare of the poor by social and sanitary
reforms, and by the inculcation of habits of provi-
dence and self-dependence." No doubt there are
some supporters of charity organization who will
resent even the raising of such a question. But I
desire to quote for their benefit the following pas-
sage from the address of the President of the New
118
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
York Charity Organization Society at the annual
meeting in the year 1888: ---
"I have attended meetings of this Society when
almost every speaker raised a laugh by some
amusing anecdote of detected imposture. I have
joined in the laugh as heartily as any one, bụt
I left such meetings with a sense of painful dis-
appointment. I have craved some more positive
good. Do not understand me as underestimating
the importance of detecting and punishing fraud,
but I think I voice the sense of our members, in
looking back over last year's work, when I say
that we dwell rather on the 558 families made
self-supporting than on the 415 frauds exposed;
and when it comes to the beggars, not one per
cent of whom were deserving, I am more proud
of the 278 who were persuaded to desist without
arrest than of the 87 hardened cases who were
convicted and punished. One of our older mem-
bers, who has a habit of speaking his mind, once
said that, our society was on sure ground until
it found a worthy case, and then it was all at
sea.
""
Of course, it is not to be forgotten that the
Charity Organization Society does not exist for
the purpose of giving aid or distributing alms.
But it does intend to benefit the needy, not merely
to save the pockets of the rich. And it is the
bringing together and organizing for more effec-
tive work of societies that exist simply for the
Philanthropy-Its Success and Failure. 119
purpose of ministering in one way or another to
the wants of the poor.
If those charities are doing useful work sep-
arately, there is no reason why they should not
do better work in conjunction. If there be any
radical mistake in the individual relief-agencies
that vitiates their efforts, that will be likely to
show itself only more plainly when they are organ-
ized. Or, to recur to the phraseology we have
already used, if there be a lack of full recogni-
tion of the real and necessary relations that exist
between men as men, whether poor or rich, on the
part of the various constituents out of which the
Associated Charities is formed, that association.
will not accomplish the task before it of "pro-
moting the general welfare of the poor" unless it
rises to a higher and truer conception and lifts
up its component parts with it.
Philanthropy cannot be a factor in social prog-
ress unless it is itself progressive. Now, I do not
think that we can deny that there is just such
a lack of recognition of necessary relations, or at
least of an out-spoken declaration of them, in that
line of philanthropic endeavor that is summed up
and centralized by the charity organization socie-
ties. In almost all these bodies the notion lurks
that while we, the refined and respectable and
well-to-do classes, have a kind of relation to the
illiterate and the poor,-a relation that imposes.
duties of compassion and benevolence and charita-
120
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
ble offices, yet that the relation is that of supe-
riors to inferiors, of higher to lower, of patrons to
clients.
But, you will rejoin, "is not that the truth?
Can anything be plainer than that we are in a
more favorable position than these ignorant and
dirty people? Are we not possessed of powers
of mind and a breadth of knowledge, to say noth-
ing of material wealth, that make us naturally
the guides and protectors of the poor? Is it not a
duty laid upon us, which we are striving to fulfil ?
Are we not to consider ourselves as stewards of
our gifts and talents, and must we not seek
to use them wisely for our poorer brothers and
sisters?"
I am quite familiar with that language; with
shame I confess that I have used it myself; but I
declare that on the lips of most of us I believe it
to be rank with hypocrisy and hollow with deceit.
I do not say that we are all consciously hypocritical
or deceitful; but that when we talk in that fashion
we are using phrases that have been employed to
bolster up almost every tyranny and despotism
that has cursed Christendom in the last fifteen
hundred years. For what is really meant by these
complacent expressions? Do we in the least mean
that we regard the poor as people of the very same
stuff as ourselves, actually our brothers and sisters
under a common Father, who is too righteous and
loving to show favor or partiality, or to exempt
Philanthropy-Its Success and Failure. 121
one set of His children from the healthful and
life-giving rules which He lays upon the rest?
Do we mean that we have no right to expect of
the poor anything that we are not willing to do
ourselves, that we are not trying to do as faithfully
as we can with the means at our disposal and con-
sistently with the work for humanity that falls to
our share? Do we mean that we never condemn
in the poor anything that we do not as frankly
condemn in ourselves and our acquaintances, and
the members of our own favored class? Do we
mean that we are always prompt to make allow-
ances for the poor, and if they do not in all in-
stances rise to the high level of virtue where we are
so conscious of standing, ask ourselves whether
we should have done any better if we had always
lived in one room with six other people, learned
to lie as soon as we could talk, and worked in a
sweating-shop from ten to twenty hours a day ever
since we were twelve years old? Do we mean

this?
We mean nothing of the kind. What we
do mean,
however we may gloss it over with
glib phrases and hide it from our own eyes, -is
that somehow, by some provision of nature or of
God, we have been established on a distinctly dif
ferent basis than that on which the poor stand, we
are not under the régime that governs and must
govern them, we are not of the same household.
We belong to the House of Have; they belong to
122
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
the House of Want; and the rules of one family
are not the rules of the other.
This is not a statement that is popular with
most of us professional philanthropists, but it hap-
pens to be true, and it is of very immediate bearing
upon the question before us, how far philanthropy
is a factor in social progress. Not only that; it is
the question that is of practical concern.
For we
live in a time when the eyes of wage-workers, of
the "poor," are being opened to the real worth of
our professions and the sincerity of our declarations
of affection for them. If we will not go forward to
accept the truth that is already making itself plain
to them, our so-called philanthropy will become
one of the barriers they must sweep away in the
process of their own emancipation and self-develop-
ment. Let us, then, courageously examine this
question.
In
In the first place, it is one of the accepted prin-
ciples, in all societies at all recognized by charity
organizations, that it is the duty of the poor to
work so far as they have strength and opportunity
to do so. Indeed, it is generally assumed, no
tiresome investigation of the real state of things
being thought necessary, that the opportunity
does exist, and that the able-bodied man or woman
could work if he had a mind to. At any rate, what is
taken as an axiom is, that any one convicted of
refusing work at any wages when he could do it,
is ipso facto beyond the pale of public or private
Philanthropy-Its Success and Failure. 123
support, and, if he tries to support himself by men-
dicancy, is a fit subject for penal correction.]
The Scripture passage usually quoted on the mat-
ter is 2 Thessalonians iii. 10, "if any would not
work, neither should he eat." I entirely agree with
this requirement; I hope, before I close, to give
some evidence of how entirely I agree with it But
the point now to be noted is, that while the duty of
working for a living is always emphasized when
the poor are in question, the charitable societies
with remarkable unanimity disregard, and thereby
practically deny, the existence of any such duty on
the part of the rich.
at is not merely that these societies do not go
about in the fashionable quarters of the city in-
culcating this duty (although that might be as
effectual a way of "promoting the welfare of
the poor by social reforms" as trying to make
people self-respecting by setting them to split
wood by hand at fifty cents a day), but that a
good many of the most prominent supporters of
these societies are people who have never done a
full day's work in their lives, and who consume in
one week more than they could produce in a year at
such unskilled labor as most of them are alone
able to perform, and who not only do nothing
themselves, but who withdraw from any useful
occupation a still larger number of able-bodied par-
asites in the form of servants, flunkies, footmen, etc.,
These are the people who largely maintain the
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Philanthropy and Social Progress.
Employment Societies, the Refuges, the Orphan
Asylums, the Soup Kitchens and Soup Schools, the
Free Hospitals, the Flower Missions, etc. They
are directors and trustees and patrons and patron-
esses and members of councils and advisory boards.
They form sewing-circles and sew for the poor, and
institute fairs and sales and raffles, and dispose of
useless things for exorbitant prices, and laugh and
joke and flirt for the poor, and finally get up a ball
and dance them in, destroying in the course of
their operations ten times as much as they event-
ually give to those in want. And in recognition
of this heroic devotion to the interests of their un-
fortunate brothers and sisters, they are elected
as officers and managers of the Bureau of Asso-
ciated Charities. 7
“But,” it will be said, "you are entirely mis-
taken about the supporters of most of our char-
ities; they are by no means idle people; they are
almost all of them men in the thick of business
life, who are working hard to support their fam-
ilies and leave something for their children."
That many such people give generously to
charitable societies, I do not for a moment ques-
tion; but that a person such as I have described
would not be accepted as a donor, and compli-
mented as a very generous person, I quite deny.
For evidence, I have only to refer you to the reports
yearly issued by these societies, which usually con-
tain, in a prominent place, a list of benefactors.
Philanthropy - Its Success and Failure. 125
Now what does this really mean? What would be
thought of a society that professed to exist for the
purpose of doing away with drunkenness, but a num-
ber of the officers of which were known to be in-
temperate men, and which was largely supported
by saloon-keepers? Would it be credited with
much moral earnestness? And, offensive as it
may be, I must insist that it is not enough to say
of a man that he works hard at his business; it is
necessary to ask also whether his business is worth
working at, whether it is of any value to society,
or whether the activity he displays has for its end,
not the adding to the real wealth of the world, but
the taking away from other men a portion of what
they have created, and putting it into his own cof-
fers.
I asked a fresh-faced young fellow who came to
see me some time ago, "What do you do for a liv-
ing?"
"Oh," said he, "I'm on the stock-exchange."
“Ah,” said I, "now will you tell me one or two
things about that. Do you think the world is any
better off for what you do?"
"I guess not," he replied, "my business is to
get all I can from the other fellows."
How widely does that differ from the impos-
tors and tricksters that the Charity Organization
Society pursues so indefatigably? No doubt they
sometimes think they work pretty hard, especially
in hot weather, when so many people are out of
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town, and so many clergymen in Europe. But
my friend on the stock-exchange would, I am sure,
be accepted as a friendly visitor for the Associated
Charities (he is a church member, and a thoroughly
moral young fellow-when not on the stock-
exchange), and would never hear at the meetings
any remarks about the unrighteousness of stock-
gambling or the immorality of "futures" that
would make him feel uncomfortable.
"But," my friend on the other side remarks,
"do you propose that the Charity Organization
Society should start out on a crusade against all
the doubtful transactions of commercial life?"
No, I propose nothing of the kind. I only ask
that we should determine, once for all, that we
will be just as outspoken against idleness and dis-
honesty in the mansions and business offices of the
rich, as in the tenement rooms and attics of the
poor. Only let us be under no misapprehension;
to do that will largely diminish the incomes of
many of the most flourishing charities, and reduce
the salaries of a number of the officers of institu-
tions, and lessen the corps of paid philanthropists
among the poor.
Take another instance. Next to readiness to
work, there is no virtue so universally required of
the poor as fearless and unflinching truthfulness.
This at least we feel justified in demanding of
those on whom we bestow our alms. Few things
bring upon a needy person the verdict "unworthy
Philanthropy - Its Success and Failure. 127
and undeserving" so surely and inevitably as false-
hood. No matter how painful it may be to tell a
stranger, the officer of an irresponsible society, the
inner secrets of family life, the things that even
husbands and wives never speak of to each other,
the bitter memories that the heart itself longs to
forget, they must all come out or the risk must
be run of being black-listed in all the cities of
the land. And not once only must this be done
but over and over again to a long succession of
"friendly visitors," paid agents, parish workers,
etc.
How would you like it?
This, however, we feel ourselves justified in
demanding under the heaviest penalties for any
indirectness or failure to tell the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth. Do we consider
that we ourselves can be justly held to any such
transparent frankness? How preposterous! We
don't dream of such a thing.
In our trade, our politics, and a good deal of
our religion, we lie and we know that we lie, and
a good many of us would look with contempt on a
man who should be unpractical enough to suppose
that we can get along without lying. And yet
the very people who are known to be imposing on
their fellow-citizens by their misleading advertise-
ments, their sale of dishonestly watered stock, their
conniving at political knavery, their insincere jour-
nalism, their appeals to men to lay up treasure
128
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
in Heaven and get their money's worth at the same
time by buying a ticket to a church entertainment,
are considered fit persons to hold the poor to the
most exact and rigorous truthfulness. To suggest
that they are doing under the name of business
methods and political expedients and conventional
religious trickery something far worse than a poor
mother who lies to shield a child from shame, or to
prevent her husband from losing his place, would
be regarded as very bad taste. Is not the inference
plain that the rich are not to be held to the same
code of ethics as must be used for the poor?
If still another instance is sought of the fact that
even we, who bear the title of philanthropists,
assume that the poor are of different stuff from
ourselves, let it be found in the way in which we
regard their recreations and our own. One of the
most damaging statements that can be made against
a man whose case is on trial before the committee
of a charitable society is that he frequents a saloon.
If it can be shown that he sometimes goes home
under the influence of liquor he is put in the pil-
lory at once. Possibly some members of the com-
mittee think that his wife ought to leave him and
put her children in an asylum, and consider her
as sharing in his obliquity if she refuses to do so.
Now, without doubt, if we look at the matter from
without we look at
the point of view of our own comfortable surround-
ings, the frequenting of a saloon is a most repre-
hensible thing, an exhibition of utterly superfluous
Philanthropy-Its Success and Failure. 129
wickedness and wanton self-indulgence. That is
what it would be for us. Whatever longings we
may feel for amusement or for art, for social inter-
course or for intellectual entertainment, can all be
met in ways that are elevating and ennobling.
The impulse that would lead one of us to spend
the evening in a saloon could hardly be anything
else than a craving for low companionship or for
the excitement of drink and play.
But have we any right to assume that because
that is true of us it is true of a man to whom all
these avenues of enjoyment are closed? Of course
the answer made, is that the man we are thinking of
has no such faculties of enjoyment as we. And that
is just where the limited rationality of our philan-
thropy shows itself. I do not say that the average
unskilled laborer would appreciate a Browning read-
ing or a recital by Paderewski; in all probability
he would fall asleep. But this doesn't mean that
he has no such faculties as we possess, but that
they have not been cultivated and developed. The
capacity for the appreciation of Art and Literature
and Music are there in that dull mind and that
sluggish spirit; and the dim consciousness of
powers within him that are not exercised, of a
manhood crushed and stifled but living still, is
precisely what makes the man crave something
beyond the shop where he works and the attic
where he sleeps.
Put yourself in his place. Suppose that you
130
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
spent ten or twelve hours a day at a perfectly
uninteresting and monotonous trade, in an at-
mosphere composed largely of carbonic acid gas,
under the eye of a task-master who was paid to
see that every ounce of wealth-producing force
was taken out of you in the course of the day, and
with the knowledge that the least sign of self-
assertion would be visited with prompt dismissal.
Suppose that from the shop you went back, in your
stained and ill-smelling garments, to a room in a
rear tenement where, after a meal eaten at a table
strewed with the dirty plates of various other
persons and lighted with a kerosene lamp, you had
before you the prospect of spending the remainder
of the evening sitting in a room festooned with
somebody else's wash, with no books and no heart
to read them and for your companion a tired wife,
who has nothing but the gossip of the neighbors
to talk about, and is vainly trying to quiet a teeth-
ing baby.
·Do you feel sure that such surroundings, week
after week and year after year, would give your
nature all the development it needs? Nothing
of the sort; you are perfectly convinced that
it would be quite impossible for you to do the
work that you feel to be so very important to the
world unless you had an office or studio fitted up
with all the modern improvements, a house in a
pleasant part of the town, books and pictures
and concerts and lectures in the winter and a
Philanthropy
Its Success and Failure. 131
trip to the mountains or across the ocean in sum-
mer.
Without as much as that you would feel yourself
cramped out of all usefulness, you would find no
way of realizing yourself. I do not dispute it, but
I do maintain that the ignorant toiler has exactly
the same impulse to realize himself that you have,
and that it is this, and not mere sottishness,
however that may follow in time, that takes
him to the saloon. Once within that enclosure,
with a few cents in his pocket, and he suddenly
finds that he is something more than a "hand,”
something more even than an "employé," he is a
man.
Instead of feeling, as he very likely would at
the Free Reading Room (“provided by some kind
ladies and gentlemen" who are so intensely inter-
ested in the cultivation of literary taste among
the poor that they send down their old magazines
six months after date of issue and paste up goody-
goody pictures out of children's illustrated papers
on the wall), that he is a subject of charity and
may at any moment find a bevy of his benefactors
coming in to show him off to their friends in the
interval between a dinner-party and the theatre,
he knows that he will be treated with the same
deference that his benefactors themselves will re-
ceive if they should come in and call for a glass of
beer; he knows that he is not on sufferance, that
he has his rights and that they will be respected.
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Philanthropy and Social Progress.
There is a good deal of democracy in the saloon
even if, in some of our cities, the converse is also
true. At the saloon he will find the evening news-
paper, he will find men of his own sort ready to
talk with him, he will sometimes get a little music,
and, if he has a voice, he will be able to take part
in a jolly song himself. In other words, the saloon
stands to him for what the club, the reception, the
Harvard symphony and the Cecilia rehearsal are
for us.
If we deny it we merely illustrate our
need of grasping a deeper sense of human relations.
Let no tender conscience think that I have been
arguing in favor of the saloon. I know its damning
effect, and I have spent some of the best years of
my life in urging men to practise the heroism that
is involved in staying away; but I see no reason
for believing that all the heroism should be found
at one end of the social scale and all the easily-
gained reputation for virtue at the other
It seems necessary also to say, that I do not
think that the misery wrought by saloons will be
removed by the ministers and the philanthropists
taking over the business and running it at the old
stands, but rather by opening possibilities and
pleasures for the poor that will make saloons a
superfluity.¹
1 "Nothing appears to me at once more ludicrous and more
melancholy than the way the people of the present age usually
talk about the morals of laborers. You hardly ever address a
laboring man upon his prospects in life, without quietly assum-
Philanthropy Its Success and Failure. 133
The many forms of philanthropic industrial edu-
cation seem beyond reproach; but here, too, there
is a call for a deeper perception of our relation to
others in society, and our consequent obligation.
For of what value will it be to teach boys and girls
any number of trades if we give them no oppor-
tunity of exercising them? Of what use is it to
have learned to cook, if there is no money to buy
ing that he is to possess, at starting, as a small moral capital to
begin with, the virtue of Socrates, the philosophy of Plato, and
the heroism of Epaminondas. Be assured, my good man,' you
say to him, 'that if you work steadily for ten hours a day all
your life long, and if you drink nothing but water, or the very
mildest beer, and live on very plain food, and never lose your
temper, and go to church every Sunday, and always remain
content in the position in which Providence has placed you, and
never grumble nor swear, and always keep your clothes decent
and rise early, and use every opportunity of improving yourself,
you will get on very well, and never come to the parish.'
"All this is exceedingly true; but before giving this advice
so confidently, it would be well if we sometimes tried it prac-
tically ourselves, and spent a year or so at some hard manual
labor, not of an entertaining kind - ploughing or digging, for
instance, with a very moderate allowance of beer; nothing but
bread and cheese for dinner; no papers nor muffins in the
morning; no sofas nor magazines at night; one small room for
parlor and kitchen; and a large family of children always in the
middle of the floor. If we think we could, under these circum-
stances, enact Socrates or Epaminondas entirely to our own
satisfaction, we shall be somewhat justified in requiring the
same behavior from our poorer neighbors; but if not, we
should surely consider a little whether among the various
forms of oppression of the poor we may not rank as one of the
first and likeliest the oppression of expecting too much from
them."— John Ruskin.
134
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
food or fuel, no land on which to raise wheat, no
ground from which to dig coal? Of what use to
know how to build bricks into houses, if there are
no bricks to be had, and no earth on which to lay
the foundations? Can we make good our claim
to have exercised a kind beneficence towards these
children if we develop faculties in them, and excite
hopes, and then refuse to move forward to throw
open to them the doors that bar the way to the fru-
ition of those faculties, and the fulfilment of those
hopes? And what does that mean but owning
that they have as much right to the use of the
world as we have ourselves?
-
I have said nothing of a darker side of organized
charity, — of poor men and women hunted down
through some stupid blunder, or as the result of
some petty malice; questions asked by mysterious
persons in heavy veils, questions that stir up a
cloud of suspicion round some defenceless girl,
who is fighting hard to keep her self-respect and
her good name, this I leave to your imagination.
The instances that I know may be rare exceptions.
I have a hope that they are, but they are at least
not impossible. A stream does not rise higher than
its source, and agents are rarely better than the
system that creates them. What I deprecate as
a menace to philanthropy as a factor in social
progress, is an organized charity, not as it might
be, but as in some measure, it has been; not as it
is in London, but with us,—an organized charity
Philanthropy-Its Success and Failure. 135
that refuses to rise to the higher conception of
men and their relations that the age demands, an
organized charity that remains fixed in narrow
grooves and timid and outworn conventionalities,
an
Organized Charity scrimped and iced
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ."
As we pass on to College and Social Settlements
we feel that we are breathing a different air. The
spirit that inspires them is not one that is patient.
of class distinctions or of effusive expressions of
commiseration for the wretched. There is but
little of the inquisitive temper that led Thomas
Hood to satirize the people, -
"Who after poking in pots and pans
And counting garments in want of stitches,
Have ascertained that the working-man
Wears a pair and a half of average breeches."
No, College Settlements and Neighborhood Guilds
start out with the conviction that we are all of a
piece, and that shirt-workers, and tobacco-strippers
have natures very much like our own; that what
delights us would, if their powers of enjoyment
could only have a chance to develop a little, de-
light them; that where we go, often with stum-
bling steps, they might, when once they were
accustomed to the way, walk fast and fleet. And
what leads these young men and women to fling
themselves in among the masses of the disinherited
136
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
and the despairing, is not that they feel that they
owe to them merely pity or prudence, advice or
admonition, but that they owe themselves, in the
bonds of a common kindred and fellowship, in the
unity of a common life.
They do not assume to stand upon any higher
plane; they come to be taught quite as much as
to teach, humbly to ask and receive as well as to
offer and bestow. They see that we are never on
the terms with a man on which we can do him the
highest good until we are as ready to let him do
us a favor as to extend one to him.As Mr.
Sheldon says, “We cannot help any person unless
we can also learn something from him."
And this is not a mere bit of sentiment or
pretence; it is the perception of a deep and
glorious truth. Some of you I trust have found
it out; you have learned that among the poor,
among the people who live in narrow courts and
crowded tenements, there are riches of reality
and simplicity, of unselfishness and love, for which
you looked in vain, perhaps, in houses rich with
elegance and fair with culture; and in hours of
sorrow or disappointment you have been given
to feel about you the arms of a warm humanity
full of healing and of strength. And yet, those
of you who have already engaged in this move-
ment are, I am sure, just the ones to own that you
have not reached the goal. Rather, that which stirs
you so deeply is the thought of the splendid possi-
Philanthropy — Its Success and Failure. 137
bilities that rise before you. Not that there are
not times of discouragement; as an old writer says,
"He who seeks to serve the poor will have sweet
moments and bitter hours"; but that the sense
that does come to you, from time to time, of the
establishment of such a relation among all men
here, as many good and holy men have dreamed of
as possible only in some future state of existence,
recompenses for all your toil. If, then, I seek to
point out to you, what may lead us on one step
farther, towards that glorious consummation, you
will not think that I undervalue what you have
already done.
It is yours to recognize in the masses the possi-
bility of pleasure in friendship, of interest in study,
of delight in literature, of fascination in science, of
enthusiasm in art. You believe that intellectual
hunger once roused is more urgent than the
hunger of the body; and that men are lifted more
surely by exciting that hunger than by simply
stuffing their stomachs or training their fingers.
But there is a craving more powerful still; it is
the passion for liberty, not the false liberty of
doing one's own will as an individual against the
rest of the world but of realizing one's self in
closest fellowship with the world. Liberty, true
liberty, is not an end in itself but it is a necessary
condition of fraternity. We are made for unity,
but the unity must be a unity of men, and a man is
not fully a man until he is a free man, until the
138
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
way is open to him for a real self-development, a
finding of the law of his being not in things out-
side of him but in the Divine Reason within him.
So long as I seek liberty for myself alone it will
prove a misleading phantom, for my true self is a
social self and cannot be achieved in isolation.
Unless I am seeking that others may secure free-
dom I must continue in bondage myself, for others
are part of myself. And without freedom even
the best gifts, learning, culture, beauty, fail to
satisfy. This we all confess, but do we carry it
out to its legitimate conclusions? That, and that
alone, will establish us in a thoroughly rational
philanthropy that will be a factor, will, perhaps, be
the factor in social progress.
What is necessary to insure freedom for the
poor? It is to put them in the position to do
for themselves and for others all those things
that philanthropy now does for them. Hitherto
we have thought of philanthropy as practically
the prerogative of a class. Except in those prim-
itive days when classes were unknown, we have
taken it for granted that the rich were to be the
benefactors, the poor the beneficiaries. But if
we are to enter into the new truth that is breaking
in upon us (or rather the old truth made young
again), that we are all one in Humanity's Head and
Lord, that we are members one of another, that we
are fellow-heirs of the gifts of God, then we, the
educated and refined, cannot any longer wish to
¡
Philanthropy - Its Success and Failure. 139
monopolize this blessed privilege of ministration
and toil and pain for others' good. We shall bid
the poor come and work with us for the uplifting
of humanity, we may even ask them to come and
show us how to work. We shall beg them to con-
sider what we do for them to be only our contribu-
tion towards the task in which they, not we, must
be the leaders, the way in which we set them
free to do for others what they alone can do.
Is not this the message that Professor Tucker
brought to us in such "winged words" in his ora-
tion before the Phi Beta Kappa at Cambridge last
June?
"The old idea of working for men is being modi-
fied by the larger principle of identification with
them. The College Settlement will not supersede
the mission, but it will put beside it the broader
conception of social unity. . It will make ser-
vice mean, not what we are able to do for others,
but what we are willing to share with others."
•
Yes, thank God, even the universities, in spite of
the academic conceit that so often blinds them, are
feeling the impulse of the new life, and are learning
to make themselves one with the people. The day
of merely helping the poor has for all thinking men
long gone by; the day of helping them to help
themselves teaching them in selfish separation
to fight, each one for his own hand—is fast wan-
ing; the better day of helping them to help others
is here.
140 Philanthropy and Social Progress.
Does this seem extravagant? Does it seem a
kind of indignity to our intellects to suggest that
mere artisans and day-laborers may know more.
about philanthropy than we do, the favored chil-
dren of this age of culture? And yet the witness
of history might well temper our surprise. For,
as dear Joseph Mazzini says, "all great national
enterprises have ever been originated by men of
the people, whose sole strength lay in that power
of faith and of will which neither counts obstacles
nor measures time. Men of means and influence
follow after; either to support and carry on the
movement created by the first, or, as too often hap-
pens, to divert it from its original aim."
Books alone will not teach the science of life,
and if philanthropy means the simple love for and
loyalty to humankind, the poor will still bear off
the palm. It is not they that build orphan-houses
and old people's homes; they open their own doors
and bid the outcast to come in. Some little time
ago, when I was working among the tenement
houses of the East Side of New York, it was not
uncommon on entering the conventional three
rooms that serve as the domicile of most families,
to see the face of a stranger-child among the other
children.
"And who is this little girl?" I would say.
"Oh, Father, that's Mrs. Hartman's little girl.
Mrs. Hartman had to go to the hospital, and we
told Lena to come and stay with us until her
Philanthropy -
— Its Success and Failure. 141
mother gets well. She goes to school with the
other children, and helps wash the dishes."
66
Or it would be, "Who's that old woman I saw at
your house the other day; is it your grandmother?"
'Oh, no, she's no relation to us; but she hadn't
any place to stay, and we couldn't bear to turn her
out, and my man said let her stay and do what she
She doesn't eat much, and she can mind the
baby while I work on the machine."
can.
Do we think that our asylum-philanthropy will
ever come up to that?¹
What do you suppose becomes of the poor, the
really penniless and helpless poor, in the intervals
between the visits of the paid agent of the char-
itable society or the volunteer parish-worker?
Here is a widow, with two or three young chil-
dren, down sick with pneumonia. The visitor
calls on Monday, and finds the coal and food
almost gone: she sends round a small quantity of
the necessaries of life, enough to last perhaps a
1 If only three families, on the average, in all the congrega-
tions of Christian people in the State of New York would take
in (not as a drudge, but as a member of the household) a single
homeless child, all the orphan asylums in the State, both public
and private, might be closed to-morrow. Could not the State,
if it continues to exempt ecclesiastical property from taxation,
require some such practical fulfilment of the very purpose for
which the Church was founded? "Whoso shall receive one
such little child in My Name, receiveth Me," is the word of the
Church's Master and Lord. But, alas, it is now as of old, "He
came unto His own [dwellings], and His own [dependents]
received Him not."
142
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
:
day and a half. The "case" slips her mind, or
she goes out of town to see a friend, and it is Sat-
urday before she calls again. Has the poor woman
frozen and starved meanwhile? Oh, no; she finds
her in just about the same condition, but with still
sufficient to live on. Has any other philanthropist
been there? Quite possibly not; only "the woman
up-stairs she came in and brought us some dinner
yesterday, and the baker next door gave my little
girl a stale loaf, and when I was so sick Wednes-
day night that girl that works in the tailor's shop
across the entry came and sat up with me. Some
of the neighbors do talk about her, but she was
real good, and she says she had a little sister that
looked just like my Minnie, but she died last win-
ter the time work was slack; and the grocer across
the way he said he'd trust me with a hodful of
coals: so we did get along, Ma'am; we poor folks
have to help each other; but if you can do some-
thing for us we'd be very grateful.”
Wretchedly unorganized, you see ; and yet what
a saving of self-respect, and consequently of strength
for future effort, lies in that "we poor folks must
help each other." And may there not be more
real philanthropy in such commonplace, unmeas-
ured, unrecorded acts than in the doles of a bureau
supported by cheques written out in half-con-
temptuous compliance with the wheedling request.
of some "society leaders," who have taken to
slumming for a diversion?
Philanthropy - Its Success and Failure. 143
The philanthropy of the future, at any rate, will
open the way for such deeds on the part of all. It
is the way forward to that philanthropy that, in
closing this lecture, I ask you to consider. The first
step must be to insure to all able-bodied men and
women freedom of opportunity to live full and happy
lives as the result of their own exertions, and not
as the recipients of charity from the members of
another class. It will be said, I know, that that
freedom of opportunity already exists. I will not
weary you with statistics, beyond saying that in
1490 cases of poverty observed by the New York
Companies, twenty-nine per cent was owing to an
inability to get work; ten per cent to drunkenness.
I only ask if freedom of opportunity to labor ex-
ists why is it almost universally considered a favor
on the part of a rich man to give a poor man work?
The other day a Slav who had been given a job in
a Pennsylvania coal mine knelt down and kissed
the hand of the boss who set him to work. Neither
of them seemed to think the action strange. Per-
haps there is nothing for which the poor so often
beg as work. I know they do not always want it.
There are people that, as wage-workers themselves
say, “look for a job, all the time praying they
mayn't find it."
That used to seem to me very reprehensible
till one of my boys on the East Side said to me
one day, when he had been several weeks looking
in vain for something to do, "Father, it frightens
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me to be out of work so long. You don't know
how it is with a fellow like us; but if a fellow
that's been working right along loses his place,
the first week he's crazy to get back; he gets up
at four o'clock every morning and looks in the
advertisements, and goes to all the shops where he
thinks they'll take him in, and walks all over town
and up and down both sides of the rivers. And
he does like that the next week and the next, and
he keeps on for one month, or two months, or three
months perhaps; but if he's out of work six months
he never wants to do another stroke of work again,
and that's the way I'm afraid it will be with me if
I don't get a job soon."
However, the fact stands out plain as day that
the poor regard work as a boon; and equally clear
is it that the well-to-do people think they are con-
ferring a favor when they give a man employment.
So habitual is this view of things that we look
upon it as a strange and paradoxical statement
when we are told that the real thanks should be
from the employer to his laborers whom he calls
his "hands." Yet evidently that is the case. For
if the workman did not return to his employer, in
the shape of the product of his toil, more than the
master gives him in wages how could the employer
ever roll up profits, as some employers certainly
do?
Now this fact, that by rich and poor alike, work is
regarded as a gratuity, throws a strong light on the
Philanthropy - Its Success and Failure. 145
question whether or not there is freedom of oppor-
tunity for all to create for themselves the things
they need for life and its delights. Men do not
thank their neighbors for allowing them to open
their eyes, or fill their lungs, or even cast their
votes. There is freedom to do these things. If
there really were freedom for men to use their
strength to produce what they need, or what they
could freely exchange with others with mutual
benefit on both sides to procure the things they
need, no one would think of thanking his brother
for opportunity for working.
But we are far enough from any such state of
things as that. Why is it? Well, what do we
mean by opportunity to work? Of course we do not
mean opportunity for a man to exercise his muscles
or to exhaust his physical strength. A man can
tire himself out walking along the high-road. But
physical labor cannot be long continued without
food to supply the waste of tissue, without a shelter
in which to sleep, without clothes to protect from
cold.
Freedom to work, that is to continue to work,
must mean, then, the chance to use one's strength
in such wise as to produce food, clothes, the shel-
ter of a house, etc. But it is perfectly clear that
all these things, and everything that ministers.
to man's need, are to be had from the earth and
only from the earth. In that sense man is a
land animal; he lives on the land and off the
146 Philanthropy and Social Progress.
land. Even the other gifts of God are of no use
to him without land. A few miles above the sur-
face of the earth the sun will not warm him, and
the air will not fill his lungs. Out on the ocean
the wind may blow, and the rain may fall, but they
will not ripen any harvests or furnish any fuel
against the cold. Freedom of opportunity means
freedom of access to the land, for land is opportu-
nity. And if the opportunity to work be wanting
it is because access to land is closed.
A single glance into the past will make this clear.
The late Thorold Rogers stands above criticism as
a careful and conscientious historian of the economic
changes of England. He is pre-eminently the stat-
istician, biassed by no prejudice on either side of
the great controversy of the day but simply asking,
"What are the facts of the past?" 1
In his great work on six centuries of English
labor he declares that in the latter part of the
fourteenth and in the fifteenth centuries pov-
erty such as we are familiar with did not exist.
In that "Golden Age" of labor there was not
one family as poor as seven million people in the
great cities of England to-day. One single con-
trast will suffice. After giving wearisomely mi-
nute statistics Professor Rogers sums up by say-
ing that, in the year 1795, the wages of agricul-
tural laborers, judged by the price of food, were
1 This statement is not quite true. Mr. Rogers began his
studies strongly opposed to the cause of the wage-workers,
Philanthropy — Its Success and Failure. 147
less than one-seventh of what they were in the
year 1495.
It is wellnigh impossible for us to
realize what this means. We only approximate
to it, if we imagine what it would be for any one
of us to live next year on one-seventh of what he
lived on last year.
Now what was the cause of this tremendous
change? No sudden and wide-spread exhaustion
of the soil is reported; rather, with the introduc-
tion of new roots and grasses, the improved system
of the rotation of crops, the bringing in of wastes,
the development of the quality of live-stock, the
land of England had in these three centuries be-
come indefinitely more productive. Not the de-
preciation of the currency or the statute of
laborers; bad as those were they could hardly
have produced such extensive misery. Not even
the introduction of machinery, as the Socialists
would fain have us believe, can be credited with
the crime of changing "Merry England" into a
land of paupers, in the richest city of which one
person in five dies in receipt of public aid. Ma-
chinery was still in its rude beginnings and steam-
power unknown when the rustic laborers were
dying of starvation and the rot.
But one cause remains writ large for those not
blinded by the self-interest that vested rights and
rent-receiving and landlordism engender. In the
two centuries that followed what the peasants still
speak of as the "good old times" the land was
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stolen from the people, the opprobrious term is
used deliberately as alone capable of describing the
fact.1 In the fourteenth century every family had,
or could have, its place upon the soil; there were
commons on which the poorest man could pasture
his goats, his sheep, or his geese, without tax or
toll. But the change of the old military duties
into a money-payment, easily shifted on to the
shoulders of those beneath, had made the ruling
classes of England greedy of land, and little by
little, by stealthy aggressions on the part of indi-
vidual landlords, or by more open assaults upon
the rights of the people in a parliament controlled
by the landed interest, the common lands have
been inclosed, until now not one person in a thou-
sand in England owns, or can obtain, an acre of
his native soil.
And in the apparently boundless territory of
this American continent the same destructive
forces have been working, only more rapidly, as
would be expected in a new country where the
influence of immemorial precedents and the linger-
ing belief in social duties hardly exist, and where
the sense that natural opportunities are limited in
amount and are being monopolized, makes men
fierce and eager in the struggle. I know very
well there are people who will say that they see
no relation between land-grabbing and poverty;
they don't even see the significance in Ben Tillett's
1 See "Land and the Community," by the Rev. S. W.
Thackeray, A. M., LL.D., Trin. Coll., Cantab.
Philanthropy-Its Success and Failure. 149
epigrammatic utterance: "For every acre of land
in England that goes out of tillage one more man
knocks on the dock-yard gates for a job." They
will say that we cannot all become farmers, and
that the poor will not go out of the city even when
the chance is given them, and that there are plenty
of deserted farms in New Hampshire if anybody
wants them, and that if they can do no better they
can go West, or that the country is over-populated
and that we must limit immigration.
It seems hopeless to try to deal with such argu-
ments as these. It is like attempting to reason
with the lady who, in response to your account of
the extortionate fines imposed on girls in New York
factories, tells you that she is sure things cannot
be so bad, because Bridget the cook left her week
before last, and she hasn't been able to fill her
place yet. But, nevertheless, I will mention two
incidents which, if carefully thought out, may
show that opening the way to natural opportuni-
ties must be the first step in preparing the way for
a true philanthropy, if it be not the true philan-
thropy itself.
Two years ago I was riding down from London
to Wiltshire with my friend, William Saunders of
the County Council of London. Into the carriage
came a nice-looking young farmer, an acquaint-
ance of Mr. Saunders. He farms eleven thousand
acres of English soil; of course he does not own
it. The conversation turned on a tract of land on
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Salisbury Plain. "If I had that piece of land,"
said the farmer, "I wouldn't take the trouble to
till it; labor down there is the most expensive in
England" (no wonder, they pay the men nine
shillings a week; what work will men do for that?).
"If I had that land I'll tell you what I'd do; I'd
just put one man on five hundred acres and raise
sheep." And that is being done. It is being done
in England as it was in Rome two thousand years
ago. Consider what it means. Those five hun-
dred acres would support from thirty to forty fam-
ilies of men working for themselves. Our friend
proposed substituting one man. What do you
suppose will become of the thirty or forty families,
that, in the natural course of things, would have
found their homes there? They will take the
road to London town, to swell the vast hordes that
are making the East End the despair of philan-
thropists and the menace of a nation.
A few months after this I was walking along the
road thirty miles west of the city of Philadelphia.
I saw in front of me an old man, sixty years of
age perhaps; his clothes were old and out of shape,
his shoes were dusty and broken; over one shoulder
was an old-fashioned carpet-bag and a pair of boots;
a heavy overcoat was strapped on his back. As
I caught up with him I said, "On the tramp?”
He turned to me with some dignity and said, "No,
I'm not a tramp; I'm an old soldier. I fought in
'most all the war, and I never thought I'd be where
Philanthropy-Its Success and Failure. 151
I am now. When I left the army I come to Phil-
adelphy and get married. We've alluz had hard
luck, and last winter a feller wrote me from
Springfield, Missouri, and told me if I liked I
could take up one hundred and sixty acres of gov-
ernment land. He said 'twas real nice land, and
ef I liked I could take my fam'ly out there in the
spring, and by fall I'd have a roof over my head
and a place to spend the winter. I reckoned I'd
better go out there first and see for myself. So I
got enough to take me out there and I went to
Missouri. But when I come to locate the tract I
see that I'd been took in bad. 'Twas a narrow
gulch between two high hills, the sides of 'em was
covered with trees and rocks and stones, and
'long the bottom run a stream so scant I had to
dam it up to get enough to get a drink. I see
right off 'twan't no use to try to make anything
out of that, and so I started home; but I hadn't
'nuff to pay my fare. The Mayor of Springfield
gave me a ride on a river steamer as far as St.
Louis, and then from there I've been walkin' back.
It's took me seven weeks; I lived on five cents a
day, a half pound of crackers or a stale loaf.
Nights I slept out of doors, and if it came on to
snow I'd walk on until I got warm again. To-mor-
row night I'll be home."
Now the point I want you to consider is not
whether this story was true or not, though I have
partially verified it, but that it might have been
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Philanthropy and Social Progress.
true, and that, in that walk of a thousand miles,
such a man would pass tens of thousands of acres
even in his own State, lying unused under the
spring sun, but that he could not have turned a
furrow in one of them without being warned off as
a trespasser. So back he goes to the city to sink
lower and lower in the ranks of the destitute and
the poor.
In New York City I know of a number of young
men and women among the tenement-house popu-
lation, who are struggling to get a bit of land and
a house for themselves. They join building and
loan associations, and with heroic self-denial, set
aside from their small earnings one, two, or three
dollars every week. One girl said to me, "I'm
not going to pay rent to a landlord all my life, if
I can help it, and I want to see my father and
mother in a house of their own when they get too
old to work."
I believe that this determination has been awak-
ened in many of these young people by the
fresh air funds which have enabled them as chil-
dren to go into the country every summer, and
so built up in their minds the dream of a fuller,
freer life than they can find in a crowded court.
I know that when our boys used to come to us
at St. Andrew's Cottage, on Long Island, at first
we had to beg them to stay. They might have
come from the reeking streets of the East Side
in sweltering July weather, but even the sea-
Philanthropy — Its Success and Failure. 153
breezes and open fields had no attraction at first.
But when a week was up they would come and
ask wistfully, "Mayn't I stay one week more?"
and, later on, they would want to be there all sum-
mer; and, finally, one and another would declare
that he meant to earn money and buy a place out in
the country, and get his father and mother to move
out there altogether.
Alas, very few of them will accomplish it, and
every year makes it more difficult. And why?
Not because there is not land enough. Within
the city limits of New York to-day, there is suf-
ficient space for every family to have its own
house. What blocks their way and imprisons
them in their caravansaries, is the fact that land
near New York is becoming more and more costly
every year, is reaching a value that no savings
on their part can ever overtake. And yet this
increment of value represents no effort on the
part of the small number of people who own the
land (seven per cent of the whole population),
but is the result of the presence in New York of
these very toilsmen who, though they have con-
tributed to make the soil of their native city richer
than any other part of this country, find that their
labor has resulted only in building higher the wall
that pens them in.
It is not an answer to say that many of the poor
do not care to go out of town, even into the sub-
urbs. I know of many families that have done
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Philanthropy and Social Progress.
so; I know of many more that are trying to do so.
Were the increased values of lands near the city,
which are the direct result of the pressure out-
wards, collected and used for free transportation,
already proved to be a perfectly practical measure,
not only would the holding of land out of use for
speculative purposes be at an end, but the way
would be free for many families anxious to move
away from over-crowded districts to do so at once,
and the stream once started would widen and
grow. Then the tenement-house wilderness might
once again be glad, and its desert rejoice in open-
ness and air and light.
Our relation with those we meet in our Social
Settlements will not be complete until we can sit
down at their tables as we ask them to sit down at
ours. But what is felt to be impossible and absurd
in the case of a family living in a tenement, would
be quite possible were the family living in even a
very humble house of its own.
These are only suggestions of the way in which
access to the basis of physical existence, the land,
would insure freedom of opportunity to all. Into
the deeper economic aspects of the question, there
is no time to enter. Did space allow, it would not
be difficult to show that the breaking down of the
fundamental monopoly of the sources of production
would provide remunerative labor of one sort or
another to all, and that the standard of wages
would no longer be set by a fierce competition
Philanthropy-Its Success and Failure. 155
among the toilers in an unnaturally restricted
area, but by the time and strength it would require
for a man possessed of perfect liberty to produce
and exchange, to support himself on land of ordi-
nary fertility. With freedom of opportunity as-
sured to all, the lazy and shiftless could with
truest kindness be left to the severe but whole-
some action of natural laws and to the disciplinary
measure of the State which could then treat pau-
perism as a crime, and segregate the habitual beg-
gar, for life if it were necessary, as mentally or
morally diseased.
But the breaking down of the monopoly of the
land would have results on others besides the poor.
We are being taught in a great many ways that
society hangs together, and that no one portion of
it can suffer alone. I used to think that the pres-
ent conditions made the poor wretched and the
rich happy. Less and less does that seem to me
to be true. After spending ten years almost ex-
clusively with the poor, I have of late had some
insight into the lives of the rich, and as I look
beneath the mask of luxury and mirth, I find a
sense of pity and compassion taking the place of
anger and resentment. Edward Carpenter says
that the hovels of East London can only be wiped
out by the destruction of the palaces of the West.
But if "healthy and happy human beings are a
nation's wealth," the call for social reconstruction
is to be heard not alone from Whitechapel, but
156
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
from Belgravia; not alone from those who labor,
but from those who leech.
It can never be well for any class in the com-
munity to be released from the necessity of sharing
in the work of the world. Since the abolition of
slavery it is land-ownership that creates an idle
class. A true philanthropy will care for those
who work too little as well as for those who work
too much. The philanthropy that will be a factor
in social progress will be a philanthropy from
which "charity" is eradicated, and which recog-
nizes a universal democracy, not only in politics
but in economics, not only at the ballot-box but in
the factory and the shop.
Philanthropy and Morality.
157
V.
PHILANTHROPY AND MORALITY.
BY JAMES O. S. HUNTINGTON, ORDER OF THE HOLY CROSS,
WESTMINSTER, Md.
THERE is a widely diffused notion nowadays
that in our relations with our fellow-men we have
simply to wish them well and to do them good,
and that this is a perfectly simple and easy matter.
The popular demand is for "practical” beneficence
as opposed to a charity based upon "theory." It
is assumed that what sets men at odds is the
fruitless and age-long controversy about "ulti-
mate truths and abstract propositions"; that if
men would only devote themselves to doing good
they would all fall into line, and the sufferings
of the world would be removed. The "service of
humanity" is set forward as a substitute for ad-
herence to creeds and dogmas and formularies of
devotion, or the development of ethical systems.
"Conduct is three-fourths of life," it is said, "and
conduct has to do with people about us. The
outworn theologies of the past have drawn off
the energies of men in vain attempts to know a
God who is by His very nature unknowable, and
158
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
fixed the attention of so-called believers on the
task of saving their own souls rather than on mak-
ing this world a little less wretched and needlessly
miserable. Why should we any longer hamper
ourselves with the uncertainties of religion or the
subtleties of a rigorous moral code? Let us go
and make the poor comfortable and happy, and
leave the affairs of heaven to be attended to when
we get there.”
Words like these are on the lips of many peo-
ple in our day and generation. I am sure there
is much to justify them. I hope we all sympa-
thize with the spirit that inspires them. I hope
we see that it is the spirit of a generous im-
patience at empty phrases and unreal professions,
hollow forms and barren speculations, the spirit of
a hearty interest in the welfare of others, and the
longing to use one's life in the cause of human
improvement. With all this we do well to be in
thorough accord. And yet, it is worth while to
ask whether there is not an error of thought
involved in setting the "practical" against the
theoretical, in assuming that men will continue
to act unselfishly when the grounds for self-sub-
dual and unselfishness have been forgotten or de-
nied, in believing that a philanthropy that rests
on no moral sanction, and is guided by no light
but its own, can be a factor in social progress.
This is the subject with which we have to deal.
If we press for a definition of the terms " philan-
Philanthropy and Morality.
159
thropy " and "morality," we can settle the question
in short order. Taking the loose expression "doing
good to people” as sufficiently descriptive of phi-
lanthropy, it will at once appear that what is meant
by the phrase is "doing good to all people," not
merely benefiting one class at the expense of an-
other; and, of course, the good done must be some
permanent and real good, not the gratification of
desires for wasteful pleasures or debasing joys.
That is to say, philanthropy, even in its vaguest
and most popular meaning, has for its end social
progress, the continual development and self-real-
ization of society. But the development of society
involves the development of the individuals that
make up society, and requires that these individuals
should become more clearly conscious of the rela-
tions that bind them together, and should volun-
tarily correspond with those relations. And this
correspondence of the individual with the real and
necessary relations in which he stands as a member
of a universe of self-conscious beings is the very
subject-matter of Ethics, or of Moral Science.
Philanthropy requires that men should know
themselves as bound together in a unity that im-
poses mutual services and duties. Morality is the
illustration of those duties and the urging them
home upon the individual conscience. Philan-
thropy would not be philanthropy if it did not
make for human progress, and the progress of
human society is the fulfilment of the moral law.
160
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
The individual cannot come to his best save in a
society that is moving forward to its true goal,
and the advance of society depends upon the
development of all the individuals that compose
it. Thus a philanthropy that does not contribute
to morality is false to its name. We will not
linger now to ask more particularly what the con-
ception of morality involves. It will serve a more
immediate purpose if we aim to see in some detail
how essential it is to bring the efforts of professed
philanthropy constantly before the bar of morality,
and to show how false is any so-called philanthropy
that cannot approve itself there.
One corollary to the position taken can be stated
at once. It is this, that when a fundamental social
injustice has come to be recognized and admitted,
any efforts towards correcting special evils, that do
not contribute to the movement against the under-
lying wrong, tend to become nugatory and abortive.
If that principle were to be generally accepted, a
gauge would be furnished by which we could in
some measure test the worth of any philanthropic
movement in the direction of social reform and
social progress, for all progress is on one side
reform, since all progress is a passing out from a
lower state of being, that, as the time for the
higher state arrives, becomes not merely imper-
fect, but evil.¹
1 Before the Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard last June, Professor
Tucker said, "The philanthropy which is content to relieve the
Philanthropy and Morality.
161
That there is some underlying wrong in our
present civilization most of us feel, if we do not
openly confess. The growing consciousness of it
is the source of a vast deal of the social unrest of
the age in which we live. This is as true as that
the fact that comparatively few men see where the
wrong lies, and who is responsible for it, and there-
fore how it is to be set right, goes far to explain
the confusions and blunders and fruitless struggles
in the war between social classes. Still a great
deal has been gained in having brought so many
of all classes to own that there is a wrong to be
righted; and if, as has just been said, the exist-
ence of that wrong is sufficient reason for the fail-
ure of the best-laid philanthropic schemes, we who
call ourselves philanthropists can with better heart
and less desire for concealment bear the exposure
of our ill success.
Let us take first, then, the effect of what is
to-day recognized as philanthropy upon the recipi-
ents of out-door relief. It is one of the axioms of
modern charity that the State cannot dispense relief
to people in their homes. The ruinous effect of
the old English Poor Law, which was in force
from 1790 to 1834, has settled that. The fatal
effect of State relief in keeping wages below a liv-
ing point, and in undermining the self-respect and
desire for self-maintenance of the working classes,
sufferer from wrong social conditions postpones the philanthropy
which is determined at any cost to right those conditions."
162
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
is one of the most familiar themes in the literature
of modern sociology. Archbishop Whately says:
"Men will do what you pay them to do; if you
pay them to work they'll work, if you pay them to
beg they'll beg." But even after the mischievous
character of State aid had been proved, the notion
still held sway that private alms-giving would not
pauperize, because, being voluntary, it cannot be
counted upon as a certainty or claimed as a right.
It was very soon discovered that this hopeful pres-
age had to be modified by adding after "private
alms-giving" the clause, "provided that such alms-
giving does not overlap, and that investigation of
the case is made by the trained officers of the
Charity Organization Society."
Yet even with this proviso I believe that the
same evils, in somewhat less degree perhaps,
will be found to flow from private as from pub-
lic relief. To those who look at the matter
from a distance, the differentiation of private
from public charity is easy enough; but to the
poor there is probably little sense of distinction
between the agent of the city or the county and
the paid representative of a large charitable in-
stitution, except that one is more distinctly con-
nected with the police in their minds than the
other. In applying to both they have to antic-
ipate being asked a great many questions that
they don't want to answer and that put a pre-
mium on lying,—successfully lying, — and that
Philanthropy and Morality.
163
bar the way to any sense of gratitude. In both
cases they imagine that the treasury of the relief
agency is practically unlimited, and that if they
can only manage to be miserable and poor enough,
its mighty forces will be set in motion on their
behalf. In both cases the sight of some neighbor-
family, apparently as well off as they are, drawing
its partial or whole support from public or private
alms, excites cupidity while it paralyzes all effort
at self-support. And there seems to be hardly
any degree of temporary suffering that human
nature will not endure with the prospect of get-
ting a living out of somebody else.
In London, we are told, men secure an immu-
nity from work for most of their lives by being
periodically run over in the streets by the equi-
page of some wealthy and soft-hearted person.
There are, of course, a great many small socie-
ties, of one sort or another, that distribute doles
and that are clearly differentiated, even by the
poor, from the great relief agencies, either public
or voluntary; but these, as developing in the poor
the vices of flattery and religious hypocrisy, are
not less demoralizing in their effects.
Charity organization has done something to
check this particular evil, but there seems little
ground to hope that its influence will ever do
more than check it slightly here and there. And
the mischief spreads far beyond those who suc-
ceed in getting helped. The very existence of
164
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
many of these charitable societies, whether " Asso-
ciated" or not, is positively baneful and degrad-
ing; it keeps before the minds of the poor the
dream of a life of dependence on others' bounty;
it fosters the preaching of that travesty of the
gospel, "alms-giving to the rich, and resignation
to the poor"; it invests poverty with a kind of
sentimental and sickly romance, and it makes
many people, who might otherwise be cheerfully
fulfilling the great and sacred law of self-respect-
ing labor, regard their work as a mere misfortune
and do their stent with grudging spirit, one eye
on their task, the other squinting aside to catch
sight of some chance to imitate the higher classes
and live on other people. And this very desire is
lowering. Mrs. Lowell says, "Human nature is
so constituted that no man can receive as a gift
what he should earn by his own labor without a
moral deterioration, and the presence in the com-
munity of certain persons living on public relief
has the tendency to tempt others to sink to their
degraded level.”
"But," it may be objected, "in this sweeping
condemnation of philanthropic endeavor to assuage
the sufferings of the poor, you must certainly make
an exception in favor of the many institutions
which, in their various ways, are ministering to
those who, as children, or old people, or invalids,
cannot possibly take care of themselves." It seems
a graceless task to say anything in disparagement
Philanthropy and Morality.
165
of hospitals and orphan asylums and fresh-air funds
and old people's homes. Few things in this weary
world are as worthy of honor as the tender and lov-
ing care of little children, and I hold that there
is hardly any profession or calling so noble as those
of the physician and the trained nurse. Nor do I
suppose that the time will ever come in this earthly
state of things, when certain forms of mental and
moral infirmity, as well as of physical disease, will
not call for segregation in buildings separate from
the homes of the community, and under the skilful
treatment of practitioners specially educated for
the purpose, and furnished with means to do for
their patients what could not be properly done in
their own homes, or in private houses at all.
But I have to deal with the question whether or
not these various institutions, regarded as dispen-
sers of charity, are a blessing or a curse. And, I
ask, is it well that the family, -taking that word
as including near relations, as much as father,
mother, and children, is it well that the family,
which most of us probably regard as a necessary
factor in social progress, should be relieved of the
support of its dependent members? Is it to the
advancement of morality, that science and art
of true human relations, that the poor, the toil-
ers, the ignorant, those who must be taught by life
rather than by books, should be released from the
sense of responsibility for their own children or the
children of their near kindred, of the maintenance
-
166
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
of their own fathers and mothers, or their grand-
parents, of tenderness to the sick and feeble and
imbecile among their kith and kin?
Can we
complacently look forward to a time when only
able-bodied individuals among the working-classes
shall be at large, all the children, sick, and aged
being grouped in institutions called by a kind of
refinement of cruelty and contempt of the divine
appointment of the household, "homes"?
We, in our rank in society, do not consider it
quite the thing to send away from our care and
tenderness those members of our families who
most need that care. And it is not only for the
sake of those on whom we are so glad to wait.
How much of the sweetness and brightness of our
homes comes from those sick-beds and couches
where lie patient sufferers ready to listen with
loving sympathy to our tales of disappointment
and ill success, bringing to the aid of our ruder
faculties the quickened perceptions of spirits re-
fined by long hours of pain, touching us to nobler
issues, and sending us forth to endure with stouter
hearts, as we carry with us the memory of calm,
pale faces, and the echo of faint but earnest tones.
How many a mother, cut off by ill-health from all
active service, has ruled the hearts of headstrong
boys and wilful girls from her sick-room. How
many a little child has by its very helplessness
kept soft a father's heart. Is it well that all this
gracious influence should be taken out of the lives
Philanthropy and Morality.
167
of the poor? It is of no use to say that the poor
do not appreciate this poetical view of things.
That is not true, to begin with; but if it were, it
would only be an added reason against removing
the very influence by which they may come to
appreciate it.
Or fall back to lower levels and be severely prac-
tical. If the desire in our philanthropic endeavor
is to "inculcate habits of providence and self-
dependence," to make the poor diligent in their
work, to give them an interest in the welfare and
advancement of their country, surely it will be
best not to remove from them the very incentives
and motives that in all ages and lands have proved
the most powerful in nerving men to exertion and
effort. The hope in a man's heart of having a
home, whose roof may shelter father and mother
when they are old, and where his children may
grow up shielded from the dangers of the world,
has been a potent factor in the progress of human-
ity; it has launched ships, and dared tempests,
and felled forests, and conquered fierce and hostile
tribes, and made the American nation.
No philanthropy that weakens this motive, no
philanthropy that does not aim at all costs to pre-
serve and strengthen it, can contribute to social
progress. But what of a philanthropy that erects
Old Men's Homes, and Children's Folds, and Chil-
dren's Nurseries, and tolerates tenement houses (in
the interest of landlord benefactors), and says
168
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
nothing against the robbery from the people of the
very earth on which alone their homes can be built?
The appeal to men to fight and struggle, and die,
if need be, in defence of their hearths, the gray
hairs of their sires, and their children's lives, has
rarely been made in vain. But what patriotism
is to be expected from a man whose wife has died
worn out by drudgery in a factory, whose parents
are in the almshouse, whose boys and girls are
growing up in an institution, and who himself
lives from hand to mouth in a room from which
he may be evicted in a week if he does not pay
his rent?1
In the movement of industrial training and
Social Settlements there is little danger of pauperi-
zation in the ordinary sense of the word, of sapping
energy, or of fostering habits of indolence. Yet
1 "It is said that as the first rush was made upon the salient
of the Redan, three old soldiers of the 41st Regiment entered
with Colonel Windham. The three men were named Hart-
nady, Kennedy, and Pat Mahony; the last, a gigantic grena-
dier, was shot dead as he entered, crying, 'Come on, boys,
come on.' There was more in the dying words of the Celtic
grenadier than the mere outburst of his heroic heart. The
garret-bred 'boys' would not go on. It is in moments such
as this, that the cabin on the hillside, the shieling in the High-
land glen, become towers of strength to the nation that possess
them. It is in moments such as this, that between the peasant-
born soldier and the man who first saw the light in a crowded
court,'
' between the cottier and the coster, there comes that
gulf which measures the distance between victory and defeat
- Alma and Inkermann on one side, the Redan on June 18th
and September 8th on the other." - A Plea for the Peasant.
Philanthropy and Morality.
169
one cautionary word may find place. Just so far
as, in this sharing with the poor of even the best
gifts, we feel that we are doing them a favor, —
something that evidences our own magnanimity
and for which they are to be correspondingly
grateful, we are allowing the baneful element
of "charity" to enter in. We need to remind
ourselves from time to time that it would be only
a fulfilment of our hopes if a day should come
when, as we now establish College Settlements
among the poor to teach them music and painting,
they will establish Trade Settlements among us, and
teach us the altogether noble arts of iron-mould-
ing, weaving, and tailoring. Perhaps by that time
there will be some arts they will not teach us,
because they will have forgotten them as we shall
have forgotten our supposed need of them And
in this connection I would remind you of what
was said in the preceding paper concerning the
Essex Institute in Salem. I have permission to
quote the following passage from a very interest-
ing letter sent me by one of the prominent mem-
bers of the Institute: -
"The Institute has a small fund but its mem-
bership contains many wage-earners, carpenters,
plumbers, shoemakers, etc., and these members
pay their annual assessment just for the purpose
of keeping our Institute alive. I do not know
as they take a very active interest in the work
at present, although our free lectures during the
170 Philanthropy and Social Progress.
winter are attended by people interested in the
subjects regardless of society membership. The
Institute work is not done, you must know, as a
charity; that is to say, there is no effort made to
lift up what you call the wage-earners, they are
not sought for and brought into the fold to have
historical and scientific information driven into
them, but they come in of their own volition to
help along the good work, and they stand upon ex-
actly the same plane of membership as any one
else. The gentleman who has now the charge of
the geological department of the Peabody Academy
of Science here was, when he first joined the Insti-
tute, interested in botany and was a shoemaker;
he has now given all his time to purely scientific
work. Another one of our members, who has
become quite a botanist, was engaged in manual
labor, farming, etc. Another, who is a skilled
microscopist, was a barber. Of course you under-
stand that they all had the desire which led them
in these directions, and very likely the Institute has
benefited more from them than they from it."
I am sure the workers in the Social Settlements
will feel that they have come very near success
when they can say as much as that. In the face
of such testimony one feels what a terrible waste
the present condition of things entails upon us in
exhausting, under a ceaseless struggle for mere
existence, men with latent powers, that, if put to
use, might lift the whole world onward.
Philanthropy and Morality.
171
We take up now the question of the moral
effects of philanthropic institutions upon their
inmates. Of course the most important side of
this question is the moral effect of philanthropic
institutions for children. Childhood is the forma-
tive time; it is then that every touch leaves its
mark. "The child is father of the man,” because
the education of the child determines the bent of
the after-life, determines to which of the countless.
experiences and impressions that will come to him
he shall give heed, and which he shall ignore
and forget. It is a very common mistake to sup-
pose that only learned people have a philosophy.
If by philosophy we mean a theory of life, some
sort of principle on which facts are arranged, then
there is no one possessed of reason who has not a
philosophy, no matter how unconscious of it he may
be; and it is in childhood that this theory of life is
formed.
It may be thought that the number of chil-
dren in charitable institutions is too small, and
their influence on society is too weak, to make it
necessary to take them into account in so general
a discussion as this. But social progress must be
judged, not by merely counting heads or consider-
ing majorities, but in asking what is the possibility
put before the feeblest and the most obscure to live
a true life and to realize the purpose of existence;
and the number of children under public or pri-
vate care is not so inconsiderable. In the State of
172
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
New York, the number reported last year was
twenty-nine thousand. These children will most.
of them go out into the community and marry ;
suppose them to have but three children apiece,
and you have an aggregate of eighty-seven thou-
sand, who may be expected to show something of
the effect of the training that is now being given
in the various orphan asylums and protectories of
the Empire State. The question is, then, how far
does this training make for morality. Of course I
do not mean to say that in any case the education
is intentionally immoral. I am sure we need not
even contemplate such a horrible possibility as
that. But that is a long way from saying that
the teaching is bringing to these boys and girls all
the force of moral example, all the inspiration of
moral motive, all the infusion of moral strength,
that they need.
The normal environment for the child is the
family and the home. It were long to trace the
subtle influences that there play in upon a young
life, and it is not necessary; we all recognize them
as existing the sense of real and human relations.
with father and mother, brother and sister, and
with a wider circle of those who are akin by blood;
the esprit de corps of the household to which the
child feels that he belongs and in which he soon
begins to form an appreciable factor; the finding
a basis for authority in one who is the author of
his life; the chivalry called forth in the protection
Philanthropy and Morality.
173
of mother
even only the fancied protection
and sister; the care and teaching of younger chil-
dren; all these are as natural as air in the true
family, but there is only the faintest shadow
of them in the institution.¹ Of course there is a
great difference between one and another form of
asylum.
Where nine hundred boys, no girls, all of about
the same age, or, if of different ages, divided up
and kept apart, the older from the younger (a
measure that is often, no doubt, necessary, though
the very necessity only serves to show the unnat-
ural effect of institution life), are brought together
in one enclosure, taught and worked in gangs,
turned out to play by scores or hundreds, put to
sleep in dormitories where the long lines of beds
stretch like lines of graves on either hand, where
the very names of the boys are laid aside and
they are known only by numbers, where they are
dressed alike, taught alike, fed alike, and when
they appear in public form but units in a proces-
sion that excites the curiosity or the contempt or
1 It is strange that even those who own allegiance to One
Who has reconsecrated and re-established all the faculties of
human nature, and all the ties that bind society together,
should, under the warping influence of a spiritual domination,
attempt to stifle some constituent of the common humanity.
A while ago a father went to take his little girl from the pro-
tectory where she had been for some months. On their way
home the child hung behind her father and would not look up
at him. He finally elicited the explanation. "The Sisters
say it's wicked to look at a man.”
174
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
the pity of the passers-by, — there the very princi-
ples of the family and the home seem to be not
only forgotten, but reversed.
This trying to bring up children by machin-
ery, indeed, is slowly disappearing, and a more
rational method is taking its place. Here the chil-
dren are broken up into groups in which those of
different ages live together in a house with an
older person as its head, and the older ones have
even rooms of their own and some sense of indi-
vidual personal possession; here there is at least.
the simulation of family relations and a possibility
of the growth of mutual loyalty among the mem-
bers of the little group, and so of gentle affections
being developed.
But still, at the best, it is almost out of the ques-
tion to attempt to give these children anything of
that feeling of responsibility for the maintenance
and welfare of the asylum that nearly every child
has for the support of the home, and that does so
much to draw forth the energy of the growing boy
or girl and make life and its interests, the house-
hold and its needs, the family and its relations,
keen and vital and vivid in a child's mind. The
66
charity-child" (what a mockery the name is!)
accepts his support as just as much a certainty as
the course of nature; he expects his food and
clothing as he expects day to follow night; he
knows that he does nothing, can do nothing, need
do nothing, to provide for his physical wants, and
Philanthropy and Morality.
175
grows up to look upon his tasks as a more or
less disagreeable necessity, for which he sees no
particular reason in the nature of the world about
him.
Quite possibly he does not handle money at all;
certainly he has very little opportunity to know
the worth of commodities, to understand that labor
gives things value, and that price is in some degree
the measure of work. Thus he knows nothing by
practical experience of the processes of production
or distribution, and grows up in a world as little.
like the one into which he will have to go out as
Mr. Bellamy's fabled Utopia is unlike the world
of to-day. Yet even that comparison is unfair,
because Mr. Bellamy assumes that his socialistic
state will be the creation of its members, that all
the children will grow up under its paternal care,
that therefore none will feel that they are cared
for by the State as an act of grudging beneficence
to the young of a dishonored and disinherited
class. Under such conditions private charitable
institutions for children would be unknown, and
the debasing sense of entering upon life as a
pauper would be rendered impossible.
Opposed as I am to that system which is known
among us as Socialism, superficial as I believe its
remedies to be, and impossible as I conceive it would
prove to carry them out, without involving us in con-
ditions yet more intolerable, yet I do not consider
it in any way a part of my function in the world
176
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
to apologize for the existing disorder and wrong.
And while I acknowledge that voluntary philan-
thropic institutions for children often have many
advantages over public institutions for the same.
purpose, it seems to me that they labor under one
almost fatal difficulty: they are supported entirely
by those whose interest it is that the existing
social and industrial maladjustment should con-
tinue; they are, therefore, on the side of the very
system that makes orphan asylums necessary.
The trustees and patrons and patronesses of the
Home appear to the child as a kind of earthly
providence, as beings from another world, who
shower their gifts upon their suppliants beneath,
and occasionally descend in their chariots with
wonderful attendant angels in livery, to receive
the admiring glances and grateful smiles of their
clients, perchance to confer upon some particu-
larly attractive child a kind of patent of nobility
by some special notice and condescension. If any-
thing were needed to enhance the child's reverence
for these heavenly visitants, it would be found in
the deep reverence and obsequious servility with
which their advent is anticipated and their favor
sought by the authorities of the asylum, who at
other times seem to the childish mind to be possessed
of wellnigh unlimited power.
What is the effect of this sort of bringing up?
In the minds of the many, to generate a feel-
ing of dependence and unreasoning submissive-
Philanthropy and Morality.
177
ness to anybody who wears good clothes and
rides in a carriage, a dispirited acquiescence
in life-long inferiority to the rich, this in the
minds of the many; in a few of the keener and
more intelligent, whose elasticity of mind pre-
vents them from being reduced to a dull conform-
ity of opinion, the result is an attitude of silent
but bitter antagonism, a warped and distorted
view of society, under the influence of which they
will look upon the rich as their natural enemies.
and oppressors. These two classes can be found
in almost every large orphanage. While they re-
main there the characteristics do not show them-
selves, save in exceptional cases; there is an insti-
tutional morality, just as there is an institutional
health, the children seem to be obedient and well.
But there is no foundation of moral or of phys-
ical strength; they have grown up like plants un-
der cover; once out in the open where the sun
shines hot and the wind blows free, and they wither
or bend. The members of the first class become the
helpless victims of circumstances; they drudge
through their work in a dreamy and exasperatingly
complacent fashion, equally unresisting and unin-
teresting; the nerve, the snap, the spring, seem to
be gone; they feel a constant and depressing sense
of inability to cope with a world so different from
any they have ever known; its rough, irregular
ways, its freedom and spontaneity, perplex them;
they yield to cruelty or oppression without dream-
178
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
ing of opposing it; they resort to the weapons of
the weak, deception, secrecy, and reserve; if
they are girls they are easily led astray, not
always, by any means, through inherited taint or
native badness, but from a long habit of unthinking
surrender to any one who seems to be above them.
If father or mother be living, that strange mys-
terious bond between parent and child may assert
itself, and once more unite them to the world; but
if there be no close relatives, the years in the
ayslum have probably made too deep a breach
between them and more distant kindred for the
tie to mean anything in particular. Thus they
are really adrift in the world, and they naturally
become the dupes and victims of the aggressive
and determined among either the rich or the poor.
After a few years they find their way back to in-
stitution life again,—only this time it is the peni-
tentiary, the reformatory, or the workhouse, instead
of the orphan asylum. Poor, helpless sheep, fleeced
and shivering, it is like getting into the fold again.
If the fare is coarser and the regimen stricter, they
themselves are coarser and harder to stand it.
Once more they can throw off responsibility for
food, or lodging, or raiment; once more the regu-
lar hours break up the day, and bolts and bars,
though they limit locomotion, assure them of the
uselessness of being anything but machines.
the
The race run by those of the second class,
bolder spirits, is usually shorter still. Society
Philanthropy and Morality.
179
has, as they think, thrown down the gage to them,
and they take it up. Life is for them a desperate
struggle for reprisals from the community which
has robbed their childhood of a home. In the
orphanage they were the leaders in any scheme
of mischief that was from time to time attempted;
in the world they find a larger field for their inge-
nuity and daring. They become, if men, the dan-
gerous criminals, the marauders and cut-throats,
the sturdy beggars and more reckless tramps; if
women, the adventuresses and betrayers of other
women. But society usually proves too much for
them, and has them under lock and key before
long, giving them a chance to recover from dissi-
pation, and devise new schemes of deviltry when
their term in prison is over. In one respect, both
classes are alike; the sense of corporate life, of one-
ness with humanity, of fellowship is wanting; and
so the very foundation and groundwork of morality
has not been laid.
I am perfectly aware that facts will be adduced
to show that I am unjust in this description; I
should be unjust if I meant to assert that all
66
charity children" go to the bad, or that there
are not in almost every institution counterbalanc-
ing influences that often materially modify the.
tendency of the system to drag down the inmates,
and so largely neutralize the evil. As there are in
almost every religion men better than their creed, so
there are in every form of philanthropy men and
180
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
а
women better than the system they represent and
administer. There are in children's homes teachers
and keepers who pour out a wealth of love upon
their charge, and win them to goodness by the
beauty of it in their own words and deeds, who
build up even in these tardily responsive natures
the sense of a wide and all-embracing love,
love that encircles and unites humanity, because
it is the presence in humanity of God, the Infinite
Love. There are ties of affection that prove as
firm and lasting as ties of blood. All this is true;
I rejoice that it is; but we cannot judge of the
effect of an institution by that which is accidental
to it. That was the sort of reasoning that forty
years ago justified chattel slavery, owing to ex-
ceptional instances of benevolent masters who
made their slaves happy and tried to make them
good.
In my description I have aimed to bring be-
fore you, what is the legitimate outcome of the
system where other elements do not come in to
interfere. Those of you who are familiar with the
history of English orphanages will know that the
picture is not a fancy sketch. Most of us have
not quite forgotten our "Oliver Twist." And it is
the calm conclusion of many modern philanthro-
pists that any home, however poor, even if it is
not entirely clean, any home, so long as it is not
actually vicious, — is a better place for a child to
grow up than the most perfectly appointed and
Philanthropy and Morality.
181
+
well-regulated orphan asylum, furnished with all
the modern improvements.¹
1 After the above passage was written my father (Bp. Hunt-
ington) called my attention to the following colloquy in "Beg-
gars All," by L. Dougall (Longmans, Green and Co.), a book
marked by a delightfully clear style, an undaunted faith in
God, a lively play of wit and many penetrating observations
upon character.
"A child left destitute upon the world is a wailing conun-
drum. Some people would answer by killing it, and some by
putting it in a charitable institution. I don't know which is
•
•
best. I was such a child myself.' . . . He spoke out of a deep
lifelong indignation, not temperately or wisely, yet as he spoke,
Star could not help feeling sympathy with him.
• When-
ever children are brought up on public money,' said Hubert,
'there is, as far as I know, a matron, and a committee to see
that she does her duty, or what is equivalent to that. Who is
the matron? Take the best mother that ever lived, and set
her to bring up her family in obedience to the dictates of a
dozen self-important aunts and uncles, who visit frequently and
are free to criticise and alter whatever they please, and tell her
to keep her house open for an hour or two every week that the
public may go through and write letters to the newspapers
how do you think it would work?' He paused a moment, let-
ting his question sink into her mind. Would that be a posi-
tion that any true mother on this earth would choose?'
"No,' said Marian wonderingly, 'I think not.'
"No; and the women who hold that position toward other
people's children are shallow, or callous, or base, or a mixture
of all three. But, whatever their character may be, they and
the children must live a life in which the look of things is every-
thing, for it is by the look of things they are judged, and all that
is mean in human nature is developed by it. You can't mend
the matter. Give the matron more power, and ten to one she
abuses it. All I say is this - take the most motherly woman
in the world, she can't fill the position as it is; alter the posi-
182
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
The course of our considerations has just led
us to refer to reformatory institutions for adults.
Most of these lie beyond the limits of voluntary
philanthropy; there are no private institutions.
that receive men for purposes of reformation ex-
cept a few inebriates' homes. But there are a
good many penitentiaries, Houses of Mercy, Shel-
ters, and other places of safe-keeping for women.
Of the need of these reformatories there can be no
doubt. And they form an entirely proper field for
private charity.
As we have noted, private beneficence can make
tion, and you run the risk of getting the worst women in the
world into it. The system is bad.'
"But you, Mr. Kent, you have come out of the ordeal
unscathed.' Marian smiled. Her tone suggested that he
must exaggerate the evil. You are a contradiction to your
words.'
"Hubert laughed and, on the whole, his laugh was self-
satisfied.
“They did n't take me off the streets till I was six, and the
Jesuits say that the first six years are final, so my sins and
virtues need not be set down to charity. But I tell you, Miss
Gower, one thing that saved me from being a knave was the
honest indignation that was roused in me every day at the
orphanage. The rich folks had given their money to buy
the satisfaction of feeling charitable. How they enjoyed their
purchase! And the machine they were so busy oiling and
polishing was grinding out dullards and sneaks. I fought
for the dullards, and worked off my badness that way, and
I resolved that I would fight against the class that patronized
us; and I'll do it as long as I live. I'd rather stand to-day
before the world with Montagu, the lamp-lighter, as my friend
than go dining with any of the managers of that orphanage.'
Philanthropy and Morality.
183
ventures and institute experiments that the con-
stituted authorities in a democratic state are not
free to undertake. What is aimed at by charity
of this sort is reformation of character. I am
sure that in many instances great improvements
result. Two remarks seem called for by the
facts as they are known to me. The first is that
a true philanthropy must recognize that punish-
ment is a factor in the establishment among men
of a robust and rational morality. There is a good
deal of danger at present from the existence of
a weak and sentimental pseudo-philanthropy, that
looks upon criminals as heroes, and grades its
admiration by the heinousness of their crimes.
The statement is openly made that the State
has no right to punish offenders, and that all restric-
tive laws are an encroachment upon human liberty.
“Sin,” “crime," "vice," these are regarded as out-
worn and meaningless terms; those who do wrong
are viewed as the victims of an unfortunate and
an unpropitious environment; restraint, it is said,
is what incites to actions that make the world
unhappy; remove all barriers, abolish all disci-
pline, and everybody will be good. This anarchis-
tic hypothesis may not be distinctly formulated
by persons who condemn punishment and send
bouquets to murderers, but the mistake that is
present to their minds is that which underlies
anarchism, that society as organized in the State
is the subversion of liberty and the antithesis of
rights.
184
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
On the contrary, freedom, human freedom, is
possible only in society, and the State is the reali-
zation of rights. We see this if we remember
that freedom is only to be predicated of persons,
and that personality implies and necessitates rela-
tions, and relations with men can only be had in
society. The State is the ordering of those re-
lations as against the disturbing and divisive
forces of brutish selfishness and irrational self-
will. Sin (of which crime or an infringement of
the laws of society is a manifestation) is selfish-
ness, the making self the centre and self-will the
rule of the universe. In order to the preserva-
tion of liberty the State must have the power of
educating its citizens out of the fatal error that is
involved in thus traversing the law of the cosmos,
and the power of unveiling the true nature of
crime by imposing its consequences upon those
who yield to it.
Thus arises the right to threaten and to in-
flict punishment. The State must teach its cit
izens that penalties are attached to the infrac-
tion of the laws that declare the obligations of
men to each other, and must impose the penalties
in case the laws are broken. The most fitting
penalties are those which consist in segregating
criminals from the company of their fellow-men.
This act is an emphatic declaration that the pris-
oner has already severed himself from the common
life by yielding to the impulse to disregard and
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185
despise the relation that bound him to his fellows.
If rightly inflicted, with no partiality shown to
wealth and no advantage taken of weakness, such
punishment might awaken in the wrong-doer the
sorrow for his misdeed, and the longing for resto-
ration to right and true relations again. If the
human relation has been wilfully and wantonly over-
thrown by taking the life of another human being,
the fit consequence is permanent separation from
society by life-long imprisonment if not by death.
Punishment, then, not only is an effort on the
part of society to protect itself, nor only for the
reformation of the offender; it must aim at both
these results. "Society never has claimed, and
does not now claim, the right to punish for an
infraction of the moral law. . . The funda-
mental principle upon which man assumes the
right to punish his fellow-man is that society, as a
whole, may be protected. It is, therefore, clear that
any act done that is not necessary for the protec-
tion of society, and which does not tend to protect
society, is unwarranted and wrong." 1 And unless
punishment seeks the deliverance of the culprit
from the tyranny of the vicious impulses or habits.
that led him to commit the crime, society becomes.
guilty of producing or continuing the source of the
very offence it chastises.
None of us, I suppose, are doubtful that our
1 "Our Penal Machinery and its Victims," John P. Altgeld,
Governor of Illinois.
186
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prison-system, our whole penal machinery, fails
wretchedly of repressing crime or reforming char-
acter. As Mr. Altgeld says, "it seems, first, to
make criminals out of many who are not nat-
urally so; and, second, to render it difficult for
those once convicted ever to be anything else
than criminals; and, third, to fail to repress those
who do not want to be anything but crimi-
nals." So long as this is the case there will be
a fruitful source of the present weak and mis-
chievous compassion for thieves and ruffians. Not-
withstanding this, we must not allow an ignorant
and emotional philanthropy to impede and render
nugatory what little really educative and correc-
tive punishment we have. There are soft-hearted
persons who would cry out in the name of philan-
thropy against indeterminate and cumulative sen-
tences, and still more against the incarceration for
life of vagabonds who have never done anything
worse than go on in beggary, dirt, and drunken-
ness, and beget children doomed by their birth to
idiotcy, profligacy, or crime. Yet the sterilization
of the unfit by life-long segregation is demanded
in the interests of every hope of social morality,
and it is a blot upon our civilization that men and
women should be sent to the Island or the Bride-
well, a dozen times a year for ten days or two
weeks at a time, year in, year out, from their
first commitment for drunkenness at eighteen or
nineteen years of age, till they stumble at last into
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187
a pauper's grave. What a senseless mockery of
corrective discipline to suppose that a drunkard of
forty years' standing is going to be reformed by
giving him ten days at the Island for the hun-
dredth time!
The second suggestion I desire to make is, that
the philanthropy which attempts to uplift these
victims of self-indulgence and self-will must depend
very largely upon awakening and stimulating the
social instinct, upon exciting the impulse to do
something for others. Mental and moral aberra-
tion are nearly allied: in one the mind, in the
other the will, is centred upon self; but the line
between them often eludes the most discerning
scrutiny.
Our modern method of treating insanity is to
seek to draw the patient out of his isolation,
to bring him into natural and healthful rela-
tions with others. In our dealing with moral
disease this has not been used as much as it will be
by and by. Where it has been tried the results
have often been beyond expectation. Why should
they not? Is not man raised rather by the power
of self-sacrifice that links him with God than by
self-interest that likens him to the brute? Is it
not due to its appeal to this desire to help others
that the Salvation Army, crude and vulgar as it is,
and wretchedly individualistic as is its theology,
has won its real and substantial victories among
the dissolute and depraved? No sooner was the
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attention of some poor wretch caught by the beating
drums and singing lassies, and some secret spring
in his heart touched by a plaintive voice and the
pressure of a kind hand, than he was set to work
to do what he could for one of his companions in
misery.
In the summer of 1890 I was in London,
and went with Commissioner Smith, then at the
head of the Social Wing of the Army, to a work-
yard in Whitechapel. We reached the yard — a
small open space in the midst of a number of rough
buildings a little after noon. A boy in the red
shirt of the Army opened the wooden gate, and
we passed in under a covered archway. The first
thing I saw was a group of fifty or sixty men gath-
ered under the open sky in the middle of the yard,
kneeling each on one knee, while one of the offi-
cers led the noon prayer-meeting held in all Salva-
tion Army barracks and work-yards. As the crowd
rose at a sign from the leader, I looked into their
faces. Then I realized the desperate character of
the work attempted: misshaped figures, pallid
cheeks, lack-lustre eyes, gaping mouths, the scars
of want and sin. Could anything be done for such
as these?
Among them one man was pointed out to me,
a jail-bird, who had spent under lock and key
forty years out of his sixty-odd. The keeper of
the yard a quiet, unassuming man-told me
that this old fellow had come in the week before
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189
with another man. His companion, after a day or
two, got out of temper with one of the officers, and
was discharged. When the old convict heard that
he was gone, he went away and put his arm up
against the wall and hid his face in it and cried
like a child. After a time he came back to the
keeper and asked permission to go out and try and
find the wanderer and give him another chance.
The next Saturday night the permission was
granted, and about ten o'clock he came back,
bringing the other man with him, his poor, bad
old face all aglow with a new-found enthusiasm,
the enthusiasm of humanity.
Suppose, for a moment, that that could be car-
ried out on a grand scale; imagine some mighty
movement that would lay hold upon the weakest
and the worst and gather them up and send them
forth to save their fellows, might there not be
found a moral motive power that would be strong
enough to lift men above themselves, above the
cravings of their appetites, above their selfishness
and their sin? And that is what must be sought
by the new philanthropy.
We used to stop with the negative half of
the apostolic counsel, and say merely, "Let him
that stole steal no more" (applying that, too,
to small thieves, not to great ones; to men who
stole bits of railroad iron, not to men who stole
railroads; to those who stole the goose from the
common, not who stole the common from the
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""
goose); we did a little better when we went on to
"but rather let him labor
say,
(though we were
not wisely careful to see that opportunity to labor
was set free); we did better still when we learned
to add, "working with his hands the thing that is
good," and taught the manual arts; but now the
spirit of the coming age is calling us to go forth
even to the cadger and the crook, for they, too,
and bring to them the nobler summons
of the full message, "Let him that stole steal no
more, but rather let him labor, working with his
hands the thing that is good, that he may have to
give to him that needeth."
are men,
That has, indeed, a ring about it that may well
stir the dullest soul, for it makes the hard struggle
against low desires something more than an ex-
change of one form of selfishness for another. But
the call must come, not from the lips of two or
three alone, but with the thunder of a great
multitude, strong with the hope of a new and
better world.
Leaving what has been said as merely illustra-
tive, in a few instances, of how modern philan-
thropy fails to minister to the moral life of its
beneficiaries, we must turn, if only for a moment,
from considering the effects of alms-giving on the
recipients to contemplate its results on its dis-
pensers. One of the most patent facts about this
side of the matter is, that the charities of the rich
are an insurance which they pay for the security
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191
of their possessions and the continuance of their
gains. Of late years the premium has risen some-
what, but the policy is still good. I do not mean
to say that many people actually sit down to figure
the thing out; but there is a sense of added secu-
rity for wealthy people, "a soothing of their con-
science and a calming of their fears," in knowing,
or having reason to believe, that the poor are not
quite starving.
In the Middle Age, red-handed barons gave
away large moneys to the poor out of their ill-
gotten stores, in order to relieve their antici-
pations of reprisals made upon them in the next
world; to-day, men do very much the same thing
in view of possible reprisals in this. That is
not in accordance with a very high morality; it
is a contemptible combination of cowardice and
greed. But worse still is the assistance to wilful
ignorance and self-deception that alms-giving fur-
nishes to the donors. The temptation to juggle
with one's conscience is not, of course, confined to
the rich; but it attacks them in particularly subtle
and alluring forms. There is so much at stake
in the case of one possessed of a great deal of
money, and the position in the world that that
assures; to be brought to acknowledge that one's
wealth is the result of injustice, even if were not
one's own, would lead to such frightful conse-
quences; to confess that one is living on goods
stolen from the very poor that it is so pleasant to
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patronize would be so horribly humiliating; and
to think of surrendering one's property would
entail such social obloquy and involve the loss of
so much social esteem, that we cannot be sur-
prised that people of this class instinctively close.
their minds to any argument that might lead to
such painful conclusions.
This is a sufficient explanation of the way in
which men and women in the higher classes
cling to some exploded theory like that of Mal-
thus, and repeat some mere sophism that an un-
biassed mind would dismiss at first sight. Hardly
a week passes that we do not hear some feebly-
stirring conscience, vaguely uncomfortable at fool-
ish and wasteful luxury, lull itself to sleep again
by repeating the well-worn formula, "Oh, well, it
gives the poor work and keeps them from starv-
ing." If sarcasm is ever allowable, it certainly is
in meeting such mere salvings of conscience as
this. It would seem to be one of the occasions
to which the Scripture refers when it says, “An-
swer a fool according to his folly." The following
lines may not be familiar, they seem apposite:
"Now, Dives daily feasted and was gorgeously arrayed,
Not at all because he liked it, but because 't was good for
trade;
That the people might have calico he clothed himself in
silk,
And surfeited himself on cream that they might have more
milk.
Philanthropy and Morality.
193
He fed five hundred servants that the poor might not lack
bread,
And had his vessels made of gold that they might have
more lead;
And e'en to show his sympathy with the deserving poor,
He did no useful work himself, that they might do the
more."
Now if this temptation to lend one's self to a
pleasant delusion exists in some special degree
among the rich, it would seem a duty to avoid
anything that might add strength to the tempta-
tion. But this is just what the philanthropy of
our present state of things does. It enables
wealthy men or women, without stinting them-
selves of a single thing that ministers to their
comfort or enjoyment, to smother, under a host of
benefactions and charities, the voice of conscience
calling them to accept some unwelcome truth.
Worse than this, these very charities draw forth
a chorus of flattery and adulation, until the person
is fairly bespattered with praise. The owner of fifty
million dollars, whose imagination has been impov-
erished by the very vastness of his possessions,
though in reality he does not possess them and
never can, and who cannot find a way of spend-
ing, on his own gratification, a tenth of his income,
gives fifty thousand dollars to a philanthropic ob-
ject. Such a donation makes no appreciable dif-
ference in his comforts or even his luxuries. It is
no more to him than fifty cents would be to some of
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us; but the man is lauded to the skies for his "deed
of noble self-denial," and accorded the freedom of
the city. It is very hard not to believe that
what everybody says about you is true, espe-
cially when it is something that eases your con-
science, and makes you think yourself a remarka-
bly fine person. This we reckon as another way
in which modern philanthropy does not contribute
to morality.
It were too long a task to enter into all the
ways in which a philanthropy that will not ac-
knowledge the fundamental iniquity of present
conditions leads to other immoralities as well, but
here is one other. While freely it is owned that
many strikes are unjustifiable and wicked, it is not
often confessed that there is about almost every
strike a great deal that is heroic, unselfish, and,
therefore, highly moral. Think of it. Here is a
set of men receiving the highest wages in their
trade, who for the sake and at the call of men they
have never seen men who have never done any-
thing for them, and who they have reason to
think would do nothing for them in like cir-
cumstances are ready at a moment's notice to
quit their work, their only means of subsistence,
and face poverty and hunger, some of them, per-
haps, imprisonment and death. How many rich
men would do as much for their dearest friends?
But philanthropy, the philanthropy of the present,
has no sympathy for such morality as this. It
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195
never stops to ask whether the strike is not for a
righteous cause, whether it may not have arisen,
as I have known to be the case, from a demand for
the discharge of a foreman who had seduced one
of the factory-girls, and was trying to seduce
another, but condemns all strikes indiscrimi-
nately, and refuses aid even to the women and
children who have had no part in the matter. I
said that all philanthropy did this; I am glad to say
that is not true. During the great dock-strike in
London in 1889, the Oxford University Mission in
the East of London did a large relief-work among
the strikers, and thereby lost a number of rich
friends and gained a great many poor ones. (I
would remind those who do not agree with this
part of my paper that the Church has not often of
late erred in this direction.)
Nor is this all. Much modern philanthropy
not only fails to recognize the morality involved
in men standing by each other in resistance to
what they believe to be unjust on the part of the
corporations that exploit them, but deliberately
declares that to qualify himself for the receipt of
charity a man must throw overboard any regard
for the industrial welfare of his fellows, and be
willing to work for the benevolent society or phil-
anthropic individual for less than other men in the
same trade are working, for less than would afford
a self-respecting man a livelihood. And, not sat-
isfied with this, many philanthropic institutions,
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especially those which profess to be of a religious
character, pay their servants and employés less
than the majority of laborers receive for like ser-
vice, have their buildings erected by "scab" brick-
layers, and their printing done by "bum " printers.
There are many shams in our modern religion-
ism. I know of few more loathsome than the hy-
pocrisy of the lady-managers (what a singularly
suggestive title!) of an orphan asylum worth a
half a million of dollars, who expect a hired nurse-
girl to be content with less than a private family
would pay, because she is working, as they say,
"for the Lord,” so afraid that she will not lay
up sufficient treasure in heaven that they rob her
of half her wages on earth, and, while they tell her
in unctuous phrases that "it's all for the good of
the dear little children," neglect to print her name
among the benefactors of the "institootion,"
though the proportion to her income of what she
perforce contributes entitles her to head the list.
Many of the trustees of such "Homes" profess
an unbounded faith in the Bible. It would be well
for them to show by their works that they believe
that "God loveth a cheerful giver," and that the
denunciation upon "those who build their houses
by robbery and their chambers by wrong," in the
under-payment of carpenters and masons, was not
written only for Jews of three thousand years
ago.
But it is time that we stopped and asked, "What
Philanthropy and Morality.
197
if all this is true? What cure do you propose?
Or do you want to abandon all charitable efforts
and let things take their course, and natural laws
work themselves out in their own relentless way?"
I believe that morality must precede philanthropy.
Before we can do good we must do right. We
must hunger and thirst after justice before we can
be merciful. It is not that, as the old lumbering,
Calvinistic theology taught, Justice is opposed to
Mercy, but that Mercy without Justice will not be
Mercy, even as we cannot really do good unless
we are striving to do right. "The tender mercies
of the wicked are cruel," says the Bible, and it has
been proved true over and over again. If we ig-
nore the right and start out merely to do good to
people, we shall before long make ourselves the
judges of the good; we shall be saying (how many
a philanthropist has come at last to say it!), "These
people do not know what is really good for them,
but I do; and if they will not voluntarily take
what will do them good, and is meant to make
them happy, I will see that they do so under com-
pulsion." And when that has once been said there
is no atrocity that may not find shelter under so
specious a pretext. And from those who go forth
to their fellows with the intent of forcing upon
them the selfish conceits of their own minds, may
a God of justice deliver His bleeding and defence-
less children!
The first thing to settle clearly, then, is that
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we must first of all be right ourselves, and then
do the right regardless of consequences. This is,
and has been, and forever and ever will be, the
best thing for rich or poor, for high and low. It
may be that the doing of the right will bring
sorrow and pain upon us and upon others; but
the mere escaping from present misery, or the sav-
ing others from it, is not the best thing for them or
for us.
The author of that most painstaking book, "Life
and Labor of the People in East London," has one
sentence so sad and yet so unflinchingly true that
it will serve to illustrate what I mean better, per-
haps, than anything else at hand. The paragraph
is headed "Dr. Barnardo's Homes." It reads as
follows: "The work of Dr. Barnardo is most re-
markable. There is, I believe, nothing in the
world like it. I need not describe either his
methods or their results. They are well known.
With its motto, 'Save the Boy,' a large and sym-
metrical structure has been built up, stone by
stone, each stone an individual case of child-desti-
tution. The only remark I would offer is that,
with such dimensions as Dr. Barnardo's work has
assumed, special dangers show themselves. His
intervention may begin to be counted on, and, if
so, it will finally stand convicted as the cause of
misery."
To say that we must put morality before phi-
lanthropy is, after all, to repeat in other words
Philanthropy and Morality.
199
what has been said in the preceding paper, that
we must infuse into our emotional philanthropy
the element of a true rationality. When we have
come to recognize that there is a Divine Purpose
in the world, that a great plan is working itself
out, then we shall be more anxious to have our
whole lives, our thoughts as well as our deeds,
brought into harmony with it, than to engage in
well-meaning efforts that may turn out to be rather
a hinderance to the true order than a help. We
must not try to cure symptoms, but attack the
seat of the disease, even if we find it in our own
hearts. This is what Henry Thoreau taught us
thirty years ago. "He felt," says his latest biog-
rapher, Mr. Salt, "that philanthropy is not love
for one's fellow-man in the broadest sense; not the
flower and fruit of a man's character, but only the
stem and the leaves; not the constant superfluity
of his benevolence, but a partial and transitory act
in which there is frequently too large an admix-
ture of self-consciousness." Then, quoting from
Thoreau, "there are a thousand hacking at the
branches of evil to one who is striking at the root,
and it may be that he who bestows the largest
amount of time and money on the needy is doing
the most, by his mode of life, to produce the
misery which he strives in vain to relieve. Some
show their kindness to the poor by employing
them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder
to employ themselves there?"
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Philanthropy and Social Progress.
Agreement is assumed, then, in the proposition
that we must be right and do right in order to do
good; that if "Conduct is three-fourths of life,"
Character is the whole of it.
But Right is founded upon Truth; it is the
Truth gone into operation. Now the Truth that
underlies our actions towards others is the rela-
tions we hold with others. What we can all do at
once is to awake to a consciousness of these rela-
tions and begin to correspond to them in our deal-
ings with the cook and the waiting-maid, the clerk
and the cash-girl, the railway conductor and the
telegraph-boy, the factory-operative, the dress-
maker, the newspaper reporter, as well as the beg-
gar and the charity "case."
When a distinguished visitor told an amusing
story at Charles Kingsley's dinner-table, after
laughing heartily at it Kingsley turned abruptly
to his wife as though a sudden thought had oc-
curred to him, and said, "My dear, I'm sure that
Mary would enjoy that story very much; will you
ring for her to come up? I know that Mr. So-
and-so won't mind telling it again." Not only the
obligation, but the joy, of thus entering into
natural and real relations with others, rather than
trying to create artificial and strained relations
as dole-dispensers and friendly visitors, is being
brought home.in many ways to many hearts.
When we have learned to value the friendship of
the woman who washes our clothes, and the man
Philanthropy and Morality.
201
who carts off our rubbish, we shall find it easier
to understand our neighbors, whether poor or
rich.
But, in this world of past mistakes and present
temptations, to do right requires also that we stop
doing wrong. More and more clearly is the truth
perceived, that in order that men may have free-
dom to live, they must have freedom of access to
the source of life, — to the earth which the Lord
hath given, not to certain favored individuals or
classes, but to "the children of men." If the land
of a nation belongs to the people of that nation,
then there can hardly be a deeper underlying evil
than the monopoly on the part of a few of the
common heritage of all. It is that evil which we,
in this new and apparently boundless country, are
called to face. To remove the wrong of private
property in land will not require any absurd at-
tempt to reapportion the soil; but it will require
the collection of the rental values of land, irre-
spective of improvements, as the fund from which
the expenses of the city, State and nation shall be
met. Until we make that change we are wrong-
ing every landless or unemployed or ill-paid person
in the nation, and we shall be baffled in all our
efforts to do them good.
Tolstoï says,
"The present position which we,
the educated and well-to-do classes, occupy is that
of the Old Man of the Sea riding on the poor man's
back, only, unlike the Old Man of the Sea, we are
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sorry for the poor man, very sorry. And we will
do almost anything for the poor man's relief; we
will not only supply him with food sufficient for
him to keep on his legs, but we will provide him
with cooling draughts concocted on strictly scien-
tific principles; we will teach and instruct him
and point out to him the beauties of the landscape;
we will discourse sweet music to him and give
him lots of good advice. Yes, we will do almost
anything for the poor man, anything but get off
his back."
The words are sharp, but are they any more
searching than those of Henry Thoreau, from whom
I just quoted? "If I devote myself," he says, "to
other pursuit and contemplation" (than the simple
common labor of every-day life), "I must first
sce, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon
another man's shoulders. I must get off him first,
that he may pursue his contemplation too."
Only let us remember that we are so involved
with others in our political and economic life that
we cannot free ourselves from the shame of this in-
justice, however we may see and detect it; we can
only do our best to bring home the horror of it to
other individuals, until the whole community is
stung with the sense of its own misery, and, like
Samson, breaks the bands that bind it down. That
will not be a war of classes, but a struggle of the
whole people to be free. And if we are to stir
others to enlist in this campaign against the monop-
Philanthropy and Morality.
203
oly of the very earth and air and light, we must
make all we do to meet the immediate wants of
the needy or the suffering contribute to the propa-
ganda of reform. We must still feed the hungry
and clothe the naked, but we shall try to show
them, if we can, whence hunger and nakedness pro-
ceed; we may open orphanages and shelters, but
they will be training-schools for the new age; we
may go down into the slums, but we shall remember
the words of the dying Pestalozzi, “I lived like a
beggar, that beggars might learn to live like men,"
and feel that our best mission is to show the poor
how to make slums impossible.
In closing, it seems best to provide against pos-
sible misunderstanding by saying that in speaking
of morality I have not meant merely a system of
ethics or a code of manners. I have set forward
morality as at once deeper and loftier than philan-
thropy, as furnishing philanthropy with its only
foundation and its indispensable guide, because I
believe that in order to bless the world we must
first of all do the will of God. That aim covers
the whole field of duty, for the service of God
demands the whole man. I do not for a moment
dream that we shall find a ground on which to
resist legalized wrong, and the despotism of vested
interests, until we have discovered that behind
laws there is a changeless and righteous Law, and
that even if the "highest crime be written in the
highest law of the land," it may yet be known
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and branded as a crime, because there is in the
souls of even plain and ordinary men the witness
to an eternal Right.
Nor does it seem probable that in the future,
any more than in the past, will men be able to
recognize an absolute Law without an absolute
Law-giver, or an eternal Right apart from an
eternal Will, —-not indeed a self-will, a will to
live, but a sacrificial Will, a Will to love. And to
speak out of my own experience, I do not find a
sufficient safeguard against the taking of my own
conceits for truth, and my own desires for right,
or a sufficient support against selfishness and pride
in my own heart, and a footing on which to bid
other men resist those disturbing passions in them-
selves, save as I acknowledge that the unseen
righteousness and love are manifested in a Word
of God made flesh, in Jesus Christ, the Head of
humanity, the Ruler of a visible and enduring
Kingdom in which love and law are one.
And if the philanthropy that now calls us is a
philanthropy that rests upon a recognition of uni-
versal relations among all men, I cannot think that
it should refuse to declare to all men that the
foundation of those relations is He Who in His
One Person is very Man and very God, the centre
of human society, because He is the presence in
human society of Truth and Right and Love.
The Ethics of Social Progress.
205
VI.
THE ETHICS OF SOCIAL PROGRESS.
BY PROFESSOR FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS, BRYN MAWR College,
HE will teach "a blinding superstition," said
Theophrastus Such, who teaches "that a theory of
human well-being can be constructed in disregard
of the influences that have made us human." If
modern thought has any new truth to contribute
to the inherited stock of ethical wisdom, it is
because we are in a position to study more mi-
nutely than was possible in earlier days, and to
interpret more exactly the forces and conditions
by which our human nature has been wrought.
We shall find them to be not altogether different
in kind from those that were recognized by Plato,
Aristotle, and Kant. Indeed, the Greek concep-
tions were truer than some later ones. Most of
the ethical systems that have been constructed
since the Protestant Reformation have dealt di-
rectly with the individual, and have attempted to
work from the individual to society. In this they
have been not wholly wrong. Centuries of sup-
pression of individuality by Church and State had
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obscured one-half of moral truth. Men needed to
be reminded that the individual, once he comes
into existence, has a value in and for himself, and
must be counted as a force reacting on society.
But to the extent that ethical systems have as-
sumed the individual as an independent starting-
point of social and moral phenomena, they have
been radically untrue. The Greeks never failed
to see that all rational life is a product of social
conditions. To the Greek, says Butcher, "The
man versus the state' was a phrase unknown; the
man was complete in the state; apart from it he
was not only incomplete, he had no rational exist-
Only through the social organism could
each part, by adaptation to the others, develop its
inherent powers.'
ence.
Nevertheless, this doctrine of the creation of
man by society was by no means completely
thought out in the minds of those writers who
first formulated it, and those who last concerned
themselves about it left much to be added by
the students of a later time. Aristotle's com-
parative study of one hundred and fifty-eight dif-
ferent communities, which enabled him first among
scientific investigators to show in detail how and
why the good life can have existence only in the
organized state, was a theoretical no less than a
practical advance beyond the speculative insight
of Plato.
In like manner, our modern study of social prog-
The Ethics of Social Progress.
207
ress is an advance, both theoretical and practical,
beyond the work of Plato and Aristotle, and be-
yond the philosophy of man as it stood when post-
Kantian idealism had achieved in Germany its task
of reviving Hellenic moods of thought. The as-
sertion demands, perhaps, a single word of expla-
nation. They misapprehend the work of science
who oppose it to speculative philosophy, as if one
must choose between them which god he will
serve.
It may be that our modern science can dis-
cover few great truths of which at least some
glimmerings were not seen in ancient Greece. The
very doctrine of evolution is in that sense not new.
But the mission of science is a patient conversion
of insight into sight; of dialectic into knowledge.
Our advantage is not in a surer conviction than
Aristotle held, that he who can live without so-
ciety must be either a beast or a god; it is in a
minute and relatively precise knowledge of those
slow but certain processes of biological and social
change by which the transformation of brutality
into humanity is effected. And we cannot afford
to despise this more perfect knowledge, as but a
tedious elaboration of ideas long since familiar and
accepted. It is itself a new factor in the social
process.
In the fateful game of chess with the unseen
antagonist of Mr. Huxley's picture, it enables man
to play with the cool and calculating joy of one
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Philanthropy and Social Progress.
who knows the meaning and the end of every
move; knows, too, that on the other side the play,
though real and relentless, is always just, patient,
and fair.
Therefore, chief among the relations of cause
and effect in the wonderful process that has made
us human, is one that brings together, in a com-
plete truth, the partial explanations that we owe
to Athens, with other explanations no less partial,
that have been worked out in our own day. The
action of a social medium upon intelligence and
character on the one hand, natural selection and
survival on the other, these influences together
have created human faculty. There came a time
in the long struggle for existence, as Mr. Wallace
has shown, when mental resource counted for more
than physical strength. But anthropoid apes and
simian men, we have every reason to suppose, ac-
quired mental resources through their social habits,
which multiplied experiences and made tradition
possible. The intelligence that association created
has never ceased to depend on association for per-
petuation and growth. Deprived of comradeship
by circumstance or law, men go back to the bru-
tality from which they came. Wilfully rejecting
companionship they learn, with Manfred, that man
is not yet qualified to act the part of god:
"There is an order
Of mortals on the earth, who do become
Old in their youth, and die ere middle age,
Without the violence of warlike death."
The Ethics of Social Progress.
209
Therefore it has been the creatures best equipped
with social habit and its products that have won
and maintained supremacy in the ceaseless conten-
tion with physical nature and living enemies. So-
ciety is a means to a perfectly definite end,
namely, the survival of living creatures through a
progressive evolution of their intelligence and sym-
pathy. There can be no sociology worthy of the
name which is not essentially an elaboration of this
central principle. The notion that society is an
end in itself amounts to an unthinkable propo-
sition. At the same time, the intelligence and the
fraternity that association creates, react in their
turn on society, making it more perfect as a work-
ing organization, nobler and purer as a medium of
individual life.
Thus the interpretation of man as a progres-
sive ethical being, and the interpretation of soci-
ety as an ever changing plexus of relationships,
must proceed together. It is not enough to know
with the philosophers of Greece that without
society and social duty there can be no indi-
vidual moral life. They understood well the prob-
lems of social order and the nature of personal
worthiness. They knew that excellence is essen-
tially a fact of organization: Plato's demonstration
that justice in the state and goodness in the indi-
vidual life are neither more nor less than the co-
ordinated play of mutually dependent and mutually
limiting activities, in proportions harmonious with
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one another, and in perfect subordination to the
unity of the whole, has never been equalled, cer-
tainly never surpassed, in ethical analysis. They
were familiar, too, with a thousand aspects of social
and of individual change.
But they did not combine these elements into
a synthetic conception. They were unable to
unite the static with the dynamic factors of
their problem, and so arrive at the peculiarly
modern notion of a moving equilibrium. And,
therefore, they failed to achieve an entirely true
and sufficient philosophy of either man or the
state. For life is not the whirl of a constant
number of jugglers' plates, balanced on the sword-
points of the players: it is a whirl in which
new plates and new motions appear at every
instant, compelling ever most delicate readjust-
ments throughout the entire system, and yet with-
out once disturbing seriously the approximately
perfect balance of the whole. The large and diffi-
cult conception, then, to which we must attain, is
that of a world in which there can be no true ethi-
cal phenomena except through a process, at once
progressive and orderly, of mutual modifications
and adaptations of man and society by each other;
in which each acquires, stage by stage, a more del-
icate complexity of organization. Of the many
implications of this conception we must now ex-
amine some of the more important.
In philosophy of every school the term personality
The Ethics of Social Progress.
211
stands for the highest synthetic product of mental
evolution. True personality is a well-unified, self-
conscious mental life, harmonious within itself,
capable of indefinite expansion, and sympathetic
with surrounding life because realizing and com-
prehending in itself the manifold possibilities of
life. It is the type at once of the concrete
and the universal. One who thoroughly under-
stands this will never make the mistake of be-
lieving, on the one hand, that utility is the
fundamental word of ethics, or, on the other
hand, that ethics can be complete without in-
cluding utilitarianism.
The fundamental word of ethics is integrity, -
wholeness. There can be no utility apart from a
consciousness capable of wants and satisfactions.
The integrity, the unity, the internal harmony of
that consciousness is therefore the first necessity.
The strongest ethical terms, as right, truth, obli-
gation, stand in direct relation to integrity rather
than to utility. The joy of activity also, including
the supreme satisfaction that one may find in self-
sacrifice, is related to integrity first of all, for it
implies the consistent action of the whole person-
ality; while utility is a quality, not immediately
of conduct as spontaneous activity, but rather of
its reactions.
Therefore if integrity and utility come into direct
conflict, utility must for the moment give way;
since self-conservation is preliminary to self-ex-
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pansion; and because the vitality and the qualities
of conduct, by which all its own consequences are
conditioned, are governed by its internal unity of
purpose. But there can be no enduring integrity
without development, no permanent conservation
without progress. Therefore ethics cannot stop at
integrity. It must expand into utilitarianism, and
work out the laws of that cumulative happiness
which is the reward and the confirmation of well-
doing.
Put this conception of personality side by side
with our view of intelligence as a product of social
conditions. Is it not evident that personality in
this philosophical sense comes into being only in
the relatively perfect society, which has passed
beyond the limitations of tribal existence, and
even of a narrow nationalism, into a sympathetic
relation to mankind in all its varied phases of
development? If so, it is a product of progressive
as distinguished from both stationary and anar-
chistic, or disintegrating, society, and the theory of
personality can be worked out only in terms of a
theory of social progress.
In detail this means that a society in which the
highest type of mind can appear is one that has
had, first, such a vigorous ethnical or national
existence, and second, such varied contact with
surrounding peoples, that it has become plastic
without losing its distinctive character. In the
nomenclature of evolution it has acquired internal
The Ethics of Social Progress.
213
mobility without losing cohesion. By admixture
of bloods a variable but not unstable physical
nature has been produced. By numberless com-
parisons of one mode of civilization with another,
a mental temper at once critical and catholic has
been created. Prosperity and a rapidly increasing
population have constantly brought the young and
enterprising to the front in the conduct of affairs.
Selection has weeded out those who could neither
learn nor forget. Force and authority in the social
organization have so far given way to spontaneous
initiative that the individual can find scope for the
development of his latent powers, but not so far as
to permit disintegration. Contact and converse
being the conditions of progress, its phases are an
increase of material well-being, an inclusive sym-
pathy, a catholic rationality, and a flexible social
constitution, adapting itself readily to changing
conditions, yet of enduring strength. And since
the conservation of energy is a fact of social as of
physical phenomena, the essential nature of prog-
ress, beneath all conditions and phases, is a con-
version of lower, that is more simple, imperfectly
organized, modes of energy into higher. Eco-
nomic activities transform the energies of physical
nature into social force, of which there is no other
source whatever, since artistic, religious, educa-
tional, and political activities are but a further
transformation of the results of economic effort.
In the medium of all these activities is moulded
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their final product, the human personality, which
could come into being in no other way and under
no other circumstances.
Such are a few of the sociological facts that
underlie ethical problems. It is interesting to
reflect that in a vague way the great truth which
they contain, that without social progress there.
can be no human personality, and, therefore, no
ethics, has always been present in popular con-
sciousness. The experiences of individual life, of
course, afford a basis for it, since the years from
childhood to maturity are normally a period of
increasing personal power, in which every ambi-
tious man believes that he was born to accomplish
some desirable transformation of the community.
But social experiences in the mass have doubt-
less built the superstructure. Studies in ethnol-
ogy and comparative religions are pointing to the
probable conclusion that faith in progress has been
an essential element in every religious belief.
Under some circumstances it may be the only
element. Charity-workers in the slums of Paris
and London report that an undefined, shadowy
belief in a better state of things is the last trace of
religious consciousness discoverable in whole classes.
of the very poor. What has been the genesis of
the conviction? Everywhere social advance has
been brought about through successive waves of
conquest. Naturally enough, in the minds of the
conquerors the good order, the right order, has
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215
been identified with the new order of things which
they have sought to establish. The evil order has
been the old way of life that was followed by the
subjugated enemies who are now reduced to serf-
dom. Good spirits are those who favor the plans
of the enterprising and successful, in whose con-
trol are the shaping of public policy and the dicta-
tion of orthodox belief. It is true that orthodoxy
is no sooner born than it turns conservative, and
seeks to maintain itself against further change.
But the effort is vain. Another conquest, or a
new generation, brings new men and new issues to
the fore, and a new orthodoxy stands ever ready
to crowd the old relentlessly to the wall. The
conquered and oppressed, on their part, have a
doctrine of progress also. It is a faith in a future
in which justice shall be done, when they shall be
delivered from their captivity, and in their turn
put their ruthless enemies under foot. In time a
closer intercourse and a finer feeling soften and
blend these conflicting faiths into a belief in the
ultimate happiness and perfection of all classes.
Crude and even visionary as it may be, this per-
ennial faith in social progress is the motive power
of moral life. Science must rectify it at a thousand
points; but the very first word of an ethical science
that is not charlatanism itself must be an unequiv-
ocal declaration that such faith in se is the begin-
ning of righteousness. The first law of life is a
law of motion. In society, as on the street, the
216
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
preliminary duty is to "move on." The nation
that has no further reconstructions to effect, no
new ideals to realize in practice, has completed its
work and will disappear before the warfare or the
migrations of more earnest men. But the moving
on must be developmental; mere change is not
evolution but confusion; and the nature and lim-
itations of an evolutionary process, imperfectly rec-
ognized as yet in ethical discussion, are practically
unknown to popular thought. It is here, then,
that the rectifying work of science must begin.
Human society is not a something-for-nothing
endowment order. The vision of a completed soci-
ety, lacking neither material comfort nor any moral
excellence, in which foolishness, want, and suffer-
ing could linger only as dim memories of an imper-
fect past, has had a strangely persistent fascination
for speculative minds in every age. Common sense
has never accepted the dream for reality; for com-
mon sense is a sceptic from the beginning. Phi-
losophy has doubted if evil be not inherent in the
nature of the world, and therefore ineradicable.
But doubt and scepticism have fallen far short of
reasoned demonstration from experience that the
vision is inherently absurd.
Yet the elements of the demonstration that
science has been patiently working out in recent
years are simple enough. The available energy
of society at any given moment is strictly lim-
ited in amount. The total can be increased only
The Ethics of Social Progress.
217
by parting with some, in the thought and labor
by which larger stores of physical energy, con-
tained in the natural resources of the environ-
ment, are set free and converted to human use.
All progress, therefore, is conditioned by cost,
and if the law of conservation holds good in these
matters, as we have assumed that it must, the cost
will increase with the progress; not, however,
necessarily in the same ratio as the gain, since
riper knowledge should enable us to get more from.
physical nature with a given expenditure of human
effort. In this simple form the limitations of
progress present an economic rather than a moral
problem, and need not detain us at the present
time.
But since society is an organic aggregate, the
cost of progress takes on various complications, out
of which grow ethical problems that are both grave
and difficult. As was shown in the illustration of
the moving equilibrium, society, as an aggregate
that is simultaneously losing and absorbing motion,
must experience an incessant rearrangement of its
parts. This means two very important things: First,
there can be no social gain that does not entail
somewhere, on the whole community or on a class,
the break-up of long-established relations, interests,
and occupations, and the necessity of a more or less.
difficult readjustment. Second, the increase of
social activity, which is the only phase of progress
that most people ever see at all, may so exceed
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Philanthropy and Social Progress.
the rate of constructive readjustment that the end
is disorganization and ruin.
For the further examination of these proposi-
tions let us translate them from physical terms.
into the language of feeling. This is legitimate,
because the destruction of familiar relations and
the necessity of establishing new ones are known
immediately in consciousness in terms of hardship
or suffering; while any disorganization of social
or individual life involves the pain of moral retro-
gression. The limitations of progress then are
these: First, there can be no social progress, and
therefore no evolution of ethical personality, except
at the price of an absolute, but not necessarily a
relative, increase of suffering. Second, if the in-
crease of social activity, which is one phase of
progress, becomes disproportionate to the con-
structive reorganization of social relationships,
which is the complementary phase, the increase
of suffering will become degeneration and moral
evil.
Such limitations are not a cheering aspect of
social progress, but their reality is fully established
in historical and statistical fact, and they sharply
define our ethical obligations. The first of these
sobering propositions has to be made a shade darker
still. The suffering that progress costs is borne
for the most part vicariously. The classes who
are displaced, whose interests and occupations are
broken up by the relentless course of change,
The Ethics of Social Progress.
219
are not the ones who secure the joys of richer
and ampler life. That which enormously benefits
mankind is too often the irretrievable ruin of the
few. For illustration, one need not be confined
to the familiar facts of the wasting of barbarian
peoples before the advance of civilization, or the
sacrifice of life in national self-defence. The his-
tory of industrial progress affords examples quite
as striking and essentially more significant, since
they show that after society has settled down to
the quiet occupations of peace, the fundamental con-
ditions of its development remain unchanged. In
reviewing them the sociologist expects to find that
the minority which thus suffers the pains of prog-
ress is composed mainly of the most unprogressive
elements of the population, and he is not disap-
pointed. But he finds evidences also that to some
extent the sufferers are recruited by victims of
pure misfortune; neither their nature nor their
conduct has been the cause of their undoing.
When in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
the growth of towns, money payments, and the
commutation of week work loosened the bonds
of custom and law that had held the serf to the
manor, the entire commonwealth of England ex-
perienced an economic prosperity never before
known. Population and wealth increased, and
the free tenants, as a class, rose steadily in social
position. They could cultivate more or less land,
or engage in trade and obtain municipal charters.
220
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
But the economic equality of an earlier day had dis-
appeared. The growth of population brought men
into the world for whom there were places enough,
and more than enough, but not places already
allotted to them in the social order. They were
places that had to be discovered by intelligence
and enterprise, qualities that are not possessed
by all men equally. The full virgate of land
was no longer secured by customary law to each
family. Since the energetic and strong could con-
trol more, the easy-going and weak had to get on
with less. In the towns the far-seeing and fore-
handed quickly monopolized trade and the more
profitable crafts. And so, while this comparative
freedom of enterprise stimulated activity in a hun-
dred ways that made England as a nation richer
and stronger, it destroyed the old economic foot-
ing of the less competent members of society, and
left them to struggle on, thenceforth, as a wage-
earning class.
Two hundred years later, in the sixteenth cen-
tury, society was again transformed by the results
of geographical discovery. Free capital and foreign
commerce quickened industry and thought into
intense and brilliant life. "It was indeed a stir-
ring time," writes Hyndman, obliged to admit that
this period, which he calls the iron age of the
peasantry and wage classes, was, nevertheless, one
of marvellous progress in other respects. "A new
world was being discovered in art and in science
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221
in Europe as well as in actual existence on the
other side of the Atlantic. . . . Never before had
so great an impulse been given to human enter-
prise and human imagination." But the splendor
had its price, a price that socialists like Hyndman
have superficially described and most imperfectly
understood. Political integration had been going
on. The struggle of contending factions had been
costly, and the re-established national life, with its
manifold activities, was more costly. Barons dis-
charged the bands of retainers that were no longer
needed in civil strife. To better their fortunes
they enclosed common lands that had been freely
used by the yeomanry, and began evicting tenants
to convert agricultural lands into the sheep past-
ures that required little labor and returned a quick
money income from sales of wool in Flanders.
Now the misery of these displaced people, forced
into wage labor and vagabondage, was not due to
any actual lack of land or of industrial opportunity.
There remained land enough and to spare, notwith-
standing enclosures and evictions, had it been used
rightly; the development of manufactures and
commerce had only begun. If they had had the
knowledge and will to cultivate arable land more
intensively they could not have been driven from
the soil; if there had been a free mobility of labor
they could have found employment quickly in the
best instead of tardily in the worst markets, as too
often happened; if the organizing ability of em-
222
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
ployers had been greater the best markets would
more quickly have found them.
But the social value of land had become too
great for their wasteful methods; they had to
change or go. That knowledge might increase;
that freedom to go and come might be established ;
that the organization of enterprise might become
more perfect, it was necessary that just these eco-
nomic and social changes which accomplished so
much ruin should take place. Consequently, if
the world was to become a larger and better place
for the alert, on-moving many, the sacrifice of the
sluggish had to be.
The industrial revolution at the close of the
eighteenth century occasioned displacements of
labor that bore more distinctly the character of
misfortunes to those who were injured by them.
No degree of skill, enterprise, or assiduity, could
have enabled the handicraftsmen to hold their own
in competition with power-machinery and the
steam-engine. They could do nothing but leave
their shops to wind and weather, and begin life
over, on new terms, in factory towns. How many
thousands of them never fully re-established them-
selves, how many succumbed to illness or even to
actual starvation before economic reorganization
was fairly completed, the reports of parliamentary
inquiries bear witness.
Yet an unprecedented increase of population
was proof that, on the whole, the masses of the
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223
"
people had never been so prosperous. Before
1751 the largest decennial increase had been
three per cent; before 1781 it did not exceed
six per cent. Then, all at once, it rose, decade by
decade, to nine, eleven, fourteen, and finally, be-
tween 1811 and 1821, to eighteen per cent. At
the present time the displacement of manual labor
by machinery is incessant, and less than in any
previous period is the suffering visited on the least
valuable portion of the population, since not in-
frequently it is men of a higher standard of life
who are forced out by the competition of a lower
type. Nevertheless, so enormous has been the
net gain from improved methods of production that
the consequences of displacement are immeasurably
less serious than they were a century ago. The
chances of finding re-employment quickly are, for
competent men, far greater than they were at any
former time, and the period of search is made en-
durable by accumulated savings and varied forms
of aid. All in all, industrial history discloses a
progressive diminution of the proportion of inevi
table suffering mixed with the gains of progress.
But the absolute increase remains. The personnel
of the displaced class changes more rapidly than in
earlier times, but the class, as a class, is endlessly
renewed. As a class, it can never disappear so long
as progress continues.
Such, in its simplest statement, is the law of the
cost of progress. "He that increaseth knowledge
224
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
increaseth sorrow." Whatever augments well-
being destroys some livelihood. As an abstract
proposition no well-informed student of social
phenomena would call this truth in question.
But, unfortunately, the law-makers, the social re-
formers, and the moralists have not bound it upon
their fingers nor written it upon the tables of their
hearts. They legislate, reform, and advise, for-
getful that their wisest endeavors can be at the
best only "something between a hinderance and a
help"; and the world goes on, therefore, not only
deceiving itself with dreams, but wasting its re-
sources on impossible undertakings.
For this principle is one that would make the
instant quietus of many vain questionings if it
were an ever-present element in our thinking.
The poor have been always with us. Must they
be with us always? Or may we hope that eco-
nomic prosperity and social justice will one day
mete out comfort, if not abundance, to all? Not
unless we can attain "finality in a world of
change." Not unless there is a definite limit to
the intellectual and moral progress of the race,
for the conditions that would eliminate poverty
from the earth would infallibly terminate the life
that is more than meat, in society first, and after-
wards in individuals. Unless all men could be
made equally prudent, equally judicious, neither
an increase of wealth nor changes in its distribu-
tion could prevent the occasional sweeping away
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225
of possessions by the social rearrangements that
progress demands. The relative dimensions of
poverty will contract and its misery will be alle-
viated, but there is no reason to believe that it
will ever wholly disappear.
Will multitudes of human beings remain always
in practical subjection to individual or corporate
masters? Can we not abolish economic slavery
as we have abolished legal bondage? Aristotle's
argument that slavery inheres in civilization has
shocked the sensitive and amused the shallow,
while both have quoted it to show what foolish-
ness a philosopher can teach. But to the wise
it will ever remain a profound though mournful
truth.
Essential slavery has been aptly described as
the estate of a man who "can't get any free-
dom." We have changed the legal conditions.
under which millions of men and women perform
ill-requited tasks of daily toil. To some extent
we have diminished the total magnitude of their
misery, if not in every individual case its extreme
intensity. But we have not enabled them to get
actual freedom. We have made it unlawful to buy
and sell their persons. The master can no longer
obtain control of the laborer's time and strength,
and therefore of his freedom, from any legal prin-
cipal but the laborer himself. The laborer cannot
even sell his own freedom in perpetuity. But he
can sell any portion of it, or all of it subdivided
226
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
into portions, for a limited period of time, or for
his whole life subdivided into periods.
Practically, therefore, any man or woman may
sell his or her entire freedom for life, and practically
thousands of both men and women are compelled
by hunger to make the sale on terms that are per-
sonally degrading. Yet that interpretation of this
melancholy fact which attributes it to the wicked-
ness and greed of a capital-owning class is a tissue
of economic and sociological fallacies. Another in-
terpretation, which explains it as unavoidable mis-
fortune, becomes a perversion of history when, in
the desire to prove that the world has grown
better, it assumes that ancient legal slavery was a
consciously-devised oppression. Neither oppres-
sion nor greed has been at any time the first cause
of legal bondage or of economic dependence.
Both are secondary causes, induced by experiences
with a slavery already existent.
Modern civilization does not require, it does not
even need, the drudgery of needle-women or the
crushing toil of men in a score of life-destroying
occupations. If these wretched beings should
drop out of existence and no others stood ready
to fill their places, the economic activities of the
world would not greatly suffer. A thousand
devices latent in inventive brains would quickly
make good any momentary loss. The true view
of the facts is that these people continue to exist
after the kinds of work that they know how to
The Ethics of Social Progress.
227
perform have ceased to be of any considerable
value to society. Society continues to employ
them for a remuneration not exceeding the cost of
getting the work done in some other and perhaps
better way.
The economic law here referred to is one that
has been too much neglected in scientific dis-
cussion. It ought to be repeated and illustrated
at every opportunity, for at present it stands in
direct contradiction to current prepossessions. We
are told incessantly that unskilled labor creates the
wealth of the world. It would be nearer the truth
to say that large classes of unskilled labor hardly
create their own subsistence. The laborers that
have no adaptiveness, that bring no new ideas to
their work, that have no suspicion of the next best
thing to turn to in an emergency, might be much
better identified with the dependent classes than
with the wealth-creators. Precisely the same eco-
nomic law offers the true interpretation of an-
cient slavery. In strictness civilization did not
rest on slavery. It was not in any true sense
maintained by slavery. The conditions that cre-
ated the civilization created economic dependence,
and they are working in the same way, with similar
results, to-day.
Ancient civilization accepted the dependence
and utilized it in the crude form of slavery.
Modern civilization accepts and utilizes it in the
slightly more refined form of the wages system.
Uor M
228
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
Certain great social tasks of creative organization
have always confronted our race. The enforced
effort to achieve them has been history's great
competitive examination. The slaves and serfs
have been those who have failed. The first great
necessity was social unity, the power to act to-
gether in a disciplined way, and the first slaves
were those who could not create a sufficiently
coherent social organization to sustain a growing
civilization. They had to make way before others.
who were equal to that great achievement, and
they became slaves not solely nor chiefly because
of a conqueror's tyranny, but primarily because
slavery or serfdom was practically the only eco-
nomic disposition that could be made of them.
To-day social unity has been in good measure
established, and the world has entered on yet
larger undertakings. The condition and assurance
of freedom to-day is the ability to devise new
things, to create new opportunities, to make not
only two blades of grass grow where one grew
before, but to make a hundred kinds of grass grow
where before grew only one kind.
Accordingly, the practically unfree task-workers
of this present time are those who, unaided, can
accomplish none of these new things. They are
those who might do well in old familiar ways, but
who have nothing to turn to when their ways cease
to be of value to the world. To live they must
force depreciated services upon society on any
The Ethics of Social Progress.
229
They are
terms that society can continue to pay.
unfree task-workers not because society chooses to
oppress them, but because society has not yet de-
vised or stumbled upon any other disposition to
make of them. Civilization, therefore, is not cruel.
It is ever supporting and trying in many ways to
utilize the wrecks and failures of its own imperfect
past.
But it may be said: All these negative con-
clusions are based on the assumption that the
régime of individualism is to continue. Might
not redemption from poverty and dependence be
possible under the reign of a beneficent socialism?
Two systems of socialism have been proposed, if
we classify them according to plans of organization,
and two if we classify with reference to a proposed
division of wealth. According to one plan indus-
trial administration would be centralized; according
to the other it would be decentralized. Either of
these systems might be communistic, incomes being
made equal throughout society, or either might
be non-communistic, the services of different men
being valued unequally.
Decentralized socialism would merely substitute
competing communities for competing private
organizations. It would follow that some com-
munities would prosper more than others, and
that some, therefore, would presently come under
subjection to the others. A centralized socialism
would probably attempt to establish a rigid and
230
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
final system of occupations, in the hope of pre-
venting industrial derangements. If successful
the attempt would make an end of progress. If
no such attempt were made, men would be thrown,
as now, from time to time, out of that ideal arrange-
ment in which each did the work to which he was
best adapted, and therefore, if rewarded in pro-
portion to their services, the unfortunates would
receive, as now, only the pittance that would
barely support life. The one difference would be
that society in its corporate capacity would assume
the responsibility of finding new work for them;
but, rewarding them according to performance
only, it would practically have them in absolute
subjection. They would only have exchanged
masters, and slavery to individuals for slavery to
society.
If, vainly hoping to escape from this dilemma,
society should not only assume the responsibility
of finding new opportunities for the displaced, but
should undertake to compensate them for the
buffetings and losses that they had suffered by
reason of industrial changes, and regardless of
their resulting worth to the commonwealth, it
would radically transform the character of its
socialism. Rewarding no longer according to ser-
vice, the socialism would become communism.
Men of unequal power to work and to use, of
widely varying capacities to enjoy, would share
alike the common product of their labor. Only
The Ethics of Social Progress.
231
one result could follow. Men of animal natures,
having as large incomes as men of a higher mental
and moral development, would spend inevitably a
disproportionate share on the grosser sorts of
gratification. Materialism of life, with all its
moral debasement, would be the unprofitable sub-
stitute for economic hardship. Income can never
be greatly disproportionate to the social value of a
man's work, talents, culture and virtues, without
degrading him. If it be said that at present many
men whose whole social value is of the slightest,
do have, in fact, fabulous incomes, which socialism
would diminish, the reply is that there are not,
accurately speaking, many such men, and that
there would be no apparent advantage in substi-
tuting a systematic breeding of dull sensualists for
the sporadic genesis of more brilliant debauchees.
Be that as it may, the men and women of this
class exemplify and verify the law. Their lives
lend the sting of truth to the saying, "How
hardly shall they that have riches enter into the
kingdom of God."
Shall we then conclude that an unrestrained
individualism, eagerly working out those social
changes that seem advantageous to their promoters,
can achieve limitless progress, and that only harm
could come from any checking of the rate or in-
tensity of its activity? Shall we assume that the
inevitable costs of progress in economic loss and
human suffering must be uncomplainingly borne
232
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
by those on whom they fall, because all private
reforms are utopian, and all public regulation of
industry or assumption of its losses in accordance
with any form of socialism or communism would
be worse than folly? Must we acknowledge that
society has no moral responsibility for the conse-
quences of the processes and changes by which its
own well-being and ethical life are maintained ?
Shall we give ourselves over to the belief that
laissez faire is the last word of social science and
the first law of ethics? Assuredly and most em-
phatically, no! Nothing in the conditions of prog-
ress as set forth in the foregoing study so much as
hints at other than negative answers to these
questions. On the contrary, if the law of evolu-
tion as exemplified in human society has been
rightly understood, we shall be prepared to find
certain very real limitations of the number and ex-
tent of the social, political, or industrial metamor-
phoses which, within a given period, can combine
in genuine progress. We shall look to discover a
growing necessity for integral social action. We
shall expect to hear the ethical consciousness of
humanity declaring that society is morally respon-
sible for the costs of its existence.
In dynamic phenomena of every kind results
are a function, as the mathematicians express it,
of time. With a given amount of energy you can
go in an hour or a day a given distance. Prolong
the time and you can increase the distance. In
The Ethics of Social Progress.
233
the inconceivably complicated dynamic phenomena
of life, — growth, organization, development are
all functions of time. Force the rate of transfor-
mation and you simply prevent the establishment
of some relations of integration, differentiation, or
segregation, necessary to complete organization.
And if organization is incomplete there is a limit
to the life-possibilities of the organism. It can
perform less and enjoy less while it lives, and its
dissolution will begin earlier. Society on a great
scale, as the individual life on a smaller scale, ex-
emplifies all these laws. If social evolution is to O
continue, and the ethical life of man is to become
larger and richer with increasing happiness, social
organization in the future will be not simpler than
it is now, but immeasurably more complex.
its larger being individualism, socialism, and com-
munism will not be the mutually exclusive things
that they now seem to be. There will be not a
narrower but a wider field for individual effort,
not less but more personal liberty. At the same
time, more enterprises will be brought under pub-
lic control, and more of the good things of life
will be distributed, like the sunshine and the air,
in free and equal portions. The displaced men
and women will be more quickly re-established
than now, their services will be made of greater
value, and society will assume a larger portion of
the burden of their misfortunes. All these things
are implications of the second of the limitations of
In
234
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
progress to which attention has been called,-
namely, that if the increase of social activity be-
comes disproportionate to the constructive reor-
ganization of social relationships, the increase of
suffering will become degeneration and moral
evil. Some of the facts in evidence must be
briefly noted.
Dazzled by the magnificent results of material
progress already achieved, men throw themselves
into the great enterprises of modern life with the
zest of an ambition that knows no bounds. The
rate of industrial, professional, political, and intel-
lectual activity becomes proportionate to the swift-
ness of electricity and steam. The intense struggle
for success causes three great demographic changes
which profoundly modify the social conditions of
existence.
The first is a phenomenal increase of population,
following an enormous production of wealth. We
have already seen how improved industrial condi-
tions in England, in the first part of this century,
were followed instantly by an unprecedented in-
crease of population. At the present time the
increase of population in England and Wales by
births in excess of deaths is not less than one
thousand souls daily. The expansion of the popu-
lation of the United States from 3,929,214 in 1790
to 62,622,250 in 1890, while the population of
Europe, in spite of enormous emigration, has been
rapidly multiplying, is a phenomenon that Long-
The Ethics of Social Progress.
235
staff accurately describes as absolutely unique in
history.
The second change referred to is a rapid concen-
tration of this increasing population in large cities,
where the great prizes of worldly success are
striven for and won. This movement and its
consequences are already attracting the serious
attention of sociologists to the grave problems.
they present. Of the 1000 daily births in access
of deaths in England and Wales, 408 are born in
the seventy-six largest cities and towns, 592 in
the country, but only 437 remain in the country-
places of their birth; 112 migrate to the cities,
and 43 to foreign lands. In the United States in
1790 3.35 per cent of the population lived in cities
of 8000 or more inhabitants. Now 29.12 per cent
live in cities of equal or larger size, while in the
Atlantic coast division, comprising the New Eng-
land States, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
and Maryland, more than one-half of the popula-
tion are urban inhabitants. This means that popu-
lation is flowing into the cities much faster than
the reorganization of the manifold phases of town
life, including municipal government, is making
urban conditions as wholesome as those of the
country. The result is that constant drain upon
the fresh vitality of the country to meet the inces-
sant destruction of vitality in the towns which
makes the depopulation of rural sections so grave
a matter for the future of civilization. "By a
236 Philanthropy and Social Progress.
curious perversion," says Longstaff, "the advan-
tage of towns is said to be 'life.' There is in
truth more life in a given space, more high press-
ure, more rush; but it is the rush of a clock run-
ning down."
A displacement, in certain industries, of men of
a relatively high standard of life by cheaper men
of a lower standard, more rapidly than the better
men can find places in industries requiring rela-
tively intelligent labor, is the third demographic
consequence of intense activity. The normal
displacement, as has been shown, is of the dull,
mechanical, non-adaptable man by a more versatile
competitor. But industries are not all of the same
character. Some are more progressive in their
methods than others because they contribute to the
satisfaction of constantly developing wants, which
create a varying demand, while others minister
to wants that are relatively stationary. In some,
therefore, the high-priced man is the cheap man;
in others the low-priced man is the cheaper man.
Economists who have contended that high wages
mean a low cost of labor, and those who have
affirmed the contrary are alike half right and half
wrong. They have been observing different classes
of industries. Under a perfectly uniform, self-
regulating circulation of labor, the versatile man,
of the high standard of life, would displace the
cheaper man in one class of industries, and the
duller, cheaper man would displace higher-priced
The Ethics of Social Progress.
237
labor in the other class. Under normal progress
the major displacement would be of inferior by
superior men.
But unless economic evolution, creating new
wants and varying demands, and reorganizing
industry to supply them, is going on more rapidly
than the growth of social unrest, or of those
political policies that so often force vast hordes
of destitute people into migrations that have no
definite destination, as in the case of the Rus-
sian Jews, there may be a cruel and ruinous
substitution of the lower for the higher grade of
workmen, prematurely and far beyond normal
limits. It would not be unfortunate that the
Irishman should displace the native American,
that the French Canadian should in turn displace
the Irishman, and that finally the Hungarian or the
Pole should displace the French Canadian, if the
men of the higher standard of life could immedi-
ately step into industries of a higher grade. But
when this is not possible, when they can live only
by sinking to the level of their more brutal com-
petitors, it is an evil of great magnitude.
Under such circumstances the intense competi-
tion of the struggle for success, due partly to am-
bition, but primarily to the quickening rate of
industrial and social transformation, piles up in
the community a frightful wreckage of physical
and moral degeneration. Every sociologist, every
statistician, has been struck with the seemingly
238
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
anomalous fact that suicide, insanity, crime, vaga-
bondage, increase with wealth, education, and re-
finement; that they are, in a word, as Morselli
says, phenomena of civilization. But the fact is
not altogether anomalous, after all. These things
are a part of the cost of progress, forms that the
cost of progress takes when the rate of social
activity exceeds the rate of constructive reorgan-
ization. Quicken the pace of a moving army, and
the number of the unfortunates who will fall ex-
hausted by the way will be disproportionately
increased. Besides quickening the pace, let disci-
pline lapse and organization break up, and the
number of stragglers will be more than doubled.
Increase the strain of any kind of competitive work
and derange the conditions under which it is done,
and the percentage of failures will rise. That
this is the far-reaching explanation of the physical,
intellectual, and moral degeneration that we behold
on every side, notwithstanding a marvellous multi-
plication of all the influences that make for good,
is not to be doubted by one who will patiently
study the facts recorded in moral and vital statis-
tics. Thus, the number of suicides in Italy was
29 per 1,000,000 inhabitants in 1864, when her
people were just entering on a new and larger life
under national unity. In 1877 it had risen to 40
per 1,000,000. In France, in 1827, the number
was 48 per 1,000,000. Before 1875 it had risen
to 155. In England a rate of 62 in 1830 had
1
The Ethics of Social Progress.
239
risen to 73 in 1876. In Saxony a rate of 158 in
1836 had risen to 391 in 1877.1 Is it any wonder
that Morselli, from whose laborious monograph
these figures are taken, says that "in the aggre-
gate of the civilized States of Europe and America
the frequency of suicide shows a growing and uni-
form increase, so that generally voluntary death
since the beginning of the century has increased
and goes on increasing more rapidly than the geo-
metrical augmentation of the population and of the
general mortality?" Elsewhere he says, and his
figures prove, that "it is those countries which
possess a higher standard of general culture which
furnish the largest contingent of voluntary deaths,"
and that the proportion of suicides is greater in
the condensed population of urban centres than
among the more scattered inhabitants of the
country.
The phenomena of insanity follow the same
general laws, with the difference that the abnor-
mal loneliness of isolated country districts, drained
of their population and social resources by mi-
gration to the cities, is as deleterious as the
1 Later figures, given by Maurice Block (“L'Europe Politique
et Sociale," deuxième édition, 1893, p. 460) are as follows:
Italy, 1888, 53 per 1,000,000 inhabitants, 1889, 47 per 1,000,000;
France, 1889, 212 per 1,000,000; England, 1889, 80 per 1,000,000.
In Massachusetts the proportion was 69 per 1,000,000 in the
period 1851-55 and 90.9 in the period 1881-85. Vide "Statistics
of Suicide in New England," by Davis R. Dewey, Publications
of the American Statistical Association, June-September, 1892.
240
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
overcrowding and fierce competition of towns.
According to the figures of the Eleventh Federal
Census the inmates of public asylums and hospi-
tals for the insane are 2.10 per 1000 inhabitants in
the North Atlantic division and 2.25 per 1000 in
the Western division. It is in these sections that
life is most intense. In the North Central division
the ratio is 1.28 to 1000, in the South Atlantic divi-
sion the ratio is 1.27 to 1000, and in the South Cen-
tral division it is only 0.71 to 1000. Some allowance
must be made for the larger number of deranged
persons not committed to public institutions in
some sections than in others, but this will not
greatly affect the interpretation of the figures, an
interpretation fully borne out by the researches of
specialists. Maudsley, for example, says, "I can-
not but think that the extreme passion for getting
rich, absorbing the whole energies of life, predis-
poses to mental degeneracy in offspring, either to
moral defect or to intellectual deficiency, or to
outbursts of positive insanity."
That crime is an effect of poverty it is no longer
possible to believe, since it varies independently
of poverty, and directly with other social condi-
tions and with the strain of progress. Thus,
serious crimes, including theft, are not more fre-
quent in poor than in wealthy countries. On the
contrary, in England the trials for theft are 228
per 100,000 inhabitants, annually, while in Ireland
they are but 101, in Hungary 82, and in Spain 74.
The Ethics of Social Progress.
241
Everywhere, too, crimes are less frequent in win.
ter, when the hardships of poverty are most griev-
ous, than in summer when they are more easily
borne. Again, crime is not a monopoly of the
poor, since all classes contribute to our jail and
prison population in very nearly exact proportion
to their total numbers, and Professor Falkner has
shown that in the United States serious crime is
more frequently committed by the native than
by the foreign-born.
On the other hand, keener competition is every-
where followed by increasing criminality, as is
most strikingly shown by the statistics of crimi-
nality among women. The crimes of women have
been heretofore in small proportion to the crimes
of men; but with the opening of hundreds of new
industrial and professional opportunities to the sex
hitherto shielded from the fiercer contentions of the
social life-struggle, the figures of arrests and com-
mitments of women show a sad increase. “In all
countries where social habits and customs constrain
women to lead retiring and secluded lives," says
Morrison, "the number of female criminals descends.
to a minimum." In Greece, in 1889, there were
only 50 women in a total prison population of 5023.
In England, on the other hand, women constitute
17 per cent of the whole number of offenders, while
in Scotland, where the industrial emancipation of
women is most complete, no less than 27 per cent
of the offences tried in criminal courts in 1880
242
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
C
were committed by women, and in 1888 that per-
centage had risen to 37.
Of the rapid increase of vagabondage, with social
unrest and industrial evolution, but a word need be
said. Professor McCook, of Trinity College, Hart-
ford, who has made an exhaustive study of this
question, finds that we are supporting in this coun-
try an army of 48,848 tramps. At the lowest esti-
mate it costs to feed these absolutely worthless
wretches $7,938,520 a year. Adding their hos-
pital, jail, and prison expenses, the total becomes
$9,000,000.
The end of these things would be social disinte-
gration and paralysis but for a reaction that they
start in the public mind. The ethical conscious-
ness of society is aroused and unified by such
evidences that civilization and progress are not an
unmixed good. The demand becomes daily more
imperative for a public and private philanthropy
that shall be governed by the results of scientific
inquiry; which shall work no longer at cross pur-
poses, but merge their plans and efforts in a unified
policy to ameliorate, so far as possible, conditions
that man can never wholly remove, but which he
can easily make worse. How far can the demand
be met?
The practical solution of the problem depends
on a difficult combination of two very difficult
things. The first is to convince one set of people
that society ought to assume the costs of its prog
The Ethics of Social Progress.
243
ress, and, so far as possible, take openly the respon-
sibility for replacing the displaced. This is the
element of truth in socialism. We have, indeed,
made some progress in this direction. Practically
and theoretically society admitted the obligation
when, in the reigns of the Tudors, it began to
supplement private and ecclesiastical charity by
systems of public relief. In a hundred forms of
legislation and administration, in public education,
in the multiplication of asylums and hospitals, in a
thousand modes of private beneficence, the duty is
being more adequately discharged by each later
generation. But we are yet very
But we are yet very far from compre-
hending its full extent. We realize but faintly
how far the incompetent and impoverished have
been made such by social movements that have cut
them off from any possibility of personal improve-
ment. The second difficulty is to convince another
set of people of the fallacy of a cardinal socialistic
notion, namely, that industrial derangements can
be prevented in a progressive world; to convince
them, therefore, that at all times a portion of man-
kind must be relatively useless to the community,
and, for that reason, relatively poor; and that their
greatest possible utilization and compensation de-
pend on their being held for the while in practical
subjection to other individuals or to the common-
wealth.
We have heard a great deal in recent years about
Christian socialism, and one of the most interesting
V
244
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
developments in the ecclesiastical world is the grow-
ing belief that Christianity ought to prove its pre-
tensions by demonstrating its power to solve social
problems. It is curious that in all this discussion
the most important single doctrine that Christian-
ity has to contribute to social science has been for-
gotten or ignored. The doctrine referred to is that
of the distinction between those who are free from
the law and those who are under bondage to the
law. The key to the solution of the social problem
O will be found in a frank acceptance of the fact
that one portion of every community is inherently
progressive, resourceful, creative, capable of self-
mastery and self-direction, while another portion,
capable of none of these things, can be made use-
ful, comfortable, and essentially free, only by being
brought under bondage to society and kept under
mastership and discipline until they have acquired
power to help and govern themselves. If one
should say that we all believe this doctrine,
that
it is in no sense new, the necessary reply would
be that we, nevertheless, habitually disregard it in
every matter save the juridical distinction between
the law-abiding and the criminal. We accept lais-
sez faire as the expedient rule for all men and all
industries alike, or we denounce it as bad for all
alike. We advocate socialistic methods for the
entire field of industry, or we pronounce them im-
practicable for any part of it. We denounce com-
pulsory education for any class in the community,
The Ethics of Social Progress.
245
or we insist on forcing it on all classes. In all
which sayings and doings we confound unlike
things, and show ourselves irrational in the last
degree.
What, then, in concrete detail, are some of the
ethical obligations placed upon individuals and
upon society by the conditions of social progress?
The law that the progressive, self-governing mem-
bers of society should lay on themselves must in-
clude at least three groups of duties. First, they
must resist, personally and in their influence, the
tendency to subordinate every higher consideration
to that mere quickening of competitive activity
which so easily goes beyond its normal function of
means to end, to become an irrational, unjustifiable
end in itself. Especially in the education of chil-
dren who are seen to be ambitious, should every-
thing that savors of competition be absolutely put
away. The competitive examination of such chil-
dren is nothing less than essential crime, essential
insanity, essential idiocy, for all these things will
be among its results. Second, they must resort
more freely, as fortunately they are beginning to
do, to country-life, and especially must they pro-
vide the conditions of country-life to the greatest
possible extent for children, not only their own but
those of the city poor. Third, they must culti-
vate that true individuality in the ccnsumption of
wealth, which is not only the mark of genuine man-
liness or womanliness, but which surely acts on
246
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
economic demand in ways that give a competitive
advantage to the higher industrial qualities of men
whose own standard of life is high.
The duties that society must discharge in its
relation to the general conditions of progressive
activity, and to its members who are undeveloped
or degenerate, fall also into three groups. First,
society must assume the regulation of international
migration. Each nation must be made to bear the
burden of pauperism, ignorance, and degeneracy
caused by its own progress or wrong-doing. Society
must also assume the regulation, by industrial and
labor legislation, of those industries in which free
competition displaces the better man by the inferior.
Perhaps in time some of these industries may
advantageously come directly under public man-
agement, as socialism proposes. Second, society
must act on the fact that a proportion of its
population must be always practically unfree, by
extending compulsory education to the children of
all parents who are unable or unwilling to provide
in their own way a training that the commonwealth
can approve. This education should be as per-
fectly adapted as knowledge, money, and sincerity
of purpose can make it, to the work of fitting the
children of the poor for life in a changing, pro-
gressive world. Third, society should enslave, not
figuratively but literally, all those men and women.
who voluntarily betake themselves to a life of
vagabondage. The time has passed when food
The Ethics of Social Progress.
247
and shelter should be given by kindly sentimen-
talists to the tramp, or when the public should
deal with his case in any partial way. Every
tramp within the borders of civilization should be
placed under arrest and put at severe, enforced
labor under public direction.
These are the positive obligations of individuals
and of the State that seem to be disclosed by a
study of social progress. But we must not forget
that the same conditions impose a negative duty
also, an obligation of restraint. For all reform,
all philanthropic work, is itself a phase of social
progress, and like all others, has a cost in effort
and suffering. Therefore, if philanthropic reform
is hurried, or pursued by too radical methods, it
may convert the absolute increase of evil, which
progress costs, into a relative increase, and so
wholly defeat itself. Those distinguished Italian
students of criminal anthropology, Lombroso and
Laschi, have lately pointed out that political crime
(the crime, that is, of those who unsuccessfully
resist governmental authority) consists essentially
in the attempt to accomplish in crude and violent
ways desirable changes or reforms for which
society is not yet ready. Devotion to the cause
of progress these authors propose to call by the
scientific name philoneism; the dread of change is
misoneism. Society is on the whole misoneistic;
therefore we can mend its ways but slowly. For,
whatever happens, we must keep in touch with
1
248
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
our fellow-men, remembering always the fine, true
words of Marcus Aurelius: "The intelligence of
the universe is social. Accordingly it has made
the inferior things for the sake of the superior,
and it has fitted the superior to one another.
Thou seest how it has subordinated, co-ordinated,
and assigned to everything its proper portion, and
has brought together into concord with one another
the things which are the best."
The Administration of Charity.
249
VII.
THE PRINCIPLES AND CHIEF
DANGERS OF
THE ADMINISTRATION OF CHARITY.
BY BERNARD Bosanquet, M.A., LL.D., LONDON, ENGLAND.
No one will suppose that I intend to pass an
opinion on institutions or methods of administra-
tion in the United States. I hope, before I leave
this country, to see something of what is being
done in Boston and New York at least. But
to-day I propose to illustrate the principles of
charity organization purely by London experience.
It is for my hearers to judge how far anything
that I say has an application that can interest
them.
The principle of our work, as I understand it,
is the faith in character, the faith, if we like,
in the ideal. Only it must be faith in that ideal
which is the essence and controlling force of the
real; not in fancies and sentiments which are
simply a failure to cope with reality.
Let us plunge into our subject by asking what
our title means. ((
Charity," it will be said, is
alms-giving; "organization of charity," then,
250
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
must mean "arrangements for the distribution
of alms."
This is just what we do not mean. "Charity"
for us means "neighborly service"; "organization
of charity," therefore, means "concerted action
in neighborly service."
The organization of charity, thus understood,
involves two essential factors:
First, there must be a high and definite con-
ception of human welfare, in so far as it can be
affected by men's attempts to help their less for-
tunate fellows.
Secondly, there must be concerted action or
division of labor in the light of this idea, and with
a view to realizing it, between all persons and
agencies that are attempting to do neighborly
service.
66
In other words, it is the general principle of
organization" always to work on a plan, and
that a plan based upon respect for character. The
great danger is in not having any plan, and there-
fore interfering with other people's lives, -a
most grave responsibility, without a distinct
conception of any good to be done them on the
whole. Nothing undermines character so much
as these chance interferences. I may illustrate
this principle by the external phenomenon, ob-
served more than twenty years ago when the
London Charity Organisation Society was founded,
that enough and probably far too much money
The Administration of Charity.
251
was being spent in relief, apparently with the
result of increasing degradation to the poor. The
idea of the founders was, so far as money was
concerned at all, to avoid raising more, but to try
if the existing expenditure could not be made to
do good instead of harm.
Now, I will try to give a picture of what we
mean by "organization"; and I will begin with
the work of a "District Committee." There are
thirty-nine District Committees in London, one or
more for each Poor Law Union; the Society con-
sists of the federation of these committees, with a
central office at 15 Buckingham Street, of which
I will speak later.
Organization presupposes elements to be organ-
ized. What are the elements which we find in
an average London district, with a fair mixture
of rich and poor?
In the district which I have in my eye there is
a population of 90,000. Judging by Mr. Charles
Booth's figures, there would be in this population
some 3000 "very" poor (say 700 families) and
some 18,000 "poor" (4000 families). Within
these (4 to 5000 families, but not including a
very large proportion of them at a time) is the
field of operations of charity. The comfortable
working-class, numbering some 50,000, would
only come in its way very occasionally and with
respect to its doubtful members, or by unusual
misfortune. Operating upon this "poor" popula-
252
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
tion, in all sorts of ways, there are such agencies.
as these Four old-established benevolent societies,
enjoying the confidence of the resident tradesmen,
whose charity is largely done through these socie-
ties; six parishes of the Established Church, all
of which do relief work by different methods and
to different amounts, and some of which have
small charitable endowments; three or four Non-
conformist organizations, attending in some degree
at least to their own poor; and two powerful
Roman Catholic churches with the charities be-
longing to them, and with a branch of the Society
of St. Vincent de Paul. There are three hospitals
in the district, and three more very large ones
within easy reach of it. There is a free dispensary
(charitable), a newly-established provident dispen-
sary, and a settlement of the district nurses who
go out to nurse the poor gratuitously in their
own homes. Of course, there are immense num-
bers of charitable ladies and others who give alms
privately, and, in addition to all the rest, there
is the tremendous machinery of the Poor Law,
with its workhouse and well-equipped hospital
("infirmary") in the centre of the district, and
its schools in the country to which destitute chil-
dren can be sent, and with its out-door relief,
medical relief, and dispensary all under the
authority of a Board of Guardians, elected by
the inhabitants for this purpose. Then there is
the system of publicly inspected primary schools
The Administration of Charity.
253
(whether "board schools" or "church schools")
through which much charitable work is done, both
bad and good; and there are also the very numer-
ous charities of all sorts and kinds, which, without
being especially local, are accessible to the poor
of this district as to all the poor of the metropolis.
If such are the elements to be organized, what
is the danger in the absence of organization? How
does mischief arise from these all going their own
way, regardless of each other?
We may describe the mischief done in three
ways, as doles, as overlapping, and as the down-
grade to pauperism.
Doles. Though the total expenditure on relief
in such a district must be quite enormous, yet each
person or agency, looking at the mass of poverty,
and ignoring all other workers, feels hopelessly
poor, — too poor to act on a plan.
An old woman,
getting past work, who is, in Charity Organization
Society slang, "a pension case or nothing," has
been receiving an occasional food ticket or a shil-
ling from some agency, perhaps a church. "What
good did you think you were doing by that?" you
ask them. "Ah, well, we should have liked to do
more; but we are so poor, and there are so many!"
So no attempt is made to take hold of, and set on
its feet, say, a single family. Want of faith and
want of knowledge make a purpose impossible,
and the aimless scattering of tickets and shillings
continues. Truly, as an old woman who had thus
254
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
been "helped" remarked to a friend of mine, "You
know, sir, that doesn't go into deep things!" No,
indeed! All that this practice effects is to create
a gambling spirit that watches for windfalls, to
encourage the desire to look poor,- for planless
charity is not attracted where help is most effective,
but where sentiment is most immediately touched,
—and to undercut wages. The dole which enables
the recipient to underbid a competitor for work
makes up the difference to the recipient, but not
to the competitor. The tendency in this respect
is to sink wages below starvation-point by the
average amount of the charitable dole.
This is bad enough; but when you get several
agencies bidding for the same poor person, the result
becomes positively horrible, it forces the poor
into fraud. This is overlapping, - when the same
person is helped, ignorantly, by several different
agencies; sometimes, alas! by several different
religious denominations. It is all very well not to
let your right hand know what your left hand
does; but if your right is Presbyterian and your
left Roman Catholic, and both are helping the
same person, it becomes advisable that they should
interchange information.
Doles and overlapping, together with the care-
less administration of public or semi-public relief,
form the down-grade to pauperism. Money is to
be had by luck, medical relief is to be had from
charity or the Poor Law, out-door relief from the
The Administration of Charity.
255
!
public funds may be got if you are fortunate in
your application, and so people become accustomed
to "chance it"; not to manage well what they
have, not to make provision for so certain a case
as ordinary illness, let alone a time of slack work
or old age. They form the habit of going to
public or semi-public offices to get benefits which
they might have provided for themselves. They
are not to blame. We confuse them; nothing is
so pathetic as the way in which they accept what
is as a guide to what should be. But it is they
who have to suffer. When thrift has not been
practised, and independence of character has been
impaired, the end is the workhouse. We can tempt
them not to provide for themselves, but we cannot
and do not adequately provide for them, except in
the "Union." The great provident institutions
which are the creation of the British working-class,
and are quite unmatched in the world as proofs of
character and administrative ability among the
wage-earners, have no chance where unorganized
charity prevails.
1
In such a chaos, what is the duty of a Charity
Organization Committee? It is commonly spoken
of as twofold, but the first branch of it really
includes the second. "Organization " includes all
that a District Committee should do in the way of
"Relief."
1 A current term for the workhouse, owing to the fact that
several parishes are generally united for Poor-Law purposes.
256
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
The first and fundamental duty of the commit-
tee, then, is to "organize the district." What
does this mean? Simply to bring all these people,
all these agencies and institutions, into a scheme
of concerted action, or division of labor, in order
to work upon a plan with a view to raising the
whole life of the poor. To act on a plan in every
individual case, and to inform one's self what
other agencies are doing and co-operate with them,
are really two sides of the same procedure. For
each of the institutions is fit for something; there
is some want that it more especially can supply,
although, in the absence of organization, it is
probably (like the hospital out-departments to-day)
straining to do something else, and doing it ill or
harmfully. By knowing what others can do, the
despair which prevented efficient work is dispelled.
We try not to scatter our help over the widest
possible surface, but to play our part thoroughly,
and if we can only help one family, to see it
through and make it self-supporting. Then some-
thing at least is done; but otherwise far worse
than nothing is done. Thus, while persuading all
whom it can reach of the ethical necessity for
thorough work, the committee has to forward the
problem in its other aspect, by charting the district,
so to speak, and ascertaining how all might and
should co-operate, and bringing them all together
to determine upon co-operation. Endowed chari-
ties may be used for pensions, the benevolent
The Administration of Charity.
257
societies may divide the district, and make the
relief more adequate, and exchange information
with other charities. "Poor-Law cases" ("unhelp-
able") that apply for charity may be sent to the
Poor Law; "helpable" cases that apply to the
Poor Law may be referred to charity. The leaders
of the working class in the district should be
made friends with; good provident societies made
known, their juvenile branches favored, the school-
teachers consulted and interested in the thrift
propaganda and in all work affecting children ;
the clergy should be begged — entreated — to
co-operate, to give information, to let their district
visitors be trained, to avoid wholesale and injuri-
ous methods of relief. The careless use of the
hospitals should be checked; provident medical
institutions established; sanitary law insisted on,
and intelligent Poor-Law administration in every
way forwarded.
That is what "organizing a district" means.
The long and short of it is the transformation of a
charitable chaos into an orderly and friendly neigh-
borhood, in which rich and poor consult together
and unite their resources with a clear concerted
idea, not only for the relief of individual cases,
but more especially for the control of general
influences. When this is done, if there still are
gaps in the array of institutions, they may be filled
up. But, usually, there are plenty of workers and
plenty of institutions, only, because the workers
258
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
are untrained, and both workers and institutions.
are unorganized, little has been done that is bene-
ficial, and everything that is injurious.
The task of administering relief is a secondary
part of the duty of a committee, but, as things
are, has to be largely undertaken. "Administer-
ing" relief must be distinguished from "pro-
viding" it, of which I will speak below. It is
plain that as the committee becomes fused with
the neighborhood, the relief work of the committee
passes, as it ought, into the relief work of the
neighborhood in consultation.
66
However this may be, all who work for or with
the committee, or who advise their neighbors in
relief work, should follow certain plain principles.
Help should be given exactly as we give it to
a friend or relation in a scrape or in misfortune.
I do not think that unction and ostentatious
'sympathy" are of much use, though in some
trying cases the loving care of a good man or
woman may make all the difference. As a rule,
I should aim at a friendly business-like tone, the
tone of a sympathetic lawyer or doctor. I should
give no moral intention to the inquiries, but pre-
suppose the duty of helping, if effectively possible,
and simply urge that we must have the case all
clear before us, if we are to find out what can be
done. I do not believe that inquiries thus con-
ducted are painful to respectable people, beyond
the pain which is necessarily involved in applying
The Administration of Charity.
259
for help to strangers. If the matter is put sensibly
before them, they soon understand, I believe, why
it is necessary to know all the family circum-
stances, and they appreciate the possibility that
further knowledge may disclose means of help
which at first did not suggest themselves. I give
an instance which illustrates the nature of thorough
help based on thorough knowledge.
A boy, who appeared ill-nourished, was being
given half-penny dinners at school. This was the
broadcast help that we condemn too much,
because too little. Inquiry showed that the
family were most respectable people, but the
father, a copper-worker, was unable to work
through chest-disease. The wife and one boy
were earning something.
More than twenty
pounds was raised by the Charity Organization
Society for this case, with the final result of setting
up the family in a different line of work, and
saving it from pauperism.
It cost money, thought, and trouble, but a family
was saved from pauperism. Dinners to the boy
would have been useless while the family was
sinking lower and lower.¹
In case, however, of very persistent ill-luck
there is almost always a screw loose in character,
and for this reason again it is absolutely necessary
to know the history of a case before trying to
1 Charity Organization Society's Report of Special Com-
mittee on feeding School-children, 1891.
260
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
help. One great chance is to catch people suffer-
ing from their first folly, and then they can some-
times be set straight. Want of work through
illness breaks down many a family. Illness, which
would be transient, is aggravated by want of food,
and seeds of delicacy are sown in wife and chil-
dren at the same time. Now, every English
workman, earning decent wages, can secure him-
self a good allowance for a long period in case of
being out of work through illness, by joining one
of the great Friendly Societies. The highest
payment is about two pounds a year (Hearts of
Oak), and secures eighteen shillings a week for
six months, and a smaller allowance beyond that
time. As a rule, one would not help a man in
mere illness who had not done this much for him-
self, unless, of course, he had saved in some
equivalent way. But catch him before the mis-
chief is done, get him to join a good club and stay
in, and you may have done well to save him from
the last results of his improvidence. Refusal, with
explanation, is no less important than help.
People soon learn why you do and do not help.
And it educates them. A charitable agency may
be very fairly judged by the character of the cases
that come to it. They learn that dirt and sloven-
liness are no claim to help; that energy and
resource are qualities which the helper or helpers
will gladly meet half-way; that no agency can
The Administration of Charity.
261
supply the needs that spring from lack of fore-
thought, industry, and management.
1
Relief, I said, is a form of organization. To
insure this, we prefer to raise money on the case,
and we are condemned, by those who know, if we
employ our general funds for relief purposes.¹
Raising the money required specially on each case,
though very troublesome, has immense advantages.
It enforces family ties, and neighborly or other duties,
instead of relaxing them. "Who is bound to help
in this case?" is the first question, and members
of the family, who may be living at a distance, are
often glad to be asked, and to know that by com-
bination of their resources one giving money,
another taking a child, and so on their relatives
are being effectively helped, with no contribution
from strangers except advice and arrangement.
Again, it tests work; on every case, instead of a
secretary saying, "we will do this," and drawing
money out of the bank to do it, you have to pro-
pound a plan of treatment which will secure the
approval and adhesion of those who are to help,
whether rich or poor. A large general fund at
the bank is very dangerous. It makes you inde-
pendent, and disinclined to press for money and
personal help from existing agencies and persons
¹ To Americans, familiar with the Boston Associated Chari-
ties and the New York Charity Organization Society, this
doctrine will seem too elementary to need explaining. But I
let the passage stand; this volume may find its way to England.
262
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
bound to assist. Though we must, for the present,
administer relief, we certainly ought not to pro-
vide it.
The question of visiting is not an easy one.
Visitors to the same family should not be multi-
plied, and I think there should be, as a rule, some
natural and definite reason for calling, e. g.,
"provident" visiting to collect sums for provident
purposes. The existing visitors clergy or dis-
trict visitors should always be utilized, if possi
ble, when work is to be done in their districts.
On the other hand, in order that this should be
done, they must submit to training. The reports
of an untrained lady-visitor and her advice are
often abjectly useless, and to act on them would
encourage fraud and all the mischiefs of charity.
As a transition from the work of District Com-
mittees to that of the central office, I may men-
tion how convalescent aid is facilitated by the
society, a simple but efficient piece of organiza-
tion. Great numbers of Convalescent Homes
exist, for poor people recovering from illness.
They differ in climate, in management, in the
kind of cases that they will receive. If a clergy-
man, or other charitable individual, wants to
send a poor person to a Convalescent Home,
he has first to find out what home will suit
the case; then, probably, to go about asking for
a subscriber's letter, and then he may find that
the home he has chosen has no vacancy for
The Administration of Charity. 263
weeks, while another, equally suitable, could
have admitted the patient at once. Through
a Charity Organization Committee things are
differently managed. At the central office in
Buckingham Street there is a special secretary
with a sub-committee containing medical men,
and this secretary, among other duties, has to be
in communication with all reliable Convalescent
Homes accessible from London, and to secure
beforehand in each of them the number of beds.
which experience teaches him will be needed by
the society. When a convalescent case is ap-
proved by a committee, the medical certificate,
and an explanatory letter, go up to the "central”,
the secretary looks down his book for a suitable
home at which he has a vacancy, and the admis-
sion order is sent back in a day or two at most.
When, as often happens, a church pays the weekly
charge at the home, or the applicant and other
persons together defray it, this is a perfect piece
of "organization." An immense benefit has been
provided for the applicant in the promptest
way, and the society has not contributed a penny
except in office rents and secretaries' salaries.
It
The central office does no relief work.
partly supervises and supplements, as in the above
instance, the work of the District Committees,
and partly acts as a bureau of statistical and other
information, and as a centre of propaganda and
inquiry for the general public. Technically, it is
264
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
the "Council" office, the Council being composed
of representatives from all the committees; and
various standing committees appointed directly or
indirectly by Council meet there week by week
to control the policy and consider the work of
the society. The District Committees in poorer
parts of London are subsidized by the Council,
and in some cases have the use of a high-class paid
secretary, who is an officer of the Council, paid
by it, and transferable from place to place at
its pleasure. All this, of course, involves much
central supervision.
66
The more public work of the Council office is
at times condemned as doctrinaire. I often wonder
whether its critics know by what a mass of ex-
perience it is supported. Eight hundred or nine
hundred volunteer workers, besides a dozen or
more highly skilled and devoted official secretaries
on District Committees, with the forty or fifty
agents," men more of the type of clerks than
of secretaries, but able and experienced in the life
of their localities, all of them are week by week
in the districts gathering the material which pours
into the central office in the shape of reports, ap-
peals for advice, notifications of new difficulties
or new institutions, answers to circular questions
on matters of the day, and notes on prevalent helps.
or hindrances in raising the life of the poor. No
investigation, I should fancy, has ever been ini-
tiated, and no policy ever adopted, at the Council
The Administration of Charity.
265
office, which has not been pressed upon it again
and again by the experience of the district workers.
Elaborate reports, with evidence, by eight or nine
special committees, appointed by the society, have
in each case carried some important social topic
into a clearer and more practical stage, from the
Report of 1875 on the Housing of the Poor, which
had much to do with the passing of Sir R. Cross's
Artisans' Dwellings Act, to the Reports on Home-
less Cases, School Feeding, Insurance and Saving,
the Treatment of the Feeble-Minded and the
Organization of Medical Charities, directed to
burning questions of the most urgent importance
in 1890-92.
Another branch of work, which by itself might
occupy a less energetic organization, is the “In-
quiry Work," with the resulting "cautionary
card." Week by week at the Administrative Com-
mittee, on the standing agendum "Inquiry Work,”
the reports of the special secretary and officers
submitted in every case to a volunteer referee
upon institutions and individuals about which and
whom information has been asked by intending
subscribers, are carefully scanned in respect of
their thoroughness and impartiality. Not only
are rogues and frauds detected, their public sup-
port cut off, and libel actions against that "public
defendant," our secretary, successfully encountered,
but the friendly criticism which subscribers to
bona fide Societies elicit is often of service in bring-
266
Philanthropy and Social Progress.
ing about changes for the better in financial and
other administration. The "cautionary card" is
a list issued yearly to our subscribers of persons
and institutions before assisting which it is well
to communicate with the Charity Organization
Society. Its utility is universally recognized.
As always, the closest grasp of facts gives the
highest faith. The workers all know the power
of character, and that no conditions will raise the
poor, if character is sacrificed, while hard conditions
can be transformed with extraordinary rapidity by
ceasing to demoralize the wage-earners. In well-
known examples this has been done. By abolish-
ing out-relief in one country district of fifteen
thousand souls, pauperism was reduced from about
one-twelfth to about one-hundredth of the popula-
tion. This is what all workers know to be natural;
it is not necessity, but our folly that degrades the
poor. But so low is the faith in character of those
who merely write and talk and count, that no
evasion is too strange for them, rather than the
belief of the simplest and most natural facts.
"The poor," they first said, "are driven into the
workhouse by the refusal of out-relief." The
figures were produced, and it was plain they were
not there, for the numbers had fallen. They
66
were driven out into neighboring Unions." Fig-
ures were obtained, and the neighboring Unions
appeared to have benefited rather than suffered.
66
They were living on in great poverty and misery."
The Administration of Charity.
267
Clergy and residents were consulted, and it was
seen that they were doing nothing of the kind.
They had turned from paupers into self-supporting
citizens, as any one would expect.1
All these evasions of fact, and the half-hearted
ideals of those who look away from reality, demand
heroic measures. Proposals for these latter --
such as weekly pensions for all old people over
sixty-five, to be paid by the State-all rest on the
persuasion that the life of the wage-earning classes
cannot be organized on a business footing (taking
the whole life from infancy to death as the unit to
be provided for), but must in some way be supple-
mented from without. I do not myself believe
such supplementation to be possible, in the sense
of causing each man at his death to have had a
larger share of wealth than a wage-system pure
and simple, with proper unions and thrift-organiza-
tions, would have given him. This is for econo-
mists to decide. To me it seems to be simply cut-
ting out some elements from the standard of life,
by which, more than by anything else, we now, I
suppose, consider the wage-level to be determined.
But at any rate the experiment is horribly
hazardous, and wholly unnecessary. One can see
1 The whole story may be seen in Mr. Loch's pamphlet,
"Old Age Pensions and Pauperism," in reply to Mr. Chamber-
lain, and subsequent letters. See, also, Mr. Loch's paper in
"Proceedings of Poor-Law Conference for South Wales, May,
1892." All these publications can be obtained from the London
Charity Organization Society, 15 Buckingham Street, Adelphi.
268 Philanthropy and Social Progress.
the barometer of pauperism and demoralization
fluctuating week by week in different divisions of
the same district according to the administration.
Nothing is plainer than that to an extent at present
quite indefinite you can make or unmake paupers
-not merely technical paupers, but poor and
suffering people at pleasure. The success of
labor organization is dependent on a wise policy
in this respect. When this shall have been tried
to the full and shall have failed, it will be time
to adopt a policy of State-supplementation, which
will in all probability stereotype such evils of the
wage-system as it may find existing.
I do not say that all drastic legislative reforms
are bad. The present more advanced state of the
dwellings question is due, as I have said, in a
large measure to the initiative of the Charity
Organization Society; and while futile schemes
are being advocated, there are many-too many
needful reforms, well known by all experts to
be desirable, which get left. I do say that legisla
tion is all bad if and so far as it makes us forget.
that society is a structure of wills, and that if we
do not look to the soundness of individual charac-
ter—if we allow it to be perplexed and demoral-
ized by a system of half-earnings, half-pauperism
the whole fabric must fall to pieces.

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