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 UNIVERSITY i LIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 LIBRARY
 
 The National Social Science Series 
 
 Edited by Frank L. McVey, Ph.D., LL.D., 
 President of the University of Kentucky 
 
 Now Ready: Each, One Dollar 
 
 AMERICAN CITY, THE. Henry C. Wright, First 
 Deputy Commissioner, Department of Public Charities, 
 New York City. 
 
 BANKING, William A. Scott, Professor of Political 
 Economy, The University of Wisconsin. 
 
 COST OF LIVING, THE. W. E. Clark, Professor of 
 Political Science, The College of the City of New York. 
 
 CAUSE AND CURE OF CRIME, THE. Charles R. 
 Henderson, late Professor of Sociology, The University 
 of Chicago. 
 
 FAMILY AND SOCIETY, THE. John M. Gillette, 
 Professor of Sociology, The University of North Dakota. 
 
 GOVERNMENT FINANCE IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 Carl C. Plehn, Professor of Finance, The University of 
 California. 
 
 HOUSING AND THE HOUSING PROBLEM. Carol 
 Aronovici, Lecturer on Social Problems, The University 
 of Minnesota. 
 
 MONEY. William A. Scott. 
 
 MONROE DOCTRINE AND THE GREAT WAR, THE. 
 Arnold Bennett Hall, Associate Professor of Political 
 Science, The University of Wisconsin. 
 
 NATIONAL EVOLUTION. George R. Davies, Assistant 
 Professor in the Department of Economics, Princeton 
 University.
 
 PROPERTY AND SOCIETY. A. A. Bruce, Associate 
 Justice Supreme Court, North Dakota. 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY OF CITIZENSHIP, THE. Arland D. 
 Weeks, Professor of Education, North Dakota Agricul- 
 tural College. 
 
 RURAL PROBLEMS IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 James E. Boyle, Extension Professor of Rural Economy, 
 College of Agriculture, Cornell University. 
 
 SOCIAL ANTAGONISMS. Arland D. Weeks. 
 
 SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT. George R. Davies. 
 
 SOCIAL INSURANCE IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 Gurdon Ransom Miller, Professor of Sociology and 
 Economics, Colorado State Teachers' College. 
 
 SOCIOLOGY. John M. Gillette. 
 
 STATE AND GOVERNMENT, THE. J. S. Young, Pro- 
 fessor of Political Science, The University of Minnesota. 
 
 STATISTICS. William B. Bailey, Professor of Practical 
 Philanthropy, Yale University, and John Cummings, Ex- 
 pert Special Agent, Bureau of the Census. 
 
 SYMPATHY AND SYSTEM IN GIVING. Elwood 
 Street, Director of Welfare League, Louisville, and Sec- 
 retary, American Association for Community Organiza- 
 tion. 
 
 TAXATION. C. B. Fillebrown, late President Massa- 
 chusetts Single Tax League. 
 
 TRUSTS AND COMPETITION. John F. Crowell, As- 
 sociate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. 
 
 WOMEN WORKERS AND SOCIETY. Annie M. Mac- 
 Lean, Assistant Professor of Sociology, The University 
 of Chicago.
 
 Sympathy and System 
 In Giving 
 
 BY 
 
 ELWOOD STREET 
 
 Director, Welfare League, Louisville, Kentucky, 
 
 and Secretary, American Association 
 
 for Community Organization 
 
 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
 
 1921 
 
 r\ 
 
 
 H
 
 Copyright 
 
 A. C. McClurg & Co. 
 
 192 1 
 
 Published March, 1921 
 
 . 
 
 
 T 1 w ^ " 
 
 , ■ 
 ■ 
 * * 
 
 i , : ' • •• « - ,- . . 
 
 « • « ..... ,
 
 Dedicated to 
 
 WHITING WILLIAMS, 
 
 Formerly Executive Secretary, 
 
 Cleveland Federation for Charity and Philanthropy
 
 «0 
 
 EDITOR'S PREFACE 
 
 MODERN charity has been an enigma to many 
 people. Not only were they confused regard- 
 ^ ing the choice of gifts but they were opposed to 
 ^ philanthropic enterprises that emphasized service 
 r , v rather than giving in the assistance of the unfortu- 
 ""^ nate. The most successful charity organizations, or 
 as they are now called " welfare associations," were 
 those maintaining staffs of well-trained people. 
 After all, every " charity " problem is a problem of 
 •^ adjustment. And it is this phase, that Mr. Street 
 |* has emphasized, adjustment under wise direction. 
 The growth, however, of the great private philan- 
 thropies require increasing amounts of money to 
 maintain them. How to give wisely and well is not 
 an easy matter to determine. Every well-to-do citi- 
 L zen is called upon to do his part in helping rejuvenate 
 £ the wreckage of society. This book will be a genuine 
 <2$ help to the giver who wants wise direction in assist- 
 ing him to a conclusion. 
 
 F. L. M.
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 FOR the " man on the street " to whom much of 
 modern charity is a mystery, but who neverthe- 
 less is being asked to give more and more to that 
 charity, is this little book written. 
 
 I have attempted to write it in the same manner 
 that, by personal conversation, I would try to explain 
 what " all this charity is about " to some broker or 
 merchant or lawyer friend of mine who had been 
 buried in his business or professional interests and 
 had suddenly come to the realization that while he 
 wanted to help others, he wanted to help effectively 
 and to know why and how he was helping. 
 
 My chief personal reaction after writing this book 
 has been a feeling of tremendous humility at the 
 amount that I have discovered I do not know about 
 social service ; and of hopelessness at ever being able 
 to know thoroughly a subject so deeply rooted in 
 human history and so various in its manifestations at 
 the present day. 
 
 If, for all this book's imperfections, it shall have 
 helped some few people to give more intelligently 
 and happily, or to lend their influence more effective- 
 ly to advance the cause of human welfare in our 
 country, I shall feel that all the effort will have been 
 well repaid.
 
 Author's Preface 
 
 I wish especially to acknowledge the valuable aid 
 of Miss Mildred Graham in securing material for 
 this book ; of Miss Mildred Anderson in painstak- 
 ingly and thoughtfully revising the manuscript; and 
 of the editor, Dr. Frank L. McVey, for his very 
 sympathetic and helpful suggestions for improve- 
 ment. 
 
 Elwood Street. 
 
 LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, 
 
 December 28, 1920.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I Why? i 
 
 II Whence ? 21 
 
 III " Not Alms, But a Friend " 42 
 
 IV " Unto the Least of These " 57 
 
 V Health, Wealth, and Happiness. . . 73 
 
 VI The Unclean Spirit 87 
 
 VII Beating the Devil 98 
 
 VIII Effective Gifts m 
 
 IX The Widow's Mite 135 
 
 X The Giver With the Gift 143 
 
 XI Whither ? 1 54
 
 SYMPATHY AND SYSTEM 
 IN GIVING
 
 THE NATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES 
 
 Edited by Frank L. McVey 
 
 The purpose of this series is to furnish for busy 
 
 men and women a brief but essentially 
 
 sane and sound discussion of present-day 
 
 questions. The authors have been 
 
 chosen with care from men who 
 
 are in first-hand contact zvith 
 
 the materials, and who 
 
 ■will bring to the 
 
 reader the newest 
 
 phases of the 
 
 subject.
 
 SYMPATHY AND SYSTEM IN GIVING 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHY? 
 
 A QUARTER of a century ago, Abraham Ep- 
 worth Rounds, aged forty-five, came sham- 
 bling out of mountainous eastern Tennessee to one 
 of our Kentucky cities. He was intent on making 
 a living in easier fashion than scratching it from 
 the lean soil of the mountainside. Among his 
 immediate relatives were nineteen people defective 
 from birth — blind, deaf, feeble-minded. Abraham 
 Epworth Rounds ran true to the family form. His 
 sight was so defective that he had been given a few 
 years of schooling at the Tennessee School for the 
 Blind. 
 
 In Louisville, at first, he made a precarious living 
 for himself and his wife (his second spouse) by 
 working at odd jobs, chiefly on the road, and by 
 periodical fits of labor in the woody ard of the 
 Associated Charities, in exchange for which evi- 
 dence of his good intent, the family rent and grocery 
 bills were paid. Before long, mutual fits of temper 
 provided the basis of a divorce between himself and 
 his wife. 
 
 Then it was that Abraham Epworth Rounds en-
 
 2 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 tered public life. He simultaneously acquired a job 
 as " white wing " in the city street-cleaning depart- 
 ment and a third wife. This good lady, in the 
 course of time, presented him with triplets, whom he 
 named after the mayor, the chairman of the Board 
 of Works (under which was the street-cleaning 
 department) and the head of the street-cleaning 
 department. Each of the godfathers made an ap- 
 propriate gift to his godchild. The story of this 
 unusual chain of events naturally got into the news- 
 papers. Thereupon gifts were showered by an 
 enthusiastic public upon the triplets and their proud 
 mother and their "blind" (for publicity purposes) 
 father. 
 
 Abraham Epworth Rounds had apparently long 
 suspected that the public owed him a living, and this 
 experience confirmed his opinion. He promptly took 
 his battered old fiddle, a folding chair, and a tin cup 
 and repaired to the most conspicuous corner in the 
 city. There, he unfolded his chair, sat himself down, 
 strapped the cup to his knee, assumed the full ap- 
 pearance of blindness, and began playing hymn 
 tunes on the fiddle. The results were highly satis- 
 factory. The " blind " fiddler, with his hymn tunes, 
 touched the sympathies and the religious sensibilities 
 of good folk, and he at once began to collect, in his 
 tin cup, a better living than he ever had been able to 
 make by work. 
 
 For twenty years Abraham Epworth Rounds thus 
 sat and fiddled and collected alms. In addition to 
 the fifteen to thirty dollars a week he made from 
 begging, he and the family received gifts from the
 
 Why? 3 
 
 three churches to which the family belonged, and 
 from various semi-religious charitable organizations. 
 The whole family was pauperized. Abraham Ep- 
 worth Rounds refused, steadily, the offers of pen- 
 sioning made from time to time by the Associated 
 Charities, because he could make a more ample liv- 
 ing by begging. The triplets grew into shiftless 
 young men. Two more boys were born, both blind. 
 When they became old enough to go to a school for 
 the blind, they proved to be the hardest to handle 
 in the whole school — because they felt they were 
 specially privileged. 
 
 Finally, the thing happened which should have 
 happened in the beginning. The police were per- 
 suaded to enforce the city ordinances and state laws 
 which prohibited begging and vagrancy ; and Abra- 
 ham Epworth Rounds, although defying the police 
 orders longer than any of the other beggars who had 
 infested the streets, was finally forced to go to the 
 Associated Charities for direction and help. He 
 was the last of the beggars. 
 
 Then was done a very simple thing, a thing which 
 might have been done at any time in the previous 
 twenty years except for thoughtless and haphazard 
 almsgiving. The Associated Charities got Abraham 
 Epworth Rounds a job working in a broom shop for 
 the blind; and persuaded one of the triplets, still 
 living with his parents, to go to work. The family 
 promptly became self-supporting ; and, thanks to the 
 guidance of the Associated Charities worker, has 
 since needed practically no material aid. 
 
 Every city in the country has its duplicates, in
 
 4 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 more or less recognizable form, of Abraham Ep- 
 worth Rounds ; and the problem he exemplifies is a 
 problem which faces most American citizens at the 
 present time. How may one give so as to render 
 constructive service to his fellow-citizens in need? 
 Old as civilization itself, the spirit of giving, or 
 charity, is one of the most potent forces of the 
 modern world in serving those in distress, in ex- 
 pressing the higher emotions of our citizenship and 
 in molding social life. By " charity," in these 
 modern days, we mean not merely the giving by 
 benevolent individuals of alms or " material relief ' 
 to those unfortunate people who are hungry, or cold, 
 or without clothing or shelter, but we include in the 
 term the whole field of human service or " social 
 service," as financed by the voluntary gifts of gen- 
 erous people and made effective through competent 
 organization. 
 
 The Reasons for Giving 
 
 Giving expresses the fundamental instinct of sym- 
 pathy. This relationship expands from the care of 
 the savage for his aged parents and his infant chil- 
 dren through various stages of regard for those less 
 able to take care of themselves, to the broad humani- 
 tarianism of the present-day philanthropist who 
 recognizes a responsible kinship for suffering human 
 beings in such distant parts of the world as Armenia 
 and Syria. The idea of brotherly love is inherent in 
 all religions ; the one point on which all faiths can 
 agree is on the practice of charity ; and many people 
 who have little or no theology at all hold that human
 
 Why? 5 
 
 service to them sums up all religion. The very name 
 " charity " is derived from the Latin caritas or 
 " love ;" " philanthropy " comes from the Greek and 
 means literally " love of man ;" while " benevolence " 
 in its Latin original means " well-wishing." Giving 
 thus is seen to be the expression of strong human 
 emotions; and to have the added virtue of putting 
 one " in tune with the infinite." 
 
 Why People Give 
 
 The fundamental nature of giving in its relation 
 to the life of the giver is well indicated by the replies 
 to a questionnaire recently sent to givers of the Wel- 
 fare League of Louisville. They were asked to 
 indicate what seemed to them the relative importance 
 of the following possible causes of giving : pity for 
 those in distress ; sympathy for their fellow-men in 
 need; humanity; religious obligations; justice to 
 those who have not had a fair chance ; duty to their 
 fellow-citizens in need; making Louisville a better 
 place for themselves and those they held dear. 
 
 Pity was indicated as the strongest motive for 
 giving, with 490 votes ; sympathy, next in impor- 
 tance, with 348 ; humanity, which is related to sym- 
 pathy, third, with 419; religious obligation, 344; 
 justice, 305 ; duty, 314 ; and safety, which is a selfish 
 motive, as contrasted with the others (which may be 
 considered altruistic), 217. 
 
 Interesting side lights on human nature are cast 
 by some of the other reasons which were assigned 
 by soul-searching givers as reasons for their charity. 
 " To make the giver a better man." " The duty or
 
 6 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 obligation one owes to his Lord and Creator and to 
 his fellow-man." " Because ' my position demands 
 it ' or because ' the other fellow did '." " Those able 
 and strong should help and assist the weak." " We 
 feel that it is our duty to assist those in distress and 
 that the distribution is much better taken care of 
 than it would be through our own private efforts at 
 investigating the different cases." "Aiding people 
 to help themselves." " Moral obligation." " The 
 happiness it brings to the giver." " Care of today's 
 children who will be tomorrow's men and women. 
 Their Christian upbringing will forestall Bolshe- 
 vistic tendencies in the future." " Unfortunates 
 must be taken care of, whether deserving or not." 
 " Our greatest blessing is our ability to serve and use 
 God's gifts to us in helping God's children." "A 
 great many, like myself, have no children." " For 
 the common good." " To make the world a better 
 place to live, both for them and ourselves." " Grati- 
 tude for blessings and ability to give." " The Golden 
 Rule." "Because I owe it to myself to see that 
 everyone is happy near me." These were more or 
 less isolated statements, for most of those who an- 
 swered the questionnaire confined themselves to 
 numbering their choices among the reasons originally 
 listed. Still, the general tone of these added reasons 
 is significant. There seems no reason to think that 
 the relative importance of these various motives of 
 giving would not hold good for the country at large, 
 for the questionnaires were filled in by people of 
 every social group or class, every religious faith or 
 no faith, and both white and colored people, in Louis-
 
 Why? 7 
 
 ville. Human nature, as expressed in giving, surely 
 is about the same everywhere. 
 
 Giving More General Now Than Ever 
 
 The force of these reasons for the practice of 
 charity seems to be growing stronger and stronger, 
 so that nowadays almost everyone gives to some 
 charitable cause or other. Our philanthropists range 
 from the world-weary multi-millionaire who estab- 
 lishes a foundation with a staff of experts to carry 
 out specific benevolent purposes, to the little boy in 
 Sunday school who gives a shiny penny, which he 
 has carried from home tightly clutched in a sweaty 
 little fist, to buy milk for sick babies. Organized 
 giving increased greatly during the World War, 
 with the "drives" for the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. 
 A., the Salvation Army, and the other war agencies. 
 These appeals were given unparalleled force by pa- 
 triotism and by a selective military service which 
 called men from almost every household to the dan- 
 gers of war. Generous givers were secured by the 
 tens of thousands where the old peace-time charities 
 had their thousands. During the war, also, men and 
 women who never before had rendered any personal 
 service for unselfish causes gave unstintedly of their 
 time and energy in Red Cross workrooms, in helping 
 to entertain soldiers, in campaigns for war funds and 
 for the sale of Liberty bonds and war savings stamps 
 and in service as Four-Minute Men, speaking under 
 the direction of the Committee on Public Informa- 
 tion. People discovered not only that they had time 
 for such unpaid service, but that they enjoyed it,
 
 8 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 as well. The habit of giving time and service, thus 
 acquired during the war, is not easily lost ; and many 
 persons either have bestowed generous gifts of their 
 time and money upon peace-time philanthropies or 
 are looking for the opportunity to do so. It may 
 truly be said of giving that " Everybody's doing it ;" 
 and, quite as truly, that almost everybody's doing it 
 because he likes it. The joy of giving is being shared 
 now by more givers than ever before in our coun- 
 try's history. 
 
 Modem Munificence 
 
 The same causes which have brought about a 
 multiplication of the number of givers have tre- 
 mendously increased the amount of money given. 
 A recent writer has said, 
 
 Up to the time we entered the war the largest national 
 project for raising money had been a pension fund for 
 clergymen, with $4,000,000 as its objective. Nearly five 
 years was spent in planning and preparation for this 
 drive, and a year allowed for putting it through. Skep- 
 tics declared the scheme preposterous. Prophets pre- 
 dicted that it would fail. Nobody really knew whether 
 it would be successful or not When contributions 
 exceeded the huge amount sought, everybody was aston- 
 ished. 
 
 Since then, however, money-raising drives for millions 
 have multiplied, until every city, town, and even country 
 crossroads has had its campaigns for war funds, chari- 
 ties, churches, educational institutions, relief work, 
 social projects, and other causes. The billion-dollar 
 steel trust was a world marvel of high finance twenty 
 years ago. But the drive is highest finance.
 
 Why? 9 
 
 It is estimated that the aggregate amount of money 
 raised for innumerable causes the past year would com- 
 fortably float the steel corporation of 1900, for it ex- 
 ceeds $1,000,000,000, as nearly as figures can be secured, 
 and maybe runs to $1,500,000,000. 
 
 Some months ago a New York investigator prepared 
 an inquiry blank and began mailing it to the promoters 
 of every money-raising drive he could get wind of. 
 He exhibited a pile of blanks that had been filled out 
 and returned to him. There were several hundred of 
 them. 
 
 The first blank on top of the pile carried the name of 
 a church organization that would not be at all familiar 
 to the general public. This organization was raising 
 funds locally, in a group of middle western states. 
 The question "What amount of money is asked for?" 
 was answered succinctly in figures: $75,000,000. Just 
 like that! 
 
 Other institutions asked for sums from $100,000 up 
 to tens of millions. The millions predominated. Every 
 fourth or fifth report modestly descended into frac- 
 tions — halves of millions and quarters of millions, but 
 rarely tenths. Anything under $100,000 was excep- 
 tional, the trifling needs of some local institution — but 
 trifling only by contrast. 1 
 
 Myriads Served by Modem Charity 
 
 While the number of givers and the amount given 
 have thus increased of late years, the number of 
 those benefiting by their gifts has also increased. 
 This increase in the number of beneficiaries of 
 modern charity is not because of any increase in 
 
 1 James H. Collins, "The Drive Industry," Saturday 
 Evening Post, August 14, 1920, p. 5-
 
 io Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 the amount of poverty (although the high cost of 
 commodities since the war has doubtless thrust many 
 families below the poverty line) or because of any 
 reckless spending of the increased funds which have 
 been made available ; but because the expanding idea 
 of charity or social service has extended this service 
 to multitudes who were not reached by ancient 
 charity. 
 
 Charity no longer contents itself with mere alms- 
 giving, with caring only for those who are sick or 
 in distress. Charity is extending itself to the field 
 of prevention. It promotes good health throughout 
 a community, so that fewer people in any social 
 class may suffer the financial losses entailed by sick- 
 ness and death. It provides wholesome recreation 
 for whole neighborhoods, so that none may become 
 the victims of vice or the devotees of crime. It is 
 concerned in seeing that all children get adequate 
 training for effective, self-supporting adult life, so 
 that none shall become poverty-stricken through lack 
 of opportunity. It renders advisory service to fami- 
 lies and individuals at the very beginning of troubles 
 which might lead to acute distress and poverty and 
 thus, while increasing the number of people served, 
 reduces the number of people who must otherwise 
 be given that mere " material relief " in the shape of 
 food, fuel, clothing, or shelter which is the evidence 
 of the failure of society adequately to safeguard its 
 members. 
 
 Charity today serves constructively an increasing 
 number of people, rendering often to whole com- 
 munities a kind of wholesome aid which was never
 
 Why? 1 1 
 
 thought of in ancient days when the whole of char- 
 ity was thought to be summed up in giving to the 
 man or woman in obvious distress. 
 
 Social Service a Groiving Profession 
 
 While givers, gifts, and clients mount in total, the 
 number of people engaged in full-time, paid social 
 service has also greatly increased. 
 
 One of the valuable results of the World War, 
 from the point of view of the peace-time charities, 
 was that it taught to untold thousands of people, who 
 previously had sneered at " the red tape of charity " 
 and at " social theorists " the value of the methods 
 which had been developed by these hitherto unre- 
 garded charities. The American Red Cross in its 
 Home Service Section took over bodily the princi- 
 ples of " case work " or individual treatment, backed 
 up by adequate records and trained workers, which 
 had been developed by the Associated Charities and 
 charity organization societies, and applied them in 
 the care of soldiers' dependents ; and took over, as 
 well, a very large proportion of the trained workers 
 from these older societies. The War Camp Com- 
 munity Service in the same way adopted the workers 
 and methods of the community-recreation movement 
 for providing adequate recreation for soldiers and 
 sailors in war-camp cities ; while the Y. M. C. A., 
 the Knights of Columbus, and the Jewish Welfare 
 Board did the same for their activities within camps. 
 The ranks of the public-health nurses were depleted 
 for army service ; and the principles of sanitation 
 and of venereal-disease prevention through elimina-
 
 12 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 tion of red-light districts and suppression of prostitu- 
 tion, which were developed before the war by social 
 agencies, were applied with startling effectiveness 
 by the United States Public Health Service and the 
 Inter-Departmental Social Hygiene Bureau in train- 
 ing-camp areas. The recognition of social-service 
 methods and of the importance of workers profes- 
 sionally trained for such service was forced home on 
 the popular mind so effectively that since the war 
 it has been impossible to meet the demand of com- 
 munities all over the country for the expansion of 
 existing agencies to serve more adequately local 
 needs or for the creation of organizations not before 
 existing but now recognized as desirable. 
 
 Charity, or social service, long recognized by its 
 own workers as a profession with standards of prac- 
 tice as clear-cut as those of the ministry, law, or 
 medicine, now has come to be seen as such by the 
 community at large. Social service now looms as 
 one of the leading professions of the future. 
 
 More Social Feeling Now Than Ever 
 
 This increase in the magnitude of charity has been 
 matched by an increase in the importance of humani- 
 tarian considerations in the minds of great numbers 
 of people. 
 
 Religion — Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish — has 
 been imbued with a new social spirit. The National 
 Catholic Welfare Council has issued a remarkable 
 pronunciamento on Social Reconstruction, putting 
 the whole weight of the Roman Catholic hierarchy 
 in America behind the betterment of the conditions
 
 Why? 13 
 
 of life and labor for all the people. The Federal 
 Council of Churches of Christ in America, made up 
 of over thirty Protestant denominations, has taken 
 a somewhat similar stand. The Central Conference 
 of American Rabbis has reaffirmed in modern terms 
 the age-old social spirit of the Law and the Prophets. 
 The late lamented Inter-Church World Movement 
 emphasized the principle of Christian stewardship, 
 or the responsibility of the owners of wealth to use 
 it for human service. 
 
 Nor is this growing feeling of the responsibility 
 of the individual to render human service restricted 
 to religious authority only. The call to service is 
 becoming part of the social code of America. A 
 great editor, retiring in the prime of his life, so 
 that he may have leisure to do as he pleases, includes 
 in his plans for his leisure the rendition of service 
 and says, " The making of money, the accumulation 
 of material power, is not all there is to living. Life 
 is something more than these two things, and the 
 man who misses this truth misses the greatest joy 
 and satisfaction that can come into his life — that is, 
 from service to others." * 
 
 Employers of labor, too, are being touched by 
 this humanitarian spirit, and are devising all sorts 
 of welfare schemes, shop committees and other plans 
 for bettering their relations with their employees and 
 for broadening the lives of all who are dependent 
 on the industry for support. 
 
 This strengthening of the feeling of responsibility 
 
 1 Edward Bok, "Just Because I Want to Play," Atlantic 
 Monthly, September, 1920, p. 370.
 
 14 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 for others cannot fail to strengthen the appeal that 
 modern charity makes to the thoughtful and con- 
 scientious citizen. 
 
 Firmly entrenched as charity or social service thus 
 is in the feelings, the reason and the activities of 
 untold numbers of people who serve and are served, 
 it also is of great importance to the community as a 
 whole, as distinguished "from its appeal to individ- 
 uals who make up that community. Modern charity 
 is proving a potent factor in improving social life. 
 
 Charity a Preventative of Distress 
 
 As was suggested in the preceding discussion of 
 the great increase in the number of people served by 
 modern social agencies, charity no longer contents 
 itself with mere relief of distress and alleviation of 
 suffering. Nowadays, charity strives to prevent the 
 linked social ills of poverty, disease, ignorance, vice, 
 and crime, through making a scientific attempt to 
 prevent the reproduction of the feeble-minded and 
 epileptic, to improve the environment of those who 
 otherwise would be overwhelmed by evil and un- 
 wholesome surroundings, and to provide training 
 for those who otherwise would not know how suc- 
 cessfully to fight the battle of life. 
 
 Piracy and Charity 
 
 The pirates of Algiers in the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries captured English ships, ravaged 
 English coasts, and took into captivity men wnom 
 they " ' put to daily extream and difficult labour, but 
 a poor supply of bread and water for their food,
 
 Why? 15 
 
 stripped of their cloaths and covering, and their 
 lodging on the cold stones and bricks ' where they 
 were chained, bastinadoed, and subjected to other 
 outrages." l To ransom these miserable captives 
 kindly English souls of that time made contributions 
 and bequests, which, unfortunately, often served in 
 large part merely to raise the current price of re- 
 demption in Algiers. 
 
 Pirates have been exterminated in these modern 
 times, and men now sail the seven seas in safety 
 from molestation ; but in our own country thousands 
 — yes hundreds of thousands — of people, men, 
 women, and children, are subject to a captivity 
 hardly less pitiful and barbarous, the captivity 
 imposed by those ferocious brigands of society ; 
 poverty, misery, ignorance, sickness, and vice. And 
 just as our forefathers of three and four centuries 
 ago did relatively little good by attempting to ran- 
 som the captives in Algiers, so, also, in these modern 
 times do we find that we shall do but little good if 
 we attempt merely to ransom our modern slaves 
 chained in the galleys of life, by giving them gifts 
 of money or " material relief " which can but lighten 
 their suffering for a day, a week, a month, a year, 
 or as long as the gift will finance their surplus needs, 
 after which they must again drop back into captivity. 
 Just as the English eventually organized powerful 
 armadas which swept these buccaneers from the 
 seas and exterminated them from their nests on land, 
 so, also, must we, through organized endeavor, free 
 
 1 B. Kirkman Gray, A History of English Philanthropy, 
 p. 40.
 
 1 6 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 our present-day captives — the poor, the sick, the 
 ignorant, the vicious — by sweeping from the seas 
 of life the causes which have reduced them to 
 captivity. 
 
 Charity Benefits Whole Community 
 
 Modern activities for amelioration of distressing 
 conditions really better the whole citizenship. As 
 St. Paul so truly said, we are all " members one of 
 another." Sickness in any part of a modern city 
 threatens all its citizens. Vice bred in slums often 
 entices the young men of the most select homes. 
 Poverty, malnutrition, and unwholesome living and 
 working conditions reduce the effectiveness of the 
 workers in our industries. Gifts for improving the 
 lot of the unfortunate and for mitigating these evils 
 thus are seen by many, who are touched neither by 
 religion nor justice nor love of their fellow-man, to 
 be excellent investments toward personal security 
 and the continuance of prosperity. 
 
 This view of charity as a means of averting trou- 
 ble is perhaps not essentially different from the 
 amiable theory of the Dark and Middle Ages when 
 the church put stress on almsgiving as a means for 
 attaining grace in the life hereafter, and for securing 
 forgiveness of sins. As the good St. Chrysostom 
 said, "If there were no poor, the greater part of 
 your sins would not be removed ; they are the healers 
 of your wounds." 
 
 Charity Supplies Facts 
 
 Further in the course of its service, modern char- 
 ity does important research work, bringing to light
 
 Why? 17 
 
 facts as to the conditions of life which serve as the 
 basis of many important reforms and social move- 
 ments. Such organized endeavors as those for 
 Americanization, prohibition, elimination of child 
 labor, public health, mental hygiene, and social in- 
 surance would have been practically impossible of 
 successful prosecution without the facts furnished 
 by humble social workers laboring with the human 
 disasters which society produces. 
 
 Charity as a Pioneer 
 
 Charity also experiments and pioneers in many 
 fields which later, after becoming firmly established 
 in the popular good will, are transformed into com- 
 munity activities, as in the care of the insane and 
 feeble-minded, in vocational education, in the pro- 
 vision for free lunches and breakfasts for school 
 children, in the care of the tuberculous, in the devel- 
 opment of community centers, and in a host of 
 similar activities. 
 
 Charity and Class Conflict 
 
 Charity in its modern sense of social service tends 
 to a considerable extent to even up the inequalities 
 of life and to transfer the surplus of the more for- 
 tunate to those who are less fortunate. It helps' to 
 ease the difficulties of those who suffer from the 
 hazards of life, such as sickness, accident, death of 
 the wage-earner, and unemployment. F*or these two 
 reasons, modern charity tends to prevent friction 
 between the classes of society. Yet it does not pre-
 
 i8 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 vent democratic progress in human betterment ; be- 
 cause by the very practice of charity, those who give 
 thoughtfully acquire a wider view of human suf- 
 fering and a deeper sense of human wrong, and so 
 tend to become leaders in movements for social 
 reform. 
 
 Charity and Democracy 
 
 An added factor for progress in democracy has 
 been found in the community financial campaigns of 
 the World War years and after, when men and 
 women of all social ranks, all races, and all creeds, 
 have been united as never before in drives to raise 
 funds for human betterment. The value of such ac- 
 quaintance in building a more democratic feeling is 
 evident. 
 
 The influence of modern charity on modern com- 
 munity life which it so variously influences is tre- 
 mendous. 
 
 Difficulties of the Modem Giver 
 
 Yet, important as charity seems to be in the life 
 of the individual and of the community, the question 
 well may arise as to whether or not it may defeat 
 itself. So many charitable organizations are spring- 
 ing up to claim the bounty of the giver ; so many 
 drives are being conducted to entice away his dol- 
 lars ; so many organizations are being interposed 
 as barriers between the giver and the person in need 
 who is supposed to receive his gift, that bank- 
 ruptcy, financial and spiritual, seems to threaten the 
 giver. What thrill is left in giving if one is whee-
 
 Why: 19 
 
 died, and teased, and cajoled, and threatened by 
 agencies competing for his gifts; if one who is en- 
 joined to "love his neighbor as himself " never sees 
 the neighbor he is asked to help; if the money he 
 gives seems to be gobbled up in " administration 
 costs?" Can there really be so much gladness in 
 giving, after all? 
 
 A Way Out of the Difficulties 
 
 Comfort for distressed givers and helpful infor- 
 mation for all givers will be given in the pages 
 ahead. The discussion will be as practical as possi- 
 ble, devoting itself to the problems of giving which 
 face the average citizen in the average American 
 city. The discussion will be further limited to giv- 
 ing to charitable or social purposes as distinguished 
 from religious and educational causes. " Giving " 
 shall be held to include the contribution, not merely 
 of money, but of personal service as well. We shall 
 attempt to show how every giver may become a 
 more sympathetic giver, a more intelligent giver, 
 and a more effective giver. We shall show how 
 charity has sprung, in its motives, its purposes, and 
 its various manifestations, out of the very nature 
 of human society ; what opportunities for construc- 
 tive giving lie before the present-day American 
 citizen ; what standards of business management and 
 what standards of human service the giver may rea- 
 sonably expect of the charities to which he gives ; 
 how the giver may plan the giving of his time or 
 his money ; and the wholesome tendencies in the de-
 
 20 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 velopment of charity which he, as a giver and a 
 citizen, can help to promote in his own community. 
 We shall, in brief, tell how one can make his giving 
 a pleasing and effective combination of sympathy 
 and system.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 WHENCE? 
 
 " TGET so many appeals from charities, that I am 
 
 J- going to quit giving altogether. If I gave to 
 them all, I'd go broke; and I've no way of knowing 
 which are worthy and which are not. I'm just going 
 to pass 'em all up," once said a bewildered and 
 wrathful citizen to the author. 
 
 " There's too much duplication between all these 
 charities, and I'm going to do all my giving direct," 
 declared another suspicious man. 
 
 Neither man was much to be blamed, either for 
 being confused by the multiplicity of charitable and 
 philanthropic agencies which seem to spring up like 
 benevolent mushrooms from the fertile soil of 
 modern city life, or for feeling that where so much 
 organized humanitarian activity is going on, there 
 must be a good deal of helping the same people and 
 a great waste of money. 
 
 As a matter of fact, both men were wrong. The 
 great number of philanthropic agencies, such as 
 associated charities, nursing organizations, hospitals, 
 orphan asylums, humane societies, protective asso- 
 ciations, and similar agencies which are to be found 
 in almost any city of any size, do actually meet 
 human needs ; should not be confusing if their pur- 
 poses are understood; and need not duplicate each 
 
 21
 
 22 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 other's efforts if they are organized as effectively 
 as they are in many cities and should be in all cities. 
 It is not surprising that such confusion and mis- 
 understanding should have arisen considering the 
 nature of present-day philanthropic effort ; for it is 
 only within the last century or so that the present- 
 day movement for the specialization of charitable 
 work has been marked, while for two or three thou- 
 sand years previously all charitable work had been 
 along the simple lines of feeding, clothing, and shel- 
 tering the poor ; housing the widowed, orphaned, 
 infirm, and aged ; healing the sick ; and lodging the 
 wayfarers. The habit of thinking of charitable en- 
 deavor as limited to these simple functions is not 
 easily to be broken. A people brought up on the 
 Bible, with its injunction to give alms to the poor, is 
 likely to think that this simple method of discharg- 
 ing one's duties to his less fortunate fellow-men will 
 still suffice ; forgetful that the change in all civilized 
 life since the days of the Prophets includes a change 
 in the conditions of poverty and in the means of 
 alleviating these conditions. 
 
 Charity a Natural Development 
 
 We who pride ourselves on the excellence of our 
 modern civilization are likely to be almost startled 
 at the discovery of how many of our present-day 
 charitable activities and modes of charitable thought 
 are as old as written history — or still older, for 
 even the folklore of semicivilized peoples has its 
 reference to charitable thought and services. The 
 truth of the whole matter may be readily revealed in
 
 Whence? 23 
 
 the consideration that the practice of charity rests 
 on elemental human needs, such as hunger, lack of 
 shelter, and sickness, from which forms of distress 
 human beings always have suffered ; combined with 
 the perception of these needs by human sympathy. 
 The manifestations of these needs have become 
 varied as civilization has become more complicated ; 
 the means of meeting them have become more intri- 
 cate as human ingenuity has been applied to the 
 problem ; and sympathy has been in turn refined into 
 religious obligation, civic duty and social justice. 
 Still, because of its basis in human need and in the 
 responsive endeavor of the sentiment of human 
 brotherhood, charity today is essentially what it was 
 two or three thousand years ago, and probably 
 always will be the same in spirit ; for in that brief 
 day which we know as written history, man has 
 changed so far as we can see not one iota, nor does 
 there seem any reason to think that he will change 
 greatly within the next few hundreds or thousands 
 of years. 
 
 The Greeks as Charitable Inventors 
 
 Thus, the ancient Greeks, adding religious sanc- 
 tion to the genial customs which had been developed 
 out of the needs of those simple times, and saying, 
 quite reasonably, that that is divine which seems to 
 be the expression of human nature and to have some 
 measure of good in it, declared that those in need 
 were the special darlings of the gods. 
 
 Strangers and beggars (and some men, even in 
 those remote days, preferred to live by their wits
 
 24 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 than by honest work) were held to be under the 
 particular guardianship of Zeus, chief of the gods. 
 Strangers were entertained at the tables of those 
 whom they asked for shelter and were sent on their 
 way rejoicing with gifts of food; a custom not dif- 
 ferent in any essential from the pleasant hospitality 
 which still prevails in the southern Appalachian 
 Highlands of the United States, where wayfarers in 
 the lonely creeks and coves of those mountains so 
 remote from recent currents of progress are 
 entertained in generous spirit with the best of bed 
 and board that the two-room log cabin affords. 
 Later Greek practice provided guest-chambers at- 
 tached to the houses of the well-to-do, or even guest- 
 houses as part of the equipment of the temples. 
 Beggars, too, were under the patronage of Zeus. 
 They received special consideration at the frequent 
 religious feasts ; were given generous portions from 
 the meals of the rich ; and were so accustomed thus 
 to be provided for that a customary part of their 
 equipment was a bag, or wallet, for scraps of food, 
 by which one might recognize a mendicant from 
 afar off. The Odyssey records that the faithful 
 Hecuba recommended to Odysseus that he make 
 complete his disguise as a beggar by putting on a 
 wallet. 
 
 The sick, too, were under the protection of Apollo, 
 the god of healing; and Aesculapius, the first physi- 
 cian, was deified, so that his pupils became priests of 
 the god. Temples of Aesculapius served as hospi- 
 tals, in which the sick were treated by the priest- 
 doctors ; dispensaries were established at which the
 
 IV hence f 25 
 
 sick poor and slaves were treated without charge ; 
 while many generous physicians held it their first 
 duty, on coming to a city, to minister first of all to 
 the sick among the lowest classes of society. 
 
 Thus do our modern almshouses, hospitals, dis- 
 pensaries, and systems of district physicians find 
 their predecessors, in principle, back in the very 
 dawn of our civilization, in which, as it were, the 
 first rays of the sun of progress struck on the roofs 
 of institutions for the care of those in distress. 
 
 Rome, Imitator and Luckless Experimenter 
 
 It was not to be expected that the Romans, who 
 took so much of their culture from the Greeks, 
 would make any great improvements in the expres- 
 sion of their charitable spirit. Their stern sense 
 of civic duty, coupled with a high religious spirit, 
 did, indeed, incline them to use all the devices that 
 the Greeks had used ; and Rome of the Republic and 
 Empire saw guest-houses, hospitals, dispensaries, 
 and visiting physicians. The Greek beggar with his 
 wallet was duplicated by the Roman beggar with 
 his sportula, or basket in which he carried away food 
 from the table of his wealthy patron. Greek practice 
 was, indeed, improved upon by those later Roman 
 philanthropists who created foundations for the care 
 and education of orphans, in principle much like our 
 modern orphan asylums and industrial training 
 schools. 
 
 Rome, however, forgot the injunction of the 
 Greek philosophers that charity to be worth while 
 must have a constructive purpose ; and indulged in
 
 26 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 an experiment in wholesale public philanthropy 
 which was disastrous not only to the recipients of 
 the charity but to the state as well. Tiberius Grac- 
 chus, one of the human jewels in which estimable 
 Cornelia rejoiced, as tribune of the Republic in the 
 year 133 b. c. decreed that citizens of the republican 
 city might have wheat at half price. This annona 
 civica quickly degenerated into a free dole of corn, 
 which at the time of Augustus was shared by 320,- 
 000 people ; and under the later emperors included 
 wine, oil, and even clothes in its enervating bounty. 
 This tremendous piece of indiscriminate almsgiving 
 bred shiftlessness, pauperism, and dependency to 
 an extent which was a large factor in the eventual 
 downfall of Rome. It has been matched, in more 
 recent times, by the Poor Law, passed in Elizabethan 
 England, which in two centuries brought one- 
 seventh of the population to dependence on the poor- 
 rates; and by the unwise "outdoor relief" of not a 
 few American cities. 
 
 Rome, both in many of its charitable institutions 
 and in its unfortunate charitable practice, was not 
 unmodern. 
 
 The Jews and Social Justice 
 
 The Greeks and Romans were surpassed in inten- 
 sity of social action by the ancient Jews. The Jew 
 combined his religion and his charity so that service 
 to those in need became an obligation to all who 
 loved Jehovah. The cry for human service voiced 
 by the Prophets has rung through the ages. So 
 strong was the feeling of social duty that the He-
 
 Whence? 27 
 
 brew tongue had but one word for both " charity " 
 and " justice." The Levitical code first gave voice 
 to Christ's second commandment, " Thou shalt love 
 thy neighbor as thyself." The customary guest- 
 houses, hospitals, and homes for the orphans and 
 widowed were supplemented in their service by the 
 synagogues, which received contributions, both in 
 regular gift-boxes and by special collection, on be- 
 half of the poor and which distributed the food and 
 clothing thus purchased through official almoners 
 who visited the poor in their homes. The charitable 
 thought and action of the Jews proved a fitting back- 
 ground for the teachings and works of Jesus. 
 
 Christianity Introduced a New Spirit 
 A new note of practical helpfulness in giving was 
 introduced by Christianity. Jesus not merely ad- 
 jured the rich to give alms, but he himself supplied 
 the example of kindly service in healing the sick, 
 driving out the devils from the man with the unclean 
 spirit, caring for the children, the weak, the fallen, 
 and the disconsolate. He gave new emphasis to the 
 Levitical saying, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
 thyself." His parable of the Good Samaritan is as 
 good a symbol as we have of constructive charitable 
 endeavor, adapted exactly to the need of the unfor- 
 tunate man and calculated to rehabilitate him com- 
 pletely. Jesus understood thoroughly and taught, 
 by word and deed, the principle, now but newly re- 
 discovered, that what the poor need is "not alms, 
 but a friend;" and that we should help the poor 
 " not in their poverty, but out of it."
 
 28 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 Christianity summed up all that had gone before 
 it in linking up religion and human service. It gave 
 an emphasis to the idea of brotherly love that has 
 not been improved in two thousand years. Christi- 
 anity is essentially an expression of love for all chil- 
 dren of the one Father. The teachings of Jesus, of 
 St. Paul, of St. Francis of Assisi, and of other 
 church fathers, supply ample justification for the 
 present-day activities of Christian churches and 
 church people in charitable affairs. 
 
 The Church as Charity 
 
 The early Christian church, with its common meal 
 for all members, with its societies for the mainte- 
 nance of resident poor and the entertainment of 
 strangers, with its orphan asylums, with its distribu- 
 tion of offerings by almoners and deacons under the 
 direction of the bishop, with its principle that church 
 property was the property of the poor and that gifts 
 to the poor were gifts to the church, set an example 
 which still links closely church and charity. 
 
 During the Dark Ages, just as the church alone 
 kept alight the flame of learning, so it, alone, kept 
 alive the spirit of charity. The monasteries and 
 convents with their hospitals for the sick and the 
 shelterless, their asylums for the aged and orphaned, 
 and their alms given out of the almonry to all who 
 might apply, provided the only charitable institu- 
 tions ; while the orders of friars with their vows of 
 poverty and service, and the parish priests working 
 from their churches, provided the only distribution
 
 Whence? 29 
 
 of relief and the only visitation of the sick for the 
 poor in their home. 
 
 The Perversion of Social Thought 
 
 Still, Jesus' followers did not follow completely 
 his example. St. Paul, the chief interpreter of 
 Christian thought, put emphasis on the second com- 
 ing of Christ, with the millennium and the judgment 
 day thought to be near at hand. In preparation for 
 this judgment day, all good Christians were to do 
 deeds of charity, which were the tests of the good 
 life. Less emphasis was put on the effect of alms- 
 giving on the recipient, because if the end of the 
 world were coming soon, it did not make much dif- 
 ference whether poverty continued or not. Thus, 
 the purpose of charity was subordinated to the mo- 
 tive of doing good for credit. As the idea of an 
 immediate millennium faded, the idea of at least 
 acquiring credit for admission to Heaven on death 
 increased in force; and the purpose of giving was 
 transferred from this world to the next. The poor, 
 it was held, we must always have with us ; and, as 
 has been noted, ecclesiastical authorities* tended to 
 congratulate society on having the poor so that alms 
 deeds might be practiced. Naturally, with such a 
 misinterpretation of the spirit of Christ, little prog- 
 ress could be made in constructive charity. As C. S. 
 Loch says in Charity and Social Life, " the peniten- 
 tial system takes it for granted that almsgiving is 
 good for others, associates with it reward or advan- 
 tage in assisting others, and puts a premium on it, 
 even though in fact it were done, not with any defi-
 
 30 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 nite charitable object, but only for the good of the 
 penitent himself. Thus almsgiving becomes de- 
 tached from charity on the one side and from social 
 good on the other." 
 
 Modern Civilization Brings New Methods 
 
 While the age-old principle of caring for the poor 
 through almshouses and public bounty, through or- 
 phan asylums, hospitals, and similar institutions, 
 secular and ecclesiastical, has persisted until the 
 present day, new methods of philanthropy have come 
 into existence with the development of modern civil- 
 ization since the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 
 
 The Pozver of Organization 
 
 One of the chief factors in the multiplication of 
 charities was the rediscovery of the principle of 
 voluntary association, or of incorporation. Until the 
 seventeenth century, practically all charitable effort 
 outside of state aid and the activities of churches 
 and monastic orders had been by individuals, who 
 either gave in person to those in distress, or who left 
 endowments for serving specific purposes after their 
 death. The corporatioon had, indeed, been known 
 in Roman times, when towns and mutual-benefit 
 societies had adopted this form; but it had lan- 
 quished until the Industrial Revolution, when ex- 
 panding business had adopted the device of the joint- 
 stock company, so disastrously exemplified in the 
 South-Sea Bubble. 
 
 Charitable persons were not slow to see the ad-
 
 Whence? 31 
 
 vantages of such association for extending their 
 powers of doing good. Hitherto, one who had 
 wished to do more charity than his own financial 
 ability would allow, had circulated a brief among 
 his friends and acquaintances who signed them- 
 selves for subscriptions of various amounts which 
 were then expended by the benevolent individual. 
 Now, however, the charitable organization, as such, 
 was given continuity of life and definiteness of pur- 
 pose. Any number of subscribers of any amount 
 might be secured. Charity no longer was limited to 
 those who were in touch with the poor and who 
 could distribute alms and render service. Many 
 might give and a few administer their gifts on be- 
 half of all, and a prediction of present-day pro- 
 fessional service was found in those philanthropists 
 who devoted practically all their time to these newly 
 developed organizations. The modern development 
 of charity would have been impossible without the 
 application of the device of voluntary association. 
 
 The Diffusion of Knozvledge 
 
 A further factor in the increase in the number of 
 charitable activities which accompanied the advance 
 of civilization was the force of imitation made pos- 
 sible by the wider diffusion of knowledge. Travel 
 had become a recognized mode of culture. Well-to- 
 do men who made "the grand tour" carried from 
 foreign countries to their native lands accounts of 
 the philanthropies which they had seen, and often 
 attempted to establish them. In the same way,
 
 32 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 immigration, which was one of the results of the 
 greater freedom of the lower classes of the people, 
 served to carry types of charitable activity from one 
 country to another. Moreover, the improvements 
 in printing brought about cheap newspapers and a 
 profuse pamphleteering, both of which devices were 
 used to spread the news of new types of charity and 
 to serve as instruments of propaganda for those who 
 wished to advocate new measures for human better- 
 ment ; while reports of various charities were printed 
 and widely distributed. Public opinion was discov- 
 ered as an instrument of philanthropic reform. 
 Social thought and experience, thus made known 
 to the masses of the people, were bound to be applied 
 in a variety of ways. 
 
 The Industrial Revolution and Social Life 
 
 The Industrial Revolution, which was but one 
 phase of the liberation of human thought and action 
 which began with the Renaissance and the Reforma- 
 tion, tremendously altered the problems of charitable 
 assistance. 
 
 When machines took the place of human hands, 
 and a few owners of machines became the directors 
 of production, great numbers of people who previ- 
 ously had worked away at various handicrafts in 
 their own homes and supported themselves in part 
 from adjacent garden plots or else exchanged the 
 things they made for the food of nearby farmers, 
 crowded into cities, so that they might be near 
 those machines ; and then became entirely dependent
 
 Whence? 33 
 
 on them. When the machines did not run, because 
 of a slack season, their operators no longer had a 
 plot of ground from which to eke out a living and 
 had no products of their own handicraft which they 
 might exchange for food. Out of work, they be- 
 came dependent on charity as soon as their savings 
 were exhausted. 
 
 At the same time, old established customs of life 
 were broken down, in the change from farm life to 
 city life. An increasing amount of purchasing had 
 to be done to obtain family supplies, and an increas- 
 ing amount of wise bargaining was necessary. The 
 worker had to sell his service wherever and how- 
 ever he could. He often had to borrow money to 
 help through dull periods, and ran into the perils 
 of the loan shark. Moreover, he had to tend to 
 business in a way which had been unnecessary on 
 the farm. If he loafed on the job, now, he was 
 " fired." The consequence was that those who were 
 deficient in judgment or in energy failed to make 
 good and had to ask for charitable assistance. The 
 present-day proof of this tendency is shown in the 
 fact that in most American cities, foreign-born peo- 
 ple, who are less well adapted than the native-born 
 to our conditions of life and industry, receive more 
 than their proportionate share of public and private 
 charity. 
 
 New Manifestations of Distress 
 
 Machinery had painful effects on human beings. 
 With great frequency it lopped off hands, put out
 
 34 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 eyes, and even crushed out lives. Industrial diseases 
 from dust and chemical vapors took their toll of 
 health and life. Thus, charity had many new 
 charges thrust upon it, and new and grave problems 
 to face. 
 
 With the crowding of workers in cities, too, the 
 need of tending to the so-called " social problems " 
 became evident. When people lived in villages, small 
 towns, or the open country, it was possible to care 
 for widows or orphans by assimilating them in the 
 normal families among the neighbors. In the city, 
 where one neighbor hardly knows the other, sucb 
 mutual aid was impossible. Moreover, as great num- 
 bers of people were crowded into cities, these ills, 
 which were inconspicuous hitherto, assumed large 
 proportions because of the very number of people 
 who were suffering from them. A consequence was 
 the development of charitable organizations to take 
 care of these needs. 
 
 The Industrial Revolution was preceded and ac- 
 companied in European countries by the freedom 
 from serfdom of the lower classes of the people. 
 Many of these people, who, while incapable of self- 
 support through natural incapacity and shiftlessness, 
 would have been cared for, as serfs, by their masters, 
 now crowded into the cities, failed to make good at 
 industrial work, and become clients of the charities, 
 whose burden thus was further increased. 
 
 While the Industrial Revolution increased the 
 problems of poverty itself, and hence the demand 
 for charitable assistance, it also created scope for 
 new types of philanthropy.
 
 Whence ? 35 
 
 The new forms of insanity engendered by the 
 tenseness of modern life had to be cared for in 
 asylums, either private or public. 
 
 The competition of machine industry revealed the 
 presence of the feeble-minded, who, incapable of 
 supporting themselves and dangerous as prolific 
 breeders of more of their incompetent kind, had to 
 be segregated in special institutions. 
 
 The specialization of industrial processes and the 
 break-down of the old system of industrial appren- 
 ticeship brought about a need for industrial or voca- 
 tional training, first carried on privately, and more 
 lately through the public schools. 
 
 The presence of large numbers of women and 
 children in industry, who needed protection from 
 adverse hours and conditions of labor and from 
 inadequate wages, led to the creation of such 
 agencies as child-labor associations, consumers' 
 leagues, etc. The fact that many women had to 
 work all day, without any place to leave their chil- 
 dren, caused the establishment of day nurseries and 
 free kindergartens, where the children might be 
 housed, fed, and be variously instructed during the 
 day. 
 
 Other types of philanthropy were brought about 
 by the congested life of industrial cities. People 
 were crowded together into unwholesome tenements, 
 and better housing associations were organized to 
 improve conditions. Life in these poorer districts 
 was unutterably sordid and dreary, without recrea- 
 tion or inspiration ; and vice and crime flourished. 
 Social settlements, with their clubs, games, classes,
 
 36 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 and similar activities, endeavored to meet the evi- 
 dent need, and societies to promote the establish- 
 ment of playgrounds and public entertainments 
 became numerous. 
 
 Science Develops Charity 
 
 Philanthropy was also affected by the advance of 
 science. 
 
 The scientific method of analyzing facts and get- 
 ting at causes was applied to charity, with the result 
 that the causes of poverty became known and efforts 
 were made to eliminate poverty through elimination 
 of these causes. At the same time biology, psychol- 
 ogy, and sociology came along with their evidence 
 that environment affected human nature, and that 
 by a change in environment, character might be im- 
 proved. In consequence, the alms-giving or relief 
 societies began to attempt not merely to feed the 
 hungry and clothe the naked, but, through getting 
 at the causes of distress and eliminating them, and 
 through improving the conditions of life, to get the 
 poor back on their feet, independent and self-sup- 
 porting. 
 
 Medical science showed that disease might be pre- 
 vented ; and nursing organizations, clinics, anti- 
 tuberculosis associations, specialized hospitals, and 
 other organizations arose to cure disease and 
 through educational methods to prevent its recur- 
 rence. Venereal disease was found to reduce human 
 efficiency and to create poverty. In consequence, 
 social hygiene societies have practically eliminated
 
 Whence? 37 
 
 red-light districts and seem to have the age-old evil 
 of commercialized prostitution on the run. 
 
 Crime and juvenile delinquency were seen to be 
 in part the result of evil conditions of life ; and the 
 movement for social settlements and playgrounds 
 was strengthened, while juvenile protective associa- 
 tions and similar agencies were organized. It was 
 further found that the punishment meted out in 
 jails and penitentiaries failed to reform. Societies 
 were formed to bring about improvement in prisons, 
 and institutions were created to give men and women 
 released from prison a new start in life. 
 
 The Secularization of Charity 
 
 At the same time that charities were increasing 
 in number and in variety, a change was coming about 
 in their control. Until the Protestant Reformation, 
 practically all charitable work had been in the hands 
 of the church. The dispossession of the church in 
 many countries entirely destroyed such charitable 
 activity ; while the appearance of multitudinous de- 
 nominations, together with the presence in society 
 of increasing numbers of people who belonged to 
 no church and for whom no church felt itself re- 
 sponsible, brought up problems of charitable care 
 which could only be met by nonsectarian endeavor. 
 This tendency toward nonsectarianism was fur- 
 thered by the fact that for a long time the church 
 was indifferent or antagonistic to the scientific move- 
 ments which were responsible for the creation of 
 many of the new types of charity; so that the 
 
 1 1> 1
 
 38 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 churches had no hand in the development of these 
 philanthropies. 
 
 Should the Church Conduct Charities? 
 
 The churches have now awakened thoroughly to 
 modern social problems, but there is quite a serious 
 question in many quarters as to how far an individ- 
 ual church and congregation should go in actual 
 social service, such as providing recreation, caring 
 for needy families, running day nurseries and con- 
 ducting similar activities. Many people say that the 
 business of the church is not itself to be a social 
 agency, but to inspire its members to render social 
 service as members of the community in which they 
 live in connection with established social agencies. 
 The sensible answer seems to be that if such service 
 is restricted to members of the church concerned or 
 if it demonstrates a way of meeting a community 
 need which is unmet, it is proper; but if this church 
 social service is used as a device to jockey into at- 
 tendance at the church those who are not sincerely 
 interested in the church as a religious agency ; and 
 if, further, the fact that these facilities, because they 
 are in a church building, both prevent people of 
 other faiths from using them and prevent the com- 
 munity from erecting similar facilities which would 
 serve everyone regardless of creed — then, actual 
 social work by the church is out of place. 
 
 The view to which increasing numbers of people 
 seem to be coming is that the church should be a 
 fountain of inspiration, leadership and support for 
 social movements which are worked out in the life of
 
 Whence? 39 
 
 the community. Thus, a city-wide Associated Char- 
 ities adequately supported by all the church members 
 of the community is more useful to the community 
 than a collection of charitable societies run by the 
 separate churches ; an open forum fearlessly con- 
 ducted in a public library under the auspices of a 
 citizens' committee better than an open forum in a 
 church ; a recreation center in a public school more 
 effective than the same center in a church. Church 
 and charity should walk hand in hand. Religion 
 and social service are complements, one of the other ; 
 but, in this modern age of specialization, neither can 
 successfully assume the functions of the other. 
 These two functions may be combined in the individ- 
 ual man or woman, who will find in social service, 
 the practical expression of his religion, while, in 
 religion, the ideal expression of a common humanity 
 which is the core of all true charity. 
 
 The State and Charity 
 
 The state has not become the successor of the 
 church in conducting philanthropic effort. It has 
 not generally had the funds or the disposition to 
 experiment in various kinds of charitable endeavors, 
 but has had to strain every financial nerve to pave 
 the streets and build the sewers and lay the water 
 mains demanded by the growth of city life. Even 
 when the state has had the funds and the disposi- 
 tion, philanthropists have often been unwilling to 
 turn over to it their cherished projects, because of 
 the fear, often justified, that under the prevalent 
 system of political inefficiency and favoritism, state
 
 40 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 philanthropy might do more harm than good. Prob- 
 ably the most important factor of all has been that 
 most of our modern philanthropic projects have not 
 been democratic in their management or support. 
 They have been the results of the vision and the 
 finance of relatively few people ; and the state, rep- 
 resenting the people, has not been sufficiently inter- 
 ested to carry on activities for which there had been 
 no popular demand. For that reason, state support 
 has been chiefly restricted to such familiar charitable 
 activities as almshouses and free hospitals. 
 
 Humanitarianism Fills the Gap 
 
 While science has progressed and impressed itself 
 on charitable endeavor, charitable feeling itself has 
 increased in intensity. Thoughtful people have re- 
 volted against the coarse brutality of the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries and the cruel materialism 
 of the early nineteenth century. Humanitarianism 
 and democracy are the watchwords of the age. 
 There is little wonder then, that with the disunited 
 church unprepared to meet the social needs of the 
 day and with the state often unenlightened and 
 hardly able to finance the growing mechanism of 
 city, state, and national government, kindly people 
 have refused to let these handicaps prevent the work 
 which they felt should be done and have poured into 
 it their money and energy in amazing quantities. 
 The multiplicity of present-day philanthropies repre- 
 sents both an unparalleled recognition of the oppor- 
 tunities for human service and an unparalleled 
 spread of the spirit of generosity not only among
 
 Whence? 4 1 
 
 the rich and well-to-do, but also throughout all ranks 
 of society. 
 
 More Wealth — More Giving 
 
 The lavish support of philanthropies has been 
 aided, too, by the fact that the Industrial Revolution 
 has created immense fortunes and a wide diffusion 
 of prosperity. People have much more money to 
 give away than ever before; and, with perhaps at 
 least half a feeling of attempting to right social 
 injustice, many are giving their money in increasing 
 sums to aid those who have not profited in propor- 
 tion by the enormous productiveness of the modern 
 organization of industry. 
 
 Such, then, are the reasons, based in human nature 
 and in the course of human events, for the great 
 number of modern charities. Human needs, human 
 sympathy, and human ingenuity seeing special prob- 
 lems which it tries to meet in special ways provide 
 the basis for the manifold social agencies of the 
 present day. We shall discuss in the chapters im- 
 mediately following the chief fields of service which 
 lie waiting for him who would plant his gifts and 
 bring forth fruit of human helpfulness.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 " NOT ALMS, BUT A FRIEND " 
 
 FIRST of the fields in which the modern giver 
 has the opportunity of giving practical expres- 
 sion to his good will toward his fellow-man in dis- 
 tress is that of family welfare. 
 
 The intricate and vital nature of the problems 
 which face him who would serve constructively in 
 this field is well indicated by the story of the Brights, 
 the News, and the Brownings. 
 
 When worthless John Bright deserted his wife 
 and three little girls under ten years of age, and Mrs. 
 Bright found it impossible to keep house and earn 
 a living for herself and the youngsters, the Juvenile 
 Court put the children in an orphan asylum. Mrs. 
 Bright, anxious to be near them, secured a job as 
 a practical nurse in the same orphanage ; but every- 
 one knows that life in an orphanage is a poor sub- 
 stitute for home life. 
 
 When Maizie New ran away with a male charmer, 
 she left behind her in an alley hovel a husband and 
 four children ranging in age from twelve to five 
 years. Arthur New, the deserted husband, did not 
 earn enough to hire a housekeeper, and the children 
 were sadly neglected — underfed, dirty, poorly 
 clothed. 
 
 When Mary Browning decamped with a mascu- 
 
 42
 
 "Not Alms, But a Friend" 43 
 
 line friend, she left in a downtown rooming-house 
 a distressed husband and five small children. 
 William Browning found as much trouble meeting 
 the situation as had Arthur New in solving his 
 problem. 
 
 At about the same time the Associated Charities 
 was asked to aid both the motherless New and 
 Browning families. The necessary food, fuel, 
 clothing, and medical aid were supplied ; but the 
 young woman visitor who provided these necessities 
 saw that this material aid must be continued until 
 the families went to smash, unless some change 
 could be brought about in the circumstances of the 
 families and some new relationship to life estab- 
 lished. 
 
 She suddenly remembered Mrs. Bright, in the 
 orphanage with her children. A cottage was rented 
 in one of the cheaper suburbs of the city ; Mrs. 
 Bright was made lady of the house ; with her she 
 took her children ; and the New and Browning 
 families were installed as boarders, with Mr. New 
 and Mr. Browning making regular and adequate 
 payment for the support of the household. Thus, 
 all three of the families were made independent and 
 self-supporting; better surroundings were provided 
 than any one of the families previously had lived 
 in ; and what had been a charge on society was made 
 an asset — all, at practically no expense except the 
 time of a trained worker. 
 
 Unorganized giving of mere alms would have 
 been of practically no value to these families. It 
 would merely have postponed their break-up. The
 
 44 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 type of trained human service which saved them 
 all is fundamental to effective care for poor families. 
 
 The Futility of Unorganised Charity 
 
 Thinking people long have recognized that it is 
 more than useless to give to a beggar on the street 
 or at the back door. Such giving makes deception 
 and fraud easy, promotes shiftlessness and pauper- 
 ism, and cannot touch the real needs of the beggar, 
 even if he and his family really require help. 
 
 It is almost equally impossible for an individual 
 man or woman to do a great deal of good in the 
 care of needy people. The difficulties which may 
 afflict people in our modern civilization are so many 
 and so complicated and the resources which must 
 be called on to help work out these difficulties are 
 so various, that hardly any untrained person, not 
 backed by an organization, can meet the need of 
 the ordinary poor family. Organization, with 
 trained, full-time workers, is necessary to care for 
 the poor. 
 
 Why Poverty When Jobs Are Plentiful? 
 
 In addition to possessing an unreasoning preju- 
 dice against trained " charity workers," the average 
 citizen in ordinary times is apt to sneer at the idea 
 that anyone may need any assistance. "Anyone 
 can have a job if he wants one," he says. "Why 
 should anyone need charity ? " 
 
 It never occurs to him that even in times when 
 business is good, there are always some men out of 
 work because of seasonal trades, such as structural
 
 "Not Alms, But a Friend" 45 
 
 iron work which ceases in cold weather ; that there 
 are always a large number of wage-earners sick ; 
 that there are always some wage-earners laid up on 
 account of accidents sustained at their work. This 
 critical citizen does not think of the large number 
 of families in which the husbands have died, or have 
 run away, or have been committed to jail for offenses 
 for which the family is in no wise responsible. He 
 does not think of the considerable number of wage- 
 earners whose wages are not sufficient to support 
 families of ten and twelve children who must be 
 cared for, no matter how injudicious it was to allow 
 them to be born ; nor does it occur to him that there 
 are a goodly number of workers in unorganized or 
 unfortunate occupations, whose wages have not 
 risen, even in an era of high wages, sufficiently to 
 meet the still further increased cost of living. 
 
 Are the Poor to Blame? 
 
 Other heedless citizens say, "Well, if they are 
 poor, it's their own fault." Such a statement is as 
 unscientific as it is heartless. 
 
 Dugdale, in his study of the " Jukes " says, " Pau- 
 perism is an indication of a weakness of some kind, 
 either youth, or disease, old age, or for women, 
 childbirth. Hereditary pauperism rests chiefly upon 
 disease in some form, tends to terminate in extinc- 
 tion, and may be called the sociological aspect of 
 physical degeneration." 
 
 Most of the people who, in ordinary times, are 
 able-bodied but out of work, are out of work be- 
 cause they are not particularly suited for work ; they
 
 46 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 lack skill, or strength, or judgment, or reliability, 
 or even temper, or ingenuity, or adaptability. 
 
 The whole scheme of life is against the very poor ; 
 and they cannot be much blamed if they fail to make 
 good in life. What chance in life has a boy who is 
 bred in a crowded tenement where privacy is un- 
 known, who is underfed, who lacks parental train- 
 ing and discipline, who is never given a chance for 
 wholesome play, who is forced by lack of family 
 finances to go to work before he has enough school- 
 ing to become anything but an unskilled laborer and 
 before he has attained enough strength to withstand 
 the rigors of strenuous labor? Self-made men are 
 few in proportion to those who fail under these con- 
 ditions. 
 
 Diagnosing the Socially Sick 
 
 The intelligent giver, knowing the causes of pov- 
 erty, wants the charity to which he gives to do its 
 best to remove these causes or to lessen their effect 
 on the needy. He believes that the best possible 
 place for the members of a family is in a home by 
 themselves, rather than in a poorhouse, an orphan 
 asylum, or a home for the aged. In attempting to 
 preserve the home, modern charity tries to make a 
 study of all the members of the family and to know 
 their characteristics and needs ; yet considers the 
 members, not as isolated units, but as part of the 
 family group. Constructive charity tries to unite all 
 the resources both within and without the family 
 group, such as relatives, churches, employers, and 
 neighbors in aiding the family ; and it keeps ever in
 
 "Not Alms, But a Friend" 47 
 
 mind the fact that not enervating alms but service 
 which leads to self-help is the way to render the 
 most permanent help. 
 
 Fitting the Treatment to the Patient 
 
 This method of constructive individual treatment 
 is what is called the " case method " of handling the 
 needy. The "case method" puts the emphasis on 
 trained service by experienced workers properly 
 supervised in a competent organization. It is the 
 method used for the care of the poor in their homes, 
 by all modern societies, such as the Associated Chari- 
 ties, the charity organization societies, and the asso- 
 ciations for improving the condition of the poor ; 
 as well as the Red Cross, which since the World 
 War, through its Home Service Section, is render- 
 ing service to the needy people in many small com- 
 munities which never before had such help. 
 
 The " case method " does, indeed, feed, and warm, 
 and clothe, and shelter the needy as an emergency 
 measure, and as long as necessary ; but, more than 
 that, it tries to put the needy in such a state that they 
 can take care of themselves. It may move the family 
 from an unwholesome, tuberculosis-breeding tene- 
 ment to a cottage in the country. It may provide 
 hospital and nursing care to put a bed-ridden man 
 back at his job. It may provide training for a grow- 
 ing boy so that he can become a skilled worker, capa- 
 ble of taking care of the family. It may bring back 
 a run-away husband. It may teach the mother how 
 to buy economically, waste no food, cook appetiz- 
 ingly, and manage her house effectively, so that the
 
 48 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 family income will be adequate. It may remove 
 members of the family who have been a drag on it 
 to special institutions, such as those for the feeble- 
 minded, the insane, and the chronically invalid. 
 These, however, are all merely variations of the 
 principle of helping the poor to help themselves. 
 
 The food, fuel, clothing, and shelter provided by 
 the charities are much like the pills a doctor gives. 
 Both are to provide relief for an abnormal condi- 
 tion. Just as one pays his doctor, not for his pills, 
 but for his skill in diagnosing the causes of the dis- 
 ease and in removing them, so one should expect a 
 charitable society to find its highest usefulness, not 
 in providing " material relief," but in finding and 
 removing the causes which hold down a family. 
 
 Why " Overhead " Is Necessary 
 
 Criticism of " charitable overhead " is frequent, 
 but unjustified. " It takes the Associated Charities 
 thirty cents on each dollar to distribute the money 
 given to it. I'm through with it " is the usual ob- 
 jection. As a matter of fact, a charitable society 
 would be most effective if it spent every penny for 
 salaries and not a cent for " material relief ;" for 
 then it would be removing the causes of poverty be- 
 fore they dragged the family below the line of in- 
 dependence. 
 
 The admirably constructive results which are at- 
 tained by family welfare societies are secured only 
 by a careful attention to the " technique " of organ- 
 ization. In every large city, the society follows Dr. 
 Chalmers' " principle of locality " and has its skilled
 
 "Not Alms, But a Friend" 49 
 
 workers assigned by districts. These workers are 
 backed up by " district committees." These com- 
 mittees are made up of social workers, volunteer 
 workers, ministers, doctors, teachers, nurses, and a 
 great variety of other people familiar with the dis- 
 trict, who give practical advice on working out the 
 human problems presented by the worker and pro- 
 mote cooperation between agencies which might 
 otherwise duplicate their efforts. Further, a careful 
 system of records is kept, so that continuous and 
 intelligent treatment may be given families over a 
 period of years, although the workers themselves 
 may change. Expert dietitians are employed to ad- 
 vise the workers on the best possible feeding of fam- 
 ilies ; while visiting housekeepers are often provided 
 to teach the women of poor families how to keep 
 house better and to make the family income go fur- 
 ther. The same principles of specialized function 
 and careful management are followed as in success- 
 ful business. 
 
 Meeting Special Needs of the Poor 
 
 Numerous specialized societies may be found 
 working in the field of family welfare. 
 
 Religious groups have their societies. Such are 
 the United Hebrew Charities, which in many cities 
 take care of all the needy Jewish families ; the St. 
 Vincent de Paul societies, made up of laymen in the 
 various Catholic parishes, who take particular pains 
 to prevent any information being given out either 
 of the names or of the amounts of contributors so 
 that giving may be based on conscience alone, or of
 
 50 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 the names of clients (which generally prevents these 
 societies from utilizing the services of the Social 
 Service Exchange [see chapter viii]) ; and the Sal- 
 vation Army, which with remarkable consecration of 
 endeavor meets both the spiritual and material needs 
 of the poor. Many Protestant churches give charita- 
 ble relief to their own needy members and others 
 who are thought " worthy." Such giving often, un- 
 fortunately, does more harm than good, because only 
 infrequently are churches equipped with trained 
 workers who follow the principles of modern " case 
 work." Recognizing this difficulty, churches more 
 and more are turning their needy members over to 
 regular charity organization societies for care and 
 are cooperating with the societies by making con- 
 tributions of money, by supplying volunteer work- 
 ers and by educating their members to understanding 
 of the city's social problems. An interesting kind of 
 teamwork between church and charity has been 
 worked out in Buffalo, N. Y., where the city has 
 been districted by the Charity Organization Society, 
 with a church in each district accepting responsibil- 
 ity, through friendly visiting and by means of all the 
 material aid it can afford, for all families not other- 
 wise cared for by individuals, organizations, or other 
 churches. 
 
 Valuable service to the poor is rendered by agen- 
 cies performing special functions. Thus the reme- 
 dial loan societies loan money at a reasonable rate on 
 household goods and save the poor man from the 
 clutches of the "loan shark." Provident savings 
 societies encourage small savings. Legal aid socie-
 
 "Not Alms, But a Friend" 51 
 
 ties give legal advice in non-criminal cases free or at 
 low cost. They often use the students of law schools 
 for their " field work." Free employment exchanges, 
 bring "the manless job and the jobless man" to- 
 gether. Prisoners' aid societies advise and help the 
 prisoner's family when he is in custody, encourage 
 him to plan a better life when he is released, and 
 when he actually gets out of prison help him to a job 
 and help keep him on the straight path. Sometimes 
 these activities are conducted as departments of 
 family welfare societies, but generally they are sepa- 
 rately organized. The latter plan seems better, for 
 it tends to widen the usefulness of the special society 
 beyond the clients of the general charitable agency. 
 
 Shortcomings of Public Relief 
 Attention to the needs of dependent families by 
 private agencies in many cities is supplemented or 
 made unnecessary by public " outdoor relief " admin- 
 istered by a city department. Often, this public re- 
 lief is limited to specific articles, such as coal, shoes 
 for school children, and groceries up to a specified 
 amount. Generally, public relief is given in a rou- 
 tine way without any " case work " and without ade- 
 quate records or knowledge of what aid the family is 
 already receiving. Thus administered, public out- 
 door relief is mere almsgiving, creates pauperism and 
 wastes the public's money. Often, public relief is 
 used as the basis of a system of political preferment, 
 serving to tie votes to the party in power. In some 
 enlightened cities, the public outdoor-relief depart- 
 ment has adopted the merit system in the selection
 
 52 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 of skilled workers, who utilize the "case-work" 
 method of a plan and a follow-up for every case and 
 give "material relief " only in emergency and when 
 reconstructive measures fail. Under such circum- 
 stances, the private family welfare agency may well 
 turn over all its work to the city ; but in the average 
 city, it must continue to do its work, utilizing so far 
 as possible the relief the city will give and trying to 
 educate the city authorities to the point where they 
 will work on modern principles in place of their usual 
 practice inherited directly from Elizabethan Eng- 
 land and but little different in principle from the 
 disastrous annona civica of ancient Rome. 
 
 A recent form of outdoor relief is the mothers' 
 pension system, which generally allots to widows 
 with children lump sums progressively graded ac- 
 cording to the number of children. These pensions 
 are usually administered through the Juvenile Court, 
 which itself is a product of late years. The effective- 
 ness of mothers' pensions as contrasted with the 
 usual public relief rests on the possibility that the 
 " juvenile judge " with his professional training may 
 have a greater sense of responsibility than the ordi- 
 nary, appointed public-relief official and is likely to 
 have one or more juvenile probation officers avail- 
 able. If the judge is conscientious and has social 
 vision, and the probation officers are competent and 
 have time to make adequate study of each case and 
 give adequate relief, the system may work well. 
 Quite frequently, however, the doles supplied by 
 the mothers' pension system have to be supplemented 
 by relief from private societies, and these societies
 
 "Not Alms, But a Friend'' 53 
 
 often have to loan workers to the Juvenile Court 
 in order to get any kind of constructive work ac- 
 complished. 
 
 "Over the Hills to the Poorhouse" 
 
 Public " outdoor relief " is usually supplemented 
 by public " indoor relief," or the care of the needy in 
 poorhouses. 
 
 " So long as there shall be poor people to be cared 
 for by public charity, a place of refuge, and asylum 
 for worn-out and feeble men and women, will prob- 
 ably be a necessity," says Alexander Johnson, our 
 chief authority on the subject. 
 
 Poorhouses can only be justifiable, however, if 
 they cease to be the miserable catchalls for the de- 
 pendent and delinquent which they are in many 
 states. It is obvious that all the insane must be 
 put in asylums ; that sufficient space must be pro- 
 vided for the care of the feeble-minded in special 
 institutions ; that sanatoria must be provided by 
 state or county for the care of the tuberculous and 
 the venereally infected ; that hardened women who 
 resort to almshouses to rest up from debauchery 
 must be placed in reformatories ; that vagabonds 
 and " hobos " should find hard work in workhouses ; 
 that children must be placed in suitable orphanages, 
 or, better still, placed out, under proper supervision, 
 in good private family homes. The almshouse must 
 indeed, become merely a " Home for the Aged and 
 Infirm," as it is so pleasantly called in many places. 
 In order to ascertain those who are eligible to ad- 
 mission to the almshouse, trained social workers
 
 54 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 must be employed. They will not only divert the 
 feeble-minded, insane, and otherwise defective to 
 suitable institutions, but will get in touch with fami- 
 lies and friends of eligible applicants, to see that 
 only as a last resort are even the aged and infirm 
 taken from home surroundings to institutional life. 
 Private agencies often loan trained workers to make 
 these investigations, where public vision is lacking 
 and public funds have not been made available. 
 
 A step removed from the almshouse — often sev- 
 eral steps in elaborateness and magnificence — are 
 the privately endowed and supported homes for 
 aged men and women ; more often for the latter 
 than the former. These institutions generally go 
 on the theory that " genteel " folk should be spared 
 the disagreeable aspects of the usual almshouse ; 
 often charge an admission fee or require that all 
 property or insurance of the inmates be made over 
 to them ; and usually have a long waiting list of 
 applicants for admission. 
 
 Another aid to attacking the problem of depend- 
 ency is found in boarding homes for working boys 
 and girls, which aim to give good home care, with 
 protection and recreation, for those whose wages 
 otherwise would not be adequate to secure these 
 advantages. 
 
 Then, too, there are the consumers' leagues, 
 branches of the National Consumers' League, which 
 work to improve the hours and conditions of labor 
 for women workers. They make studies of the 
 relation of wages and of the cost of living with a 
 view to bringing about the passage of minimum
 
 "Not Alms, But a Friend" 55 
 
 wage laws and the adoption of other measures cal- 
 culated to make wages at least equal the cost of the 
 necessities of life for working girls and women. 
 
 Shelter for the Shelterless 
 
 For homeless wanderers are the wayfarers' lodges 
 and municipal lodging houses which are conducted 
 in most cities of any size. These institutions gen- 
 erally put stress upon a bath and a certain amount 
 of wood-splitting as a condition of simple board and 
 lodging for men. The best of them employ social 
 workers, who attempt to solve the difficulties which 
 have set these men (and often boys) to wandering 
 on the face of the earth and often are able to return 
 them to home and family ; but most of these insti- 
 tutions have no such enlightened policy. They are 
 busiest in times of unemployment. 
 
 The activities of these homes for the homeless are 
 often correlated with the travelers' aid societies. 
 They have agents in railroad and interurban stations, 
 who give directions to bewildered travelers, protect 
 girls and women from the dangerous attentions of 
 strange men, and refer to the proper institutions and 
 agencies travelers in need of help of various kinds. 
 
 The field of poverty, or family welfare, it may 
 clearly be seen, is worth the most serious considera- 
 tion of the giver who would give helpfully ; for the 
 family, which is chiefly concerned, is the unit of 
 social life and on it rests our civilization. In this 
 field, however, the giver must exercise judgment, 
 making sure that the agencies to which he gives are
 
 56 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 completely organized on modern principles of in- 
 telligent sympathy. The giver must have ever in 
 mind this slogan, " What the poor need is not alms, 
 but a friend."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 "unto the least of these" 
 
 MARIE, thirteen years old, was soon to become 
 a mother. This much, at least, was quite 
 evident to the visitor from the Children's Protective 
 Association who called at Marie's shabby home in 
 one of the most neglected parts of the city on a 
 bright spring morning. Neighbors had notified the 
 association that Marie was both neglected by her 
 parents and delinquent on her own account. 
 
 The visitor found Marie staying home (at her 
 age, she should have been in school), caring for 
 her little brothers and sisters. Her father and 
 mother were both away working; and the visitor 
 found that they usually were absent, even on Sun- 
 days, when the mother, particularly, was likely to 
 go away on a visit. Marie professed to know noth- 
 ing of her own condition. 
 
 The visitor then called on Marie's aunt, who said 
 that the mother was neither a good housekeeper, 
 wife, nor mother, and was immoral and unconcerned 
 in the welfare of her family. The aunt was not 
 surprised at Marie's condition, because the house 
 was the unsupervised meeting place for all the chil- 
 dren of that miserable neighborhood. 
 
 That evening, Marie's father and mother were 
 found at home, but were entirely indifferent to 
 
 57
 
 58 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 Marie's trouble and apparently unable to see any- 
 thing out of the way in the state of affairs. 
 
 In the course of a few days, the visitor established 
 a friendly relationship with Marie and learned the 
 pitiful story of how she had been forced to submit 
 to the attentions of two youths of the neighborhood, 
 brothers. She had told her father and mother about 
 it, she said ; but they did nothing. 
 
 The visitor arranged with the Salvation Army 
 Rescue Home to take Marie and care for her until 
 after her confinement. Her father was finally per- 
 suaded to swear out a warrant for the arrest of one 
 of the youths. The other had hurriedly left the city. 
 
 Criminal Court heard the case. It developed that 
 the young fellow arrested had served a term in the 
 penitentiary for forgery. The jury returned a ver- 
 dict of "guilty of carnal knowledge" and the youth 
 was sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment. The 
 search is still on for his brother. 
 
 Marie's baby, a fine little boy, has been born. 
 Mother and child have been sent to a pleasant home 
 in the country, where Marie can earn her own living 
 and forget the horrors of her earlier years, while 
 the baby grows into a sturdy young fellow. 
 
 Marie is but one of the thousands of helpless 
 children who suffer mistreatment and distress of 
 every conceivable kind each year ; and who offer 
 the strongest appeal to those who give. 
 
 The Value and Appeal of Service to Children 
 
 Children, abandoned, neglected, or cruelly treated 
 by their parents; children begging; children with
 
 "Unto the Least of These" 59 
 
 unfit parents ; children kept in vicious or immoral 
 associations ; children badly diseased or undernour- 
 ished because of deep poverty ; children with one or 
 both parents dead ; children forced to go to work too 
 soon for their well-being or that of society, are to 
 be found in every city of any size — and it is for 
 their sake that a large number of child-caring 
 agencies have been devised. 
 
 Work for children is, it is generally agreed, the 
 most attractive of all kinds of charitable endeavor. 
 Children are so appealing, the results of cruelty, 
 neglect and poverty are so painfully obvious, and 
 the happy results of good care so quickly evident, 
 that child welfare work appeals strongly to the 
 emotions; while the advantages to the race of care 
 and protection for children appeal equally to the 
 reason. It is little to be wondered at, therefore, 
 that agencies serving children are as numerous, 
 perhaps, as all other types of social endeavor com- 
 bined ; nor is it surprising, on reflection, to find that 
 practically every kind of social agency which affects 
 any part of family or community life affects the 
 child as well ; for both family and community exist, 
 in fact, largely for the sake of the child — the coming 
 citizen. 
 
 Child Protection 
 
 The first function which the thoughtful giver will 
 want to see exercised in the care of children is the 
 prevention of cruelty and of neglect. This function 
 is exercised by the enforcement of laws concerning 
 children; by the removal of the child from danger
 
 6o Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 of physical injury or moral contamination and the 
 punishment of the offender; and by securing new 
 guardians when conditions warrant. The second 
 function, closely related to the first, is the provi- 
 sion of new homes for children improperly cared 
 for because of hopeless poverty or death of par- 
 ents. The first of these functions is performed 
 by such societies as the Society for the Prevention 
 of Cruelty to Children, the Humane Society, the 
 Children's Aid Society, the semi-public Board of 
 Children's Guardians, and the juvenile courts. Chil- 
 dren who have been rescued from neglect or cruelty 
 by these agencies and who cannot be returned to 
 their own homes, or who through poverty or death 
 or abandonment cannot be cared for in their own 
 homes, must evidently be cared for either perma- 
 nently or temporarily in institutions or in private 
 homes not their own. 
 
 Children's Institutions Numerous 
 
 A large variety of children's institutions has been 
 developed. Among them may be discovered found- 
 ling asylums, orphan asylums, detention homes, and 
 schools under control of boards of children's guard- 
 ians and juvenile courts, and state schools. These 
 institutions may be sharply divided into those for the 
 care of children under two years of age ; and for the 
 care of children over two years of age. "Among the 
 former," says Amos G. Warner in his American 
 Charities, " the death-rate is the principal index of 
 success or failure, while among the latter the death- 
 rate is always low and the attention must be given
 
 'Unto the Least of These" 61 
 
 to evidences of right or wrong development afforded 
 by the character and subsequent careers of the chil- 
 dren." Trained nursing care and supervision, 
 enough nursemaids to give individual care to the 
 babies, a careful individual diet and continuous med- 
 ical supervision are necessary for the institution 
 which will successfully deal with babies and not 
 have its death-rate a scandal and a shame. Institu- 
 tions for the older children, in addition to providing 
 good food and shelter and clothing, must also pro- 
 vide facilities for play and recreation under trained 
 leadership, industrial training and other prepara- 
 tion for successful life outside of institution walls. 
 It is generally considered better for institution chil- 
 dren to attend public schools than schools within the 
 institution, because of the contact with normal chil- 
 dren which the public schools provide. 
 
 An institution for dependent children is not doing 
 its full duty, however, if it merely takes good care 
 of the children entrusted to it. It must see to it, 
 first of all, that only such children are admitted to 
 it as should be there. This means that every appli- 
 cant for admission to an institution should be sub- 
 jected to a careful scrutiny, through questioning and 
 visits to the home, to make sure that the family is 
 not trying to dump the child on the institution and 
 thus be free of the responsibility of his care. This 
 means, of course, that complete records of the 
 child's previous history should be made. Further, 
 each child, on admission, should be given a thorough 
 physical and mental examination, to make sure that 
 he has no transmissible disease ; or a mental defect
 
 62 Sympathy and System in Givi 
 
 mg 
 
 which would make him belong in an institution for 
 the feeble-minded. Similarly, institutions for de- 
 pendent children should not take delinquent children, 
 or blind, or deaf and dumb, or hopelessly crippled 
 children. They should be sent to the special institu- 
 tions which are, or should be, provided for those 
 with special handicaps. Moreover, after a child is 
 admitted to the orphanage every attempt should be 
 made to make his parents or guardians pay as much 
 as they are able for his support ; and he should be 
 returned to parents or guardians as soon as possible. 
 Finally, if a child has no parents or guardians, he 
 should be placed, as soon as possible, in a good 
 family home, where he may grow up as a member 
 of a normal family. Except for those few unfor- 
 tunate children who because of unattractive fea- 
 tures or disposition cannot be placed in family 
 homes, and so must spend all their days until ma- 
 turity in an institution, all normal children should 
 be kept in an orphan asylum or similar institution 
 only long enough to train them and prepare them 
 for placement in good family homes. 
 
 Family Home vs. Institution 
 
 It is generally admitted that even a mediocre 
 family home is better than the best orphan asylum ; 
 even when the orphanage adopts the modern plan 
 of cottages on an ample space of ground in the 
 country, instead of the huge congregate institutions 
 within the city which arc so common. In an insti- 
 tution there must be a certain amount of discipline 
 and uniformity, a treatment of children as part of
 
 'Unto the Least of These" 63 
 
 a group rather than as individuals. In a family, 
 children of different ages learn to play together, to 
 work together, to take their share in family life. 
 As Warner says, " It is not possible to raise babies 
 by wholesale. The institution baby lacks and must 
 lack that affectionate handling which gives exercise 
 to baby muscles and zest to infant existence which 
 makes it worth while for the child to live." In 
 greater decree, this is true, also, of older children. 
 So it is that the best modern practice in the care 
 of children is to get them out of institutions as soon 
 as possible into family homes ; and, if possible, to 
 put them into family homes without even the inter- 
 vention of an institution. 
 
 A number of types of child-placing are now being 
 practiced. Often it is possible to place children in 
 free homes, where no charge whatever is made for 
 their care. Sometimes, children are placed in family 
 homes at a moderate rate of board. Sometimes, 
 children are indentured out, and paid a wage in 
 return for their services. Finally, in a great number 
 of cases, children may be adopted permanently in 
 good families. 
 
 A great variety of agencies are engaged in child- 
 placing. Orphan asylums and other institutions for 
 dependent children as well as children's aid societies 
 practice the placement of children for adoption as 
 one of their regular functions. Boards of children's 
 guardians and juvenile courts quite frequently place 
 out children. Lying-in hospitals and the maternity 
 wards of general hospitals are prone to give babies 
 away, as are private physicians. The responsibility
 
 64 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 of these agencies ranges from the crooked lying-in 
 hospital that extracts a fee from the unmarried 
 mother for disposing of her baby and another fee 
 from the foster parents for providing them with a 
 baby to the high-grade Children's Home Society, 
 with a modern cottage receiving home and a staff 
 of trained workers. 
 
 Children Require Trained Service 
 
 The placing of children in foster homes is a deli- 
 cate process, dependent upon the careful adjust- 
 ment of children to foster parents. Race and re- 
 ligion must be considered in placement. Children 
 must frequently be placed two or more times, until 
 a perfect adjustment is made between child and 
 family. They must be visited frequently, to deter- 
 mine that conditions, thought satisfactory, do not 
 change. In consequence, no agency should be al- 
 lowed to do child-placing unless it has a competent 
 staff of trained workers. Hospitals and similar insti- 
 tutions should be forced to do their child-placing 
 through suitable agencies. It is inadvisable, gen- 
 erally, for juvenile courts to mix child-placing with 
 their usual punitive and probationary functions. 
 
 Very often, an institution is not large enough to 
 afford the services of a full-time trained visitor ; 
 and the superintendent or matron is too busy to do 
 this work. Under such circumstances, it is usually 
 possible to arrange with a regular child-placing 
 society to loan a worker for part-time work. Still 
 better is it for all the institutions of a city to co- 
 operate in the formation of a Children's Bureau,
 
 ' Unto the Least of These " 65 
 
 or Home-Finding and Child-Placing Association, 
 which will have a staff of trained workers, Catholic, 
 Jewish, and Protestant, to render to the several 
 institutions the same service they would give if 
 engaged exclusively by these institutions. Moreover, 
 such a bureau can act as a clearing-house for depend- 
 ent children, referring them to the proper institu- 
 tions ; can work to discover free, adoptive and 
 boarding homes in which children may be placed ; 
 and can serve as a clearing-house for discussion and 
 action on the problems and methods of all child- 
 caring agencies. 
 
 The Child Whose Mother Works 
 
 Another problem of child-care which has been 
 met liberally by modern givers is presented by the 
 mother who goes out to work by the day. For her 
 children, the day nursery is provided. The typical 
 day nursery cares for children from six oclock in 
 the morning until six or even later at night. It 
 therefore provides as many as three good meals a 
 day for its little charges ; has cots or cribs in which 
 they may take their naps ; has playroom and play- 
 ground with suitable apparatus ; conducts a kinder- 
 garten for the older children under school age ; and 
 cares for the children of school age after school 
 hours. A moderate charge, usually of five cents 
 a day, is made of mothers who can afford to pay it, 
 so that they may feel that the service they receive 
 is not entirely charitable. The day nursery should 
 be located where it may be readily reached by one 
 or two street-car lines, and should be as close as
 
 66 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 possible to the districts from which the majority 
 of the mothers using it come. 
 
 A day nursery is not, however, doing its duty if it 
 merely houses children and gives them food and 
 sleep and recreation. It must provide various kinds 
 of individual service. A physician should always 
 be available, to examine all applicants for admission 
 to see that they are free from infectious disease ; 
 and to look over the whole group frequently to see 
 that no diseases develop. A trained social worker 
 should be employed for full or part time, to go into 
 the homes of the children and advise the mothers 
 in the care and feeding of their children ; to organize 
 classes, if desirable, among the mothers, in cooking 
 and sewing ; to help the mothers secure suitable 
 employment, and to help train them for better 
 employment ; and, whenever possible, to get the 
 mother not to work, but to care for her children in 
 her own home. A day nursery should strive to keep 
 mothers at home if the mother wishes to work 
 merely to add to an income already adequate ; if the 
 mother's work, combined with home duties, is detri- 
 mental to her health ; or if the husband is making 
 his wife's work an excuse for his failure to work. 
 A day nursery can be of particular use to widows 
 with children ; to families in which the wage-earner 
 is sick and the presence of the children at home is 
 undesirable ; during periods of bona fide unemploy- 
 ment when the mother can help the family finances 
 by working ; to deserted wives ; and to unmarried 
 mothers. The day nursery should cooperate closely 
 with other social acencies interested in family wel-
 
 " Unto the Least of These" 67 
 
 fare or child welfare. For example, the Associated 
 Charities can be persuaded to provide a pension or 
 to supply food, clothing-, or rent when it is better for 
 the mother to stay at home and care for her children 
 than for her to work. Day nurseries, like orphan 
 asylums, can profitably combine in engaging one or 
 more social workers to serve them all. 
 
 Help for Undernourished Children 
 
 Still another type of child needing assistance is 
 the one undernourished because of insufficient food 
 or because of the wrong food wrongly prepared. 
 Such children are aided by the free breakfasts and 
 lunches which are supplied through the public 
 schools. Often, these children are collected in spe- 
 cial groups, given instruction in foods and eating, 
 and inspired to better eating and to better food 
 habits through periodical weighings and measurings. 
 Often, too, the instruction given in these classes is 
 carried into the homes through a trained worker, 
 who visits the homes and advises the mothers in how 
 to buy and prepare food ; and who organizes classes 
 in domestic science among the mothers. When a 
 child is brought up to normal weight and it seems 
 that good food habits are assured, he is "grad- 
 uated " and his place is taken by another. 
 
 The "Scarlet Letter" 
 
 Inseparable from the problem of child welfare is 
 that of the unmarried mother and her child, whose 
 needs were among the first to be seen by philan-
 
 68 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 thropists in the revival of humanitarian thought in 
 the seventeenth century. They were the first of 
 the unfortunates to whose needs the good St. Vin- 
 cent de Paul addressed himself. Every prospective 
 unmarried mother should have prenatal care, with 
 freedom from worry and overexertion, either in her 
 own home or some other private home in which she 
 may be placed by social workers, or in some such 
 institution as the Salvation Army rescue homes and 
 the Florence Crittenden homes. Nursing and med- 
 ical service should be available. In case the pros- 
 pective mother has applied for help and has been 
 placed in an institution or in a private home, all 
 possible facts should be ascertained about her — her 
 physical condition, so that her health and that of 
 her future baby may be protected ; her mental ability, 
 so that her capacity to respond to training and the 
 possibility of keeping her permanently in an insti- 
 tution for the feeble-minded as a protection to her- 
 self and society may be known ; and as much as 
 possible of her personal history, so that the aid of 
 relatives may be secured and the father of the 
 child brought to at least a financial share in the 
 responsibility of caring for the new life he has helped 
 to bring into the world. 
 
 Institutions should be provided for both white 
 and colored mothers, in which they may receive 
 moral strength and vocational training, so that when, 
 finally, they leave, they will be prepared to earn 
 their own way in the world. Very often, unmarried 
 mothers have venereal disease. Special wards should 
 be provided for them in institutions for unmarried
 
 " Unto the Least of These " 69 
 
 mothers ; or special institutions should be provided 
 for their care until they become non-infectious. 
 
 After the child's birth, the mother should stay in 
 the institution with it for at least six months, so 
 that the child may have its mother's milk and so 
 that the mother may acquire a feeling of responsi- 
 bility for it. 
 
 Shall the Unived Mother Keep Her Child? 
 
 Whether or not the mother shall permanently keep 
 the child should be determined on the same basis 
 as the question whether or not a widow should keep 
 her child — " can the mother provide a proper home 
 for the child?" If the mother gives evidence of 
 being a good mother, every possible means should 
 be exercised to keep mother and child together. 
 They may be placed in a family home, where allow- 
 ance will be made for the necessity of the mother 
 giving time to her baby. If this arrangement is 
 made, a social worker should keep in continued 
 touch, to see that all goes well with mother and 
 child. 
 
 The mother, on the other hand, may not be adapted 
 to housework. If so, a position can be found for 
 her in store or factory ; and she can either leave the 
 child in a day nursery during the day, taking it to 
 her home at night ; or leave it in a boarding home, 
 visiting it once or twice a week, and paying the 
 expenses of its care. A social worker should be 
 available, under these circumstances, to smooth out 
 any difficulties that arise. 
 
 On the other hand, the mother may be incompe-
 
 /O Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 tent and unfit to have the responsibility of the child. 
 The mother should be either placed in an institution 
 for the feeble-minded, if she is mentally below par; 
 in a reformatory, if she is vicious and needs correc- 
 tion ; or, if allowed in society, under some sort of 
 supervision which will help to strengthen her against 
 the temptations and difficulties she is sure to meet. 
 
 The illegitimate child taken from its mother may 
 be placed out for adoption if it is certain that it is 
 fit physically and mentally ; but, if there is any ques- 
 tion as to its possible feeble-mindedness, it should 
 be kept in an institution until it is old enough for 
 tests to be made. 
 
 In these ways, the best interests of the mother 
 and the child may be served. 
 
 The School the Fundamental Social Agency 
 
 The work of all private agencies for the care of 
 children must be carefully coordinated with the 
 work of the public schools, which, after all, consti- 
 tute the fundamental social agency. If our schools 
 are rightly organized, efficiently equipped and 
 manned by a staff of competent teachers, many of 
 our problems of poverty, delinquency, and civic and 
 industrial inefficiency will disappear. A school 
 should train for life. It should give vocational 
 training to those who cannot take a higher educa- 
 tion, and vocational guidance to them when they go 
 to work. It should conduct part-time continuation 
 classes for its children who must leave and go to 
 work before completely trained ; and industry should 
 be forced to allow its younger workers to attend
 
 Unto the Least of These" yi 
 
 these classes, if only for the reason that such train- 
 ing will make them more efficient workers. Each 
 child should be treated as an individual, with his in- 
 dividual abilities and needs made known by mental 
 and physical examinations ; with remedial defects 
 corrected without charge if necessary; with his 
 home background studied and improved if possible 
 by visiting teachers. The " case-work " method mu$1 
 replace the wholesale method in education. 
 
 An interesting experiment in making the school 
 the starting point for all social endeavor with all 
 social agencies working closely with the schools has 
 been begun in Youngstown, Ohio. The results in 
 improving physical condition and scholarship in one 
 year have been striking. Privately financed, this 
 experiment may well be the precursor of large public 
 expenditures for the establishment of a similar sys- 
 tem in schools throughout the country. 
 
 State Supervision of Children's Agencies 
 
 All child-caring agencies should be supervised by 
 some sort of a state board with power to enforce 
 needed improvements and with sufficient knowledge 
 and experience at its disposal intelligently to guide 
 institutions desiring advice. Such supervision 
 seems to be best provided through a state law requir- 
 ing the licensing of all institutions or organizations 
 or individuals caring for dependent children or plac- 
 ing- them. Licenses should be refused or revoked 
 on the evidence of wrong methods ; and heavy fines 
 should be provided for operation without a license. 
 Thus, illlicit child-placing and " baby-farming " can
 
 J2 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 be prevented ; and all agencies kept up to a rea- 
 sonably high plane of excellence. 
 
 Two- fold opportunity for the giver lies in the 
 child-welfare field — through his influence to see 
 that his community and state take all possible meas- 
 ures to keep up the standards of child-care ; and to 
 give as liberally as he can to agencies which are 
 following the principles laid down here. He who 
 gives thus will reap dividends in the smiles of happy 
 children and in the strengthening of the next 
 generation.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS 
 
 THE needs of the sick and injured- always have 
 presented a strong appeal to human sympathy. 
 The desire to assuage the anguish of those who 
 suffered and to aid those whom illness and accident 
 had rendered impotent has, as we have seen, been 
 responsible for some of the earliest charities; and 
 it persists as one of the greatest incentives to giving 
 at the present day. Added to the earlier impulse to 
 relieve pain, we now have the reasonable conviction 
 that most disease is preventable and that it repre- 
 sents a loss in earning power and in expense for 
 care and treatment which can and should be avoided. 
 In the field of health more than in any other social 
 field are treatment, cure, and prevention happily 
 blended ; and the results of thoughtful giving most 
 obvious to those who like to know the good their 
 donation does. 
 
 The human basis of such service is well illustrated 
 by the tale of Robert Brown as told by an " infant 
 welfare" nurse. 
 
 Robert, ten weeks old, was sure to die, according 
 to the tearfully expressed opinion of his eighteen- 
 year-old mother. Robert didn't weigh hardly any- 
 thing, she told her neighbor over the back fence 
 which bounded the rubbish-strewn Brown yard, and 
 
 73
 
 74 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 he cried all the time, and was all skin and bones, 
 and she didn't know what to do. " I'll get the baby- 
 nurse for you," spoke up the experienced neighbor. 
 
 The baby-nurse came, saw and conquered the 
 situation. Robert was removed from his mother 
 and from his condensed-milk diet and taken to the 
 Children's Hospital, where he was kept clean and 
 comfortable, given necessary medicine and fed on 
 a diet of pure milk modified according to a formula 
 created for his particular needs. In a month Robert 
 weighed thirteen pounds, was fat and well, and was 
 ready to go home. 
 
 Back to his home he went, but the baby-nurse went 
 with him. She taught his mother how to bathe him, 
 how to clothe him properly, how to make his bed, 
 and how to modify his milk. She emphasized the 
 necessity of a clean home for a well baby. As 
 Robert grew older, the nurse kept on visiting, and 
 advised the mother how to change his diet. 
 
 In consequence, Robert now is a fine, husky 
 youngster of three, who looks as if he never had had 
 a sick day in his life. His little sister, aged six 
 months, shows by her chuckles that she has been 
 raised correctly from the very beginning, for her 
 mother before the baby's birth even attended a pre- 
 natal clinic, where she learned how to take care of 
 herself and give the new baby the best possible start 
 in life. 
 
 What Every City Needs 
 
 Not only for the sake of such babies as Robert 
 but also for the welfare of all its citizens, every
 
 Health, Wealth, and Happiness 75 
 
 community should be thoroughly equipped to care 
 for its sick and injured and should be thoroughly 
 organized to prevent disease and accident. Most 
 cities are more or less adequately supplied in the 
 first respect, because the painful results of sickness 
 and accident are so readily to be seen and so touch- 
 ing in their necessity ; but most cities, also, are under- 
 equipped in the second respect, because, as in the 
 old song " you never miss the water until the well 
 runs dry," so you never miss your health until you 
 lose it. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to quote statistics showing 
 that the average loss of wage-earning time because 
 of sickness is two weeks a year for every man. 
 woman, or child in our country ; or that the greater 
 part of the people who die, die of preventable dis- 
 ease; or that the average family spends over fifty 
 dollars a year for medicine and medical service, with 
 the burden of prolonged sickness and unusual heavy 
 expense often falling on those who can least 
 afford it. 
 
 It is obvious that every city should have enough 
 hospital beds to take care of those who are too sick 
 for care in their own homes, for those for whom 
 home care is inconvenient or inadvisable, for those 
 who are sick of infectious disease, for accident and 
 surgical cases, and for maternity cases, with some 
 means of expansion in emergency, as in time of 
 disaster or epidemic. Estimates vary as to the num- 
 ber of hospital beds which should be provided ; and 
 the need varies with the degree to which a com- 
 munity is educated to the use of hospitals. A fair
 
 j6 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 estimate would seem to be six beds per thousand 
 population. 
 
 Care for Special Ailments 
 
 Provision, either in special wards or special hos- 
 pitals, should be made for special types of cases, 
 including maternity cases, children, people suffering 
 from contagious diseases, and so on. Tuberculosis 
 sanatoria are a necessity in any up-to-date com- 
 munity, for it has been demonstrated that, with 
 plenty of good food, rest, air, and freedom from 
 worry, tuberculosis can be cured very nearly as well 
 in any ordinary city as in a distant climate. Special 
 institutions for women with venereal disease (and 
 for men, too, for that matter), where they can be 
 kept, if necessary, under restraint, so that they will 
 not go out and infect others, are essential. As a 
 relief to the hospitals handling acute illnesses and 
 accidents, convalescent wards or hospitals should be 
 provided, where the patients could get along with 
 less intensive care and less skilled attention, and 
 hence, at less cost. Special provision should be 
 made, also, for helpless cripples and chronic invalids 
 such as often, when cared for at home, create abnor- 
 mal and almost unbearable domestic situations, and 
 clog hospitals, where they take the space needed for 
 acute cases. 
 
 Shall Those Pay Who Can? 
 
 The question of whether a privately managed 
 hospital shall do charity work, or a public hospital 
 shall do pay work, is one which is not yet settled.
 
 Health, Wealth, and Happiness 77 
 
 Many hospitals run at a loss on practically all cases, 
 so far as rates are concerned, and make up the 
 difference by income from endowment and by con- 
 tributions from the public. 
 
 It seems unfair that a person who is financially 
 able to pay the full cost of hospital service should 
 be treated at less than cost, at the expense of char- 
 itable funds ; but the hospitals answer often : ' We 
 can't raise the rates, or the patients wouldn't come, 
 and we should lose more money than ever if the beds 
 were empty." The situation is complicated by the 
 fact that hospitals run by religious orders often 
 utilize their members as nurses at practically no 
 salary, and can handle patients at a cost far below 
 the cost of hospitals which have to pay for all service. 
 Most hospitals take some out-and-out charity cases, 
 and some, with special endowments or the assurance 
 of large sums in contributions, cater especially to 
 the poor who cannot pay. 
 
 It is evident that those who cannot afford to pay 
 for hospital service must have it, anyway, for their 
 own sake and for the sake of society. Hence has 
 come the development of city hospitals, making no 
 charge. And with the development of the city hos- 
 pital and the private charity hospital, has come the 
 abuse of their charitable intention by people able to 
 pay but willing, if they can, to get without charge 
 the service intended for others. Very often, hos- 
 pitals desirous of imposing records of service and 
 of clinical material for students encourage such 
 imposition. The only way out, under the present 
 system, seems to be to have a graded scale of charges
 
 /8 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 for both public and private hospitals, on the basis 
 of service rendered, and to enforce these charges, 
 through social workers who can visit in the homes 
 of the patients and ascertain their ability to pay. 
 
 Patients Outside the Hospital 
 
 Dispensaries, at which people can receive medical 
 service and medicines either free or at small cost, are 
 quite common, either as separate institutions, or con- 
 nected with public and private hospitals. Such dis- 
 pensaries may be either for general practice, or for 
 the exercise of special functions, such as eye, ear, 
 nose, and throat clinics; dental clinics; tuberculosis 
 clinics ; children's disease clinics ; clinics for the 
 instruction of expectant mothers ; and so on. Vene- 
 real-disease clinics are increasing in use with the 
 development of the social-hygiene movement ; and 
 through nurses or social workers given police power 
 should have the power of enforcing attendance of 
 those with venereal disease in the infectious state. 
 
 While dispensaries and clinics should make no 
 charge to those unable to pay, there is no reason 
 why patients able to pay should not pay the cost of 
 prescriptions and service ; or part of the cost if they 
 cannot pay the full cost. 
 
 For this reason, and for the further reason that 
 many ailments, particularly of poor people, are due 
 to home conditions, progressive hospitals and dis- 
 pensaries now are employing specially trained social 
 workers and organizing " social-service depart- 
 ments." The least part of this service is to ascertain 
 the ability of patients to pay. The most important
 
 Health, Wealth, and Happiness 79 
 
 task of these departments is to attempt to remedy 
 home conditions tending to cause disease ; to secure 
 the cooperation of other social agencies in the care 
 of the patient and his family; and to supply infor- 
 mation concerning the background of the patient 
 which will enable a more accurate diagnosis and 
 more effective treatment of the patient's ailment by 
 the physicians. 
 
 Caring for the Sick in Their Homes 
 
 One of the most important developments of recent 
 years in service to the sick has been the growth of 
 the " public-health nurse " or " visiting nurse " move- 
 ment. The public-health nurse, visiting in the homes 
 of the sick, not merely gives necessary care, in 
 cooperation with the physician and under his direc- 
 tion, but also gives such instruction, by word of 
 mouth and personal example, in care of the sick 
 and in household hygiene, that the whole household 
 is permanently bettered. Public-health nurses may 
 apply themselves to non-contagious cases in general, 
 to tuberculosis cases, to the care of infants and chil- 
 dren, or to contagious diseases. Generally, nurses 
 caring for special types of cases handle only the one 
 kind;. but sometimes, in the interest of economical 
 covering of the greatest number of patients, one 
 nurse does all types of work in the district assigned 
 her excepting the care of contagious diseases. Pub- 
 lic-health nurses quite generally work under private 
 organizations; but, increasingly this work is done 
 also under municipal direction and finance. 
 
 Parallel to the work of the public-health nurse
 
 So Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 runs the work of the district physician, usually an 
 employee of the city health department, and usually 
 a young physician who has not yet worked up a 
 practice. He gives free medical care to indigent 
 patients in the district to which he is assigned. 
 
 Closely connected with the public-health nurse and 
 the district physician are the school nurse and the 
 school physician, who examine school children for 
 diseases and defects, and report to the parents of 
 the children special action which should be taken. 
 In the schools, also, a great deal can be done to 
 improve the health of the children and of the next 
 generation by instruction in physical education and 
 personal hygiene. In many states such instruction 
 is required by state law. 
 
 Open-air schools, in which all instruction is in 
 the open air, are useful in improving the condition of 
 children who are anemic or who have been exposed 
 to tuberculosis or are predisposed to it. 
 
 The Maimed, the Halt, and the Blind 
 One of the most difficult tasks connected with 
 health work is the care of the physically handi- 
 capped — of those who are crippled, deaf, dumb, 
 blind, or suffering from two or more of these defects. 
 Special allowance must be made for these defects, 
 and special training and treatment provided for those 
 suffering from them. 
 
 The treatment of all the handicapped is the same 
 in principle — the hospital care of those whom medi- 
 cine and surgery will help, the education of all possi- 
 ble handicapped persons to full or partial self-
 
 Health, Wealth, and Happiness 81 
 
 support, and care by the state or community for 
 those who cannot help themselves. 
 
 Hoiv to Help the Crippled Child 
 
 The program for the care of cripples is typical of 
 all these groups. 
 
 Very nearly half of the cripples become handi- 
 capped while less than fifteen years old; and a great 
 many of these children could have had their defect 
 prevented or cured by early, adequate treatment for 
 such ailments as infantile paralysis, rickets, and 
 bone tuberculosis. In consequence, great emphasis 
 is placed upon the hospital care of crippled children, 
 and no charity is more appealing than those which 
 render such service. 
 
 Each state should have at least one hospital school 
 for crippled children, where medical and surgical 
 care can be coupled with education of the children 
 in the ordinary school subjects and in vocational 
 work. Such hospitals should have social workers or 
 nurses to cover the state and discover children who 
 need treatment and to follow up those who are dis- 
 charged from the hospital to see that proper care 
 and treatment are given. Often, such hospitals are 
 supplemented by convalescent hospitals for children 
 who have improved beyond the need of the special 
 hospital's care. 
 
 In connection with hospitals or hospital wards for 
 crippled children, dispensaries should be conducted 
 for children who live near enough to be brought from 
 their own homes for treatment, and in whose homes 
 adequate care can be given. This dispensary care
 
 82 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 should be followed by the visits of the nurse to the 
 home. 
 
 The education of the crippled child is doubly 
 important, not only because he needs special train- 
 ing so that he may overcome his handicap, but also 
 because it is difficult, often, to get him to go to school 
 when school is provided. The vocational training, 
 which should be given all crippled children to fit 
 them if possible for some useful activity, should be 
 made to fit in with the general vocational training of 
 the community, state, and nation. A great impetus 
 to vocational training for the crippled has been given 
 by the attention paid, during and after the war, to 
 training for crippled soldiers ; and federal aid, 
 recently granted to local agencies doing approved 
 vocational training, is sure to help still further this 
 most important activity. 
 
 The education of the crippled child may go on in 
 hospital schools or in day schools, either private or 
 part of the public-school system. The day schools 
 should have omnibus service for the children, out- 
 door schoolrooms, lunches, and special diet according 
 to the physician's orders, and careful medical and 
 nursing supervision. 
 
 Crippled children thus cared for and trained may 
 often be cured of their handicaps, or else may so 
 overcome them that they will be happy, self-sufficient 
 members of society. 
 
 Giving the Crippled Man a Chance 
 
 The crippled adult needs, first of all, hospital 
 care, and then training to adapt himself to his new
 
 Health. Wealth, and Happiness 83 
 
 circumstances in life. This training should include 
 the use of any appliances which may be necessary 
 and, quite possibly, a new occupation to take the 
 place of one made impossible by the crippling acci- 
 dent. Such training can be given through hospitals, 
 trade schools, and special " bureaus for the handi- 
 capped." 
 
 The crippled adult next needs a chance to work, 
 if possible. He may be placed in ordinary industry 
 or business — after the objection of the employer to 
 the extra hazard of employing a cripple under the 
 provisions of the Workmen's Compensation law 
 has been removed and work has been found to which 
 the cripple is suited. Such employment service may- 
 be rendered by social workers in a " bureau for the 
 handicapped." Crippled workers who cannot go into 
 ordinary industry may be employed in special work- 
 shops for the handicapped, where suitable work is 
 provided, or in their own homes, at such industries 
 as needlework, chair caning, wood carving, and so 
 on. Those who are absolutely helpless can be cared 
 for permanently in homes for the incurable and 
 infirm. 
 
 The interests of cripples may well be looked after 
 in each community of any size by a "bureau for 
 the handicapped," which will coordinate all the 
 agencies interested in the problem of the crippled 
 and employ competent workers to meet the various 
 needs of the cripples outside of institutions. Of 
 particular value would be the endeavors of such a 
 bureau to lessen the number of cripples through the 
 prevention of accidents, the lessening of infantile
 
 84 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 paralysis, and the early treatment of all cases where 
 crippling was threatened. 
 
 Eyes for the Blind 
 
 Provision for the blind closely follows that for 
 the crippled. Hospital treatment, institutional and 
 day schools, vocational training, and other helpful 
 services are about the same in principle, if different 
 in detail. A smaller proportion of the blind than 
 of the crippled are self-supporting, and hence more 
 of them require either institutional care or pension- 
 ing in their homes. More than half of all blindness 
 is said to be preventable, and great service in pre- 
 vention of blindness as well as in other services to 
 the blind can be rendered by properly equipped 
 " societies for the conservation of vision " and by 
 state commissions for the blind. 
 
 The problem of the deaf and of the deaf and dumb 
 is handled in much the same way as that of the 
 crippled and blind, by " associations for the hard of 
 hearing," with social, industrial, and educational 
 features. 
 
 Disease Prevention Essential 
 
 Important as is the treatment of victims of disease 
 and accident it is still more important to prevent 
 disease if possible. The first essential in the preven- 
 tion of disease in any community is a non-political, 
 capably managed, adequately financed city health 
 department, with a well-trained and thoroughly 
 experienced staff whose members are assured of
 
 Health, Wealth, and Happiness 85 
 
 tenure in office as long as they satisfactorily perform 
 their duties. 
 
 In addition are many private activities which can 
 help to fight and prevent disease. A well-organized 
 " housing and city-planning society " can make sure 
 that proper legislation for healthful dwellings is 
 passed and enforced, and also, through a far-seeing 
 city plan, ensure the development of the city along 
 lines most wholesome for the people and most 
 effective for its industrial life. A proper housing 
 law prevents the overcrowding of rooms, of houses 
 and of lots, and provides for adequate light and air 
 for every room — surely not an unreasonable re- 
 quirement. A proper city plan provides for the 
 development of residential areas which shall not be 
 marred by industrial plants, for industrial areas pro- 
 vided with necessary switching facilities ; for quick 
 and safe transportation of workers to and from 
 work ; for the attractive and harmonious appearance 
 of dwellings and factories and stores ; for civic cen- 
 ters ; and for many other details which will make 
 the development of our cities follow the needs of the 
 people more closely than has heretofore been the 
 case in most American cities. 
 
 Most of all, perhaps, the prevention of disease 
 and the conservation of public health depend upon 
 a thoroughgoing educational program carried on 
 through churches, newspapers, schools, clubs, and 
 motion-picture theaters, touching both personal 
 hygiene and the larger problems of health. Such 
 programs are often fostered by "anti-tuberculosis 
 associations " and " public-health associations ;" and
 
 86 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 are being aided by the health centers which are being 
 established by the American Red Cross. 
 
 These, then, are, in general, the instruments which 
 ought to be available in the ordinary community for 
 preventing and curing physical ailments. He who 
 contributes to them may well feel that he is helping 
 to bring to his fellow-citizens those boons which 
 well-wishers of their fellow-men always have sought 
 — health, wealth, and happiness.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE UNCLEAN SPIRIT 
 
 DRAB and unholy were the lives of the numerous 
 dreary members of the Tompkins family. Shift- 
 less Kentucky "poor white" stock mingled with 
 equally shiftless Ohio "shanty boat" stock soon 
 after that autumn day in 1900 when the strange for- 
 tunes of life whirled together in a cheap dance hall 
 in Cincinnati a tobacco-worker, Nellie Grayson, and 
 an odd-job man, Harry Tompkins. They married 
 almost immediately. Seven puny children had been 
 added to the family when the spring freshet of 1909 
 in the Ohio River caught up the willing Tompkins 
 horde, encamped, Noahlike, in a battered and mea- 
 gerly furnished houseboat, and carried them on its 
 broad, swirling, muddy tide to that neglected, flood- 
 swept portion of riverward Louisville known as 
 " The Point." 
 
 In the course of time, an eighth child was born ; 
 but Mr. Tompkins would not own it, claiming that 
 its real male parent was Ike Reardon, the landlord 
 of their pitiful shack. On the ground of immorality, 
 Tompkins secured a divorce and the custody of the 
 children. 
 
 Mrs. Tompkins, undaunted, promptly married 
 Reardon; and the couple eventually had six chil- 
 dren. Reardon. in the meanwhile, acquired a case 
 
 87
 
 88 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 of chronic rheumatism. The children, too young to 
 work, could not be fed by Reardon's intermittent 
 labors. The Associated Charities lent a helping 
 hand, sent Reardon to the hospital and supplied the 
 family clothes, food, coal, rent and other necessities. 
 The children were unruly and destructive and the 
 three oldest were finally sent to the local reform 
 school, while the fourth was committed to the Pa- 
 rental Home, leaving only the two youngest at home. 
 
 Mr. Reardon died in 1918. Mrs. Tompkins- 
 Reardon shortly remarried Mr. Tompkins, and got 
 the court to return her four Reardon children to her 
 from the reform school and Parental Home. In 
 addition to the six little Reardons, there remained 
 four of the earlier batch of Tompkins' in the happy 
 family. 
 
 Mr. Tompkins soon decided that the combined 
 family was too large for him to support. Any aid 
 he might have had from his children was prevented 
 by the fact that one son had married and was strug- 
 gling to support a little family of his own, while 
 the next two had stolen some junk and had been 
 committed to the State Reform School. Mr. Tomp- 
 kins therefore applied to Mrs. Reardon's old friend, 
 the Associated Charities, for aid. 
 
 A psychopathic clinic had recently been estab- 
 lished, and Mr. Tompkins was one of the first to be 
 examined. He was found, while forty-three years 
 old, to have a mental age of ten years — and his 
 incompetence and unreliability were easily to be 
 understood. Similarly, Mrs. Tompkins, thirty- 
 eight years old physically, was nine years old men-
 
 The Unclean Spirit 89 
 
 tally. All the children old enough to be given 
 mental tests were found to be feeble-minded. 
 
 Criminal Court committed the whole family to 
 the State Institution for the Feeble-minded, but 
 inasmuch as that institution is overcrowded, under- 
 financed, and possessed of a huge waiting list, the 
 Tompkins' are still at large; and the community is 
 suffering not only the burden of their support, but 
 the prospect of their increase and the menace of 
 their potential delinquency. 
 
 Thus is exemplified the menace of feeble-minded- 
 ness which, with its kindred mental diseases of 
 insanity and epilepsy, helps to make up the problem 
 of mental hygiene. This field of service presents an 
 increasingly strong attraction to the discriminating 
 giver. 
 
 New Light on an Old Problem 
 
 It is only of late years that the milder forms of 
 insanity and feeble-mindedness have been recog- 
 nized, and that any realization at all has come of 
 that tremendously evil effect which feeble-minded- 
 ness, with its train of paupers, criminals, and pros- 
 titutes, entails to mankind. 
 
 Indeed, in many backward localities but little 
 progress has been made over the methods of the 
 time of Christ, when, it is reported by St. Luke, 
 Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to come out of 
 the man who was possessed of devils. " For often- 
 times it had caught him : and he was kept bound 
 with chains and in fetters ; and he brake the bands, 
 and was driven of the devil into the wilderness
 
 90 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 . . . and [he J ware no clothes, neither abode 
 in any house, but in the tombs." Chains and fetters 
 and iron bands are, happily, passing as a means of 
 caring for the insane ; and while the mental hygien- 
 ists of the present day are not able, as Jesus did, 
 to drive the devils from their patients into swine, 
 which then run into the lake and thus drown both 
 devil and swine, they do affect many remarkable 
 cures, and are throwing on the whole problem of 
 mental defect a light which is sure to show the way 
 to much better mental health for future generations. 
 
 "Almost Everybody's Crazy, But Me and Thee" 
 
 The extent of insanity and feeble-mindedness in 
 the population is not generally appreciated. The 
 British Royal Commission found in 1906 that Eng- 
 land averaged 3.66 insane per thousand population 
 and 4.03 feeble-minded to every thousand. These 
 figures probably would hold good, in a general way, 
 for this country. The insane are more nearly ade- 
 quately cared for than the feeble-minded because 
 their violence makes them dangerous or helpless and 
 hence has brought about more adequate institutional 
 provision ; while the feeble-minded, less conspicuous 
 although even more dangerous to society, have 
 neither been recognized nor provided for. 
 
 How to Find the Mentally Sick 
 
 The first necessity which the discriminating giver 
 may help in providing for insane and feeble-minded 
 is a psychopathic clinic in each community of any 
 considerable size, to which people suffering from
 
 The Unclean Spirit 91 
 
 mental defect, or suspected ot suffering from it, may 
 come or be brought. This clinic should be in charge 
 of a physician, skilled in mental ailments as well as 
 in ordinary medicine. He should be assisted by a 
 staff of psychologists, capable of making accurate 
 mental examinations ; and by so-called psychiatric 
 social workers, familiar with mental difficulties and 
 skilled in studying the homes and community back- 
 ground. Members of clinical staffs are made avail- 
 able for visiting the less populous centers of the 
 state periodically, so that no part of the state may 
 be without its mental hygiene service. 
 
 For the insane, such a clinic examines and adjusts 
 incipient cases, which often can be cured by a change 
 in mental attitude and in social background. The 
 clinic consults with ordinary medical practitioners 
 in the care of mental patients. It handles many 
 mildly insane patients in their own homes, making 
 their commitment to hospitals for the insane unnec- 
 essary, and supervises patients paroled to their own 
 homes or boarded out in private homes by these 
 institutions. 
 
 For the feeble-minded, the psychopathic clinic 
 measures the degree of mental ability ; and makes 
 sure, through mental tests backed up by physical 
 tests, that none are treated as feeble-minded who are 
 actually backward because of physical defects, such 
 as bad eyesight, tonsils, adenoids, and teeth, which 
 often make children, who are really normal men- 
 tally, seem dull. 
 
 In its service to normal people, not mentally 
 defective, the psychopathic clinic gives advice toward
 
 C}2 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 attaining the highest possible mental health, advises 
 on vocational problems, and, for children, indicates 
 those who are unusually capable and may be given 
 special educational opportunities. 
 
 Clinic Helps Social Agencies 
 
 Aside from its services to individuals, the psycho- 
 pathic clinic cooperates with all other social agencies. 
 
 It works closely with the courts, supplying the 
 necessary mental facts for commitment of the insane, 
 feeble-minded, and epileptics to institutions and giv- 
 ing mental examinations to criminals and juvenile 
 delinquents to determine their proper treatment. 
 
 It serves the penitentiaries and reformatories of 
 the state, providing information as to the proper 
 treatment of prisoners and as to their parole. 
 
 It works with the public schools, examining all 
 children and indicating those who are so bright as 
 to be put in " opportunity " classes and those who 
 are so feeble-minded as to require immediate insti- 
 tutional care or instruction in special retarded or 
 backward classes. 
 
 Children's institutions have their feeble-minded 
 inmates drained off to the state institution by the 
 tests provided by this clinic. The feeble-minded 
 and insane are taken from almshouses where .many 
 of them now unfortunately still are confined, and 
 the feeble-minded from the insane asylums where 
 many have been wrongly placed. Agencies such as 
 the Associated Charities, dealing with needy people 
 in their homes, are given information as to mental 
 ability of their clients which enables these organiza-
 
 The Unclean Spirit 93 
 
 tions to give treatment based on the ability of their 
 clients. 
 
 The psychopathic clinic is the necessary adjunct 
 to institutional care of those suffering from mental 
 diseases. 
 
 Good State Law Required 
 Essential, also, to such adequate care ot the men- 
 tally afflicted in each state is a law providing for 
 the compulsory commitment to proper custody of 
 all insane and epileptic persons in need of restraint 
 and all feeble-minded persons of an age or a con- 
 dition to be a menace to society. 
 
 Treating the Insane as Sick People 
 
 The insane require somewhat different institu- 
 tional treatment from the feeble-minded and epi- 
 leptic. 
 
 Insanity is often curable and through early treat- 
 ment of nervous conditions which lead to insanity 
 may often be prevented. 
 
 The first need, however, in the care and preven- 
 tion of insanity is a psychopathic ward in a general 
 hospital or a special psychopathic hospital, where 
 patients may be observed carefully and where proper 
 treatment and disposition of each individual case 
 may be adequately planned. 
 
 Working closely with these psychopathic wards or 
 hospitals are state institutions which provide various 
 types of service — hospitals, of the usual institu- 
 tional sort, for the treatment and cure of curable 
 cases in insanity, with provision for recreation and
 
 94 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 for various kinds of industrial activity, along the 
 lines of the " occupational therapy " so greatly popu- 
 larized during and since the World War ; colonies, 
 on the cottage plan, for the able-bodied and tractable 
 chronic insane, where, at farm and dairy work and 
 various simple industries, they may be happy and 
 self-supporting; infirmaries for the feeble, infirm, 
 aged, intractable, and dangerous long-resident in- 
 sane, where suitable care and protection can be pro- 
 vided ; parole of the milder patients to their own 
 homes, or boarding out in private families, where 
 they may live a more or less normal life and possibly 
 earn their own living — all this, under the continu- 
 ous supervision of competent parole officers, often 
 in connection with the psychopathic clinic. 
 
 In this way, the individual needs of the patients 
 are much better met, more cures are effected, the 
 patients are made much happier, and they are, in 
 many cases, a real asset to the state rather than a 
 burden ; as compared with confinement in a single 
 institution of the old-fashioned type. 
 
 Treat the Feeble-Minded as Incurable 
 
 The feeble-minded present a different problem, in 
 many respects, than do the insane. Feeble-minded- 
 ness almost always is hereditary, incurable, and 
 transmissible to offspring. Once feeble-minded, 
 always feeble-minded. The problem in the care of 
 the feeble-minded is first to prevent them from re- 
 producing their kind, and, second, to train them 
 and to provide facilities so that they can be so far 
 as possible happy and self-supporting. There are
 
 The Unclean Spirit 95 
 
 two ways of preventing reproduction among the 
 adult feeble-minded — sterilization and segregation. 
 Sterilization, although simple and practically pain- 
 less, cannot be practiced at the present state of pub- 
 lic opinion, and segregation is the only alternative. 
 Moreover, the feeble-minded, with their inferior 
 mental ability, are at so great a disadvantage in com- 
 petition for a livelihood with normal human beings, 
 that in general the best way of giving them a chance 
 at self-sufficient life, so far as they are capable of it, 
 is through putting them in protected surroundings 
 where they can be directed in all their activities. 
 
 The starting point for the care of the feeble- 
 minded is the public schools. Thorough-going men- 
 tal tests of all school children will quickly reveal 
 those of subnormal mentality. Those retarded suf- 
 ficiently to be regarded as feeble-minded, after all 
 possible physical causes of their slowness have been 
 removed, are placed in special classes where training 
 adapted to their mental ability is given them. Spe- 
 cial stress is laid on handicrafts and manual train- 
 ing. 
 
 When the adolescent period is reached, and these 
 feeble-minded children begin to be a menace to so- 
 ciety through the possibility of their producing others 
 of their kind, they are often sent to a training school 
 operated in connection with a state institution for 
 the feeble-minded. This school continues the train- 
 ing along industrial lines so far as possible, and then 
 turns over its " graduates " for service on the farm 
 colony which is operated by the institution. Boys 
 and men on the farm colony can clear waste land,
 
 96 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 build necessary buildings, and do all the usual opera- 
 tions of farming — under competent supervision. 
 Girls and women can engage in dairying, weaving, 
 and other handicrafts. Cottages can provide for the 
 proper segregation of the inmates according to men- 
 tal ability and sex. 
 
 Of course, there are large numbers of feeble- 
 minded who are so helpless and incompetent that 
 they cannot even care for themselves, to say nothing 
 of doing any useful work. They have to be given 
 the same institutional care that would be given little 
 children and babies until beneficent death comes to 
 carry their souls from the pitiful bondage of their 
 inadequate minds and misshapen bodies. 
 
 Curing the "Fits" 
 
 The epileptics differ from both the insane and 
 feeble-minded. Their mental defect takes the form 
 of " fits," more or less severe, which do not inca- 
 pacitate the victims continuously. Moreover, it is 
 thought that epilepsy may be cured, or its victims at 
 least improved in condition. For the more severe 
 cases, care on a farm colony separate from the 
 insane and feeble-minded is given ; but for the less 
 violent cases treatment and guidance by the psycho- 
 pathic clinic, together with special arrangements 
 made with employers, often allow the victim to 
 remain at work and at home. 
 
 State funds are usually provided to supplement 
 local public and contributed funds for the estab- 
 lishment and maintenance of psychopathic clinics, 
 psychopathic wards and hospitals, and special classes
 
 The Unclean Spirit 97 
 
 for backward children in the public schools, but pri- 
 vate endeavor should be willing to show the way. 
 For example, local " mental-hygiene societies," made 
 up of interested people, in voluntary association, help 
 to stimulate public interest in mental health. 
 
 The field of mental hygiene, in its modern sense, 
 is relatively new and many of its needs are met by 
 public funds, but it offers opportunities for service 
 by contributors who like to help in pioneer work- 
 that is bound to be of value to individuals and to 
 the community.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 BEATING THE DEVIL 
 
 HE WHO wishes to secure constructive results 
 for his gift will find no happier location for 
 his aid than in the field of leisure-time activities, 
 where he can work to beat that devil who since days 
 of long ago has found evil for idle hands to do. 
 
 Not merely to those in abject poverty, but to all 
 who lack opportunity for normal expression of their 
 better selves, may leisure-time activities be extended. 
 Boys and girls who have no play place but the street, 
 with its evil companionships and associations, with 
 its interrupted and thwarted play, with its gang life 
 built up of gambling and fighting and stealing, with 
 its total inability to form character in the years of 
 life w r hen character is formed (and during which 
 the average child spends each year but 925 hours in 
 school to a possible 4,703 hours at play) ; young men 
 and women who have gone to work too soon, and 
 who after working hours want the opportunity for 
 wholesome recreation freed of commercial greed and 
 for education for betterment in life and work; immi- 
 grants from other lands, unfamiliar with American 
 language, ideals and standards of life, lonely and 
 bewildered in our great buzzing American cities ; 
 working men and women, who with the reduction in 
 the hours of the working day have more and more 
 
 98
 
 Beating the Devil 99 
 
 spare time ; those who by modern industrial condi- 
 tions are thwarted of self-expression and from 
 whose dissatisfaction are bred many of the disturb- 
 ances of our day ; families in which children and 
 parents are out of sympathy because of the lack of 
 opportunity for home life in crowded quarters and 
 the lack of a common interest and understanding; 
 all, of any age or condition of life, who, because of 
 conditions of work and life, need a change of activ- 
 ity in their spare moments, a fresher view of life, a 
 chance for wholesome play, or an opportunity for 
 higher training and self-improvement — all these 
 mav be served by him who gives for work in this 
 field. 
 
 An Antidote for Vice 
 
 Leisure-time activities present an antidote for vice 
 and dissipation. Knowing that eighty per cent of 
 the crime is committed between the hours of six in 
 the evening and midnight, these agencies strive to 
 prevent crime and delinquency. 
 
 They are of particular importance now, since the 
 practical elimination of the red-light districts 
 throughout the country and the disappearance of the 
 saloon. Their importance and value were demon- 
 strated as never before during the World War, when 
 the " morale agencies " such as the Y. M. C. A., the 
 Y. W. C. A., the Jewish Welfare Board, the Knights 
 of Columbus, and other leisure-time activities were 
 credited with a large share in the successful training 
 of our armies here at home and in their victorious 
 battling overseas. They are still more important
 
 ioo Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 after the war, when social unrest is rife and when 
 they, more than any other group of agencies, can 
 direct the activities of the people in wholesome chan- 
 nels helpful to the development of our democracy. 
 
 Private Endeavor Necessary 
 
 It is true that most people are able and willing to 
 pay for recreation ; but it is equally clear that this 
 field, so fertile because its soil is compounded of 
 fundamental human instincts, cannot be left to ex- 
 ploitation by commercial greed. The evils of un- 
 supervised dance halls, " tough " poolrooms and de- 
 generate motion-picture theaters which cater to the 
 worst elements in humanity are sufficiently obvious. 
 Activities such as playgrounds, parks, bathhouses, 
 public dance halls, art museums, and swimming pools 
 are splendid as far as they go, but are necessarily 
 wholesale in their treatment and generally limited 
 by lack of funds and stiffness of public administra- 
 tion to obviously " necessary " activities. As the 
 Cleveland Foundation Survey of Recreation truly 
 says, " There is a wide zone of recreation needs of 
 children and adults who are either not economically 
 independent or who have peculiar racial or social 
 interests, which can be covered at present only by 
 private recreation operated either on a cooperative 
 or philanthropic basis. It ministers to the children 
 and adults of peculiar needs which can be met only 
 by an intensive leadership beyond the reach of the 
 public recreation agency." One of the chief oppor- 
 tunities of private leisure-time activities, as of all 
 philanthropies, is to demonstrate new ways of meet-
 
 Beating the Devil 101 
 
 ing newly discovered needs, and then to turn these 
 activities over to the community — to be, as it were, 
 a sort of social experiment station. 
 
 The Social Settlement — and Town 
 
 Best known and most popular of the privately 
 financed leisure-time activities are the social settle- 
 ments. 
 
 The story following will illustrate how the settle- 
 ments meet individual human needs in a flexible and 
 helpful manner. 
 
 The story begins in a juvenile court. 
 
 " Well, madam, what have you to say for your 
 son?" inquired the judge of a thin, middle-aged 
 woman, who, with a shawl over her head and her 
 face tear-stained, stood in front of the judge's desk. 
 Beside her stood a curly-haired, bright-eyed young- 
 ster of about fourteen years. Ranged roundabout 
 the walls of the small room, sitting and standing, 
 were court probation officers, school truant officers, 
 social workers, and other interested people. 
 
 " It was this way, your Honor," quavered the 
 mother in a thick Italian brogue impossible to imi- 
 tate. " My man died when Tony was a baby, soon 
 after we came to America from the Old Country, 
 and I had to earn a living. So I bought an old 
 second-hand clothing store and lived over it. It was 
 a bad place to bring up a boy. The only place he 
 had to play was the street, and the neighbors and 
 their children were tough. I had to keep store and 
 couldn't keep my eye on my Tony. Instead of going 
 to school, he got to playing around in pool parlors
 
 102 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 or shooting craps in the alley back of the store with 
 the worst boys in the neighborhood. Then the truant 
 officer caught him. I don't know what to do with 
 him. He's a good boy, but he hasn't had a chance 
 in this great America of yours." And the mother 
 again burst into tears. 
 
 "If you'll put him on probation to me, I'll see 
 what we can do with him," spoke up a settlement 
 worker, to the judge. " Our settlement is only a 
 block or two from where he lives and I think we can 
 help him." 
 
 And so Tony, who hitherto had despised the set- 
 tlement because it wasn't tough enough for him, be- 
 gan a new life. He was forced to go to school, but 
 he discovered that the teacher, to whom his friend, 
 the settlement worker, had spoken about him, took a 
 new interest in him and tried to help him along. 
 After school, he found joy in the pool table in the 
 settlement house, where he had the satisfaction of 
 victory without the menace of gambling. He dis- 
 covered a group of boys of his own age, lively fel- 
 lows, with whom he got to playing baseball on the 
 settlement playground, and taking hikes and camp- 
 ing trips, and playing basketball in the gymnasium, 
 and, finally, in joining in debates in a debating club. 
 His mother, too, got to attending the neighborhood 
 parties at the settlement, and with her son enjoyed 
 the weekly program of moving pictures and com- 
 munity singing. 
 
 Tony eventually graduated from grammar school, 
 went to high school, where he won honors, while 
 working in the second-hand store afternoons, and
 
 Beating the Devil 103 
 
 finally went to college, from which he writes back 
 joyous letters to the settlement worker to whom he 
 was put on probation only six years ago. 
 
 Tony is but typical of the need which is met and 
 the problems which are happily solved by the social 
 settlements and other agencies of a community work- 
 ing to meet the leisure-time needs of its people. 
 
 What a Social Settlement Is 
 
 The settlement, " an experimental effort to aid in 
 the social and industrial problems of a great city," has 
 been defined as "a home established in an industrial 
 neighborhood by a group of people of education for 
 mutual helpfulness." It aims to appreciate every human 
 interest, and its distinguishing characteristic, according 
 to Miss Jane Addams, is " its flexibility, its 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." 
 
 The residents identify themselves as closely as pos- 
 sible with the life of the neighborhood and through 
 their intimate personal contact with their neighbors, 
 both individuals and families, strive to know conditions 
 and to interpret needs. Their relation with the neigh- 
 borhood is one of mutual helpfulness. The settlement 
 resident gains a knowledge and a point of view, and the 
 families and individuals served are brought into more 
 profitable association through classes and clubs and 
 into contact with public, private, and social agencies 
 through personal sympathy and effort of the residents. 
 Because of the workers' knowledge and unselfish inter- 
 est the neighborhood is often interpreted through them 
 to the rest of the community. The settlement should
 
 io4 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 be sympathetic and of quick insight, ready to change 
 its function promptly with change of conditions. (Cleve- 
 land Foundation Survey of Recreation. Chapter vi, 
 page 89.) 
 
 Meeting Neighborhood Needs 
 
 The typical settlement is equipped with play- 
 ground, gymnasium, which can be used as dance 
 hall and auditorium, gamerooms, clubrooms, and 
 classrooms with equipment for the teaching of do- 
 mestic science and arts and crafts. 
 
 Among the activities within the settlement are 
 classes in a great variety of handicrafts; social ac- 
 tivities including social dancing and folk dancing, 
 entertainments, plays, motion-picture shows, and 
 neighborhood parties ; physical activities including 
 gymnasium, swimming, games, pool, billiards, ath- 
 letic games, picnics, hikes, and camping ; instruction 
 in all phases of domestic science ; literary pur- 
 suits, including dramatics, story telling, lectures, de- 
 bating, nature study, civics, English, and history. 
 Some settlements conduct community stores at which 
 their neighbors may buy food at low cost ; others 
 conduct community kitchens, which make possible 
 canning of fruit and vegetables at low cost and 
 instruct foreign-born women in the use of American 
 foods ; others maintain community laundries. 
 
 Whenever possible, a nominal charge is made for 
 membership in clubs and classes and for other serv- 
 ices, so that those who use them may not feel they 
 are getting " chanty." On the other hand, lack of
 
 Beating the Devil 105 
 
 ability to pay does not prevent a neighbor who needs 
 such service from receiving it. 
 
 Settlement activities are not confined to settle- 
 ment property ; but settlement workers extend their 
 influence throughout their neighborhood, directing 
 play in streets and vacant lots, helping in the super- 
 vision of undermanned public playgrounds, directing 
 clubs and other groups which prefer to use public 
 halls rather than the settlement property, aiding in 
 vacant lot gardening, helping to organize the com- 
 munity life in every possible way, following up and 
 helping families which have passed beyond the need 
 of temporary aid by the charity organizations and 
 keeping in touch with boys and girls released on pro- 
 bation from juvenile courts or discharged from 
 children's correctional institutions. The settlement 
 plant is merely the headquarters of a work which 
 may extend throughout the neighborhood or even 
 throughout the city. 
 
 The " Y" as a Recreational Agency 
 
 An activity whose purpose is only partly recre- 
 ational is the Young Men's Christian Association. 
 Its chief aim is " to furnish religious, vocational, and 
 physical stimulation and development for boys and 
 young men." Its activities include club life, home 
 life, recreation, education, physical training, music, 
 and dramatics through club and classrooms, audi- 
 torium, gymnasium, gamerooms, athletic field, swim- 
 ming pools, summer camps, and similar facilities. 
 The Y. M. C. A. states vigorously that it is not a 
 charity, but it almost invariably has a deficit which
 
 106 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 must be made up by contributions. In general, its 
 activities for men tend toward self-support ; while 
 those for boys and non-members, particularly among 
 the foreign groups of our cities, tend to cost more 
 than they bring in. In this last sense, particularly, 
 is the Y. M. C. A. a philanthropy and a social agency. 
 
 Much like the Y. M. C. A. in purpose and method 
 are the Young Women's Christian Association, the 
 Young Men's Hebrew Association and the Young 
 Men's Institutes of the Roman Catholic church. 
 
 Another wholesome recreation activity for boys 
 is the Boy Scouts of America, distinguished by its 
 well-rounded program of activities including out- 
 door life and civics sendee. Of a somewhat similar 
 nature, for girls, are the Camp Fire Girls and the 
 Girl Scouts. 
 
 Also of service to girls and young women are the 
 vacation savings clubs, which collect the savings of 
 those employed in stores, office, and factories, as a 
 means of financing their summer vacations. Direc- 
 tories of suitable vacation places often are published 
 by these clubs. 
 
 The Church and Play 
 
 The Protestant churches, also, are stepping into 
 the recreation field. Church members, as we have 
 said, are seeing more and more that social service 
 is but the other side of religious service, and are 
 trying to make their church plants meet the needs 
 of their communities in other ways than merely by 
 conducting religious services. The church audito- 
 rium is used for motion-picture shows, community
 
 Beating the Devil 107 
 
 music, lectures, and neighborhood meetings ; the din- 
 ing-room or parish-house for neighborhood dinners 
 and (sometimes) for social dancing. Specially 
 equipped institutional churches may parallel in 
 equipment and service the best of social settlements. 
 Through all this service runs the idea of conserving 
 the spiritual welfare of the family by providing 
 wholesome activities for all its members. 
 
 The Roman Catholic church also is becoming in- 
 terested in recreation ; and while it never uses its 
 church building for other than religious purposes, 
 is rapidly developing a system of community houses 
 as part of the church property. 
 
 Other church activities include daily vacation 
 Bible schools, conducted during the summer vaca- 
 tion period with singing, Bible lessons, games, and 
 handicrafts ; tours to beaches and parks ; and sum- 
 mer camps for children and mothers of congested 
 districts. 
 
 Fresh-air camps for mothers and children from 
 congested districts who otherwise would get no 
 summer outing are often conducted by social settle- 
 ments, by the Salvation Army and by other similar 
 agencies, or independently. 
 
 Playgrounds and Philanthropy 
 
 Another field for private recreational activity is 
 in the development of playgrounds. While play- 
 grounds were almost all originally begun by private 
 finance, they now are usually under public finance 
 and control. There still exists, however, in many 
 cities the opportunity for private initiative to pur-
 
 108 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 chase and equip playgrounds in neglected districts 
 and present them to the community, and sometimes 
 to provide supervision of these playgrounds or extra 
 supervision for under-manned playgrounds. 
 
 The Community Center — New and Popular 
 
 Still another recreational movement which may be 
 either publicly or privately financed, or financed by 
 joint action, is the community center or neighbor- 
 hood organization movement, which strives to utilize 
 all the resources of a neighborhood in organizing the 
 leisure time of the people on a cooperative basis. 
 The center of such a movement very often is the 
 public school, which may be utilized in the afternoon, 
 after school hours, for the recreation of the children, 
 and in the evening for the whole community. 
 Schools may be especially equipped for neighbor- 
 hood work, and may closely approximate the services 
 already described as being performed by settlements. 
 So far as possible, these neighborhood associations 
 are self-governing and self-supporting. They tend 
 to develop a feeling of neighborliness and give val- 
 uable practice in democracy. 
 
 Out of the community center movement has de- 
 veloped the community council movement, which 
 strives to develop a voluntary organization repre- 
 sentative of a whole neighborhood or community, 
 with a full program of activities for all the people. 
 These community councils have been interestingly 
 demonstrated in New York City and in Chester, Pa., 
 where particular attention has been paid under the 
 direction of Community Service, Inc., to the assimi-
 
 Beating the Devil 109 
 
 lation of foreign groups through developing their 
 participation in community life. It is quite likely 
 that in the city of the future this type of community 
 organization will make the development of new set- 
 tlements less and less necessary. 
 
 An Alliance to Beat the Devil 
 
 Such, in brief, are the recreational or leisure-time 
 activities which a normal American city may be 
 expected to have. The scheme is not complete, 
 however, unless some method is devised to secure 
 cooperation between all these activities and to pro- 
 mote construction planning to meet all the com- 
 munity's recreational needs. Such a coordinating 
 force can be found in a Playground or Recreation 
 Association, including representation from all the 
 activities concerned in leisure time; in a branch of 
 Community Service, Inc., (formerly the Playground 
 and Recreation Association of America) ; in a Rec- 
 reation Commission appointed by public authority ; 
 or in a recreation committee which will include the 
 representatives of all recreational activities which 
 belong to a Council of Social Agencies as described 
 in the next chapter. A body of this sort, in addition 
 to planning for better recreation, might very well 
 either officially or unofficially serve as a censor of 
 commercial amusements, including dance halls, mo- 
 tion pictures and burlesque shows, and poolrooms, 
 seeing that the laws regulating them are enforced, 
 while stimulating the better types of commercial 
 recreation. 
 
 A city thus equipped by thoughtful givers with
 
 no Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 voluntary recreation facilities, with the community 
 itself providing a more and more complete system 
 of general recreation from public funds, and with 
 close cooperation through a general supervisory 
 body, should have little trouble in breeding better 
 and happier citizens and in beating most unmerci- 
 fully that devil who delights in finding things for 
 idle hands to do.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 EFFECTIVE GIFTS 
 
 I HAD occasion once to confer with a group of 
 colored women regarding the financial report of 
 the " charity club " which they conducted. An item 
 of one hundred dollars as income from entertain- 
 ment appeared in the report. 
 
 " How did you raise that one hundred dollars ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 "Oh, we gave a charity ball," replied the treas- 
 urer. 
 
 "How much were the expenses of the ball?" I 
 inquired. 
 
 "We lost money on it. It cost us one hundred 
 and two dollars," was the response. 
 
 " Why do you conduct charity balls, then, if you 
 lose money on them, and the poor don't get any 
 of the money that is given?" I asked in surprise. 
 
 " The ladies have such a good time, they'd rather 
 lose money than not give the ball," was the naive 
 reply. 
 
 The amiable colored women had transgressed one 
 of the prime rights of the contributor. He is entitled 
 to know that his gift is turned into human service 
 with the least possible expense for handling. It is 
 to be feared, also, that the charity club had trans- 
 gressed the other prime right of the giver — the 
 
 in
 
 ii2 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 right to know that his gift is rendering effective 
 service. 
 
 Charity and Business Principles 
 
 A charitable organization should be run on pre- 
 cisely the same principles as any effective business. 
 This does not mean that charity need be hard and 
 cold and inhuman, as business is often reputed to 
 be ; but that the same methods of organization, 
 administration, and salesmanship which have made 
 American business the marvel of the world, also 
 may make our charity render better service to the 
 needy and to the community, serve more people, 
 make the money given go farther or make less money 
 necessary for a given service, and secure more con- 
 tributors, more permanent contributors and more 
 generous contributors. 
 
 For, after all, looked at from one point of view, a 
 charitable organization is no more nor less than a 
 business organization. It is made up of a group of 
 people, associated in a corporation ; not, indeed for 
 profit to themselves, but for profit and advantage 
 to those in need and to the community. It produces 
 a definite article, such as mended families, healed 
 invalids, restored eyesight, trained minds and bodies, 
 more efficient workers, better Americans, healthier 
 children, saved lives. This product should have a 
 distinct money value to the community which should 
 be represented in the shape of contributions of people 
 who care to buy this product. It can be " sold " to 
 the community through the same principles of ad-
 
 Effective Gifts 113 
 
 vertising and selling as are employed in selling 
 collars or breakfast foods. 
 
 Just as in business the most successful corporation 
 is the one which most closely follows business prin- 
 ciples, so in charity the most successful organization 
 in rendering service and in securing contributors is 
 the one which follows these same principles — for 
 they are the principles, not of technical service in a 
 particular field, such as mining or bridge-building, or 
 medicine, but the broad principles of organization, 
 control, production, and marketing which hold good 
 for all organized activity which employs workers 
 and relies on the public for its support. Business 
 is rapidly adopting these principles. Charity has 
 been slower to adopt such methods ; but the day is 
 coming when we shall demand efficiency in the man- 
 agement of our charities on the same basis as we 
 already expect it in business. It is the duty of 
 every giver to require such efficiency as the condi- 
 tion of his gift ; for without it, the fullest effective- 
 ness of the gift cannot be realized. 
 
 The Principles of Charitable Effectiveness 
 
 The principles of charitable effectiveness here pre- 
 sented are the twelve advocated by the industrial 
 efficiency expert, Harrington Emerson, 1 adapted to 
 the field of social service, and supplemented by a few 
 additional principles necessary to an effective social 
 organization. 
 
 1. A Need to Be Met. — It is quite clear that no 
 1 Emerson Harrington, The Twelve Principles of 
 Efficiency, Engineering Magazine Co., N. Y.
 
 ii4 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 charitable organization has any excuse for existence 
 if it is not meeting a specific need. Too often the 
 organization exists after the need has disappeared or 
 to meet a need which does not really exist. For 
 example, the few aged colored people cared for by 
 the charity club described at the beginning of the 
 chapter could have been cared for much better and 
 at less expense by the Associated Charities which 
 with a staff of trained workers covered the whole 
 city. The need for the creation of a new charity 
 should be made clear by a statement of facts which 
 can often be secured through surveys conducted by 
 experts from such organizations as the Russell Sage 
 Foundation, the National Child Labor Committee or 
 similar authoritative research agencies. Obviously, 
 the charity should not come into existence if its work 
 can be done equally well by an existing organization ; 
 while two agencies working at the same problem in 
 the same field generally should consolidate to prevent 
 unnecessary "overhead" and duplicated effort. 
 Once the need for an agency is established, knowl- 
 edge that the need continues to exist should be sup- 
 plied by periodical re-study of the situation. The 
 history of charities which have outlived their use- 
 fulness but continue because interested people enjoy 
 the activity, or the authority, or the salaries, is a 
 tragic one of wasted money and effort. 
 
 2. A Clean-Cut Ideal or Purpose. — Not only must 
 the need be recognized, but a definite method of 
 meeting it must be in mind. Thus an Associated 
 Charities plans not merely to care for the poor, but 
 to care for them and to eliminate the causes that
 
 Effective Gifts 115 
 
 make them poor, so far as possible, by the continu- 
 ous efforts of intelligent, trained workers. All of the 
 activities of the organization should be contributory 
 to that purpose. 
 
 j. Common Sense. — The program of the organi- 
 zation must be practical. Much good money has 
 been wasted in vain endeavors by impractical theo- 
 rists. The successful charity must be based on 
 knowledge of facts, with sound judgment applied to 
 their treatment. That is one reason why the pres- 
 ence of business men on the boards of social agencies 
 is desirable and why training is so important for 
 social workers. 
 
 4. Competent Counsel. — The successful charity 
 must take advantage of the best opinions it can get 
 anywhere. Boards of social agencies should be will- 
 ing to send their paid workers to such meetings as 
 the National Conference of Social Work and to visit 
 other cities where they may study the most success- 
 ful methods in actual operation. Experts should be 
 called in whenever possible to advise on the plans 
 and methods of the organization. Paid and volun- 
 teer workers should be encouraged to take social- 
 service training courses in their spare time. Books 
 and magazines on charitable subjects should be made 
 available. Frequent discussion of the problems of 
 the organization and of the community should be 
 provided through such bodies as local social workers' 
 clubs and local and state conferences of social 
 workers. 
 
 5. Discipline. — Within the organization, lines of 
 responsibility should be clearly drawn, and members
 
 n6 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 of the staff held accountable for results. Policies of 
 the organization should be well known, and workers 
 held to observance of them. Execution of the deci- 
 sions of the governing board and of the orders of 
 the executive should be prompt and thorough, in 
 contrast with the slipshod practices of many social 
 agencies, which seem to have as many plans and 
 programs as there are workers on the staff. Such 
 discipline should be maintained, however, not by the 
 fear of discharge or other penalty, but by the devel- 
 opment of an esprit de corps which can be aroused 
 through the repeated statement of the ideals of 
 the organization, through frequent staff meetings 
 at which plans are thoroughly discussed by the exec- 
 utive and workers, and through making each worker 
 feel that he has a part in a task in which all are co- 
 workers and in which the elected board and the 
 executive only have authority because of greater 
 training, experience, and judgment. 
 
 6. The Fair Deal. — In charitable organizations, 
 certainly, because of their foundation in idealism, 
 should all relations be based on the fair deal. The 
 workers must know that they will be treated fairly 
 and squarely by the executive and his board and not 
 subjected to arbitrary or petty rulings or to partisan- 
 ship or favoritism. Other social agencies must know 
 that the agency concerned will be fair in its coopera- 
 tion with them, uninfluenced by personal likes or 
 dislikes or by " pull." The clients of the agency must 
 know that it will be fair with them, playing no favor- 
 ites, giving all equal treatment and the best that can 
 be given, kindly, considerately, and thoughtfully.
 
 Effective Gifts 117 
 
 The public must know that it is getting a fair deal, 
 that it is being told all the truth about the organiza- 
 tions and nothing but the truth, that its money is 
 being spent honestly and effectively, and that its in- 
 terests are being served wholeheartedly and with 
 diligence. 
 
 7. Reliable, Immediate, and Adequate Records. — 
 Those who sneer at the " red tape of charity " and 
 object to the poor being asked " a lot of unnecessary 
 questions " show their ignorance of successful busi- 
 ness practice and of essential charitable practice. 
 Records of service rendered to individuals or fami- 
 lies and of the social facts which make such service 
 necessary are indispensable to effective social service. 
 Records are necessary if accurate knowledge is to 
 replace guesswork and memory ; if continuous, con- 
 sistent treatment of those who are " socially " sick 
 is to replace haphazard " charity " which often is as 
 harmful as it is serviceable ; if effective work is to 
 be done over a period of years with a changing staff 
 of workers ; if the poor are to be saved from the 
 repetition of questions by a succession of workers 
 from the same agency or from different agencies. 
 
 Records of service rendered are essential to the 
 preparation of reports showing the problems faced 
 by the organization and the amount of service ren- 
 dered, and to that interpretation of the work of the 
 organization to which the public is entitled. 
 
 Records must be kept up to date, legibly written 
 (preferably typewritten), kept in orderly classifica- 
 tion so that they can be quickly found for reference, 
 and be uniform for the single organization and pref-
 
 n8 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 erably uniform for as many organizations as possi- 
 ble, so that figures may be compared. 
 
 Such social bookkeeping must be matched by good 
 financial accounting checked by annual auditing by 
 an outside, disinterested agency, such as a firm of 
 certified public accountants. 
 
 Social and financial records should be combined 
 to show the cost of service, in such terms as expense 
 per patient per day for a hospital, cost per visit for 
 a public-health nursing association, and so on ; and 
 these figures should be prepared on a uniform basis, 
 so that costs for all similar organizations may be 
 compared. 
 
 8. Standards and Schedules. — From the records 
 of service and of service cost thus compiled, stand- 
 ards of performance and schedules for working on 
 these standards should be compiled. Nurses and 
 family social workers should be expected to make 
 a certain minimum number of visits a day and to 
 care for a certain minimum number of clients. At 
 the same time, standards should be set as to limits 
 above which the worker cannot go without destroy- 
 ing the effectiveness of his service. 
 
 0. Dispatching. — Standards and schedules should 
 be enforced by the superintendent or director of the 
 organization, who should see that everything needful 
 in the way of supplies and equipment is available 
 when required and that the activities of all workers 
 are carefully " dovetailed," so that there is no lost 
 time or effort. 
 
 10. Standardized Conditions. — Offices of charit- 
 able organizations should be laid out and equipped
 
 Effective Gifts 119 
 
 for the greatest comfort and convenience of the 
 workers, with adequate lighting, ventilation, and 
 toilet facilities. Institutions should be similarly 
 planned for the comfort and safety of their inmates, 
 with regard to the varied needs of old and young 
 and those suffering from special infirmities. 
 
 11. Standardised Operations. — All routine work 
 of a charitable organization should be standardized 
 and reduced so far as possible to habit. Thus, 
 records should all be prepared in the same way by 
 family workers; bandages wound in the same way 
 by nurses. This does not mean that social service 
 itself should be done mechanically ; but that in order 
 to free themselves for constructive social work, all 
 workers should be shown the easiest, quickest, and 
 best ways to do those things which may be stand- 
 ardized, and then expected to use these methods until 
 better methods are developed, when they, in turn 
 should be made the standard. Thus, family visitors 
 and public-health nurses sometimes found formerly 
 that they could make their calls more quickly and 
 easily by riding a bicycle than in walking or taking 
 the street car. Now, in sparsely settled districts, 
 such workers are being provided with automobiles, 
 and it is quite likely that in many neighborhoods it 
 will be found that a nurse with a " flivver " can do 
 more work than two nurses traveling on foot or by 
 street car, and at less than the double salary expense. 
 
 12. Written Standard Practice Instructions. — 
 Once standards and schedules are set, they should 
 be made permanent by putting them in writing. This 
 is necessary for uniformity and continuity of policy,
 
 120 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 for the instruction of new workers, and for certainty 
 in treatment of clients and in cooperation with other 
 agencies. One of the best examples of written stand- 
 ard practice instructions is given by the American 
 Red Cross, which, early in the course of the tremen- 
 dous expansion occasioned by the World War, issued 
 manuals of elementary practice for its different de- 
 partments, as, for example, the Home Service Sec- 
 tion, and then followed up these manuals by instruc- 
 tions and statements of policy printed on perforated 
 sheets which fitted into loose-leaf books. In this 
 way the activities of an organization with thousands 
 of workers were kept remarkably uniform and 
 effective throughout the country and even overseas. 
 i 5. Efficiency Reward. — No organization can be 
 kept at a high pitch of efficiency unless some reward 
 is before its workers for following the principles 
 heretofore stated. 
 
 A benighted public seems to have had the idea in 
 rears past that in charitable work the consciousness 
 of doing good should be the reward of service. It 
 was felt that paid workers should work for long 
 hours, at salaries which barely covered the cost of 
 existence, under miserable conditions, because they 
 were working for charity. Somewhat the same idea 
 is largely responsible for the low state in which the 
 Protestant ministry now finds itself in many places ; 
 and was responsible certainly for the fact that during 
 a large part of the last century charitable organiza- 
 tions were run by broken-down preachers, poor rela- 
 tives, business men who had failed in everything else 
 but were thought to be " good," elderly spinsters who
 
 Effective Gifts 121 
 
 had gotten tired of teaching school, and melancholy 
 widows of good connection who were supposed to 
 know how to raise children. 
 
 Now, however, it is being seen more and more 
 clearly that effective social service requires the same 
 order of ability and training that is required in 
 effective business ; and that to get such ability, cur- 
 rent business rates must be paid for it. Social service 
 is so exacting in its responsibilities, so incessant in its 
 demands upon the time and thought of those who are 
 earnestly engaged in it, that they are entitled at least 
 to a comfortable living wage, equal to what they 
 could have earned by the same effort in ordinary 
 business. 
 
 At present, the greatest diversity exists in social 
 workers' salaries. One of the services which is be- 
 ing rendered by national organizations such as the 
 American Red Cross and the National Organization 
 for Public Health Nursing and by local federations 
 such as the Cleveland Community Fund is the stand- 
 ardization of salaries at reasonable rates for corre- 
 sponding grades of responsibility, training, and 
 experience. 
 
 Workers are entitled to regular raises in pay, as 
 their usefulness to the organization and their length 
 of service increase ; and to the first chance at pro- 
 motion to vacancies which they are qualified to fill 
 within their organizations, rather than seeing these 
 vacancies filled by outsiders. 
 
 Social workers are entitled to vacations, not as a 
 reward for service rendered, but as a preparation for 
 work to come ; and because of the strenuous and tax-
 
 122 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 ing nature of social work, vacations of a month 
 rather than of the conventional two weeks are often 
 justified in better service. Similarly, some progress- 
 ive organizations follow the example of colleges, and 
 give their workers one year in seven as a sabbatical 
 year for study and research. 
 
 Workers should be allowed a reasonable amount 
 of sick-leave with pay ; and some progressive agen- 
 cies are working on plans for sickness-insurance for 
 their workers. 
 
 Pensions for workers grown old in service have 
 not yet been provided, so far as is known, possibly 
 because social service as a profession is so new ; but 
 pensions should surely be provided in the future. 
 
 A charity with such efficiency rewards as these 
 for its workers will find them amply justified in more 
 effective and cheerful service, and in permanency 
 of its staff. 
 
 14. Responsible Management. — Every charity 
 should be incorporated under the laws of its state. 
 The legal code of every state provides for associa- 
 tions for educational, charitable, and religious pur- 
 poses, not for profit, and with the incorporators not 
 liable for financial obligations of the organization. 
 
 The corporation should be managed by a respon- 
 sible board, which meets at least once a month. The 
 board must be made up of members who are really 
 active and not of people who merely lend their names 
 for the sake of the effect on the organization's letter- 
 head. Too many charitable boards are mere figure- 
 heads. 
 
 The board of directors should be democratically
 
 Effective Gifts 123 
 
 elected by the contributors, and should not be a self- 
 perpetuating body responsible to no one, as far too 
 often is the case. Where possible, as sometimes in 
 social settlements and community centers, the actual 
 clients or users of the organization should either 
 elect supplementary boards which advise the board 
 of directors, or elect a specified number of the direc- 
 tors. Such a plan is excellent, both because it con- 
 veys to the group representing contributors an idea 
 of the needs and desires of the clients and also 
 because it helps give the clients or users a knowledge 
 of the policies of the organization and a feeling of 
 responsibility for its successful activity. 
 
 15. Responsible Executive. — The successful char- 
 itable organization must have a competent executive, 
 fully responsible for the activities of the organiza- 
 tion. He must be free from the interference of 
 board members in the work of the organiza- 
 tion. He must have the privilege of attendance and 
 participation in the discussion at meetings of the 
 board and of its committees, unlike the practice in 
 some antiquated organizations which debate all 
 measures by themselves and then call in the execu- 
 tive to tell him what it has been decided he shall do. 
 He must be free to engage, discipline, and discharge 
 all his subordinates. He must have a staff and equip- 
 ment adequate to discharge the work of the organi- 
 zation, and to leave him time for planning. 
 
 Selling Charity 
 
 A charity organized on the foregoing principles 
 will inevitably get good results. It will produce a
 
 124 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 high-grade article of social service at low cost for 
 each unit of service. Just, however, as a factory 
 has not finished its job when it has made an auto- 
 mobile, but must proceed to create a desire for it 
 in the mind of the public and then to sell it ; so, also, 
 must modern charity conduct a campaign of adver- 
 tising and selling on the principles of successful 
 business. 
 
 Cut Out Wasteful Financial Schemes 
 
 It is obvious that wasteful and extravagant meth- 
 ods of collecting and distributing funds should be 
 eliminated. Charity balls and entertainments which 
 exact as much as sixty per cent or even more of 
 the proceeds are a clear injustice to the contributor. 
 Moreover, such devices are uneducational, leaving 
 the giver no wiser than before as to the real nature 
 of the work his money is doing, and hence necessi- 
 tate the same work of finance year after year, instead 
 of building up the interest of the giver so that his 
 gift eventually comes without solicitation. The use 
 of commissioned solicitors, who often get thirty- 
 three per cent or more of their collections (these 
 solicitors often are beautiful young women who get 
 gifts more on the basis of their charms than of the 
 charitable causes they represent) also is inexcusable. 
 
 Money Can Be Raised at Low Cost 
 
 Charitable agencies ail over the country are 
 financed adequately and economically by the efforts 
 of executives, skilled in money-raising or publicity, 
 who give part time to this work, or of full-time
 
 Effective Gifts \2\ 
 
 finance and publicity workers on salaries. Fre- 
 quently, these workers are backed up by the efforts 
 of board members. 
 
 In many cities, the principles of successful sales 
 management are applied to the organization of com- 
 munity-wide campaigns for contributions, in which 
 volunteer workers are assigned to specific territories. 
 Quotas for contributions are sent each group of 
 workers. A keen competition is aroused between 
 groups by the publication of their results. Such 
 campaigns may be for a day, a week, or longer. 
 
 A recent development of the campaign idea is 
 found in the creation of a permanent organization. 
 The workers are assigned the same territory each 
 year. They gradually become familiar with the 
 givers in the territory and take a pride in improving 
 the results secured each year from the individual 
 givers and from the territory as a whole. This 
 organization in the meantime serves as a medium 
 for popular education on the work of the organiza- 
 tion and also for referring needy persons to the 
 appropriate charities. 
 
 Such a combination of the idea of volunteer serv- 
 ice with that of a permanent "selling" organization 
 reaches its highest development in cities where 
 " community chests " include most of the city's chari- 
 ties and make one carefully budgeted annual drive 
 for funds. A financial campaign conducted on these 
 lines can reduce the cost of raising and collecting 
 funds to extremely low figures and can secure 
 remarkably large numbers of givers and amounts 
 of gifts.
 
 126 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 There is no doubt, then, that charities can be 
 financed adequately on a basis running from fifteen 
 per cent or less for the single agency with a finan- 
 cial secretary and a campaign of letters and personal 
 calls, down to two or three per cent or less for the 
 big community chest campaigns. Such figures are 
 much lower than the selling costs of most busi- 
 nesses. Every contributor ought to require an au- 
 dited report showing that his gift has been handled 
 in such economical fashion. 
 
 Publicity for Charity 
 
 Further, every giver is entitled to know what the 
 results of his gift, in human service, have been. 
 The charity which he has aided should make, at 
 least annually, to all givers, a clear and compre- 
 hensive report. The interest of the giver will be 
 greatly increased by photographs, charts, stories of 
 actual " cases " where the organization has been 
 most helpful, and by good, clear typography and 
 attractive paper in the report. A charitable organi- 
 zation which will use the opportunities for free 
 publicity offered by the newspapers, which will back 
 up this publicity by paid newspaper advertising when 
 necessary, by attractive printed matter mailed to 
 givers and prospective givers, by lantern slides and 
 films in the motion-picture theaters, and by illus- 
 trated talks in churches and before clubs and other 
 organizations, will find this business-like educational 
 program more than repaid by new contributors, in- 
 creased support and prompt renewal by present
 
 Effective Gifts 127 
 
 contributors, and by cooperation of the general pub- 
 lic in its plans for improvement of social conditions. 
 
 Eliminating Duplicated Effort 
 
 The giver is entitled still further to the assurance 
 that his gift has been expended without duplicating 
 other effort. Such assurance is given by use of the 
 Social Service Exchange, which is a card index of 
 the names and addresses of all clients of the co- 
 operating agencies. It is confidential, and even if it 
 were not, could yield no information other than 
 the name and address of the family and the names 
 of the agencies interested in it. Agencies inquir- 
 ing of families in the exchanges are given the 
 names of other agencies already interested from 
 whom details can be secured ; and, immediately, the 
 agencies previously interested are informed of the 
 inquiry by the new agency. By use of this exchange 
 repeated questioning of families for facts already 
 known to some agency is prevented, duplicated effort 
 is minimized, and teamwork in treatment is pro- 
 moted. No adequate excuse can be offered by any 
 agency giving " material relief " or doing " case 
 work" for not using the Social Service Exchange. 
 Givers should insist on it as a requisite of efficient 
 service. 
 
 Supervision for Efficiency 
 
 The average contributor to charity is not in a 
 position to know accurately the value of the service 
 rendered by the organizations which solicit his sup- 
 port. Some extremely well-to-do and conscientious
 
 128 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 givers employ charitable secretaries, who weigh the 
 merits and study the methods of those who ask the 
 bounty of their employers. This same service is 
 provided for the average contributor by the charities 
 endorsement committees of chambers of commerce, 
 which issue to members of their organizations lists 
 of agencies endorsed as meeting reasonable quali- 
 fications of business-like management and social 
 usefulness. 
 
 A service in the field of state and national chari- 
 ties similar to that provided in the field of local 
 charity by charities endorsement committees is sup- 
 plied by the National Information Bureau, with 
 headquarters in New York City. It issues lists of 
 endorsed agencies and furnishes special reports in 
 individual projects. It is proving of the greatest 
 value in suppressing " fly-by-night " solicitation 
 schemes which otherwise would have ensnared many 
 unsuspecting givers. 
 
 In addition to these types of voluntary stimula- 
 tion of efficiency, government may step in and estab- 
 lish certain standards of service. A number of cities 
 have public welfare departments, which, in addition 
 to administering the public charities and welfare 
 activities of the municipality, also issue licenses to 
 properly conducted private charities. Many states, 
 further, maintain state boards of charities ; which, 
 in addition to either administering or supervising 
 state institutions, issue licenses to private agencies, 
 chiefly in the field of child-care. 
 
 An interesting development of the idea of public 
 supervision is seen in the Indianapolis Community
 
 Effective Gifts 129 
 
 Welfare Board which may "manage and control 
 any unconditional gift, devise, or bequest to the 
 city not made for any specific purpose and also any 
 gift, devise, or bequest to the city for community 
 welfare purposes ; and may apply any fund subject 
 to its administration to any enterprise which may 
 involve the health, education, safety, pleasure, com- 
 fort, welfare or convenience of or benefit to the 
 citizens of the city." 
 
 Safeguarding Charitable Bequests 
 
 This plan suggests the whole question of safe- 
 guarding bequests for philanthropic purposes. Since 
 the early Christian era, charitable people have left, 
 by will, funds to endow benevolent causes ; and ever 
 since that time, difficulty has been found in making 
 the terms of bequest fit changing conditions of life. 
 Of recent years, wealthy men, such as Russell Sage 
 and Andrew Carnegie have established foundations, 
 under boards of trustees, which may administer in 
 perpetuity for the benefit of humanity the funds at 
 their disposal. In order to make possible this same 
 flexibility in administering endowments for chari- 
 table causes, " community foundations " have been 
 established in a score or more of American cities, 
 by trust companies or groups of trust companies, 
 which serve as the repositories for funds, the income 
 of which is expended for current charitable needs as 
 determined by a permanent " foundation board." 
 Perhaps the most distinguished example is the Cleve- 
 land Foundation, which in addition to receiving 
 bequests of large amounts, has conducted a number
 
 130 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 of valuable community surveys both to ascertain 
 how best to expend its funds and also to make avail- 
 able to the whole community facts as to social 
 conditions and needs. The foundation plan makes 
 it possible for the average citizen to die with the 
 pleasing knowledge that his influence will live on 
 through the effective service of his bequest, large 
 or small. 
 
 ' Teamwork Essential to Effective Service 
 
 Safeguards, however elaborate, will not give the 
 fullest value to a gift. Its most complete effective- 
 ness will only come when it is made a potent factor 
 for good by the cooperation of all charities and 
 social agencies, public or private. It has been 
 shown that the fields of social service are not sepa- 
 rate areas, but that they overlap. One family may 
 require assistance on account of family troubles, 
 child- welfare difficulties, ill health, poor mentality, 
 and inadequate recreation. Poverty, disease, igno- 
 rance, vice, and crime go hand in hand. The prob- 
 lems they bring about are so various, and the amount 
 of work to be done in comparison with the funds 
 and workers available are so great, that only if 
 charitable agencies also go hand in hand, can any 
 headway be made. Teamwork in human service, 
 consultation and conference on the problems of 
 service, mutual endeavor to raise the standards of 
 service are as essential to effective expenditure of 
 gifts, as are economy and freedom from waste. No 
 charity can stand alone these days. 
 
 A beginning of cooperation is provided by the
 
 Effective Gifts 131 
 
 Social Service Exchange already mentioned; but a 
 cooperation limited practically to individual cases. 
 Present-day cooperation must be broader than that. 
 It must rest on mutual knowledge of community 
 problems, mutual agreement as to what action shall 
 be taken on these problems, and mutual action in 
 executing these problems. Such teamwork is being 
 provided by the so-called " councils of social agen- 
 cies " which have developed so rapidly within the 
 past decade that now practically no city of any size 
 and possessed of a dozen or more social agencies 
 feels itself complete without one. 
 
 " City Planning in Flesh and Blood " 
 
 The council is essentially a clearing-house for all 
 of a city's activities, public or private, in any way 
 concerned with the public welfare. It may include 
 charities, endowed institutions, city departments, 
 public-school systems, civic and labor organizations, 
 federations of churches, or any other group con- 
 cerned in community betterment. It serves as a 
 sort of board for " city planning in flesh and blood." 
 A great variety of committees may be organized, on 
 such subjects as child welfare, family welfare, 
 health, recreation, mental hygiene, central purchas- 
 ing, Social Service Exchange, and so on through 
 many functions, any one of which any group of 
 agencies may wish to perform in common. Each 
 committee brings together the representatives of 
 all the agencies interested in the problem, for 
 common discussion and action. In general, these 
 committees are purely advisory, and do not attempt
 
 132 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 to render any actual social service. Their task is to 
 get things done, chiefly through directing to the 
 problem the activities of existing agencies. Some- 
 times, however, services of mutual advantage are 
 undertaken, as in central purchasing. The advan- 
 tages of cooperation in studying the city's needs and 
 in seeing that every phase of every welfare problem 
 is met in the best possible way are obvious. The 
 power of a gift is magnified by teamwork. 
 
 Joint Money-Raising Desirable 
 In many of the cities where these councils exist, 
 most or all of the charities which must raise funds 
 by contributions have combined in a unified financial 
 campaign. 
 
 The advantages of such a method of finance are 
 obvious — reduction of cost of raising funds; saving 
 in time of volunteer solicitors for funds; relief of 
 the giver from repeated solicitation ; standardization 
 of bookkeeping methods and consequent improve- 
 ment in business methods of the cooperating chari- 
 ties ; evening up finances of the charities, so that all 
 have enough to do their work properly and none 
 have unused balances lying idle ; planning of social 
 work on a careful budgetary basis, related to the 
 social needs of the community ; opportunity for the 
 giver to put his own giving on a similarly careful 
 budgetary basis and to plan at one time all his giving 
 for the whole year ; and release of charitable boards 
 from continued money-grubbing so that they can 
 do real social service. 
 
 The interest of the giver is not diminished by
 
 Effective Gifts 133 
 
 interposing this new financial agency, for he may 
 designate on the subscription card any agency which 
 he wishes to receive any part of his gift; while, 
 usually, a carefully planned, year-round publicity 
 program made possible by the centralization of 
 finance and publicity keeps him closer in touch than 
 ever before with the service his gift is rendering. 
 
 More givers, larger gifts, more effective gifts, and 
 happier givers are reported to be the practically 
 unanimous experience of the communities which 
 work out properly the plant of unifying all appeals 
 for funds. The table below indicates the financial 
 success of the " Community Chest " plan in a few 
 cities. Under this plan the difficulties of the giver 
 seem to be removed so far as is possible, and his 
 pleasure in constructive charity to be raised to the 
 highest degree. 
 
 Popula- 1920 Am' t per 
 City Organization tion Budget Capita 
 
 Saginaw, Mich... Welfare League 65,000 $ 428,617.20 $6.59 
 
 Cincinnati, O. ... Community Chest 401,158 2,100,000.00 5.23 
 
 Cleveland, O Welfare Federation.. . .796,836 4,000,000.00 5.02 
 
 Detroit, Mich. ... Community Union 993,739 4,000,000.00 4.03 
 
 Rochester, N. Y.. Patriotic and Com- 
 munity Fund 395,000 1,163,272.52 3.94 
 
 Plainfield and N. 
 
 Plainfield, N. J. Community Chest 35,000 133,900.00 3.83 
 
 Rome, N. Y Community Chest 24,000 88,847.75 3.70 
 
 Minneapolis, 
 
 Minn Council of Social 
 
 Agencies 380,498 1,251,566.00 3.27 
 
 Orange, East Or- 
 ange. South 
 
 Orange, West 
 
 Orange and 
 
 Maplewood, N. 
 
 J. Welfare Federation. .. .105,000 340,342.00 3.24 
 
 Youngstown, O.. Community Corpora- 
 tion 125,000 400,000.00 3.20 
 
 Erie. Pa Community Chest 102,093 319,667.44 3.13 
 
 Dayton, O Community Chest 153,000 450,000.00 2.22 
 
 Toledo, O Community Chest 243,000 500,000.00 2.06
 
 134 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 The principles given in this chapter for the effi- 
 cient organization, management, and "marketing" 
 of a charity, and for the cooperation of charities for 
 efficiently serving their mutual requirements and the 
 community's needs, show that gifts can be given an 
 effectiveness which was not even suspected until 
 recent years. Charity can be run on the business 
 basis of the most effective corporation ; and by virtue 
 of the freedom made possible by this very fact, can 
 be made, still, to have all the sympathy, all the 
 love, all the kindliness, all the insight, all the flexi- 
 bility of the most perfect individual. " Efficiency," 
 says Harrington Emerson, " is the easiest, quickest, 
 and best way to the most desirable things of life ; 
 and is not that what the giver wants in his charity ? "
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE WIDOW'S MITE 
 
 IN a recent campaign for charitable funds the 
 card of a well-to-do woman "prospect" was 
 returned without a subscription, but with this pen- 
 ciled comment by the volunteer solicitor who had 
 tried to secure a gift, " Said she couldn't give a cent ; 
 but I know she has three maids, a butler, and two 
 motor cars." 
 
 About the same time, I accompanied two of our 
 most effective volunteer solicitors, regular "wheel 
 horses" noted for their success in wringing gifts 
 from reluctant contributors, in a call on a gentleman 
 who had never been known to contribute to any 
 cause, either in connection with his business associa- 
 tion or with charity. " No, I can't give you a cent," 
 he said evasively, " I've already given away seven- 
 teen and one-quarter per cent of my income — more 
 than my income tax allows. I've given it all direct, 
 but I've given it." Nothing that my companions or 
 I could say could budge him. " Well," they said as 
 they departed, "we didn't do any worse than we 
 expected. He never gave anything to any cause that 
 we ever heard of." 
 
 On the other hand, I have known people who gave 
 far out of proportion to what others of the same 
 income were giving; and I have known one of our 
 
 i35
 
 136 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 most effective volunteer workers to advise a gen- 
 erous woman giver not to subscribe as much as she 
 offered to, because he did not think she could 
 afford it. 
 
 In general, I should say, the average citizen is 
 generous, and wants to give his full share to the 
 charities which have a just claim on him. What, 
 however, this full and fair share may be is often a 
 difficult question to answer ; and lists of givers reveal 
 the greatest disparity between the opinions of various 
 citizens. 
 
 "Hozv Much Shall I Give?" 
 
 The question of how much to give has long been 
 of concern to the charitable. The ancient Jews 
 devised a tithing system, the giving of a tenth of 
 one's income to church and charity. St. Augustine 
 directed the faithful "to give one's superfluity to 
 him that hath need ; to give of one's temporal abun- 
 dance to deliver his brother from temporal tribula- 
 tion." "What am I bound to give?" inquired St. 
 Thomas Aquinas ; and he answered himself, thus, 
 " My superfluity." A more modern idea was ex- 
 pressed in the slogan used during the war charity 
 campaigns — " Give until it hurts." A still more 
 recent development is the attempt made by the Inter- 
 church World Movement and the various denomina- 
 tional campaigns which have been associated in it, 
 to create " Christian Stewards " who will give at 
 least one-tenth of their income to the church, regard- 
 less of any other gifts they may make to unsectarian 
 causes. None of these slogans or catch-words, how-
 
 The Widow's Mite 137 
 
 ever, indicates very closely what the average citizen 
 should give to all charitable causes. 
 
 Modern Giving on a Wholesale Scale 
 
 More adequate evidence as to the citizen's respon- 
 sibility for giving is found in the experience of 
 various American cities which since the World War 
 have established so-called " Community Chests " 
 that include all charitable appeals, whether for local, 
 state, national or international purposes. The re- 
 sults of some of these campaigns for the budgets of 
 the year 1920 were given at the end of the last 
 chapter. 
 
 It is quite evident that many people in these cities 
 do not give at all. For example, Cleveland's Com- 
 munity Chest campaign for 1920 secured 150,000 
 givers; Cincinnati's, 50,000. A large number of 
 these contributors gave small amounts only. Obvi- 
 ously, other givers must contribute larger amounts 
 to make up the difference and must give, not merely 
 in proportion to their incomes, but in proportion to 
 their surpluses over the mere expenses of living. 
 In some of these big community campaigns, gifts of 
 $50,000, $100,000, and more are not unknown. The 
 most well-to-do must bear the heaviest portion of 
 the burden ; but everyone who can give at all should 
 give in proportion to his ability. 
 
 Giving as " One of a Group " 
 
 A successful method of scaling gifts is the "one- 
 of-a-group" method, whereby the giver decides to 
 become one of a group of givers of a certain amount.
 
 138 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 For example, if a city has one man who can afford 
 to give $100,000, it ought to have two men who each 
 can give half as much, five who can give a fifth as 
 much, and so on, after this fashion: 
 
 Size of Gift 
 
 Number in Group 
 
 Total for Group 
 
 $100,000 
 
 1 
 
 $100,000 
 
 50,000 
 
 2 
 
 100,000 
 
 25,000 
 
 4 
 
 100,000 
 
 10,000 
 
 10 
 
 100,000 
 
 5,000 
 
 20 
 
 100,000 
 
 2,500 
 
 40 
 
 100,000 
 
 1,000 
 
 100 
 
 100,000 
 
 500 
 
 200 
 
 100,000 
 
 250 
 
 400 
 
 100,000 
 
 100 
 
 1,000 
 
 100,000 
 
 50 
 
 2,000 
 
 100,000 
 
 25 
 
 4,000 
 
 100,000 
 
 10 
 
 10,000 
 
 100,000 
 
 5 
 
 20,000 
 
 100,000 
 
 2 
 
 50,000 
 
 100,000 
 
 1 
 
 100,000 
 
 100,000 
 
 Totals 187,777 $1,600,000 
 
 This plan cannot of course be exactly followed, 
 but with it as a guide, givers can place themselves in 
 the groups in which they belong. 
 
 Shall Gifts Be Published? 
 
 With this one-of-a-group plan, which has the 
 further advantage of giving a contributor a certain 
 pride of place, would necessarily go at least in part, 
 the policy of publishing the names and amounts of 
 subscriptions. Some objection has been raised to 
 such publication, on the score that the left hand 
 should not know what the right hand does, but ample
 
 The Widow's Mite 139 
 
 precedent exists in church history, for it is recorded 
 that in the early Christian Church the bishop, when 
 he distributed alms among the poor, was to tell the 
 recipients the name of the giver, so that they might 
 pray for him by name. In addition to securing the 
 potential value of the blessings of those who are 
 benefited by charity, publication of names and 
 amounts also has a wholesome effect on givers whose 
 generosity might be less if they did not know that 
 the public would know what they gave; while he 
 who is really charitable should not mind having his 
 gift published if it will help serve as a standard for 
 the giving of others less sure of what they ought to 
 give. 
 
 Given the standards set by information as to the 
 amount per capita given in his city, by a scale of giv- 
 ing on the one-of-a-group plan, and by a published 
 list of names and amounts, the giver can probably 
 figure out pretty well what he ought to contribute. 
 
 Giving by Budget 
 
 Probably the best system of giving is to make a 
 budget based on the year's income, and to allot to all 
 philanthropic causes as much as can be spared or as 
 the giver feels he ought to give. This amount set 
 aside for giving should then be further divided into 
 various causes, including church, child- welfare work, 
 health-work, family welfare work, leisure-time activ- 
 ities, and so on. The amount to be given to each of 
 these causes should depend upon the number of 
 people likely to share in the burden. For example, 
 one would give more to help support a church with
 
 140 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 an annual budget of $10,000 a year and 200 mem- 
 bers, than he would to support a child-placing agency 
 with a budget of $10,000, but with a giver's list of 
 1,000. 
 
 Every giver should b^ a well-rounded giver, rather 
 than one who gives exclusively to some one cause. 
 
 After the year's budget of giving has been thus 
 planned it should be divided up into payments on 
 some convenient time basis such as monthly, quar- 
 terly, or semiannually. 
 
 All this may seem like a great deal of trouble, 
 but surely if one gives at all, he wants to give both 
 wisely and well. The only easier way to give intelli- 
 gently is by giving through the financial federations 
 and community chests which are described in the 
 previous chapter. While such federated funds exist 
 in forty or more cities at the present time, the greater 
 number of givers in this country have not yet 
 available the relief which federation affords. Under 
 any circumstances, however, he who makes an art 
 of his giving will plan his gift with a direct rela- 
 tionship to his income and to the needs of his com- 
 munity, distributing it carefully, and with due regard 
 to the service it will render. 
 
 The Will to Give 
 
 These suggestions, practical as they are, do not 
 settle entirely the question of how much one can 
 give. Guideposts, they are, indeed, on the road to 
 giving; but, after all, the really decisive factor is 
 the will to give and to help one's fellows in the 
 manifold kinds of distress which afflict them in our
 
 The Widow's Mite 141 
 
 modern cities. Most of us, as a matter of fact, give 
 far less than we could, if we would. We want so 
 many other things worse than we want to give — 
 trips to the seashore and to the mountains, for 
 example, when there are multitudes at our very 
 doors who cannot even get into the open country 
 that lies about our cities for much-needed recrea- 
 tion ; new clothes, when our old clothes would do 
 another season and when there are many souls who 
 live in veriest tatters; new motor cars, when our 
 old ones would do and there are many who lack the 
 necessities of life; ostentatious dinners and parties, 
 when many have not enough food to eat. I have 
 known respectable citizens who spent more for a 
 buffet supper for a few friends than they give in the 
 whole year to all of a city's philanthropic activities. 
 The trouble of course is that they do not really care 
 as much as they pretend to for their fellow-men; 
 and that in their sleek comfort they lack the imagina- 
 tion to see the troubles which afflict those who live 
 but a few blocks from their comfortable homes. 
 
 The story is told of a wealthy woman who came 
 in from a drive on a bitterly cold day and said 
 to her chauffeur, " James, prepare a basket of food 
 for the poor at once. They must be suffering 
 greatly." Ten minutes later, after thoroughly warm- 
 ing herself in front of her crackling grate fire, she 
 called James and said, " I guess you needn't bother 
 about that basket for the poor. It isn't as cold as I 
 thought it was." 
 
 Whether we are givers or social workers, the 
 responsibility rests on each one of us who sees the
 
 142 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 problem of human service and the need for it, to 
 use every possible means of arousing the under- 
 standing and stirring the consciences of those who 
 do not see and who do not care. We must make 
 the cause of human brotherhood so important and 
 so popular, that it will overshadow the claims of 
 ostentatious expenditure and competitive display. 
 We must make it a vital factor in the lives of all 
 our citizens — or else many other things than charity 
 will suffer. 
 
 No more fitting summary of the argument for 
 generous giving can be presented than the following 
 quotation from a very Good Book : 
 
 And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld 
 how the people cast money into the treasury : and many 
 that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain 
 poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a 
 farthing. And he called unto him his disciples, and 
 saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor 
 widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast 
 into the treasury : For all they did cast in of their abun- 
 dance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, 
 even all her living.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE GIVER WITH THE GIFT 
 
 The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 
 
 In whatso we share with another's need; 
 
 Not what zee give, but what we share, 
 
 For the gift without the giver is bare; 
 
 Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, 
 
 Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me. 
 
 Thus sang the transfigured leper to Sir Launfal 
 in days long gone by ; and thus still sings the spirit 
 of service in the souls of those who really love their 
 fellow-man. To give of one's surplus surely is 
 necessary, to give until it hurts is certainly credita- 
 ble ; but still more desirable is it to give of one's 
 thought and time and energy in personal human 
 service. 
 
 Volunteer Service Must Be Organised 
 
 Evidently, the desire to render such service is 
 general. It is behind the impulse of the man who 
 gives a coin to the beggar on the street or of the 
 housewife who gives a handout to the " bum " at 
 her back door. Intelligent people, who are familiar 
 with the facts given previously in this book, realize 
 the futility of such giving. The remedy is to provide 
 channels for constructive giving of money through 
 
 143
 
 144 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 carefully organized charities, and then to give oppor- 
 tunity for those who wish to render personal service 
 through proper arrangement made by these same 
 charities. 
 
 The days of the individual giver to his private 
 poor have gone forever. " Lady Bountiful " is a 
 caricature of a type of benevolence which has passed 
 beyond recall. As was made clear in chapter iii, 
 the problems of the poor are so numerous and so 
 complicated and the agencies which may be brought 
 into play to solve these difficulties are so various, 
 that the person who wants to give money can usually 
 only be sure of its effectiveness when it is trans- 
 formed into the activities of a competent organiza- 
 tion. So also the person who wants to render per- 
 sonal service must render it through some agency 
 which can advise and direct him and back him up 
 with a great variety of resources. 
 
 Danger of Unrelated Effort 
 
 Individual effort, unrelated to that of existing 
 agencies, is likely to be not only ineffective but posi- 
 tively damaging. I have in mind a group of kindly 
 ladies who one day telephoned the Associated Chari- 
 ties in one of our cities to the effect that they would 
 like the Associated Charities to send milk to the 
 Jones family. 
 
 " You don't need to make any investigation," said 
 the good woman who was telephoning. " We have 
 been taking care of the Jones' for a long time and 
 all they need, beyond the other food we have been
 
 The Giver With the Gift 145 
 
 giving them, is this milk, which we haven't enough 
 money to get for them." 
 
 In spite of this assurance, the Associated Chari- 
 ties visitor called, and found that Father and Mother 
 Jones were dying of tuberculosis ; that their appear- 
 ance of poverty had been enhanced by the fact that 
 they had sold most of their furniture, knowing they 
 would die ; and that the diet which the ladies had 
 been providing was entirely unsuited to the tuber- 
 culous. A doctor and tuberculosis nurse were called, 
 but it was too late. The father and mother died. 
 The five small children were all found to be infected 
 with tuberculosis, of which they were only cured 
 after long and expensive treatment. They then had 
 to be turned over to a child-placing society for 
 adoption. 
 
 Such, too often, are the results of amateur charity 
 in our complicated modern cities. 
 
 An Old Idea in New Form 
 
 The idea of rendering non-professional, volunteer 
 service in an organized way is not new. As early 
 as the twelfth century St. Francis of Assisi estab- 
 lished rules of order for the Tertiaries, or members 
 of his Third Order (the First Order included the 
 Franciscan friars and the Second Order the nuns). 
 The Tertiaries were lay men and women who lived 
 as other people but were bound to deeds of religious 
 and charitable service in cooperation with the mem- 
 bers of the First and Second Orders. This Third 
 Order became exceedingly popular, and kings and 
 emperors and women of high rank, as well as great
 
 146 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 numbers of the more common people, joined it. In 
 the course of time, similar groups of lay workers 
 were attached to the Dominicans, the Augustinians, 
 the Benedictines, and the other mendicant and mo- 
 nastic orders. St. Vincent de Paul in the seventeenth 
 century in France helped to bring about a revival of 
 interest in such volunteer service, particularly in 
 behalf of the sick, of the imprisoned, and of unmar- 
 ried mothers and their children. At the present day 
 lay service in connection with Roman Catholic char- 
 itable orders seems to be on the increase ; while more 
 and more people of all religious faiths are endeavor- 
 ing to find means for effective personal service to 
 those in need. 
 
 Wide Scope for Volunteers 
 
 The opportunities for personal service now are 
 greater than ever they were before. This is indicated 
 by the tremendous variety of social service activities 
 previously described. He who wants to serve can 
 utilize any aptitude he has for the well-being of 
 others, from exercising a talent for housekeeping in 
 instructing inefficient housewives, to employing a 
 knack of imitating birdcalls in entertaining the chil- 
 dren of an orphan asylum. He can give, further, 
 any amount of time he chooses, from an hour once 
 a year to all day, every day, week in and week out. 
 
 The Volunteer Salesman 
 
 The opportunity for service in connection with the 
 financial campaigns of various charities and com- 
 munity chests has been mentioned. Such service
 
 The Giver With the Gift 147 
 
 often is all that a person can render. It can be made 
 most valuable if the worker adds to his annual 
 campaign work of solicitation the function of talking 
 about the charity whenever the occasion offers, 
 throughout the year. By thus serving as a center 
 of publicity he can lighten his own task of money- 
 raising in the next campaign and can help in advanc- 
 ing the whole social service movement. 
 
 Useful as this financial service is, it still lacks the 
 pleasure of personal contact with the person served 
 and the advantage which may be given to that person 
 through the personality of the volunteer. Our pur- 
 pose here is to discuss some of the opportunities 
 which exist for real personal service on a volunteer 
 basis and the conditions which should govern such 
 service. 
 
 Opportunities for volunteer service exist in all 
 the fields of charity which we have described. 
 
 Helping the Poor to Help Themselves 
 
 In the field of family welfare, one may serve as 
 a member of a " case committee," helping with his 
 advice to solve family problems as presented by the 
 district workers ; or may give as much time as he 
 chooses in visiting the families themselves in their 
 homes and in helping to work out their problems. 
 Many are the instances where a man or woman of 
 strong character and wide experience has been able, 
 through sympathy and tact, actually to regenerate a 
 family ; while often, even when such improvement 
 is not possible, the friendly visitor brings a fund of 
 good cheer and encouragement which is of the great-
 
 148 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 est value in softening the rigors of life for the 
 unfortunate. One of the prime requirements of 
 such service among the poor is that it be marked by 
 simplicity and friendliness, without any condescen- 
 sion. The relation of volunteer to client must be 
 one of mutual trust and sympathy. 
 
 "Become as a Little Child" 
 
 In the field of child welfare much valuable service 
 also may be rendered. One may take into his home, 
 temporarily, children who are being held for adop- 
 tion or for return to their parents when transient 
 difficulties are over. He may visit in the homes of 
 neglected children and try to help work out their 
 difficulties. He may keep in touch with children 
 who have been "placed out" for adoption, to see 
 that all is going well. He may become a Big Brother 
 to a delinquent boy ; or " she," a Big Sister to a 
 wayward girl. He may organize games, read, or 
 give musical performances in children's institutions. 
 Work with children is difficult, because to get the 
 best results one must " become as a little child ;" but 
 it offers great joy and satisfaction. 
 
 Caring for the Sick and Injured 
 
 In the field of health great opportunities for serv- 
 ice exist. While the good soul of today no longer 
 goes around nursing the sick poor, because public 
 health nurses and charity hospitals do this work 
 much better, much work still remains for volunteer 
 hands to do. The Red Cross during the World War 
 showed the opportunities for unpaid workers in
 
 The Giver With the Gift 149 
 
 winding bandages, sewing hospital linen, and prepar- 
 ing layettes for infants. On a lesser scale, this work 
 still remains to be done for our ordinary hospitals 
 and nursing associations. It offers a pleasant and 
 useful type of activity for church sewing societies 
 and hospital auxiliaries. Women trained in home 
 nursing or given short courses in the elements of 
 public-health nursing may be of great service in time 
 of epidemic, as during the influenza epidemic of 
 1 91 8- 19. Valuable service can be rendered in visit- 
 ing hospitals and reading to patients or talking with 
 them cheerfully ; while among convalescents and 
 particularly children, much may be done in the way 
 of providing training in handicrafts and leader- 
 ship in games. In connection with hospital service 
 departments, one may visit in the homes of the 
 sick and help work out the problems which have 
 caused the sickness or which may hamper recovery 
 when the patient returns home. 
 
 In the field of mental hygiene similar opportunities 
 for service are presented. One may help train the 
 inmates of institutions for the insane or feeble- 
 minded in occupations, provide entertainment of 
 various sorts, and visit in their homes to help work 
 out domestic problems. Contrary to general belief, 
 most of the insane are not dangerous, and the feeble- 
 minded are merely little children in mind. 
 
 Widest Range in Leisure-Time Activity 
 
 In the field of leisure-time activities perhaps the 
 greatest variety of volunteer service may be ren- 
 dered. One may become a Boy Scout master or a
 
 I 5° Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 Girl Scout leader ; teach citizenship, English, arith- 
 metic, or other subjects to men and women of for- 
 eign birth ; coach backward girls and boys in their 
 studies ; supervise a gameroom ; help direct activi- 
 ties on a playground ; conduct classes in manual 
 training, music, sewing, cooking, clay modeling, 
 painting, printing, or any one of a multitude of other 
 subjects; conduct hikes; provide musical or other 
 entertainment at club or neighborhood parties ; work 
 with " difficult " boys or girls and through personal 
 advice and help keep them from getting into trouble. 
 The opportunities in this field are as infinite as the 
 likes and desires of human nature itself. 
 
 Such in brief are the opportunities for personal 
 service which present themselves to the person who 
 wishes to give himself along with his gift. 
 
 The Value of Volunteer Service 
 
 The satisfactions of such service are manifold 
 and the rewards many, both to the person who is 
 served and to the person who renders the service. 
 The volunteer will find his own sympathies broad- 
 ened, his understanding deepened, and his outlook on 
 life widened. Valuable, too, are the results to the 
 organization which secures volunteer workers. It may 
 do its usual work with fewer paid workers, or more 
 work with the same staff of workers and may count 
 on the volunteer workers to act as centers for in- 
 forming the public on the work of the organization. 
 The infusion of the outside point of view helps pre- 
 vent the organization's point of view from becoming
 
 The Giver With the Gift 151 
 
 too highly institutionalized — that is, if the volun- 
 teers are of right quality and may be depended on. 
 
 The Rules of Volunteer Service 
 
 This last proviso suggests that if volunteer service 
 is to be of any value, or, indeed, of not more harm 
 than good, certain regulations and requirements must 
 be set for it except for the most casual kind of 
 impersonal entertainment. The volunteer should 
 first of all have an understanding of the general 
 field in which he is attempting to serve, as, say, the 
 family welfare field ; and some acquaintance, also, 
 with the principles of the specific task he is under- 
 taking, as, say, the instruction of housewives in 
 family budgets. Second, the volunteer should be 
 willing to keep in touch with current developments 
 in the field in which he is serving, through reading 
 such a social service magazine as the Survey, read- 
 ing the best books which are published, and attending 
 conferences and lectures on social subjects. Fur- 
 ther, the volunteer must be regular in his service 
 and be dependable. Much volunteer work in recrea- 
 tion centers is more bother than it is worth because 
 half the time the person who has promised to con- 
 duct, say, a manual training class, fails to appear at 
 the scheduled time, and a paid worker has to be on 
 the job to instruct the boys or else the organization 
 suffers a severe loss of confidence on the part of 
 those it is trying to serve. Moreover, it is generally 
 better for the volunteer to do one job well than to 
 give partial attention to several tasks; better, for 
 example, to devote one's self to one needy family
 
 152 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 than to give the same amount of time to half a dozen. 
 Finally, volunteer service must be supervised. The 
 volunteer must be responsible to a trained worker 
 with whom he advises concerning the problems he 
 meets and the solution he applies. In his service 
 the volunteer must be subject to all the principles 
 which have been enumerated as essential to an effi- 
 cient organization. They are the " rules of the 
 game " which all workers, whether paid or unpaid, 
 must play by. 
 
 A Clearing-House for Volunteers 
 
 One of the chief problems of the person who wants 
 to render volunteer service is to find opportunity for 
 his service. The method of making application at 
 one agency after another for permission to help is 
 wearisome and unsatisfactory, and likely to tire out 
 the volunteer before he finds a niche in which he 
 can be most effective. The only sensible method is 
 for the charities of a city to unite as a council of 
 social agencies, as described in the chapter on " Ef- 
 fective Gifts " and then to let this council maintain 
 a clearing-house for volunteer workers. This cen- 
 tral office can direct volunteers to the charities which 
 can best use their abilities and most need them. It 
 can advertise the opportunities for volunteer service, 
 so as to reach many people who had not previously 
 thought of such service. It can conduct training 
 courses for volunteers, organize series of lectures, 
 issue courses of reading, and standardize the require- 
 ments for volunteer service for all the agencies of 
 each type. Teamwork in handling gifts of service
 
 The Giver With the Gift 153 
 
 is as valuable as teamwork in handling gifts of 
 money. 
 
 Promotion for Volunteers 
 
 The volunteer need not stop at service of the kinds 
 described. Many volunteers have developed such 
 ability and such interest in their work that they have 
 become full-time, professional social workers. Many 
 others have developed such an interest and showed 
 it so effectively, that they have been elected as mem- 
 bers of the boards of directors of the organizations 
 in which they have served, and thus helped to put 
 into action constructive policies, the reasons for 
 which they learned as actual workers. Certainly, 
 also, volunteer service in giving time is the best 
 possible basis for an understanding to guide the 
 giving of money. 
 
 Volunteer service thus is seen to be of the utmost 
 importance in contributing to the well-being of those 
 in need, in aiding charitable organizations to do their 
 work well and adequately, and in satisfaction to the 
 volunteer, himself. It requires intelligence, patience, 
 persistence, and the cooperative spirit, and can utilize 
 all the talents, all the training, all the experience and 
 all the time the volunteer is willing to devote to it. 
 When properly rendered, it is the highest form of 
 giving, for with it the giver gives himself.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 WHITHER ? 
 
 AND thus, at last, we have come to the end of 
 this little guide book which strives to describe 
 for wayfarers through the land of life one of its 
 pleasantest routes. 
 
 " What," you may ask, " is the use of all these 
 minute directions as to the roads to follow, and the 
 pleasant sights to see and the experiences to be 
 enjoyed, if the route is to be put out of business? 
 We hear so much talk these days that poverty is to 
 be abolished, that charity is to disappear, that social- 
 ism and syndicalism and single-tax-ism and birth- 
 control-ism and social-legislation-ism and general 
 prosperity-ism will banish all need for philanthropy 
 and social service. Perhaps your guideposts and 
 landmarks, so carefully indicated, will soon stand 
 stark and useless on a road which is overgrown with 
 lush grass that knows no travelers' foot." 
 
 Charity to Remain 
 
 Alas, that this prophecy is not likely to come true ! 
 Would that poverty, disease, ignorance, shiftless- 
 ness, untimely death, inequality of opportunity and 
 ability, vice, and crime might disappear from the 
 face of the earth ; and that all the millions of men 
 who swarm thereupon might become equally aoble, 
 
 i54
 
 W hither f 155 
 
 happy, independent, self-supporting, and robust. 
 Such an evolution may take place in some dim and 
 distant millenium ; but still, for many hundreds and 
 thousands of years to come, there will be opportu- 
 nity, of some sort or another, for those of us who 
 feel sympathy and pity and compassion; who are 
 moved by the calls of duty, justice, religious obliga- 
 tion, and a broad humanity, to show, through sharing 
 our worldly goods and our energies, that we do love 
 our neighbors as ourselves. 
 
 Much Poverty Will Be Eliminated 
 
 The needs, indeed, which charity is called on to 
 meet will change. There is no doubt that some of the 
 reforms which are so valiantly agitated at the present 
 time will help greatly to modify our present prob- 
 lems of poverty, to lessen the acuteness of distress 
 and to distribute more widely the wealth of the 
 community and of the nation. The preventable haz- 
 ards of life, such as sickness, accident, untimely 
 death, and unemployment, may be very greatly elimi- 
 nated. Old age will doubtless be robbed of much 
 of its terrors by pensions ; and accident and sickness 
 encountered in the course of work will be compen- 
 sated by disability pensions and health insurances. 
 Compulsory education with increasingly high age 
 requirements, coupled with continuation education 
 after a young person goes to work, given force by 
 vocational training for specialized pursuits and given 
 point by mental tests which will adjudge the fitness 
 of each child for a particular type of work, will 
 produce men and women more able to earn their
 
 156 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 own living. A universal system of labor exchanges 
 will greatly reduce unemployment. Segregation of 
 all feeble-minded as the result of tests early in life 
 will remove most of our criminal, vicious, and shift- 
 less classes. The housing and city-planning move- 
 ment will endeavor to see to it that every citizen 
 lives in an attractive and wholesome home. The 
 recreation movement will offer everyone a chance for 
 joyous play and for self-expression in a multitude 
 of ways. Industrial processes will be better adapted 
 to the physical and spiritual needs of the workers, 
 and we shall have fewer men and women " worked 
 out" in the prime of life. Despite all these rosy 
 prophecies, which will surely be realized in greater 
 or less degree, there still will be people in various 
 sorts of need. No system works perfectly. The 
 civilization of the future will break down in this 
 place and that and human nature will here and there 
 revert to old types. Charity will still have work 
 to do. 
 
 The methods, too, of charity will surely change, 
 as its problems change. 
 
 City Will Assume Many Activities 
 
 As community after community becomes prac- 
 tically a community of givers, through the operation 
 of unified campaigns which secure subscriptions from 
 almost every able-bodied person, and as the whole 
 community is more and more completely " sold " on 
 the question of social service, the question will nat- 
 urally arise, "Why not substitute this voluntary 
 giving, which is practically universal, for taxation,
 
 IV hither f i$7 
 
 which is universal ? " In consequence, many activi- 
 ties, now privately financed, will be taken over by 
 the community. Public-health activities, including 
 home nursing and hospital treatment probably will 
 be among the first to be taken over by the state. On 
 them depends the community's well-being; and the 
 community cannot afford to let any special group in 
 its number, no matter how wise, finance and direct so 
 vital a function. Family welfare work is already 
 being done in some cities as a function of govern- 
 ment, notably in Detroit ; and as it becomes possible 
 to trust municipal officers to administer so delicate a 
 function without partisanship and with trained and 
 competent workers given assurance of employment 
 so long as they render satisfactory service, more and 
 more communities will be willing to see their Associ- 
 ated Charities transformed into city social service 
 bureaus. It probably will not be long before the state 
 assumes complete responsibility for dependent and 
 neglected children, with special attention given to 
 home-finding and child-placing by competent work- 
 ers, just as it has assumed complete responsibility for 
 education, which until the last century or so was en- 
 tirely private or charitable. Rapidly, too, the leisure- 
 time field will be occupied by such community activi- 
 ties as school social centers and community music 
 and drama, while the playground and park systems 
 will be expanded to meet the needs of all the people. 
 In all these activities, it is to be hoped that opportu- 
 nity will be left for volunteers who want to give of 
 their time and ability, to serve their fellow-citizens, 
 much as in Elberfeld, Germany, citizens in each dis-
 
 158 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 trict of the city were made responsible for a certain 
 amount of family welfare work under the supervi- 
 sion of public officers. 
 
 Private Philanthropy Will Still Remain 
 
 While a large part of what we now consider phil- 
 anthropic activities will be taken over by the 
 public, many others will remain or be created under 
 private finance and control. Public opinion will in 
 actuality move but slowly to assume all the functions 
 just described ; and in many cities for a long time the 
 mass of the citizens will be unwilling to carry the 
 burden of taxation for causes now supported by 
 contribution. Further, many special groups will 
 retain their own charities. The Jews probably will 
 long continue caring for their own poor, the ortho- 
 dox of whom require special food and cooking which 
 probably would not be supplied by public authori- 
 ties. The Roman Catholics and some Protestant 
 denominations will for many years continue their 
 orphanages where dependent children may be 
 brought up carefully in the faith of their fathers. 
 Fraternal orders will keep up institutions for their 
 aged and infirm members and for widows and 
 orphans of members. Recreational centers will be 
 maintained by such activities as the Young Men's 
 Christian Association which wish to subject their 
 users to a special inspiration or religious influence. 
 Again, a public system of social service, established 
 by law, is bound to have many inequalities and to 
 suffer from the fact that social conditions change 
 while the law remains unaltered through inertia of
 
 Whither? 159 
 
 public opinion. Private charity must " take up the 
 slack." Thus, in the beginning of the development 
 of the mothers' pension system, it was found that 
 many unusual cases existed which the law did not 
 cover, as, for example, mothers with sickly children 
 who required special food and care for which the 
 allotment provided by law was inadequate; while, 
 later on, during and after the World War, the in- 
 crease in the cost of living made all allowances 
 inadequate and forced private charities to supple- 
 ment practically every pensioned family. Finally, 
 private philanthropy will always go a-pioneering, 
 seeking to render service in the places not yet ac- 
 cepted as properly to be cared for by public agencies, 
 and to experiment in untried activities, as, recently, 
 private philanthropy has done in promoting mental 
 tests for the feeble-minded and in developing treat- 
 ment and training for the crippled. 
 
 Principles of Social Service Will Endure 
 
 If it is true that charity will still be needed in this 
 world for many and many a day — and it seems as 
 true as anything well may be in this changing world 
 — the principles which have been enunciated in the 
 earlier chapters of this little book will stand. Still 
 will giving be most truly charitable when based on 
 the desire to serve another. Still will the best 
 method of social service be that which takes into 
 account the special problem of each individual and 
 cuts the service to fit his needs. Still will it be 
 wise and humane to remove so far as possible 
 the causes of human distress. Still will remain,
 
 160 Sympathy and System in Giving 
 
 in one form or another, the problems of family 
 welfare, of child welfare, of physical and mental 
 health, and of the leisure time of the people, to be 
 solved in varying ways. Still will the principles of 
 business organization be required to render effective 
 aid in these fields of service. Still will heart speak 
 to heart, and human being help human being. Still 
 will abide those graces of which the greatest is 
 charity. 
 
 Charity and Human Brotherhood 
 
 Still, also will persist the factor of charity, or 
 social service, as a great binder of mankind. As more 
 and more people become liberal in thought through 
 the wide dissemination of education, as we pass 
 further and further from a state of class distinc- 
 tion and economic bondage, and all citizens see that 
 they are responsible for the well-being of our democ- 
 racy, giving will become more and more general, 
 until even those who receive charity will think it 
 their pleasure and duty to give when they can, while 
 all of us will be benefited by a charity which serves 
 the whole community. In some democratic plan of 
 cooperation all charities will be affiliated ; all racial 
 groups ; all neighborhood groups ; all citizens. It may 
 be that in charity, whose principles are common to all 
 religions, we may find a basis for cooperation which 
 will bring together Catholic, Jew, and Protestant, 
 overlooking doctrinal difference, in a common pro- 
 gram of human service. It may be that charity, as 
 translated into service to the life of the community, 
 will bring together capital and labor, in agreement
 
 Whither? 161 
 
 first on the principles of social well-being and later 
 on the principles of economic cooperation. Through 
 that charity which is the living spirit of all human 
 service, the bonds of human brotherhood will be knit 
 closer and closer, and men will come nearer and 
 nearer to realizing the truth of that inspired phrase 
 now nearly two thousand years old, " We are mem- 
 bers, one of another."
 
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