/ a Fr'aTwuscan Fathers San DiSgo. 10, Calif. THE SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTfON CHICAGO DALLAS ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA, LTD. TORONTO THE SOCIA rt OF CHAR A STUDY OF POINTS OF VIEW IN CATHOLIC CHAKITIES BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, PH.D. LL.D. PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY LN THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY AND TRINITY COLLEGE, WASHINGTON, D. C. SECRE- TARY OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC CHARITIES, 1910-1920 T SANTA BARBARA, CAJ-UG. gotk THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1921 All rightt reserved PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and printed. Published June, 1921. Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company New York, U. S. A. bstat. ARTHURUS J. SCANLAN, S.T.D., Censor Librorum. imprimatur. 4. PATRITIUS J. HAYES, D.D., Archiepiscopus Neo-Eboraci. New York, May 7th, 1921. TO THE MEMORY OF MY PARENTS SOCIAL ACTION SERIES This series will comprise several volumes pre- senting the Catholic teaching on the important so- cial and industrial problems of the day. "The Church and Labor" has already appeared; "The Social Mission of Charity" is the second volume; two others dealing with charity are in preparation, and also a volume on Church and State. Other volumes will be published from time to time, ac- cording as the need for them becomes manifest and competent writers can be obtained to prepare them. PREFACE THE scope of this volume limits its contents to a discussion of general points of view in Catholic charities. On this account neither methods nor problems are treated in any detail. The plans of the Department of Social Action of the National Catholic Welfare Council provide for a number of volumes relating to practical aspects of charities. They will appear as circumstances permit. Special bibliographies on problems and agencies are reserved to them. Since the social facts dealt with in a general way are beyond dispute, although interpretations vary, it did not seem necessary to weight the pages with extensive literary references. The author has endeavored to confine his interpretations to forms which may invite but little disagreement. Exposition rather than argument was aimed at throughout in the hope of making general appeal for thorough understanding of the wider mission of Charity in social life. THE AUTHOB. INTRODUCTION THIS volume was prepared by the author at the invitation of the Department of Social Action of the National Catholic Welfare Council. It is the second volume of the Social Ac- tion Series of the Department. The general purpose of the series is to explain the attitude of the Church toward social problems, institutions and philosophies that engage the at- tention of society at this time. The object of this volume is to discuss fundamental points of view in the relations between Catholic charities and the prevailing sociological interpretations of poverty and relief. The author offers a general analysis of the social back- ground of poverty and describes the problems that it causes, in the terms of that analysis. Similarly the constructive aims of relief work are set forth from this standpoint. This method furnishes a simple basis of classification and interpre- tation of the countless activities resulting from our general endeavor to deal with poverty in the light of practical social ideals. The various phases of social endeavor to deal with poverty are described as steps in the development of what the author terms "the supplementary social constitution." By showing the intimate relation between relief and preven- tion in dealing with a single case of dependency, and by insisting on preventive social action against poverty as a whole, the author urges us to view the entire field of social service from the supernatural standpoint and to invest with high spiritual dignity everything that is done to protect the weaker social classes in the name of charity and justice. While insistence on the fundamental religious and spiritual character of charity is found throughout the volume, it dis- plays nevertheless thorough sympathy with the results of xiii xiv INTRODUCTION modern scholarship and with the organic view of poverty which characterizes present day thought concerning it. The author's repeated appeal for wider views of poverty and relief and for insistent social action to prevent poverty, deserves attention and acceptance throughout the entire range of Catholic charities. The imperative need of doing this is the basis upon which the author builds his appeal for closer coordination among Catholic charities and for greater attention to other agencies that work in the field. There is no disparagement of our equipment or of our service in the field of relief in the ad- mission that we have everything to gain from the upbuilding of a national social point of view in our charities. The intense individuality of what the author calls "the geo- graphical and institutional units of Catholic life" is well known to us. Perhaps we had not adverted sufficiently to the fact that this individuality has prevented effective co- operation and a large vision of our problems and their relations. One notes with pleasure the absence of any tone of fault- finding and the avoidance of extremes in the discussion of practical steps to improve our work. The author favors the rapid development of conferences, increased use of modern literature and the production of a vigorous literature of our own on problems and methods in Catholic charities. But back of all of this he suggests what is more important still, namely, an atmosphere in which the union of the super- natural in attitude and impulse with the approved results of modern research and experiment may be happily realized. My reading of the proofs enables me to express the belief that the author has interpreted faithfully the sympathies of the Department of Social Action and its hopes for rapid improvement in the quality of our work. As the scope of this volume limits its contents to the discussion of general points of view, the author has not gone into the practical field nor has he taken up detailed application of the principles INTRODUCTION xv which he sets forth. These tasks are reserved to a later volume which the Department hopes to publish. In addition to that one, another is contemplated which will contain re- prints of documents which have historical or actual authority in themselves, and value in indicating the drift of Catholic thought on poverty as a social problem and charity as the source of divine direction in dealing with it. The Hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the United States at its annual meeting in September, 1920, voted unanimously in favor of the immediate establishment of a National School for the training of Social Workers. This is one of the most significant steps ever taken in the history of our charities. It indicates full recognition of the need of technical training for social work, and of practical steps toward the development of a national outlook on our problems and agencies. The spirit that prompted that step on the part of the Hierarchy comes to expression throughout this volume on The Social Mission of Charity. It may be com- mended to all who are interested in Catholic charities as a faithful interpretation of the mind of the Department of Social Action of the National Catholic Welfare Council. f 1 P. J. MULDOON, Chairman. Bishop of Rockford, III. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE PREFACE xi INTRODUCTION xiii I. GOOD SAMARITANS 1 II. THE BACKGROUND OP POVERTY 10 III. THE QUALITY OF POVERTY 35 IV. POVERTY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS 42 V. JUSTICE 54 VI. EQUALITY 73 VII. CHARITY 83 VIII. PROPERTY 94 IX. WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR? 101 X. PRINCIPLES IN BELIEF Ill XI. PRINCIPLES IN BELIEF (CONTINUED) .... 130 XII. THE SOCIAL WORKER .139 XIII. THE LITERATURE OF BELIEF 146 XIV. SPIRIT AND ORGANIZATION IN CATHOLIC CHARITIES 161 XV. CERTAIN PRESENT NEEDS 178 XVI. OLD AND NEW 190 THE SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY CHAPTEK I GOOD SAMARITANS "And, Behold,, a, certain lawyer stood up, tempting him, and saying : Master, what must I do to possess eternal life? But he said to him: What is written in the law? How readest thou? He, answering, said: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself. And he said to him: Thou hast answered right; this do and thou shalt live. But he, willing to justify himself, said to Jesus: And who is my neighbor? And Jesus answering said: A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, who also stripped him, and having wounded him, went away, leaving him half dead. And it chanced that a certain priest went down the same way, and, seeing him, passed by. In like manner, also, a Levite, when he was near the place, and saw him, passed by. But a certain Samaritan, being on his journey, came near him, and seeing him, was moved with compassion: and going up to him, bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine; and setting him upon his own beast, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two pence, and gave to the host, and said: Take care of him; and whatsoever thou shalt spend over and above, I at my return will repay thee. Which of these three, in thy opinion, was neighbor to him that fell among the robbers? But he said: He that showed mercy to him. And Jesus said to him: Go and do thou in like manner." ST. LUKE, X 25-37. WE read in this incomparable parable of the Good Samaritan that the priest and the Levite saw the wounded man and passed by unmoved. The Samaritan, social outcast of whom nothing good was expected, saw the wounded man, 1 2 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY was moved by compassion, went up to him, served him, made provisions for him and continued his journey after promising to return the next day. The Samaritan saw, felt, served and remembered. The problem was simple. Sympathy and action offered no complexities and no circumstance hindered the simple and direct relief of the wounded man. The para- ble which involved but one Samaritan and one object of his pity expressed the spirit and law of charity as Christ taught it. Now when there are a thousand Samaritans who see, feel and serve, and when there are a thousand or ten thousand wounded men or poor in need of service, while resources in persons, means and wisdom are plainly inadequate to the claims of the sufferers, a new problem and a new duty appear. The duty is that of thinking. The problem is that of man- aging. The outcome is found in method and system. Charity is "science ending in love." We must think about the good Samaritans. By thinking we discover the qualities that they need, the ways in which they interfere with one another or assist one another, the policies required to govern their relations with one another, the mistakes to which they incline, the motives which actuate them, the views that they develop and teach. By thinking we learn to interpret their experience, to avoid their mis- takes and perpetuate their wisdom. If we permit the samari- tans to obey even their noblest impulses and yield to their deepest feelings of compassion as they wish without relation to one another, without knowledge of one another, without cooperation, understanding and mutual appreciation, we defeat the noblest of all purposes. We doom the men, women and children wounded by modern social conditions to a neg- lect or a delay of service that belies the charity in whose name we claim to act We must think about the wounded, that is the poor. Ban- dits have never been more sure in iniquity nor distressing in their brutal selfishness than have modern social conditions been in prostrating the weak who were unfit for their struggle. Kow thinking about the poor is like any other kind of think- GOOD SAMARITANS 3 ing that relates to facts, the explanation of them and control of the processes that cause them. We are required to find the poor, all of them not some of them. Only thinking and managing can do this. We must classify them in order to find the causes of their distress and deal with those causes as our wisdom guides us. We must remember, return, encour- age, befriend and serve until physical, moral and social wounds are healed and health is restored. We must think about the past and the future of the poor. We must discover, measure and control the processes in social life that issue in poverty. We must aim to conquer it and bring high courage, enlightened patience and constant zeal into the work if we are to do it well. To act as one good Samaritan dealing with one wounded man in these days would defeat every larger impulse of charity and leave untouched much of the misery of the poor. It is distressing to realize that many good Samaritans are hurting the poor and promoting their agony by isolating themselves from the policies that practical experience ap- proves in our efforts to befriend the poor. It is equally dis- tressing to feel that tens of thousands of poor, men, women and children, remain hidden in the low valleys of their name- less despair because our faulty methods do not discover them and our narrow views of duty shut them out of range of our active solicitude. It requires only the most superficial glance at poverty to realize the imperative duty of thinking and managing as we deal with it. It requires only the most cur- sory acquaintance with good Samaritans to be convinced that they and their relations to one another and to their work make necessary the most painstaking thinking and managing in the interest of the poor. An analogy is at hand. For many years physicians dealt with malaria and yellow fever. Many of the victims died. Some recovered. Friends felt sympathy and expressed it in the kindest of services but sat helpless in ignorance of the cause of the fevers or misled by accepted false theories con- cerning them. So long as physicians dealt with isolated 4 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY cases or with many cases guided by false views, and confined themselves to routine care of patients there was no promise of mastery of these scourges of mankind. But physicians and scientists who began to think with critical care broke away from the tyranny of routine and the assumption that the diseases were completely understood. Thoughtful men searched for causes and the facts of transmission. Data accumulated and were studied with restless energy. Experi- ments were made and results were watched. False theories faded away as insight was slowly gained. Brilliant thinking, patient industry and courage led to the threshold of the truth. Brave men risked their lives to test conclusions. Truth yielded its secrets. The fevers were mastered and humanity was relieved of its terror. Dealing with isolated cases would never have accomplished this. Sympathy with sufferers prompted by purest devotion would have brought no emancipation. Thinking, industry, docility of mind and cooperation did bring to us this emanci- pation. The lesson is before us. Sympathy with the poor will never master poverty. Dealing with isolated cases of it will never give us insight into its real nature. Assump- tions concerning its nature, gratuitous theories about it, self- sufficient attitudes that excuse us from efforts to learn facts and their meaning can only hinder progress, prolong suffer- ing and delay the day of social justice. Thinking, courage, industry, docile minds and impersonal devotion to intelli- gent ideals, these and these alone will prepare the modern good Samaritan for the divine tasks of Christian Charity in the modern world. No one is required to do everything for the poor but every one is obliged to do something. There are humble and simple tasks that remain forever noble and forever necessary in serving the poor. The happy face of a little child to whom one gives its first toy, lights the heavens as perhaps no think- ing can light them and honors the benefactor more than his philosophy. Yet we must accept facts and recognize laws of life and action. If some who could think clearly would GOOD SAMARITANS 5 serve awkwardly they do full duty by their thinking. If many can serve admirably but think with little effect they do their duty in service. Our limitations in charity, as else- where, indicate to some degree the negative will of God. We may follow aptitudes without concern if we do so under the discipline of practical ideals and with impersonal zeal. But if the Catholic Church is to meet her responsibilities toward society and the poor fully, her representatives must be found at every post, doing every duty and serving every high stand- ard that more exact knowledge of poverty presents to the modern world. Much thinking is called for to gain insight into facts and processes of poverty, into measures of relief and prevention, into policies of social reform which prevent poverty, into social theories which lead toward spiritual and social truth or error. The creation of the National Catholic Welfare Council indicates an effort on the part of the Catholic Church in the United States to restate in as far as restatement is needed, her philosophy and policies toward national life and its exact- ing problems. The Department of Social Action of the Council represents efforts toward collective thinking and con- certed action in respect of pressing social problems. This volume and others to follow represent the desire of the Department to study the relations of the Church to poverty and the bearing of our new insight into social conditions and processes on the principles and methods of Catholic Charity. The Church aims to give and to receive in this exchange. The charities of the Catholic Church are an expression of her understanding of the spiritual relations of men to one another and an interpretation of those relations in the terms of human service. At no time in her history has the Church failed to insist that the determining relations of men to God and to one another are spiritual. These relations are those of brotherhood. The mental and emotional attitude that envelops that brotherhood is love. The expression of that love is completed in service. The motive of that service C SOCIAL MISSION OF CHAEITY rests in the will of God. The full realization of relationship, attitude, expression and motive is found in Jesus Christ. The historical charities of the Church represent spontane- ous eiforts of the children of the Church to take hold of these truths with unfaltering loyalty and to establish instruments and a spirit of service that may make these truths effective in life. The authorities of the Church have never failed to encourage, to assist and to direct varied activities in the inter- est of the weaker classes. These have at all times been modi- fied by circumstances and have taken on color from conditions and institutions. Throughout all of the variations of their history we find related phases of a single process; that of emancipating the strong from the tyranny of their strength, releasing the weak from the penalties of their weakness, imparting spiritual vision and a correct sense of values to both types and preparing the way for brotherly love and service. Our charities are the human expression of a divine love resulting from the rich spiritual initiative of Catholic life and not from the formal decrees of Catholic authorities. Our understanding of poverty varies as knowledge and insight into conditions vary. The prevailing judgment of it at any time directs the impulses of service and its organized expression. If poverty is looked upon solely as the plight of a single person or single family, the spirit of service will express itself in the work of relief and will be confined prac- tically to that If instead of dealing with a single dependent family we take into account hundreds and even thousands of families we gain the impression that poverty is a plight of society as well as of the individual. Our impulses will oper- ate then in the direction of action upon society as well as upon the single family. Our aims and language will be different but the spirit of Christian charity remains in full vigor as we endeavor to modify social conditions and social relations. Poverty is in a particular way a problem for the State. It indicates the failure of social justice, the protection of which is a fundamental duty of the State. Full duty toward GOOD SAMARITANS 7 the poor cannot be done without regard to the processes of legislation. The task of dealing with poverty takes on infi- nite complications at this point since we must attempt a readjustment of political institutions and a deeper insight into the processes of life that defeat the benevolent ends of these institutions. The conscience of the modern world ia striving as perhaps never before to express itself through legislation in the interests of the poor. It would be a poor service to Christian charity were we to remain away from legislative halls and to hold indiscriminately to the belief that the service of the poor in the tedious and exacting ways of legislation lacks any of the moral grandeur that our tradi- tions attach to the simpler works of relief. !N"or may we forget that poverty is in last analysis a spirit- ual problem, an indication that something has prevented the law of Christian brotherhood from its intended sway in the relations of men. We shall never deal effectively with pov- erty without the thorough understanding of the nature of Christian brotherhood, without true vision of the spiritual values of life, without promoting that discipline of heart which should lead the strength of the world to bow its head in adoration before Jesus Christ and to accept with courage the law that sends the strong to seek their holiness in the service of the weak. Since poverty takes on a highly complex character adequate treatment of it becomes equally complex. Aims must be stated with care, methods must be tested by the light of expe- rience and study. If it is possible to harm the poor by faulty methods of befriending them, the methods that we do adopt may not be left to the whim of any one. They should represent our best wisdom. All of this means that charity must be scientific. To make it less than that would mean that one's standards of service are inadequate or that there are no standards of care in the service of the poor. If science did not hurt theology on the speculative side, and the religious life develops science and method on the practical side, charity has nothing to fear from science properly under- 8 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY stood on either the theoretical or practical side. If there may be a method in meditation there may be a method in dealing with a dependent family. Method is the outcome of science. It is well to beware of the tyranny of words, of the inertia of feelings that survive their occasion and of associations that beguile one into misunderstanding. There are some who have an antipathy for the phrase "scientific charity." They rule it out of court and excuse no use of the phrase except in condemnation. In spite of this, charity must be scientific and it will be this to its advantage when we bring appropriate qualities to the task of making it scientific in the Christian sense. Sometimes we yield to a feeling of indignation when mistakes of science fully warrant it We forget then to sur- render the feeling when its occasion is removed. Doubt and indignation that were justified a year since may have no place to-day. When feelings are in this way detached from their cause they exercise a surviving tyranny over us which interferes greatly with clearness of thought. Some of the dislike of the phrase "scientific charity" may be explained in this way. There are phases of scientific charity which have been associated with much error in both philosophy and policy. To refuse to ally science and method with Christian charity because they had been allied with un-Christian philanthropy hardly commends itself as the dictate of prac- tical wisdom. Intelligent service of the poor to-day requires mastery of much information, insight into processes, thought and rela- tions, application of the lessons of experience to the tasks in hand and careful supervision of the results. That all of this can be accomplished without foresight, thought, records, cooperation, is unthinkable. To accomplish these results is the mission of scientific charity. All of this is self-evident where information, sympathy and vision center on Christ Approach to His spirit broadens. It never narrows. Methods and standards are means not ends. They are channels by which love travels from soul to soul with judg- GOOD SAMARITANS 9 ment as its guide. No system will exhaust the spirit of Christ or place limits upon the range of His love. System and science which arouse that love into wider expression, multiply resources and increase our capacity to serve His poor need have no doubt that plenteous benediction will be their portion. When we bring proper qualities of heart and intelligence to the science of Christian charity all will go well. "We are then in an age of scientific charity. It is no longer a question whether religious workers shall conform. They have conformed and, speaking generally, they have conformed without detriment to their work. Science has its place in religious charitable work, and no one deplores it, no one would have it otherwise. We have no reason to fear it, rather should we welcome its aid. A generation ago there was some misgiving, some lurking fear that science might oust the spirit of charity. . . . We realize now that science can be made the handmaid and need not be the mistress of the spirit in charitable work." (Rt. Rev. Bishop William Turner, address to Quarterly Conference of the Social Wel- fare Council of Buffalo.) CHAPTER II THE BACKGROUND OF POVERTY THE remote background of poverty is found in the diver- sified gifts and powers of man. Men, women and children are unequal in natural ability and in their developed capaci- ties. Whatever our aspirations toward equality; whatever the approach that we have attempted in democracy, to equal- ity before the law, we may not neglect, in any study of pov- erty, this basic fact of inequality. As we meet it in every day life, inequality is a highly complex product of many factors and processes. At every point in life cross currents of social influences appear and modify the strength or weak- ness that was our original endowment. In some instances, weakness is traceable to personal fault. Again, it is due to the fault of others whom we can name or may know. In other cases, it seems due to social arrangements or condi- tions which are beyond the power of any person at any one time to correct. In much the sarnie way strength may be due to personal qualities or to favoring circumstances or to relations with others who are fortunate. Thus we find that inequality may be due to differences in intellectual ability, in moral traits, in favoring circumstances and in social arrangements, conditions or institutions. When men, women and children are practically equal in personal capacity and when conditions favor them equally, they may be made unequal by chance, by death, disaster, unexpected strain and stress that become determining factors in their fortune. The processes of life are so complex that one follows with difficulty any attempt at analysis which aims to find and measure factors that enter into the determination of our lives. However, it is necessary to attempt as one may, 10 THE BACKGROUND OF POVERTY 11 to recognize the features of inequality as it becomes a deter- mining factor in poverty. Human inequality does not in and of itself necessarily and at all times cause poverty. We find nearly every element of inequality among those who are not poor. Ill health, igno- rance, laziness, feeble-mindedness, wrongdoing, are found in every degree among those with abundant income as well as among the so-called poor. It is necessary to sketch the con- ditions and discover the atmosphere in which human inequal- ity is made a determining factor in causing poverty. This is brought about by the economic, political and cultural organ- ization of life. The economic background of poverty is found in this, that these unequal men, women and children are forced to com- pete for a living, that is for property or income. All are thrown upon their own resources and driven into the com- petitive struggle. When the full logic of this struggle is understood, we find that life is organized on the basis of selfishness. In tendency we are taught and compelled to learn to think much of self and little of others. We are encouraged to accumulate beyond needs and permitted to acquire, hold and use property as we wish. When the com- petitive struggle is practically without restraint and the appeal to selfishness is fundamental, competition among unequals can lead to but one outcome, the victory of the strong and the defeat of the weak. There are many degrees of victory and many degrees of defeat. The poor are they who are, for whatsoever reason, unable to gain income in the unequal struggle. This competitive struggle has not worked universally with- out various forms of restraint and modification. Conscience, family affection, temperament, social imagination have mod- ified its severity often and have lifted many of the weak above the lower levels toward which competition naturally drove them. But the combined action of the corrective forces with which we are familiar, has not been of a quality which prevented the harsh extremes of the struggle from prostrating 12 many. Whatever the correctives that we allege as easing these extremes and whatever the philosophy that we invoke in defense of competition, the essential explanation of mod- ern poverty is to be found in the competitive struggle carried among unequals in a spirit of socially approved selfishness. Now this outcome of competition would have been pre- vented or greatly modified if we had not lived under a state whose philosophy and policies prevented it from interfering. The individualistic state based on the policy of large eco- nomic freedom as to contract, enterprise, property, industry, was hindered very greatly by its constitution and traditions from curbing the strong or aiding the weak. Since the strong were well represented in every branch of government, sympa- thy even in fields where the state might have acted, was diverted away from the weak. The distinctive features of modern industrial conditions were not anticipated. Laws were remedial rather than preventive of abuses. Information was slow in penetrating public opinion. The weak were not vociferous and the strong were nimble and resourceful. In consequence of this process, the weak competitors were left largely to the action of the selfish struggle. The minor cor- rectives already mentioned operated favorably in the lives of many. They were not, however, numerous or strong enough to overcome the terrific pressure of unrestrained self- ishness. Poverty became, therefore, the outcome of compe- tition among unequals conducted under an individualistic state. This outcome might have been prevented and the history and character of poverty might have been much less pitiful had the social ideals of the Christian life not been greatly weakened by the industrial process and its accompanying spirit and conditions. We find in this collapse of ideals and the weakness of idealistic forces the cultural elements in the background of poverty which became determining in its history. Had human life been held in Christian reverence and had property been valued always as secondary to it, the inhumani- THE BACKGROUND OF POVERTY 13 ties of competition would have been in large measure pre- vented. The beatitudes would have become our social axioms and their triumph in the industrial world would have been our glory. Home, school and church as channels of culture would have been in position to check or correct such vicious tendencies of competition as would have appeared in any case. But the subtleties of selfishness invaded philosophy, controlled policies, caused sympathies to shrink and imagi- nation to suffer eclipse. Social ideals were gradually chilled into inaction and the industrial process exempted itself from the discipline that they would have imposed. Life was divided into stubborn sections that refused to merge in the harmony of a divine unity. Industry became foreign to religion. Its authority was reduced and it failed often to be the messenger of God directing all of the ways of man. Edu- cation was driven into the secluded paths of culture and counted no longer among the prophets of God to call men away from selfishness into the gentler duties of service and love. Class was isolated from class, alien to each other in knowledge, habit, feeling and aspiration. The forms of strength, health, wealth, power, culture, education centered on the few. All forms of weakness were visited upon the many. Dependency is found among the most helpless of these. They are the poor. The salient features of poverty are accounted for in some manner like the foregoing ; by human inequality, competition among unequals, lack of relief in the severity of the struggle by state action; the breakdown of the culture forces that shape and direct character and fix the valuations which con- trol the lives of men. Wherever any one of these factors was not found, the spirit and outcome of the harsh process were modified. But if we take life as a whole, these factors remained in the ascendancy and produced the poverty with which we are so familiar. We may not forget that many among the poor were made dependent by their own personal qualities against which no social institution could have saved them. Others were made 14 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY dependent through the iniquity of those upon whom they depended. Provision must be made for every type of excep- tion and for numbers of them. But the social elements in the background of poverty are so evident and they have oper- ated with such compelling force in the lives of the weak that it seems impossible to deal with poverty without attributing to these elements a determining role. We may not overlook the apparent exceptions; the rise from poverty and obscurity of so many men and women of eminence and power whose contributions to national welfare have been striking and of permanent value. Their rise, however, merely indicates that the untoward circumstances of poverty do not necessarily hinder exceptional qualities from leading one to power. There is, of course, no record of those who as victims of poverty were doomed to its penal- ties but in other circumstances might have contributed to human progress in effective measure. No mistake can be more cruel than that of absolving social conditions and arrangements from blame for poverty and resting in the assumption that the poor alone are responsible. As we explain poverty we adapt measures in dealing with it. The assumption that it is not the outcome of social processes and is primarily the result of individual choices, would mis- lead all social effort and halt all steps toward social progress. As the hope of progress in science lies always in the "unclassi- fied remnant" so the hope of social progress lies in finding proper place and full life for those poor now found as "unclassified remnants" in the world. It is vain for the moment to speculate on the place of com- petition in social evolution or to consider the possibility of its elimination. It is identified with the organization and progress of the world. Progressve effort to modify it gives us reason for believing that it may be so controlled as to be freed from its distressing extremes. The awakened con- science of society is dealing now with the problem of ine- quality, the curbing of strength and the reenforcement of weakness. The wider activity of the State deals with social THE BACKGROUND OF POVERTY 15 conditions and institutions which are determining in poverty ; and culture agencies are attracted with new insight to their humane tasks. We may undertake the study of these poli- cies and of the conditions which occasion them without fur- ther reference to exceptional situations or exceptional persons. Inequality. The remote background of poverty is found in the diver- sified gifts and capacities of men, women and children. There are among us the strong and the weak, the noble and the ignoble, the dull and the cunning, the provident and the thoughtless, the wise and the foolish, the healthy and the diseased, the sinful and the righteous, the educated and the uneducated, the normal and the subnormal, those with and those without social reenforcement. All degrees will be found in each form of strength and in each form of weakness. Many forms of strength will be found in the same lives. Many forms of weakness will be found congregated in a single life. The successful merchant may have economic strength and a thorough education but be at the same time morally weak and in ill health. An unskilled laborer will have neither economic nor intellectual strength yet he may have perfect health and high moral character. To a very great extent our strength and our weakness are determined independently of ourselves, by factors over which we have no control or a control that is imperfect and delayed. If the foundations of health, education and character are laid in childhood, our future strength or weakness is conditioned on others, not on ourselves. Later one can gain more or less power of self-direction and of correction of mistakes. We may not, however, underrate the extent to which our lives and capacity are actually conditioned by others rather than by ourselves. Now strength and weakness become more or less important in our development as they are in relation to or independent of the social order in which we live. If life were organized on a spiritual basis we should call the virtuous 16 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY strong and the evil-doer, weak. Other phases of strength and weakness would remain secondary though important. If the world were organized on a purely intellectual basis, the learned would be strong and the ignorant, weak. Other forms of strength and weakness would take on apparently dimin- ished value. If society were organized with primary refer- ence to physical health, they who had perfect health and high vitality would be the strong while they who lacked health would constitute the weaker class. As the world is actually organized, not one of these forms of strength is really determining. Property or income is the typical ' qualification for success. Property is primary strength. Lack of it is primary weakness. Income is gained, controlled and enjoyed without particular reference to health, virtue or education. Each of these has an economic value distinct from its own intrinsic nature and peculiar dignity. Health and education improve one's earning capac- ity and they become thereby factors in one's economic suc- cess. But no degree of virtue insures an economic place or income to any one. No degree of lack of virtue necessarily hinders one from enjoying abundant income. Fundamentally, as the world is organized income insures opportunity and prospect for health and education, for the ways of safety and the strength of profitable alliance with others. Lack of income reduces one to a state of partial or complete dependence. It is this condition that gives to pov- erty its encyclopedic character. It tends to become not merely economic weakness, lack of income because of defeat in the competitive struggle, but all forms of weakness, in health, in education, in physical safety, in culture, taste, outlook and association. Insight into the complex content of poverty and understanding of the larger aims that inspire effort to conquer it may be gained by reviewing the salient features of human inequality from the standpoints of health, education, character and social reenforcement. Physical strength implies that one's body and physical forces are normally developed, that one lives in surroundings THE BACKGROUND OF POVERTY 17 that are reasonably free from danger to health and shows normal power of resistance against the approach of disease. When one enjoys good health, wholesome food and environ- ment and one is not subjected to exhausting labor or to con- ditions that involve excessive risk to life, health and limb, physical health is protected as adequately as may be expected in this world. While good health remains always supremely desirable no degree of it brings assurance of success. A deli- cate man with an alert mind may gain and hold ascendancy over the lives of thousands by force of social institutions and of superior education. Although good health insures no economic success, disease and physical handicaps become fac- tors of primary importance in poverty. Health depends on physical heredity, intelligent care in childhood, wholesome food, reasonable self-knowledge, cor- rect moral sense and personal habits, Now the physical well-being of the poor has been so undermined by the expe- riences and implications of poverty that its health aspects have become fundamental. Poor physical heredity, ignorant parents, helpless though intelligent parents, malnutrition, lack of interest in health itself, environment lacking in all forms of normal stimulation, industrial accidents and occu- pational diseases, low resistance against every approach of disease, wretched housing conditions, failure to take advan- tage of even free and skillful medical care, constitute a series of factors that have worked dreadful harm to the health of the poor and have weakened them immeasurably in the com- petitive struggle. The relation of good health to the demands of unequal com- petition is fundamental. The effect of physical weakness in any form varies with the economic position that one takes. Toward the lower industrial level, health is of supreme eco- nomic importance. As we rise in the industrial world and mental instead of physical effort is called for, good health becomes less important in competition. In the case of the investor, the owner of capital, system replaces person to such an extent that after death, one's estate remains active in 18 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHAKITY industry because its operation is impersonal. Among the poor everything is individual and personal. Illness for a single day takes away from the worker his income for that day. The manager may lose a month and suffer no reduc- tion in salary. Health is positively necessary to the weaker competitor. Ill health in the worker or in his family causes mental and physical strain and expense and becomes thereby an addi- tional drag in the struggle for life. Inequality appears in mental as well as physical capacity among competitors. Intellectual strength depends on natu- ral capacity of mind reenforced by wise training, average good health and character. There are many degrees of natu- ral and acquired mental power. We note several degrees of feeble-mindedness below normal and a number of grades of ability above normal up to the exceptional mind. In a civi- lization in which education to some degree is all but univer- sal, natural talent and training become vitally important in the competitive struggle. Inability to read and write, simple as these accomplishments now appear, shuts out men and women from every kind of occupation except the most infe- rior. Inability to read signs, addresses, notices ; inability to make a memorandum or read one, has become a tragedy in modern life. Thus the illiterate, the dull, the feeble-minded are hopelessly outclassed in the competitive struggle. Intel- lectual weakness becomes a determining factor in it. An ignorant mind is a defeated mind. At this point we find health conditions affecting education in a far-reaching way. The children of the poor show a reaction upon mind and education from health and physical home conditions. If they are under-nourished they cannot study with advantage. If they are afflicted in any way or defects in hearing and sight are found, these become serious handicaps in their education. If children are wayward and home discipline is lax or the atmosphere of the home is vicious and depressing the school can accomplish but little. If truancy is over- looked or children are allowed or forced to earn at an early THE BACKGROUND OF POVERTY 19 age, schooling promises scarcely any redemption from the penalties of poverty. Even when such heavy obstacles are overcome by the wis- dom of parents and industry of children, these are only too often the victims of useless or aimless instruction. Misdi- rected education is now counted among the factors that affect the quality and extent of poverty among those who can read and write. Fundamental in the life of each of us as is edu- cation, we are in childhood entirely at the mercy of others to whom our training is entrusted. The child has, therefore, but little to do in determining its education. So long as feeble minded compete with normal, illiterate with literate, trained with untrained, there can be but one outcome. The strong will win and the weak will lose. Degrees of moral strength, of quality in character are fac- tors in our strength in the competitive struggle. The under- standing of moral and spiritual ideals, capacity for self- discipline and self-control, unfaltering trust in virtue and an abiding sense of security gained through obedience to the laws of God and of society are essential not only to spiritual but also to social life. Moral qualities are a form of intelli- gence since they represent actual insight into true relations and values in life and indicate conformity of behavior to such truth. Hence we look upon education as the process of developing the whole man in his physical, mental, moral and spiritual nature. Education is a united process because life is a united process. Differences in moral strength become factors in the competitive struggle because they are funda- mental aspects of the strength or weakness that men bring to the struggle for a living. The provident defeat the improvi- dent. They who remain true to personal ideals and moral standards win against the wayward and sinful. The sober replace the intemperate. The moral inequalities that affect the competitive struggle react beyond the competitors themselves. Sober, industrious and provident men bring happiness, refinement and hope to their wives and children, meet all of the obligations of life 20 with manly foresight. But the wayward, careless and sinful defeat not only themselves but their families as well, destroy home life, force children and mothers into industrial occu- pations at the cost of every high ideal. Sin then and lack of moral sense and fiber bring defeat in the competitive struggle and add many tragedies in innocent lives among the poor. Thus poverty breeds poverty. Economic failure leads to moral and social defeat and differences in moral qualities among competitors become factors in causing dependency. No one lives unto himself alone. Our social relations are fundamental and enduring. These relations greatly strengthen or greatly weaken us as the case may be. Social reenforcement is a primary factor in our strength for the competitive struggle. Lack of it causes weakness against which one all but struggles in vain. Men are socially reenforced by family ties, by friendship, good reputation, credit and the consciousness that others believe in them and trust them. This consciousness is a determining factor in leading us to patient industry and high endeavor. The hope of not disappointing those in whose good opinion we place our aims and our honor is a founda- tion stone in all sturdy character. They who are socially reenforced in these ways are strong indeed. Those who are not so strengthened are weak indeed. A feeble-minded child born into a family that has wealth and position is saved from every social consequence of its affliction. Such a child born to a poor family is exposed to every bitter consequence of its. affliction. Wagner calls attention to this general truth in his treatise on Economics. He applies the term "conjunctur" to the sum total of conditions, institutions, arrangements and relations by which the individual is made strong and effective in industrial life. May we not find among the poor a "con- junctur" of conditions, relations and factors that occasion weakness, not strength, and subject the poor to the heavy penalties of their failure in the competitive struggle? No history of poverty can ever reveal to us the extent to which social reenforcement has lifted and saved thousands who THE BACKGROUND OF POVERTY 21 otherwise had gone down to complete dependency. Nor can any such history ever count those who did perish in the struggle when normal social reenforcement might have saved them to happiness and peace. All forms of strength and of weakness tend in the com- petitive struggle to become gregarious. Health, education, character, culture, social reenforcement are associated widely among the victors in that struggle; that is among those who enjoy adequate income. Ill health, low resistance against disease, exposure to unfavorable environment, ignorance, misdirected education, lack of opportunity and of reenforce- ment assemble in the lives of the weaker competitors. Thus it is that the curse of the poor is their poverty. The blessing of the strong is their strength. As life is organized, all oppor- tunity is assured to those who have economic strength, who possess qualities that are of value in the competitive strug- gle. Lack of economic strength presses in the direction of dependency. When that line is reached by the weakest these are hurled into the abyss to perish or to be salvaged from the wreck of life by the spirit and efforts of charity. Poverty is the outcome of the competitive struggle among unequals. It includes the complete and partial failures who lacked the qualities and relations that condition survival. Competition. There are many degrees of victory and of defeat in the competitive economic struggle. They who gain income suffi- cient to all of the normal demands of life and development, and enjoy some degree of independence and security are among the victors. This victory carries some beyond this modest level to varying heights of economic and social power where ownership of millions is found and imperial sway over human lives is insured through industrial organization. There are likewise many degrees of failure. Some such are they who at times are unable to gain income sufficient to their normal or extraordinary needs; they who are permanently 22 unable to provide for themselves and those dependent on them; they who can procure income needed for existence at the sacrifice of home, health and education; they who are dull, aimless, wayward and irresponsible and are apathetic in presence of every fate or opportunity. Certain processes occur among the strong which have a vital bearing on poverty. Competition has forced upon the stronger types a degree of concentration in the economic struggle which has led to a tone of practical materialism. Risk which is always associated with industrial activity has added to this development. Passion for power which is in wealth, lack of limit to accumulation, desire for acquisition without particular aim have appeared among the strong and led them into a false philosophy of life and property. Isola- tion from the weak, social antagonisms particularly between- labor and capital and the tyranny of system have permitted these elements in the outlook of triumphant competition to dominate their feelings and thought in a way that bears very directly on the complications of poverty. Not only the states of mind that result from struggle, victory, accumulation and social separation among the strong but also the facts in the organization of property aggravate the conditions among the weak economic classes. Property has taken on an exaggerated social valuation. Typical industrial property which is in closest relation to poverty is found in large units of amalgamated capital. Ownership is parceled to hundreds and even thousands of persons who hold shares. Ownership is separated from man- agement. Owners do not manage and managers do not own. Representative government through directors occurs nearly everywhere. Majority control is basic. Financial and indus- trial relations and kindred philosophies of property and life unite industrial and financial units in common sympathies that defend and declare the rights of property and its feudal instincts against serious claims that humanity urges at its cost. The conscience of property is weakened when not lost. Its social imagination is misdirected and its benevolence THE BACKGROUND OF POVERTY 23 toward the defeated is careful lest any power be surrendered. The economic process is isolated in its native crudity. The profit motive and the instinct that resists every surrender of power are accorded sway. The sympathies of those in control are insulated against the currents of humane sympathy and practical Christian idealism. Noble exceptions to this process occur but the natural tendency, the accompanying mental and social traits, the social antagonisms and the degrees in outcome that scale down to abject dependence and annihilated hopes are typical in character and expression. They are the background out of which modern poverty has resulted. Laborers who do not earn a living wage ; mothers and little children who are drawn away from the secluded peace of a worthy home and thrown into the industrial conflict, unfitted in body, mind and soul for its exacting demands; families that are herded in shelters that cannot by any courtesy be called homes; victims of industrial accident, occupational disease, and death, are just where they are and as they are to a large extent, because of the power of the profit motive in industry and the impersonal isolation that holds strong and weak apart in association, sympathy, understanding and thought. Geologists associate the high mountains and the abysmal depths of the sea as phases of one vast process. We may similarly conceive the high peaks of social power and the abysmal and chilling depths of poverty as associated phases of a process which holds civilization in its all but unyielding grasp. We must account for the facts that declare poverty, for the philosophy that has tolerated it, for the spir- itual blindness that has condoned it, for the deluded con- science that has thought to excuse or misinterpret it, for the discriminating deafness that has closed the ears of the strong to its whispered agonies. There are not enough of noble exceptions, many though they be, to hide the headlong ten- dency of the unequal competitive struggle toward such out- come in distribution of property and enjoyment of power as 24 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY declares the ascendency of the philosophy of property over the philosophy of humanity. It would be false to facts and unjust to the last degree to insinuate that this process has been welcomed by the victors in the competitive struggle. It is system not persons that shaped the direction of the movement. Humane minded men have rebelled with noble courage against it. But the sullen continental pressure of the system has prevailed with a con- stancy that has brought out every ugly implication of its nature. It has made triumph easy for the ignoble and diffi- cult for the noble. This alone invites seriou*s attention to the attitude that finds willing toleration of it possible at all. Individualism. The competitive struggle in which unequals have engaged reached its outcome under the individualistic state whose philosophy and traditional policies reduced intervention to a minimum. The political element in the background of pov- erty takes, therefore, a place of first importance. The State is the organized sovereign will of society. Its fundamental aim is to enable men, women and children to live normal lives, to enjoy normal opportunity for develop- ment, to be happy, and secure against unreasonable fear, to foster mutually helpful relations, to declare and perpetuate ideals in which the sanctities of life are recognized, to dis- cover and obey the will of God which is the supreme law of life. The accomplishment of these ends depends in fact to a large degree on the government which is merely the State in action. But in addition, social and spiritual agencies, public opinion, education, a strong community sense are essential. Home, church, school, social classes, whatever their basis have measurable functions which are performed with more elastic freedom than are those of the State. Since we are fundamentally affected by physical and social environ- ment, social conditions no less than social institutions come within the range of the solicitude of the State. The indi- THE BACKGROUND OF POVERTY 25 vidual must be left as free as possible but at the point where he becomes helpless in face of conditions and processes, the State must find its work. Now conditions arose out of the unhindered competitive struggle which aggravated with dreadful effect the misery of the weak. The more robust classes of laborers developed a technique of protection through unions. But the unskilled have always lacked power and representation. The weakest went down to defeat unhin- dered. The various elements that enter the problem at this point are evident. Democracy is primarily social, moral and spiritual and secondarily political. It is a philosophy of life as well as theory of government. It is inspired by a noble concept of the individual, of the dignity of his person, the sanctity of his rights, the claim of his powers to normal development. Democratic institutions taken in conjunction with sturdy home life, strong community sense, reasonable self-control, true valuations, healthy respect for religion and obedience to its spiritual teaching, and general education can scarcely fail of their high inspiring promise to humanity. But the indi- vidualistic state that has been Democracy to us was estab- lished when its social and religious auxiliaries were weakened and the normal correctives of selfishness could not assert themselves. It shaped itself to a future which it did not and could not foresee. It hampered its freedom by carefully measured restraints in constitutions. The strong economic class gained adequate representation in its every department while the weak industrial class fought for a recognition and effective representation that were long delayed. Society became highly organized. The prevalence of the strong delayed action by the State in favor of the weak. When that obstacle was overcome it was found that constitu- tional limitations on State powers hindered it from most elementary defense of social justice toward the weak. Ordi- narily the State cannot act except by warrant of preestab- lished law. It protects only those human rights which it has in advance defined. After it has attempted new legislation in 26 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY defense of the weak it witnesses challenge to the constitu- tionality of its action. Even when this trial is successfully met it must depend on whimsical legislatures for appropria- tions and the good faith of those to whom administration is entrusted. But further obstacles of a different nature stood in the way of benevolent assistance to the weak. The State assumes that citizens will take the initiative in defending their civil rights under the law. To that end courts serve us. The State takes the initiative in criminal but not in civil cases. Now the weak have not a keen sense of their rights. They are largely ignorant of them. Lacking means to meet expenses they cannot carry an even contest with the strong. Uncer- tainty of outcome, delay, intimidation reduced very greatly the actual protection that the weak might have enjoyed under actual legislation. The negative and the positive elements in the political background of poverty have weighed heavily on the weaker classes and most heavily on the weakest among them. The competitive philosophy led to inequalities which thwarted the benevolent ends of State action and rendered nugatory, the promises of free institutions. Constitutional limitations on State action prevented interference until amendments con- ferred the needed powers. Powers that might have been exercised in the interest of the weak were not employed because the strong prevented their action. When the pres- sure of public opinion forced remedial measures through, questions of constitutionality, of interpretation and applica- tion occasioned annoying delays. When these obstacles were overcome, indifferent, even corrupt, administration nullified legislation frequently. When all of these difficulties were overcome, ignorance, indifference and miscarriage of justice completed the litany of disasters that touched the poor. Failure of the strong classes to visualize these pitiable con- ditions left the weak helpless and doomed them to the agony of thwarted life. The admirable study of "Justice and the Poor" by Reginald Heber Smith, published in 1919 by the THE BACKGROUND OF POVERTY 27 Carnegie Foundation, calls attention with scholarly thorough- ness and temperateness to these conditions. We read : 1 1. "We have been slow to appreciate the changes of conditions which to so great an extent have put justice beyond the reach of the poor." 2. "The administration of American justice is not impartial, the rich and the poor do not stand on an equality before the law, the traditional method of providing justice has operated to close the doors of the courts to the poor, and has caused a gross denial of justice in all parts of the country to millions of persons." 3. "The system not only robs the poor of their only protection but it places in the hands of their oppressors the most powerful and ruthless weapon ever invented." 4. "The effects of this denial of justice are far-reaching. Nothing rankles more in the human heart than the feeling of injustice. It produces a sense of helplessness, then bitterness. It is brooded over. It leads directly to contempt for law, dis- loyalty to the government and plants the seeds of anarchy. The conviction grows that law is not justice and challenges the belief that justice is best secured when administered according to the law. The poor come to think of American justice as containing only laws that punish and never laws that help. They are against the law because they consider the law against them." 5. "All that can be done within the scope of this work is to examine these cardinal defects which have brought about a denial of justice to the poor. Many other factors, such as the frailties in human nature, maladjustments in our social order, ignorance, unfairness in our economic system, contribute to this deplorable result. "One further cause is so closely linked to the administration of justice that it must be stated, although it cannot be discussed in detail. There are to-day many members of the Bar so ill- trained in law and so poorly equipped to practice law that the cases entrusted to them are mishandled and ruined and the rights of their clients lost. Unquestionably too large a proportion of the existing denial of justice is traceable to this source." The poor might well have asked James Kussell Lowell to retain in his poem on Agassiz, the phrase describing America, which his friends prevailed on him to expunge, "The Land of Broken Promise." introduction by Elihu Root, p. x. Pp. 8, 9, 10. Footnote, p. 16, respectively. 28 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY Cultwral Ideals. The cultural elements in the background of poverty are found in factors not controlled by law. It is well known that political institutions are effective by virtue of factors which they themselves do not control. The State can give to its citizens the ballot but religion and personal will must shape the conscience that guides the exercise of that power. Laws do not operate effectively against an adverse public opinion but laws do not create nor, on the whole, control public opinion. Democracy is an experience in character, the outcome of high moral qualities, but these the State does not create. It rather assumes such qualities as conditions to its effective action. Ideal democracy implies a maximum of order with a minimum of coercion. It depends on pro- found reverence for human rights and human personality, prompt courage in yielding to the discipline of personal ideals, unreflecting promptness in recognizing and defending the claims of public welfare on the active solicitude of citi- zens. Home, church, school, public opinion, individual con- science, theories of life and its relations, disciplined valua- tions are more powerful factors in a democracy than courts, jails and fines. The failure of these forces to play their respective parts in the direction of life became determining in the development of modern poverty. This truth was brought out with telling effect by Edmund Burke in his study of the French Revolution. These factors did not succeed in disciplining the strong. Men of power did not gain from them the cultured outlook that should have redeemed them from the tyranny of their strength and the abuse of their powers. They developed a keen sense of rights and a blunted or obscured sense of larger duty toward society. Selfishness became dominant. Partial views of life and human society prevailed. Love of dividends and hatred of taxes become symbolical of the drift of economic life. Love of sociological dividends which are our rights and disregard of sociological taxes which are our THE BACKGROUND OF POVERTY 29 duties became the rule in moral and social relations. Strong and weak drifted apart. Each developed its own code, its own outlook, its own philosophy of life. The strong were beguiled into error as the weak were driven toward or into misery. The cultural forces did not fit them for democracy. The State did not hinder the fury of selfishness. TJnequals competed. Inequality beyond the law neutralized equality before the law. Poverty is one of the consequences of that process. The failure of the cultural agencies to ennoble and guide the strong is shown in the loss of a true cultural outlook among these. Life is a whole. Part must be seen in relation to part. The law of life is the law of the whole of life. Industry is a phase of life, not all life. Profit is one incen- tive, not the sum of all incentives to action. Property is good but not the chief good nor all good. Civil law is one source of discipline but not all discipline. Self-protection is a duty but not all duty. Duty toward others is related to one's power to serve others. Life was split into fractions. Each tended to become a stubborn unrelated element. Insti- tutions, conditions, social philosophy, social relations and ac- tion followed that development to such an extent that they became primary factors in the poverty of the modern world. The breakdown of the cultural forces among the poor became a significant element of poverty. Home, school, church, public opinion, ambition meet obstacles at every point among the poor and aggravate to a pitiable degree the misery of their lot. A normal home requires a comfortable house, adequate room space to protect privacy and morality, decent surround- ings, intelligent parents, protected childhood, sufficient whole- some food, freedom from unreasonable fear and the experi- ence of peace, affection and hope. A home involves a moral unity among parents and children that is the basis of con- tinuity of life, a source of motive and aspiration and effec- tive discipline that prepares one for the wider relations of life. Through this moral unity of life experience is assured 30 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY in thoughtf ulness, renunciation, obedience, respect for duty and the memory of a thousand joys that are dear to affection, and are enduring springs of noble impulse later. The ideal home constitutes a spiritual unity as well in which faith in God and belief in the compensations of His love deepen the natural unity of life and light it with the touch of eternity. The divine foundation of family laid by the hand of Jesus Christ Himself imparts to it a sanctity that gives it enduring spiritual quality. When the home lacks this it ceases to be a home. "This is the true nature of home it is the place of peace ; the shelter not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home: so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved or hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home ; it is then only a part of that outer world which you have roofed over and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by household gods before whose faces none may come but those whom they can receive with love, so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light, shade as of a rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea ; so far it vindicates the name and fulfills the praise of home." (Ruskin, "Sesame and Lilies.") Now the home is intended to be a channel of culture. It promotes intellectual, spiritual and social life. It takes on some functions of church and school. It is a channel for the tradition of civilization to the oncoming generations, the familiar guide of the child into the wider complexities of life. It is the child's first natural and divine protection against ignorance and evil. Now this ideal has been made impossible for countless numbers. The breakdown of the home and of home life among the poor is a supreme tragedy. The home in its physical aspects has been made impossible by housing conditions, ignorance of home making, lack of THE BACKGROUND OF POVERTY 31 income, helplessness, the rapacity of landlords, the indiffer- ence of government and the inadequacy of the resources of charity. The home has broken down for countless numbers as an educational factor on account of the ignorance of parents, their apathy or enforced selfishness. The enduring effects of this condition have touched every aspect of life and imparted to much of poverty a stubbornness that defeats every resource of wisdom. Among the poor the home has very frequently failed as a moral influence because the fam- ily lacked the unity, intelligence and security upon which its moral power depends. Furthermore, environmental influences of a degrading kind have acted upon children with such effect as to have led us to expect a high rate of juve- nile delinquency among the children of the poor. It is but natural then that the home should have failed frequently in its spiritual role. Since it was equal to none of the tasks of time it fell short often of meeting those of eternity. We are thus compelled to recognize the breakdown of the home, the disintegration of the family as a fundamental ele- ment in poverty. Throughout the entire range of relief work the rehabilitation of the family is looked upon as the imme- diate imperative aim. It would be an injustice that no one could pardon were one to speak of the poor indiscriminately in discussing the breakdown of the home among them. There is no social worker who does not with real joy pay tribute to the marvelous instances of refinement, ambition, silent heroism, noble life, great endeavor and splendid outcome found among the homes of the poor. Dickens gives us a lesson that is forever powerful in the story of "Oliver Twist." It requires no particular ingenuity to trace much of the responsibility for every detail in the breakdown of home life among the poor in its physical, mental, moral and spirit- ual aspects to the competitive struggle as we have known it. The school is a channel of culture that takes on impor- tance increasingly with the progress of the world. Its mis- sion is to impart to the young the best that the past has given, to interpret present life and future life, to prepare the chil- 32 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY dren of the nation for their place in the world, to develop their latent powers and increase their capacity for noble living. Profitable attendance at school requires that the children have a normal home life, that they be well nourished* and clothed, that their education be adapted to their capacity and prospects and that they be fitted for an independent and orderly place in life. Both home and school are fundamen- tal in socializing the child, in giving it a true outlook on life, in developing the powers and motives of self-control, respect for the common welfare and reverence for human rights. In proportion as poverty hurts the positive well-being of children or compels them to go to work at an early age, it either removes them from school or unfits them for the disci- pline and concentration of the class room. Children who need medical attention or are under-nourished or neglected at home can profit but little in a school. If the indifference of parents, teachers and truant officers permits them to absent themselves from school frequently or altogether, there is little promise that they will escape the penalties of ignorance. The failure of the poor to share adequately in the opportuni- ties for education now universally offered exposes them to enduring consequences which become primary factors in their misery. Religion is the supreme factor in culture. It aims to place the creature in true relation to the Creator ; to set forth and sanction the social relations and values which indicate the will of God in respect of us. It sets before the world the true ideals of life. It expounds and sanctions the moral law. It furnishes the discipline that would curb strength and the sympathy that would reenforce weakness in a way to balance all human relations in the sight of God. The Church is the organized expression of religious truth and moral law as revealed to us through Jesus Christ and adapted to the circumstances and limitations of life. Receiv- ing her mission from Jesus Christ, she is His continuing personality, setting before the world the law of eternity as the basis of relations in it. She sets forth the true values THE BACKGROUND OF POVEKTY 33 that would discipline every desire of the human heart, the renunciations that make for spiritual peace and the impulses that lead to service in the name of Christ. She knows no compulsions but those of love. She depends upon no law but that of free choice of the individual who elects to accept the law of Jesus Christ and live according to it or who repu- diates that law and lives as he will. Christ in His own time found those who accepted and those who rejected His mes- sage. We are not to wonder if we find their successors to- day. Now the work of the Church is always difficult because evil is subtle and error is resourceful. Many of the strong, defiant in their strength, choose either not to accept the law of Christ or to accept it as they choose to interpret it. On the other hand the weaker classes, objects of special love and ten- der service on the part of Christ so suffer from poverty and its implications that the message of the Gospel does not reach them, or if it reaches them, it remains very often inoperative. From the spiritual standpoint, poverty is a problem that involves erroneous views of life, of wealth and of social rela- tions. It is also a problem of evil indicating frequent posi- tive or negative sin among the strong and involving condi- tions that promote evil among the poor. This analysis completes the sketch of the background of poverty as it is held in mind. Human inequality, competi- tion among unequals, the emerging of property as an interest in conflict with human rights, and the individualistic state made inevitable the development of the strong and the weak classes. They who proved incapable through personal inca- pacity or adverse environment of surviving in the competi- tive struggle were thrown near or into the ranks of depen- dency. Among the dependents the agencies of culture have broken down in varying degrees and have resulted in detri- ment to the physical, mental, moral and cultural welfare of the poor. Through congestion in large cities great numbers of poor are brought into proximity with one another. The general social isolation that separates them from normal con- 34 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY tact with other classes has permitted them to develop qualities that react upon them and aggravate the evils of their con- dition. In order, therefore, to understand modern poverty we must study not the single dependent family but the aggre- gate of dependence. We must gain insight into the nature and relations of poverty, its atmosphere and processes. Hence an approach to the problem more or less like that one here suggested promises a better grasp of recent thought concern- ing poverty and clearer insight into the numberless activi- ties whose aim is either the relief or prevention of poverty. Attempts have been made frequently to classify the causes of poverty. While some success attends these efforts investi- gators are unconsciously governed by their own outlook, limi- tations and prejudices as is shown by the literature of relief. Hence instead of attempting to catalogue causes it seems worth while to outline the facts of life and the phases of social organization that result in the poverty that we know. Such an analysis gives us a method of understanding and correlating all of the efforts resulting from our attempts to conquer poverty in the name of the social and Christian ideals of life. CHAPTEE III THE QUALITY OF POVERTY POVERTY may be looked upon exclusively as the plight of an individual or of a single dependent family. If the father does not earn sufficient income to maintain his family according to accepted standards of living the family may be called poor. If death removes the breadwinner, leaving wife and children helpless, these are made dependent. Now pov- erty understood in this way appears in many degrees. It ranges from the lowest level of destitution, degradation and utter indifference, to the highest level in which moral excel- lence, intelligence and industry occur among those who are forced to receive assistance occasionally. Instances are found when illness or death, temporary idleness or the birth of a child strains the resources of the family to the breaking point. Again we may find a family capable of maintaining itself if the mother and the children work in addition to the father. In a case like this the economic independence of the family which lifts it above the plane of material need is gained by the sacrifice of home life and by depriving the children of normal opportunity for education and play. If we could take this narrower and particular view of poverty and judge each instance in itself without relation to any other, we could deal with it adequately through mere relief. But in doing this we would be inclined to pay insufficient attention to the history of the family and to its future. We might excuse ourselves from attempting to understand why the family is poor and we might leave consideration of its welfare to future relief work. This narrowing of our view to a particular case is apt to lead us to ignore or underrate the full implications of poverty, to hinder the development 35 36 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY of foresight and to give us diminished standards of service. When social relations are simple and social conditions are fixed to a degree that permits an extremely narrow range of activity, this view of poverty will prevail. An isolated vil- lage that has not more than three or four dependent families presents a simplicity of life and of problems that makes relief work simple. This must have been the case to a great extent in the time of Our Blessed Saviour. He dealt with the afflicted, the widow, the orphan, in a direct, simple and immediate way. He expressly commanded His followers to give relief measured to immediate needs. He conferred upon this simple and homely service a touch of grandeur that makes it forever resplendent. At the same time He promul- gated laws of sympathy and principles of human relation- ship, a discipline of selfishness and an impulse toward serv- ice that affected and still affect the foundations of the social order itself. The complexities of modern society must yield to the touch of His law and of His spirit as did the simple life of His own day. We must add new duties toward the poor as His law directs and modern conditions require. But no new duties that we undertake, no complications that we may meet, no philosophy, no investigation and no standards that we may ever adopt under the direction of our highest wisdom and noblest impulses may lead us to diminish by one iota the spiritual and human worth of feeding the hungry, of clothing the naked, of giving drink to the thirsty and of comforting the afflicted. We do need and we shall need exact methods that will enable us to find all of the poor and neglect none. We must aim to prevent poverty and hinder irreparable harm to its victims. These are but added duties. There are never substitute duties for the immediate, literal and sympathetic relief of want as we find it. This wider view of poverty and these more exacting duties in dealing with it become evident when we study poverty not only as a plight of the individual or single family but also as a plight of society itself. When we look upon many dependent persons or families 37 instead of one, proportions are modified, views are changed and new impulses are stirred. We see poverty over a large surface and we see it more deeply. As the microscope seems to enlarge objects, to emphasize detail and increase our power of vision, the study of many poor families magnifies the view of the single poor family. We are enabled to see more deeply and more clearly. The uniform action of social forces, all but invisible in a single case, is displayed in the full sweep of their irresistible power when we see them acting in a larger way. These forces pick unerringly men, women and children who are unable to withstand the adverse pressure of their environment and they are huddled together in the valleys of misery where they declare the defeat of civiliza- tion and baffle the multiplied resources of Christian life. We must look upon poverty, therefore, as a plight of soci- ety, the condition of a large social class in which the purposes of organized common life fail of realization. It is the out- come of processes that discourage the weak and create insur- mountable social obstacles to their safety and happiness. The prevailing forces in industry and society weaken further those otherwise weak, whereas the ideal condition should tend to curb strength and encourage the weak in the unity of a common social and spiritual ideal. In this way poverty con- veys a challenge to our collective intelligence which has failed of the foresight needed to prevent it and has been indifferent on this account to the ideals which demand that we master it. Poverty as a social problem makes specific demands upon the owners of wealth, the cultured class, the professions of law and medicine, upon high-minded men and women, lovers of their kind, upon scholarship and statesmanship, upon every type of voluntary organization that professes genuine inter- est in the common welfare and possess resources that may contribute to it. It has been said that no indictment can be drawn against a nation. Poverty, however, draws an indictment against society. The extent to which all of these agencies of larger social action now recognize poverty as a social problem and obey the vision and the impulse that leads 38 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY them to contribute in their several ways to the mastery of it is one of the most encouraging features of modern life. This hopeful condition could never have developed had we insisted that poverty is merely the plight of the individual and nothing else. Only when poverty is seen from the larger social standpoint, and responsibility for it is brought in some way to the larger conscience of the world, can we gain the insight into its organic nature of which we have such present need. Only as increasing knowledge of the facts of poverty and deeper insight into its processes and relations are gained can the conscience of the world be stirred and can we engage in the greater task of social reorganization that widens the tasks of relief into those of prevention. The State stands out among all of the agencies of social action as the ultimate expression of temporal sovereignty and master of the resources of life available in the task of promoting social justice. Hence poverty becomes in a par- ticular way a problem for the State. We discover among the poor large numbers who fail to enjoy the protection that the State promises. The poor are subject to conditions of nega- tive and positive kinds which defeat the ends of justice in so many ways and in so many lives that poverty becomes an indictment of the intelligence, good will and power of political sovereignty itself. The bills of rights that our State constitutions promulgated and defined, fail to include definitions of rights which protect the poor at the points of their greatest danger. Reexamination of technical legal phrases that have become as chains holding the poor is made necessary. Amendment of constitutions which will permit the State to deal with social conditions and relations which are primary factors in poverty must be made. New laws must be enacted. Laws enacted must be enforced. New processes of administration and new methods of procedure are required in order that all grosser forms of injustice may be mastered and the State may be inspired by the new and intelligent benevolence made necessary in modern conditions. Waiving technicalities which on the whole have their THE QUALITY OF POVERTY 39 value, the State in dealing with poverty must aim at modi- fications of the property system, effective mastery of the processes of industry that bear on poverty, improvement of conditions in which the poor live, the fostering of commu- nity activities that relate to physical, mental, moral and social life of the weaker classes. It must force upon the owners of wealth and directors of industry a sense of new responsibility toward the working class. It must emanci- pate the weak from harassing economic fear and devise meth- ods that will reduce effectively the industrial risks that have forced so many into the ranks of the poor. Poverty must be dealt with also as a phase of the failure of the Christian organization of life. It is a defeat of divine brotherhood. It indicates an un-Christian isolation of the weak from the strong. It exposes the latter to conditions in which the human and divine purposes of life are baffled. Poverty impoverishes not only the poor but the world as well. It indicates the defeat of spiritual aspirations, arrested development of life, loss of happiness and culture that are intended in the Divine plan. Poverty indicates that the law of charity as promulgated by Christ is either deliber- ately evaded or made inoperative through impossible social conditions. We can understand the poor only by studying the rich. We know the weak only when we know the strong. The latter are victims of error, false ideals and triumphant selfishness, of a tyranny of system which makes them only too often willing slaves and leads them into self-deceiving excuses for their disregarding of the wider law of the King- dom of Christ. That law is nobly expressed in a line whose authorship unfortunately escapes memory. "The law of life leads away from poverty as a social condition and toward poverty as a spiritual condition." From this truth we infer that the first step in dealing effectively with poverty must be spiritual. There must be a conversion of heart that will lead the strong to seek the way, the truth and the life in Jesus Christ. This must be done 40 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY by their own choice. Jesus Christ does not compel the acceptance of His law. There are no tyrannies in His King- dom. He offers His truth and His graces and awaits our choice. Brotherhood in Him is a social no less than spiritual truth. It is a principle of social life, an axiom in political life, an immediate, personal, moral law in the everyday life and relations of all who believe in Him. It is vain to seek to deal effectively with poverty unless we first recognize it as the unhappy harvest of error and of evil. Redemption from these comes to us through Jesus Christ alone. Poverty is, therefore, a plight of the individual poor, a plight of society, a plight of the State, a plight of Chris- tianity. It is a challenge to the poor themselves who must do their own utmost whatever it be in working out their own redemption through sheer force of industry, good will and ambition. It is a challenge to society that calls forth far- reaching action by all of the organized agencies of common life. It is a plight of the State which must study anew the demands of social justice and incorporate its deeper vision into laws made effective by wise and benevolent administra- tion. It is a challenge to Christianity. The individual Christian gifted with powers and resources is called upon to examine his conscience and test his philosophy of life and his schedule of values by the spirit and commands of Christ. The Church as the authorized interpreter of the law of Christ is called upon to declare His law and utter His judgments as the moral, spiritual and social helplessness of the poor indi- cates a departure from the standards of the Christian life. There are social as well as spiritual aspects of the mission of the Church. She is called upon within the limits of her power to serve every wholesome social end which contributes to the protection of justice, the insurance of social peace and the happy development of the cultural forces of life. Since the principles of the Christian life must be expressed in the terms of social relations, there is no aspect of poverty whether individual or social which may not engage her solicitude and THE QUALITY OF POVEKTY 41 invite the help of her resources. This participation on the part of the Church in the battle for social justice and against poverty depends in last analysis on the initiative of the indi- vidual, whether bishop, priest or layman. Church authori- ties encourage, welcome and assist, but they do not compel. Hence every child of the Church who would be true to his graces and worthy of his spiritual inheritance should feel a definite responsibility toward the modern world to do his utmost as citizen no less than as Christian in the struggle for righteousness. Anything less than this makes one unworthy of one's graces and a poor representative of the ideals of Christian life. Any view that removes the larger social aspects of poverty from the immediate concern of the Church would lead to the surrender of her moral and spiritual lead- ership at a time when the world is most in need of it. CHAPTER IV POVERTY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS THERE are those who seem to think that the poor are unlike the rest of mankind, that they are destined to be poor, adapted by temperament to poverty and that there is no way of preventing it. They are discussed, described, dealt with as belonging to a separate order of nature. Those who hold this view believe, for instance, that one is born to a certain station and should remain there. Nothing should be under- taken which should lead the poor to be discontented with their lot or arouse in their hearts futile aspirations toward any higher order of life. Those who share such views resem- ble some of Bulwer Lytton's characters who are described as "very good to the poor whom they looked upon as a different order of creation and treated with that sort of benevolence which humane people bestow upon dumb animals." This view is unworthy of the strong, fatal to the poor themselves when they believe it and contrary to the funda- mental beliefs upon which free government rests. Poverty is the result of social arrangement or disarrangement. There is no decree of nature in regard to specific persons. There are those who lack the qualities required in the competitive struggle. There will be failures in a competitive civilization as there would be in a cooperative civilization. Our favorite argument against economic socialism is that it would shape institutions for the advantage of the weaker class and at the same time defy the power of the strong, stifle their aspira- tions and react to the detriment of civilization. Competi- tion among unequals when conducted without restraint or mercy searches out the unfit and visits the penalties of their weakness upon them. Some fail in the competitive struggle 42 POVEKTY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS 43 because of personal incapacity. Some fail through accident, disease, industrial risk, commercial disaster and other un- classified incidents and accidents of life. Now these pro- cesses have nothing to do with types of persons. Hfence it is vain to believe that poverty is a status or that there are some who are poor by the decree of nature or of God. The processes of life have brought together large numbers who are directly or indirectly victims of the competitive system. They live among themselves, physically, socially and morally isolated from the strong. They show identical moral, social and industrial traits which are to a great extent the result of poverty as well as the cause of it. Poverty makes the type that we call poor. The type does not make poverty. We are unduly influenced by a fallacy of con- centration that leads us to see and to judge poverty as a static condition instead of seeing dependent men, women and chil- dren threshed out of life by the competitive process and huddled together. We should see the process behind each victim and not the resemblances among victims if we would gain the only insight into poverty that is either true or helpful. A single happy incident, an acquaintanceship, a relationship that attracts attention may gain for a poor boy or a poor girl or a widow, friendship or opportunity that leads straight to success and power. Such facts and they are without number, put on end to the impression that there is any type in nature destined to be poor. Modern conditions force us to deal with poverty in the aggregate as a problem of society and the State and of Chris- tianity no less than as a problem of the individual. So long as there is a geography of poverty there will be a psychology of poverty. So long as there is a psychology of poverty we are exposed to the danger of believing that the poor are a social type. There will be no intelligent service of the poor until we believe in their capacity for resurrection following their crucifixion and until we stir all of the resources of life to make that resurrection possible. The following para- graphs from Dickens' "Hard Times" are well worth reading : 44 For the first time in her life, Louisa had come into one of the dwellings of the Coketown hands; for the first time in her life, she was face to face with anything like individuality in connection with them. She knew of their existence by hundreds and by thou- sands. She knew what results in work a given number of them would produce in a given space of time. She knew them in crowds passing to and fro from their nests like ants or beetles. But she knew from her reading infinitely more of the ways of toiling in- sects than of these toiling men and women. Something to be worked so much and paid so much, and there ended; something to be infallibly settled by laws of supply and demand; something that blundered against those laws and floun- dered into difficulty; something that was a little pinched when wheat was dear and overate itself when wheat was cheap; some- thing that increased at such a rate of percentage, and yielded such another percentage of time, and such another percentage of pauperism; something wholesale, of which vast fortunes were made; something that occasionally rose like a sea and did some harm and waste (chiefly to itself) and fell again; this she knew the Coketown hands to be. But she had scarcely thought more of separating them into units than of separating the sea itself into its component drops. . . . showed how the workers would get drunk, the chemist and druggist showed that those who did not drink took opium, and the jail chaplain showed that they resorted to low haunts, then the two named could show that these same people were a bad lot altogether, gentlemen; that, do what you would for them, they were never thankful, gentlemen ; that they were restless, gentlemen ; that they never knew what they wanted; that they lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter, and insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat, and yet were eternally dis- satisfied and unmanageable. Poverty is massive. Dependent families, dependent and neglected children, homeless and aimless men and women, deserted wives, victims of accidents, of acute and chronic forms of disease, helpless victims of sin, themselves as in- nocent as angels, victims of involuntary idleness no less than of vicious habits are found in all of our industrial centers in distressingly large numbers. If we include among the poor those who gain income at the pitiable sacrifice of health and home life and of child life; also those who depend on POVERTY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS 45 charity only at intervals the aggregate number is staggering. It is impractical to attempt measurement of the extent of poverty. The popular estimate of ten million persons in the United States who are not one week removed from poverty may be an exaggeration. Could the number be placed safely at one-fourth of that, the aggregate would still be staggering. It is difficult to find any city in which the agencies of relief would for a moment pretend that they were reaching all who needed help or were giving that help with effective care. No superficial views, no mistaken attitudes toward the poor, no assumptions of their wholesale guilt can hide the fact that our outstanding poverty is our outstanding disgrace. Poverty is complex. The condition of the poor represents recurrent action of many social forces. This is made evident the moment we attempt to write the history and analyze the condition of a single dependent family. It is made more evident the moment we set about the work of rehabilitation of a single family and the protection of its independence and dignity in the normal course of life. The rehabilitation of a single family may require finding employment for the father and fitting him for it, instruction in housekeeping for the mother, preventive care of health of children, the watching of school attendance, kindly direction of the way- ward child, protection of legal rights and the removal of the family to a new neighborhood. Any one who has worked with intelligence among the poor knows that a single depen- dent family is a cross section of all poverty. Now to give material relief which is an extremely important service and to close the eyes to the processes that threaten a family would be most inadequate service and a poor expression of the rich resources of intelligent love of the poor. Poverty is organic. It is the outcome of social philosophy, institutions, conditions and relations. It is a symptom of the operation of social processes that control all organized life. It is not fortuitous. It is not the result of a decree of the strong or the arbitrary choice of the weak. It is the inevitable outcome of the organization and conditions of life. 46 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY Only when we look upon it as organic can we understand the pitiable inadequacy of relief alone. Only then can we gain insight into its real nature and can we feel the stirring of impulses that would lead us to deal with processes, insti- tutions, conditions and relations in our efforts to conquer it. This organic view forces us to study the ethical codes that prevail in life, the relations of social classes, the prop- erty system, the social philosophy of the strong, the inef- fectiveness of the discipline of religion, the conduct of indus- try, the process of legislation and the tyranny of conditions in the lives of the weak. Neither amiable assumptions nor mere sympathy, how- ever earnest, nor prejudice however firm, nor complacent self-confidence, however dignified, can by any expected mir- acle serve as substitutes for earnest study, scholarly insight, docility of mind and painstaking service in undertaking to bring justice, happiness and peace to the victims of poverty. Mistaken notions of the nature of poverty, of the meaning of social service, of the law of Christian charity, die slowly. But nothing can kill them more effectively than information as to the facts of poverty, insight into its organic nature and a generosity that forbids us to hesitate at any cost in the full expression of intelligent Christian love. It is possible to see nothing in poverty except the plight of the individual and to see no duty except that of relief, comfort and ad- vice as cases present themselves. It is possible to shut one's eyes to the wider bearings of poverty but it can be done only in defiance of scholarly standards and at the cost of per- petuating the misery of the poor. Much of the harm done by poverty is irreparable. The adult who is illiterate, shiftless and irresponsible is irrep- arably harmed. Food may satisfy his hunger but who shall restore the birthright of mind and soul, stolen from him for all time through the neglect that cursed his early life? Children led by the circumstances of poverty into the ways of sin may be redeemed by the grace of God in His holy providence. But the task of befriending them and making POVERTY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS 47 them noble has been made infinitely more difficult through the harm against which we had failed to protect them. Harm to health and limb, recklessness born of despair, and waywardness that seemed to be the only escape from misery indicate a quality and extent of harm that tax the utmost resources of our wisdom in our efforts to render service. It is easy to understand the spirit that prompted Hawthorne to speak as follows after observing the poor of London. I never could find it in my heart, however, utterly to condemn these sad revelers, and should certainly wait till I had some better consolation to offer before depriving them of their dram of gin, though death itself were in the glass; for methought their poor souls needed such fiery stimulant to lift them a little way out of the smothering squalor of both their outward and interior life, giving them glimpses and suggestions, even if bewildering ones, of a spiritual existence tbat limited their present misery. The temperance reformers unquestionably derive their commission from tbe Divine Beneficence, but have never been taken fully into its counsels. The poor suffer much from their friends. They who stand most in need of help are least capable of being bene- fited by it. The service of the poor requires infinite tact, acute understanding of social processes and human nature, delicacy and patience of the most exacting kind. Lacking love of full physical life and opportunity for it, they are indifferent to the measures that would promote their health. Lacking intellectual capacity and dulled by their environ- ment great numbers of them show no response to provisions for their education and refinement and no concern about the lack of these in their lives. When the friends of the poor lack understanding and insight they are more concerned about expressing their charity than about expressing it by effective care. Indiscriminate sympathy, inadequate stand- ards, careless methods of numbers who give relief form temptations against which many of the poor struggle in vain. Thus they are paralyzed, robbed of their self-respect, encour- aged in deceit and laziness, and thereby all but irreparably 48 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHAEITY harmed by their very friends who often act in this way in the name of charity itself. The poor are harmed sometimes by the excessive idealism of their friends, by those who lose sight of the limitations of life and abandon themselves to the seduction of an indis- criminate idealism. Patience with the limitations of life, and a discreet allowance for the harassing difficulties under which the poor labor can do much to prevent these mis- directed efforts and the harm that results from them. Poverty is inert. Its very nature indicates lack of re- sources, lack of impulse and opportunity to rise, lack of op- portunity for a normal share in the blessings of life. This indisposition of poverty to help itself is one of its most baf- fling qualities. Since everything has happened to the poor nothing is left to be feared. A kind of fatalism leads them to accept every kind of misfortune and disposes them to bear it without struggle. There is a curious joyousness about them, a buoyancy that springs from a lack of sense of responsibility. This is perhaps the element that contrib- utes most to the saving of their reason. When relief comes to the poor, it comes from a class alien to them in experience, association and culture. It is presented often in an awk- ward and patronizing way that defeats its purpose. All who work among the poor agree in undertaking to develop in them the impulse to self-help. Yet, as Conrad tells us, there is a kind of way of assisting our fellow creatures which is enough to break their hearts. We have been taught that the prospect of acquiring and owning property securely is necessary to develop character, enterprise, foresight, self-discipline and ambition in the human race. Believers in individualism have claimed con- stantly that no other motive and prospect can be sufficiently powerful to arouse the latent energies of the race, stimulate industrial development and promote human progress. The argument is undoubtedly true. But if the strong depend on the prospect of acquiring and enjoying property in their de- velopment what may we expect in justice and mercy from POVERTY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS 49 the weaker classes, notably the dependent to whom prospect and opportunity for acquiring and enjoying property are de- nied ? They who are least resourceful of themselves are pre- vented from contact with the source from which the strong derive their stimulation and self-discipline. Goldsmith said in one of his letters to his brother: "Frugality and avarice in the lower orders of mankind are true ambition. These offer the only ladder for the poor to rise to preferment." Thia is perhaps good psychology but bad ethics. Nevertheless it sets before us a factor that is fundamental in the weakness of the poor. From this standpoint we gain an insight into the wholesome impulse that leads society at this late date to bring prospect of ownership of property nearer to the disinherited social class. Again we are taught that substantial trust in the social order is necessary for a happy and disciplined life. Belief in the benevolent mission of the State, confidence that rights will be protected with impartial fidelity, the enjoyment of service and guarantees in orderly life are essential in build- ing up the tone of confidence that accompanies the strivings of ambition. Now the poor have no such experience of the benevolence of the social order. It has decreed and it tol- erates their poverty and misery. It has built up an elaborate process for the protection of property rights but the poor have no property. It is a baffling paradox to recognize that the system of private property prevents the weak from having property. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, free- dom of contract, have little if any meaning in the actual lives of the poor but there are many distinctive general dangers that are causing tragedy every day in the lives of the poor. Against these the poor have found themselves helpless and undefended. The moment the stronger classes lose their confidence in government we are near to the disintegration of the nation's life. The poor have no such confidence and they lack the enrichment of strengthened impulse that it might engender. The poor take short outlooks. Neither future nor past 50 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY means much to many of them. They live near to reality, from day to day. Neither memory nor anticipation can do much for them. Johnson says in the "Rambler" : "Among the lower classes of mankind there will be found very little desire for any other knowledge than what may contribute immediately to the relief of some uneasiness or the attain- ment of some near advantage." It is this lack of outlook together with emphasis upon pres- ent lower needs that makes so many of the poor indifferent to education and unconcerned about income that will relieve their daily wants. If the quality of civilization is measured by the degree of foresight that the nation shows; and if in a corresponding way living from day to day without regard to a long future and higher things is an outstanding trait of primitive people, we find here an indication of the place of the poor in the story of human progress. The following from an address by Elihu Root in honor of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York indicates the spiritual and cultural elements whose defeat is so marked in poverty : "They understood that the cultivation of taste is one of the mightiest agencies in the eternal conflict, the struggle for happi- ness against the discontent and the tedium of life. They knew that when for rich and poor alike food and drink and clothing and shelter have been supplied, there still comes the question of happiness. They knew that then Satan enters into the empty chambers of the soul that has no spiritual interest in life. They knew what we see to-day, that the great problem for the laboring people of America, with their higher wages and their shorter hours, is what to do with their higher wages and their leisure hours. They knew that no wealth and no material things can fill the void in human nature. And with that deep knowledge they proceeded with a breadth of view worthy of all honor. They determined to establish an institution which should be not to gratify curiosity, but to educate taste, which should be not for amusement but an essential means of high cultivation. And they declared that they were determined to establish an institution which should gather for the education of all the people the human documents of art in all its phases and in all possibilities painting and sculp- POVERTY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS 51 ture, the graphic arts, handiwork, textiles and metals, music, the arts of East and West, of the present and the past all were to be made to contribute toward the cultivation of that taste which makes for human happiness. Poverty is to a great extent anonymous. That is to say the normal social bonds that fix one's place in society and furnish the basis of normal attachments are often lacking among the poor. There are strong and weak in nearly every family, particularly in large families. The former provide for the latter with tender and watchful love and in a spirit of generosity and thoughtfulness that are noble in the ex- treme. Now when the family as a whole is weak, when its spiritual and social unity is disturbed and resources are lack- ing the tendency to disruption becomes marked. This proc- ess has a far-reaching effect upon the poor. It is not excep- tional to find members of a successful family scattered in many cities and remaining out of touch with one another. But when the family tie is weakened among the poor the in- dividual members who drift into the lower levels of de- pendency enter the mass of anonymous poor. One of the first steps taken by an intelligent social worker is to find and reconstruct the family bond. The bonds of neighborhood, of religion, of employment, of race, which should theoreti- cally unite strong and weak in some kind of human associa- tion have been broken down so generally that the weak are not reenforced by them and they become practically anony- mous. If all of these social bonds retained their normal strength and operated to awaken in the strong a sense of re- sponsibility toward their weak, the complexities of poverty would be greatly simplified. But these bonds have been broken. The poor become anonymous and unstable. They move from place to place. Instead of depending on per- sonal knowledge and immediate normal touch in the relations of the strong to their own poor we contrive to depend on records, investigations, card catalogues as we deal with the masses of poor in a modern city. It is much to be regretted that the gain made through our 52 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY insight into the psychological aspects of poverty is accompa- nied by a tendency to misunderstand and even ignore the elements of sin to be found in it. It is interesting to note that theologians were disposed long ago to associate the insti- tution of private property with sin. Their view was that private property would have been unnecessary except for the disorder in human desire caused by sin. There is no doubt that in many cases poverty results from specific individual sin on the part of the strong. They vio- late the laws of God that they might have respected and their sinning leads directly to injustice, fraud, oppression and neglect of duty which become paramount in poverty. There is no doubt that in many instances sin on the part of the poor is indicated as the determining cause of their poverty. There can be no safe guidance in psychological study if it leads us to ignore the sin element in our problem. Where sin has been a cause, repentance alone is remedy. No constructive policies can replace the grace of God and the action of the will in dealing with the sin element as a cause of poverty. Sins of employers, sins of wealth, negative and positive sins of lawmakers, sins of commerce and of trade are factors of poverty no less than wife desertion, deliberate immorality, hatred or lawlessness on the part of the poor themselves. All of this is increasingly misunderstood because there are so many who eliminate God from their social science and who drop the word sin from their vocabulary. Having lost spiritual vision they have no talent that enables them to see spiritual processes, spiritual laws and the action of Divine Grace in human life. There is no duty toward the poor more pressing than that laid upon the Church, of asserting the spiritual element in life, of declaring the supremacy of the law of God and its immediate obligations throughout the entire range of social life. The most important chapter in any account of poverty is one that should declare and deal with it as a spiritual phenomenon. One of the most discouraging results of recent scholarship is in the establish- 53 merit of the sociological view of poverty and the awakening of the impulse to deal with it from the standpoint of social processes alone. Unless the soul is kept in view and spiritual processes are recognized and the law of God is counted as a factor, research and reconstruction will fail. The spiritual interests of the poor are a supreme concern of the Church. Reduced powers of physical resistance ex- pose one to disease in a way similar to that in which reduced resistance to moral peril endangers character and smoothes the way to sin. The relation of delinquency to poverty offers a searching challenge to the Church. Social factors in moral- ity are far-reaching. If wholesome environment, effective moral and mental training, vigorous home ideals and good example are fundamental in all life, who shall measure the extent to which lack of these results in every kind of delin- quency that we find among the poor ? CHAPTER V JUSTICE THE passion for justice lies deep in the heart of the world. Whenever men have become thoughtful and responsive to ideals that quicken the pulse of life they have offered stern resistance against obstacles which stood in the way of their happiness and growth. Respect for justice is respect for life. Indifference to it is indifference to death. Men can- not live together except as a sense of justice is developed among them and each individual is surrounded by safeguards which shield his personality, further his aspirations and offer opportunity to develop his powers. The passion for justice takes its direction and its demands gain their content from the practical ideals of life that prevail at any time. There are souls without aspiration, minds without initiative and indifferent to enslavement, hearts that feel no protest against oppression and speak no anguish of defeated hope. But such are not representative. They do not live or feel with complete powers. Normal men and women wish to live, to grow, to feel equal to their tasks and worthy of their opportunities; to attain to self-realization and self-expression, in the terms of accepted ideals. Views of the nature, relations and destiny of man are the very roots of life. Codes, customs, social valuations and self-estimates that touch the hearts of multi- tudes and arouse their emotions are but outcroppings on the surface of life, of estimates of life that make the foundation of the world. The quality of a civilization is indicated by its prevailing views of life and by the earnestness and effect with which social authority teaches them and realizes them in the lives of increasing numbers. The failure of a civili- 54 JUSTICE 55 zation is indicated by its errors in fundamental views of life or its indifference to those which are true. The passion for justice is essentially spiritual. Life is the gift of God. Jesus Christ placed an eternal value in the nature and destiny of the individual and enveloped person- ality in a sanctity which becomes law to us and to institutions. The soul acting through intelligence and will is the basis of personality. The roots of our dignity, the law of our destiny and the pattern of every approved relation into which we enter are found in this spiritual element in each of us. Rights are extensions of personality, assurances of sanctioned moral control over conditions, institutions, persons or things as these relate to personality in the unfolding of individual and social life. Our nature destines us to live among others and in fixed relations to them. Communities exist in the plan of nature in order that individuals may live, grow and gain their ends. Our rights are restraints on others lest they crowd, oppress or defeat us in our legitimate ways and aims. Obligations are our contributions to the common life for the sake of the rights of others or of communities. Rights are protective at the points of danger to our welfare and peace. Love of justice is but love of life, of completed personality, and as such it is an integral part of the character of the nor- mal man and woman. When rights fall short of aspira- tions, or defiance of them and indifference to them are found among the powerful because of their strength, the passion for justice appears as a collective power that asserts itself in defense of the weak with lawful moderation or lawless energy, with measured demand or blind fury, with Christian zeal or pagan hate as the case may be. Not more impressive in their grandeur nor more determined in their action are the cosmic forces that have lifted continents from beneath the waters and have driven the very oceans from their strong- holds than are the emotional forces of the passion for justice when it is once aroused. They have overturned dynasties which had seemed destined to wield power as long as life endures. They have wrenched institutions to destruction 56 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHAKITY in order to make room for wider concepts of personality, to rearrange human relations and enable men, women and chil- dren to live, to grow, to express themselves, to choose their ways and be secure in control of things and relations that are essential to life. The sanctity of justice is independent of the mistakes of its passionate expression. Not all of the horrors of revo- lution, nor the blood that has been shed, nor the price that has been paid for the human rights that have been gained can affect the essential role that the sense of justice must play in all organized social life. The strong must love and respect justice. The weak must seek it. They in whose hands power has been placed must gain the high vision of justice as the herald of God and their ideals must hold them pledged to work toward it and secure it for the children of men. Justice is defeated among the poor. Men, women and children in numbers that shame us sit in the shadows, dumb, defeated, aimless. Their wrongs impress them merely as experiences since all guarantees and understanding of rights and of the glory of life are denied to many among them. No traces of the sanctity of personality are found in the methods and views of those who oppress or cheat the poor. Justice nods in convenient oblivion when little children pass the doors of the school to enter the factory. Human rights seem shorn of all respect when industry holds life more cheaply than profits, and industrial power absolves itself from the restraints of Christian faith and sympathy in not caring about the helplessness of those who have lost in the competitive struggle. The injustice that is associated with poverty comes by the action of individuals who oppress and defraud them; from conditions against which they are help- less; from social philosophy which lulls the conscience of the strong into indifference to the plight of the weak ; from in- effective or delayed legislation which should control social processes, regulate conditions and protect opportunity; from indifference to the valuations of the Christian life. In as far as poverty represents injustice and not inevitable limita- JUSTICE 57 tions of human nature and social institutions, it can be dealt with only by developing knowledge of facts, by tracing re- sponsibility for them and formulating effective definitions of rights which will protect the weak at their points of danger. Not all poverty represents social injustice. It would be false to facts and misleading to the highest degree were we to overlook the phases of poverty due to the fault of the poor, to sin among them, to deliberate neglect of opportunity and defiance of personal ideals. It would be mistaken kind- ness to deal with the poor as though they lacked will and could commit no wrong. The aspects of poverty which do not represent clearly indicated social justice may, therefore, be dismissed from consideration now, important as they are. Individual Conscience. The prevailing moral code of a time ascribes to the individual whether he be strong or weak a more or less fixed range of rights and obligations. This code rests in Christian civili- zation on the divine teaching about human personality, human destiny and social relations. The teaching is inter- preted in the light of experience and practical application of principles. The Catholic recognizes the Church as inter- preter and judge of the essentials of the Christian code of rights and obligations. Our practical views of one another, of the rights which we must respect and duties that we must perform depend on intelligent training, good will and spiritual sanction. The safety of one lies in the conscience of many. Only as men and women respect in their hearts the rights of others with whom they have dealings, may we hope for any justice whatsoever. The corner stone of the temple of Justice is the human heart, shaped by the hand of God and by the agents of His law. When men are equals and confederates these relations are reflected in the rights that are declared and the respect that they inspire. When men are unequals and competitors, found in separated groups and lacking understanding, sym- 58 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY pathy and active good will, arbitrary codes of rights that reflect partial views of life appear and claim the sanction of the ideals of justice. The first view of poverty as a phase of injustice is that in which the strong are misled by mis- taken social philosophy, partial views of social relations and values and are governed by these views in dealing with the weak. Error concerning human rights, and wrong-doing in defiance of even recognized rights as both are found among the strong are factors in poverty. The remedy demanded is conversion of heart, correction of views, stern self-disci- pline that holds the strong true to personal ideals. The cul- ture forces that shape character, home, school, Church, find a fundamental task here. The accepted moral code of a time indicates the moral interpretation of life and its rela- tions. The morals of a time show how far this code is respected and individual conscience operates in serving justice. These principles have bearings in two directions. They hold the weak to respect the natural and acquired rights of the strong. They require honest service for wages paid, loyalty to duties founded in natural and divine law. Our study does not, however, lead us in this direction. We are concerned mainly in searching for aspects of injustice in poverty. One of these is failure of individual moral intelligence in the strong to gain true understanding of human rights and duties; the failure of individual conscience to respect human rights as understood. The individual is no longer a mere individual. In our social organization the strong are trebly strong through property and industrial power; the weak are trebly weak through conditions, social isolation and competition. Men of power who exercise control over many lives, many thousands of lives and bring no socialized conscience to the task which fits them for their stewardship, contribute greatly to the injustice of poverty. Such may be and usually are conscientious as individuals but vision has not followed power and conscience has not controlled it. This process continues unhindered when the organization JUSTICE 59 of life and industry, of finance and management separates strong from all personal contact with weak, insulates the profit motive in industry in its full raw strength and disas- sociates it from all relation to a whole view of life, a bal- anced moral judgment of values that holds all men in bonds of reassuring Christian sympathy. The conditions that have arisen represent a mixture of erring social philosophy that survives from an earlier day to which it was perhaps fitted, lack of will to revise standards to meet conditions and the ascendancy of partial interests and warped ideals among the strong. It follows that true social philosophy, new standards of justice, stern good will are elementary demands in our en- deavor to cope with the elements of injustice in poverty. Conversion of heart, compelling appeal by spiritual and cul- tural forces, the arousing of a socialized conscience in the strong constitute the only wholesome beginning possible in our work. It would be vain to overlook the magnitude of the task. Even when many bring good will and intelligence to it they find themselves in the unyielding grasp of national industrial organization that leaves them only a precarious liberty to follow a higher conscience. But no difficulties can change the nature of things or dispense with this first step in the orderly struggle for justice which awaits us. Social valua- tions that give to wealth an enhanced worth, and dimmed social imagination that prevents the most obvious facts in poverty from being seen at all, slow down the process of securing justice in a most discouraging way. Personal error, personal fault, wrong-doing among the weak, together with personal error, personal fault and wrong-doing among the strong will yield to intelligence and conscience and to these alone. Much can be done at these points. Much must be done. But when the most has been done, so much remains to invite our solicitude and disturb our social peace that we must look far beyond individual conscience and individual reform. We are led thus to the functions of the social con- science in dealing with the injustice of poverty. 60 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY Social Conscience. Lack of terms leads toward confusion here. It were bet- ter perhaps to speak of the socialized conscience instead of the social conscience. Conscience is practical judgment of right and wrong in particular instances. It is necessarily individual. But the range of information, the quality of ideals and the sense of moral responsibility that issue jointly in our practical moral judgments introduce the greatest variety into behavior. One who has an intensely individu- alistic conscience, lacks social imagination and is ignorant of the complex processes of life, will combine a good con- science with very bad judgment and cause much harm. Now when such an individualist gains insight into social relations and develops his sense of social responsibility and becomes conscious of a general obligation toward the community, par- ticularly toward its helpless elements, his conscience will be socialized. He will see many things to which he had been blind before. The large number of individualistic con- sciences that survive in every social circle from an earlier day creates the most serious problem in social welfare that confronts us. The process of socializing those consciences consists in giving them insight into social processes, actual knowledge of conditions, awakening a sense of moral respon- sibility for both processes and conditions, correcting their outlook on life and leading them to form new judgments concerning duty toward the community and the weaker classes. The socialized conscience is in itself not new. The tradi- tions of the moral teaching of the Church give fundamental emphasis to social duties, duties connected with power and office in social life. Since we can have broad or narrow judgments, limited or abundant information, mistaken or corrected interpretations of social relations even this teaching may fail to bring conscience up to our problems. And this has occurred. We are gaining in these days new insight into social relations. We see the social elements in the fate of JUSTICE 61 the individual more keenly than ever before. We are re- stating the ideals of individual life in wider terms. The collective sense of society is engaged in formulating a larger catalogue of human rights intended to protect men, women and children against danger from social arrangements. In proportion as this code of rights is clarified and accepted a new public opinion arises. It affects religious and academic teaching, employers and public leaders of every kind. A social pressure is exerted on individual conscience and con- science is socialized in the sense explained. Dangers threaten us before we are born. They face us at and after birth, during childhood and adolescence. These dangers relate to health, education, morals and social effi- ciency. Social conditions destroy homes, convert labor into an instrument of disease and death at times, disrupt the fam- ily and harden the hearts of the strong. Conditions of dependence in industry place the weaker classes at the mercy of industrial processes conducted for profit; conducted without sympathy or real understanding. We have gained knowledge and insight into the facts of poverty and the meaning of them, that show how body, mind and soul are endangered for time and eternity. Rights to health, to education, to normal protection, to play, to a start in life free from undue handicap, rights of children to normal home life, to leisure for finer joys are coming to long delayed recognition in the modern social conscience and reacting on human society in a way rich in promise as it is already honorable in achievement. The pressure of this socialized conscience is witnessed in a hundred voluntary movements of reform, in welfare work, in improved methods and standards of organizations which act as attorneys for the poor before modern society. These rights throng the pages of our newer literature, inspire leaders, direct teachers, create an atmos- phere in which individual consciences thrive in unwonted vigor. Their most striking effect is seen in the changed con- ception of the function of the State and policies of new leg- islation which are now witnessed everywhere. The most 62 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY clearly established rights set forth in the socialized conscience gradually attain to final form in legislation and take their place in the political conscience of society with the sanction of sovereign power to support them. This conscience oper- ates in two directions. It inspires and directs individual conscience to recognize and respect human rights from high motives of duty and at whatsoever cost. On the other hand it recasts definitions and sanctions of human rights in the law and engages the full resources of the State in defense of justice as it is defined. Political Conscience. The State is the organized sovereign will of society. It is the mainstay of the social order in that it alone has control of the supreme coercive sanctions in life. It alone may force obedience to law by taking away life, liberty or property by execution, imprisonment and fine. It is the vicegerent of God and its authority when properly exercised indicates the effective will of God in social relations. The State is the servant of justice. It exists and acts in order that the individual may live in peace and be secure in the gradual unfolding of his powers as he seeks his final destiny in God. Although this is the exalted mission of the State, it has at times in its actual exercise of government become recreant to its duty and has stood in the way of justice instead of promoting its interests. The history of human liberty, the story of the development of free institutions is due to the determination of men to be free, to be secure, to have oppor- tunity to grow, to express themselves and choose their ways. They have shrunk from no effort, recoiled from no extreme, hesitated at no cost whenever government seemed to ob- struct justice as it was conceived and to interfere with personal rights whose enjoyment was taken to be essential. The modern State, democratic in spirit and form, is found as a result to be hemmed in by a constitution and they who administer it are held in various ways, subject to those whom they govern. JUSTICE 63 The State does not and cannot protect all human rights. It protects them only in as far as it defines them. All arbi- trary action on its part is prevented by requiring the warrant of a law for everything that it does. Hence the vision of justice that guides the State is limited to the rights of sub- jects already enacted and provided for. This restraint on the State offers safety from historical abuses due to arbitrary exercise of power. But it operates to the harm of justice when the definitions of human rights prove inadequate to present dangers of the weaker social classes and effective obstacles either arrest all attempts to remedy conditions or slow down action into tedious delay. The political rights of man traditionally defined and guar- anteed are quite inadequate to the present dangers of the weaker classes. Magna Charta, the rights of man enunciated in typical revolutions, the bills of rights underlying our State constitutions beginning with that of Virginia, the first of them, indicate like abuses, like protests, like aspirations. Equality before the law was demanded because inequality beyond the law had led to abuses that baffled the passion for justice. Freedom of worship and of conscience, of speech, press and assembly; the acquisition and possession of prop- erty; security in person, house, papers and possessions; un- trammeled access to courts with speedy trial; the right to confront accusing witnesses and to compel the appearance of favorable witnesses ; safety against imprisonment for debt ; security against bills of attainder and corruption of blood; the pursuit and attaining of safety and happiness are fun- damental political rights written into political constitutions and laws that both limit and compel the modern State in dealing with the individual. These defined rights of the individual limit the State be- cause in the words of the Alabama constitution "These rights are excepted out of the general powers of government and remain forever inviolate." They compel modern govern- ments because these must protect each citizen in the enjoy- ment of rights named when that enjoyment is endangered. 64 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY Every one of these rights is the outcome of protests against historical experience. These protests were due to the pas- sion for personal liberty, for self-expression, for larger life and freer action. That passion has led to unrest, to war, and revolution and to death. It has made mistakes as hor- rible in their consequences as in their content. There is no form of cruelty, injustice, error or inhumanity to which the passion for liberty has not been misled. But when the storv is read in its completeness we do find that the modern lib- erties which are so highly prized and the exalted estimate which democracy places upon the individual are the harvest of the passion for justice. And every precious element in that passion as a spiritual force is found in the Gospel of our Lord. Even if life were stationary the State would on account of human limitations fail often to realize the justice which it defines, fail to guarantee human rights whose protection is its supreme aim. Special interests may gain the ascendancy and prevent its disinterested service of justice. The facts of inequality beyond the law may easily neutralize the value of equality before the law. The unhindered play of social forces will bring about conditions of fact as for instance in the distribution of property which make political rights nugatory. The difficulty of applying laws to conditions, con- tests of skill in the courts, the discouraging cost of search for justice are factors which discount greatly the promises of justice which we receive from the State. But in addition to these defeats of justice we find the conditions of life lead- ing to others which are of the greatest concern. Life moves rapidly, social relations become infinitely complex, while in- stitutions and definitions remain relatively rigid. The weaker social classes are constantly exposed to new dangers which invite new definitions where individual and social conscience fail to afford protection. Thought is always in advance of institutions. Funda- mental views of human rights and relations as framed in social philosophy carry aspiration far in advance of achieve- JUSTICE 65 ment. A sensitive individual conscience accompanied by balanced judgment and a correct sense of values will do full justice to the weak in ready recognition of every claim of the latter to sympathy and humane treatment. A larger num- ber will readily do justice to the weak under the guidance of a clearly formulated social conscience which assembles and respects rights needed to protect the weak at their points of danger. But in last analysis we have need of the exact- ness of definition and force of coercion through law to put the pressure of the State upon the stronger classes who be- lieve that legal justice is full justice and that conscience is freed when the coercions of law are satisfied. The fullest and freest service of justice is found in the social conscience. The process in question is accomplished mainly by widen- ing definitions rather than by changing principles. The larger definition is merely a new adaptation of an old prin- ciple to new conditions. When the right to life is set down as fundamental in moral, social and legal relations, it means primarily protection against physical violence and gross neg- lect that may lead to death. But in present social and in- dustrial conditions the right to life must be made to include by definition the right to fullest protection against industrial accidents and occupational diseases. It must include con- trol of conditions which carry specific menace to health and life against which the weak are helpless. Social thought has arrived at an estimate of the nature and degree of social dangers to the weaker individuals. It has amassed infor- mation, analyzed processes and reached conclusions which gradually issue in a series of newly conceived personal rights which convey the new vision of social justice. These rights relate to all phases of human inequality as aspects of justice, to the meaning of the competitive struggle and resulting social conditions and to a fair chance in starting life, to the relation of cultural forces to personal development, moral security and personal independence and to a new view of the relation of the State to the problems of strength and weakness in society. 66 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY The State has under its present powers absorbed into its laws many of the rights urged upon society by the social conscience. But ineffective administration has defeated the ends of justice only too often. It has attempted further protection by enactment of laws which courts have found unconstitutional. Constitutions have been amended in order to enable the State to meet its new tasks and provide pro- tection for the weak. No adequate view of modern poverty may fail to see in it a defeat of justice. If the human person possess a sanc- tity whose protection is the object of laws, that sanctity in- volves a reasonable share of justice, an effective code of per- sonal rights by means of which normal life, growth, opportunity, happiness and security are brought within reach to constantly increasing numbers. Justice demands such institutions, such control of social conditions and proc- esses, such modifications of strength and restraint on self- ishness, such guarantees to the individual as will take from life its social terrors and insecurity and create such condi- tions as will secure to good will and individual merit encour- aging compensations. Every one has duties toward justice. Injustice is a dan- ger to society and thereby to every member of it. The strong man without a conscience threatens every one with whom he comes into contact. Love of justice and hatred of iniquity are vital to institutions as they are to personal character. The laboring men whose collective activities in self-defense are directed by the simple slogan "An offense against one is the concern of all," utter one of the most profound moral, social and spiritual truths that inspire men to unselfish action. Poverty is thus our common concern be we rich or poor, employer or laborer, Churchman or statesman, strong or weak. Much of it is caused by direct injustice. Much is made possible by general indifference to justice as a social interest. Much of it is due to the fact that mistaken social philosophy, false social valuations of wealth and power, have made the definitions of justice matters of bitter social JUSTICE 67 controversy and the dust of battle has clouded the vision that should inspire our nobler selves. The following standards serving as an approach toward Social Justice were adopted at the meeting of the National Conference of Social Work in Cleveland in 1912. The report is introduced here to show how far below minimum standards we still are, and to make appeal for wider personal interest in the process that clarifies social thinking and re- moves barriers to moral progress. In order that readers may have no occasion to overlook the text, it is introduced here and not as an appendix which might escape attention. The welfare of society and the prosperity of the state require for each individual such food, clothing, housing conditions, and other necessaries and comforts of life as will secure and maintain physical, mental and moral health. These are essential elements in a normal standard of living, below which society cannot allow any of its members to live without injuring the public welfare. An increasing percentage of our population derives the means to maintain this normal standard through industry. Industry, there- fore must submit to such public regulation as will make it a means of life and health, not of death or inefficiency. This regulation has to do with hours, safety, overstrain, and other conditions of the day's labor; with premature employment, unemployment, incapacity, and other factors which shorten or impair the length of the working life; with wages as the basis which work affords for a normal standard of home life; with unwise taxation and other community conditions which in our industrial centers exploit wages; with insurance against those risks of trade death, injury, occupational disease which break in upon the working years and wipe out earnings : and with pro- tection against poverty in old age when productive labor is ended. The community has a right to complete knowledge of the facts of work. The community can cause to be formulated minimum occupa- tional standards below which work is carried on only at a human deficit. The community should bring such subnormal industrial conditions within the scope of governmental action and control, in the same way as subnormal sanitary conditions are subject to public regulation, and for the same reason because they threaten general welfare. Such minimum standards in relation to Wages, Hours, Housing, 68 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY Safety and Health, Term of Working Life, and Workmen's Com- pensation are called for if the United States is to keep abreast with the social statesmanship of other great industrial nations; they are counseled by physicians and neurologists who have studied the effect of fatigue and overstrain upon health; by econ- omists who have analyzed the extravagance of unskilled labor, ex- cessive hours, and low pay; and by social workers who deal with the human wastes of industry through relief societies, or through orphanages, hospitals, insane asylums, and almshouses. Wherever they are not the standards of given establishments or given industries; are unprovided for by legislatures, or are balked by unenlightened courts, the community pays a heavy cost in lessened efficiency, and in misery. Where they are sanctioned and enforced, the conservation of our human resources contributes the most substantial asset to the wealth of the future. I. WAGES 1. A Living Wage. A living wage for all who devote their time and energy to industrial occupations. The monetary equiva- lent of a living wage varies according to local conditions, but must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living; to provide for education and recreation; to care for immature members of the family; to maintain the family during the periods of sickness; and to permit of reasonable saving for old age. 2. Minimum Wage Commissions. Many industrial occupa- tions, especially where women, children, and immigrant men are employed, do not pay wages adequate to maintain a normal stand- ard of living. Minimum wage commissions should therefore be established in each state to inquire into wages paid in various industries, and to determine the standard which the public will sanction as the minimum. 3. Wage Publicity. Properly constituted authorities should be empowered to require all employers to file with them for public purposes such wage scales, and other data as to earnings as the public element in industry demands. The movement for honest weights and measures has its counterpart in industry. All tallies, scales, and check systems should be open to public inspection and inspection of committees of the workers concerned. Changes in wage rates, systems of dockage, bonuses, and all other modifica- tions of the wage contract should be posted, and wages should be paid in cash at least every two weeks. JUSTICE 69 n. HOURS 1. Eight-Hour Day. The establishment of the eight-hour day for all men employed in continuous industries, and as a maximum for women and minors in all industries. 2. Six-Day Week. The work period limited to six days in each week ; and a period of rest of forty consecutive hours in each week. 3. Night work. Night work for minors entirely prohibited; an uninterrupted period of at least eight hours night rest for all women; and night work for men minimized wherever possible. III. SAFETY AND HEALTH 1. Investigation. An investigation by the Federal Govern- ment of all industries, on the plan pursued in the present investi- gation of mining, with a view to establishing standards of sanita- tion and safety and a basis for compensation for injury. This should include a scientific study and report upon fire-escapes, safety appliances, sanitary conditions, and the effects of ventila- tion, dust, poisons, heat, cold, compressed air, steam, glare, darkness, speed and noise. 2. Prohibition of Poisons. Prohibition of manufacture or sale of poisonous articles dangerous to life of worker, whenever harm- less substitutes are possible, on the principle already established by Congress in relation to poisonous phosphorous matches. 3. Regulation According to Hazard. In trades and occupations offering a menace to life, limb, or health, the employment of women and minors regulated according to the degree of hazard. No minor under 18 employed in any dangerous occupation, or in occupations which involve danger to fellow workmen or require use of explosives, poisonous gases or other injurious ingredients. Unskilled craftsmen who do not read and understand the English language forbidden to handle dangerous machinery or processes known to be extra-hazardous. 4. Standardized Inspection. Inspection of mines and work places standardized either by interstate agreement or by estab- lishment of a Government standard. All deaths, injuries, and diseases due to industrial operations to be reported to public authorities as required in accident laws of Minnesota, and with respect to some trade diseases in New York. IV. HOUSING 1. The Eight to a Home. Social welfare demands for every family a safe and sanitary home; healthful surroundings; ample 70 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY and pure running water inside the house; modern and sanitary toilet conveniences for its exclusive use, located inside the build- ing ; adequate sunlight and ventilation ; reasonable fire protection ; privacy; rooms of sufficient size and number to decently house the members of the family; freedom from dampness; prompt, adequate collection of all waste materials. These fundamental requirements for normal living should be obtainable by every family, reasonably accessible from place of employment, at a rental not to exceed 20 per cent of the family income. 2. Taxes. To protect wage earners from exorbitant rents and to secure for them that increased municipal service demanded by the massing together of people in thickly settled industrial com- munities, a greater share of taxes to be transferred from dwellings to land held for speculative purposes the value of which is enhanced by the very congestion of these industrial populations. 3. Home Work. Factory production to be carried on in fac- tories. Whenever work is given out to homes, abuses are sure to creep in which cannot be controlled by any known system of inspection or supervision. 4. Tenement Manufacture. Tenement house manufacture is known to be a serious menace to the health, education, and eco- nomic independence of thousands of people in large cities. It subjects children to injurious industrial burdens and cannot be successfully regulated by inspection or other official supervision. Public welfare, therefore, demands for city tenements the entire prohibition of manufacture of articles of commerce in rooms occupied for dwelling purposes. 5. Labor Colonies. In temporary construction camps and labor colonies, definite standards to provide against overcrowding, and for ventilation, water supply, sanitation, to be written into the contract specifications, as now provided in the New York law. V. TERM OP WORKING LIFE Society may reasonably demand from every normal individual his self -support during a certain period of life. This period should be bounded by a minimum age, to protect against premature labor, and a maximum age beyond which the wage earner should find himself economically independent of daily labor. Adoption of the following standards will promote this end. 1. Employment of Children. Prohibition of all wage-earning occupation for children under 16 years of age. 2. Employment of Women. Prohibition of employment of women in manufacturing, commerce, or other trades where work JUSTICE n compels standing constantly. Also prohibition for a period of at least eight weeks at time of childbirth. 3. Intermittent Employment. Any industrial occupation sub- ject to rush periods and out of work seasons to be considered abnormal, and subject to Government review and regulation. Official investigation of such intermittent employment and other forms of unemployment as a basis for better distribution of immigrants, for guiding seasonal laborers from trade to trade, and other methods for lessening these evils. 4. The Unemployable. The restrictions upon employers set forth in this platform will lead them to refuse to engage any who fall below a grade of industrial efficiency which renders their work profitable. An increased army of industrial outcasts will be thrown upon society to be cared for in public labor colonies or by various relief agencies. This condition will in turn necessitate a minimum standard of preparation, including at least sufficient educational opportunity to abolish illiteracy among all minors and to train every worker to some form of industrial efficiency. VI. COMPENSATION OR INSURANCE Compensation Demanded. Both social and individual welfare require some effective system of compensation for the heavy loss now sustained by industrial workers as a result of unavoidable accidents, industrial diseases, sickness, invalidity, involuntary unem- ployment, and old age. 1. Accidents. Equitable standards of compensation must be determined by extensive experience, but there is already ample precedent for immediate adoption as a minimum of the equivalent of four years' wages in compensation for accidents resulting fatally. Compensation for accidents resulting in permanent dis- ability should not be less than 65 per cent of the annual wage for a period of 15 years. 2. Trade Diseases. For diseases clearly caused by the nature and condition of the industry, the same compensation as for accidents. 3. Old Age. Service pensions or old age insurance whenever instituted so protected that the person who withdraws or is dis- charged from the employment of a given company does not forfeit his equity in the same. 4. Unemployment. Unemployment of able-bodied adult men under 65 years of age is abnormal and wasteful, and is as proper a subject for recognition by the public authorities as contagious disease or other abnormal conditions which menace the public well 72 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY being. The demand for insurance against unemployment increases with the increasing specialization in industry. The development of state, municipal and private agencies to insure against unem- ployment in European countries affords ample information for the guidance of such enterprises in America. CHAPTEE VI EQUALITY THE problem of inequality has always harassed the human race. So long as the ascendancy of the strong is not ques- tioned the problem remains in abeyance. But when views of the human person emerge in collective experience of men, and an ethical or spiritual rating of persons supplants a phys- ical or fortuitous estimate of them, there is no escape from the problem of inequality and no surcease of the aspiration after a form of equality in profession if not in fact. Men had thought that the abolition of privileged classes would bring peace. They had dreamed of equality before the law as the promise of justice. But the "thwarting facts of social inequality" have made that hope vain and have permitted negative rather than positive results to reward the incredible efforts that political equality cost the race. Aspiration for some kind of equality is a phase of the passion for justice. This aspiration is conditioned on many homely experiences. Contrast is one of them. Men measure themselves largely by comparison with others. The self-estimate that becomes the standard of effort and aim is largely one that is found in the minds of others. It represents comparisons rather than original thinking. It is vain as well as untrue to hold that aspirations for equality are the work of envy or jealousy or indiscriminate feeling. When inequality defeats person- ality, forces men, women and children into weakness, degra- dation and dependence in socially antagonistic classes, it is a defeat of justice and as such a primary concern of civili- zation. The history of Democracy is to a large extent the story of protest made against the strong by the weak or in their 73 74 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY name. It was protest against strength reenforced by social institutions, made by weakness that was defeated by institu- tions. To-day the struggle is made in the name of industrial weakness which is the sum of all weakness against industrial strength which is the sum of all strength. Yesterday it was protest against political privilege and power by political weakness and helplessness. Active aspirations after equal- ity to-day find their supreme expression in demand for an approach to industrial equality for the weaker class rather than the weaker individual. Every modern political right that has been gained in the development of free institutions stands as a monument over the grave of an historical tyranny of the strong whose mistakes of judgment and at times iniq- uity of aim carried them into conflict with the passion for justice that slumbers in the hearts of men. Not all of the hatred, sacrilege, murder and pillage that have been camp followers of the army of revolution may be blamed indiscrim- inately upon the blind passions of hate, envy and lust as these have acted in human history. Much of the blame for these excesses must be laid upon the souls of the strong who failed to hold both judgment and vision of justice in reverence and to obey them with impersonal loyalty. Unequal competition for a living under an individualistic state that freed itself largely from cultural and spiritual restraints permitted the triumph of the strong and the rela- tive defeat of the weak. The outcome has led to such ex- tremes of personal and class inequality that a powerful reac- tion toward equality became inevitable. What we know as industrial democracy to-day is a positive effort to remedy in- dustrial inequalities and secure some kind of approach to class if not individual equality. Socialism, Bolshevism, anarchy are in last analysis efforts to deal with the problems of human inequality. Each of them starts its thought and inspires its efforts by some theory of human equality and a corresponding aspiration for it. Equality before the law has failed to control inequality which is beyond the law. Now the sources of the social EQUALITY Y5 inequality which harasses the modern world are mainly two property and government. Conservative reform move- ments aim to modify the two in view of the far-reaching inequalities which have developed under free institutions. The modern eugenic movement represents another ap- proach to the problem. It is inspired by the belief that at- tention to the laws of physical heredity will prevent recur- rence of typical forms of physical and mental weakness and bring about a leveling upward of human powers. The move- ment has remained academic and without general appeal. Christianity includes a fundamental theory of equality which offers essential truths to guide us in every approach to the problem of social weakness whether in the name of justice, charity, objective truth or social policy. "For one is your master and all you are brethren." If we may arrange the elements of the teaching of Our Divine Savior in keeping with the study herewith under- taken, we meet at the outset the doctrine of the infinite value of the individual. Each of us is a child of God, des- tined to happiness and immortality in our common Father's Kingdom; alike in personal dignity and separate destiny; called back to peace with God through the agony of the re- demption. We are taught that reverence, love and service should hold us in unity and peace. Differences in power, in mission and in experience may never blur the spiritual vision in whose light alone we see truth as Christ revealed and exemplified it. Essential equality with inequality in accidentals, works toward justice and peace when the spirit of Christ prevails and spiritual valuations operate as social forces and keep the whole ideal of life supreme. Christ saw in the days that he spent among us in the flesh, strength and weakness in organized array and sullen estrangement. His words winged messengers that carried redeeming truths over barriers of race and time warned the strong in their heresy and reassured the weak in their mis- ery. Learning repudiated Him. Power despised Him. Public opinion crucified Him. But the weak, lowly, afflicted 76 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY and ignorant understood, loved and followed Him and their starved souls fed on the Manna of His words in the chill desert of their misery. Since His day the basic truth in human relations is supernatural. Any other view is partial and misleading in theory and fact if presented beyond its due proportion. Equality in person and destiny, need of spiritual redemption, judgment by God, of each of us in the light of His understanding and grace, reverence, love and service as laws of thought and action are truths and obliga- tions which are the granite foundations of life itself. If there are strong who have insight, power, culture and wealth, and weak who are not equal to their tasks or superior to their dangers, provision is made in Christ's law for sym- pathy, understanding and reassurance by uniting strong and weak in brotherhood and happy assurance. 1 The solidarity of nature holds men in unity, in craving for association and in reciprocal relations at every point of need and social growth. It places our nobility and our degrada- tion largely in the keeping of others with whom we live and is the counterpart of a spiritual solidarity which makes us members one of another, members of one body of which Jesus Christ is Head. Since Our Divine Lord saw each of us a spiritual weakling, susceptible to social influence, guided by a heart that harbors selfish instincts and impulses that rebel against truth, He insisted with unvarying dignity on brotherhood, sympathy and service as conditions of admis- sion to His Kingdom and favor. There is much truth in the observation. "Men have never felt themselves to be brothers in good fortune, in pride, in ambition, in success, in the emotion born of conquest and of enjoyment of earthly bless- ings; but in the face of danger, in misfortune, in times of trial Christianity could bid men to regard one another and treat one another as brothers because at the same time it told them that they were weak and imperfect creatures, needing 'Devas in Book III, Chapter VI, of his "Political Economy" offers a strange line of argument in favor of patience with inequality. EQUALITY 77 to assist one another and always menaced by the enemy they held concealed within themselves." "The 19th century on the contrary told men that they were brothers but told them at the same time that they were des- tined one and all to be monarchs of the universe. . . . Now is the rediscovery of brotherhood in common misery." 1 Salvation is our free choice. Christ offers but does not compel redemption. He teaches but leaves acceptance to our choice. He waits with patient love for the recognition of His law and dominion of His spirit in the relations of men. Democracy finds its thinking on essentials completed by Christ. Modern aspirations for equality endeavor often to account for themselves independently of Him Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. As well might the fair moon claim the serene splendor that hides its chilling depths, as its own endowment and refuse all honor to the sun. The crucifixion was the answer of the strong to the challenge of Christ's message of equality, brotherhood and service to man. The crucifixion of the weaker classes with which He identified Himself is the answer that a pagan individual- ism has given to their appeal for life and hope and peace. In as far then as poverty is a problem of inequality among men it is a spiritual problem and its remedy must be sought in spiritual understanding and motive. Since poverty is an organic feature of society, the outcome of social proc- esses that arise in a complex social organization, we are compelled to see it and combat it in the terms of social relations and the spirit of Christian love. We see others in truth only when we take the attitude of brotherly love toward them. That attitude alone promises emancipation from selfishness and mistaken social valuations. And in it alone do we find our compensations. It does no violence to the clear teaching of the Gospel to accept it as our fundamental guide in dealing with the prob- lem of human inequality. One after another Our Divine 1 Atlantic Monthly, May, 1920, p. 710. T8 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHAKITY Lord hurled His amazing revelations against the institutions of His time. The Fatherhood of God, the infinite value of the individual, the supremacy of spiritual values, equality in dignity and destiny as well as equality before the moral law by which the judgment of the world is written by the hand of God, the obligation and splendor of service, divine compensation for the simplest service, bore directly on the problem of human equality and offered for the first time to a too reluctant world the spiritual and social mastery of ine- quality. The mountain of Calvary became therewith the spiritual watershed of the world that directed the streams of love and the impulses of service to enrich and beautify the lower valleys of human weakness that had been dark and forbidding before. And these valleys of human weakness remain dark and forbidding to-day wherever untouched by the spirit of Christ. That blessed spirit moved by the intemperate energy of love does not await the slow coercions of the law to obey the impulses of its benevolence. It finds in every form of strength whether that of wealth or learning or virtue or culture a stewardship to be exercised in the spirit of deepest kind- ness in favor of the weak. It recognizes as supreme in social no less than spiritual relations the law of surplus service. Surplus strength finds its nobility in service. We do not own our surplus strength. We owe it. 1 Our Divine Lord adapted His teaching, precept and example to the per- manent elements in human nature. We can find no indica- tion that He foresaw a time when men and women would be equal in powers, happiness and achievement. All of these accidental differences of life can be tolerated without danger when the spirit of His love and the high coercions of His divine law are respected. Nor can we find any indication that Our Lord foresaw any time when we might ignore the sanctity of the human person and the claims of the weak upon the generosity and service of the strong. Who can look out upon the world to-day and see degraded childhood *The line is from Professor Peabody. EQUALITY 79 robbed of its innocence and opportunity or see defenseless men and women herded, defeated, endangered in mind and body and soul and not feel some touch of a divine indignation that reminds us of the standards of life, justice and service set down for our acceptance by the Savior of the world. The inequalities of life are lodged in accidentals, in pow- ers, aptitudes and qualities. These are modified in a most far-reaching way by social arrangements, conditions and re- lations. We must, therefore, judge these in their bearing on equality and on poverty. Equality before the law was negative and theoretical. It was not realized in fact on ac- count of the free play of powers which congested strength and diffused weakness throughout society. The poor have not enjoyed equality in fact before the law. Justice has failed them on account of many circumstances such as cost, delay, ignorance of rights and indifference to them when known. Now differences in health, in education, in moral strength and social reinforcement have become determining and have had far-reaching effect in the development of poverty. Congenital ill health due to ignorance, helplessness, indus- trial processes through which parents suffer is a permanent handicap. Neglect before, at and after birth endangers mother and child. In as far as factors that are social in their nature and action, and beyond control of the individual, injure health and the victims are unfitted for the competitive struggle and normal responsibilities of life, the impulses of the Christian life lead us to inaugurate, support and further every effort to safeguard health in order to prevent a handi- cap from defeating the demands of equality and, therefore, justice. This principle draws within the vital circle of formal Christian sympathy and charity and ennobles with spiritual dignity and recompense, efforts to protect infants and mothers and children, movements to reduce industrial haz- ards to life and occupational diseases, plans to improve hous- ing conditions as they affect health. It is, of course, prefer- 80 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY able from every standpoint to induce men and women to take intelligent care of their own health. We are after all but trustees of our own lives. But at the point where social factors that are compelling, endanger health and life and the individual is helpless this solicitude must be assumed for him. This is done preferably by volunteer agencies and effort. But when even these fail, gradual efforts by public- authority must be encouraged. Whatever the outcome of pres- ent controversies and doubts as to necessary health activities by public authority it is clear that so long as unequals com- pete, health is a condition to effective competition. If men and women and youth are thrown upon their own resources to find their living, justice demands effective health pro- tection in order to minimize inequality. Mental inequality among competitors is equally determin- ing, perhaps much more so on the whole. Superior minds and ailing bodies may win all of the prizes of life. Educa- tion is now a condition to economic survival. Illiterate men and women are shut out from every occupation, every refine ment and joy conditioned on ability to read and write. Chil- dren are in danger from many sides. Education depends on the wisdom and conscience of parents not on that of the child. It depends on the organization and quality of the school, on freedom from the pressure of necessity or avarice which would force the child into gainful occupation during its early years. The State fears an ignorant citizenship. It promotes measures looking toward universal education as steps toward national greatness. The individual has need of a rudimen- tary education at least in order that he may gain a footing in his civilization. He needs economic training if he is to advance from the ranks of the unskilled to those of the skilled and if he is to compete with fair chances of success. Economists who see the remedy for poverty in advance from unskilled to skilled ranks see a precious half truth at least. Education is useful in that it ought to improve the quality of citizenship. It is necessary as equipment in the com- EQUALITY 81 petitive struggle for a living. The greater one's handicaps the more pressing the need of education. It is necessary too for refinement of living, for understanding of spiritual and moral truths, of personal and social ideals. Inequality appears in moral qualities. Character is, therefore, a source of strength in the competitive struggle. Moral weakness is a handicap. The tragic extremes to which we are led by this truth are seen in the marked asso- ciation of poverty and delinquency. Moral qualities are a form of intelligence, of understanding. The man who is honest and industrious possesses by that fact a degree of in- telligence denied to one who lacks these traits. Good char- acter honors God and makes for one's true peace. But it is in addition a reliable asset in the unequal competition of life. We find among the poor a minimum of strength and opportunity with a maximum of danger and difficulty. Justice expresses its deepest instincts in the search for equality in some degree. It must, therefore, keep in mind moral protection for the poor, adequate training in moral and spiritual truth, wholesome surroundings in which virtue will be safeguarded and innocence may walk unafraid. Another aspect of inequality is seen in the degrees of social reenforcement or lack of it that may be experienced. As civilization becomes more complex the individual is helped* or hindered to a greater degree by social arrangements and conditions. Friends, reputation, family, credit in the busi- ness and social worlds are sources of inspiration and cheer always. They who are without these can scarcely compete with those who have them. One cannot overrate the role of such reenforcement in normal life. An unskilled laborer out of work, whom no one knows, no one has occasion to trust, in whom no one is personally interested, feels in his blameless soul the chill despair that poisons life. Inequality presents itself to us in respect of health, home, education, character and social reenforcement. When we compel unequals to compete for a living, justice requires that we bring strength to the weak in as far as human wis- 82 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY dom can do so. To the extent to which social relations and arrangements contribute to this weakness justice sends us as its messengers to modify them in a way to equalize in some degree the conditions of the struggle. To send weak men, women and children into a blind struggle against their more fortunate fellows, to condition life, health, refinement, morality and salvation on the outcome of the unequal strug- gle lacks no element of tragedy and no promise of woe. That men can do this and be indifferent to the problem and its outcome is at once our mystery and our shame. All of these processes assemble in the effort to develop a supplementary social constitution which will provide for the poor at their points of danger and distress. All policies, standards and efforts must take into account the elementary problem of inequality and strengthen the weak at the points where their own resources are endangered or fail. They must modify the competitive process in order to stop the savagery of competition before it reduces the weak to a help- less condition. All of these efforts should indicate and insure intervention by law at points where its coercions are necessary to insure justice. Efforts must be made to recon- struct self-confidence, home life, school life and religious life among the poor. We may never forget that poverty is not only the problem of the individual but also of society, of the State and of Christianity. Any view of it that falls short of these aspects can make no promise of effective ser- vice of the poor. CHAPTEE VII CHARITY JUSTICE is fundamental in the social order because it de- fines and defends the individual at points where he is in danger from others or from social conditions against which he is helpless. Charity is fundamental in the social order because it corrects the selfish impulses of strength and reen- forces those who are weak with a view to a more perfect realization of the cultural and spiritual ideals of life. Were there no sense of justice individuals would be crushed by the community. Were there no sense of charity the commu- nity would perish because self-seeking would disintegrate it. Justice involves full respect for the rights of others no lesa than insistence on one's personal rights. Charity includes all life and all attitudes in life. It is not confined to the giving of relief. It engages the solicitude of every form of strength and wisdom for every kind of weakness and despair. The law of charity is universal in the Kingdom of Christ. The qualities upon which Our Divine Lord laid emphasis are the offspring of charity which is the bond of union among men. Kindness, forgiveness, humility, free- dom from resentment, the discipline of ambition are required for the corporate unity of life and they are insisted upon in the teaching of Christ because of His desire to see social relations express the Divine Will. Hatred, scorn, crass self- ishness are forbidden because they break the divine harmony of life. Personal qualities are of supreme importance. Those qualities which lead toward unity of spirit and cultural bal- ance in social relations must be cultivated while anti-social traits must be conquered. The law of life is the law of the 83 84 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY whole of life. In this sense morality is wholesomeness. It follows from this that the separate interests of life must be fostered and judged by their relation to the whole of life. Partial views of life are tyrannies. Truths are but phases of whole truth. Partial views of life are like stubborn fractions that refuse to melt into the unity that alone can give them meaning. Judgment of wealth and desire for it concern but one fractional interest in life. If wealth is loved and sought out of its proportioned place in the whole of life, it destroys the harmonies of culture, perverts judg- ment and throws all of the qualities of the Christian life into confusion. Love of power and distinction when the forms of power are sought out of proportion, causes equal moral confusion. Every one of the interests that stirs us to action and forms the center of ambition must be viewed always through the discipline imposed upon it by the vision of all life. Whenever a single one of these interests is released from that discipline it betrays an unmistakable tendency to become the central factor in all life, to shape all other inter- ests in subdued relation to itself. Thus it is that business becomes one's religion. Power, art, learning, pleasure, may likewise become a religion, a supreme organizing aim of life, subjecting every other interest to its tyranny. The deepest drift of humanity is toward a united view of life. All of the aspirations of historical culture assert and respect some kind of unity and insist that every fraction of life must be seen in place and proportion in that complete view. The longing of life for integration cannot be con- quered. Every single mind builds toward its own unity. Collective social ideals declare the larger unities. Hence all human qualities and all human interests must be understood in their relation to the whole concept of life, to the concept of the whole of life. Human culture has always aspired after a moral unity in life. All sciences work toward the center of reality from every point upon its circumference and their converging pathways lead toward God, the center of all truth. Philoso- CHARITY 85 phies are the unifying interpretations of sciences in their search for truth. Religion embraces the aspirations of cul- ture for the moral unity of life and also the aspirations of science for unity of understanding, truth and interpretation. Natural religions have made persistent but incomplete when not mistaken, efforts to discover and declare the unity of life, of truth and action. Revealed religion complete in both intellectual and moral content solves the essential problem in the supernatural view of life and the law of its behavior. This is done through Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life. He has told us that love of God and of neighbor which fills the heart, gives splendor to the soul, directs thought and all endeavor is the way to eternal life. Charity is the highest element in the law. Its function is to assert the unity of speculative truth and our law of practical action in relation to one another and in our common relations to God. Thus charity finds its place in declaring and promoting the supernatural unity of life and in defending it against all of the processes of moral, intellectual and social disintegra- tion, due to the extremes of self-seeking and self-assertion. Charity is not merely emotion. It is a form of under- standing. There can be no truth in our view of one another if charity is excluded from it. The only fundamental atti- tude of man toward man approved by Jesus Christ and in harmony with the law of life is that of love. Hatred, scorn, indifference, cruelty, are offenses against charity because they are the outcome of false views of fellowmen. We are compelled at whatsoever cost in effort and sacrifice to strug- gle to gain the charity which is both truth and law. It in- volves reverence, truth, kindly impulses and such a discipline of human values as will enable men to see one another as God wills and to shape their conduct in every detail upon the vision gained. It is a mistake from whose consequences few of us escape to assume that the law of charity relates alone to the poor and that the service of these exhausts its obligations. The attitudes of charity are as indicated, fundamental and of 86 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY universal application in social life. The impulses of charity follow those attitudes and express them. They must govern the relations of the powerful among themselves, the relations of the weak among themselves and relations among strong and weak, among sinful and righteous, among ignorant and learned. Charity as attitude toward the poor and service of them is, therefore, one incident of a general law and its application. This can in no way reduce the importance or impair the splendor of the relief of the poor. Our Divine Lord singled out this aspect of charity for particular insis- tence and detailed application. While we may be compelled to modify the forms of this service and extend its aim as social conditions change, nothing can diminish the moral grandeur imparted to the service of the poor by Christ. There are many obstacles to our understanding of the full import of the law of charity and to our obedience to that law. One of them is lack of complete and prompt trust in the Divine ordering of life. Many tend to shut off the full power of the appeal of the love of God by failing to realize that peace is found in His will alone and that unquestioning trust in the outcome of obedience to that law is fundamental. Many fall short of the full duty in charity because of the failure to trust spontaneously in the doing of that duty as highest wisdom. The tendency to place excessive confidence in personal wisdom, in the plans of ambition or the quest of power and the possession of wealth is widespread. It chills virtue and disturbs all spiritual vision. Social geography is another obstacle because it so groups us and confines our relations that strong and weak do not enter into normal and representative association. Many types of strong are brought together in intimate association. They tend to organize thought and express emotion under the narrowing influence of such arrangements. In this way a view of life is developed which disturbs proportions and lim- its the need of service and opportunity for it. Another obstacle is found in general failure to grasp the deeper meaning of the law of charity and to be satisfied with mis- CHAEITY 87 taken appreciations of it. One must think one's way through all of the confusion of life and of conflicting claims presented in the name of duty in order to gain insight into the incom- parable simplicity and sweetness of the law of love as laid down by Christ. Another obstacle of far-reaching effect is found in the tyranny of social valuations which press us to give to power, to wealth, to social security and to spurious claims upon re- sources and sympathy a degree of deference and obedience which destroys the spiritual vision of life and the balance in spiritual valuations. ~No man of wealth can be selfish or arrogant or indifferent toward the poor unless he overem- phasize the value of wealth and underrate the sanctity of human personality. No man of so-called culture will scorn the uncultured poor and refuse to interest himself sympa- thetically in them unless he adopt a partial view of life which is essentially vulgar and shut his eyes against the splendor with which God envelops every human person. No in- dustrial leader will claim feudal lordship over the weak who labor for him unless he fights down the impulses that would lead him to be tender, thoughtful and fair, unless the eco- nomic motive and mistaken emphasis upon industrial power pervert his judgment of values and dull his hearing against the declared commands of God and the whispered appeals of the poor. Wealth has gained so many uses foreign to its real function that the world has placed a supreme valuation upon it and has stirred the desire of it to the point of sustained fury. Philosophy has followed action. They who own wealth and seek to own it are made its slaves unless the ideal restraints of life give effective guidance and discipline. So many forms of distress, hopelessness and sin are associated with poverty that those of wealth and culture recoil from social contact which should lead to service. Intelligent service of the poor is so exacting and complicated that large numbers shrink from both the solicitude and the effort that are involved. Hence they either give no service or give the least exacting of 88 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHAKITY all gifts, money alone, and delegate to others the homely offices of service. Now this permits many of that type to live in error and it robs them of the wholesome influence of actual contact with the poor and understanding of them. Study, patience, industry and perseverance are required for the worthy service of the poor. Many shrink from such cost of service and forego it. Narrow views of the meaning of service lead many to give it indiscriminately with little profit to themselves and harm to the objects of their benevolence. Other obstacles are found in the limitations to which all of the service of the poor is necessarily subjected. They are the least resourceful among men. Their need is greatest and very often their response to refining influence is most delayed. The work of rebuilding the individual or the family, of eliminating fear, awakening ambition and win- ning the poor to industry and self-discipline is far more exacting than the ordinary tasks of normal life. Only full insight into the law of charity and the truth that underlies it will give the wisdom and the strength to obey that law in the tedious service of the poor. This difficulty is the more pronounced when mistaken views of poverty or ignorance of social processes that lie behind it blind one to the full range of personal and social demands made upon us by the poor. The North Star of the Christian's world is the neigh- bor who is in need. Saint Vincent de Paul was constant in his use of the phrase "The poor are our masters." He inserted it into the vow made by the first sisters whom he consecrated to the service of the poor in the name of Christ. If the poor are our masters, their need and not our temperament or preference becomes determining. Hence the full duties of charity toward them involve intelligent study, restraint of sympathy and patience with the limitations which we cannot control. Those who are indisposed to make the effort required to serve the poor intelligently and with effect will serve them badly or not at all. The simplicities of charity must be adapted to the com- CHAEITY 89 plexities of our social system and the complex problems of poverty. The causes of poverty are so complex and its cir- cumstances are so stubborn that concentration, patient study, experience and training are required to do for the poor all that they need. Organizations are necessary as is specialized service. Most of our service of the poor must be vicarious, that is done by others for us. We are compelled, therefore, in obeying the law of charity to delegate the service of the poor to others who are qualified. We may not, however, delegate our solicitude. That remains always personal. They who surrender it misunderstand the law of Christ and defeat their own spiritual progress. The tendency of large numbers to delegate both solicitude and service and confine their duty to charity to the giving of money must hinder the full spiritual understanding of charity as the law of life. The practical aims of charity are taken from the needs of the poor. The first of these aims is that of relief, the giving of food, clothing and immediate medical care as may be required. But the charity of Christ never lacks fore- sight. It will aim to prevent recurrence of the need and to assure independence, self-reliance and opportunity in order that they who suffer may attain normal strength. But the foresight of charity goes much farther. It discovers the social conditions and arrangements that single out the weak constantly and hurl them into poverty. It feels the obligation to work for such social movements and conditions as will stop this process and offer protection against dependence before it strikes the poor. It will aim to spread knowledge of poverty, to sharpen the conscience of the strong, to build up public opinion, to strengthen the cultural forces and promote the legislation required to put an end to the poverty that is degrading and hopeless, and to bring relief and comfort where human wisdom cannot succeed in bringing justice and independence. As regards our own charities one duty remains clear. It is that of neglecting not a single activity that can serve the poor, or prevent poverty and bring the fullest measure of 90 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHAKITY refinement and security to the weakest of our fellowmen. No one who obeys the law of charity must do all of its duties. Every one will have some duty to perform, preferably the kind that he can do with best effect. But in the summing up of our charities as a whole, it would be a shadow upon them were we to neglect a single one of the far-reaching services that the plight of the poor invites. We infer readily from the foregoing that the relations between religion and charity are most intimate. From the supernatural standpoint the service of the poor is imperative because it is the outcome of our supernatural insight into human relations and valuations on the one hand and obedience to the specific command of Jesus Christ on the other hand. Historically the charities of the Church resulted from the spiritual vision of the Church, from her grasp of the immediate and universal truth of unity and law of service. The Church claims divine insti- tution. It is the corporate expression of the mind of Christ, declaring His revelation as to belief and conduct It is natural, therefore, to insist constantly upon the spiritual nature of charity and the spiritual quality of the service of the poor. The Christian denominations that look upon reli- gion primarily as a problem of individual concern and tend to regard a Church as a natural fellowship springing out of identity of belief, are inclined to stress the social phases of poverty and of service with diminishing insistence in fact, if not in doctrine, upon the spiritual qualities of the law. The Protestant author of the admirable life of Saint Vincent de Paul, E. K. Sanders, speaks of him as follows: "His vast undertakings were never so engrossing as to dis- tract him from his life-long endeavor after self-purification." "To overlook even momentarily the spiritual bias of all his actions is to fail in comprehension of their purport; to remember his charitable achievements and forget the hours of prayer in which they germinated is to miss the real inter- est of his life." It is interesting to note that Professor Todd gives Saint Vincent de Paul credit for having anticipated the principles of modern scientific relief. The religious CHARITY 91 basis of social work is described as follows in Todd's volume on "The Scientific Spirit and Social Work," while the vol- ume commends strongly the dictates of scientific charity. "There are certain aspects of Jesus' teaching which are basic to a wholesome concept of social work, and which may be called scientific without abusing the term. His concept of God as love and of all worship or service as love is the key to any sound process of social amelioration. His vision of social justice as laid down in the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount is the greatest Magna Charta of human rights and liberties ever formulated. In his doctrine of the vine and its branches he lays down not only a plan for church organization the church universal, the communion of the saints, the City of God, the Mystic Body but he forecasts a leading concept of modern sociological theory; namely, that human society is an organic unity, if not of the biological, tben of the psychological order. And, mark this, that organic unity as Jesus saw it seems to overleap every barrier of geography or race and to anticipate what we begin to call the international mind. "If, as I believe is the case, religion and science are not abso- lutely opposites but are complementary, mutual correctives, then Jesus rendered science and social work a magnificent service by two contributions. First, His consistency, living and demonstrat- ing the theory of God as ever-present and all-powerful. Second, His idealism; an absolute idealism which conceived God as all in all, a power that makes not only for righteousness but also for health, peace, and the life more abundant. It was this indomitable optimism which sustained him and which preserves and energizes the modern social worker whether he be churched or unchurched, Christian or non-Christian, or name any name prescribed in the codes whereby man must be saved." The pathway to the temple of Christian truth erected by the hand of Christ to declare the splendor of God is traveled only at the cost of effort and constant struggle. Within us lie instincts, ambitions, limitations, doubts, scattered pur- poses, fragments of truth gathered into deceitful unities. All of them operate to confuse, mislead or dishearten us. From without us comes confusion from rivalries, from the allurements of ease, false teachers and debasing conflicts. Every one of these finds allies within the citadel of the soul and out of the collusion that results our betrayal is only too 92 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY often effected. Nothing can carry us past all of these dan- gers of error in thought and mistake in action except the vision of the full truth and the authority of every particle of that truth as found in the temple of revelation from which Christ, the Light of the World, shines in enduring splendor. He teaches us the unity of all truth, the brotherhood of all men, the unity of the race, the gentle compulsions of divine love, the supremacy of His Kingdom and its valuations, spiritual judgment of all things and persons, and trust in the obedience to His law that knows no doubt or hesitation. Only in complete vision, in complete trust, in complete con- secration do we find the harmony of charity and the eternal foundations upon which it rests. Only when the spirit of Christ has unhindered sway over every recess in the broad savannahs of the soul do we share in the abundant life and sanctifying truth that He offers. From this standpoint we gain mastery over certain falla- cies that do much harm. The assumption that mere mate- rial relief can satisfy the full law of charity and excuse the benefactor from all concern beyond the hunger of the poor does much to obscure our understanding of the law of love and service. The heart that has gained the full measure of the love of God and of man feels impelled not alone to serve the poor but also to recast institutions, to master social processes and to labor without ceasing until all of the poor have been served and saved and poverty has been freed from its degradation and reduced to the smallest possible limits. The assumption that one may disassociate service of the poor from religious truth, religious motive and religious inspiration strikes at the unity of life and at the harmony of the revelation of Christ. Such an assumption is surely out of place in the lives and efforts of those who believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and who profess obedience to His law. Similarly, one who assumes that the service of the poor may dispense with all concern for their benefactors, interferes with the complete harmony of the spiritual law of life. Nothing stands out more clearly in Holy Scripture CHAKITY 93 than insistence upon the spiritual value of service of the poor in the lives of those who serve them. The parable of the Good Samaritan was told in answer to the lawyer's ques- tion, "What must I do to possess eternal life ?" The methods of efficiency that disregard this truth and subject service of the poor to the demands of economic axioms make insuffi- cient allowance when they make any at all, for the place of charity in the supernatural unity of the race. No one may excuse carelessness, indifference to results, methods that hurt directly, the poor whom we would serve. Any attempt to defend faulty methods or indifferent service or disregard the most effective methods of charity known to the mind of man, must be interpreted as an indignity in the spiritual life. A social worker whatever his motive, whose methods pauperize and enervate the poor, encouraging them in laziness, deception and fraud is as much their enemy as the economic tyrant who is willing to accumulate wealth at the cost of the agony of the weak. On this account the service of the poor requires supreme intelligence, eagerness to mas- ter effective methods of service, readiness to abandon inef- fective ways when better ones may be found, humble self- effacement combined with industry and intelligence as all of these were displayed so creditably in the thought and action of the peerless Vincent de Paul. While these principles must guide every one who obeys the laws of surplus service and places his resources at the service of the weak, they place our charities as a whole under specific and compelling obliga- tion to draw the best out of human experience and combine it with our understanding of the Divine law. Aptitudes and circumstances may govern the individual but our chari- ties as a whole may claim no exemptions from the full claims of the poor upon us nor may we be excused from a single noble purpose or large endeavor developed in the entire field of social service and approved to the intelligence of the world. CHAPTER VIII PROPERTY POVERTY is an aspect of the system of private property. It indicates the point at which normal methods of gaining income and making provision against the physical and social risks of life break down. The property system has been developed through the frankest kind of appeal to selfishness and approval of its triumph. The impulse to "get" wealth, to accumulate and administer it as one wishes has been ap- proved and universally rewarded. At the point where the principle of "getting" property breaks down dependence appears and the principle of "giving" enters. The giving of food and clothing to the poor is a phase of the distribution of wealth under altruistic not egoistic motives. The motives and valuations that operate here are fundamentally unlike those that govern the processes of acquisition. The timid, the dull and the awkward, those weak of body and mind, orphans, widows, cripples, who are unable to gain income through their own efforts live and hope by the mercy of those who give. The point of breakdown of the principle of self- seeking marks the frontier line of the kingdom of charity where the spirit of God and the sanctities of His law prevail. The system of private property is one phase of the entire system of property that obtains in human society. Owner- ship and management of property may be simple and indi- vidual, as occurs when the owner of a small shop manages it without association with others. Property may be private in ownership but socialized in function as is the case when many hundreds or thousands are share owners in an indus- trial enterprise. They delegate management to representa- tives who determine all of the conditions of industry and 94 PROPERTY 95 report dividends or profits to owners. To an overwhelming extent ownership of property is impotent in industry, since its complications are far beyond the capacity of owners themselves. In this way the conscience of property is weak- ened when it is not lost and the motives of accumulation are freed from the discipline of the Christian conscience of the owner. If we were to compel owners of property to hold and manage it themselves without merging it into amalgamations, the arrangement would overturn the world. There are other forms of associated private ownership of property as seen in the ownership of Churches, private schools, insurance and benefit funds and mutual benefit organizations of many kinds. This form has taken on greatest importance in life as a supplement to the outcome of the distribution of wealth effected through self-seeking. Public property, all forms owned by city or state and managed for the common welfare is another fundamental fea- ture of the property system as a whole. Streets, parks, gov- ernmental buildings, public schools and some forms of indus- try are public property. Municipal street railways, mines, railroads, water systems and means of communication are forms of industry that are at times owned and operated by the civil authorities. The pressure of Socialism is in the direction of practically complete ownership and management by the public of all industrial processes. It proposes to sub- stitute the motive of service for that of profit and to adjust the entire production of wealth to that ideal. Now such a system of private ownership would be practically restricted to things that we consume in living and income would be confined to compensation for service alone. Such an arrange- ment would eliminate most of the motives of accumulation,' stifle all incentives to it and place the selfishness that expresses itself in ownership, in practical subjection. The proposals now favored so widely that look toward private cooperative enterprise in both production and distri- bution are intended to supplement private ownership and to retain the incentives and opportunities for private owner- 96 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY ship upon which progress and industry are conditioned. There are many who advocate in addition to such measures public ownership and operation of railroads, mines, tele- graph and telephone for the sake of the public. Nearly all of the important social reform movements that aim at either social pressure or legislation have as their purpose the amelioration of the savagery of competition. The curbing of the strong and the protection of the weak are the two aims that inspire these efforts. Minimum wage legislation, factory laws and child welfare legislation are instances in point. When we look upon poverty as a phase in the distribution of wealth we are compelled to take into account those who have property as well as those who have none. No view of poverty is adequate if it fails to take into account its rela- tion to the state and to society as well as to the individual. Adequate dealing with poverty, therefore, involves constant attention to the whole system of property and to tendencies among its forms. The aims that inspire effort toward relief of the poor involve far-reaching modification of the institu- tions of property and control of the processes of production and distribution of wealth in the name of Christian ideals. The evolution of property forms has removed all of the physical inconveniences of ownership. Were property actu- ally confined to the things that we consume in living, all of the ambitions of ownership would be limited by our capacity to hold and protect material wealth. If there were no such things as money or forms of credit and if no owner could transfer the custody of things owned, to others, the incon- veniences of ownership would be prohibitive. When we may accumulate money as a symbol of things instead of the things themselves we escape many of the incon- veniences of ownership. But money should circulate. It is impersonal, good in the hands of one who has it. It may be stolen or lost. The possession of it in any quantity would involve much fear of theft and incite to theft if the fact were known. But the development of all forms of borrowing such as notes, bonds, certificates and the like removes the PROPERTY 97 inconveniences of ownership of money and makes wealth much more attractive. In the forms of credit it becomes personal, lucrative and convenient to own and safeguard. The modern passion for accumulation and the enormous valuation now placed upon wealth were made possible and inevitable through the development of infinitely complicated institu- tions of credit. The ownership and safeguarding of vast wealth has become extremiely simple. Property has become in this way the object of intense universal desire. It is the depositary of indefinite power, key to mastery over life. The aspirations, ambitions, valuations of property in the lives of those who own it tend to fix their philosophy of life, their interpretations of religion and their judgment of the poor. Property has become a thing apart. It produces its own philosophy, its own outlook. Instead of remaining a phase of human rights it has taken its place in the thought of the world as a menace to those rights. Paul Bourget remarks in one of his works that we shall think as we live unless we live as we think. Property has not obeyed the nobler thinking of the race and it has hurt the spiritual vision of life. Since it has not obeyed thinking, thinking has obeyed it. Our Divine Savior hurled many denunciations against those whose judgment of human rela- tions was colored by property interests. He reaffirmed the sanctity of human rights and the supremacy of humane prin- ciples over every other interest in the world. They who hear His word and keep it aim to emancipate themselves from the tyranny of property thinking and seek the source of insight and judgment in the teaching of Christ. They who think with Christ and live as they think make no mistake in their judgment and they understand his law in respect of the poor. Capital has evolved its own philosophy. It has shaped ideals and has stood with stern resistance against movements which would curb its power and correct its vision of life. The industrial, political, cultural, social and journalistic usur- pations of capital are reflected in most of the tragedies that are heaped upon the lives of the poor. This remains true in 98 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY tendency and to a certain extent true in fact. No one may overlook the benevolence that has been associated with much property or fail to honor the kindly impulses that have sur- vived its urging. In spite of the arctic temperature of the economic world, endowments of every kind, colossal sums devoted to charity and other ideal purposes make noble chapters in the history of private property. But the law of gravitation in the property world remains as described until checked by the power of great ideals that subject it to rigid control. Since nearly everything that is done systematically to remedy poverty involves some kind of moral or legal modi- fication of property rights heretofore recognized, the larger service of the poor is accomplished only after much struggle. Life has become so complex ; the equilibrium of the economic process has become so delicate that the slightest modification of factors in industry makes its influence felt throughout the nation, even throughout the world. Since the poor lack the qualities that make for success in the economic struggle their poverty becomes a factor in eco- nomic life. They represent economic inefficiency, reduced powers of production, reduced powers of consumption and on the other hand a large economic cost of maintenance. Those among the dependent who are permanently helpless should have assurance of relief with dignity, assurance and peace. Those who can be made economically efficient, aided and guided to employment or trained for it, may need transitory relief. But duty toward them is not done until they have been prepared for their tasks in life and protected in under- taking them. One of the noblest aims in relief is to make relief unnecessary. When social conditions are such that the weak are unable to control the conditions of employment or are made to suffer unnecessarily in the industrial process or from social arrangements, the apostle of charity will be found fighting to improve conditions and modify institutions in order that the weak may be made strong and independent. There is not a point in all of the complicated processes of life that is foreign to the efforts of charity if the interests of the PEOPEETY 99 poor are directly or indirectly involved. None of the falla- cies, assumptions, fancies and extravagances of property enjoy immunity against the claims of the herald of charity who comes in the name of God to assert His law. Whether the spirit of charity assert itself in the relief and prevention of poverty or whether it is seen in the wider movement of social reform it remains for all time and in all circumstances the spirit of the law of Christ, the interpreter to man of the divine relations of brotherhood in His Kingdom. When we view poverty as an aspect of the property system, our first view of the poor represents them as consumers. Eegardless of the methods by which property is distributed or income is gained the poor must live. The food, clothing and shelter of which they have need must be provided. All material relief must keep in mind a minimum standard of living and insure to those who are helpless that standard. So long as we confine it to mere existence we accomplish but little. The standard of adequate relief must satisfy the reasonable needs of the poor regardless of their ability or inability to become producers themselves. This is a phase of the literal distribution of wealth under the principle of "giving," not "getting" ; under the motives of altruism, not those of egoism. It is our duty to single out those who are entirely helpless and provide such relief in a humane and intelligent way. It is our duty to find all of those who actu- ally or in prospect may become either entirely or partially able to support themselves. We must endeavor either to find labor or to furnish training which will bring to these some degree of economic efficiency. In this way we are called upon to be interested in employment service, vocational guidance or vocational training. In particular we meet here the obli- gation to direct those who are below the normal standard in health or mentality. It should be our aim further to bring the weak up to normal standards that will enable them to provide for themselves, regain their independence and make charity unnecessary in respect of them. If it is possible to bring them still farther and train them in the habits of thrift 100 SOCIAL MISSION" OF CHARITY and foresight, we shall enable them to make their own pro- visions against the harder strains of life associated with ill- ness, death or involuntary idleness. It is interesting to note that the first savings bank was founded in Scotland in 1810 in order to conquer pauperism by training the poor in habits of industry and thrift. These three qualities of service relate directly to the eco- nomic process of production, distribution and consumption of wealth. To that extent economic axioms must be respected and the exigencies of industry must be taken into account. But we discover here that moral qualities have a fundamental economic as well as spiritual value. Hence we are required to be moral teachers as well as industrial guides and to serve character as well as body. Temperance, the sense of duty, intelligent use of money, the habits of loyalty, honesty and self-control are fundamental. But the development of these qualities demands normal home life, decent and hope-inspir- ing conditions, confidence in the social order, effective reli- gious teaching, reasonable protection of health and effective provisions for education. Now it is false to truth and unwise in effect to separate moral training from spiritual truth. Religion is called upon, therefore, to do its full work in the wide development of life in order that the fullest measure of truth and protection and comforting interpretation of the stern facts of life, may be assured. Industry, education, social reform, law making and religion must work, therefore, with mutual understanding and with singleness of purpose if we are to marshal our resources in dealing with poverty which remains perhaps for all time the most searching test of progress. Human inequality remains, therefore, a perma- nent problem for all charities. The control of the competitive process among unequal s must be aimed at with strong insist- ence. The State must be called upon increasingly to bring the resources of the law to the mastery of conditions that escape all other control. Home, Church, school, must be made increasingly effective at every point. Anything short of these demands delays the day of justice and baffles the efforts made to deal effectively with poverty. CHAPTEK IX WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR WHEN the young man asked Our Lord the question "Who is my neighbor ?" he sought a definition. He had been told that he should love his neighbor as himself but he was at a loss as to the identity of the neighbor. In reply to the ques- tion Our Lord narrated the parable of the Good Samaritan and asked "Who was neighbor to him that fell among the robbers ?" "He that showed mercy," was the reply. Where- upon Our Lord said, "Go and do thou in like manner." When we undertake to-day to show mercy to our neighbor we are at a loss for a definition that will guide us in determin- ing the neighbor that we would serve. He may not be picked at hazard. We may not show mercy in a thoughtless man- ner. The Good Samaritan was confronted by no complex- ities. He was guided wisely and without confusion. In our day, however, when there are thousands of good Samaritans who wish to serve from whatsoever motive and tens of thou- sands of others in need of help the problem becomes difficult. When society is divided along economic, religious and race lines; when conflicting philosophies meet in the service of the poor and the utmost of our endeavors will fail of what is required, careful thought and thorough organization become necessary to our endeavor whose aim it is to find the needy neighbor. The law of love is imperative and universal in the Chris- tian life. The law of service prompted by love is conditioned on our resources. The legitimate claims of duty, efficiency and development on our time and means and sympathy must be respected. The fallacies urged upon us by ease, luxury, mistaken ambition, imaginary needs and excessive solicitudes 101 102 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHARITY for self-protection must be recognized and conquered. The claims of charity relate in varying degrees to the resources left available for the reasonable service of others after our own legitimate claims have met their satisfaction. When one has arrived at a Christian judgment of these claims upon one's resources, one is called upon to weigh the claims of idealistic interests. Community welfare, religion, education and other culture interests appeal to us for support and their successful maintenance depends upon our generosity. Devo- tion to these interests is praiseworthy in the extreme, but it does not appear to excuse us from the specific claims of charity. The measurement and sanction of these claims are beyond the scope of this study. Assuming that they are established and recognized we are called upon to undertake to find the neighbors to whom we should show mercy. As life is organized those of approximately the same income live in the same neighborhood. The rich live among the rich. The well-to-do live among their own kind. The poor tend to be segregated to such a degree that the needy know only the needy. While common experience shows us that the most noble instances of neighborly service are found in the reciprocal relations of the poor, these are exceptional. They in no way interfere with the general process of our definition. This tendency to distribute population according to income extends so far that we find more or less exclusive circles in the laboring class itself. If he who needs me is my neighbor in the Christian sense, when I live among those who have no need of me I have no neighbors. Were I to live among many who had immediate need of me I would have so many neighbors that I would be utterly helpless in pres- ence of them. We are thus enabled to eliminate proximity in attempting to find our neighbors. The processes of life perpetuate this condition. The strong know only the strong and the weak know only the weak. Friendships, intermarriage, acquaintanceship and association follow along these lines and make this condition self-perpetuating. Normal social relations follow the plans WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR 103 fixed by income and culture. Association among those of different income and culture planes occurs only by exception. It does not occur frequently enough to become a factor in our thought. There is fortunately a certain progress upward from lower to higher social and cultural planes found among those who are exceptionally gifted in mind or character. We pretend to be surprised, if not shocked, when one marries "beneath" one's social station. In fact, we do not know our neighbors whatsoever our social class. Complete indifference and lack of all information are not only possible but probable among the inhabitants of a modern city block. Locality fails altogether then to indicate the neighbor whom we would serve according to the command of Christ. Since we are compelled to live in close physical proximity with large numbers of persons civilization has developed the forms of conventional privacy by which we protect ourselves against undue invasion of our lives by others. Those who are near us physically are kept at a distance socially. Life would be scarcely possible in a modern city except for the protection that we gain through respect for privacy. The customs of privacy prevent strangers from speaking to one another, prevent us from asking impudent personal ques- tions, forbid us to look at the book or the letter in the hands of those near us in a street car. The more closely we approach one another the more insistent are the obligations of privacy in order that we may live at all. The cultured man or woman holds curiosity about others in complete con- trol. The result must be a shrinkage in human sympathy, cautious approach to social intercourse with others, a mental habit that leads us to mind our own business and not to inter- fere without reason in the affairs of others. Thus the free and spontaneous appeal of sympathy and interest in one another and of attention to one another's affairs is practically forbidden. Even among the poor there is a form of self- respect, an appreciation of privacy that leads them to hide their distress against the inquiry of those who would serve them. One of the tasks of the friends of the poor is to find 104 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHAKITY out how to serve these without giving offense, without break- ing down that refined self-respect which is one of the flowers of culture. There can be no doubt that many carry the prin- ciple of respect for privacy too far and lose interest in seek- ing the neighbor who may be in need of mercy. Those who enjoy the finding of fault with social workers express their sarcasm by calling these "busybodies," "med- dlers" and the like. There is no doubt that the problem here hinted at is one of the most delicate to be met in the service of the poor. We do feel warranted in asking them questions concerning intimate personal life which we would never dare to ask of others. And yet information of this kind is neces- sary if we are to be of assistance at all. The inertia of the poor prevents them from helping themselves. The assistance that comes to them comes from a class alien in social standing, association and experience. The nobler the type among the poor the more delicate is their sense of privacy and their reluctance to see that privacy invaded. Much of the argu- ment made against so-called systematic charity rests upon the assumption that oifice records are an unpardonable inva- sion of privacy. At the same time, many of those who are careless as to the results of their work among the poor are apt to hide faulty methods behind an exaggerated alleged respect for the feelings, that is for the sense of privacy that the standards of civilization permit us to cherish. Proximity does not define neighbor for us. The customs of conventional privacy interfere greatly with the processes by which we might find and serve our neighbor. One might be led to conclude then that contact in the organized service of life would furnish the definition of neighbor whom we would love and serve. But we are disappointed again. Not even the essential service of life that brings us into close contact with one another serves this purpose. Life is fractioned. One life touches another in one way but the relations are confined to that one contact. No one can come closer to us than the servant in a home. She conies from the weaker social class. Only too often has she need of neigh- WHO IS MY NEIGHBOK 105 borly service in the Christian sense whether it relate to phys- ical, mental or moral distress. But conventional privacy places a barrier between her and those whom she serves. She does her work, receives her wages and goes her way. Now and then kindly human relations are established but the modern type of servant possesses a degree of dignity and shows an insistence on privacy and independence that keeps her mistress in her place. The newsboy, the milkman, the messenger boy, the drivers of the grocery and laundry wagons who came to our doors daily and minister to our recurring wants are in many, if not all, cases in need of some kind of neighborly interest and service relating to either health, home life or wage conditions. And yet we do not know their names. We know nothing about them. No human relations are created between them and us although the orderly move- ment of our intimate daily life is conditioned on their serv- ice. Life is fractioned here and relations remain entirely impersonal. Nor can the condition be otherwise. Each one of those who render service of this kind comes into touch with a mul- titude of homes. Attempt on the part of any one to engage them in conversation would disorganize their service and disrupt the neighborhood. Not choice but the fixed demands of life force these relations upon us, bring us together in economic intimacy and separate us in complete social estrangement. And again, we ourselves come into touch with so many of these in our daily life that it would be imprac- tical for us to attempt to take a human interest in every one of them. Unless we discipline our sympathies we shall scarcely survive at all. Thus we gain no assistance in seek- ing the definition of neighbor from the economic services rendered to us in the most direct way daily by representatives of the weaker social classes, many of whom are probably in need of friendly service. We might expect the bond of industrial employment to have some effect in determining Christian relations between strong and weak, in defining the neighbor in the friendly 106 SOCIAL MISSION OF CHAEITY serving of whom the employer might obey the obligations of Christian charity. But again we are disappointed. The mental outlook of the employer is primarily economic. He belongs to his class. He thinks and feels with his class. That class embraces a philosophy and follows a practice that result generally in the fractioning of life again. Relations remain impersonal. Labor is performed. Wages are paid. Relations are ended. The historical antagonisms that have developed between employer and employed so dominate the mental attitudes of both that the holier relation of neighbor seems unbusinesslike and out of place. The competitive struggle dominates the outlook of the employer. As the num- ber of those who work for him increases he takes refuge to his economic advantage against the human sympathy that might be his undoing. Furthermore, the typical modern employer is ordinarily not an owner. He is rather a man- ager. Generally speaking, the owners of an industry do not manage it and the managers of an industry do not own it. The scattered owners who enjoy dividends have no knowl- edge of conditions under which business is conducted. So long as generosity of impulse increases cost of operation and reduces dividends, affects credit and the values of stock, business rules sympathy and generosity out. A broad review of our industrial history shows the horrible and inhuman extremes to which separation of employer and employed have led. Capital has asked labor to carry uncompensated the frightful risks to life, to limb and to health that have been associated with the feverish development of industrial processes. Hundreds of thousands of industrial accidents that resulted in death ; hundreds of thousands of instances of occupational hazards that robbed working men of their health, deprived families of their breadwinners ; robbed chil- dren of their parents and hurled helpless, maimed and broken, men, women and children into the pit of dependency declare the failure of Christian relationship, sympathy and love between employer and employed. We may take into account all of the types of noble-minded WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR 107 employers that have endeavored to foster human relations with employees. We may take into account all of the instances wherein the distress of the weak is due to their own fault, sin, treachery and indifference. After making most generous allowance in both directions the facts of our industrial history still write a full indictment of the strong ones of the earth. They have builded an economic empire that gave them imperial sway over uncounted thousands of lives which they used with pagan indifference to the claims of humanity and Christianity. Much of this is due to the exactions of the competitive system and the mental outlook that resulted from them. Much of it is due to general con- ditions which the single employer could scarcely master. Whatever the circumstances the harvest of disaster, death, disease and dependency that resulted challenges the human and Christian sympathy of the world. While employers in individual cases find it possible to be neighbors in the fullest Bens of the term to those who labor for them, the bond of employment has not operated and does not operate generally to unite strong and weak in bonds of Christian love and kindly service. We might expect the bond of faith to define neighbor for us. Religion continues to teach the doctrine and foster the spirit of the charity of Christ. But every one of the factors already mentioned interferes in one way or another with the social relations of Christians. The complexities and man- dates of social organization, the social cleavage between strong and weak, between cultured and uncultured follow us into the house of God itself and affect mind and sympathy in varying degrees. While religious charities, particularly those of the Catholic Church, have done wonderful things in the way of service, these charities represent a reaction made necessary because the bond of faith does not automatically and directly define neighbor for us. None of the social bonds described have of themselves operated to furnish automatically definitions of neighbor which enable strong and weak to cultivate the spirit of love 108 and service that stands out in unparalleled grandeur in the ideal of Christian life. Again we must allow for exceptions. But these do not impair the truth of the general statement as made. We are confronted in this way by social classes and class estrangement, unequal distribution of strength and weakness, lack of normal definition of neighbor by the ordi- nary processes of life. But the law of Christ's love has not remained inoperative. Christian sympathy has been suffi- ciently strong in Christian hearts to do in one way what has been found impossible in another. In this way the relation of neighbor in the Christian life has been made vicarious and service has become indirect It has become necessary to seek out the poor. They have been found in such multi- tudes and in so many types that their condition has offered a challenge to Christian sympathy and the intelligence of the world. Poverty has become so complex and the helplessness of the poor is so many sided that the service of them has become exacting and technical. We have been compelled, therefore, to specialize in the service of them and to become systematic and thoughtful in that service. The relief organ- ization which assembles those who are skillful in the service of the poor and gathers the resources available for this serv- ice represents the combined typical Christian sympathies of the community and gives promise of most effective neighborly service of the poor. We turn, therefore, to the modern relief organization for the answer to our question,