Part 7 (2/2)
[4] an almoner should ask himself about any given case:
”1. Can anything be done to increase the family income? Can the number of wage-earners be added to? Can those doing badly paid work be taught better-paid work? Can they be put in the way of getting better tools or appliances?
”2. Can anything be done to make the existing income go farther than it goes now? e.g.
”(_a_) Is too much money paid away in rent? Could as good accommodations be obtained in the district elsewhere for less? Or could the family do with less accommodation.
”(_b_) Is money wasted? _e.g._ on medicine, or in habitual p.a.w.ning, or in purchasing from tallymen, or in buying things not wanted? Do husband and children keep back an undue share of their earnings?
”(_c_) Is too much money spent in travelling {157} backwards and forwards to place of employment? If so, could the family move nearer to their work without increasing their rent?
”These are but a few of the questions which the almoner must put if he wishes to be thorough. In every case he must _think_ about the problem with which he is dealing, and he must try to make those who are applying for help think also.”
The best arguments for giving relief upon a definite plan are the results of haphazard benevolence that are all around us--feeble-minded women with illegitimate offspring, children crippled by drunken fathers, juvenile offenders who began as child-beggars, aged parents neglected by their children. Every form of human weakness and depravity is intensified by the charity that asks no questions.
_The third relief principle is that relief should look not only to the alleviation of present suffering, but to promoting the future welfare of the recipient._
IV. It follows from the foregoing that when we relieve at all we should relieve adequately.
”Can any one really approve of inadequate {158} relief? Can any one really approve of giving 50 cents to a man who must have $5.00, trusting that some one else will give the $4.50, and knowing that, to get it, the person in distress must spend not only precious strength and time, but more precious independence and self-respect? . . .
”There are many families in every city who get relief (only a little to be sure, but enough to do harm) who ought never to have one cent,--families where the man can work, but will not work. The little given out of pity for his poor wife and children really intensifies and prolongs their suffering, and only prevents the man from doing his duty by making him believe that, if he does not take care of them, some one else will. On the other hand, there are many families who ought to have their whole support given to them for a few years,--widows, for instance, who cannot both take care of and support their children, and yet who ought not to have to give them up into the blighting care of an inst.i.tution; and these families get nothing, or get so little that it does them no good at all, only serving to {159} keep them also in misery and to raise false hopes, or else to teach them to beg to make up what they must have.
”Ought not charitable people to manage in some way to remedy these two opposite evils?--to do more for those who should have more, and to do nothing for those who should have nothing, saving money by discriminating, and thus having enough to give adequate relief in all cases.” [5]
By adequate relief charity workers do not mean that all _apparent_ needs should be met. There are often resources that are hidden from the inexperienced eye, and by ignoring these we destroy them.
_The fourth relief principle is that, instead of trying to give a little to very many, we should help adequately those that we help at all._
V. We should make the poor our partners in any effort to improve their condition, and relief should be made dependent upon their doing what they can for themselves. Whether we give or do not give, our reasons should be {160} clearly stated, and we should avoid driving any sordid bargain with them. For instance, it may be wise sometimes to make relief conditional, among other things, upon attending church, but to require attendance upon a church to which they do not belong because it is our church, or to let them regard relief as in any way a.s.sociated with making converts to our way of thinking, is to weaken our influence and tempt the poor to deceive us.
_The fifth relief principle is that we should help the poor to understand the right relations of things by stating clearly our reasons for giving or withholding relief, and by requiring their hearty cooperation in all efforts for their improvement._
VI. The form of relief must vary with individual circ.u.mstances and needs. Work that is real work is better, of course, than any relief; but there should be a prejudice among charity workers against sham work, for which there is no demand in the market. Unless such work is educational, or is used to test the applicant's willingness to work, it is often better to give material relief.
{161}
A charitable superst.i.tion that we should outgrow is the notion that it saves us from pauperizing the poor to call our gifts loans. We may know that they cannot repay, and they may know that we know it, but this juggling with words is still undeservedly popular. When the chances of their being able to repay are reasonably good, and a loan is made, we should be as careful to collect the debt as in any business transaction.
Another charitable superst.i.tion is the prejudice in favor of relief in kind rather than in money. We think that bundles of groceries and clothes, and small allowances of fuel, can do no harm, but the fact is that, where it would be unsafe to give money, it is usually unsafe to give money's equivalent. Large relief societies find it more economical to buy commodities in quant.i.ties, and so get the advantage of wholesale prices; but, so far as the poor themselves are concerned, there is no reason for giving goods rather than cash. On the contrary, many poor people can make the money go farther than we can. Money intended for temporary relief should not be used {162} for rent, however, except in cases where ejectment would seriously endanger the welfare of the family. Back rent is like any other back debt; landlords should take their chances of loss with other creditors. Nor should charitable relief be used to enable people to move from place to place in order to avoid the payment of rent.[6]
When inst.i.tutional care is clearly not only the most economical but the most adequate form of relief, we are sometimes justified in refusing all other forms.
In cases where inst.i.tutional care is not practicable, and relief will be needed for a long period, it is best to organize a private pension, letting all the natural sources of relief combine and give through one medium an adequate amount.
_The sixth relief principle is that we must find that form of relief which will best fit the particular need._
Though the foregoing six relief principles could easily be extended to twenty, yet a {163} bookful of such generalizations would be of no value to the almoner without a detailed knowledge of the neighborhood into which relief is to go, and an intimate acquaintance with the lives of the poor. It is evident, therefore, that a beginner in charity should not decide relief questions except in consultation with an experienced worker. For instance, a new visitor going to the house of a widow supporting her aged mother and two children, may find the woman sick, and receiving only a small pittance in sick benefits from the society to which she belongs. There is no apparent suffering, but the visitor at once concludes that the income is insufficient, and applies to the nearest relief agency, asking that coal be sent. As a matter of fact, the family income is as large as the average income of the neighborhood, and the woman has never thought of asking relief; if fuel is sent, the neighbors all know it, and, immediately, there is a certain expectancy aroused, a certain spirit of speculation takes the place of the habit of thrift. There seem, to the simple imaginations of these people, to be exhaustless stores of relief, which {164} are somehow at the command of visiting ladies. Take another instance of a more difficult kind. A family has long pa.s.sed the stage of receiving relief for the first time; the man is a heavy drinker, the household filthy, the children neglected. They appeal at once for a.s.sistance.
The children need shoes to go to Sunday-school, the rent is overdue, the coal is out. Confronted with such misery, the beginner is very likely to give, and to compound with his conscience by giving ”a little.” This is the very treatment that has brought them to their present pa.s.s, and only an experienced and intelligent almoner can tell how far it is wise to let the forces of nature work a cure, and how far it is wise to prevent extreme suffering by interference.
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