Part 8 (1/2)

One trouble in the past has been that the agents employed by relief societies have not always been intelligent, but there have been great advances made in this regard, and now, in many communities, the agents of charitable societies are active, intelligent men and women, who have received special training for the work. These agents are often in communication with {165} many sources of relief, and can save us from duplicating relief to the same persons--from sending it, that is, where others are meeting the same need already. There are many reasons, therefore, for doing our charitable work in consultation with an experienced almoner, and friendly visiting, where it has failed, has usually failed through the visitor's unwarranted a.s.sumption that the giving of material relief was a simple and easy matter, about which charity workers made an unnecessary lot of trouble.

Collateral Readings: ”The English Poor Law,” Rev. T. Fowle. ”The Beggars of Paris,” translated from the French of M. Paulian by Lady Hersch.e.l.l. ”Outdoor Relief,” see Warner's ”American Charities,” pp.

162 _sq_. ”Economic and Moral Effect of Outdoor Relief,” Mrs.

Josephine Shaw Lowell in Proceedings of Seventeenth National Conference of Charities, pp. 81 _sq_. ”Outdoor Relief: Arguments for and against,” in Proceedings of Eighteenth National Conference of Charities, pp. 28 _sq_. ”Relief in Work,” P. W. Ayres in Proceedings of Nineteenth National Conference of Charities, pp. 436 _sq_. ”Is Emergency Relief by Work Wise?” the same in Proceedings of Twenty-second National Conference of Charities, pp. 96 _sq_.

[1] Miss Z. D. Smith in Report of Union Relief a.s.sociation of Springfield, Ma.s.s., 1887, p. 12.

[2] Fifth Report of Boston a.s.sociated Charities, pp. 31 _sq_.

[3] Eighth Report of Boston a.s.sociated Charities, p. 25.

[4] Vol. II, New Series, p. 224.

[5] Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell in Proceedings of Twenty-third National Conference of Charities, New Haven, 1895, p. 49.

[6] See Fifteenth Annual Report of the New York Charity Organization Society, pp. 44 _sq_., and p. 55.

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CHAPTER X

THE CHURCH

Relief agents working in our great cities usually find that, in answer to direct questions, the poor are likely to claim connection with some one of the large denominations, though further acquaintance will often reveal the fact that this connection is merely nominal. There are, of course, many poor people that are active church members, but in spite of the wonderful activity of all branches of the Christian church during the last fifty years, in spite of the multiplication of missions and the devotion of many good men and women to their upbuilding, the fact remains that many of the very poor are still outside the churches.

In trying to explain this, we have to take into account certain external conditions, such as the natural shrinking of the less fortunate from social contact, and the migratory habits of the poor; {167} but another very important factor in this alienation is, I believe, the preoccupation of the church with material relief and with those who clamor for it.

Some of the very poor are ready enough to connect themselves with the church, but, attending its services and receiving its ministrations with the one idea of getting a.s.sistance, it is not too much to say of them that they are ”pious for revenue only.” And yet, in saying this, it is necessary to qualify it at once by the statement that the fault rests not so much with the ignorant poor as with the multiplied and rival church agencies that tempt them to hypocrisy and deceit. If the church could only have a good, wholesome, terrifying vision, and see itself as the poor see it!

”A friend of mine,” writes a London charity worker, ”heard two very respectable women talking. One said, 'Well, Mrs. Smith, how have you fared this Christmas?' 'Oh, very badly; I had very little relief.'

The other replied: 'Well, Mrs. Smith, it is all your own fault; you will go and sit in the side aisle of the church, where n.o.body ever sees you. If {168} you would sit in front, you would be helped as we all are.'” Writing of conditions too common in America, Rev. George B.

afford says: ”Families transfer their connection from one church to another, or, with an impartiality rare in other relations, distribute their representatives among several Sunday-schools or churches, gaining by pseudo-devout arts what they can from each: Methodist clothing; Baptist groceries; Presbyterian meat; Episcopalian potatoes; Roman Catholic rent; Universalist cash, available for 'sundries,'--all are acceptable to the mendicant pensioner of religious charity. One family, now at last well advertised, in an eastern city found its numerous youthful progeny effective leeches as applied to the several Sunday-schools among which they were distributed. The 'widowed' mother underwent frequent conversion; the children enjoyed the benefit of as frequent baptism. On a certain gathering of clergymen of different churches, when one after another had told the story of his discomfiture, all joined to congratulate the single representative of the Baptist denomination present on his happy escape {169} from the imposture, under which several others had in turn baptized the children. But from him came the sad confession that he had baptized the woman herself.” [1] In my own city, a family made a small child not their own a source of income by having it baptized frequently in different churches, so that three charitable members of three Episcopal churches were astonished to find, on comparing notes, that they shared the responsibility of being the child's G.o.dmothers.

But it is needless to multiply ill.u.s.trations; almost every church has a collection of such experiences, and the bad effects of successful deception upon the deceivers are apparent enough. I pa.s.s to the important fact that this cla.s.s of the poor, though numerically insignificant by comparison with the poor in general, are yet so much in evidence as the objects of Christian zeal, and the church wastes so much time in coddling them, that the self-respecting poor often hold aloof. It is a common thing to hear a poor man say that he is not going to attend church, and be suspected of {170} trying to get something. It does not increase his respect for Christians to find them easily deceived, and it outrages his sense of justice to see that laziness, drunkenness, and vice are rewarded by church workers. Even among tramps, the variety known as the ”mission b.u.m” is looked down upon by his fellows, and there is a lesson for the mission worker in this simple fact.

In writing thus frankly of home missionary work, I am not unmindful of all the difficulties with which Christian ministers have to contend.

Many of them are as much alive to the dangers of indiscriminate relief as any one can be, and many of them have risked unpopularity and misunderstanding to lift their churches out of the tread-mill of ineffectual, dole-dispensing charities into vital contact with the needs of the poor. The difficulties of Christian ministers are twofold. Their first duty is to develop the charitable instincts of church members, to overcome the selfishness and inertia of the natural man. When they have succeeded in arousing a desire to do something for somebody else, they must also furnish ample opportunity for {171} the exercise of this newly awakened impulse. Now the charitable development of the individual follows the development of the race; the individual outgrows slowly, if at all, the sentimental and patronizing view of poverty. To carry church members beyond this phase and make them effective workers, genuine powers of leaders.h.i.+p are needed, and it is much easier to let them follow their own devices. We have seen in the last chapter that relief work, if well done, is the most difficult of all charitable work, but nine inexperienced workers out of every ten will think it the best and easiest means of helping the poor--the only means, in fact.

A difficulty to be reckoned with, and yet one with which it is hard to have any patience, is the rank materialism that regards relief as a legitimate means of attracting people to the church. Relief as a gospel agency has done far more harm than good: you cannot buy a Christian without getting a bad bargain, and yet, compet.i.tion among rival churches working in the same poor neighborhood is so sharp that even now, in these days of cooperative {172} effort, we find that the sordid appeal is made. ”I call it waste,” wrote the late Archbishop of Canterbury, ”when money is laid out upon instinct which ought to be laid out upon principle, and waste of the worst possible kind when two or three religious bodies are working with one eye to the improvement of the condition of those whom they help, and with another eye directed to getting them within the circle of their own organization. When each of those religious bodies does so work, say upon a single large family, and, feeling quite sure of one member of the family, nourishes great hopes of the rest of the members of the family that they will become true and orthodox members of their own community, I call that not only waste--I call it demoralization of the worst conceivable kind, for a reason which the poet puts thus, 'What shall bless when holy water banes?' The demoralization produced is the worst possible, because the highest possible thoughts are used as mere instruments for low ends.”

[2]

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One result of using relief as a bribe is that the gift no longer has for its sole object the relief of distress, or the restoration of the receiver to independence, and is likely, therefore, to be inadequate.