Part 20 (1/2)
289. =Public and Private Agencies.=--Inst.i.tutions and agencies of relief are of two kinds, public and private. It is one of the functions of every social group to promote the welfare of its members.
It is to be expected, therefore, that the church and the trade-union will help their own poor, but it is just as proper to expect that the whole community, and even the whole state, will take care of its own needy. The distinction between public and private agencies is not one of fundamental sociological principle, but one of convenience and efficiency of administration. Where the state has extended its activities, as in Germany, relief by such a method as the Elberfeld system is practicable; where public opinion, as in the United States, is not favorable to remanding as much as possible to the government, it is thought best that private agencies should supplement State aid, and in most cases make it unnecessary.
290. =Arguments for and Against Private Agencies of Relief.=--Some argue that private agencies should do it all. In spite of the large resources at the command of the state and the frequent necessity of legislation to handle the problem, they claim that public aid humiliates and degrades the recipient, while private a.s.sistance may put him on his feet without destroying his self-respect; and that public charity is too often unfeeling and tends to become a routine affair, while private aid can deal better with specific cases, show real interest and try experiments in the improvement of methods. There are those who would have all charity given back to the church. They believe the responsibility would stimulate the church's own life, extend its influence among the unchurched, show that it had an interest in the bodies as well as the souls of the people, and bring about co-operation between churches in the districts of town or city.
It is of the genius of true religion to be helpful, and the church could soon learn wise methods. In answer to this argument the reply is that at present the indiscriminate charity of the church is doing real harm; that the church does not like to co-operate with other agencies; that it does not have adequate resources to deal with the problem or legal authority to restrain mendicants or segregate the various cla.s.ses of dependents; and that all persons in the community ought to share in the responsibility of poor relief, and not all are in the church. They recognize the valuable aid of such organizations as the Hebrew Charities and the work of the St. Vincent de Paul Society of the Catholics, but they believe that such as these at best can be only auxiliary to the state.
An ill.u.s.tration of the usefulness of private a.s.sociations appears in a group of seven boys of foreign parentage in New York City, who organized themselves in 1903 into a quick-aid-to-the-hungry committee.
They were only thirteen years old and poor. They lived on the East Side, and pennies and nickels did not make a full treasury. But they knew the need and had an instinct for helping the right people. In seven years these boys helped in more than two hundred and fifty emergency cases; their pennies grew to dollars as they earned more; their charity developed their self-respect; they held weekly meetings for debate, and several of them made their way through college. Funds were supplied, also, from friends outside, who were glad to aid such a worthy enterprise. The great need among private agencies is fuller co-operation with one another and with public boards and inst.i.tutions.
Then duplication of effort, misunderstandings, and wastefulness are avoided, and the hope of a decline in conditions of poverty increases.
There are limits, however, to the ability of private agencies to control the situation. There are cases where the organized community or state must take a hand. There are lazy persons who will not support themselves or their families; there are certain persons who are chronically ill or dependent; there are various types of defectives and delinquents. All these need the authority of the public agencies.
Then there are constructive activities that require the a.s.sistance and sanction of government, like parks and playgrounds, industrial schools, employment bureaus, the establishment and administration of state inst.i.tutions, and the enforcement of health, sanitary, and building laws. Of course there is often inefficiency in government management. The local almshouse needs reforming, and the overseers of the poor should be trained experts. The organization and superintendence of state inst.i.tutions is not ideal, and building arrangements need improvement, but there is a steady gain in the efficiency of boards of trustees and local managers. There is a willingness to learn from experience and a disposition to raise the standards in all departments of administration.
291. =The Social Settlement.=--However efficient an official board may be in the discharge of its duties, it cannot expect to call out from the beneficiary so enthusiastic a response as can a real friend. The best friends of the poor are their neighbors. It is well known that a group of families in a tenement house will help one of their number that is in specific difficulty, and that the poor give more generously to help their own kind than do those who are more well-to-do. It was a conviction of these principles of friendliness and neighborliness that led to the first social settlements. Because a person lives in an undesirable part of the city he is not necessarily a subject for charity, and the settlement is in no sense to be thought of as a charitable agency. It is a home established among the less-favored part of the population by educated, refined, sympathetic people who want to be neighborly and to bring courage and cheer and helpfulness to the struggling ma.s.ses. The original residents of Hull House in Chicago believed that cla.s.s alienation could be overcome best by the establishment of intimate social relations.h.i.+ps, and they were willing to sacrifice their natural social advantages for the larger good.
Settlements are not exclusively of the city, but the stress of life is sternest in the cities, and most of the experiments have been made there. They are oases in the desert of the buildings and pavements of brick, with their grime and monotony, and if the people of the desert will camp for an hour and drink of the spring, those who have planted the oasis will be well pleased. To attract them the settlement workers have organized clubs and cla.s.ses for united study and activity in matters that naturally interest the people of the neighborhood; they have music and dancing and amateur theatricals, and often they supply domestic or industrial training in a small way for the young people who frequent the settlement. The residents aim to give the people what they want; they do not impose anything upon them. They try to satisfy economic and social wants. They try to stimulate the people of the neighborhood to desire the best things that they can get. They co-operate with the police and other departments of the city government, with the library, and with the school. They a.s.sist in procuring work for those who want it; they encourage the people to be thrifty and temperate; they help them to get baths and gymnastic facilities, playgrounds, and social centres. They frequently carry on investigations that are of great value and a.s.sist charitable agencies in their inquiries and beneficence. They call frequently upon the people in their homes and encourage them to ask for counsel and help if they are in trouble.
The settlement idea grew out of a growing interest in the common people. It was stimulated by Maurice's establishment at London of a working man's college, with recent Cambridge graduates as teachers, and by university extension work in Cambridge; it was suggested further by the location of Edward Denison in the East End of London in 1867. In 1885 Canon Barnett, of St. Jude's Church, London, founded Toynbee Hall under Oxford auspices. The first settlement in the United States was established in New York in 1887, and soon became known as the University Settlement. Hull House in Chicago was started two years later; the first settlement in Boston was founded under the auspices of the Andover Theological Seminary. Most settlements avoid church connections, because of the danger of misunderstandings among people of widely differing faiths.
The settlement has existed long enough to become a true social inst.i.tution. It has remained true to its original principle of neighborliness, but it has increased its activities as occasion demanded. It has been a useful object-lesson to churches and city governments; some of its methods have been imitated, and in some of the cities its efforts have become unnecessary in certain directions because the city government itself has adopted its plans. The settlement has its critics and its devoted supporters; it is one of the voluntary experiments that shows the spirit of its promoters and that helps along social progress, and it must be estimated among the a.s.sets of a community. Here and there in the country among certain groups, as lumbermen, miners, or construction workers, or even in a settled town, many of the methods of the settlement are likely to find acceptance, and the settlement idea of neighborliness is fundamental to all happy and successful social life.
READING REFERENCES
DEVINE: _Principles of Relief_, pages 10-28, 171-181.
WARNER: _American Charities_, pages 301-393.
CONYNGTON: _How to Help_, pages 56-219.
HENDERSON: _Modern Methods of Charity_, pages 380-511.
HENDERSON: _Social Settlements._
ADDAMS: _Twenty Years at Hull House_, pages 89-153.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII
EDUCATIONAL AGENCIES
292. =The Schools of the City.=--An important function of city government and of other inst.i.tutions is the education of the people who make their home in the city or come to it to broaden their culture. The city provides for its young people as the country community does, by locating school-buildings within convenient reach of the people of every district, but on a much larger and usually a more efficient scale. Better trained teachers, better grading, a more modern equipment and well-proved methods give an advantage in education to the city child, though there are drawbacks in overcrowded buildings and narrow yards for play. The opportunities for social education are broader in the city, for the child comes into contact with many types of people, with a great variety of social inst.i.tutions, and with all sorts of activities. It is these advantages, together with the higher inst.i.tutions for study, that attract hundreds and sometimes thousands of students to the prominent social centres. The colleges and universities, the normal schools, the music and art inst.i.tutes and lecture systems are numerous and attract correspondingly.
293. =The Press as an Educator.=--The inst.i.tutions directly concerned with instruction are supplemented by other educational agencies. Among these is the press. The press is an inst.i.tution that exerts a mighty force upon every department of the city's life. It is at the same time a business enterprise and a social inst.i.tution. It is a public misfortune that the newspaper, the magazine, and the book publis.h.i.+ng house is a private business undertaking, and often stands for cla.s.s, party, or sectarian interests before those of the whole of society.
There is always a temptation to sacrifice principle to policy, to publish distorted or half-true statements from selfish interest, and to prost.i.tute influence to individuals or groups that care little for the public welfare. The publication of a statement or narrative of a crime or other misdemeanor tends by suggestion to the imitation of the wrong by others; it is a well-known fact that a sensational story of suicide or murder is likely to provoke others in the same manner. It is a grave question whether the realistic fiction so much in vogue and published in such quant.i.ties is not a baneful text-book on modern society. But when it chooses the press becomes an instrument of immense value to the public. It can turn the light of publicity on dark and dirty places. It can and does provide a means of wise utterance on questions of the day. It keeps a record of the good as well as the evil that is done. It is a means of communication between local groups everywhere, for it publishes what everybody wants to know about everybody else. It introduces the antipodes to each other, and makes it possible for far-sundered groups to unite even internationally for a good cause. As the railroad binds together portions of a continent, so the press links the minds of human beings.
294. =A Metropolitan Newspaper.=--Take a metropolitan newspaper and see how it reflects the current life of society. Economic interests of buyer and seller are exploited in the advertising columns. In no other way could a merchant so persuasively hawk his wares or a purchaser learn so readily about the market. The wholesaler and jobber find their interests attended to in special columns provided particularly for them. Financial interests are cared for by stock-exchange quotations, news items, and advertis.e.m.e.nts. All kinds of social concerns are taken care of in the news columns, items collected at great expense from the four quarters of the globe. Gatherings for a great variety of purposes are recorded. Educational and religious interests are given s.p.a.ce, as well as sports and amus.e.m.e.nts; last Sunday's sermon jostles the latest scandal on Monday morning; weather probabilities and s.h.i.+pping news have their corners, as well as the fas.h.i.+on department and the cartoon. The newspaper is a moving picture of the world.