Friendly Visiting among the Poor: A Handbook for Charity Workers

ed all thought of this as too ambitious. The movement-if, indeed, there be such a movement-has always pictured itself to my mind as the march of the plain and common people into the foreground

ould probably find also that, in the earlier attempts of the novel writer to picture the poor, they were drawn as mere puppets on which the richly endowed heroes and heroines exercised their benevolence. Very likely he would discover that, when at last the poor began to take an important part in the action of the story, we were permi

, and leaving, therefore, no unlovely trait slurred over or excused, yet giving us that perfect understanding of every-day people which is the only true basis of sympathy with them. In America we ar

Monstrous and misshapen as this must seem to us often, if considered as a work of art, it

Here, too, the facts will not always travel in straight lines, and the great souls of earlier ages will be found to have anticipated our best thinking; but usually the world has failed in {4} any effort to adopt their high s

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te dead or dying, but the sentimental view, which succeeded it, is still very common. We are still inclined to take a conventional attitude toward the poor, seeing them through the comfortable haze of our own excellent intentions, and content to know that we wish

e spirit of individual service, which has found one of its highest expressions in the work of friendly visitors in the homes of the poor. The second is the new but vigorous growth of the spirit of social service, which has found its best expression in social and college s

} of social service. In the first phase, we are charitable either for the sake of our souls or else to gratify our own emotions. In the seco

e condition of his fellows for better or worse, and it is impossible to deal with social conditions without affecting the units that compose society. The problems of poverty must be attacked from both sides, therefore, and though I shall dwell particularly upon individual service in these pages, we should remember that, unless this

en rouses in a neighborhood hopes that it is impossible for us to fulfil. Then, too, occupied as we are with individuals, we are likely to exaggerate the importance of those causes of poverty that have their origin in the individual. We are likely to over emphasize the moral and mental lacks shown in bad personal habits, such as drunkenness and licentiousness, in thriftlessness, laziness, or inefficiency; and some of us are even rash enoug

ns affecting the welfare of the poor. But they should not permit themselves to be swept away by enthusiastic advocates of social reform from that safe middle ground which recognizes that character is at the {9} very centre of this complicated problem; character in the rich, who owe the poor justice as well as mercy, and character in the poor, who are masters of their fate to a greater degree than they will recognize or than we will recognize for them. To ignore the importance of character and of the discipline that makes character is a common fault of modern philanthropy. R

t all-has included human beings as different as Lord Shaftesbury and Mr. Barney Barnato. But it is the very same with the poor; and any effort to go among them for the purpose of helping them that does not frankly recognize this wide diversity, must end in failure. The charity worker must rid himself, first of all, of the conventional picture of the poor as always either very abjectly needy, or else very abjectly grateful. He must understand that an attitude of patronage toward the poor man is likely to put the patron in as ridiculou

te happens to be poor we call him a pauper; but there is a world of difference between poverty and pauperism. The poor man may become destitute through stress of circumstances, and be forced to accept charity, but your true pauper, be he rich or poor, has the parasitic habit of mind. When we ask ourselves then, Who are the poor?

those who hold to this view seldom have the courage of their convictions. When they see suffering, they are very likely to interfere by sending help, though this well-meant interference, unaccompanied by personal knowledge of all the

ourage and self-control to confine his work to a few families, for it is impossible to know many well, to understand all their temptations and difficulties, and so help them effectively. To supply every needy family with a friend may seem an impossible ideal, but if all who are und

ugh the district office of a charity organization society, for these societies usually make a specialty of training volunteers and of establishing friendly relations

tions of the friendly visitor to be tact and good-will. If we consider that tact includes knowledge, either instinctive or acquired, this may still stand. We cannot be tactful with those whose point of view we fail to understand, or do not even strive to understand. The best helps toward such an understanding, and the best training for charitable work, must come from life itself. If we take no interest in the joys and sorrows of human beings, if we show {15}

the family as citizen, employee, husband, and father; the wife as homemaker; the children; the family health and recreations; the principles involved in spending and saving; the principles of effectual relief; the relations of

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