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 L1BRAR\ 
 
 UNIVb i-T^ Of 
 
 S AN C!ESO
 
 IIA, SAN DIEGO 
 LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA 
 
 HOW TO HELP THE POOR. 
 
 BY 
 
 Mrs. JAMES T. FIELDS. 
 
 TWENTY-SECOND THOUSAND. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 
 
 New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street. 
 
 (aflbe fitoersiue pre??, Cambridge. 
 
 1885
 
 Copyright, 1883, 
 
 By MRS. JAMES T. FIELDS. 
 
 All rights reserved.
 
 
 " Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, 
 and have not charTty, it profiteth me nothing." — Si- 
 Paul. 
 
 * 
 
 " The grand doctrine that every human being should 
 have the means of self-culture, of progress in knowl- 
 edge and virtue, of health, comfort, and happiness, of 
 exercising the powers and affections of a man, — this 
 is slowly taking its place as the highest social truth." 
 — William Ellery Channing. 
 
 " No historic event is so important as the advent of 
 a conviction, of a new truth. These convictions of the 
 human soul build up institutions, change the course of 
 events, and alter the tendencies of human affairs ; and 
 among all convictions there are none so strong, perma- 
 nent, and unconquerable as religious convictions." — 
 James Freeman Clarke.
 
 NOTE. 
 
 This little manual does not propose to deal 
 with public questions. It aims to give a few 
 suggestions to visitors among the poor, and to 
 lead all such visitors to attend the conferences 
 which now are held weekly in almost every dis- 
 trict of our large cities. 
 
 In these meetings, they will reap advantage 
 from the experience and knowledge of others 
 who are endeavoring, like themselves, to lighten 
 the burden of the unfortunate. Especially, we 
 believe that such meetings will awaken a wider 
 interest in the hearts of well-to-do people, — an 
 interest strong enough to increase the number 
 of visitors to the homes of the poor. 
 
 Every page of this book is a prayer for more 
 helpers, and aims to show that such labor is 
 neither too difficult for us, nor one from which 
 any household can feel itself altogether exempted. 

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Why Organization Began 5 
 
 II. How Organization Began, 14 
 
 III. What a District Conference is, and 
 
 how to Create One, 26 
 
 IV. What a Visitor may do for Children 
 
 and Young Persons, 44 
 
 V. Suggestions in Behalf of the Aged, . 66 
 
 VI. Investigation, 78 
 
 VII. Intemperance, 9 2 
 
 VIII. Visitors and Visited 107
 
 WHY ORGANIZATION BEGAN. 
 
 " Give to him that asketh " is one of the 
 most direct commands in the Christian Script- 
 ure ; doubtless, in some form, the same com- 
 mand may be found in every scripture since 
 man began his race with man. 
 
 The slow growth of moral civilization is 
 only now beginning to unfold the true signifi- 
 cance of this law, which is found to stand 
 side by side with other laws belonging to it 
 and explaining it. These bring us to consider 
 the Example from whom we receive our doc- 
 trine. We find him living the life of an 
 utterly poor man, who could give neither 
 silver nor gold, yet whose bounty was un- 
 ceasing. He taught his followers to speak of 
 themselves " as poor, yet making many rich." 
 
 "Give to him that asketh," therefore, should 
 be the true motto for this revival in benevo- 
 lent work which we call organized or associ- 
 ated charity, whereby we learn to take hold
 
 6 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 of each other's hands, and, forming a break- 
 water thus against the rising waves of pauper- 
 ism, find ourselves strengthened into better 
 ways for relieving suffering. 
 
 Formerly, when the knight rode out from 
 his castle, he scattered largess as he went, 
 and the people bowed and worshipped the 
 hand that shed down the golden rain; but, 
 when the giver of the gold had passed, they 
 crept into their wretched huts and lived little 
 better than the beasts of the field. As civ- 
 ilization advanced, and castles were de- 
 stroyed, and men gathered into large cities, 
 trade and commerce increased, and equal 
 chances were given to equal strength. Then 
 the idea of brotherhood among men began 
 to develop. It had been prophesied in the 
 holy places, but at last it was becoming a 
 visible truth in the mind of humanity. Equal 
 worth was seen to be allied to unequal 
 strength, and the growth of love to man pro- 
 duced fellowship and sympathy with suffering. 
 The simplest and least thoughtful, or least 
 spiritual, methods were first seized upon in 
 the earlier times for the alleviation of poverty 
 and its ills. Community of goods, gifts of 
 gold, gifts of land, every temporal method 
 was essayed, and all to no good end. Those
 
 Why Organization Began. 7 
 
 who had no gold before, seemed to have still 
 less, and to be worse off than ever, after the 
 gifts were exhausted. The larger the city, 
 the more munificent its expenditure, the 
 darker its poverty and its degradation. Even 
 in these later times, when the idea of civiliza- 
 tion has begun te creep " into the study of 
 imagination," a friend has related substan- 
 tially "as follows her experience during one 
 day. 
 
 With the early morning mail came a letter 
 from Association, asking for a gener- 
 ous yearly subscription. The names of good 
 men and women were on the list. She read 
 that all cases were carefully visited who ap- 
 plied for aid ; therefore, she enclosed her con- 
 tribution. By and by, we shall see how this 
 money was used. 
 
 Another letter was then opened from a 
 woman in Lowell, who had heard this lady's 
 name, and wished "her advice and assist- 
 ance." The woman had a mortgage on her 
 house, and she sent names of well-known per- 
 sons in Lowell who would help her with cer- 
 tain sums, if she could make up the full 
 amount elsewhere. The request seemed quite 
 reasonable, because the woman should keep a 
 roof over her head, if possible, having three
 
 8 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 children. On the whole, my friend decided 
 to make up the deficit of about two hundred 
 dollars. Later on in these pages, I propose 
 to consider another method of disposing of 
 such a case. 
 
 A third letter was from a woman who 
 wished to learn to play the harp, and desired 
 to insure her life for that purpose. At this 
 moment, a man called with a paper signed by 
 the mayor and prominent merchants, stating 
 that he fell down a hatchway a year ago, and 
 had required help ever since. Here, also, 
 money was given. I hope in these pages to 
 return also to this case. 
 
 Presently, Mrs. X. went out. She was one 
 of the managers of a sewing-circle and a 
 trustee of a Temporary Home, and, before 
 returning in the afternoon, she performed her 
 usual labors in both those positions. Going 
 hurriedly along the street, she was accosted 
 by a child who looked very cold, and who 
 asked her for a cent. It was so little ! She 
 gave him a bit of money, and so reached 
 home, her clay's work done. 
 
 By and by, we will follow this doing out 
 into its detail, giving a simple statement of 
 what was effected by her generous expendi- 
 ture of time and money. Mrs. X. herself
 
 Why Organization Began. 9 
 
 did not feel satisfied. She could not see that 
 anything was accomplished. Apparently, to- 
 morrow must be the same as to-day, bringing 
 much weariness and little fruition. She re- 
 membered, too late, that she had intended 
 to buy on this day a certain picture. The 
 artist needed to 'know that some one cared 
 for his work, and her own children would be 
 better and happier for having the beautiful 
 scene before their eyes. 
 
 The thought came back, also, that an even- 
 ing-school for boys, which she had long hoped 
 for (seeing how much care is needed in city 
 life, fcr boys), was still far from being estab- 
 lished. She saw more and more plainly that 
 she was not yet working altogether in the 
 right direction, since there seemed absolutely 
 no harvest after all her labor. 
 
 One day, Mrs. X. discovered from a book 
 which fell into her hands that the subject 
 weighing upon her mind — of how we may 
 best use what we possess, both of time and 
 money, in behalf of the unfortunate — was not 
 a problem belonging to herself alone. It had 
 already become a vital question first in Europe 
 and later in America. 
 
 She read of a city in Germany — in which 
 country much good thought is developed —
 
 io How to Help the Poor. 
 
 which had been divided and subdivided into 
 manageable sections and where the poor are 
 all placed under the supervision of companies 
 of visitors, men and women, who go to see 
 the needy and advise with them, in order 
 that educated and sympathetic interest may 
 be brought to bear upon their condition. By 
 this means, it was discovered that the poor 
 and unhappy drop out of sight and lose their 
 way in the world. Therefore, the effect of 
 bringing friends to the friendless has proved 
 almost miraculous, especially during the life 
 of the good man who first tried this experi- 
 ment at Elberfeld. The result was greatly 
 successful in that place. His work brought 
 the new life which springs from every living 
 seed. Later, Dr. Chalmers achieved a large 
 measure of success in Glasgow, introducing 
 practically the same idea, though possibly it 
 was also original with him. From that mo- 
 ment, the movement was established in the 
 world and can never die out of it. It be- 
 seeches humanity to give. Day by day this 
 cry is reiterated, Come and help us ! Give us 
 of your time first, then, if you see fit, of your 
 money. Give to him that asketh enough of 
 your attention to find somebody or to pay 
 somebody, if you cannot go yourself, to dis-
 
 Why Organization Began. 1 1 
 
 cover the real condition of the sufferers. 
 There need be no beggars in our American 
 cities. Labor is wanted everywhere, espe- 
 cially educated labor; nowhere is the supply 
 of the latter equal to the demand. But the 
 education of public schools at present does not 
 bring labor of the hands into sufficient promi- 
 nence*; and it is a fact to be considered that 
 governesses and teachers often earn smaller 
 wages than professed cooks and dressmakers 
 when the latter are skilful in their business. 
 
 Meanwhile there is a large proportion of 
 the people crying continually, "Give to us." 
 What they really need is a chance to learn 
 how to work, and sufficient protection, in the 
 mean time, from the evils of idleness, drunk- 
 enness, and vice. 
 
 Miss Octavia Hill writes : " I do believe 
 that our almsgiving has been cruel in its kind- 
 ness. It is for the sake of the people them- 
 selves that I would see it decreased, yes, even 
 put down altogether. I believe they would be 
 richer as well as happier for it. For the sake 
 of the energy of the poor, the loss of which 
 is so fatal to them, for the sake of that inter- 
 course with them — happy, friendly, human in- 
 tercourse — which dependence renders impos- 
 sible, seek to your utmost for better ways of 
 ' helping them.' "
 
 12 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 This is why organization began with us. 
 A cry was heard from men and women need- 
 ing a chance in this new land and seeking to 
 be rescued from their misfortunes. 
 
 Dr. Joseph Tuckerman was one of the first 
 men in Boston who brought to light the im- 
 portant "difference between pauperism and 
 poverty." His life was passed in endeavor- 
 ing to awaken our people to their duty, and 
 to the necessity of wise and organized effort 
 against pauperism. In this labor for the poor 
 he says, " We must identify ourselves with the 
 transgressor, through that sympathy with which 
 nothing short of a strong sense of our own sins 
 can inspire us " ; and he adds, " A few judi- 
 cious and energetic minds, combined and re- 
 solved to accomplish all they can and may for 
 the suppression of pauperism and crime, could 
 accumulate in this world a better treasure 
 than all their wealth, let them be rich as they 
 may ; and in a few years might do more for 
 the advancement of society than without these 
 services would be accomplished in half a cen- 
 tury. . . . Only by creating a feeling of relation- 
 ship and connection between different classes 
 of society . . . can we ever bring about any 
 great and permanent melioration of the condi- 
 tion of the poor, any great and permanent
 
 Why Organization Began. 13 
 
 means for the prevention of pauperism and 
 crime. 
 
 "'Faith alone can interpret life; and the heart that 
 aches and bleeds with the stigma 
 Of pain alone bears the likeness of Christ, and can 
 comprehend its dark enigma.' "
 
 II. 
 
 HOW ORGANIZATION BEGAN. 
 
 "How organization began" signifies not 
 only the need from which it sprang, but the 
 form it assumed. The form in Boston is as 
 follows : — 
 
 First, the Registration Bureau. 
 
 Second, the Board of Directors. 
 
 Third, the District Offices. 
 
 Fourth, the Agents. 
 
 Fifth, and chief in importance, the Volun- 
 teer Visitors. 
 
 The Registration Bureau is like a room in 
 a large public library, with the private history 
 of individuals, instead of books, carefully ar- 
 ranged on cards which are kept strictly from 
 the public eye ; with its library upon the 
 various branches of this wide subject of how 
 best to help the unfortunate, its tables where 
 gentlemen and ladies may consult together, 
 and, more important than all, its Registrar, 
 ready to give intelligent information to those 
 who apply.
 
 Hozv Organization Began. 15 
 
 The story of the birth and growth of the 
 Registration or Central Office is worthy of 
 record. It is now a basis on which intelligent 
 assistance for the unfortunate can plant itself 
 with hope of success, so soon as society un- 
 derstands its value. When the public begins 
 to serve the poor by first inquiring what is 
 known about them at this office, and when 
 newspapers cease to print appeals for indi- 
 vidual needs until the same thing has been 
 done, the true value of the office will be un- 
 derstood ; but, while money is wasted on 
 private applicants in whose behalf there is 
 already a large public appropriation, it is not 
 possible to obtain a sufficiently generous sum 
 yearly to foster the best and largest growth of 
 registration. 
 
 "The Registration Bureau may be called 
 a clearing-house of information. All reports 
 of relief are kept on cards alphabetically 
 arranged, and there are on file now more 
 than twenty thousand. There is no publicity 
 about this work, and the cards are strictly 
 limited in their use to the detection of impost- 
 ure or the aid of a family." 
 
 Speaking of the important question of 
 church co-operation, Robert Treat Paine, Jr., 
 one of the founders of united service for the
 
 1 6 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 poor in America, and under whose fostering 
 care it has grown to its present value in 
 Boston, writes: — 
 
 We ask the churches to register all the relief they 
 give ; and some of them are ready to do so, and believe 
 it is wise, especially when they find that these facts are 
 kept private. But many of the churches decline, owing 
 to the sacred relation existing between themselves and 
 their own poor. In these cases, we ask them to send 
 their workers to consult the registration in our office; 
 and this they are usually ready to do. The result is a 
 benefit to us as well as to them. It is an advantage for 
 them to know from what other sources their poor are 
 drawing relief, and, conversely, it is our interest to 
 know that that church is also aiding such a family. 
 
 Upon this subject, we read in the excellent 
 Hand-book for Friendly Visitors among the Poor 
 of New York : — 
 
 It should be remembered that all religious bodies 
 recognize their obligations to provide for the poor 
 of their own parishes, and often possess the most 
 intimate and intelligent knowledge of an applicant's 
 circumstances. 
 
 Therefore, great care should be taken not to interfere 
 with their treatment of any case belonging to them; 
 and, to avoid the possibility of this, every one who 
 belongs or pretends to belong to any congregation 
 should invariably be referred to it. 
 
 All Hebrews should be referred to the Society of 
 the United Hebrew Charities, which society dispenses 
 all synagogical charity. All baptized Roman Catholics
 
 How Organization Began. 17 
 
 are members of the parish within whose limits they 
 reside, and should be sent to their priest or to the 
 President of the Conference of St. Vincent de Paul 
 in that parish. All Protestants should come strictly 
 under the same rule, and be dealt with onlv through 
 consultation with the relief authorities of the parish 
 to which they are fairly affiliated. 
 
 The management of the organization in 
 Boston- is vested in a board of twenty-two 
 directors, ladies and gentlemen, who meet 
 always once a month, and more frequently in 
 emergencies. In this number are included 
 the Chairman of the Overseers of the Poor, 
 the President of the Boston Provident Asso- 
 ciation, the President of the Societv of St. 
 Vincent de Paul and of the Roxbury Chari- 
 table Society. The other members are per- 
 sons chosen because they are known to have 
 done or tried to do some practical labor for 
 the poor, as well as because of their intelli- 
 gent interest in the subject. 
 
 The district office may be called the home 
 of the agent. Here duplicate registration 
 cards of reference are kept respecting the 
 poor of the district ; here information may be 
 found about persons needing employment, es- 
 pecially that of men and children who can 
 work only a part of the time, and therefore 
 cannot be advertised or sent to an intelligence
 
 1 8 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 office. These offices are arms, as it were, 
 of the Industrial Aid Society, which may be 
 called a kind of central bureau for employ- 
 ment of this nature. Here the volunteer visit- 
 ors may find the agent any day, or meet each 
 other at the regular meetings called confer- 
 ences, which occur weekly. 
 
 The agent becomes a connecting link for 
 the volunteer visitors who come daily for 
 advice and assistance. When a family is in 
 distress of any kind, there need be no delay 
 in getting relief, because the agent is always 
 ready to consult with the committee, if neces- 
 sary, or is able by constant experience to 
 know how and what to do immediately. 
 
 The struggle of the volunteer visitors under 
 the various district committees has been a 
 brave one, and the exhortation " to give to 
 him that asketh " is at length bearing fruit; 
 but it is slow fruition, because there must be 
 growth ; and, if such work is to be really 
 useful, the service of many persons must be 
 accepted whose work is necessarily intermit- 
 tent. " This must be done in order that we 
 may secure a sufficient number of workers, 
 and not waste, but gather in and use, all the 
 overflowing sympathy which is such a blessing 
 to giver and receiver. With our volunteers,
 
 How Organization Began. 19 
 
 home-claims must and should come first ; and 
 it is precisely those whose claims are deepest 
 and whose family life is the noblest who have 
 the most precious influence in the homes of 
 the poor. But, if the work is to be valuable, 
 we must find some way to bind together those 
 broken scraps of time, and thus give it con- 
 tinuity in spite of changes and breaks." 
 
 This we believe we have done in establish- 
 ing agents in every district who are assisted 
 each by a committee of men and women. 
 Certainly agents and committees are yet very 
 far from understanding the full scope of their 
 work, but knowledge is increasing every day, 
 and the reform is moving on because the 
 foundations are sound. 
 
 One great difficulty in advancing any public 
 work of such unobtrusive character is that of 
 finding a sufficient number of unselfish per- 
 sons who will take hold of it. " I believe that 
 educated people would come forward, if once 
 they saw how they could be really useful and 
 without neglecting nearer claims. Let us re- 
 flect that hundreds of workers are wanted; 
 that, if they are to preserve their vigor, they 
 must not be overworked ; and that each of us 
 that might help and holds back not only 
 leaves work undone, but injures to a certain
 
 V 
 
 20 . How to Help the Poor. 
 
 extent the work of others. Let each of us 
 not attempt too much, but take some one 
 little bit of work and, doing it simply, thor- 
 oughly, and lovingly, wait patiently for the 
 gradual spread of good." In our present 
 method of helping the poor by associated and 
 organized labor, it is found that a little time 
 will go a great way. Two hours a week 
 on an average, the year through, is all the 
 time that need be given by a visitor who is 
 busied with other duties and yet wishes to do 
 something to help the unfortunate. Within 
 this brief space of time, more good can be 
 achieved than is easy to describe ; and who 
 cannot save two hours for such a work ? I 
 know many persons give more time because 
 it is theirs to bestow, and because their inter- 
 est grows and thrusts aside other things ; but 
 this is no reason why others should withhold 
 the mite they possess. 
 
 The lack of organization in behalf of the 
 unfortunate was deeply felt in Boston, and the 
 work has been ardently started. Its present 
 value and its future existence depend en- 
 tirely upon the way in which the well-to-do 
 people accept their yoke of service. 
 
 "The burden is light," but it is indeed a 
 burden, and one not to be undertaken in any
 
 How Organization Began. 21 
 
 '■$ 
 
 frivolous spirit. It is distinctly the work 
 pointed out to us by the Founder of our 
 religion : and, in so far as he is loved and 
 believed in among us, his service will not be 
 forgotten. 
 
 One of the important results of this sym- 
 pathetic inquiry into the true wants of the 
 poor 'has led to new views respecting what is 
 called " out-door relief," — that is, the giving 
 of money (or its equivalent) which is raised by 
 taxing the people, if the applicants come under 
 certain rules and laws. 
 
 Mr. Seth Low, of Brooklyn, N.Y., has said 
 upon this subject : — 
 
 Is it not worth while, in these days of prosperity-, for 
 communities large and small, all over the country, to 
 try the experiment of abolishing public out-door relief? 
 Private benevolence seems preferable to public relief, 
 because it is almost always inspired by a higher motive, 
 and therefore more apt to consider the good of the 
 receiver, because it contains within itself the limits to 
 which it can be carried, and because such relief is less 
 readily sought after by the recipients. 
 
 A remarkable illustration of variation in out-door 
 relief in our Western States is seen in Centre Town- 
 ship, Indiana, in which is the city of Indianapolis. In 
 1875 and 1876, the township trustee distributed nearly 
 $90,000 a year. Since that time, a new trustee has 
 found $8,000 a year to be sufficient. It seems hardly 
 doubtful to a stranger that the private benevolence of
 
 22 How to Help the Poor, 
 
 Centre Township could cope successfully with all the 
 real need without the hitter small sum. . . . The subject 
 of out-door relief is too vast in its extent and too in- 
 tricate in its relations to be treated dogmatically by any 
 one. This present contribution to the theme is sub- 
 mitted in the spirit of one open still to learn from 
 those who differ as from those who may agree with its 
 conclusions. 
 
 These are, briefly : — 
 
 That out-door relief, in the United States, as 
 elsewhere, tends inevitably and surely to increase 
 pauperism ; 
 
 That in towns and cities it is not needed ; 
 
 That even in villages it can probably be dispensed 
 with. 
 
 In thinly settled sections, its evils are at the lowest 
 ebb, while its benefits at the same time are greatest. 
 If coupled with the condition of work in return for 
 relief, which in the country ought to be easy of accom- 
 plishment, out-door relief in the country would prob- 
 ably be free from serious objection. On the same 
 basis, it is relieved from its chief harmfulness every- 
 where. ... In some States or sections of States, the 
 office of overseer of the poor is at the bottom of the 
 political ladder. The overseers are chosen for short 
 terms, and are expected to serve party or personal 
 ends. It is needless to say that, in the hands of such 
 officers, out-door relief is an instrument full of danger 
 to the common weal. Long terms of office may help to 
 modify the evil, but there is no effectual remedy while 
 the administration of the poor funds is controlled in the 
 interest of politics. Where this is known to be the 
 case in any city or town or hamlet, for the sake of
 
 How Organization Began. 23 
 
 the poor, for the sake of the locality, for the sake of 
 the country, let civil service reform begin there. 
 
 The foregoing consideration of the form 
 of organized work for the poor brings us 
 back to Mrs. X. and to the conditions which 
 made it a necessity. 
 
 A poor woman came to her door one day 
 asking help. Remembering her many dis- 
 satisfactions and disappointments in trying 
 to benefit others, Mrs. X. simply took the 
 woman's address and told her kindly that she 
 would inquire further into her condition. She 
 went as soon as possible to the office of one 
 of our oldest and largest societies, only to find 
 the name as a recipient among eight hundred 
 others who had been referred to one visitor. 
 This " Case " was credited with quarter of a 
 ton of coal and shoes for a woman and two 
 children, without further comment. 
 
 Mrs. X. discovered that volunteer visiting 
 had gone out of fashion, and that the expert, 
 with his four or eight hundred families to 
 visit during the year, could not be expected 
 to grapple with any details. The " system," 
 good enough in itself, had drifted utterly away 
 from its early purpose, and had almost lost 
 sight of Dr. Chalmers' wonderful work, which 
 had been the inspiration of its founders.
 
 24 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 Mrs. X. then went to another society. This 
 one was less catholic in its grasp, and con- 
 cerned only respectable widows. She found 
 her applicant was known here also, and re- 
 ceived her rent regularly from this benevolent 
 fountain-head. She went into the rooms of a 
 sewing-circle adjoining, and found her friend 
 already there, returning last week's sewing 
 and receiving more. On her way home, 
 Mrs. X. met a friend, and was relating her 
 morning's occupation, when the lady replied 
 that she had known this woman, who was a 
 widow, for many years. She was surprised 
 to know of her call at Mrs. X.'s door, because 
 she had made the woman understand that she 
 herself always stood ready to give her what 
 she required. She was an excellent person, 
 and she would ask her about it. 
 
 On parting from her friend, Mrs. X. deter- 
 mined to visit the woman. Turning into a 
 court, she rapped at a side door of a com- 
 fortable tenement. It was twelve o'clock. A 
 man with shirt-sleeves rolled up, just in from 
 his morning's work, was sitting down before 
 a dirty table, on which was a huge slice of 
 fried beefsteak and some potatoes. Two un- 
 combed children were playing about the floor, 
 and a general air of dirt and disorder pre-
 
 How Organization Began. 25 
 
 vailed. Excellent health pervaded the place. 
 The woman was somewhat abashed and dis- 
 comfited by this speedy return of her visit; 
 but, after a brief explanation from Mrs. X. 
 that she wished to understand her needs more 
 clearly, she camg away. Something, surely, 
 needed to be done ; but what was the some- 
 thing"? One visitor with hundreds of cases 
 could not prevail against the evil. Mrs. X. 
 believed that volunteer visiting might at least 
 begin a reform. The attempt was made, and 
 has proved successful so far as it has gone. 
 
 This is "how organization began," — not 
 hurriedly and as a new thing, but as an intel- 
 ligent outgrowth from old methods which 
 were leading to no good end.
 
 III. 
 
 WHAT A DISTRICT CONFERENCE IS, AND 
 HOW TO CREATE ONE. 
 
 In the government of a State, we consider 
 the question, Who shall be its officers ? to be 
 one of primal importance. So, in the adminis- 
 tration of charities in a city district, no rules 
 can be laid down which should for a moment 
 challenge our consideration, compared in sig- 
 nificance with the necessity of obtaining the 
 right persons to fill the committees. In the 
 past, the question has been, "Will he do it?" 
 in the future, the query will be, " Can he do 
 it?" Improvement in methods has, in part, 
 wrought this change ; but advance in morality, 
 more than all, demands that the best force the 
 community can afford shall devote at least 
 a portion of its energy to grappling with the 
 problems presented by the unfortunate of 
 great cities. This unfulfilled labor is the 
 religion of the present and the future. It is 
 the first duty of the Central Board of any
 
 District Conferences. 27 
 
 organization, and one never to be set aside 
 for matters of secondary importance, that 
 persons of ability be sedulously informed of 
 the need of assistance, and constantly beck- 
 oned to the front. Not as figure-heads, nor 
 to lend their names, but to give such time 
 as they can spare to strict performance of 
 weekly duties ; this being far more important 
 to our advance than any gift of money. 
 Without underrating what money can do, we 
 have learned from the past, as well as the 
 present, that, if the gifts of sympathy and 
 energy are withheld from the work of the 
 Associated Charities, wealth may be pro- 
 nounced useless to perform the service. 
 
 The conference of a district is composed 
 of three parts : First, the District Committee, 
 to which special reference has been made in 
 considering the need of active intelligence in 
 this service ; Second, the Representatives of 
 various societies and public or private Officers 
 working among the poor of the vicinity ; and, 
 Third, the Visitors. This body constitutes a 
 conference. One of the valuable effects of 
 such a body has proved to be that the distinc- 
 tive gifts of both men and women are required 
 to accomplish the ends proposed. The com- 
 parative ease with which we grasp difficulties
 
 28 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 in Boston, from this perfectly natural union, is 
 to be remarked. We have no separated com- 
 mittees. We have silently recognized the 
 fact that in this business, because we are deal- 
 ing with social questions and those of the 
 family, we have need of each other. 
 
 We believe in the value of a weekly meet- 
 ing for each conference, — the committee to 
 come together one hour before the moment 
 of the meeting, in order to look over the 
 business to be presented, and to dispose of 
 such cases as need not be brought before the 
 larger company. The agent will have time 
 to ask questions and give advice, and the 
 committee can thus bring itself into order and 
 harmony, which will serve to expedite the busi- 
 ness of the following hour. I will not give 
 here the order of work already laid down for 
 guiding the administration of a conference. 
 So far as this business can be reduced to 
 form and put on paper, it has been done, and 
 may be found among the publications of the 
 Associated Charities in Boston ; and we feel 
 assured that every district conference will find 
 it greatly to its advantage to follow the printed 
 plan as closely as possible. 
 
 The relation between the agent and visitors 
 is one that has been often discussed; but
 
 District Conferences. 29 
 
 we must beware of rules and of red tape. 
 We have to deal with different agents and 
 a large variety of visitors. Some excellent 
 agents are far less able to satisfy the needs 
 of the visitors than others. In such cases 
 there may be special service of another kind 
 which is remarkably performed, making it wise 
 to supply this gap between visitors and agent 
 in some other way. Again, the agent may be 
 an excellent visitor, but slow to make efficient 
 record of work really well accomplished. It 
 would then devolve upon the committee to 
 see that this want was remedied. A person 
 of intelligence and unselfishness, devoted to 
 the work, is what is required in an agent. 
 When these qualities are given to the service, 
 incapacity respecting details, in whatever direc- 
 tion, should be voluntarily supplied, if possi- 
 ble, by the committee. 
 
 The work of the committee of each dis- 
 trict conference includes one branch of labor 
 too often omitted or forgotten. Each member 
 should be informed respecting the public de- 
 partments of protection for the unprotected : 
 what may be lawfully asked and received in 
 cases of need ; what shelter, what relief, what 
 advice, or what methods of transportation ; 
 also, what loans may be obtained ; where and
 
 3<d How to Help the Poor. 
 
 how children may be cared for, and the best 
 methods for saving. 
 
 In short, the committee should hold its seat, 
 not from any supposed superior wisdom, but 
 from a power of which it is perfectly possible 
 for persons of average intelligence to possess 
 themselves ; I mean resource, the ability which 
 knowledge can give, prompted by sympathy, 
 to turn quickly when called upon for relief, 
 and to answer, " If the conference considers 
 this application a suitable one, at this or that 
 place relief maybe obtained." 
 
 Closely related to this question of organized 
 administration of charity in cities is public 
 out-door relief, or the distribution of money 
 raised by taxation for the city poor, to which, 
 under certain restrictions, they have a right 
 by law. This "right" is one of the greatest 
 of man's inhumanities to man. How is the 
 law to estimate, for instance, a woman's capac- 
 ity to take care of herself, or the injury to her 
 children from receiving a pauper's fund ? 
 Questions of relief which visitors find most 
 delicate and difficult to decide are compli- 
 cated by the demand upon public moneys 
 made by a large proportion of the poor.* 
 
 In this country, where every kind of labor 
 
 * See quotation from Mr. Low in previous chapter.
 
 District Conferences. 31 
 
 is needed, and more of it, at lower rates, is 
 constantly in requisition, it is the blind lead- 
 ing the blind and all falling into the ditch 
 together for us to allow public money to be 
 bestowed in what are called settlements by 
 law, instead of being given after investigation, 
 and according to the individual need. What 
 the people require is education, beginning 
 with the lowest forms, in order that money 
 invested in their behalf shall be anything but 
 a future disgrace to our nation. By the lowest 
 forms of education, I mean industrial educa- 
 tion in its simplest development, — the use of 
 the hands and feet for some common good. 
 
 It should be carefully observed by the offi- 
 cers of a district committee that their posi- 
 tion, as such, has nothing to do with the 
 management of loan systems, or savings, or 
 tenements, or any form of relief. Their busi- 
 ness is to understand where such systems 
 exist, to discover if well administered, and to 
 keep the roadways open between them and 
 the needy. Of course, their influence will be 
 invaluable for holding all such institutions up 
 to the best working-point; but, by virtue of 
 their office, they are examiners and indicators, 
 and must carefully avoid the dangerous mis- 
 take of losing sight of their first duty in any
 
 2,2 Hoiu to Help the Poor. 
 
 such detail. Each member will have as much 
 to do as one person can well perform, under 
 ordinary circumstances, to obtain the proper 
 information and communicate it, especially 
 when we remember that no officer is consid- 
 ered entirely exempt from the practical expe- 
 rience of visiting the poor. 
 
 The simple idea of a conference is that 
 various individuals come together for the pur- 
 pose of getting each other's advice and knowl- 
 edge. Thought and care are required to 
 make such meetings interesting and profit- 
 able, and how best to do this is a question 
 to be kept continually before the committee. 
 The meeting should not only be agreeable to 
 the visitor who has a chance to talk, but the 
 case in hand should be made interesting, if 
 possible, to the whole company, which is apt 
 to include some persons wholly ignorant of 
 the people talked about. I know it is difficult; 
 but I am convinced, if we keep this end in 
 view, we can advance much in this respect. 
 There should be no talking back and forth 
 among the visitors, but the chairman and 
 agent should hold the business in their hands 
 sufficiently to bring out the interesting points 
 in turn from those present, giving every one a 
 five minutes' chance during the afternoon for
 
 District Conferences. 2>Z 
 
 the benefit of the whole, and thus limiting and 
 passing over suggestions which belong to a 
 more private consideration of any case. 
 
 Our watchword is Co-operation. Its practi- 
 cal efficacy can only be fully understood at the 
 conference. A fady visitor hears the secre- 
 tary .read the name of Mrs. Kelly, giving 
 street and number. She responds : " I found 
 Mrs. Kelly well ten days ago when I called 
 to see her last, but the baby was ailing and 
 needing food from the Diet Kitchen, which I 
 obtained for her. I have not been able to 
 visit her since, and I came to the meeting in 
 the hope that you could tell me how she is 
 gfettins: on. The other children were all at 
 school the day I called, and I could not see 
 them." 
 
 There is a moment's silence. Then the 
 truant-officer says : " A week ago, I found 
 the Kelly children weren't at school, and so 
 I looked them up ; found chicken-pox had 
 broken out among them. She was pretty 
 down-hearted, being a lone woman, and no 
 money in the house, because the sick baby 
 had kept her from going to work. Said I'd 
 call the next day, but was detained ; and, 
 when I went the day after, I couldn't find them. 
 The neighbors' doors were locked (they were
 
 34 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 all at work), and I couldn't understand it — " 
 Just then, a gentleman, who had dropped into 
 the meeting half hoping that he might hear 
 something of this case, spoke up, and de- 
 scribed how " One night last week, it must 
 have been Thursday, I was hurrying home 
 from business rather late, when I heard chil- 
 dren crying. That's a sound I can't bear 
 long. So I pushed open the broken door of 
 the house where the sounds came from, and 
 went in. Going up the third flight of stairs, at 
 last I found the room, and knocked. Nobody 
 answered ; but the children still were crying, 
 so I went in. There lay a woman on the floor 
 in a heavy drunken sleep, just where she had 
 fallen after emptying a mug which stood on 
 the table. Five hungry, sick, miserable chil- 
 dren were wailing, and trying to rouse her in 
 vain. It was a pitiful sight, and what to do 
 I did not know. Out I ran, downstairs again, 
 and asked the first police-officer I met where 
 I could find the Society for Prevention of 
 Cruelty to Children. He said he didn't know. 
 I told him he ought to ; but, if he would take 
 some money and carry the children some 
 bread and milk for their supper, I would come 
 back and get them, while he could take away 
 the mother. I found it a long distance to the
 
 District Conferences. 35 
 
 office of the Society, and by that time the 
 hour was approaching for the last train to 
 take me home that night ; but the agent was 
 kind and prompt, and sent off at once to get 
 the children. Unfortunately, I have not been 
 in town since, and could not hear anything 
 more of them ; so I thought I would drop in 
 here." Whereupon, a quiet little lady in the 
 corner said : " I happened to come into the 
 office just as you left it, and the agent asked 
 me to go with him, there seemed so much to 
 do. When we reached Mrs. Kelly's, I de- 
 cided to take the baby myself. We carried 
 the two younger children to Auntie Gwynne, 
 while the agent took charge of the two elder. 
 The officer, meanwhile, was obliged to carry 
 the poor mother to Deer Island." 
 
 Our agent then told us how her work for 
 the week had carried her to Deer Island, 
 where, to her great surprise and sorrow, she 
 found Mary Kelly, whom she had formerly 
 known as a good, respectable woman. " The 
 poor thing was terribly abashed and grieved 
 at her situation, and explained how a neigh- 
 bor, seeing her discouragement, had thought 
 to comfort her by bringing her beer. Little 
 by little, yet faster than she was aware, the 
 habit of taking beer had grown until she was
 
 36 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 mastered by it. The kind of beer, too, seemed 
 to have dangerous elements in it such as 
 make this drink harmful ; and before she knew 
 it her senses were stolen away, and she found 
 herself at Deer Island. So I said, seeing how 
 wretched she was, that I would try to get her 
 transferred on probation to the Massachu- 
 setts Home for Intemperate Women in town, 
 where her friend and visitor could see her. 
 After we had assured ourselves of her desire 
 to behave well, we got permission from the 
 officers of public institutions to bring her 
 back to town ; and she is doing well, and 
 giving every promise of being able to have her 
 home and children some day. I wish the vis- 
 itor would now take up the case again, and, as 
 soon as the woman ought to be trusted, help 
 her to get work and to establish herself once 
 more. After such a severe lesson, and with a 
 kind friend to watch over her, I think this will 
 never happen again ; and she is longing and 
 weeping for her children." The visitor prom- 
 ises to go and see her, and this case ends for 
 the afternoon. 
 
 From this illustration, it is easy to see how 
 a party of people interested in the same work 
 can help each other. It is not often that all 
 the intricacies of a case can be followed out
 
 District Conferences. 37 
 
 in this way at one session, but it is striking to 
 see how many can be settled in one season. 
 In a multitude of counsellors there is knowl- 
 edge as well as safety. 
 
 Many of the Boston districts contain five or 
 six hundred families who receive aid. Of this 
 large number, not more than one hundred and 
 fifty, 'on an average, are properly visited and 
 cared for by agent and visitors. New cases 
 sent in as having applied for help in the 
 street, or otherwise, and requiring immediate 
 investigation, in order to relieve the mind of 
 the person applied to, who has generously 
 refrained from giving because of our con- 
 tinual appeals to that end, — even such cases 
 have, in a few instances, been suffered to lie 
 over. Is it not easy to see that public dissat- 
 isfaction will be the result of such inadequacy, 
 and also that the fault lies, not in the plan, 
 but in a misunderstanding of methods ? How 
 can this evil be rectified? It cannot, of 
 course, be accomplished by a stroke of the 
 pen, or in a moment's time. But when and 
 how shall a beginning be made ? We ask 
 the agent. The answer comes promptly, "I 
 have as much as I can do to keep the run of 
 one hundred and fifty cases, assist the visitors, 
 and keep up the books." There seems small 
 chance of help in that direction.
 
 38 Ifow to Help the Poor. 
 
 How then ? First, Every new case sent 
 from outside, because of especial application 
 ami present need, should be considered by 
 the committee as a duty to be at once per- 
 formed, either by one of their own body, the 
 agent, or the visitors ; one of the old cases 
 being dropped for that week, or fortnight, 
 if necessary. Second, For such emergencies, 
 a committee might be formed to be styled 
 "assistant visitors/' — persons who are willing 
 to be called upon to assist the agent in visits 
 of investigation, in addition to the three or 
 four families regularly under their care. A 
 very small company of such helpers will be of 
 great assistance to the committee ; but, the 
 larger the number, the less chance there will 
 be, of course, for anything to be neglected. 
 A large organization pledges itself to respond 
 to these appeals from a busy public. It 
 exists for this purpose, and the execution of 
 the labor rests with the district committees. 
 The old excuse of " too many cases in hand " 
 must be set aside. We are bound to under- 
 stand the general condition of the district in 
 which we work, and to remember that one 
 applicant has as much right to our attention 
 as another, until all their needs are perfectly 
 understood and classified. Of course, better
 
 District Conferences. 39 
 
 work will be accomplished when we can con- 
 fine ourselves to one hundred and fifty cases, 
 but that should be in the future. Our first 
 work is to understand the field as it lies 
 before us, to canvass each case, to beseech 
 the churches who* are giving alms here and 
 there to send a visitor to the conference and 
 learn what is there known of the family they 
 are aiding. Private missionaries, any one, in 
 short, giving either money or what is called 
 " charity-work " to any family within the juris- 
 diction, should be, in a measure, one of the 
 district conference, and persuaded to look 
 more closely, perhaps, into the condition of 
 their charge, or to modify their plan of pro- 
 cedure materially in connection with especial 
 persons. 
 
 Another measure for obtaining knowledge 
 of families in the district, who cannot be regu- 
 larly visited for lack of helpers, will be to 
 gather the children into little schools, — sew- 
 ing-schools, Sunday-schools, vacation-schools, 
 kitchen garden, kindergarten, cooking-schools, 
 or wherever the committee may see opportu- 
 nity to place them, — and the elders into indus- 
 trial schools, laundries, sewing, carpentry, and 
 the like. Last year, a weekly evening-school 
 for boys brought in a number whose homes
 
 40 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 were quite unknown to us ; also, at Christmas 
 and other festivals, we may be brought into 
 relation to new families ; and, if we confine 
 our attention entirely to our own district, the 
 time will not be long when we shall have the 
 whole number of recorded recipients of relief 
 in hand, and soon very much reduced. But, 
 if a beginning is never made, and our ener- 
 gies are spent in trying to elevate and educate 
 the few, helping them up very successfully, as 
 we may, we shall find a large body straying 
 about the same as ever, begging and imposing 
 upon the community, until we shall become 
 only "the one more society" so much dreaded 
 everywhere, and the end of organization will 
 remain unfulfilled. We must be content for a 
 time to do more than we can, — that is, we must 
 do less well than we can for the few, until we 
 understand the general need somewhat better, 
 and have more help to grapple with it. The 
 rock ahead has always been that men and 
 women in this business lose sight of the idea, 
 and are ensnared in ruts and in details. Let 
 the committee, at least, hold its head above 
 water. 
 
 In this connection, the experience of Miss 
 Mary Carpenter, in the ragged schools of 
 England, is worthy our consideration. She
 
 District Conferences. 41 
 
 says it was with the utmost difficulty she could 
 keep attention fixed upon the lowest strata. 
 The moment her children had opportunity, 
 they were lifted out of their old degradation 
 and became a different class. Teachers and 
 friends naturally wished to keep on with the 
 hopeful cases ; but she was obliged continually, 
 as it were, to plunge her own hands down to 
 the very bottom, and bring up those who had 
 sunken there. This also should be the work 
 of our district committees. 
 
 The foregoing difficulties and how to meet 
 them turn upon a subject almost too familiar 
 to be mentioned, — the need of more visitors. 
 
 " I feel most deeply," writes a friend, " that 
 the disciplining of our immense poor popula- 
 tion must be effected by individual influence ; 
 and that this power can change it from a mob 
 of paupers and semi-paupers into a body of 
 self-dependent workers." Believing this, any 
 labor among the poor becomes not only a 
 hope which is constantly nourished by suc- 
 cess, but it also assumes the form of public 
 responsibility, where every man and woman 
 may do his or her part. Visiting the poor 
 does not mean entering the room of a person 
 hitherto unknown, to make a call. It means 
 that we are invited to visit a miserable abode
 
 42 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 for the purpose first of discovering the cause 
 of that misery. A physician is sometimes 
 obliged to see a case many times before the 
 nature of the disease is made clear to his 
 mind ; but, once discovered, he can prescribe 
 the remedy. How many visitors fail in this 
 long undertaking ! We are at a great disad- 
 vantage : we go without authority, and often 
 without knowledge ; we are met sometimes 
 with distrust and possible dislike. I can only 
 say, in face of all failures, the success has 
 been triumphant. But, looking at the failures, 
 I am more and more persuaded that we are 
 working at too great a loss. I mean our vis- 
 itors too frequently become discouraged, and, 
 in army words, "we lose too many men." A 
 partial cure for this is to be found in the tene- 
 ment house system as introduced by Miss 
 Octavia Hill, and pursued in New York and 
 Boston. A proposition for governmental su- 
 pervision, quoted in one of the reports of the 
 Board of Health, has been suggested as pos- 
 sible and necessary. Such oversight would 
 assist benevolent work in the homes of the 
 poor, immeasurably. 
 
 The value of organized charity lies with the 
 visitors, not in the organization ; and as in 
 the St. Vincent de Paul Society, from which
 
 District Conferences. 43 
 
 we have derived so many suggestions, no offi- 
 cers are exempted from this duty, so with our 
 district committees, — we allow no one to be 
 ignorant of it. Constant experience keeps a 
 continual sympathy alive between the com- 
 mittee and visitors. ' They all labor together ; 
 therefore, their chief desire is to increase their 
 numbers, seeking to relieve each other of too 
 great a burden, instead of the old habit of 
 asking more work from the same visitors. In 
 twenty years after the establishment of the 
 St. Vincent de Paul Society, Ozanam, its 
 founder, said with his dying breath, " Instead 
 of eight visitors, we have grown to two thou- 
 sand in Paris alone, and we visit there five 
 thousand families." Is our labor to be carried 
 any less far ? I believe not. Our methods 
 have improved, our knowledge upon this sub- 
 ject has greatened. It remains for our faith in 
 God and in humanity to carry us forward into 
 victory.
 
 IV. 
 
 WHAT A VISITOR MAY DO FOR CHILDREN 
 AND YOUNG PERSONS. 
 
 " How to care for the children of the very 
 poor, and often depraved, part of the popu- 
 lation of cities," writes Mrs. Lowell, "is one 
 of the most serious of public questions ; and, 
 in discussing it, it is necessary to consider the 
 effect to be produced, not only upon the child, 
 but upon its parents and upon the public at 
 large. . . . The effect upon the tax-payer and 
 upon the hard-working poor man, struggling 
 to bring up his children to be honest, indus- 
 trious, and healthy, must not be ignored. 
 The tax-payer must not be required to give 
 what he needs for his own family to support 
 the family of his dissolute neighbor, unless 
 that family threatens to be a public injury; 
 nor should the honest laborer see the children 
 of the drunkard enjoying advantages which 
 his own may not hope for. . . . There should 
 be a constant pressure brought to bear on
 
 What to do for Children. 45 
 
 parents to contribute toward the support of 
 their children ; and, as soon as they are able, 
 they should be required to take them back [if 
 they have been placed in institutions], or, if 
 unable or unfit to do this after a given 
 number of years, they should forfeit all claim 
 to them. No child should be held as a public 
 charge for an indefinite time and the parent 
 have a right to reclaim it at any moment. A 
 parent who will not perform the duties of a 
 parent should not have the rights of a parent." 
 
 Dr. Tuckerman says: "I am quite satisfied 
 that far the greatest part of the abject pov- 
 erty and of the recklessness in crime which 
 people either our prisons or almshouses, or 
 which is seen in our streets, may be followed 
 back to causes which showed themselves 
 within the first fifteen or twenty years of life, 
 — to causes which at that period are within 
 our power." 
 
 Within our power. Will the visitors 
 among the poor — the men and women who 
 are hoping " to do something " — bring these 
 words home ! 
 
 There is now a statute in Massachusetts 
 which reads as follows : — 
 
 [Acts of 1882, Chap. 270.] 
 
 Section 4. Whoever unreasonably neglects to pro- 
 vide for the support of his minor child shall be pun-
 
 46 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 ished by fine not exceeding twenty dollars, or by 
 imprisonment in the house of correction not exceeding 
 six months. 
 
 It is clear, therefore, that the visitor has the 
 law upon his side in many cases of neglect. 
 What is chiefly required further is to see 
 that laws of this nature be enforced. The 
 moral sentiment of our people has framed 
 the statutes bravely. It only remains for 
 those who wish to succor the unfortunate to 
 see that the abused child obtains the benefit 
 granted him by law. 
 
 One of the forms in which the wrongs of 
 
 children appear is in the neglect of the 
 
 babies of wet nurses. One who has made a 
 
 specialty of the care of mothers and infants 
 
 writes : — 
 
 The exceptional care and watchfulness required to 
 save the life of a young infant separated from its 
 mother, and placed at board during the sum Tier months, 
 can only be estimated by those who have undertaken 
 such a responsibility. It would, no doubt, be better 
 for both infant and mother that they should remain 
 together through the summer. And this can often be 
 arranged by having the mother and child admitted to 
 the Massachusetts Infant Asylum or Medford Infant 
 Asylum ; but the poor young girl, tempted by the high 
 wages of a wet nurse, and ignorant of the danger in- 
 curred by the separation, seldom hesitates in her choice. 
 We are then compelled either to leave the poor baby
 
 What to do for Children. 47 
 
 to its fate, — which would be speedy and almost certain 
 death, — or to expend upon it an amount of time, toil, 
 and care which would suffice to save the lives of ten 
 infants at another season, with the result (which we 
 have now learned to expect almost as a matter of 
 course) that the mother, removed from our influence, 
 separated almost whqJJy from her child, and taught 
 indifference to her duties and responsibilities by her 
 employer, comes to us at the end of the summer with 
 an urgent request that we will assist her to relieve her- 
 self altogether of the charge of her infant, by placing 
 it in some institution, — although a wet nurse is better 
 able to support her child than any of our patients not 
 similarly placed. Wet nurses, therefore, cause us more 
 trouble than any of our other patients, and are the most 
 disappointing of our cases. But this need not be so if 
 the bearings of the situation were understood by the 
 employer, who would'then co-operate with us in what is 
 for the real interest of the mother and of her child. 
 
 In such service, the idea of the visitor's 
 true work is made evident. She (for this 
 would be a case for a woman) is the assisting 
 and instructing medium between the young 
 nurse and her employer on one hand, and 
 the child's questionable fate on the other. 
 
 Cobden said, " There are many well-mean- 
 ing people in the world who are not so useful 
 as they might be, from not knowing how to go 
 to work." In studying this subject of neg- 
 lected children, methods of work have been
 
 48 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 tried which bring us nearer regeneration 
 than any attempts to influence the danger- 
 ous classes in any other direction. Here we 
 know " how to go to work." 
 
 "I would say," writes Dr. Tuckennan, "to 
 all who wish to do good, whether they have 
 much or little to give to those who are in want, 
 strive to save at least one truant, vagrant, 
 or vicious child, who, if no friendly hand be 
 stretched out, will fall into the abyss either of 
 pauperism or crime." 
 
 The taking of children from miserable 
 homes in tenement houses during the summer 
 and sending them away for a week or two 
 "gives a look almost of health " to some who 
 were pinched and wretched to look upon. 
 Air does much, and milk and oat-meal, instead 
 of tea and bad bread, do the rest. 
 
 " That these children are alive at all, that 
 fatherhood and motherhood are allowed to be 
 the right of drunkards and criminals of every 
 grade, is a problem whose present solution 
 passes any human power, but which all lovers 
 of their kind must sooner or later face. . . . 
 Hopeless as the outlook often seems, salva- 
 tion for the future of the masses lies in these 
 children. Not in a teaching which gives them 
 merely the power to grasp at the mass of sen*
 
 What to do for Children. 49 
 
 sational reading, . . . but in a practical train- 
 ing which shall give the boys trades . . . and 
 the girls suitable occupations." 
 
 Our prosperity seems to be still too great to 
 allow young women .to feel any necessity to go 
 into domestic service ; or the reason may be 
 a moral one, and lie deeper. The labors per- 
 formed in bag-factories and other factories 
 and shops are certainly quite as heavy and 
 less refining than those of household service. 
 "To be a shop-girl seems the highest ambi- 
 tion " ; but the steps downward from this am- 
 bition are frightfully easy. It is, however, a 
 good beginning toward the cure of the evil to 
 have it widely recognized, and to find a grow- 
 ing respect for household knowledge, espe- 
 cially for the fine art of cooking. 
 
 House-keepers' classes are forming gradu- 
 ally, where young girls from ten to fifteen are 
 taught everything except cooking, that requir- 
 ing a separate foundation. To get girls into 
 such schools, if only for a few weeks, often 
 develops tastes and capacities which they 
 could not previously know they possessed, and 
 by which their whole lives are lifted from the 
 old degradations. 
 
 For unmanageable girls and those who 
 must be sent to institutions, we have learned
 
 50 Hour to Help the Poor. 
 
 after sad experience that a great deal remains 
 to be done. In Massachusetts, the Dorches- 
 ter Industrial School for Girls took the lead in 
 inaugurating a system of individual guardian- 
 ship. This plan has resulted in a company of 
 State Auxiliary Visitors, who aim to hold per- 
 sonal guardianship over every girl graduating 
 from the public reform schools and institu- 
 tions. " One whole year before the Auxiliary 
 Visitors began their work for the wards of the 
 State, the Hampden County Children's Aid 
 Association, proposed and created by Mrs. 
 Clara T. Leonard, had taken every child from 
 the almshouse, and provided for all children 
 who might come upon the county in future, 
 by securing committees in every town who 
 should seek out homes and watch over the 
 children when placed. This society has the 
 right of legal guardianship over its wards, 
 granted by the legislature. A certain amount 
 is paid by the almshouse toward the board of 
 those children thus placed out who are too 
 young to earn their own board and clothes." 
 The report of Mrs. Nassau Senior, of Eng- 
 land, a few years ago, describing the lack of 
 power in girls trained in institutions to stand 
 up and take their places in the world, first 
 drew attention seriously to this great topic.
 
 What to do for Children. 5 1 
 
 Above all, such girls need friends ; and, with- 
 out them, they are seen to sink down into the 
 great "criminal sea," which has been largely 
 made up of graduates from public institutions. 
 The stories told by our New England visitors 
 are touching and "interesting beyond words. 
 Compared with this work, how petty other 
 occupations seem ! 
 
 We will turn now to the consideration of 
 another class of neglected youth, and recall 
 the apparently harmless gift of a few cents 
 given to a boy by Mrs. X. Such gifts to 
 street children are sometimes a fountain of 
 life-long evil. If, however, instead of this 
 baleful response, we listen to the real wants 
 of the little child, and gather him up into the 
 arms of love, we have already learned that 
 much will be accomplished. For those who 
 have not yet learned "how to do it," the 
 following truth, pronounced by high author- 
 ity, will at least show where we must abstain 
 from doing. " Every child," says Dr. Tucker- 
 man, " who is a beggar, almost without excep- 
 tion, will become a vagrant, and probably a 
 thief." 
 
 " In Hamburg, at one time," writes Mr. 
 Kellogg, " a police regulation went so far as 
 to forbid almsgiving in the street." Such
 
 52 Horn to Help the Poor. 
 
 measures in America would be neither prof- 
 itable nor desirable ; but what is seen to 
 be a necessity is that public opinion shall 
 recognize the wrong-doing- in such careless 
 response to those who appeal to us in their 
 misery. Our hope is in and for the children; 
 yet many a mother with four or five little ones, 
 from whom she must be away all day, will 
 lock them up together in a room, under the 
 care of the eldest, until her return. One of 
 the duties of a friend should be to prevent 
 this locking up of children ; because there are 
 both nurseries and kindergartens where the 
 little ones can be sent, besides the common 
 schools for those over five years of age. For 
 the mother, eager to get to her own work, the 
 difficulty of preparing little children for school 
 so early is certainly serious. But if she be 
 friendly to the idea, and will take the baby 
 to the nursery as she goes, some kind neigh- 
 bor will often help the others on their way. 
 Teachers of kindergartens will sometimes call 
 for a child who has no other chance of getting 
 to school. 
 
 Although no one case is just like another, 
 human nature being infinite in its variety, it 
 will still be useful to study ways of relief em- 
 ployed by others, and to see what has been
 
 What to do for Children. 53 
 
 accomplished. In the hope of gaining use- 
 fulness in this way, the following history is 
 related. 
 
 There was a family, living in a certain dis- 
 trict, where there were two little girls, seven 
 and nine years oTd. They were under the 
 care oi their aunt, who had married their 
 grandfather, and she held papers for the 
 guardianship of the children. She was a 
 French Canadian, speaking little or no Eng- 
 lish, but expressing great anxiety for the 
 good of her wards to every one who came 
 near her. She was a Protestant, and an ex- 
 cellent beggar in her church and out of it. 
 Even-body loved to be kind and generous to 
 her, both for her own sake and the children's; 
 but one day the grandmother fell ill, and then 
 the friendly visitor who was appointed by a 
 conference of the Associated Charities was 
 able to understand the case more perfectly. 
 
 The family was found to consist of the 
 grandmother and her husband, also her father, 
 a son eighteen years old, and the two girls 
 now nine and eleven. They were in debt ; 
 but, in spite of this fact, they had a family of 
 pets : there were many poodle-dogs, big and 
 little, a parrot, a cat, and canary-birds ; and 
 one day a woman, coming in to warm herself
 
 54 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 by their fireside, left her baby, never calling 
 for it again ; so the baby was included in the 
 family. Four boarders were found to be also 
 of the company ; and these eleven human 
 beings, with their pets, inhabited four rooms. 
 The two girls cooked all the meals for the 
 family of eleven persons. They were seldom 
 allowed to go to school ; and it was the grand- 
 mother's excuses in this particular which first 
 aroused suspicion with regard to the case. 
 When they did go, they had a habit of rushing 
 down two flights of stairs, past the door of a 
 crazy, drunken woman, whom they dreaded, 
 and out into the street, trembling. On their 
 return, piles of the day's dishes awaited their 
 washing. The household duties often kept 
 them at work until eleven at night, and before 
 six the next morning they must be up to get 
 breakfast. They were on speaking acquaint- 
 ance with all the men in the market-stalls. 
 The boarders would get into fights with one 
 another, and the girls were taught that they 
 must not call in the police, and were even 
 shown how to keep the officers away. The 
 grandmother also instructed them to lie to 
 the boarders and others, when any advan- 
 tage could be gained ; and their cJorh.es were 
 utterly neglected.
 
 What to do for Children. 55 
 
 "Imagine," writes one who knew the cir- 
 cumstances well, " these girls, with refined and 
 affectionate natures which made them favor- 
 ites everywhere, leading such a life, and ruled 
 by a woman whose bursts of temper, profanity, 
 and coarseness made her a terror to those 
 who did not know her cowardly spirit. The 
 family had better means of support than many 
 others, and resources which, if developed, 
 might have made them respectably indepen- 
 dent. But, in spite of three years of the com- 
 bined influence of church and charity visitors, 
 instead of the grandparents working harder, 
 they overworked the children in the house- 
 hold service, taught them to beg and deceive, 
 surrounded them with improper associates, 
 and deprived them of their schooling. The 
 result was the girls were growing up to lead 
 unhealthful, dependent, deceitful, ignorant, 
 and possibly still more degraded lives. Va- 
 rious ways were then tried to obtain a peace- 
 ful separation of the children from their 
 grandmother, but without success. Hearing 
 the report of the visitor, the conference asked 
 that all ' relief ' might be withdrawn from the 
 family. This resulted in the grandmother's 
 allowing one of the girls to be put into a school 
 supported by her church in a distant town ;
 
 56 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 but in a short time she went secretly and en- 
 ticed the child away. By this time, the con- 
 stant labor of several visitors had given us 
 the necessary evidence, and truant officers, 
 relief-givers, and visitors all agreed that the 
 time had come when it was necessary to take 
 these children from their home by force. 
 Assisted by the Massachusetts Society for the 
 Prevention of Cruelty to Children, this was 
 done, and the girls were placed in a public 
 institution. 
 
 " We had now checked the ' old charity ' 
 which gives outward relief, but develops no 
 inward resources; and we had removed the 
 children from the fearful influences which 
 such charity often fosters. 
 
 " The ' new charity ' had taken these children 
 away from the only home that belonged to 
 them, and had incurred the responsibility, 
 therefore, of providing a better one. We 
 had placed the girls in the institution, be- 
 cause it is one of the places which serve as 
 hospitals for the moral diseases of children. 
 As soon as the Superintendent thought it 
 wise, the elder girl was placed in a country 
 family, which served as a convalescent home ; 
 but the child's moral sickness showed itself 
 by unmistakable symptoms, so that her return
 
 What to do for Children. 57 
 
 to the ' Home ' soon became necessary. 
 There she remained some time longer, until 
 it seemed well to try again, especially as an 
 excellent place opened for her, — a home 
 which we knew would give her the combined 
 love and wisdom* so essential to the develop- 
 ment, of a child. After five weeks, the lady 
 wrote that she had seen nothing like deceit 
 in her, and thought her far above the average 
 girl. An opportunity soon offered to send the 
 sister to the family of a near neighbor, and 
 the result proved satisfactory. It is quite 
 possible further changes may become neces- 
 sary with one or the other, but the way seems 
 fair now to launch the girls upon a respec- 
 table and independent life. 
 
 " Let us return for a moment to the grand- 
 mother, thus suddenly bereft of her children. 
 A chance was found for her at once to support 
 herself by fine laundry work, but this she did 
 not accept. It was then decided to leave her 
 in the care of her church people, who now 
 report her as supporting herself and living 
 independent of relief." 
 
 " It were useless," continues the faithful 
 friend who has recorded this history, "to 
 recount all these details, unless we can arrive 
 at some principles of action and plans for the
 
 58 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 future provision of children thus rudely torn 
 from their natural protectors. 
 
 " These principles may be ranged under five 
 heads : — 
 
 " 1 st. The only just reason for taking chil- 
 dren from their natural homes is to lift them 
 
 OUt of MORAL POVERTY. MATERIAL POVERTY 
 
 alone is not sufficient cause. 
 
 " 2d. When there is sign of moral disease, 
 children may be placed in some of the numer- 
 ous institutions or homes provided for them, 
 which serve as hospitals for the treatment of 
 such diseases. 
 
 "3d. Children should not be allowed to 
 stay too long in these institutions or homes, 
 because they will become entirely dependent 
 upon others, and unable to act for them- 
 selves. One year may be fixed as the longest 
 term. They should then be placed out in 
 families for convalescence. 
 
 " 4th. If the moral disease makes its ap- 
 pearance again, the children should be re- 
 turned to the home for further hospital treat- 
 ment. 
 
 "5th. In selecting a home in a private 
 family, great care should be taken to find 
 one where the children will be taken in a 
 measure for their own sake, not as servants
 
 What to do for Children. 59 
 
 merely. If possible, brothers and sisters 
 should be placed so near that their attach- 
 ment for each other will be cherished." 
 
 We have the record of many families where 
 the children have been taken away from 
 drunken and unfit parents ; but, unfortunately, 
 the story does not often extend beyond the 
 Marcella Street Home or some such hospital. 
 Surely, it is strange that visitors should be 
 content to stop at this critical part of their 
 work, when one year flies so swiftly away and 
 a second in any institution will possibly rob a 
 child of the power to stand alone. 
 
 The following brief history will be an excel- 
 lent guide and encouragement to many a 
 visitor who is looking upon the career of 
 some young girl with dismay, if not with 
 despair. 
 
 A young American girl, Mary, just twelve 
 years old, excited the strong interest of one 
 of my friends. Her parents were intemper- 
 ate, and were living at the North End of 
 Boston. She was handsome, fond of excite- 
 ment and of having her own way, like many 
 bright girls, and she had no restraining influ- 
 ences at home, — if the place of her abode 
 deserved that name. 
 
 After visiting the family nearly two years,
 
 60 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 all the time having in mind a desire to get 
 Mary to go to service in some kind family, 
 my friend persuaded the father and mother to 
 allow the girl to go where she would earn her 
 board. She had been getting into wild habits 
 and with bad companions. The summer was 
 approaching for the second time when a reluc- 
 tant consent was won from them ; but, after a 
 few weeks of absence, Mary became unhappy, 
 and during the summer vacation of her visitor 
 she returned to Boston. The second autumn 
 found Mary in a worse condition than ever 
 before. She had passed the summer in such 
 amusements as the North End afforded to a 
 reckless little girl. She had sufficient pride to 
 be wretched in the despicable home afforded 
 her by drunken parents, yet her friend did 
 not wish, till other means failed, to deprive 
 them forcibly of their guardianship. The 
 teachers at her school, and others, agreed in 
 calling her the worst girl of her age they 
 knew, and pronounced their opinion that she 
 could not be got out of Boston except under 
 arrest. Her friends felt it would be useless 
 to put her at service anywhere where she 
 was not compelled to stay, and her character 
 prevented her admission to the Dorchester 
 School.
 
 What to do for Children. 61 
 
 An application was then made to the Chil- 
 dren's Aid Society, which places children in 
 families where they will be taught and strictly 
 watched over. This society agreed to take 
 charge of the chijd, and promised to have a 
 home ready for her if the father and mother 
 would* sign a paper giving that society the 
 guardianship for the next four years, and if 
 the girl would consent to go. 
 
 Here, then, was a case for influence, and 
 my friend wrote to Mary's father to come to 
 see her. This he did not do, but sent a 
 friend in his stead, to say that he would not 
 give up his daughter. The deputy proved a 
 true friend of the family, and, being a man of 
 good sense, listened to the visitor. He was 
 easily persuaded by her that the proposed 
 plan was the best chance for the girl, there- 
 fore he undertook to make the father change 
 his mind. He succeeded in so far as to get 
 his consent to see my friend, and the inter- 
 view resulted in the signing of the paper by 
 his wife and himself, giving up the guardian- 
 ship of their daughter till she should reach 
 the age of sixteen. 
 
 The next point was to get Mary's consent, 
 as the parents refused to compel her ; finally, 
 the friend of the family and the visitor
 
 62 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 together persuaded her, also, although she 
 knew she was going to a lonely farm-house 
 where she must work and could never come to 
 Boston. Her evil companions did all in their 
 power to keep her; but she went, because, 
 when it was fairly put before her, she did 
 wish in her heart to be good. 
 
 The visitor took her to her new home in the 
 uninviting November season. She has be- 
 haved on the whole extremely well, and the 
 effect on her parents has been excellent. 
 They were sobered by Mary's loss, and for 
 the sake of her younger sister are striving for 
 a better life at home. 
 
 Parents who cannot govern themselves are 
 naturally unfitted for the guidance of their 
 offspring. Girls are to be found everywhere 
 who are utterly untaught in any business of 
 life. They have been compelled to go to 
 school, but they are ignorant of any useful 
 service. They pick rags and sew in tailors' 
 shops, or, if they are especially fortunate, get 
 into a store ; but these places are over- 
 crowded, and they can earn a mere pittance 
 by such pursuits. Wherever a visitor can 
 rescue a girl from such a life and cause her 
 to be trained to some useful calling, a val- 
 uable work has been accomplished. There
 
 What to do for Children. 63 
 
 are many training-schools in and near Boston, 
 besides the best of training which a well- 
 disposed girl can always receive in the family 
 of a good, motherly woman. 
 
 We have been informed by the statistics 
 of the Labor Bureau that there are twenty 
 thousand homeless young women in Boston 
 whose wages average only $4.00 per week. 
 The visitor should learn this statement by 
 heart, and try to save as many girls as pos- 
 sible from this hard fate. " A little self- 
 control would raise the poor into the ranks 
 of those who are really wanted and who have 
 made their way from the brink of pauperism 
 to a secure place, and one where they are 
 under better influences. Above all is this 
 true of the children. A little self-control 
 would enable the daughters of most of these 
 people to rise into the class of domestic ser- 
 vants ; and their sons, instead of remaining 
 Street-sellers, would soon learn a trade or go 
 to sea, if they cared to do regular work." 
 
 There are many societies, plans, and laws 
 for the protection and education of children ; 
 but the difficulty of supplanting or supple- 
 menting the work of a parent is great, and 
 should be so. Where parents can by any 
 means be brought to support and guide their
 
 64 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 own offspring, it should be our idea to assist 
 them to do this, since it is nature's law. No 
 help given is so sure of success as the per- 
 sonal oversight of friendly visitors who feel a 
 certain power behind their friendship. The 
 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chil- 
 dren, our excellent truant-officers, the news- 
 boys' evening-school, the Law and Order 
 League, all these are ready to strengthen 
 their hands. One of the most hopeful meth- 
 ods of dealing with street-boys is, however, 
 to send them away on farms. From the 
 streets of New York over sixty thousand boys 
 have been sent into the West, who are doing 
 well. What benevolent plan can give a better 
 showing than this ? 
 
 Let no visitor despair of doing something 
 to improve the condition of neglected chil- 
 dren, especially one who lives where there is. 
 a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
 Children. Such a society is, however, a 
 helper, and not a place where the burden 
 may be dropped by the visitors. If the offi- 
 cers find a friend who is willing to go with 
 them to the judge and bear witness to the 
 miseries of which they complain, they will 
 find not only co-workers, but a genuine power 
 to assist and relieve. If, however, the visitor
 
 What to do for Children. 65 
 
 drops the case into their hands, and it be- 
 comes one of thousands, it must not only wait 
 its turn for examination, but, for lack of 
 proper testimony, it may never come to justice 
 at all. 
 
 The hearing in neglect cases is not public, 
 and no lady need hesitate to appear. It is 
 given in a private room ; and, as hearsay 
 evidence is never received, — if the visitors 
 really wish to help the children, it will largely 
 depend upon themselves to get what is re- 
 quired. All complaints are confidential. 
 
 Where the parents of children have proved 
 themselves unfit for their charge, the visitor 
 may, through the Probate Court, obtain guar- 
 dianship and custody of such children. This 
 gives power to find a good home, and to 
 advise for their future. 
 
 " Can I do anything more in this case ? " a 
 visitor will ask who has taken a woman with 
 three children to visit, and who has been 
 fortunate enough to find work for the mother. 
 Yes, we answer. Do not feel this case is 
 finished until each of those children is in a 
 fair way to make industrious and useful mem- 
 bers of society. The inherited paupers of 
 Europe must die and be crushed out on our 
 soil ; their children should become our useful 
 and busy compatriots.
 
 c3 
 
 
 V. 
 SUGGESTIONS IN BEHALF OF THE AGED. 
 
 Peggy O'Hara is now fifty-eight years of age, 
 but she is feebler than her years would seem 
 to justify. With her, as with so many others, 
 poverty, combined with ignorance, and their 
 attendant ills, have induced premature old age. 
 Peggy's husband went to the war in i860, and 
 soon returned ill. Her father lived with them 
 from the time he was sixty until he became 
 eighty years of age, contributing very little to 
 their support during this period. Peggy could 
 do only the coarsest sewing; and it was through 
 her bad sewing of the soldiers' shirts, by which 
 she was trying to maintain herself and her 
 father while her husband was away, that I 
 made her acquaintance. In the beginning, it 
 was necessary to compel her to take out and 
 do over a large part of her work ; to-day, she 
 sews very neatly, but always slowly. She 
 could find very little else to do, however, during 
 the long period when she was confined at
 
 Care of the Aged. 67 
 
 home chiefly, with the care of both husband 
 and father, and it was impossible for her to 
 meet the family expenses without help. One 
 friend paid her rent, the overseers found the 
 family entitled to a " settlement," and there- 
 fore gave them certain punctual relief, and 
 many givers of occasional doles appeared 
 who managed to keep them comfortable. At 
 length, the father and husband died, also 
 many of the old friends ; but begging had 
 been found very lucrative and quite agreeable. 
 Peggy wished to continue her old plan of life, 
 with the hope of reaping a good harvest for 
 herself ; but the friend on whom she chiefly 
 depended, having the needs of many depend- 
 ent persons upon her hands, and seeing at 
 last by her experience that there was a better 
 way, resolved that Peggy must now try to 
 maintain herself. She stated this necessity 
 frankly to her, and said, as she was now left 
 to herself, she must manage to earn what was 
 necessary for her own support. She did not 
 require so much room, and could take some 
 one to lodge with her. Peggy stoutly opposed 
 the suggestion ; but, coming shortly after to 
 her friend, in a depressed frame of mind, — 
 having been sent for, indeed, because she was 
 found begging in spite of remonstrance, — she
 
 68 Ho%v to Help the Poor. 
 
 said that she could not live peaceably with 
 anybody she could think of ; other women 
 would wrong her and make her life miserable. 
 Her friend listened (understanding Peggy well 
 enough to know this was quite true), then an- 
 swered, " Well, Peggy, why shouldn't you take 
 a little child to look after, some one of the 
 many motherless little ones we are constantly 
 hearing of ? " Peggy thought not, and her 
 friend was for the moment a little discouraged 
 with regard to finding the right thing for her. 
 But, about six weeks later, going to her rooms 
 one day to see how she was getting on without 
 any relief except what the overseers granted 
 in view of her settlement, she found Peggy 
 unusually comfortable and bright, and a little 
 baby asleep in a cradle in the corner. No 
 words could express Peggy's satisfaction. At 
 last, she had found something to love and care 
 for, and her whole appearance was changed. 
 The money she received for its care was just 
 about enough to pay the room rent and for 
 the baby's food, and this made her comfort- 
 able with the bit of washing and coarse sew- 
 ing she found weekly. But, apart from this, 
 even if no money had come from it, the influ- 
 ence of the child itself proved beneficent in 
 bringing cheerfulness into a poor, arid life,
 
 Care of the Aged. 69 
 
 which had lost courage and hope and desire, 
 and was sinking under the early approach of 
 age. 
 
 Peter Church, as he is sometimes called, is 
 an old Italian of tfae better class of poor. We 
 found him living utterly alone, in great filth 
 and destitution. He said ten cents a day was 
 all his food cost, because he lived chiefly on 
 macaroni which he cooked himself. He 
 would go to gentlemen whom he knew a 
 little, on the streets or at their offices, and 
 ask a small sum for his support. He had 
 once taught his native tongue in a rudimen- 
 tary way, but his sight had failed ; and he 
 liked to roam the streets at his own will until 
 he was tired, and then at night he would 
 sometimes make a little fire and play the 
 flute. When he first came to our notice, he 
 was becoming feeble. It was getting unsafe 
 for him to go about alone, lest he should be 
 thrown down. He was losing strength from 
 cold and lack of nourishment. Nevertheless, 
 we discovered that he had once tried the 
 shelter of an institution for a few weeks, and 
 had been so unhappy at the loss of his free- 
 dom and the constant sight of misery that he 
 ran away on the earliest opportunity. It was 
 a puzzle what to do. For a few months, some
 
 70 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 friend to whom he had applied for help gave 
 the money to an interested visitor, to be paid 
 out in the 'very small portions he required. 
 Meanwhile, many plans were suggested for 
 his shelter and protection ; but to all of them 
 the independent old man turned a deaf ear. 
 At length, in a kindly talk, it was discovered 
 that the sufferer had relatives in another city. 
 An account of his condition was written to 
 them, and very soon a reply came, saying, 
 though they were still struggling themselves, 
 they would each subscribe seventy-five cents 
 per week, the total proving sufficient for the 
 old man's modest board and maintenance. 
 
 The friendly visitor takes sincere pleasure 
 in seeing this money paid out to a needy 
 family willing to take care of him for the 
 remuneration received. 
 
 It is a cause for wonder to see how many 
 aged and infirm persons are left to pine away 
 in the attics of cities, forgotten by their own 
 people, and receiving fifty cents a week to 
 pay their rent from some relief society. It 
 is not astonishing that good honest Betty 
 Higdons do not wish to go to the almshouse : 
 but there are many cases where intemperance 
 and uncleanliness have set in, induced by 
 their feeble and solitary condition ; and where,
 
 Care of the Aged. 71 
 
 when kindly persuasions are brought to bear, 
 they will go to Austen Farm or some other 
 retreat, and once having made the change are 
 grateful and pleased. 
 
 I found two sisters living in a scant, squalid 
 fashion. They were Scotch by birth, and 
 had been dressmakers, but had outlived their 
 custom and their usefulness. They were 
 getting small doles which they chiefly spent 
 in drink "to keep up their spirits." They 
 would not tolerate the idea of being sent 
 away, at first. The visitor was firm about it, 
 all relief was cut off, and they cannot now 
 express the gratitude they feel for the care 
 and shelter they receive at a public refuge, 
 near Boston, for aged women. 
 
 " Among those who have fallen from fort- 
 une into utter penury, and suffered in 
 silence," writes a friend, "are the Grays, 
 two old brothers, Englishmen, — one a good 
 classical scholar, and the other of such abil- 
 ity that he formerly earned several thousand 
 dollars a year in business. He was ruined 
 by a partner. I found him, one day, warm- 
 ing himself by the fire of a sickly little old 
 woman who befriended him and cooked his 
 rye or corn meal once a day. He has eaten 
 meat rarely for years. I had heard of his
 
 72 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 distress, and forced myself, against his will, 
 into his chamber. I never have seen such 
 utter destitution : no fire, no stove, no lamp, 
 no comforter, no blanket, no pillow, almost 
 no furniture. Many remnants of a sheet had 
 been sewed again and again together, till it 
 was now perhaps three feet wide. What was 
 once an excelsior mattress was now about as 
 hard as a board. ' You do not know what I 
 have suffered here,' said he : 'I was ashamed 
 to let you see it.' To supply all these needs 
 was a pleasure. His gratitude was even sur- 
 passed by his unwillingness to be helped. I 
 sent five dollars by a lady for him to make 
 some drawings, but he had parted with all 
 his apparatus, and refused the money. He was 
 not a case for the Overseers of the Poor or 
 any public relief. Our conference voted that 
 he should have a pension of two dollars a 
 week, which was enough for his food, as he 
 has his rent free. 
 
 " The two dollars were nominally given him 
 for errands for the conference, which he per- 
 formed most zealously. ' I see through it 
 all,' said he : ' you want me to think I am 
 earning it. Let me do all you can.' 
 
 " His literary brother had been poorer still, 
 and, having no fire, frequented a public library
 
 Care of the Aged. 73 
 
 where he could read and keep warm ; and 
 then, for lack of food and fire, chewed ginger 
 to keep alive. He, too, received a pension, 
 kindly raised by the clerks of an institution 
 which knew him* 
 
 "They were about the last survivors of a 
 family which had included a barrister, a 
 clergyman of the English Church, and a mer- 
 chant. 
 
 " Charity sometimes appears hard when it 
 cuts off relief from those able to earn a 
 good support, yet who prefer to beg ; but 
 surely it delights to discover and tenderly 
 relieve those who have done their best, and 
 who are left in old age to suffer, unfriended 
 and alone." 
 
 A visitor of thought and experience, to 
 whom the foregoing pages had been referred, 
 writes in reply : " The foregoing cases were 
 not all ideally treated. Some of them had 
 been injured by doles, and others by the 
 notion that relief from the city is a right. 
 But such experiences lead to certain prin- 
 ciples which should be followed in the care 
 of aged people. The first impulse, when we 
 find a white-haired woman living alone and 
 apparently friendless, is to find some home in 
 whose sheltering care she can be placed. Bu^
 
 74 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 a home which is not full is hard to find ; and 
 the more homes are built, the larger grows 
 the crowd of applicants. Once in, the old 
 person often finds the rules necessary to so 
 large a company irksome, and wishes herself 
 back in her own lonely room. But, the 
 bridge being burned behind her, she remains 
 only half happy and half grateful for the 
 bounty she has received. Means must there- 
 fore be sought to reduce the number of ap- 
 plicants, and to confine their privileges to 
 those who really need the kind of care an 
 institution gives. Also, greater consideration 
 is required in order to care properly for those 
 who remain outside." 
 
 Mrs. Lowell writes succinctly on this 
 subject: — 
 
 We are constantly coming on chronic cases, so to 
 speak, — old, or permanently sick, people who can never 
 hope to earn a living. The only thing to be done for 
 such (unless we simply pass them by, as perhaps in the 
 early stages of our work we must) is to provide for 
 them permanent relief of one kind or another, — cither 
 put them into a suitable institution, or secure from indi- 
 viduals such regular relief as will place them above the 
 need of casual help, and then see to it that they do not 
 beg. 
 
 The following suggestions for the better 
 care of the aged are contributed by a thought- 
 ful friend and fellow-worker : —
 
 Care of the Aged. 75 
 
 1st. By patient study of each individual, 
 and by ingenious experiment of one plan after 
 another, some fit occupation can often be 
 found which shall bring both happiness and 
 profit. Peggy O'Hara's story illustrates this. 
 
 2d. If unable to earn enough for full sup- 
 port, the relatives should be sought out, and 
 persuaded to bear the burden, as in Peter 
 Church's case. 
 
 3d. If both work and relatives fail, who 
 shall care for this worn-out soul ? — we as indi- 
 viduals and friends (to make the end of life 
 peaceful and content for one who has done 
 well his part in the world's work), or we as a 
 body polity, giving the bare necessaries of life 
 to one whose destitute condition is a symptom 
 of disease ? To answer this question wisely, 
 a knowledge of the past life is necessary. If 
 opportunities of saving have been thought- 
 lessly passed by, if intemperance or vice has 
 been allowed control, neither pleasant man- 
 ners nor the most pathetic pleading should > 
 prevent our seeing that to help such a person 
 encourages improvidence, intemperance, and 
 vice in others. If relatives who ought to aid 
 will not do so, they should be made to feel 
 that, because of their negligence, the disgrace 
 of becoming a pauper falls upon their kin.
 
 j 6 How to Help the Poor 
 
 Aid must therefore come from us as a body 
 polity to protect the community from people 
 infected with moral disease. Such cases 
 should be aided only in the almshouse. Pri- 
 vate charity does not do its full part while 
 any other than almshouse cases are allowed 
 to fall into the care of the city authorities. 
 
 If, on the other hand, savings have been 
 swept away by misfortune, or slowly eaten up 
 by long sickness ; if, in short, no serious fault 
 is behind the poverty that has fallen like a 
 blight upon old age, — we ought to be proud 
 and glad to share our abundance with these 
 stricken ones; and those who have been em- 
 ployers or known the aged people well in any 
 relation of life ought to have the first claim to 
 this privilege of doing good. If to a stranger 
 first comes the knowledge of the need, be it 
 his grateful duty to seek out the old friends. 
 If none can be found, private benevolence 
 must see that the sum necessary for comfort 
 is regularly given. Let not a week of plenty 
 be followed by weeks of semi-starvation, be- 
 cause we will not take the trouble to make 
 our relief regular and adequate. 
 
 What can be done to prevent old people 
 from becoming dependent upon strangers ? 
 We can encourage thrift, and foster family
 
 Care of the Aged. 77 
 
 affection and the sense of responsibility in 
 children for their parents, in brothers for 
 their sisters ; and, at least with every appli- 
 cant for our charity, and often in counsel 
 with those we know in other relations, we 
 can use our forethought to make sure that 
 as many as possible are put in the way of 
 providing not only money, but friends, for 
 their own old age. 
 
 How many women left stranded at forty, 
 who have bravely made their way alone, 
 might have been saved the unhappiness and 
 need into which they fall in extreme age, if 
 into the empty heart some other lonely ones 
 had been taken, and a new home, where all 
 worked together, could have been made !
 
 VI. 
 
 INVESTIGATION. 
 
 The science of investigation is only half 
 understood by those who believe in it, and 
 only half believed in by the world in general. 
 
 " I like his looks " must always be a strong 
 argument, because character carves and 
 sculptures itself on the human face in un- 
 mistakable lines ; but, in order to learn 
 whether the original value of a face has been 
 raised or degraded by the will behind it, 
 which we call character, is a knowledge no 
 one can get with surety at first sight or with- 
 out study. 
 
 The cry, " What in the world can we do for 
 these people ? " comes often to the ear, if not 
 to our own lips. Perhaps we find a family 
 far too respectable for the almshouse, but 
 who seem to be of no use, and, as it were, 
 born without the power to stand alone. What 
 can be done, indeed ? 
 
 It is a brave heart, and one of much re-
 
 Investigation. 79 
 
 source, which does not sometimes fa'l before 
 the need of these helpless creatures. We 
 wonder why the)' were born, and why they are 
 here in the tumult of city life to be run over 
 by the tide of busy feet. It seems to be the 
 theory of some saintly souls that many people 
 are created incapable, simply as a cross and 
 ladder for martyrs into heaven ; and, doubt- 
 less, a few may remain for the edification 
 and purification of their stronger-shouldered 
 brethren ; but experience shows this percent- 
 age to be a very small one, — so small that, as 
 our opportunities for observation widen, we 
 come to believe that every human being can 
 do something, if he have a chance, and is in- 
 tended to fill some gap in the universal plan. 
 
 In order to find this gap and to understand 
 what a man can do who has fallen by the 
 way and failed to find his proper place, we 
 must first acquire some knowledge of his per- 
 sonal and inherited character. 
 
 Such knowledge can only be obtained by 
 careful searching and inquiry by a skilful 
 person. Volunteer committees may occasion- 
 ally be able to do this ; but we have only to 
 see how difficult ladies usually find the busi- 
 ness of obtaining proper knowledge of the 
 servants they engage, to understand how
 
 80 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 unfit volunteers often are for this business. 
 Miss Octavia Hill says : " We cannot work 
 wisely without full knowledge of the circum- 
 stances of those to be dealt with, — hence, the 
 necessity of investigation. ... A great deal of 
 the preliminary work is quickly and well done 
 by an experienced person, which it would be 
 difficult for a volunteer to do ; neither is it a 
 sort of work which it is worth while for a 
 volunteer to undertake. I refer to verifying 
 statements as to residence, earnings, employ- 
 ment, visiting references and employers. The 
 finishing touches of investigation, the little 
 personal facts, the desires and hopes, and, to 
 a certain extent, the capacities of the appli- 
 cant, no doubt a volunteer visitor could learn 
 more thoroughly ; but that can always be done 
 separately from the preliminary and more 
 formal inquiry." 
 
 The following little story will illustrate 
 better the uses of investigation than can be 
 done by any mere description of methods : — 
 
 In describing the benefactions and perplex- 
 ities of Mrs. X., the reader will remember 
 that a paper was brought to her door by a 
 man who had fallen down a hatchway some 
 time before, and had been assisted by the 
 mayor and other prominent citizens, who had
 
 Investigation. 81 
 
 *VS 
 
 given him a paper to show, with their names 
 appended, and the amount of their subscrip- 
 tions set down. 
 
 Mrs. X. carried the name and address of 
 this man to the agent of a district near his 
 abode, and asked to have the case examined. 
 It was found that the accident had occurred 
 ten years previous to his application to her, 
 and that he had become perfectly able to 
 work ; but the subscription method of exist- 
 ence had proved so satisfactory that it was 
 continued in preference to returning to hard 
 work. 
 
 None of the gentlemen who signed the 
 paper in behalf of the supposed disabled man 
 had ever looked into the case. When, at last, 
 the visitor of the Associated Charities took the 
 trouble to do so, the man was found totally 
 unworthy. He had certainly injured himself 
 at one time, but nobody had looked up the 
 date, and the mayor who headed the paper 
 had been out of office twelve years. 
 
 Another history of a different character may 
 also be of use in illustrating the necessity for 
 close observation and scrutiny in order really 
 to help the unfortunate to any permanent good. 
 
 One of the appeals to Mrs. X., you remem- 
 ber, was from a woman in Lowell who wished
 
 82 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 to have the interest paid on a mortgage. It 
 was discovered, after a while, by a friend to 
 whom she applied and who took the trouble 
 to look into the subject, that the house was 
 worth something above the mortgage, and it 
 would be wiser to sell. One thousand dollars 
 was the result of the sale, which money was 
 invested in a small, comfortable dwelling suf- 
 ficient for the woman and her children and 
 one boarder. They had no debts, the boarder 
 helped to pay running expenses, and the two 
 eldest children began to earn something. By 
 this timely care given to their business, the 
 woman was not only rescued from the position 
 of a beggar, and several hundred dollars thus 
 saved every year, which she had begged for 
 ten years regularly to pay the mortgage, but 
 she was delivered from anxiety, and her chil- 
 dren felt an honest pride in keeping an inde- 
 pendent roof over their heads. 
 
 In one of the first papers published in 
 America upon a better way of helping the 
 poor, wherein the methods so generally 
 adopted since are admirably described by 
 Mrs. Ames, she says : " Wherein does our 
 method differ from others whose machinery is 
 much after the same pattern ? Chiefly in the 
 spirit of its administration. ... It not only
 
 Investigation. 83 
 
 requires that every case shall be carefully 
 investigated, — it makes that investigation the 
 main feature in the proceedings ; it creates for 
 the community something equivalent to a court 
 or tribunal, whichgputs each case on trial, looks 
 up the evidence, and seeks to guide its de- 
 cision by some intelligent principle of reason 
 which has the moral force of law. It assumes 
 that a request for help is not in itself a ground 
 for bestowing it, any more than a complaint 
 lodged in a Court of Common Pleas is ground 
 for giving a verdict to the plaintiff. ... It is 
 made certain that the amount of helpless de- 
 pendence can constantly be lessened by the 
 careful painstaking and judicial administration 
 of local charity." 
 
 The result of failure to investigate is seen 
 every day. The impossibility of finding good 
 positions for persons who are not known, and 
 the mistakes in placing those who are only 
 half understood, sometimes makes us feel that 
 knowledge of character underlies all success, 
 and failure to obtain such knowledge is the 
 best reason for want of success. 
 
 In order to give some idea of the far-reach- 
 ing nature of true investigation, the following 
 history will be of interest : — 
 
 One day, a lad about fifteen years old called
 
 84 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 at a gentleman's office down town, asking for 
 help to start in the business of selling news- 
 papers. He was originally from England, but 
 was just then recovering from a hurt in the 
 heel received while running an elevator in 
 Chicago. The gentleman, who was a believer 
 in the endeavors and a visitor of the Asso- 
 ciated Charities, asked one of the agents to 
 investigate and report to him, when he would 
 gladly give some assistance if it were thought 
 wise. Letters were sent accordingly to Eng- 
 land through the Charity Organization Society, 
 as well as to Chicago and Philadelphia, the 
 addresses in the latter cities being furnished 
 by the lad himself. Meantime, another kind 
 of employment was offered him, which he 
 accepted ; but he failed to appear at the ap- 
 pointed time. Also, the address in Philadel- 
 phia was a false one; but the record from 
 Chicago was good, although it covered only 
 the one month preceding his accident. From 
 the London Charity Organization Society, we 
 learned that the lad's story was altogether 
 untrue. He has a mania for running away 
 and leading a vagrant life. In vain have his 
 parents advertised for him. They are far from 
 being dead, as he says, on the contrary, they 
 wish to send money for his return to them.
 
 Investigation. 85 
 
 They are respectable working-people, and full 
 of grief because of their prodigal son. 
 
 While we were waiting for these letters, the 
 lad disappeared. He was heard of once, with 
 his leg bound up, begging at a lady's door, 
 who gave him money. The police were no- 
 tified as soon as we received the information ; 
 and it is to be hoped that the knowledge of 
 his case will spread abroad widely enough to 
 cause him to be brought into a better way of 
 life. 
 
 The plan of action agreed upon by the con- 
 ference, into whose care the case fell, was as 
 follows : The police were requested to arrest 
 the boy as a vagrant, and hold him while the 
 information should be sent to the office of 
 that conference. An effort will then be made 
 to have him placed, by the judge of the court, 
 "on probation," until fitting employment may 
 be found for him, either on a training ship, or 
 by sending him to sea. His vagrant propen- 
 sities seem to preclude the possibility of any 
 success either in sending him home, which 
 has already been tried, or finding employment 
 for him on land. This case is at present un- 
 finished, certainly ; but the first step has been 
 taken, by means of information obtained from 
 his parents through the Charity Organization
 
 86 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 Society of London, for rescuing the lad from 
 a life of continued deceit and crime. " The 
 crime of begging," as Edward Denison says, 
 "does not consist in the mere solicitation of 
 alms. The gist of the offence is the intention 
 of preying upon society ; and of this intent 
 the asking alms is only evidence, — not proof." 
 In a valuable paper lately printed by Mrs. 
 Lowell on the subject of " Duties of Friendly 
 Visitors," she remarks : — 
 
 One very important point for a visitor to aim at is 
 to find out all about the man of the family, where there 
 is one. Charities and charitable people are too prone 
 to deal exclusively with the woman, accepting her state- 
 ment that the man is looking for work. Now, perhaps 
 he is, and perhaps he is not ; but the facts should be 
 fully established, — ist, that he has no work; 2d, that 
 he would be glad to get it. The man and the woman 
 should be seen and advised with together in regard to 
 their present condition and future plans. Where there 
 is a real desire to help themselves, the man will be 
 ready to accept his proper place as head of the family, 
 responsible for its support ; and, where he keeps out of 
 the way and lets his wife do the running and the beg- 
 ging, the visitor may well suspect that all is not as it 
 should be. 
 
 This is excellent, but now and then we find 
 the trouble lies in the other direction. 
 
 Within the past six months, two cases have 
 come before one committee where the incom-
 
 Investigation. 87 
 
 petence and inertness of the women have 
 chiefly caused the degradation and shipwreck 
 of their large families. 
 
 The first is the case of a woman, her 
 brother, and five children, who never asked 
 any help, but who were found by a friendly 
 visitor one day this spring while searching for 
 another family. This company of seven per- 
 sons had been almost entirely supported for 
 many months by the labor of the two eldest 
 children, fourteen and sixteen years old. 
 Their clothes were worn out. The tenement 
 where they lived was dark and dirty, and 
 despair seemed to be settling down upon the 
 place. It was discovered that the father had 
 gone to the far West two or three years ago, 
 and made a home there. He earned the first 
 year about two hundred dollars, which he sent 
 to his wife, asking her to come to him and 
 bring the children. Her mother was then 
 living, who did not wish to go ; therefore they 
 spent the money, and lingered until in a few 
 months the old woman died. He could not 
 send any more money on account of plans 
 he had made to prepare a comfortable home 
 for their reception. A letter was sent west- 
 ward immediately to corroborate the story. 
 It was not only found to be true, but kind
 
 88 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 neighbors offered to send fifty dollars in 
 order to bring out the two eldest children. 
 Although this was clearly impossible, these 
 children being the chief bread-winners for the 
 family, an offer was made to raise the rest of 
 the sum here, if the whole party could be re- 
 ceived with reasonable hope of employment. 
 After a brief delay, a good woman came from 
 the West with the fifty dollars in her hand; 
 the remainder was raised in Boston ; and the 
 party soon left with lunch-baskets and decent 
 clothes, full of hope for this new life in the 
 West. But the mother has been difficult to 
 manage ; and, except for the enthusiasm of 
 the children, would have preferred to waste 
 and languish in the poverty and filth of her 
 miserable abode. Except for her fear and 
 incompetence, the whole family might have 
 gone with the two hundred dollars sent so 
 long ago, and her poor children would have 
 been spared much suffering and degradation. 
 Very like this is the history of another 
 family with a mother who was suddenly left a 
 widow with nine children. They were becom- 
 ing utterly dependent in the city ; but a place 
 was found for them in a factory town, where 
 they had a clean, airy tenement (a beautiful 
 contrast to their wretched abode in Boston),
 
 Investigation. 89 
 
 and, what was, for them, a large income. But 
 the mother's total incapacity either to cook a 
 dinner or to buy it properly, or, what was far 
 more important, to train her children, led 
 them into debt. Suddenly, we heard, to our 
 despair, that they had returned to Boston. 
 Their going had given cause to hope for 
 a good future for the children, and their 
 benevolent friends rejoiced in giving them 
 everything for their comfort which could be 
 thought of. Therefore, to find them once 
 more crowded into a wretched hole at the 
 North End and asking alms was indeed a 
 disappointment. 
 
 A council was held upon the case ; and it 
 was decided that the only hope was in a 
 factory town, and that we must send them off 
 again elsewhere. But how to do it? They 
 could not absolutely be compelled : therefore, 
 what measures could be adopted ? We found 
 there were two reasons for their wishing to re- 
 main in the city : first, the eldest girl, who was 
 getting beyond all restraint, wished to be in 
 town ; second, the mother thought she could 
 get relief from public and private sources.. 
 These, then, were the two points of attack; 
 and it was thought well to try both at once. 
 A wise, sweet woman, who has a gift for in-
 
 90 H(nv to Help the root: 
 
 fluencing young girls, was persuaded to tiy 
 the first. At the same moment, all the relief 
 societies were asked to withhold assistance, 
 in spite of the fact that the family really was 
 hungry. The generous visitor who had in 
 previous years exhausted her substance upon 
 this family was told that it was not necessary 
 to visit them again just then, because we 
 hoped to get them off shortly, and we would 
 gladly call upon her for assistance, if any were 
 required, but it seemed better that none should 
 be given just then. , 
 
 The result was unexpectedly successful. 
 The kind friend who had taken the girl in 
 hand was surprised at finding her at last 
 amenable to her advice ; and, in a week or 
 two, the family was once more on the road, — 
 this time outside the State lines, — and we 
 hear that they are doing well. They pleaded 
 for clothes and comforts for this their second 
 journey ; but we were afraid to trust them, and 
 they went in their old clothes. The result is 
 better than we feared. Every day they seem 
 to be improving. The clergyman of the town, 
 who was written to by the girl's friend, goes 
 to see them, and is satisfied with their con- 
 dition. 
 
 These stories, drawn from late experience,
 
 Investigation. 
 
 •<s c 
 
 illustrate what I have hinted at before, — that 
 volunteer service is what we live by. We 
 cannot, of course, get on in this work of in- 
 vestigation without some person whose busi- 
 ness it is to be 'found regularly at certain 
 hours, and upon whom we may all depend, 
 because volunteer service must be interrupted 
 service ; but oftentimes, in making inquiries, 
 the appeals of some one who is not known to 
 have any business connection with any organ- 
 ization are of very great value, and will have 
 far more influence than agents' letters. 
 
 How shall we increase this valuable volun- 
 teer service ? " We are all members of one 
 body working together," and a devoted agent 
 said only a short time ago : " Pray make the 
 visitors understand that, do the best I can, 
 I may easily be mistaken ; and I feel myself 
 very dependent upon their impressions."
 
 VII. 
 
 INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 "Tender pity for the poor has been a grow- 
 ing characteristic of this age. A better sign 
 of it still is the increased sense of duty to 
 them, not only as poor men, but as men. 
 There needs, however, it appears to me, some- 
 thing still, before our charity shall be effectual 
 for good. The feeling is there, the conscience 
 is there ; but there is wanting the wise thought 
 and the resolute because educated will." 
 
 We have seen a degraded population in- 
 crease year by year in our American cities. 
 We have seen drunkenness decrease among 
 our well-to-do people, and fall into a contempt 
 unknown in the past century ; but among the 
 unprotected classes it has greatly increased, 
 together with illiteracy and other evils, and 
 yet we have continued to give broken food 
 and " charity sewing " to our poor, and have 
 felt that we have done what we could. In 
 short, we have received the children of pau-
 
 Intemperance. 93 
 
 perized Europe into our open arms, and have 
 wondered at first, then felt ourselves repelled, 
 by the sad issue of our careless hospitality. 
 Drunkenness is the root of a very large pro- 
 portion of the suffering of the poor in the 
 cities of America. Therefore, this is the chief 
 problem with which the volunteer visitor as 
 well as the political economist must deal. It 
 is of no use to say, " I will have nothing to do 
 with 'drunken cases,'" because here lies the 
 ground of misery and of our labor. If 
 " drunken cases " are to be excepted in any 
 district, there can be no work of any moment 
 done for the poor of that locality. 
 
 On the contrary, the visitor's motto should 
 be, " Never give a family up." If the father 
 drinks irrevocably, and will not support his 
 family, he should be sentenced upon the vis- 
 itor's testimony, and sent to some institution 
 where he will be obliged to work. His wife 
 may then be better able to do something for 
 the support of the family. If the children are 
 grown, they can assist her. If they are very 
 young, they can be put into day-nurseries and 
 kindergartens while she is at work, and return 
 to her at night. 
 
 If the mother drinks, and cannot be influ- 
 enced to reform, it will be far better for the
 
 94 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 children that she should be sent to the Re- 
 formatory at Sherburne (if she live in Bos- 
 ton), the visitor being willing to bear witness 
 to what is known to be for the ultimate good 
 of the family. If the father is dead or incapa- 
 ble of caring for his children, they may then 
 be taken into "guardianship and custody" of 
 the visitor or some other friend, and afterward 
 placed out. Nevertheless, visitors continue to 
 ask in these puzzling cases : " What can we 
 do ? Suppose the mother is respectable and 
 intelligent, far above the average : can we let 
 her and the six children suffer? " 
 
 Certainly, these sorrowful cases make us 
 pause. There is great danger in yielding. If 
 we clothe the children and give them food 
 one day, the father will feel the situation less 
 than before ; and, unless we think best to sup- 
 port the family entirely, they will only sink 
 lower as soon as our attention is engaged 
 elsewhere. Something can be done, however; 
 and much depends upon the visitor. The 
 statutes of Massachusetts make it incumbent 
 that a man should support his family. There- 
 fore, we may call the arm of the law to assist 
 us. A complaint to the police will sometimes 
 do good, even if we go no farther; and, if we 
 combine with such measures all the healthy
 
 Intemperance. 95 
 
 and kindly influences we know, the whole cur- 
 rent of affairs in that household may be grad- 
 ually changed for the better. 
 
 We cannot afford either to fear or despise 
 any labor in behalf of temperance. The evil 
 runs too deep. 
 
 It is one of the visitor's duties to strive to 
 enforce the laws of Massachusetts upon this 
 question. The judge of the district may be 
 asked to listen to the case and advise ; the 
 police of the district will assist, if requested, 
 by keeping watch and threatening arrest ; the 
 truant officers will look in and see that the 
 children are kept at school ; and the visitor 
 may meanwhile, by friendly oversight, interest 
 the man in some club or friendly evening 
 resort, where he will be withdrawn more or 
 less from temptation. If he is too far gone 
 and a slave to drink and, humanly speaking, 
 incapable of reform, he must then be com- 
 mitted on long sentence to some institution. 
 Such cases cannot be settled in a day nor in 
 a year ; but they are, perhaps, the most impor- 
 tant branch of our labor : certainly, they are 
 the most puzzling and difficult part of it. 
 
 " How many women," I asked a friend who 
 conducted me lately over the Reformatory for 
 women at Sherburne, " were sent here for
 
 g6 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 drunkenness ? " " Directly or indirectly, it has 
 been the cause of nearly all the commit- 
 ments," was the reply. " There are very few 
 exceptions." It has been estimated that nine- 
 tenths of the city poor who ask public relief 
 have fallen into pauperism from the same 
 cause. Let us accept our burden of work, 
 therefore, with our eyes open and with hands 
 willing to struggle with this evil. 
 
 It is not encouraging work in the present 
 condition of our license law ; but, even when 
 all is done that law can do, there will still be 
 no restraining force to compare with that of 
 public opinion and a recognition of the divine 
 law planted in the heart of men. Much re- 
 mains to be clone by visitors among the poor 
 (who are beginning to create public opinion), 
 by the knowledge they obtain daily. Mr. 
 James H. Dormer, of Buffalo, writes : " Bishop 
 Ireland, one of the most earnest, practical, 
 and beautiful characters that ever formally 
 identified himself with the temperance cause, 
 has said : — 
 
 What is at once practicable and would be most ser- 
 viceable in diminishing the evils of intemperance is to 
 demand of liquor-sellers high license fees. There are 
 two grounds upon which we base our plea for high 
 license. One is the economic ground. If a traffic of
 
 Intemperance. 97 
 
 any kind puts unusual impediments in the wheels of 
 government, State or municipal, and increases to an 
 inordinate degree its expenses, the traffic should be 
 made to bear its due proportion of those expenses. 
 Before saloon-keepers have reason to complain of injus- 
 tice or harsh treatment, they should be made to pay 
 over three-fourths of all sums spent annually in main- 
 taining police forces, criminal courts, jails, and public 
 charities. In allowing them to pay but trifles of those 
 sums, the State or city is guilty of deep injustice toward 
 the sober citizen, who is taxed to repair the harm in- 
 flicted by liquor upon society. The second ground for 
 high license is the moral consideration that it is the 
 duty of the government to prevent as well as to punish 
 wrong-doing, when no principle is violated by such pre- 
 vention, and to put restrictions upon a traffic which is 
 dangerous to public morals. Saloons are numerous 
 beyond all justification, and in most cases are in the 
 hands of reckless individuals. High license will reduce 
 the number. Not many who would be candidates for a 
 bar could pay $1,000 or $500 ; nor would the wholesale 
 dealer be anxious, as he is now, to advance the license 
 fee. High license would drive saloons from the out- 
 lying districts into the more central portions of the city, 
 where police control is more effective. It would end 
 the unholy alliance between groceries and liquor, and 
 the poor laborer or his wife could buy a pound of tea 
 or sugar without being invited to buy also a glass of 
 whiskey or beer. The impecunious fellows, ashamed 
 to beg and too idle to work, willing, however, to sell 
 key, are often the men most careless of conse- 
 quences : their idea is to make money. They would be 
 kept out of the business. A salutary fear would rest 
 upon all liquor-dealers of violating city ordinances,
 
 98 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 lest they lose their license, which has some value when 
 it costs $500 or $1,000. Nor would so many drink, if 
 we had high license. There are men who will seek out 
 whiskey or beer wherever it is, and pay any money for 
 it. There are many others, however, who will not 
 drink, when temptation is not thrust upon them. The 
 poor workingman, after his day's work, will not walk 
 several blocks to find a saloon. If it is next door, and 
 the selfish keeper, envying the dollar he has earned so 
 hard, invites him with a sickly smile and a shake of his 
 clammy hand to cross its threshold, the poor man will 
 yield and get drunk. Diminish the saloons, and you 
 diminish the number of drinkers. A low license fee is 
 an open encouragement to the indefinite and irrespon- 
 sible multiplication of rum-holes in every street and in 
 every block of our cities. 
 
 Canon Farrar, in speaking of the effect of 
 drunkenness upon the lives of children, enu- 
 merates nine results, one only more terrible 
 than the last. The passage reads briefly as 
 follows : : — 
 
 " 1 st. They are exposed to shameful neg- 
 lect. . . . 
 
 " 2d. To horrible accidents. . . . 
 
 "3d. To cruelty. . . . A week ago, a drunken 
 woman is seen holding a child of five months 
 by the legs. When remonstrated with, she 
 flings the child on the pavement, and runs 
 away. 
 
 " 4th. Not only to cruelty, but to death. A
 
 Intemperance. 99 
 
 fortnight ago, a child is found burned and 
 scalded to death, because the drunken woman 
 in charge of it falls against a fireplace. . . . 
 
 " 5th. They are exposed to dreadful congeni- 
 tal sickness. The author of John Halifax 
 writes, after a visit to the East London Hospital 
 for Children : ' The nurse said, " These are our 
 worst and most painful cases." One felt in 
 going through this ward that death was better 
 than life.' 
 
 "6th. They are exposed also to murder. . . . 
 
 "7th. And to unconscious suicide. In the joy 
 of men this last Christmas, a child of three 
 gets out of bed, drinks some whiskey left on 
 the table, and in the morning is found dead. 
 
 "8th. They are exposed to something still 
 worse, — that is, sin. . . . How often are the 
 children of the drunkard trained in sin ! . . . 
 
 "9th. Lastly, how fearful is the lot of the 
 drunkard's children from the fearful taint in 
 the blood, the awful hereditary craving/" . . . 
 
 "With regard to the connection between 
 intemperance and lunacy," writes Mr. Francis 
 Peek, " the most eminent doctors connected 
 with lunatic asylums put down at least twenty 
 per cent, of the cases treated by them to 
 intemperance." . . . 
 
 Mr. Peek continues : " If there be one duty
 
 ioo How to Help the Poor. 
 
 which is universally acknowledged as more 
 incumbent than another on the governing 
 power in a State, it is the duty of providing 
 protection for the citizens. ... In what way, 
 then, can State action be taken with the best 
 chance of success ? ... It is fairly proved that 
 undue facilities for obtaining strong drink, 
 involving those numberless inducements which 
 competition compels dealers to offer in the 
 shape of amusements, etc., are the greatest 
 cause of national intemperance ; that, where 
 there are no drinking places, there is scarcely 
 any intemperance at all ; that, where there are 
 few, there is very little ; and that, where these 
 facilities have been reduced, a corresponding 
 decrease in intemperance has taken place. 
 It is in evidence that where a public house 
 has been introduced into a hitherto sober 
 community, where none had before existed, 
 drunkenness has followed. It is to the dimi- 
 nution of drinking facilities, and the discour- 
 agement of liquors of high alcoholic strength, 
 that we must chiefly look for any improve- 
 ment in this matter. . . . 
 
 " Every inducement is required for redoubled 
 efforts to enlighten public opinion. . . . Every 
 Band of Hope formed is a gain. . . . The battle 
 must be won by degrees, by steady persistence
 
 Intemperance. i o i 
 
 and patient endeavor, by bringing public opin- 
 ion to approve each step attained." . . . 
 
 I promised in the earlier pages of this little 
 book to refer again to the effect produced by 
 Mrs. X.'s gift t<? a well-known relief society. 
 Application had been made at the office of 
 that society by Mary Conolly, a good-looking 
 Irishwoman, for shoes and coal. She had 
 three little children, and her husband had 
 been out of work several weeks. The busv 
 visitor, who not infrequently makes twenty 
 visits a day, looked in upon the family at ten 
 o'clock in the morning. He found the mother 
 sleepy and uncombed, the room cold, the three 
 children guiltless of face-washing, the room 
 rather cleaner than the worst, however, but 
 the man still asleep in bed in an adjoining 
 room. " Poor man ! " Mary said. " He was 
 looking for work all day, it being very scarce 
 now; and he had taken cold, which made his 
 legs stiff.'' The eldest boy had just come in 
 with a basket of cinders and some chips to 
 make a fire. They were in debt for rent, they 
 all needed shoes, and " Whatever we shall do 
 if Mike don't find work soon I don't know. 
 I ain't used to livin' so." And indeed it 
 seemed as if she were not. So the visitor 
 withdrew, marked it a worthy case, sent five
 
 io2 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 dollars' worth of coal and shoes, and heard 
 nothing more of the family until the next sea- 
 son, when the woman returned, representing 
 still greater need, because there was another 
 baby and work had been more scarce than 
 ever. 
 
 It is hardly reasonable to expect a woman 
 with three young children and a healthy hus- 
 band to go to work, in order to get money for 
 their support. Indeed, it is far from desirable. 
 The best the visitor can do is to leave word 
 for the man to come to see him, making an 
 early appointment. Even in the hardest sea- 
 sons, it is possible to get more or less work for 
 men who are willing. Meanwhile, hard as it 
 may seem, " relief " must absolutely be with- 
 held as a general rule. If the man finds that 
 the truant officer will get shoes for his chil- 
 dren and societies will send him coal and he 
 can get broken food at ten cents a day from 
 hotels, which is sufficient to nourish his fam- 
 ily, he will not make the same exertion to get 
 and keep employment, and saving will be 
 altogether out of his calculation ; but, if his 
 children are kept in the public schools less 
 well clothed than other children, if he finds 
 the room cold and the table bare when he 
 goes home, his pride and comfort will both be
 
 Intemperance. 1 03 
 
 at stake, and, if the man be not sunk too low, 
 these motives will be found strong levers for 
 his regeneration. 
 
 Either something can be done to bring a 
 man to his senses and give him a chance once 
 more to face the world as an honest man 
 should, or, if all available means fail to re- 
 store him, he must be put away where he will 
 no longer continue to contaminate society. 
 Something is to be done in either case. 
 
 The man can be put to work, and by kind- 
 ness, personal influence, opportunity, reform 
 clubs, combined with watchfulness of the 
 police and truant officers, can be kept in 
 order, or he cannot ; and, in the latter case, he 
 should not be suffered to lie in his bed by 
 day and contaminate the community by night, 
 but he should be brought under the penalty of 
 the laws of the Commonwealth. This last work 
 is usually considered as outside of the pale of 
 charity work, but it is as much a part of it 
 and as great a necessity as any other part. 
 It cannot be left to the police altogether to do 
 this. The visitor is often needed to make the 
 complaint or to appear as witness. Who 
 should know better than such a friend the 
 suffering caused to a little family by the 
 father's sins and self-indulgence ? Who can
 
 104 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 be so well qualified to speak in their behalf ? 
 I have in mind such a family at this mo- 
 ment, where the priest performed this benevo- 
 lent office with the assistance of the truant 
 officer. The father and mother both drank, 
 and the children were neglected. Both par- 
 ents were shut up in separate institutions and 
 the children taken away from them ; but, after 
 two months, they were suffered to have home 
 and children again. The result has been sat- 
 isfactory. The man is at work all clay, the 
 woman at home, their debts are paid, their 
 rooms are decent ; and the wholesome fear 
 which hangs over them in case of failure, 
 combined with the unceasing kindness and 
 attention of the priest, have thus far kept them 
 from falling. 
 
 It would be far from impossible to give 
 many touching and interesting stories in this 
 place of what has been effected by the per- 
 sonal influence of good men and women over 
 those who are weak and subject to temptation; 
 but the private nature of such work, as well as 
 lack of space, must prevent. I know a certain 
 Captain of our Police who has saved at least 
 one man, not by the force of the law, but by 
 exercising his private influence alone. The 
 man in question had brought his family to
 
 Intemperance. 105 
 
 starvation, and he was in a condition to be 
 arrested ; but he is now a respected and self- 
 respecting carpenter, his family restored to 
 their comfortable home. 
 
 A lady who had striven patiently, but, as it 
 seemed, unsuccessfully, with many cases of 
 intemperance, lost no courage, but helped a 
 man who still continued to drink at intervals, 
 until she feared she might be doing harm 
 rather than good by her renewed forgiveness 
 of his broken promises. The period arrived 
 when she saw that further help should be 
 withdrawn ; and before a solemn company 
 gathered "in an upper chamber" prayers were 
 offered for his future, and he was told that, in 
 justice to others, nothing further could be 
 done for him. He was a man above the lower 
 classes of the poor ; but he had sold his 
 clothes, and had crept in to the back of the 
 room in the wretched overalls provided in lieu 
 of clothes by the refuge where he had found 
 shelter. When all was silent, he asked to be 
 heard ; and, kneeling there, he thanked God 
 for these friends who had been so patient 
 with him. His own family had long felt they 
 could have no influence over him. Then, 
 he besought our Father in heaven to give 
 him strength to resist temptation. He had
 
 io6 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 tried again and again. Would not the Infinite 
 God help to save him, when all earthly hope 
 seemed withdrawn ? Perfect silence and the 
 raining down of tears followed his sorrowful 
 figure as he withdrew, and the patient woman 
 who continued to be his friend determined 
 still to endeavor to sustain him in his new re- 
 solve. He was no longer young, the habit 
 was an old one ; but from that moment, which 
 is now three years ago, he has been perfectly 
 sober, is restored to his position and his fam- 
 ily, and this dark valley is to the world as if 
 it had never been.
 
 VIII. 
 
 VISITORS AND VISITED. 
 
 " You probably all know," writes Miss 
 Octavia Hill, " that dirt disappears gradually 
 in places that cleanly people go in and out of 
 frequently." 
 
 One of the first duties of a visitor is to use 
 the senses in entering a tenement house. The 
 laws of the city of Boston are very clear about 
 the care which must be taken in order to pre- 
 serve the public health and public decency, 
 and the officers of the Board of Health are 
 courteous and attentive in listening to and fol- 
 lowing up suggestions. We wish all persons 
 assuming the responsibility of visitors would 
 recognize that it is a part of their duty to give 
 a report concerning the condition of the houses 
 they enter. The following extracts from the 
 Statutes show how great a reform we can bring 
 about by faithful reporting, accompanied by a 
 personal request that the law shall be en- 
 forced : — 
 
 8. The board or the health officer shall order the 
 owner or occupant at his own expense to remove any
 
 108 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 nuisance, source of filth, or cause of sickness, found on 
 private property, within twenty-four hours. . . . 
 
 10. If the owner or occupant fails to comply with 
 such order, the board may cause the nuisance, source 
 of filth, or cause of sickness to be removed; and all 
 expenses incurred thereby shall be paid by the owner, 
 occupant, or other person who caused or permitted the 
 same, if he has had actual notice from the board of 
 health of the existence thereof. . . . 
 
 109. Every tenement or lodging house shall have in 
 every room which is occupied as a sleeping-room, and 
 which does not communicate directly with the external 
 air, a ventilating or transom window. Every such 
 house or building shall have in the roof, at the top of 
 the hall, an adequate and proper ventilator, of a form 
 approved by the inspector of buildings. 
 
 no. Every such house shall be provided with a 
 proper fire-escape, or means of escape in case of fire, 
 to be approved by the inspector of buildings. 
 
 in. The roof of every such house shall be kept in 
 good repair and so as not to leak ; and all rain-water 
 shall be so drained or conveyed therefrom as to pre- 
 vent its dripping on ground or causing dampness in the 
 walls, yard, or area. All stairs shall be provided with 
 proper balusters or railings, and shall be kept in good 
 repair. 
 
 112. Every such building shall be provided with 
 good and sufficient water-closets, earth-closets, or priv- 
 ies, of a construction approved by the inspector of 
 buildings, and shall have proper doors, traps, soil-pans, 
 and other suitable works and arrangements, so far as 
 may be necessary, to insure the efficient operation 
 thereof. It shall not be lawful, without a permit from 
 the board of health or superintendent of health, to let or
 
 Visitors and Visited. 109 
 
 occupy, or suffer to be occupied separately as a dwell- 
 ing, any vaults, cellar, or underground room. . . . The 
 owner or keeper of any lodging-house, and the owner 
 or lessee of any tenement house or part thereof, shall 
 ■whitewash the walls and ceilings thereof twice at least 
 every year, in the months of April and October, unless 
 the §aid board shall otherwise direct. Every tenement 
 or lodging-house shall have legibly posted or painted on 
 the wall or door in the entry, or so?ne public accessible 
 place, the name and address of the owner or owners and of 
 the agent or agents, or any one having charge of the 
 renting and collecting of the rents for the same. . . . 
 
 These extracts from the laws may be found 
 in a little pamphlet printed by the Board of 
 Health and perfectly accessible. From these 
 brief quotations, it will be seen how large a 
 power the visitor possesses. Contrast for a 
 moment what may be done with what is done, 
 and no one can fail to see great possibilities 
 of improvement. If walls and ceilings must 
 be whitewashed twice in the year, why do we 
 find them so black ? ' If balusters and railings 
 must be kept in repair, why do we climb up 
 uneven stairs by a broken rail ? If there must 
 always be a ventilating or transom window 
 leading to the outer air, why do we stifle 
 among smells too bad to remember ? The 
 answer is easy. There has been no one to 
 complain. Landlords are apt to let things
 
 no How to Help the Poor. 
 
 alone as long as they can, and these evils have 
 grown to be what they are by the visitor's 
 default. 
 
 We pray the friends of the poor to remem- 
 ber this. Helen Campbell says : " In one 
 tenement house in New York, seven hundred 
 and fifty people were so packed that each fam- 
 ily had a living space of but ten feet by 
 eleven. The Chinese quarter of San Fran- 
 cisco shows nothing worse. . . . In 1870, an 
 Act of Parliament demolished ten thousand 
 houses in Glasgow, and within two years a 
 marked change in health returns, prevention 
 of crime, and arrest and conviction of offenders 
 was the result. ... It is in the tenement houses 
 that we must seek for the mass of the poor. 
 And it is in the tenement houses that we find 
 the causes which, combined, are making of 
 the generation now coming up a terror in the 
 present and a promise of future evil beyond 
 man's power to reckon. They are a class 
 apart, retaining all the most brutal character- 
 istics of the Irish peasant at home, but with- 
 out the redeeming light-heartedness, the ten- 
 der impulses, and strong affections of that 
 most perplexing people. . . . 
 
 "There are many houses with every plank in 
 them steeped in sin and misery. Law should
 
 Visitors and Visited. in 
 
 be strong enough to order their destruction. 
 . . . We think the time of coarse, brutal sin- 
 ning is over, and that our charities, our great 
 hospitals, our missions here and there, set us 
 apart from and beyond any century that has 
 gone, before. We wonder why pauperism has 
 become a profession ; and we build stately 
 asylums for our idiots and insane and crippled, 
 while we allow thousands of hot-beds for the 
 production of such species to do their work 
 under our very eyes. If it goes on at the 
 present rate, ten asylums must rise where one 
 stands now, and State taxes double and treble 
 to cover the cost per head of what one might 
 judge to be a personal luxury, each tax-payer 
 requiring his special pauper or idiot, as kings 
 once had their own particular fool. 
 
 " Foul air and overcrowding would, however, 
 be less fatal in its results, were food under- 
 stood. The well-filled stomach gives strange 
 powers of resistance to the body. . . . Happily, 
 to know an evil is to have taken the first step 
 in its eradication. ... To have made cooking 
 and industrial training the fashion, is to have 
 cleared away the thorny underbrush on that 
 debatable ground, the best education of the 
 poor. . . . That cooking schools and the knowl- 
 edge of cheap and savory preparation of food 

 
 1 1 2 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 must soon have their effect on the percentage 
 of drunkards no one can question. Philan- 
 thropists may urge what reforms they will, — 
 less crowding, purer air, better sanitary regu- 
 lations, — but this question of food underlies 
 all. The knowledge that is broad enough to 
 insure good food is broad enough to mean 
 better living in all ways. . . . Such work must 
 be done from within, out. Methods which 
 touch merely the outside are but of temporary 
 service. One woman who has learned in any 
 degree to order her own home and life aright 
 will be more a power with those among whom 
 that life passes than a dozen average preach- 
 ers ; and, if the rich would trust less to indis- 
 criminate giving and more to the work of 
 some accredited agent of this description, 
 they would find double the result for every 
 investment. 
 
 "How to make even the smallest home clean 
 and attractive, and to get the largest return 
 from every dollar earned, is a knowledge that 
 means physical salvation, and thus a better 
 prospect for understanding the spiritual. . . . 
 The training school is even more important 
 than the public school, and industrial educa- 
 tion the only solution of the incompetence 
 and well-nigh hopeless inefficiency of the 
 poorer classes.
 
 Visitors and Visited. 113 
 
 "They are with us. The burden is ours, 
 and cannot be cast aside. It remains with us 
 to train them into decent members of society, 
 or to fold our hands and let the crowd of 
 imbeciles and drunkards and criminals and 
 lunatics increase year by year, till suddenly 
 some frightful social convulsion opens the 
 eyes that have refused to see, and disaster 
 brings about what moderate effort could long 
 before have accomplished." 
 
 There are hundreds of tenement houses in 
 every poor ward of Boston, where the evils of 
 pauperized Europe seem to be fostered by 
 transplanting. Something more can be done 
 by a better fulfilling of the laws and closer 
 official oversight. Nothing, however, can com- 
 pare with the influence of a friend who is also 
 landlord or landlady, enforcing extreme punc- 
 tuality in the payment of rents and proper 
 care of the apartments Tented. " When a 
 tenant is out of work, instead of reducing his 
 energy by any gifts of money, we simply, 
 whenever the funds at our disposal allow it, 
 employ him in restoring and purifying the 
 houses. . . . The same cheering and encourag- 
 ing sort of influence, though in a less degree, 
 is exercised by our plan of having a little 
 band of scrubbers. We have each passage
 
 ii4 Horn to Help the Poor. 
 
 scrubbed twice a week by one of the elder 
 girls. The sixpence thus earned is a stimulus, 
 and they often take an extreme interest in the 
 work itself. . . . 
 
 " Among the many benefits which the posses- 
 sion of the houses enables us to confer on the 
 people, perhaps the most important is our 
 power of saving them from neighbors who 
 would render their lives miserable. It is a 
 most merciful thing to protect the poor from 
 the pain of living in the next room to drunken, 
 disorderly people. ' I am dying,' said an old 
 woman to me the other day. ' I wish you 
 would put me where I can't hear S. beating 
 his wife.'. . . Occasionally,, we come upon people 
 whose lives are so good and sincere it is only 
 by such services and the sense of our friend- 
 ship that we can help them at all. In all im- 
 portant things, they do not need our teaching, 
 while we may learn much from them." 
 
 For the assistance of the visitor who can 
 give only a small portion of time to the work, 
 a sheet has been printed asking to have cer- 
 tain simple questions answered relating to the 
 condition of the house or houses where the 
 people live who are visited. The little paper 
 may be found at the office of the Associated 
 Charities in Boston.
 
 Visitors and Visited. 115 
 
 In considering the need of destroying cer- 
 tain dwellings altogether, we find that Mr. 
 Charles Spencer, of Philadelphia, has lately 
 
 said : — 
 
 •■ 
 
 If the question be asked, What has become of the 
 wretched people, have they been driven into other dis- 
 tricts, or has their manner of life been improved corre- 
 spondingly with the better accommodations supplied? 
 we answer that we have not learned that the bettering 
 of Bedford Street has made any other district worse ; 
 but, on the contrary, since the people have been scat- 
 tered, we have known in some happy instances of those 
 who have been forced to leave, driven out from dens of 
 vice, and having settled in less noxious localities, be- 
 coming industrious and respectable citizens. 
 
 Mr. Theodore Starr thus speaks of what he 
 believes to be a reasonably successful en- 
 deavor to come into contact with the laboring 
 poor as their landlord, and by fair treatment, 
 by a consideration of their needs, and by 
 insisting upon a faithful performance of their 
 obligations, to gain an influence over them 
 which, it was hoped, might lead to much physi- 
 cal, moral, and spiritual improvement of their 
 condition. The basis of the experiment was 
 a purely business one, and its object was two- 
 fold : — 
 
 1. Could houses of a reasonable size, rented 
 at such a rate as to induce the laboring man
 
 u6 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 to use them, be made to return a fair interest 
 to the owner ? 
 
 2. Could the slums of the city be redeemed 
 to decent living, if decent houses were built 
 and owned by decent people, and rented to 
 decent laboring men ? 
 
 " I should like to emphasize," he writes, 
 " the character of the opposition to the work of 
 regeneration. It arises from three sources, — 
 the old style of property owners, the rum- 
 seller, and the ward politician. So long as 
 the work is that of simply visiting the poor 
 and relieving such cases as seem to need help, 
 the visitor is unmolested and arouses no oppo- 
 sition ; but let one blow, however feeble, be 
 struck at the root of the matter, and at once a 
 coalition is formed to obstruct the work. ... He 
 who enlists in this war for the regeneration of 
 the slums must do so in the face of bitter 
 opposition, deep discouragement, and oft- 
 repeated disappointment, for indeed he ' wres- 
 tles against principalities, against powers, 
 against the rulers of the darkness of this 
 world, against spiritual wickedness in high 
 places.' Nevertheless, if he will but persevere 
 in the right methods to the end, his effort 
 cannot fail to be crowned with an enduring 
 success."
 
 Visitors and Visited. 117 
 
 One of the earliest and most important 
 topics which should engage the attention of 
 the visitor is that of helping people to save. 
 In Newport, this branch of work has been 
 made a specialty, the peculiar circumstances 
 of so large a watering-place rendering it a 
 question of prime importance. The commit- 
 tee began in the spring of 1880 to warn their 
 poor friends that they would not be allowed to 
 receive public relief the following winter, and 
 that, unless they meant to suffer, they must lay 
 up something in summer for the winter's wants. 
 The plan adopted is simple in its details, and 
 is given in full in their report for the benefit 
 of those who wish to follow it. It is unusual, 
 even in these days of good work, to see any 
 plan followed quite so closely and carefully by 
 a company of visitors ; and the result is a suc- 
 cess beyond all anticipation. Surely, if our 
 workers everywhere would read this report, the 
 methods would be much more widely adopted. 
 In conclusion, the secretary writes : — 
 
 We are ready to say, however, that having educated 
 our people (or some of them) into the practice of 
 saving, our wish is to see them strong enough to turn 
 the practice into a habit, and to do without our help. 
 For this reason, we look with great satisfaction on the 
 prospect of post-office savings banks, which will make 
 the matter easy for them ; and more than a year ago we
 
 n8 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 signed a petition to the Postmaster-General for the 
 establishment of such banks. 
 
 "Saving is like spending," writes Mrs. Ames, 
 "more and more easy the longer it is prac- 
 tised. It is also a conservative moral habit 
 which helps to set in order the whole life. It 
 is a great gain when these people are once 
 aroused to the fact that they can save." 
 
 Trouble of any kind, and especially any 
 misfortune which has a tendency to lower a 
 person in the social scale, drives people into 
 solitude. Edward Denison wrote, " How 
 many thousands of paupers have lived and 
 died and been buried at the public expense, 
 whom a little friendly advice, a little search 
 for friends or relatives, some pains taken to 
 find proper work, when the first application 
 to the Board was made, would have lifted out 
 of the mire and set on the rock of honest 
 industry." Many of the poor who most 
 deeply need visitors are lonely persons, and 
 the fact of finding a friend at last is encour- 
 agement to them and a beginning of better 
 times. The influence of clubs, unions, asso- 
 ciations, meetings for discussion, is often very 
 beneficial. Men whose homes are uncomfort- 
 able are helped over many a hard hour by 
 being allowed to go to a reading-room or
 
 Visitors and Visited. 119 
 
 good place of resort. There are so many- 
 bad places to go to that the sooner the visitor 
 can put a half-discouraged man into relation 
 to an organization worth joining the better 
 chance there will be of his improvement. 
 In an admirable little English book, by 
 Ellice Hopkins, called Work among Working- 
 men, we read : " One thing at least is certain. 
 The public house, in some form or other, is 
 a necessity. . . . However domestic a man may 
 be, he requires the society of his fellows, he 
 needs some place where he can see the 
 papers, and where he can talk trade and 
 politics. . . . The club house is an absolute 
 necessity to workingmen. . . . Practically, it 
 seems to be constantly overlooked that the 
 old tavern bore precisely the same fruits in 
 the we'.l-to-do class as it is now bearing in the 
 lower classes ; and not till the club took the 
 place of the tavern did a better state of public 
 opinion arise, and a consequent diminution 
 of drunkenness. . . . Should we not meet with 
 more success, if we were steadily to recognize 
 that the club, with its absence of vicious self- 
 interest enlisted in the drink traffic, with its 
 esprit de corps and its character to sustain, 
 does present, both positively and negatively, 
 the necessary moral influences to control the
 
 120 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 use of intoxicants, or to dispense with them 
 altogether, as may be thought best ; and if, 
 while still endeavoring to procure an amend- 
 ment of our licensing laws, we were to throw 
 our chief energies into getting the club sub- 
 stituted for the public house ? 
 
 "'Why not advocate the establishment of 
 coffee-palaces which are open to all ? ' some 
 one will ask. ' Why restrict it to the members 
 of a club ? ' 
 
 " Coffee-palaces are admirable things, and 
 I advocate their being multiplied tenfold in 
 every large town. They will do much to 
 educate everybody out of our present ridicu- 
 lous dependence on alcoholic drinks, as if 
 they were the necessary concomitant of every 
 social and kindly feeling. ... As a rule, how- 
 ever, workingmen do not use them as an 
 evening resort, for the simple reason that 
 they do not afford quiet, separate rooms where 
 they can feel at home, and where they can 
 smoke their pipes and do as they like. And 
 I would earnestly point out, it is the evening 
 resort that must ever be the stronghold of 
 drunkenness. . . . Even in those rare cases 
 where the upper premises of a coffee-jDalace 
 are let off for the exclusive use of a working- 
 men's club, there is the great disadvantage
 
 Visitors and Visited. 121 
 
 of the club being forced to adopt total absti- 
 nence principles, whether they wish it or not, 
 since intoxicants are not allowed on the 
 premises. In the case of voluntary teetotal- 
 ers, this would lead to no evil ; but, with 
 those who are not, it leads to their going else- 
 where to get the glass of beer they cannot 
 procure at their club. And I would again 
 urge that you should never attack drunkenness 
 in the mass on principles of total abstinence. 
 . . . Why do we expect of workingmen a self- 
 denial which, in the mass, we do not practise 
 ourselves ? . . . When you admit intoxicants, 
 you must also secure a moral element, the 
 social esprit de corps of a well-organized club, 
 to control them. The admission of beer into 
 coffee-palaces would, I fear, generate the old 
 abuses over again." 
 
 "The workingman's home," writes Edward 
 Denison again, "in great towns is such that 
 he cannot there give himself either to study 
 or recreation. He must have a club ; and, till 
 every head of a family belongs to a club, 
 there is not much hope of the poorer artisans 
 improving their condition." Women and chil- 
 dren, too, should be introduced into the 
 schools and classes working everywhere for 
 their education, physical, moral, and religious.
 
 122 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 They need to be persuaded to take the first 
 step; but, this difficult point once passed, they 
 are willing to make a good deal of effort to 
 hold the places they have gained. 
 
 The old method of working for the poor 
 always left the man in the swamp, but threw 
 him biscuits to keep him from starving. By 
 means of throwing him biscuits enough, he 
 managed to make the oozy place appear to 
 himself soft and even comfortable. The new 
 method is to throw him a plank. He cannot 
 eat or drink the plank, but he can scramble 
 out upon it, and have his share of the labors 
 and rewards which the experience of life 
 brings both to high and low. 
 
 " The supreme need is to give not only our 
 dollars, but ourselves, and to learn the busi- 
 ness." 
 
 The noble duty of caring for the sick poor 
 is one which has been omitted from these 
 pages, because of the importance of the sub- 
 ject and the fact that it is too often considered 
 altogether as a specialty; but there are cer- 
 tain things which every woman should know, 
 and which, if she visits without knowing, she 
 cannot fulfil all her duty. Miss Nightingale 
 writes as follows regarding the success to be 
 attained by nurses who serve the sick poor: —
 
 Visitors and Visited. 123 
 
 As to your success ? What is not your success ? 
 To raise the homes of your patients, so that they never 
 fall back again to dirt and disorder, — such is your 
 nurses' influence. To pull through life and death 
 cases, — cases which it would be an honor to pull 
 through with all flie appurtenances of hospitals, or of 
 the richest of the land, — and this without any appurte- 
 nances at all. To keep whole families out of pauper- 
 ism by preventing the home from being broken up, and 
 by nursing the bread-winner back to health. To drag 
 the noble art of nursing out of the sink of relief doles. 
 To carry out practically the principles of preventing 
 disease by stopping its causes or infections which 
 spread disease. 
 
 Florence Craven says upon this subject : — 
 
 "Whenever a nurse enters, order and cleanliness must 
 enter with her. She must reform and re-create, as it 
 were, the homes of the sick poor. These unfortunate 
 people often lose even the feeling of what it is to be 
 clean. The district nurse has, therefore, to show them 
 their room clean for once, and to bring about this result 
 with her own hands ; to sweep and dust, empty and 
 wash out all the appalling dirt and foulness ; air and 
 disinfect, rub the windows, sweep the fireplace, carry 
 out and shake the bits of old sacking and carpet and 
 lay them down again, fetch fresh water, and fill the 
 kettle, wash the patient and the children, and make the 
 bed. 
 
 And Miss Nightingale adds again : — 
 
 Every room thus cleaned has always been kept so. 
 This is her glory. She found it a pigsty : she left it a 
 tidy, airy room.
 
 124 How to Help the Poor. 
 
 To teach the poor how to use even the 
 small share of goods and talents intrusted 
 to them proves to be almost the only true 
 help of a worldly sort which it is possible to 
 give them. Other gifts, through the long ages 
 tried and found wanting, we must have done 
 with. Nearly one million of dollars in public 
 and private charities have been given away in 
 one year in Boston alone ; and this large sum 
 has brought, by way of return, a more fixed 
 body of persons who live upon the expecta- 
 tion of public assistance, and whose degrada- 
 tion becomes daily deeper. The truth has 
 been made clear to us that expenditure of 
 money and goods alone does not alleviate 
 poverty. 
 
 How, then, we ask, may help be given ? 
 To find a fitting answer, we have studied the 
 methods of other countries and of holy, self- 
 sacrificing men and women who have also 
 learned wisdom in their humble devotion to 
 their work. And the answer we find is this : 
 we have followed the law, and not the spirit of 
 the Master ; but the law is dead, and he still 
 lives among us, the shepherd of his sheep, 
 speaking through these hungry and suffering 
 children, and praying us not to give the meat 
 which perisheth, but the meat which shall
 
 Visitors and Visited. 125 
 
 endure. In our comfortable and sheltered 
 homes, we forget how near these wretched 
 cellars and attics are to the reformatories and 
 prison cells. They are the next door, and it 
 depends often upon our personal influence 
 over the poor to keep that door shut. 
 
 When we are told that certain evils cannot 
 be helped, that we may as well let things 
 alone, we must remember that experience has 
 taught differently. Evils can be helped, and 
 to let things alone is to lend ourselves to 
 wrong. It is to be cowardly and to hate just 
 where we are taught to love, and to have faith 
 that will remove mountains. 
 
 It is impossible to overestimate the value of 
 friendly communication with the poor and un- 
 fortunate. When I see what is accomplished 
 sometimes by what in contrast may be called 
 so small an expenditure, it seems impossible 
 not to spread the good news, and thus bring 
 in a very much larger number of workers, 
 where the harvest is so abundant. " From 
 wealth, little can be hoped ; from intercourse, 
 everything."
 
 WRITINGS OF JAMES T. FIELDS. 
 
 Yesterdays with Authors. Twenty-Fifth Edition. 
 i2mo, gilt top, $2-00; half calf, $4.00. 
 
 Holiday Edition. With Portraits of Pope, Wordsworth, 
 Thackeray, Dickens (2), Hawthorne (2), Miss Mitford, 
 " Barry Cornwall," and Leigh Hunt. 8vo, full gilt, 
 $3.00 ; half calf, $5.50 ; morocco, $7.50. 
 
 Contents. — Thackeray, Hawthorne, Dickens, Words- 
 worth, Miss Mitford, Barry Cornwall and some of his 
 Friends. 
 
 It is the kind of book which the world is certain to read, — a book 
 for a half hour, for a long summer day in the woods or on the shore, 
 or for a winter evening by the quiet fireside. Dip into it where you 
 will, you will always find it detaining your attention, charming your 
 heart with its pleasant reminiscences, filling your fancy with its ex- 
 quisite little sketches, luring you on into visions and imaginings that 
 will make you forget the present, and help you to feel that the pleas- 
 ures of memory furnished by such a skillful story-teller as Mr. 
 Fields are very precious indeed. . . . Wherever this book is known 
 it is sure to be valued, and we can only hope that its charming 
 pages will become familiar to those who wish to come into pleasant 
 intercourse with the illustrious dead, whose words and deeds, whose 
 characters and habits, are so happily recalled in these delightfully 
 interesting pages. — Literary World (London). 
 
 This work is far better than Crabb Robinson's delightful book, the 
 fault of which was that, being chiefly a diary, it only gave glimpses o: 
 eminent people; whereas Mr. Fields gives portraits, not elaborated, 
 but spirited, graceful, and undeniably accurate. Much of what he tells 
 us is the result of personal knowledge and observation, and for the 
 rest he has allowed the subjects of his reminiscences to speak for 
 themselves in their many letters. — Philadelphia Press. 
 
 It offers a rare charm to the lovers of literary anecdote, and in 
 many considerable portions possesses an interest no less enticing than 
 the naive recitals of Boswell. — New York Tribune. 
 
 *#* For sale by all Booksellers. Sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt 
 of price by the Publishers, 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., Boston, Mass.
 
 
 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 356 962 1