III.—TWENTY-FIVE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON “HOW TO HELP THE POOR.”
51. Q. What is the aim of the book, “How to Help the Poor?” A. To give a few suggestions to visitors among the poor, and to lead all such visitors to attend the conferences which are now held weekly in almost every district of our large cities.
52. Q. What is one of the most direct commands in the Christian Scripture? A. “Give to him that asketh.”
53. Q. Why need there be no beggars in our American cities? A. Labor is wanted everywhere, especially educated labor; nowhere is the supply of the latter equal to the demand.
54. Q. What do the people crying continually “give to us” really need? A. A chance to learn how to work, and sufficient protection in the meantime from the evils of idleness, drunkenness and vice.
55. Q. What is “out-door relief?” A. It is the giving of money (or its equivalent) which is raised by taxing the people, if the applicants come under certain rules and laws.
56. Q. To what conclusion does Mr. Seth Low, of Brooklyn, N. Y., come in regard to “out-door relief?” A. That out-door relief, in the United States as elsewhere, tends inevitably and surely to increase pauperism.
57. Q. Of what three parts is the conference of a district composed? A. First, the district committee; second, the representatives of societies and officers; third, the visitors.
58. Q. How does one writer state that the disciplining of our immense poor population must be effected? A. By individual influence; and this power can change it from a mob of paupers and semi-paupers into a body of self-dependent workers.
59. Q. What does not, and what does visiting the poor mean? A. 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 for the purpose, first, of discovering the cause of that misery.
60. Q. What does Dr. Tuckerman say of every child who is a beggar? A. Every child who is a beggar, almost without exception, will become a vagrant and probably a thief.
61. Q. What is the only just reason for taking children from their natural homes? A. To lift them out of moral poverty. Material poverty, alone, is not sufficient cause.
62. Q. What do the statistics of the Labor Bureau show in regard to homeless young women in Boston? A. That there are twenty thousand homeless young women in Boston whose wages average only four dollars per week.
63. Q. What is the first suggestion made for the better care of the aged? A. 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.
64. Q. When does not private charity do its full part? A. While any other than almshouse cases are allowed to fall into the care of the city authorities.
65. Q. What does experience, as the opportunities for observation widen, induce the writer to believe? A. That every human being can do something if he has a chance, and is intended to fill some gap in the universal plan.
66. Q. What does Edward Denison say of the crime of begging? A. It does not consist in the mere solicitation of alms. The gist of the offense is the intention of preying upon society; and of this intent the asking alms is only evidence—not proof.
67. Q. What is the root of a very large proportion of the suffering of the poor in the cities of America? A. Drunkenness.
68. Q. What is one of the first duties of a visitor in entering a tenement house? A. To use his senses.
69. Q. What knowledge means physical salvation, and thus a better prospect for understanding the spiritual? A. How to make even the smallest home clean and attractive, and to get the largest return from every dollar earned.
70. Q. What is one of the earliest and most important topics which should engage the attention of the visitor? A. That of helping people to save.
71. Q. What drives people into solitude? A. Trouble of any kind, and especially any misfortune which has a tendency to lower a person in the social scale.
72. Q. What is said of many of the poor who most deeply need visitors? A. They are lonely persons, and the fact of finding a friend at last is encouragement to them and the beginning of better times.
73. Q. What is almost the only true help of the worldly sort which it is possible to give the poor? A. To teach them how to use even the small share of goods and talents intrusted to them.
74. Q. What truth has been made clear in regard to the expenditure of money and goods alone? A. That it does not alleviate poverty.
75. Q. What has experience taught differently from the assertions that certain evils can not be helped, and that we may as well let things alone? A. That evils can be helped, and to let things alone is to lend ourselves to wrong.