VII. THE WAYS AND MEANS OF CHARITY—ORGANIZED CHARITY.
Most of us would be apt to think that our modern methods of obtaining funds for charitable purposes represented definite developments, and that at least special features of our collections for charity were our own invention. In recent years the value of being able to reach a great many people even for small amounts has been particularly recognized. "Tag day" is one manifestation of that. Everyone in a neighborhood is asked to contribute a small amount for a particular charitable purpose, and the whole collection usually runs up to a snug sum. Practices very similar to this were quite common in the Thirteenth Century. As in our time, it was the women who collected the money. A rope, for instance, was stretched across a marketplace, where traffic was busy, and everyone who passed was required to pay a toll for charity. Occasionally the rope was stretched across a bridge and the tolls were collected on a particular day each year. Other forms of charitable accumulation resembled ours in many respects. Entertainments of various kinds were given for charity, and special collections were made during the exhibition of mystery plays [{440}] partly to pay the expenses of the representation, and the surplus to go to the charities of the particular gild.
Most of the charity, however, was organized. Indeed it is the organization of charity during the Thirteenth Century that represents the best feature of its fraternalism. The needy were cared for by the gilds themselves. There were practically no poorhouses, and if a man was willing to work and had already shown this willingness, there were definite bureaus that would help him at least to feed his family while he was out of work. This system, however, was flexible enough to provide also for the ne'er-do-wells, the tramps, the beggars, but they were given not money, but tokens which enabled them to obtain the necessaries of life without being able to abuse charity. The committees of the gilds consulted in various ways among themselves and with the church wardens so as to be sure that, while all the needy were receiving help, no one was abusing charity by drawing help from a number of different quarters. Of course, they did not have the problem of large city life that we have, and so their comparatively simple organization of charity sufficed for all the needs of the time, and at the same time anticipated our methods.