CHAPTER II
THE BREADWINNER
A conference was held in one of our large cities lately of half a dozen church and charity workers, who had been called together to make some plan or agree upon some common principle in dealing with a certain family, to whom charitable relief had been given in an aimless way for many years with no good result. Three churches were represented, and the persons present had visited and relieved the family for periods ranging from three to ten years. Almost immediately, however, the fact was brought out at the conference that not one of these visitors had ever seen the man of the family, or had ever made any effort to see him. By way of excuse one visitor said she had always understood that the man was very good-for-nothing. But happily there is no better dispeller of mental {18} fog than a friendly conference of those who are in earnest, and it did not take long to convince these conferees that the man's good-for-nothingness was, in part at least, their own fault. I shall have occasion to speak more than once, in this book, of the power of suggestion. Even here, where these relief visitors had never given the head of the family a thought, they had taught him a lesson. From their whole line of conduct he must have received the suggestion that his neglect of his family was an affair of no consequence.
In turning to the details of family life among the poor, I take the breadwinner, or the one who ought to be the breadwinner, as my first consideration for the reason that he is so often ignored altogether by charity workers. Especially is this true of church workers. "A church worker came to me the other day," writes Mrs. Bosanquet, "about a family of little children, concerning whom he was greatly distressed. He had visited them for months, and found the woman honest, striving, and clean, but as usually happens he knew very little of the man. He assured me {19} over and over again that the family was in a pitiable state of poverty and in urgent need of help; and we at once set to work to ascertain the real financial position. Result: man earning 35s., giving 20s. to his wife and keeping 15s. for pocket-money. Obviously, if charity steps in here, it will not necessarily improve the state of the wife and children at all; it will merely enable the man to keep a still larger proportion of his wages for pocket-money." [1]
But, though the charity worker may ignore the man of the family, there are others who are wiser. In the first place he is a voter, and the ward-worker, the policeman, and the saloon-keeper never forget this fact.
An illustration of the policeman's interest in the voter as an applicant for charity may be found wherever the police are allowed to become distributors of alms. In Baltimore the police have been allowed to distribute relief intrusted to them by private citizens, and have been in the habit of making public appeals for such contributions to aid the poor {20} in cold weather. One policeman, who had a difficult beat, where there were many toughs and criminals, said that the distribution of police relief made his work easier, as toughs whose families had been relieved did not trouble him so much. It is an interesting fact that, during the hard times of 1893-94, political clubs vied with each other the country over in distributing aid. Leaders of Tammany Hall were shrewd enough to urge their followers to organize relief distributions in every district of New York.
It is well to realize that much of the political corruption of our large cities may be traced to the simple fact that the poor man is like ourselves: he follows the leaders personally known to him, and to whom he is personally known. He is sometimes a venal voter, but more often he is only an ignorant voter, who, while innocently following the man that has taken the trouble to do him a favor or to be socially agreeable to him, is handicapping himself and his children with dirty streets, an unsanitary home, an overcrowded school, an insufficient water supply, {21} blackmailing officials, and all those other abuses of city government which press with peculiar hardship upon the poor. The question of municipal reform is inextricably connected with any effort to improve the condition of the poor in their homes, and no charity worker can afford to ignore this connection.
In "Problems of Modern Democracy," Mr. E. L. Godkin says: "Nothing is more surprising in the attempt to deal with the problems of urban life than the way in which religious and philanthropic people ignore the close connection between municipal politics and the various evils about which they are most concerned. All the churches occupy themselves, in a greater or less degree, with the moral condition of the poor. Charitable associations spend hundreds of thousands every year in trying to improve their physical condition. A conference of Protestant ministers met in this city two years ago to consider the best means of reviving religious interest among the working classes and inducing a larger number of them to attend church on Sundays. Of course these gentlemen did not {22} seek an increase in the number of church-goers as an end in itself. The Protestant churches do not, as the Catholic church does, ascribe any serious spiritual efficacy to mere bodily presence at religious worship. Protestant ministers ask people to go to church in the hope that the words which they will hear with their outward ears may be so grafted inwardly in their hearts that they may bring forth the fruit of good living. What was remarkable in the debates of this conference, therefore, was the absence of any mention of the very successful rivalry with religion which, as an influence on the poor and ignorant foreign population, politics in this city carries on. The same thing may be said, mutatis mutandis, of the charitable associations. No one would get from their speeches or reports an inkling of the solemn fact that the newly arrived immigrant who settles in New York gets tenfold more of his notions of American right and wrong from city politics than he gets from the city missionaries, or the schools, or the mission chapels; and yet such is the case. I believe it is quite within the truth to {23} say that, as a moral influence on the poor and ignorant, the clergyman and philanthropist are hopelessly distanced by the politician." [2]
It has been said that, in the effort to establish friendly relations with a poor man, often the greatest lack is a common topic. Here is at least one topic that rich and poor have in common. Here it will be found too that they have many grievances in common, and what makes a better beginning for a friendly relation than a common grievance? Another common topic, and a related one, is the news of the day. More often than not, even the very poor read the daily papers.
Beside the ward politician, the saloon-keeper, and the policeman, there are others who take an interest in the breadwinner. If he is injured, or his property is injured, there are third-rate lawyers ready to bring suit for half the proceeds—an unduly expensive arrangement for the man that has a good claim. If he would save, there are agents of unsound financial schemes ready to take advantage of his ignorance. If he would borrow, there are {24} chattel-mortgage sharks ready to burden him with a debt at ruinous interest. If he would buy, there are instalment dealers ready to tempt him into buying more than he can afford, and ready to charge two prices for their wares. Whole industries are created to take advantage of his lack of shrewdness, and every effort of his to get on, to get out of the old groove, is resisted by such agencies. Surely, if any one stands in need of a friend, who will patiently strive to see the world through his eyes, and yet will have the courage to tell him the plain truth, it is the breadwinner.
But that picture would be a distorted one which represented the poor man as friendless save for the politicians. His neighbors and companions are in no position to protect him from the foes I have mentioned, but their neighborliness is none the less genuine. Most patient and long-suffering of neighbors are the small landlords who sublet. The tradesmen in poor neighborhoods are also heavy losers. When a family applies for the first time to a church or charity, it often means that they have been aided most generously for a long {25} time by neighbors and small dealers. Sometimes one happens upon the very best and most thoughtful charity given in this way. A Boston worker tells of a street-car conductor, not only supported through the winter by his fellow-conductors, but faithfully nursed by them at night, each one taking turns after the long day's work. Such glimpses as this show us how queer is our usual charitable perspective, in which, as in a picture on a Chinese fan, we see the church steeple in the middle distance and the church visitor looming large in the foreground, while the poor little object of charity, quite helpless and alone save for us, huddles in a corner. The fact is that every life has a background, if we will but take the trouble to see and understand it: all the barrenness is in our own imaginations.
When the poor man attempts to be charitable without knowledge, he is just as clumsy as the rest of us. Writing of "The Attitude of Workingmen toward Modern Charity," Miss Clare de Graffenreid says: "A notable instance of reckless giving came under my observation just after the great strike in the mining regions, {26} when a man who had lost both arms went begging in Georges Creek Valley. How he was maimed, whether he was worthy, proved immaterial. Nor does it appear that he was even a miner; but he asked alms at all the mines. Now the miners had had no money since they were paid off for April, the strike having begun on the 7th of May and having lasted until the 1st of July, while some workers were unable to secure employment until later. After two months and more of idleness the men had either used their savings to live on or were deeply in debt, or both. They could hope for no money until their July labor was paid for in August. In the latter part of July came this armless stranger, who personally solicited these big-hearted coal diggers, and received, without investigation on their part, written subscriptions for various amounts, to be withheld next pay-day from their wages. From the mines of one company alone the man presented to the paymaster orders amounting to three hundred dollars; and the superintendent believes that this one beggar during a short stay in the Valley obtained fully a {27} thousand dollars, if not more. Nor did the enterprising mendicant trouble himself to remain to collect these sums in person. He gave a Chicago address to which checks for the total amounts subscribed in each mine were sent; and he went away to 'work' some other field." [3]
These facts stand side by side. The poor man is often able to do the very best charitable work, acting, with a full knowledge of the circumstances, with quick sympathy, and entire unselfishness. On the other hand, when considerations of public welfare, or conditions outside his personal experience complicate the situation, his charity is sometimes reckless and harmful.
Another fact to bear in mind is that the ties of neighborliness and mutual dependence among the poor can be weakened by a charity that leaves such natural and healthful relations out of account. The poor in rich neighborhoods, or in neighborhoods where alms are lavishly given, are less kind to each other, and the whole tone of a neighborhood can be lowered, {28} mistrust and jealousy being substituted for neighborly helpfulness, by undiscriminating doles from those whose kindly but condescending attitude has quite blinded them to the everyday facts of the neighborhood life. There are some who think it a pity that, out of their slender store, the poor should give to the still poorer; they feel that the rich should relieve the poor of this burden. But relief given without reference to friends and neighbors is accompanied by moral loss; poor neighborhoods are doomed to grow poorer and more sordid, whenever the natural ties of neighborliness are weakened by our well-meant but unintelligent interference.
Turning to the breadwinner as an employee, we are confronted with the gravest questions now occupying public attention: with the organization of labor, the strike, the lockout, the rights of capital, the problem of the unemployed, and of the unskilled laborer. The truth about these matters, even if one were so fortunate as to possess the truth about them, is not to be stated in a paragraph or a chapter. {29} Only in so far as they directly concern the friendly visitor to the families of the least fortunate class of workers, can questions of employment be even mentioned in these pages. The more the visitor studies and thinks of them, however, the better friend he can be to the poor. Partly because they are difficult, and partly because our prejudices are involved, the charitable are too prone to dodge economic issues.
We should ask ourselves fearlessly the object of all our charitable work. As Mrs. Bosanquet says: "We need to be quite sure that we really want to cure poverty, to do away with it root and branch. Unless we are working with a whole-hearted and genuine desire toward this end, we shall get little satisfaction from our efforts; but those who share unreservedly in this desire are comparatively few at present. Only the other day I heard it said that it was a very doubtful policy to aim at curing poverty, for that in the absence of poverty the rich would have no one upon whom to exercise their faculty of benevolence; and I believe that this was but an outspoken {30} expression of a feeling which is still very prevalent, the feeling that there is something preordained and right in the social dependence of one class upon another. There is the lurking fear, also, that if the working classes get too independent the rich man may suffer for it. 'It won't do,' said one wise lady, 'to make them too independent; they go and join trade-unions, and a friend of mine lost quite a lot of money because his workmen joined a trade-union.' This is quite in the vein of the old Quarterly Reviewer, who summed up the current objections to the Owenite schemes of coöperation as 'the fear that the working classes might become so independent that the unworking classes would not have sufficient control over them, and would be ultimately obliged to work for themselves.'" [4]
The ability of the friendly visitor to put behind him his own personal prejudices and selfish interests, and look at all questions of employment with reference to the best interests of the workers, is of the first importance. Such questions are often very complicated. {31} An inquiry was sent out in 1896 to the charity organization societies of the country, asking whether these societies approved of supplying workers to take the place of striking employees. The answers, as reported in the proceedings of the Twenty-third National Conference of Charities,[5] seem to take it for granted that either all strikes are equally justifiable or else equally unjustifiable; the fact being, of course, that some strikes are entirely justifiable, that others are quite the reverse, and that still others, which are justifiable at one stage, become unjustifiable at another stage, where the ground of contention has been shifted.
It is about such complicated relations as these that we must inform ourselves when we dare to interfere, and charitable societies cannot afford to adopt any patent formula with regard to them; they must be courageous enough and intelligent enough to bear their part in the solution of industrial questions. The individual friendly visitor may be called upon at any time to advise an unemployed {32} workman whose only immediate chance of work is in replacing a striker. His family may be destitute, and their troubles may press heavily upon the visitor, who sees in the offered work an easy solution of their difficulties. But the visitor's duty toward the family does not end with their material needs, and, unless the man who replaces the striker is sure that the strike deserves to fail, he will have done an unmanly thing in betraying his natural allies. All question of the right of individual contract aside, he will have injured himself, he will be a meaner man and a less worthy head of a family. Charity cannot afford to ignore this possible result for any temporary and material advantage. Nor will it be enough for the friendly visitor to believe that the particular strike is an unjustifiable one; the man himself must believe it.
Other things being equal, a man is stronger and steadier for having a trade that is well organized, one that has its trade code of ethics. It is safe to say, therefore, that a visitor is justified in advising non-union men to join trade-unions, and that he is not {33} committing himself to an endorsement of every act of every trade-union in so doing.
But applicants for charity are not usually skilled workmen, and most of the work of the friendly visitor will be with those whose occupations are still unorganized, with porters, day-laborers, stevedores, etc. In spite of many assertions to the contrary, it would seem that, in ordinary times, there is still work somewhere for those who have the will and the skill to do it. The charity worker has discouragements enough without allowing himself to be demoralized by the wild talk about millions of skilled workers out of work. During times of panic, even, the number of the unemployed is often grossly exaggerated.[6]
The fact which most directly concerns us is that a large majority of those who are thrown upon charity through lack of employment are either incapable or are unfit for service through bad habits, bad temper, lack of references, ignorance of English, or through some physical defect. Experience has proven that a certain proportion of these can be {34} reinstated in the labor market if we are careful (1) not to make it too easy for them to live without work, (2) if we will use every personal endeavor to fit them for some kind of work, and (3) help them to find and keep the work for which they are fitted. "Character is not cut in marble; it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do." [7] Like our bodies, too, it may be made whole again by skilful treatment.
Those who are simply incapable, without bad habits or other defects, are often the victims of their parents' necessities or greed: they were put to work too early, and at work where there was no chance of education or promotion. Sometimes they have been wilfully careless and lazy, but, more often, the fault was either with the parents or with an economic condition that denied them proper training. Of all this we shall hear in connection with the children, but our present concern is with the breadwinner. The man who "does not know how" is the football of {35} industry; employed in work requiring nothing but muscle, promptly discharged because easily replaced, he drifts from job to job, and, at certain seasons of the year, being unable to adapt himself or easily change from one kind of work to another, he is almost certain to be unemployed.
Miss Octavia Hill calls attention to this in "Homes of the London Poor." [8] "The fluctuations of work cause to respectable tenants the main difficulties in paying their rent. I have tried to help them in two ways. First, by inducing them to save; this they have done steadily, and each autumn has found them with a small fund accumulated, which has enabled them to meet the difficulties of the time when families are out of town. In the second place, I have done what I could to employ my tenants in slack seasons. I carefully set aside any work they can do for times of scarcity, and I try so to equalize in this small circle the irregularity of work, which must be more or less pernicious, and which the childishness of the poor makes doubly so. They have {36} strangely little power of looking forward; a result is to them as nothing if it will not be perceptible until next quarter!"
This plan of equalizing work by saving our odd jobs for dull seasons is one way of helping. Another is to seek lists of unskilled and seasonal occupations that do not overlap. Some work is naturally winter work, and some naturally belongs to the summer season. The ice companies in Baltimore employ their workers in winter by combining the coal business with the ice business, and, on this principle, a list could be drawn up for each community of occupations that do not overlap. No list can be given here, because the conditions of work vary in different parts of the country.
When we furnish work ourselves we must be careful not to confound the employer with the friend. "A visitor was interested in a woman who needed work very much, and herself employed her," writes the secretary of the Boston Associated Charities, Miss Z. D. Smith. "Once or twice it happened that the woman had to go to court in the morning, and came at ten instead of eight, or again the visitor {37} let her off early, but she always paid her for the whole day. The visitor was advised that in the long run it was unwise not to pay her by the hour, as was the custom, but she was not convinced until, having got work for her among her neighbors, they complained that she came at ten instead of eight, and expected pay for the whole day, and they would not employ her longer. The relief the visitor gave, disguised as pay, defeated her efforts to help the woman to self-support." [9]
Bad habits as a cause of unemployment will be considered in the next chapter. As to the man who loses his work through bad temper, it is well to bear in mind that there are many degrees of badness of temper, and the bad temper that comes from worry or ill health must be carefully distinguished from innate ugliness. Lack of references, another cause of unemployment, does not always mean a bad record. Unskilled workers are often personally unknown to their employers, and the knowledge that a visitor can acquire by testing a worker may become a great help to him. When a {38} man has some physical defect, such as an impediment in his speech, or a crippled arm, only one who takes a personal interest in him can overcome the prejudice created by his defect. Often such people have qualities that would recommend them, but they are awkward in pleading their own cause or in finding their right niche.
The following illustrations of timely help in finding employment are taken from the Twenty-eighth Report of the Charity Organization Society of London.[10] "One was a quiet, honest young fellow, a gardener, who had lately come out of a lunatic asylum, his insanity being due, it appeared, to ear trouble, involving a painful operation. He had been some months in the asylum, and on coming out was at some loss to obtain regular employment. The Committee, having thoroughly investigated the case and satisfied themselves of the safety of recommending the young man, issued a circular to gardeners and nurserymen, which got him a job within a week. The other man had been noticed in the infirmary—a big, strong fellow, {39} most of his life a seaman, and part of it on board an American man-of-war, till he met with an accident resulting in the loss of one of his legs. Then he had to come ashore, and a restless, roving disposition led him to tramp about the country, and brought him on one occasion before a London police magistrate for attempting to commit suicide. Inquiry showed that the man could work hard, and, strange to say of a man over six feet high and broad in proportion, was handy with his needle at embroidery, etc. The Committee kept him a few nights at a common lodging-house—for he was homeless since leaving the infirmary—and then by great good fortune got him work at a tent and sail maker's, where now, some half a year later, he is earning his 3s. 6d. a day. It is to be noted that neither of these men was able-bodied. The Society does not try to find work for ordinary, able-bodied men."
Ignorance of English has been given as another cause of lack of employment, but this is not irremovable. "After many days' searching, work was found for Mr. H. and his son, whose ignorance of our language was so entire {40} that they failed to get employment, and were in despair. At the earnest request of the visitor, a furniture dealer consented to take them on trial; and they proved so satisfactory that they have now been employed a year, and their pay increased." [11]
A few cautions are necessary. The charities of a large city often attract from the country those for whom there is no economic place. Our immigration laws have allowed many to come to America for whom there is no place, and charity has kept them alive here, knowing the while that they are forcing down the standard of living among our poor, and complicating the problem incalculably at every turn. But, as concerns interstate emigration, and the migration from country to city, charity should not be so helpless. It is within our power to refuse, by charitable aid, to settle the man who cannot settle himself in a community where he does not belong. It is often doing other workers a wrong to establish him and find work for him where he has no claim. The attractions of a large city are great enough without adding {41} any such artificial help to overcrowding. Our effort, on the contrary, should be to get back into country life those families that are found to be really fitted for it. Advertise in country papers, interest friends in the country in finding places for families, and do not fail to keep up communication either by letter or occasional visits with families so placed.[12]
One more caution. It helps a man to know that some one cares and will help him to find work; but it cripples him to let him feel that he can sit idle and let his friend do all the searching and worrying. "Send a man to find work, and go with him to a special place; but never go from place to place seeking it for him." Develop his resources, show an interest in all his efforts, and encourage him to renewed effort.
It has been claimed that only men and men of business experience can be successful friendly visitors where the head of the family is concerned; that, in matters of employment especially, a woman visitor is not capable of giving sound advice. It is undoubtedly true {42} that such work could be better done if more men, instead of contenting themselves with service on charitable boards, would take the trouble to become personally acquainted with a few poor families. This would be better for the boards and better for the men that are charitable trustees. But the woman visitor need not despair. It is true that she could do her work better, as will appear in this book, if she were in her own person a lawyer, a sanitary engineer, a trained cook, a kindergartner, and an expert financier; but she may be none of these things and still be a very good friendly visitor. When legal complications arise, she will go to some friend who is a lawyer; when the children get into trouble, she will consult a teacher, or an agent of the children's aid society, and, in the same way, the matter of employment will send her to a business man, or some one who can advise her, when her own store of experience is too scant. The poor man often has a mean opinion of the judgment of "charitable ladies," and this opinion has not always been without a degree of justification; but the visitor who {43} takes the trouble to go on Sunday and get acquainted with the men folk, or makes occasion for them to come to her house from time to time, who proves herself, moreover, not without resource or common sense as emergencies arise, will soon overcome this prejudice and become the friend of every member of the family.
Collateral Readings: "The Settlement and Municipal Reform," James B.
Reynolds in Proceedings of Twenty-third National Conference of
Charities, pp. 138 sq. "Benevolent Features of Trades-Unions," John
D. Flannigan in the same, pp. 154 sq. "The Ethical Basis of
Municipal Corruption," Miss Jane Addams in "International Journal of
Ethics," for April, 1898. "The Workers," Walter A. Wyckoff. "Working
People and their Employers," Washington Gladden. "Problem of the
Unemployed," Hobson. "The Unemployed," Geoffrey Drage. "Korbey's
Fortune," William T. Elsing in "Scribner's," Vol. XVI, pp. 590 sq.
[1] "Rich and Poor," p. 211.
[2] pp. 141 sq.
[3] "Charities Record," Baltimore, Vol. I, No. 6.
[4] "Rich and Poor," pp. 138 sq.
[5] pp. 242 sq.
[6] See Warner's "American Charities," pp. 177 sq.
[7] George Eliot in "Daniel Deronda."
[8] pp. 22 sq.
[9] "Charities Review," Vol. II, p. 54.
[10] p. 11.
[11] Thirteenth Report of Boston Associated Charities, p. 42.
[12] See "Charities Review," Vol. VI, pp. 402 sq.
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