Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

Charity Transformed

Active and efficient as women have shown themselves in high offices in public and private associations for charitable work, they have not lagged behind in the movement that is transforming the relief of the needy into a war on poverty. Little by little as the work of associated charities has widened, forces within the very organizations themselves necessitated the expansion of the idea of charity into one with broader implications. The organization of relief and the centralization of funds bring about a greater demand for relief because they abolish much of the personal succor of the old type. Instead of more or less lavish care of a few families intimately, all cases of relief that come to the notice of charitably minded persons are, through an organized system of relief, referred to the central agency which is expected when it receives thousands of dollars to do marvelous things with them. The very centralization of charity, however, creates the necessity for offices, clerks and stenographers, investigators, perhaps a training school, salaried heads, publications, and the like which consume funds rapidly. Indeed it has been estimated that in New York City under the system of the Charity Organization Society, it costs several dollars to distribute every single dollar in relief. The system of charity therefore breaks down of its own weight in time, or is transformed, much of the relief money being used for social workers instead of the poor, and the little money that is left being spread over a larger group of recipients.

Of course a centralized bureau of charities can make appeal for money and get responses, but here again it has been estimated that for public movements it often costs a large portion of a dollar to bring in one, even when the greatest care is used in selecting probable donors.

Owing to the financial situation within organized charity, the inquiries into efficiency in relief, and the criticism of almsgiving, charity workers have sought to alleviate distressing conditions by suggesting other means of reform than monetary help. In their own defense they have had to do this, but they have learned by experience that mere monetary relief may sometimes keep a family or an individual under their care in perpetuity. Not being able to secure funds to assist all cases indiscriminately, even had they wished, charity workers began to ask why relief was needed in each case. Thus they learned by home visiting and personal investigation that lack of education, unemployment, sickness, intemperance or poverty, singly or in company, were at the bottom of dependence as it came under their surveillance.

Gradually they realized that the remedy for lack of education was not charity, but schools, and many charity workers went over to vocational education and guidance activity; the remedy for unemployment they found to be a labor issue and many of them joined the working class movement or social reform movements having as their goal continuous labor, well requited; the remedy for sickness they found to be prevention and many of them went into public health work in all the ramifications described in Chapter II; the remedy for intemperance they found to be complex and many of them joined in prohibition or recreational or labor activities in the hope of checking its ravages; the remedy for preventable poverty they found to be its abolition and charity workers studied and divided into groups according as they thought it might be abolished—political groups for the most part.

For example, Josephine Shaw Lowell, who was for years a member of the New York State Commission on Lunacy and Charity, saw that “she was giving the best years of her life to the service of the sick poor in the public institutions. Meanwhile, honest working people were being made sick by overwork in the service of the Christmas shopping mob. Mrs. Lowell proceeded, without loss of time, to invite to her home some leading retail merchants who were her friends, and some working people acquainted with the effects of long working hours. She, herself, represented the shopping public. The Consumers’ League was the result.”[^[37]]

The Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor, soon after its establishment, formed a Housing and Tuberculosis Committee. The field workers in all such associations have helped to educate the executive bodies of the organization and the Executive Committee has helped to educate the people and municipal officials, and thus the whole social movement verges toward an increase of public functions.

Indeed, everywhere charity workers are saying: “The people who come to us should be thrown back upon industry. It is a poor sort of an industrial system that cannot support those willing and able to work in it.”