Public and Private Charity. As has already been indicated, the ordinary line to be observed between private charity and public relief is that to private charity should be given the more delicate and difficult tasks, such as readjusting the temporarily dependent persons, the care of, in some cases, dependent children and the like, while to public charity should be given the cases which need permanent relief in institutions. This is only a conventional line, however, between private charity and public relief. As has already been pointed out, the state can conceivably, also, undertake the more delicate and difficult tasks of charitable aid, and probably it should do so as rapidly as it demonstrates its fitness to undertake this work, as the state, when once it has achieved certain standards, is a more certain and reliable agency than private institutions or societies. But there is in philanthropic work, a large place for the private society or institution. There will probably always be debatable cases which may better be looked after by private agencies than by public. There is, therefore, in every well-developed community, room for both public and private agencies, although there should be close coöperation where both exist one with the other. The church, through all its history, has undertaken philanthropic work with notable success, and it would be regrettable if the philanthropic activities of the church were to cease at this time, when they are needed as never before, in spite of the large development of public philanthropy. Church charity should, however, be made as scientific as any other form of charity, and should be carefully coördinated with the work of the state and other secular agencies. Among the secular agencies we have already mentioned the charity organization society as typifying in many ways the highest type of philanthropic activity of the present. It would seem that this society, organizing as it does all the philanthropic forces and agencies of the community, could scarcely be displaced by state activity; and that there would remain to this society, as well as many other private philanthropic societies, a very large field of activity in the future. State activity in the field of charity is, therefore, to be encouraged, but it must not be supposed that such activity can take the place of private charity.
Preventive Agencies. A very large task for both private societies and the state is to be found in the field of prevention. This field is so broad, however, that we cannot attempt to even mention the many different movements alone which characterize our present social development. Such are the movements for better housing, for better sanitation, for purer food, for juster economic conditions, for the prevention of disease, and the like. The main thing to be said with respect to these movements is that they need to be guided by the larger social view, they need synthesis in order that they may work toward a common goal, and in harmony, also, with the activities of the state. In the field of prevention the state has much to do, especially in forwarding education along lines of social need and in creating juster economic conditions.
We may, perhaps, sum up this chapter by saying that it is evident that the cure of poverty is not to be sought merely in certain economic rearrangements, but in scientific control of the whole life process of human society. This means that, in order to get rid of poverty, the defects in education, in government, in religion and morality, in philanthropy, and even in physical heredity, must be got rid of. Of course, this can only be done when there is a scientific understanding of the conditions necessary for normal human social life. What some of these requirements for a normal life are will be seen in a subsequent chapter, and it is only necessary to say in conclusion that the wisest measures for removing pauperism will be directed toward the prevention of its causes rather than toward the reclaiming of those who have already been caught in its meshes.
SELECT REFERENCES
For brief reading:
WARNER, American Charities, Revised Edition.
DEVINE, Misery and Its Causes.
HUNTER, Poverty.
For more extended reading:
DUGDALE, The Jukes. DEVINE, Principles of Relief. HENDERSON, Dependent, Defective and Delinquent Classes. RUS, How the Other Half Lives. ROWNTREE, Poverty: a Study of Town Life. Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction. The Survey (formerly Charities and the Commons).