CHAPTER VI.
Some Minor Features of the Salvation Army Social Work.
There are a number of features of the Salvation Army Social Work, which for the sake of brevity we shall group together in one final chapter. These are, (1): Christmas dinners, (2): prison work, (3): the employment bureau, and (4): work among the children. Taking up the subject of Christmas dinners, we find here what seems to be an advertising scheme more than a systematic form of relief. Sentiment, doubtless, has its place, even with the masses, and yet, in this great winter feast, there is more sentiment than there is real practical good accomplished. To the quiet, calculating student the question arises whether it would not be far better to utilize the vast amount of energy and financial outlay, which it gives to gorging the multitude for one day, in a better and more lasting way; the question whether there is not, in these Christmas feasts, a likeness to the old time feast of pagan Rome. In every city of any size throughout the country the pots and kettles on the street corner are familiar objects. At each Corps or other location of the Army, tickets are given out entitling the bearer to a Christmas dinner, or, in certain cases, to a basket with a dinner for a family. A good deal of trickery is indulged in by the professional beggars, by means of which it often happens that several dinners go to the same person. And yet, as we have watched those 5,000 baskets containing food for 25,000 persons go out, to bring cheer and comfort to the hungry in their homes, and as we have gazed on that vast banquet of 3,000 guests seated at one sitting, we could not but feel glad that these poor brothers and sisters of ours might realize the force of human sympathy for once in the year at least.[93]
Another minor feature of the Salvation Army work is the prison work. The majority of the jails, local, county and state, are visited at intervals by certain members of the Army set aside for that purpose in each community. In one State's prison there is a regularly organized corps of Salvation Army soldiers, who are all prisoners, some of them for a life term. In most prisons the Army provides literature, sees to the correspondence of the prisoners and holds meetings with them. But it is not so much the work with the prisoners in the jail that counts, as it is the influence gained over them, which leads them to come to the Army and make a new start in life when they get out. Many who find themselves behind the prison bars are not to be classed as regular criminals. A man is often classed as a criminal who is a victim of misfortune only, and has no inherent criminal instincts. It is with the criminal "by occasion," as Lombroso puts it,[94] that much successful work can be done in the way of reform. The Army has a regular organization known as the Prison Gate League. When a prisoner is discharged he is met by one of this league and invited to go to work at one of the Army's institutions. After being influenced and helped in this institution for a certain length of time, if he seems to justify it, he is sent out to work in some position. There are no definite statistics recorded of those of this class who have been permanently bettered.
Still another minor feature is the employment bureau system. While mentioned here as merely one of a group of minor features, this system is one of great importance to the industrial world. It is being taken into consideration in many places by thoughtful men, and there is promise of its assuming national, if not international proportions. The general term, employment bureau, serves to bring to our recollection the accompanying evils of the contract wage system and industrial slavery, against which there has been agitation in the past, but it is because of these accompaniments that the importance arises of securing a system which shall be free from them. In Germany considerable work has been done along these lines, municipalities and provinces have taken up the work, and an all-round effort is being made to place labor in the right position for work at the proper time.[95] New York City is to-day swarming with many agencies, which are conducted by men and women, who may rightly be classed as extortioners. In spite of the rigid rules on the subject, the ignorance and poverty of their victims makes evasion of the law comparatively easy. Jacob A. Riis, speaking of this subject, says:
"It is estimated that New York spends in public and private charity every year around eight millions. A small part of this sum intelligently invested in a great labor bureau that would bring the seeker of work and the man with work together, under auspices offering some degree of mutual security, would certainly repay the amount of the investment in the saving of much capital now much worse than wasted, and would be prolific of the best results."[96]
In regard to the work of the Army in this field every large city contains an employment bureau conducted by it and maintained for the free use of the unemployed. Some of the men, who secure positions have been in one of its own institutions, and the Army workers know whether or not to recommend them for a certain position. Outside of giving men work in its own institutions, the Army, during the year 1907, found employment for 55,621 persons in the United States alone.
Contrary to expectation, the children's work of the Army has not attained a magnitude in proportion to the other lines of work which have been developed. This may be accounted for in part by the fact that there are more institutions open for children to which the Army can turn for help than there are institutions of other types. Thus, while the Army can often get a child taken into some orphanage already existing, either public or private, in the case of the drunkard, the unemployed or the fallen woman, the Army finds it necessary to furnish its own institutions. Again, the Army states that wherever possible, some friend is found who is willing to adopt a child. Of course, this is far preferable to placing the child in some institution, inasmuch as adoption restores the home in a real sense.