Part I.—Primitive Charity—highly developed idea of duty to guest or stranger, whether beggar or vagrant.
Part II.—Charity among the Greeks. “In Crete and Sparta the citizens were wholly supported out of the public resources.” In Athens, charity by: legal enactment for release of debts; assisted emigration; gifts of grain; poor relief for infirm and for orphans of soldiers; pay for public service; private charity; loan societies.
Part III.—Charity in Roman Times. “The system obliged the hard-working to maintain the idlers, while it continually increased their number.” “The effect on agriculture, and proportionally on commerce generally, was ruinous.”
Part IV.—Jewish and Christian Charity. In Christianity a fusion of Jewish and Greco-Roman practice. Summary of Hebrew Charity. “To mark the line of development, we compare: 1. The family among Jews and in the early Christian church. 2. The sources of relief and the tithe, the treatment of the poor and their aid, and the assistance of special classes of poor. 3. The care of strangers; and, lastly, we would consider the theory of alms giving, friendship or love, and charity.”
Part V.—Medieval Charity and its Development. St. Francis and his influence. St. Thomas Aquinas. Medieval endowed charities.
Part VI.—After the Reformation. “The religious life was to be democratic—not in religious bodies, but in the whole people; and in a new sense—in relation to family and social life—it was to be moral. That was the significance of the Reformation.” Organization of municipal relief. Poor relief acts and statutory serfdom. Progress of thought in 18th and 19th century: influence of Rousseau, of Law, of Howard, of Bentham, of Nonconformists, particularly Friends in England; Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor (1796). The Poor Law. Movement for Old Age Pensions. Charity Organization. Hospitals.
American charities and their peculiar problems.
Other articles bearing on the subject are:
Poor Law (Vol. 22, p. 74), for the British system, and Dr. T. A. Ingram’s articles Unemployment (Vol. 27, p. 578) and Vagrancy (Vol. 27, p. 837).
Prisons