TWO KINDS OF CHARITIES
Charities, broadly, are of two kinds, public and private; and activity in one should not preclude activity in the other. The ideal administration of charity would consist in every person comfortably established, having among his real friends several poor persons or poor families from whom he himself received a broadening knowledge of life, as well as to whom he gave of physical necessities. In the absence of this ideal situation, he must avail himself of the best means open to him. He must take advantage of the splendid organization of modern charities, but he must not forget also to be on the lookout for individual cases of need that are not likely to appear before the board of any philanthropic organization.
BUILDING UP CHARACTER
We hear it from the pulpit and the platform continually, yet not too often, that organized charitable work is one of the finest achievements of our present civilization. Narrow-minded people sometimes say that our grandmothers got along very well without it, and did as much good as the women of the present day. They got on without it only because they did not have such complex conditions to cope with. It is not possible, no matter how good the intentions of the individuals concerned, that as valuable work can be done without modern methods as with them. In these days, each charity of a city or town attempts to cover one field, and to cover it as thoroughly and from as many different points of view as possible. Wherever possible, the aim of such organizations is to help people to help themselves. The idea is not only to tide the beneficiaries over temporary difficulties, but to aid them in building up character by means of self-respecting effort.
Membership in such organizations brings opportunity for action and knowledge also of the bearings of one’s action. It makes charity something more than a matter of sentimental impulse. The opportunity to do good offered by these societies is not only an opportunity to help the poor, but to help one’s self, and even in other ways than the one generally acknowledged of broadening one’s sympathies and cultivating one’s heart. The gain a woman derives in discipline from working in concert with other women is of inestimable value. This discipline is sometimes accompanied by vexations, as discipline commonly is, but, taken in the right spirit, it is broadening.
Charitable societies are often made up largely of women whose ideas of business are chaotic, whose capacity for speech is not at all equal to their capacity for work. The time spent by such people in idle discussion at business meetings is wearing, but it is not altogether unprofitable. The better trained women must do what they can to improve the situation. When they can not improve it, they must grin and bear it. Even with the drawbacks named, organization pays. The experience of many is a richer thing than the experience of one; and, when it comes to action, concerted action is a more powerful thing than single and individual effort.
SELECTION OF CHARITIES
One can not help all the causes one would like to help, or belong to the organizations that represent them. One should select that charity which appeals to one most or where one feels one can do the most good, and one should make attendance upon its meetings and the other work of the society a part of one’s regular duties. The sorrows of one’s life often suggest the charity one cares most to aid. Women who have lost little ones feel a drawing of the heart toward the society that helps children. Women who have seen much of pain and suffering in their own families wish to join a society that makes the burden of the sick poor as light as possible. Those who have seen sympathetically the loneliness and bitterness possible to old age, wish to help the aged poor. And the determining personal experience makes the work of charity so much richer and more effectual.