Diagram of Forces With Which the Charity Worker May Co-operate
A.—Family Forces.
Capacity of each member for
Affection
Training
Endeavor
Social development.
B.—Personal Forces.
Kindred.
Friends.
C.—Neighborhood Forces.
Neighbors, landlords, tradesmen.
Former and present employers.
Clergymen, Sunday-school teachers, fellow church members.
Doctors.
Trade-unions, fraternal and benefit societies, social clubs, fellow-workmen.
Libraries, educational clubs, classes, settlements, etc.
Thrift agencies, savings-banks, stamp-savings, building and loan associations.
D.—Civic Forces.
School-teachers, truant officers.
Police, police magistrates, probation officers, reformatories.
Health department, sanitary inspectors, factory inspectors.
Postmen.
Parks, baths, etc.
E.—Private Charitable Forces.
Charity organization society.
Church of denomination to which family belongs.
Benevolent individuals.
National, special, and general relief societies.
Charitable employment agencies and work-rooms.
Fresh-air society, children's aid society, society for protection of children, children's homes, etc.
District nurses, sick-diet kitchens, dispensaries, hospitals, etc.
Society for suppression of vice, prisoner's aid society, etc.
F.—Public Relief Forces.
Almshouses.
Outdoor poor department.
Public hospitals and dispensaries.
Ten years later a group of members in the National Conference of Social Work formed a division under the title "The Organization of the Social Forces of the Community." The term community, in connection with that of social forces, suggests that every community may be conceived as a definite constellation of social forces. In this form the notion has been fruitful in suggesting a more abstract, intelligible, and, at the same time, sounder conception of the community life.
Most of the social surveys made in recent years are based upon this conception of the community as a complex of social forces embodied in institutions and organizations. It is the specific task of every community survey to reveal the community in its separated and often isolated organs. The references to the literature on the community surveys at the conclusion of chapter iii, "Society and the Group,"[170] will be of service in a further study of the application of the concept of social forces to the study of the community.
2. Social Forces and History
Historians, particularly in recent years, have frequently used the expression "social forces" although they have nowhere defined it. Kuno Francke, in the Preface of his book entitled A History of German Literature as Determined by Social Forces, states that it "is an honest attempt to analyze the social, religious, and moral forces which determined the growth of German literature as a whole." Taine in the Preface to The Ancient Régime says: "Without taking any side, curiosity becomes scientific and centres on the secret forces which direct the wonderful process. These forces consist of the situations, the passions, the ideas, and the wills of each group of actors, and which can be defined and almost measured."[171]
It is in the writings of historians, like Taine in France, Buckle in England, and Karl Lamprecht in Germany, who started out with the deliberate intention of writing history as if it were natural history, that we find the first serious attempts to use the concept of social forces in historical analysis. Writers of this school are quite as much interested in the historical process as they are in historical fact, and there is a constant striving to treat the individual as representative of the class, and to define historical tendencies in general and abstract terms.