Practicable Socialism, New Series

by S. A. Barnett; Mrs. S. A. Barnett

February, 1912.

[1] From “The Contemporary Review”. By permission of the Editor.

The tender mercies of the thoughtless, as of the wicked, are often cruel, and charity when it ceases to be a blessing is apt to become a curse; A Mansion House fund we used in old days to count among the possible winter horrors of East London. The boldly advertised details of destitution, the publication of the sums collected, the hurried distribution by irresponsible and ignorant agents, and the absence of any policy, stirred up wild expectation and left behind a trail of bitterness and degradation. The people were encouraged in deception, and were led on in the way which ends in wretchedness.

In 1903 a Committee was formed which used a Mansion House fund to initiate a policy of providing honourable and sufficiently paid work which would, at the same time, test the solid intention of unemployed and able-bodied applicants. The report of that Committee has been generally accepted, and has indeed become the basis of subsequent action and recommendations. It seemed to us East Londoners as if the bad time had been passed, and that henceforth charitable funds would flow in channels to increase fruitfulness and not in floods to make devastation.

The hope has been disappointed. Funds inaugurated by newspapers, by agencies, or by private persons have appeared in overwhelming force, and have followed in the old bad ways. The heart of the public has been torn by harrowing descriptions of poverty and suffering, which the poor also read and feel ashamed. The means of relief are often miserably inadequate. A casual dinner eaten in the company of the most degraded cannot help the “toiling widows and decent working-men,” “waiting in their desolate homes to know whether there is to be an end to their pains and privations”. Two or three hours spent in fields hardly clear of London smoke, after a noisy and crowded ride, is not likely to give children the refreshment and the quiet which they need for a recreative holiday.

Much of the charity of to-day, it has to be confessed, is mischievous, if not even cruel, and to its charge must be laid some of the poverty, the degradation, and the bitterness which characterize London, where, it is said, eight million sterling are every year given away. Ruskin, forty years ago, when he was asked by an Oxford man proposing to live in Whitechapel what he thought East London most wanted, answered, “The destruction of West London”. Mr. Bernard Shaw has lately, in his own startling way, stated a case against charity, and we all know that the legend on the banner of the unemployed, “Curse your charity,” represents widely spread opinion.

But—practically—what is the safe outlet for the charitable instinct? The discussion of the abolition of charity is not practical. People are bound to give their money to their neighbours. Human nature is solid—individuals are parts of a whole—and the knowledge of a neighbour’s distress stirs the desire to give something, as surely as the savour of food stirs appetite. But as in the one case the satisfaction of the appetite is not enough unless the food builds up the body and strength, so in the other case the charity which relieves the feelings of the giver is not enough unless it meets the neighbour’s needs. Those needs are to-day very evident, and very complex. Our rich and ease-loving society knows well that a family supported on twenty shillings a week cannot get sufficient food, and that even forty shillings will not provide means for holidays—for travel or for study. There will be children whose starved bodies will never make strong men and women; and there will be men and women who live anxious and care-worn lives, who cannot enjoy the beauties and wonders of the world in which they have been placed.

There are ghastly facts behind modern unrest, which are hardly represented by tales of destitute children and the sight of ragged humanity congregated around the free shelters. The needs are obvious, and they are very complex. The man whose ragged dress and haggard face cries out for food, has within him a mind and a soul fed on the crumbs which fall from the thoughts of the times, and he is a member of society from which he resents exclusion. Relief of a human being’s need must take all these facts into account. It must not give him food, at the expense of lowering his self-respect; it must not provide him with pleasure at the expense of degrading his capacity for enjoying his higher calling as a man, and it must not be kind at the expense of making independence impossible. The man who is stirred by the knowledge of his neighbour’s needs must take a deal of trouble.

The only safe outlet for the charitable instinct is, it may be said, that which is made by thinking and study. The charity which is thoughtless is charity out of date. It is always hard to be up to date, because to be so involves fresh thinking, and it is so much easier to say what has been said by previous generations, and to imitate the deeds of the dead benefactors. They who would really serve their neighbour’s needs by a gift must bring the latest knowledge of human nature to bear on the applicant’s character, and treat it in relation to the structure of society as that structure is now understood. They must be students of personality and of the State. They must consider the individual who is in need or the charitable body which makes an appeal, as carefully as a physician considers his case; they must get the facts for a right diagnosis, and bring to the cure all the resources of civilization. The great benefactors of old days were those who thought out their actions—as, for instance, when Lady Burdett-Coutts met the need of work by building amid the squalor of East London a market beautiful enough to be a temple, or as Lord Shaftesbury when he inaugurated ragged schools—but new ages demand new actions, and the spiritual children of the great dead are not they who act as they acted, but those who give thought as they gave thought.

The charity which does not flow in channels made by thought is the charity which is mischievous. People comfort themselves and encourage their indolence by saying they would rather give wrongly in ten cases than miss one good case. The comfort is deceptive. The gift which does not help, hinders, and it is the gifts of the thoughtless which open the pitfalls into which the innocent fall and threaten the stability of society. Such gifts are temptations to idleness, and widen the breach between rich and poor. When people of good-will, in pursuit of a good object, do good deeds which are followed by cries of distress and by curses there is a tragedy.