Aside from the various kinds of work outlined above, where the main element is the coming together of people for the purpose of helping one another to rise higher, there is, of course, a very large field for charitable work proper. For such work there must be thorough organization of the kind supplied, for instance, by the State Charities Aid Association. Here, again, the average outsider would be simply astounded to learn of the amount actually accomplished every year by the association.
A peculiar and exceedingly desirable form of work, originally purely charitable, although not now as exclusively so, is that of the Legal Aid Society, founded by Arthur von Briesen. It was founded to try to remedy the colossal injustice which was so often encountered by the poorest and most ignorant immigrants; it has been extended to shield every class, native and foreign. There are always among the poor and needy thousands of helpless individuals who are preyed upon by sharpers of different degrees. If very poor, they may have no means whatever of obtaining redress; and, especially if they are foreigners ignorant of the language, they may also be absolutely ignorant as to what steps should be taken in order to right the wrong that has been done them. The injuries that are done may seem trivial; but they are not trivial to the sufferers, and the aggregate amount of misery caused is enormous. The Legal Aid Society has made it its business to take up these cases and secure justice. Every conceivable variety of case is attended to. The woman who has been deserted or maltreated by her husband, the poor serving-maid who has been swindled out of her wages, the ignorant immigrant who has fallen a victim to some sharper, the man of no knowledge of our language or laws who has been arrested for doing something which he supposed was entirely proper—all these and countless others like them apply for relief, and have it granted in tens of thousands of cases every year. It should be remembered that the good done is not merely to the sufferers themselves, it is also a good done to society, for it leaves in the mind of the newcomer to our shores, not the rankling memory of wrong and injustice, but the feeling that, after all, here in the New World, where he has come to seek his fortune, there are disinterested men who endeavor to see that the right prevails.
Some men can do their best work in an organization. Some, though they occasionally work in an organization, can do best by themselves. Recently a man well qualified to pass judgment alluded to Mr. Jacob A. Riis as “the most useful citizen of New York.” Those fellow-citizens of Mr. Riis who best know his work will be most apt to agree with this statement. The countless evils which lurk in the dark corners of our civic institutions, which stalk abroad in the slums, and have their permanent abode in the crowded tenement houses, have met in Mr. Riis the most formidable opponent ever encountered by them in New York City. Many earnest men and earnest women have been stirred to the depths by the want and misery and foul crime which are bred in the crowded blocks of tenement rookeries. These men and women have planned and worked, intelligently and resolutely, to overcome the evils. But to Mr. Riis was given, in addition to earnestness and zeal, the great gift of expression, the great gift of making others see what he saw and feel what he felt. His book, How the Other Half Lives, did really go a long way toward removing the ignorance in which one half of the world of New York dwelt concerning the life of the other half. Moreover, Mr. Riis possessed the further great advantage of having himself passed through not a few of the experiences of which he had to tell. Landing here, a young Danish lad, he had for years gone through the hard struggle that so often attends even the bravest and best when they go out without money to seek their fortunes in a strange and alien land. The horror of the police lodging-houses struck deep in his soul, for he himself had lodged in them. The brutality of some of the police he had himself experienced. He had been mishandled, and had seen the stray dog which was his only friend killed for trying in dumb friendship to take his part. He had known what it was to sleep on door-steps and go days in succession without food. All these things he remembered, and his work as a reporter on the New York Sun has enabled him in the exercise of his profession to add to his knowledge. There are certain qualities the reformer must have if he is to be a real reformer and not merely a faddist; for of course every reformer is in continual danger of slipping into the mass of well-meaning people who in their advocacy of the impracticable do more harm than good. He must possess high courage, disinterested desire to do good, and sane, wholesome common-sense. These qualities he must have, and it is furthermore much to his benefit if he also possesses a sound sense of humor. All four traits are possessed by Jacob Riis. No rebuff, no seeming failure, has ever caused him to lose faith. The memory of his own trials never soured him. His keen sense of the sufferings of others never clouded his judgment, never led him into hysterical or sentimental excess, the pit into which not a few men are drawn by the very keenness of their sympathies; and which some other men avoid, not because they are wise, but because they are cold-hearted. He ever advocates mercy, but he ever recognizes the need of justice. The mob leader, the bomb-thrower, have no sympathy from him. No man has ever insisted more on the danger which comes to the community from the lawbreaker. He sets himself to kill the living evil, and small is his kinship with the dreamers who seek the impossible, the men who talk of reconstituting the entire social order, but who do not work to lighten the burden of mankind by so much as a feather’s weight. Every man who strives, be it ever so feebly, to do good according to the light that is in him, can count on the aid of Jacob Riis if the chance comes. Whether the man is a public official, like Colonel Waring, seeking to raise some one branch of the city government; whether he is interested in a boys’ club up in the country; or in a scheme for creating small parks in the city; or in an effort to better the conditions of tenement-house life—no matter what his work is, so long as his work is useful, he can count on the aid of the man who perhaps more than any other knows the needs of the varied people who make up the great bulk of New York’s population.
Half a dozen men have been mentioned, each only as a type of those who in the seething life of the great city do, in their several ways and according to their strength and varying capacities, strive to do their duty to their neighbor. No hard-and-fast rule can be laid down as to the way in which such work must be done; but most certainly every man, whatever his position, should strive to do it in some way and to some degree. If he strives earnestly he will benefit himself probably quite as much as he benefits others, and he will inevitably learn a great deal. At first it may be an effort to him to cast off certain rigid conventions, but real work of any kind is a great educator, and soon helps any man to single out the important from the unimportant. If such a worker has the right stuff in him he soon grows to accept without effort each man on his worth as a man, and to disregard his means, and what is called his social position; to care little whether he is a Catholic or Protestant, a Jew or a Gentile; to be utterly indifferent whether he was born here or in Ireland, in Germany or in Scandinavia; provided only that he has in him the spirit of sturdy common-sense and the resolute purpose to strive after the light as it is given him to see the light.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Reprinted, by permission, from McClure’s Magazine. Copyright, 1901, S. S. McClure Co.
THE WORKS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT
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