| Amount of grant or pension | Grants or pensions of each specified amount |
|---|---|
| $50 and under $100 | 28 |
| $100 and under $150 | 55 |
| $150 and under $200 | 47 |
| $200 and under $250 | 48 |
| $250 and under $300 | 8 |
| $300 and under $350 | 11 |
| $350 and under $400 | 4 |
| $400 and over | 4 |
| Total | 205 |
[245] Some grants of over $50 have been grouped with the emergency relief cases.
The disaster case has many variations, but the common mark is that the applicant is thrifty, in fairly good health, and capable of self-support. Adventitious circumstances brought a reduction or a loss of income. With rare exceptions, when the grant was sufficient the family became entirely self-supporting. The policy of the office was to find what had been the former standard of living, and to aid so that not only would the same standard be maintained but a higher one if possible attained. The two cases that follow illustrate how in 18 or more cases a grant of from $75 to $500 gave the aid needed to make a fresh and successful start.
A peddler of imported linen goods, in poor health, with a wife also in poor health, and four children under fourteen years of age, who had been burned out, asked for no aid until 1908. He believed he could do without help, but when the wife became very ill the man knew that he must appeal for relief. He was granted at once $250 to purchase a stock of goods, though his plan for resuming his old business was vague. For about three months, as the family seemed able to care for itself, the case was not held under treatment. Then the wife died, leaving the man as sole caretaker of four ill children. The children, three suffering with typhoid fever and one with tuberculosis of the hip, were sent to a sanatorium and a grant of $150 was secured, which was supplemented later by a grant of $300. A large part of these two sums was spent for hospital treatment, but the remainder was invested in getting the man to make a fresh start at his old business of selling imported linens. When the family was revisited in June, 1909, the man’s sister-in-law reported him as making a good living. Having employed a housekeeper, he was able to keep his children properly and to give them a suitable education. This expenditure of $700 lightened burdens brought alone by disaster and illness.
Home for the Aged and Infirm (the “Relief Home”)
An American widow fifty-nine years of age, with a daughter of forty stone deaf and in ill health, and the daughter’s three children under thirteen, had kept a boarding house before the fire in fairly comfortable quarters in one of the busier districts of San Francisco. The daughter, separated from her husband, an inebriate and a gambler, was entirely dependent on her mother. With high courage the fine woman planned to rent and furnish a hotel in one of the smaller watering places of the state. The Rehabilitation Committee gave her $400 for the purpose. The venture failed, so two years later she applied to the Associated Charities for rehabilitation. She was given $200 with which to move the furnishings saved from the first venture to a suburban town, where she now has a successful rooming and boarding house. She is valiantly carrying her own burdens.
There are some 20 or more cases whose success is dubious, because the money was used for purposes for which it was not intended; because the plan to keep a domestic group intact through the expenditure of a large grant was frustrated; or because defective character balked the rehabilitation plans. In most of these cases the investigation failed to unearth characteristics or resources which, if discovered, would have made a flat grant unnecessary or undesirable.
Pensions were granted of course for several different ends. In a good many instances they were given primarily to tide a family over the period during which one of the younger members was being given a good business training so as to be prepared to undertake the chief support of the group. These so-called “scholarship” grants had definite and satisfying results. A typical case will illustrate the method.
A Mexican seamstress of thirty-five and her three orphan sisters were living together at the time of the disaster. One of the sisters, aged thirty-three, had to be sent afterwards to a hospital for the insane. A married sister, aged thirty-four, with a child of three years, was deserted by her husband the day of the earthquake, and had to place the child in the Orphans’ Home. The deserted wife assumed charge of the household, and the two young sisters of fifteen and thirteen who were markedly intelligent were kept at school. The seamstress was very proud of her young sisters, so she borrowed $20 from a woman who worked in the same factory with her in order that she might send the elder to a business college. Later when taken ill she found herself in debt and unable to carry out her plan. She then applied to the Associated Charities and was given two grants of $75, one for general relief, the other to keep the girl in the business college. The girl graduated and her knowledge of Spanish and English then enabled her to get a specially advantageous position. All the sisters are the better for the grant which raised their social status.