RESTATEMENT AND CONCLUSION THE charitable impulse has four distinct stages of de velopment : the desire to alleviate obvious and obtrusive distress ; the desire to relieve distress adequately ; the desire to restore the dependent if possible to a position of self-support ; and finally, the desire to create social condi tions in which pauperism is entirely absent.
The impulse itself, in its most primitive, and perhaps most permanent, form, is deeply ingrained in our human nature, and is encountered in all the quarters of the earth. The sight of suffering calls forth, as if by direct reflex action of brain and heart, the impulse to act, to give, to share either of our goods or of our strength to the end that the evident signs of suffering may be obliterated. It is strange how little it takes, however, even in civilized man, to satisfy this original impulse, how slight the obstacle that will suffice to prevent even its crudest expression.
The daintily gloved, well-groomed gentleman who, in summer, will toss a quarter to the mutilated cripple to be rid of his supplications, will, on a cold winter day, when to reach the quarter in an inside pocket means a little more trouble and slight exposure, pass on with a quicker step, stifling his impulse to give by the reflection that organized charity condemns giving to street beggars, any way. This is the kind of charity which has an open hand but a closed eye, which gives what is demanded to any one who asks, when it involves no sacrifice, but does not earn the blessing promised to him that considereth the poor.
An effective desire to relieve distress, upon which intel ligent relief measures may be based, is so closely allied to this original charitable impulse that they may not always be distinguished. The second is a direct development 177 from the first, showing that the primitive instinct is not to be condemned, but rather encouraged and trained. It follows that carefully planned relief measures may safely be given a more prominent place in our national and municipal policies. One of the chief defects of the char itable system of many American communities, even of those in which relief is most ample and most elaborately organized, is that for certain kinds of need the relief is inadequate in amount and not at all organized. The desire
to relieve distress — really and sufficiently to relieve — is of gradual growth. We naturally develop a relief sys tem, public and private, just as we do an educational or an industrial system. We become willing to make large sacrifices to carry it into effect. Relief is the means by which, in a progressive community, the blows of un merited misfortune ; the crushing burdens of protracted illness and serious accident; even, at times, and in some communities, the loss of employment because of industrial changes through which the community gains but the indi vidual suffers ; and, more obviously still than any of these, the care of orphans and neglected children, may be• as sumed — when it is right and necessary to assume them— by the community, either through private agencies es tablished for that purpose, or through public agencies supported by taxation. The relief system is the means of transferring insupportable burdens to a group large enough to bear them.
Cripples, children who are defective in sight, speech, or hearing, children who are defective in intellect, should be discovered and placed under the special care of those who can, to some extent, build up their defective organs, or at least care humanely for them in their affliction. A keen lookout should be kept in every schoolroom and in every home for those who need special attention or care, and who cannot themselves, or whose family cannot, pro vide it ; and no community can be said really to care for the relief of distress until it is awake to all such needs curing the curable while they are curable, and relieving the incurable in a humane and charitable way. This does not by any means uniformly imply care in an institution. Each class of dependents — each individual who is in need — must be considered separately, and the best that professional skill and experienced judgment can dictate should be forthcoming. This is, in the long run, an eco nomical policy, but it is to be urged, not because it is economical, but because it is charitable.