The class of social debtors is not recruited from any one occupation, or from any one economic or social group. The learned professions, the mercantile and clerical voca tions, artisans skilled and unskilled, contribute each their fair quota of those who for a longer or shorter period are dependent upon public or private relief. Religion, race, nationality, and color require in the records of charitable societies as many subdivisions as in the census. By no means all of those who have small and irregular incomes become dependent. Meagre or irregular income is, of course, a usual precedent condition of dependence, but there is an uncounted multitude whose earnings are irreg ular or meagre who, nevertheless, do not become social debtors, and who maintain a standard of living which conserves their physical vitality, and enables their chil dren to attain a better position than that which they have themselves occupied.
The relief problem is not directly concerned with attempts to elevate the general standard of living, or to influence the general distribution of wealth. It deals rather with social accidents — with individual families, whatever their previous station, who, through sickness, death of breadwinner, or exceptional misfortune of some kind, lose their position and are either temporarily or permanently unable to regain it, or to adjust themselves to any other position of normal self-support. The aggregate number of those who are thus submerged in the onward movement of commerce and industry may be great, but it affords a relief problem only in those communities which are so far advanced in civilization as to recognize social obligations and in which there are at least some resources available for relief.
Whether a particular family is dependent is to be judged not by an absolute standard, but with reference to the pre vailing conditions. Where there is general prosperity and a considerable social surplus, it is possible to find families temporarily dependent and fairly entitled, in the interests of the community, to a helping hand from their fellows, who, under harsher conditions, might instead, with the same earning capacity, be looked upon as fairly successful and as contributors to the common welfare rather than as social debtors. The helping hand to which such families are entitled under the more prosperous conditions is one that will enable them eventually to stand alone, not one that will carry them. As we shall see later this involves skill and familiarity with the principles and methods of efficient relief. Dislike of organization and a dread of extending it to the delicate and intangible task of charity, are responsible for much real hardship and neglect.
Granting that relief partakes of a social as well as of a personal character, and that it produces a definite social effect, there are some who think that that effect is per nicious, because it is in some way in conflict with the beneficent operation of the law of evolution. From an
evolutionary point of view the pressure of population on the means of subsistence is supposed to prevent the sur vival of the unfit, and therefore to be a good thing for society. Instead of becoming dependent, those who cannot maintain themselves should, in this view, be allowed to perish. There should be no interference with the natural results of competition, and those who are submerged should not receive charity, which is but the robbery of the prosperous and successful of a portion of their subsistence. This, however, is an unwarrant able deduction from the great truths which constitute the doctrine of evolution. Charity may be of a kind that will transform the unfit into such as are fit to sur vive, and still more readily, charity — or, to use a more appropriate term, an enlightened relief policy may alter the conditions which create the unfit. It is doubtful if modern charity often increases the birth-rate or diminishes the death-rate of the criminal or the pauper. What it does is to give to the children of the dependent and the anti social classes a chance to pass from the associations and surroundings of their parents into a position of self respect and self-support. It gives to those who are physically disabled, but otherwise valuable, members of the community, an opportunity to regain their health and strength, or, if incurable, to live with less of suffering and more of kindly care. By segregating the epileptic and the feeble-minded, and preventing them from producing off spring, it may even hasten the elimination of the unfit a process which by natural selection proceeds but slowly. It provides for the aged and infirm, for the insane and those who are otherwise afflicted, a more suitable main tenance, but under conditions, with some exceptions which should be remedied, that do not impede progress.
If there is an active policy directed to that end, the pressure of population may accomplish the beneficent results which scientists have claimed for it without impos ing extraordinary hardship upon individuals. What is demanded to insure this result is that individuals, and sometimes a considerable number of persons, shall be entirely removed from the ordinary economic and social competition and supported in one form or another from the surplus of human society. The burden in this way becomes a definite one of which the community is con scious, and the extent of which can be clearly ascertained. It is of comparatively little importance from our present point of view whether the surplus is drawn upon by taxa tion or through the channel of charitable donations. While it is conceivable that the burden might be so great that it would become a serious drain upon productive industry or upon normal consumption, there are no indications that this would happen at the present time in American communities.