Friendly Visiting among the Poor Part 5

With all the charities provided for the sick, there is still need of better provision in this country for convalescents, who are sent from the hospitals too weak to resume work, and still needing rest, good food, and pure air to effect a complete cure.

Two cla.s.ses of invalids remain to be mentioned in this condensed summary. First, accident cases, in which the visitor must be careful to see that legal redress is obtained when the case is one for damages, and must, at the same time, protect the victim from lawyers who are glad to take a sure case for "half the proceeds." Second, incurables, for whom homes are provided requiring an entrance fee, or for whom, more often, nothing remains but the almshouse. The visitor can sometimes secure the cooperation of friends and charities interested, and so raise enough money to provide the fee for such an invalid, when, without cooperation, as much money and more would be spent and the patient remain in the end unprovided for. Charitable people often {105} get tired; they will do a great deal for a while, and will then get interested elsewhere, and grudge the help that is still needed. In view of this failing, it is much better, in making plans for incurables, to secure a lump sum that will make adequate provision, than to depend upon the continued interest of a number of people.

The migration of invalids is the last point upon which I shall attempt to touch under this head. Any one who has visited California, Florida, Colorado, or any other part of our country where climatic conditions are supposed to be favorable for invalids, will realize the irresponsible way in which charitable people are accustomed to send the sick where they do not belong. The worst of it is that the sudden change of climate and the impossibility of securing proper care, so far from effecting a cure, in many cases hasten death. "The saddest thing about the life of a Denver minister," writes Rev. Samuel A. Eliot, "is the number of lonely funerals that he is called upon to attend. Often I have been hastily summoned to say a prayer over some poor body at the undertaker's {106} shop, where there would be present just the undertaker and the minister, with perhaps the keeper of the boarding-house where the lad died or an officer of the Charity Organization Society. I look at the youthful victim of ignorant good-will borne to his neglected grave, I imagine the mother and sisters in the farmhouse on the New England hillside, whose tenderness might have soothed his last hours, and I think with bitterness of the well-meant but misdirected charity which condemned him to a miserable exile and a forlorn death." [2]

It must be remembered that change of climate is helpful only in the earlier stages of disease, and only then when the patient is able to live in comparative comfort, free from worry and anxiety. To send invalids to a strange place in the name of charity, without providing them with the means of subsistence, is the refinement of cruelty.

Collateral Readings: Publications of local Board of Health.

Proceedings of International Congress of Charities, Chicago, 1893, volume on "Hospitals, Dispensaries, {107} and Nursing." "Instructive District Nursing," M. K. Sedgewick in "Forum," Vol. XXII, pp. 297 _sq_.

"The Feeble-minded," Dr. George H. Knight in Proceedings of Twenty-second National Conference of Charities, pp. 150 _sq_. See also discussion in same volume, pp. 460 _sq_. "The Care of Epileptics,"

William P. Letchworth in Proceedings of Twenty-third National Conference of Charities, pp. 199 _sq_. "Industrial Education of Epileptics," Dr. William P. Spratling in Proceedings of Twenty-fourth National Conference of Charities, pp. 69 _sq_. "Dest.i.tute Convalescents: After Care of the Insane," Dr. Richard Dewey in the same, pp. 76 _sq_. See also discussion on pp. 464 _sq_.

[1] "American Charities," p. 40.

[2] Proceedings of the Nineteenth Conference of Charities, Denver, 1892, pp. 91 _sq_.

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CHAPTER VII

SPENDING AND SAVING

There is a new school of philanthropists that are inclined to make light of thrift, and to cla.s.s both industry and thrift among the merely "economic virtues." To this school must belong the settlement worker who spoke of thrift as "ordinarily rather demoralizing." [1] But another objection to thrift which has been made by settlement workers is that it was only good for the working cla.s.ses "until their employers discovered that there was a margin to their employees' wages."

Is it true that industry and thrift are merely economic virtues? We instinctively feel that they are something more. One has only to think of a lazy man to get an impression of something essentially contemptible and {109} cowardly. On the other hand the man that loves work and throws himself into it with energy is winning more than material rewards. The thriftless and the extravagant, whether rich or poor, are often mean and self-indulgent, lacking the first quality of the unselfish in lacking self-control. In teaching industry and thrift, therefore,--though these virtues, like others, have an unlovely side,--we may feel that we are dealing with two of the elements out of which not only character but all the social virtues are built.

Nor will the pessimistic theory that the worker must spend as much as possible on indifferent food and housing in order to keep up the rate of wages, bear the light of common sense. It is true that the man who merely h.o.a.rds for the sake of h.o.a.rding, developing no new and higher wants, no clearly defined aims, will still be almost as helpless as the most thriftless. But no one is more helpless against the encroachments of employers than the man who lives from hand to mouth, whose necessities press ever hard upon him, crippling him and crippling those {110} with whom he competes in the open market. Then again, successful cooperation is impossible to the thriftless. The lack of self-control, the lack of power to defer their pleasures, unfits them for combined effort and makes it more difficult for them to be loyal to their fellow-workmen. Visitors can advocate thrift, therefore, for both economic and moral reasons.

There is a use of the word "thrift" that may help us to realize its best meaning. Gardeners call a plant of vigorous growth a "thrifty"

plant. Let us bear this in mind in our charitable work, and remember that anything that hinders vigorous growth is essentially unthrifty.

Thrift means something more than the h.o.a.rding of small savings. In fact, saving at the expense of health, or training, or some other necessary preparation for successful living, is always unthrifty. It is unthrifty to live in damp rooms to secure cheaper rent; it is unthrifty to put aside money for burial insurance when the children are underfed; it is unthrifty either to buy patent medicines or to neglect early symptoms of disease in order to save a doctor's bill; above all, it {111} is unthrifty to take young children away from school and force them to become breadwinners. Thrift, therefore, includes spending as well as saving.

Charity workers often complain that, in the poor families known to them, thrift is impossible, because there is nothing to save. More often than not this means that their relations with the poor have ceased as soon as acute distress is past, and that they have stopped visiting at the very time when improved material conditions have made the best friendly services possible.

Any attempt to divide the poor into cla.s.ses is to be deprecated, because human beings are not easily cla.s.sified. But, speaking roughly, and using the cla.s.sification merely as a temporary convenience, charity workers will find that the thrift habit divides the poor into three cla.s.ses. First, those who are very thrifty, and this is a large cla.s.s.

Misfortune may overtake the most provident during long periods of industrial depression, or they may become temporarily dependent through sickness or some unforeseen accident. The second cla.s.s includes {112} those who are willing to work when work is plentiful, but who have little persistence or resourcefulness in procuring work. In the busy season they spend lavishly on cheap pleasures and soon become applicants for relief in troubled times. Debt has no terrors for them, and, from their point of view, it is useless to save because they cannot save enough to make it seem worth while. In the third cla.s.s we find the lazy and vicious, who shirk work, and, living by their wits, are better off in bad times than in good. "It is with the second cla.s.s that the charitable may work lasting harm or lasting good. To let them feel that no responsibility rests with them during the busy season, and that all the responsibility rests with us to relieve their needs when the busy season is over, rapidly pushes them into the third cla.s.s. To teach them, on the other hand, the power and c.u.mulative value of the saving habit, and so get them beforehand with the world, is to place them in the first cla.s.s and soon render them independent of our material help." [2]

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A characteristic of the second cla.s.s is the habit of buying on credit.

The book at the corner grocery not only tempts the purchaser into buying unnecessary things, but the prices are higher than the market rate for inferior goods. A student in a university laboratory, who is also a friendly visitor, had occasion to use some sugar in one of his experiments, and, being hurried, purchased it from the nearest corner grocery, paying more than the usual price. It proved to be badly adulterated, and the user has been more careful since in advising his poor friends about purchasing provisions. The credit system is the natural outcome of uncertain income, and for that reason is hard to avoid, but in a number of instances it is continued long after the necessity that caused the buyer to ask credit has ceased to exist.

Another and less excusable form of the credit system is buying household goods on the instalment plan. The poor are often teased into this by glib agents. An old woman, whose income was not sufficient to keep her alive, contracted to buy a clock on the instalment plan for $8.00 because she needed one when she {114} occasionally had a day's job of cleaning. When her visitor remonstrated that a dollar clock would have done quite as well, she replied triumphantly, "Yes, but this one is only 25 cents a week!" When payments cannot be made, and the purchaser is threatened with the loss of the goods, it is possible to be too hasty in rushing to the rescue. The Fifteenth Report of the Boston a.s.sociated Charities records such an experience. "A family had purchased furniture upon the instalment plan, when the husband was suddenly deprived of his job. The furniture was about to be seized, when generous sympathizers came to the rescue, and redeemed the articles. Scarcely had the donors time to realize what a financial relief they had been able to give to the troubled family before the same bit of folly was repeated, and 'parlor furniture' was added to the inventory of goods and chattels to be paid for by the week." [3] When instalment men threaten seizure, it is well to find out whether they are acting within the law. They have been known to take advantage of ignorant clients. But the system {115} itself is bad in that it encourages the purchase of unnecessary things, and at a great advance upon cash prices.

When the poor man would borrow, he is often exposed to the impositions of a cla.s.s of unscrupulous money lenders, who violate the laws against usury, but hope to escape punishment or loss through the ignorance of their customers. The pitiful part of it is that the self-respecting poor often fall into their traps. A family in pecuniary straits for the first time is naturally attracted by the specious advertis.e.m.e.nts of the chattel-mortgage companies, which offer to lend money on goods that the borrower keeps in his possession, and promise that all negotiations shall be strictly confidential. This seems an easy way out of present difficulties without loss of self-respect or any painful publicity.

But the terms of the contract are far from easy in reality. Through a system of bonuses, extra fees, or monthly payments for "guaranteeing"

the loan, interest amounting to from 100 per cent to 200 per cent a year is wrung from the borrowers. Bled dry at last, and unable to pay {116} such extortionate interest and the princ.i.p.al too, their goods are seized, and the members of the household become objects of charity.

Whereever these chattel-mortgage companies gain any foothold, many of their victims are applicants for relief. The law usually furnishes ample protection, but the companies flourish through the poor man's ignorance of the law.

As soon as a visitor learns that the goods of a poor family are mortgaged, he should, at once, whether the company is pressing for payment or not, learn the terms of the contract, and get an opinion as to its validity from some friend who is a lawyer. The usual form of contract in Maryland is a six months' mortgage, bearing 6 per cent interest, with the legal charge for recording deducted from the amount advanced to the borrower. But, in addition to this, notes for from $2.00 upward, according to the size of the loan, are made payable monthly to some third party who is supposed to guarantee the loan.

Lawyers advise no payments on these notes, and that princ.i.p.al and legal interest be offered at the expiration of the mortgage. If this offer {117} is refused, the company renders itself liable to damage proceedings in seizing the furniture. In each case, however, it is better to have a lawyer's advice, as the contracts vary, and ignorant men, who thought they were signing a six months' mortgage, have been known to sign a one month's mortgage instead.

The law against usury can protect those who know enough to apply it, but the poor man remains unprovided with any satisfactory means of negotiating a loan. The legal rate of interest is too low to make loans on chattels profitable. The organization, by public-spirited business men, of companies that will be careful in taking risks, and will secure special legislation enabling them to charge not more than a reasonable rate of interest, is the only remedy. Companies like these have been organized successfully in Boston and Buffalo by philanthropists who were also business men and wise enough to realize the importance of placing such loan agencies on an equitable business basis. Several advantages are apparent from the working of these equitable loan companies. Those who cannot {118} properly negotiate a loan are discouraged from applying, because the loans are made with great care. Those who get the loans are fairly dealt with, and are helped at the right time in a way that saves them from becoming applicants for charity. Best of all, the other loan companies are forced to reduce their rate of interest, and offer fairer terms.

The habit of p.a.w.ning goods has never become general among our native population, but among the foreign poor of our large cities it is the common practice; and here, too, the philanthropic p.a.w.nshop, started at the instance of the New York Charity Organization Society, has reduced the percentage charged by other p.a.w.nshops in New York.

This new interest taken by philanthropy in the poor man as borrower is still in the tentative and experimental stage, but there is an encouraging a.n.a.logy between its beginnings and the early history of the savings banks. "It is seldom remembered," says Mrs. Lowell, "that the great scheme of savings banks was originally conceived and put into operation as a means of helping the poor. The two first {119} savings banks were started in Hamburg in 1778, and in Berne in 1787, and both were more or less closely restricted to the use of domestic servants, handicraftsmen and the like. The Hamburg bank was part of the general administration of the poor funds." [4]

When the poor man attempts to save, what inducements have greatest weight with him? First of all, he is likely to save for some definite and immediate object, because he cannot spend in any effective way until he has saved. In teaching shiftless families to put by small sums, therefore, it is well to keep some definite object in view. For instance, persuade the children to save to buy needed clothing, or the parents to save to buy proper clothing, bedding, etc., for the children. This strengthens family affection and leads the way to a bank account later, by showing what money can do.[5]

Next to such immediate inducements to thrift comes the dread of pauper burial, which is a far more influential motive with the poor than the dread of either dependence or privation. {120} Respectability is measured in poor neighborhoods by funerals, and, whether the neighborhood standards of morality and respectability are ours or not, we cannot afford, in our charity work, to ignore them. Extravagant funerals are an evil, and we should use our influence to discourage extravagance, even where it is rooted quite as much in affection as in vanity; but an unsympathetic att.i.tude on the part of the charitable, an inability to understand the neighborhood point of view, has helped to encourage an extravagant form of saving, namely, burial and child insurance.

To enter into a discussion of the merits of industrial insurance, as furnished in this country to the poor, is outside the scope of this book, and the matter is treated quite fully, moreover, in another volume of this series ("The Development of Thrift," by Mary Willc.o.x Brown), but the most enthusiastic advocates of industrial insurance can hardly claim for it that it is an inexpensive form of saving. A very large percentage of industrial policies lapse, and it is a common thing to find that those who have kept up their payments and have {121} become beneficiaries, spend everything on the funeral of the insured.

"Of $200.00 insurance received by one widow, $180.00 was given to the undertaker, and the remaining $20.00 was expended for a mourning outfit for herself. The family were being aided by the Emergency Society at that time." [6] In New York, the agents of the Charity Organization Society regard the following as a typical instance: A woman's husband was insured for $136.00. When he died, she called the same undertaker that had buried a child for them. His charges on the former occasion had been moderate. The woman told him that she wanted a very inexpensive funeral with only one carriage. This was the only instruction that she gave. The undertaker asked whether the deceased was insured, and was told that he was, whereupon he offered to collect the insurance and to pay over to the widow what was left. His bill amounted to $102.50. These instances do not indicate any collusion, of course, between the undertakers and the insurance companies.

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We have seen in another chapter that sickness is one of the most persistent causes of distress, and only in rare instances does a death occur that has not been preceded by weeks and often months of sickness.

The poor man needs sick benefits more than burial or life insurance, and the children of the poor stand in need of many other things besides decent burial. In fact, the money spent in child insurance, which can be of no possible benefit to the child, is often needed to protect the child's health or provide for its education. These should be a parent's first care from no sordid motive, and yet it is a legitimate view to regard children as an investment. The poor man has a right to expect support from his children when he is no longer able to work, and to neglect their best interests is to cripple his own future.

The beneficial societies and fraternal orders furnish a means of saving for sick benefits, but they are of such varying degrees of merit and trustworthiness that it is impossible to recommend them without qualification. They have not gained the same position that the {123} friendly societies hold in England, partly, perhaps, because they are not subject in America to the same legal restrictions and official inspection.

Though the savings banks are open to the objection that money is too easily withdrawn from them, and is not, therefore, always available at the time of greatest need, yet, after making every allowance for this, the savings banks remain one of the safest and best means of putting by small savings. Another way of saving, which is not open to the objection of too easy withdrawals, is the purchase of shares in a good building and loan a.s.sociation.

Some banks provide facilities for small savings by selling special stamps of small denominations, and, in several cities, charities have established stamp saving societies to promote the saving habit, especially among children. When $5.00 has been saved in this way, a bank account should be opened. One visitor has found that, in getting children to save, it helps to have a stamp-saving card of one's own, and show it. As a means of teaching children to save, visitors should encourage the {124} introduction of stamp savings into our public schools.

Another way to promote small savings is to send volunteer collectors among the poor, who will visit certain families weekly, and collect the five and ten cent pieces until enough has been saved to open a bank account. This work may be combined with friendly visiting, though the collector must visit at regular intervals, and in many cases it is better for the friendly visitor to visit at irregular intervals. One visitor always leaves a small bank with her family when she goes away in summer, and the unlocking of this on her return has become a family ceremony.

Saving for fuel becomes an admirable object lesson, when it is used to establish the saving habit and not allowed to stop with the mere purchase. During the summer, families can be encouraged to put by small sums weekly, and, instead of buying coal in small quant.i.ties at very high prices during the winter, can save more than half the cost by buying a ton or more early in the season.

In teaching thrift in a careless and shiftless {125} home, we can get many valuable suggestions from more thrifty families in the same neighborhood, or with the same income. To effectively advise about expenditure, one must know the family budget of receipts and expenditures, and often this is more than the family knows. Learning to take note of the items is the first lesson in thrift. The most important thing, however, is our own att.i.tude of mind. "We must not get into the habit of saying, 'Poor things; they can do nothing.' We should rid ourselves of the habit of treating them, not as men and women, people who can look after themselves with strength in their muscles and brain-power in their heads, but as animals whom we allow to live in society along with ourselves, taking for granted that they are deprived of, or cannot exert, those faculties which go to make up the strength and fibre of men and women. I a.s.sure you, those who are inclined to take a sentimental turn have great temptations put before them to treat the poor as if they were dependent animals." [7]

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Collateral Readings: "The Development of Thrift," Miss Mary Willc.o.x Brown. "The Standard of Life," Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet, especially the essay on "The Burden of Small Debts." Annual Reports of the Workingmen's Loan a.s.sociation, Boston; the Provident Loan a.s.sociation, New York; and the Provident Loan Company, Buffalo. For stamp savings, see reports of New York Charity Organization Society (Committee on Penny Provident Fund).

[1] See Report on the Questions drawn up by Present Residents in our College Settlements, p. 17. Published by the Church Social Union, Boston.

[2] Leaflet on "Summer Savings," published by the Baltimore Charity Organization Society.