plicants' condition is assumed. It is taken for granted that this condition is unusual and requires unusual remedies, and that, in the plan of relief proposed, questions of cost, time, and labor do not enter. Generally speaking, it may be said that unusual forms of relief shall be given in exceptional cases only. The danger in work of this kind lies in the fact that the unusual so readily becomes the usual, the uncommon merges into the common. Care must be exercised that, in our efforts to be of service, we do not forget those simpler and more natural remedies which lie at our door and with which we are more conversant. The procuring of employment makes less of a drain on the self-respect of the beneficiary than the grant of a considerable sum of money, and in the long run has less of a tendency to undermine those human traits that make for character.

When all has been said, however, there still remains the fact that exceptional conditions require exceptional measures, and that it behooves every relief society which desires to do its work conscientiously and thoroughly to use every means within its power to give that adequate relief to its beneficiaries which will prevent a recurrence of distress among them in the future.

XII.

The Principles of the Associated Charities.

PRINCIPLES AND METHOD IN CHARITY.

BY EDWARD T. DEVINE,

GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE CHARITY ORANIZATION SOCIETY OF NEW YORK

CITY.

The principle of organized or associated charity is introduced where the task gets too big for unorganized, disassociated charity to perform; but it rests upon this spirit of kindliness, of courtesy, of human charity, because of the rarity of which Thomas Hood lamented, but because of the glorious abundance of which, unrecognized as it sometimes is, I feel that we should sing aloud with thanksgiving and praise.

If the world-wide desire to help others can once be effectively organized and associated and directed, we shall see the end of half the world's misery. We organize not because people are doing too much and should be restrained, but because, working in the dark and at cross purposes, their efforts are thrown away and fruitless. We organize charity, not because we are pained at the success of fraud and imposture and like the fun of exposing and punishing them, but because we are pained to see a child suffer for lack of resources which are worse than wasted in creating pauperism and chronic dependPeople sometimes think that the negative side of our work is over-emphasized; but I tell you it is not negative work, but the most positive and preventive work to divert a dollar from the manufacture of vagrancy to such other errands as the training of children, the supply of adequate relief for a family in trouble, the preservation of the integrity of a family where money can do it, as it sometimes can. The principle of associated charities, in one word, is that individual citizens who want to be charitable, and who are charitable, shall

band themselves together in a voluntary association to make their charity effective, to make it really change things, to remove the causes of destitution, to prevent in individual cases the recurrence of dependence, to insure that children shall not grow up paupers, that begging shall not remain a profitable industry while real misfortune bears alone its insupportable burdens, that every one who has a dollar or an hour to spare shall have a chance to spend his time or his money or both, under reasonable guarantees that they are not doing harm, that they are not wasted, but that they are doing good.

The method of the associated charities is that of the broad sunlight of knowledge. There are some things in any given case of distress which we cannot find out and others which are of no use to us; but there are a number of other things which we can find out and which do have a direct bearing on the course to be taken. In the name of common sense let us find out about those things. The inquiry which is made by the Associated Charities, when application is made for assistance, is not in the smallest degree for the sake of detecting imposture, protecting the pockets of the charitable, or dividing applicants into the two classes of the worthy and unworthy, deserving and undeserving, the helpable and the unhelpable. The purpose of the inquiry is to find out what the trouble is, to find out precisely how to remedy it, to find out what caused it, to find out how those causes, if possible, may also be removed. The investigation is not for the sake of the contributor, it is not for the sake of the fund, it is not for the sake of the annual report, it is not for the sake of the investigator. It is for the sake of the individual who is in trouble and for the sake of others like him who may be brought into trouble if we do the wrong thing. I suppose that the analogy of the physician may have been overworked. But investigation is precisely analogous to the diagnosis of the physician. There are patients foolish enough when they consult a physician to mislead him in regard to the causes of their affliction, particularly if a confession of the causes becomes a source of personal embarrassment; but the majority of those who seek a cure are frank, even garrulous in their anxiety to put the whole case before their advisers, and the skilful diagnostician gets the truth from both classes.

Something like this is really what takes place when the expert visitor of an associated charities calls upon a family reported to be in distress. Some shrink from exposing the faults and weaknesses

and misfortunes which have led to the destitution. The great majority, however, are frank to the point of embarrassment. They tell things which are relevant and things which are not. They answer questions readily enough. No unnecessary curiosity into private and remote relations ever manifests itself on the part of a visitor fit for his work. Confidences are waived aside as often as urged; and the interview is as brief, as definite, as searching, as is necessary for the purpose in hand. No other course is possible, if any practical result is to be obtained. To give without knowledge is not only unwise it is wicked. It is administering an opiate without diagnosis, to quiet pain, instead of ascertaining the nature of the disease in order that it may be cured. That is what we mean by investigation.

Records are kept, to make future investigation of the same applicants unnecessary, in order to assist citizens, churches, and relief agencies of various kinds to help intelligently, discriminatingly, and efficiently. That is the use of registration; and investigation and registration are the first essentials- by no means the only essentials of the methods of organized charity.

Its aim, however, is relief- relief and restoration in the interests of the individual who suffers, and in the interests of the community which suffers when any of its members are in distress. Its aim is relief, prompt, efficient, generous. It believes even in unnecessary gifts, in the sense in which Mr. Riis's gift of a parrot to the old Indian woman, which he describes in the May Century, was an unnecessary gift. It believes in immediate relief of precisely the right kind, in the destruction of red tape and the substitution of personal relations, in the use of brains under the promptings of heart, in an honest investigation which leads to useful knowledge of the essential facts. We were warned in the conference yesterday morning that in any statement of the methods of associated charities we should not omit to say that emergent and obvious destitution actual suffering from hunger and cold is to be relieved instantly, without waiting for prolonged investigation, in the course of which the hungry may starve and the halffrozen applicant may complete the process. I hesitate to say it. I should like to think that it might be taken for granted; but, since some think it necessary to say it, I say it. The principles and methods of the associated charities permit that a hungry person

shall be fed while he is still hungry, and that one who is without shelter and adequate clothing shall be warmed and sheltered before he is frozen to death. Investigation is good, but it is not a satisfactory substitute for emergent relief.

THE STORY OF JOHN AND MARY BAKER.

BY ERNEST P. BICKNELL,

GENERAL SUPRINTENDENT OF THE BUREAU OF CHARITIES, CHICAGO.

I am going to tell you a little story about John and Mary Baker. I hope, if there is any one here by the name of Baker, that he will not take any offence at this. I told this story just once before to an audience, and a lady named Baker in the back of the room came up and said that she was no relation to the Mrs. Baker of my story.

John and Mary Baker lived in a little country town in Southern Wisconsin. When the World's Fair was being laid out and the great buildings were going up, a young man who was a friend of John Baker went down to Chicago and got a job of work on the Fair grounds. John Baker was a good carpenter; and his friend wrote that everybody could get work at good pay, and that he had better come down.

So John came down, and brought Mary and the two babies. He got work and steady pay. When the Fair was finished, there followed a terrible industrial depression. John Baker lost his job, and had an awful time in getting another. He went up and down, and looked at the half-finished buildings; but the whole town was over. built, and there was nothing for him to do. His savings gradually wasted away; and after a while he had to give up his flat for which he was paying fifteen dollars in a nice neighborhood, and move into another place where he could rent rooms for ten dollars in a neighborhood not so good. He went on struggling and doing what he could in the way of odd jobs, and Mary took in a couple of boarders for a while. They managed to get along for a year or two that way.