The Problem of Charity : Part 1

Girls and Women
by Harriet E. Paine

(Page 9 of 17)

I suppose every large-hearted girl wishes to do some work which will add to the happiness of others, and most girls would like to do a little, at least, outside of their own immediate circle. It seems to me that the most beautiful charity is always that which is done within one's own circle. There is the personal giving, the real denial of ourselves for others, the doing of the duties which come to us rather than of those we have fancifully chosen. And these duties are done for love.

Do you remember how Mrs. Pardiggle in "Bleak House" tried to interest Esther and Ada in some great schemes for doing good by wholesale, and how Esther modestly answered that they hardly felt equal to such great things, but that they hoped if they were careful to do all they could for those immediately about them their circle would gradually widen? This is the ideal way to do good. You help your neighbor simply without any pretense or self-consciousness. She helps her neighbor, and so on. There need be no break in the chain from lowest to highest.

Mrs. Whitney has taught beautiful lessons of this kind in her stories, emphasizing the theory of "next." I have often thought this was the only kind of charity which did not injure the giver; for the moment we try to help those perceptibly below us we are apt to be condescending and to feel a secret pride. Probably this inward satisfaction accounts for the readiness of many people to undertake forms of missionary work, though they are by no means thoughtful of those around them. There has often been bitter criticism of foreign missions to the heathen on this ground. Part of it is, no doubt, just. But as bitter criticism might be made of much noble work at home, like that of the Associated Charities, for instance.

In Boston, it is said, there is not one woman of any standing in society who is not interested in some charity. Most of their work is probably genuine. It is done from a sincere wish to do the best thing - very likely in many cases simply to ease the importunate New England conscience, yet also, no doubt, with the hope of relieving suffering. But we can hardly hope that much of it is ideal since the true charity is "Not what we give but what we share."

The women who are readiest to give their money and even their time to the desperately poor do not like to share their pew in church with some quiet person whom they consider below them in the social scale. Some one tells of a woman who spent all her time in going about among the poor giving practical help, but who really cared so little about those she helped that every day on her return from her rounds she amused the family by satirizing her pensioners. She could not love them, perhaps, and it may still have been an excellent thing for her to help them. Nevertheless, this was not the ideal charity.

There are a great many girls who would like to do some definite charitable work. They would like to be the founders of a great charity. They are ambitious, and their ambition is, on the whole, a noble one. Some of them are so sweet and generous to everybody about them that I really think they might be trusted to do something on a large scale. One of them might even oversee an orphan asylum; yet I do not think she could be such a blessing to little children as is a woman I know who is the matron of such an institution, for this woman had an unsympathetic step-mother, and she learned through a lonely childhood how to pity motherless children, and I heard a thoughtful woman say of her orphan asylum, "It was a shabby place, but beautiful to me because there was such a motherly atmosphere about it."

Others of these girls are too intolerant of everybody outside their own particular set to be allowed to do any work for the poor except to give money, and even then there is danger they may be so lifted up by a sense of their own goodness that perhaps it would be better for them personally to spend the money extravagantly, for then they would certainly be ashamed of themselves. Nevertheless, the poor need their money, so perhaps it is better they should give it.

This brings me to another point. In the country it is still possible to keep to the ideal neighborly charity, but in the city there are quarters where the misery is wholesale, and wholesale scientific methods must be applied to relieve it. The Associated Charities in Boston, for instance, do a kind of work which must be done unless we are willing to sit down and let all the innocent suffer with the guilty. And many of the leaders have the ideal spirit, and they hold up ideal standards for the visitors of the poor, that is, they ask us to visit the poor with love in our hearts.

The work to be done in cities is so enormous that every woman of leisure who feels the desire to help should certainly be encouraged to do so, and I am even inclined to think that where so well-organized a system exists as in the Associated Charities, it is a saving of energy for her to put herself under its direction though not so wholly as to allow her no means or leisure for her personal sphere of action to expand naturally.

As long as we try to do the nearest duties there will always be failure enough to keep us humble and to make it safe for us spiritually to undertake something beyond. A girl tries to help her brothers, and instead of admiring her for it they frankly tell her how far she falls short. But if she does a tithe as much for the poor she is likely to get some thanks, more or less sincere, and all her circle of friends admire her. This pleasant encouragement does her no harm as long as she has the antidote of the family criticism, so I would let every ardent woman have some outside work, and the Associated Charities will find room for every worker. Some women can help children by teaching them and amusing them, and this is the most efficient kind of work, for it prevents crime and misery. Some can sew for the poor, some can cook, some can manage tenement houses as Octavia Hill has done.

Copyright, 1890 by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., All rights reserved.