Friendly Visiting among the Poor; a Handbook for Charity Workers

Bibliographic Data

ID9708326
AuthorsHelen Bosanquet, Mary E Richmond
Year1899
Volume9
Issue34
Pages226
Publication date1899-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Economic Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0133 • E-ISSN: 1468-0297
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2956804
OpenAlexW2017806965
LanguageEN
Citations received31

to tracing this gradual development of interest in the poor and unfortunate, he would find, of course, that facts have a tantalizing way of moving in zigzags whenever one is anxious that they should move forward in a straight line; but he would probably find also that, in the earlier attempts of the novel writer to pict- ure the poor, they were drawn as mere pup- pets on which the richly endowed heroes and heroines exercised their benevolence.Very likely he would discover that, when at last the poor began to take an important part in the.action of the story, we were permitted to see them at first only through a haze of senti- mentality, so that, allowing for great advances in the art of novel writing between the time of Richardson and the time of Dickens, we still should find the astonishing characterizations of " Pamela " reflected in the impossible virtues and melodramatic vices of Dickens* poor people.To Miss Edgeworth and Scott first, perhaps, and to George Eliot most of all, we should find ourselves indebted for faithful studies of plain people,studies made with an eye single to the object, and leaving, therefore, no unlovely trait slurred over or excused, yet giving us that perfect understanding of every-day people which is the only true basis of sympathy with them.In America we are indebted to such conscientious artists as Miss Jewett and Octave Thanet for a similar enlargement of our sympathies through their life-like pictures of the less sophisticated people of our own time.An even more recent development would be found in what is called the " sociological " novel.Monstrous and misshapen as this must seem to us often, if considered as a work of art, it would have to be reckoned with in any investigation of the treatment of poverty in fiction.Turning to the treatment of poverty in fact, it is surely not altogether fanciful to think that we can trace a similar development,the march of the plain and common people into the foreground of the charitable consciousness.Here, too, the facts will not always travel in straight lines, and the great souls of earlier ages will be found to have anticipated our best thinking; but usually the world has failed in FRIENDLY VISITING AMONG THE POOR any effort to adopt their high standards.Speaking roughly, several centuries of chari- table practice, in the English world at least, are fairly well summed up in the doggerel verses of that sixteenth-century divine, quoted by Hobson, who counselled his flock, " Yet cease not to give Without any regard ; Though the beggars be wicked, Thou shalt have thy reward."The spirit of the mediaeval church, too, en- couraged charitable giving in the main " as a species of fire insurance."The poor, when they were thought of at all, were too likely to be regarded as a means of saving the giver's soul.This view of poverty is either quite dead or dying, but the sentimental view, which succeeded it, is still very common.We are still inclined to take a conven- tional attitude toward the poor, seeing them through the comfortable haze of our own excellent intentions, and content to know that we wish them well, without being at any great pains to know them as they really are.In other words, our intentions are good, but they Turning from these more general considera- tions, it is proposed, in this book, to treat of various aspects of the home life of the poor as lO FRIENDLY VISITING AMONG THE POOR affected by charity.At the very beginning, however, it may be well to inquire, Who are the poor ?If this were a study of the needs of the rich, we should realize at once that they are a difficult class to generalize about ; rich people are understood to differ widely from each other in tastes, aims, virtues, and vices.The great, conglomerate class of the richwhich is really no social class at allhas included human beings as different as Lord Shaftesbury and Mr. Barney Barnato.But it is the very same with the poor ; and any effort to go among them for the purpose of helping them that does not frankly recognize this wMe diversity, must end in failure.The charity worker must rid him- self, first of all, of the conventional picture of the poor as always either very abjectly needy, or else very abjectly grateful.*He must under- stand that an attitude of patronage toward the poor man is likely to put the patron in as ridicu- lous a position as Mr. Pullet, when he addressed his nephew, Tom Tulliver, as "Young Sir."Upon which George Eliot remarks : " A boy's sheepishness is by no means a sign of overmas- tering reverence ; and while you are makingWhy not interfere effectively ?Why not do our best to remove the causes of need ?Many earnest workers in charity feel that social conditions could be wonderfully im- proved if, to every family in distress, could instinctive or acquired, this may still stand.We cannot be tactful with those whose point of view we fail to understand, or do not even strive to understand.The best helps toward such an understanding, and the best training for charitable work, must come from life itself.If we take no interest in the joys and sorrows of human beings, if we show ; the principles involved in spending and saving ; the principles of effectual relief ; the relations of the church to the poor,these will be considered in turn.Necessarily, in a book of this size, the attempt must be to suggest lines of inquiry and points of view, FRIENDLY VISITING AMONG THE POOR rather than to treat adequately any one part of the subject

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