BOOKS.
CHARITYORGANIZATION.*
Ire Fletcher's play, The Pilgrim, the following dialogue occurs ALINDA; What poor attend my charity to-day, wench P. JITLErrA : Of all sorts, madam; your open-handed bounty Makes 'em flock every hour ; some worth your pity, But others that have made a trade of begging. ALINDA: Wench, if they ask it truly, I mist give it :
It takes away the holy use of charity To examine wants."
For forty-five years the Charity Organization Society has been engaged in an arduous struggle to combat the economio heresy enunciated by the heroine in Fletcher's drama. In 1868-69 a body of social reformers, whose mere names con- stituted a sufficient guarantee for their ardent philanthropy, banded themselves together in order, if possible, to cheek the evils caused by the action of other no less ardent but more impulsive and lees thoughtful brother-philanthropists. Edward Denison, himself a leading apostle of enlightened humanity, lamented his inability to "get one honest news- paper to write down promiscuous charity." The history of these efforts has now been admirably told by one who can speak with unquestionable authority on all matters connected with social reform. Mrs. Bosanquet very rightly states in her preface that the chief interest of her in- etructive work turns on the discussion of the principles which the Society has persistently sought to translate into action. Of these principles, perhaps the most important is that no good charitable work can be done without preliminary inquiry and careful discrimination between the different classes of those applying for relief. Hence the Society has always held that the systematic visitation of the poor must form the basis for any effective scheme having for its object the dispensation of charity. 'Visitation was, indeed, practised before the Society came into existence, but it was of a spasmodic and' wholly unmethodical description, and often did more harm than good. A clergyman in the East End of London, writing in 1877, said that "a court in his parish might go unvisited from year's end to year's end until some special calamity 'befell it, such as a police case, &e. Then there was a swoop of rival charitable eagles from all sorts of religious quarters to settle on the body." The character • Booka Work in Tondos, 1869-1914. By Helen Boennquot, London; Tohn Murray. (5a not]
and methods of the early Victorian visitors have been immortalized by Dickens in the person of Mrs. Pardiggle, whose blatant and obtrusive philanthropy was in itself suffi- cient to defeat its own object and to excite the resentment of the poor. A large number of charitable associations were at work, but there was no co-operation or cohesion amongst them. The liberality of the rich had resulted in the "paralysis of all local self-help." Imposture, mendicancy, and "sheer shameless pauperism" were steadily increasing. " Every possible device had been adopted for turning charity into an unmixed evil to those whom it affected."
It must here suffice to give a solitary instance of the class of evil which the Society sought to combat. Londoners whose memories can carry them back some thirty to forty years will surely remember the poor children who often accompanied Italian organ-grinders, and whose youth and attractive appear- ance were commonly exploited to excite the compassion of the charitable. The Charity Organization Society instituted a searching inquiry into the conditions under which these children were employed. It was elicited that they were the victims of a " traffic as barbarous as any slave-trade." They were bought by persons known as padroni (masters) from their parents in Italy, and marched through France, sometimes dying of sheer exhaustion on the way. They were grossly maltreated on arrival in this country, and were, of course, not allowed to retain any of their earnings. In the case of one padrone a sum of no less than £12,000 had been amassed from the proceeds of this infamous traffic. As the result of the efforts of the Society the trade was practically suppressed. A number of padroni were arrested, and in many cases sent to prison. The children themselves were banded over to the Italian Consular authorities and were sent back to Italy.
The Society, which from the nature of its work was necessarily forced into adopting from its inception an attitude of militancy, also engaged in a vigorous campaign against those associations which, sometimes by reason of negligent management and sometimes owing to fraudulent intent, were undeserving of public sympathy. London was "infested by hordes of fraudulent societies, impostors, and begging-letter writers ; to clear the field of these was essential to the culti- vation of genuine Charity."
The work which the Society undertook was, indeed, colossal. The attempt to direct into one broad and beneficent channel all the petty rivulets which it found meandering aim- lessly over the vast Sahara of London pauperism was sure to evoke bitter opposition. It obtained, indeed, the un- grudging support of many whose names were known and honoured throughout the length and breadth of the land— the late Lord Shaftesbury, Mr. Ruskin, Cardinal Manning, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Miss Ootavia Hill, and many others. But, broadly speaking, it may be said that every man's hand was against it. The warm-hearted and unthinking philanthropist thought that the principles adopted by the Society were "not according to the true spirit of Christianity, nor the manly and generous character of Englishmen." The attempt to unmask the proceedings of fraudulent individuals and associations, who on false pretences managed to extract and misspend "at least from £300,000 to £400,000 a year from the pockets of the benevolent," naturally evoked the bitter hostility of the very numerous class who were interested in the perpetration of existing abuses. The rising tide of State Socialism, and the fact that the influence of the old orthodox political economists was waning, alike contributed to create a public opinion unfavourable to the reception of those principles which the Society regarded as fundamental. Mr. Mundell& declared that "political economy must be corrected by facts," a Delphic utterance which meant but too often in practice that facts were to be distorted by the light of unreasoning sentiment. These combined causes rendered the Society the object of much vehement and very undeserved obloquy. One writer regarded the Society as the " Scourge of Humanity." A Socialist newspaper declared that" the minions of this 'close corporation,' for it is nothing less, dissect, torture, and mock the distress and misery abounding on all sides," and another newspaper representing the interests of Labour denounced the Society as a " hoary-beaded old fraud." Manifestly that indiscriminate charity (ineonsulta donatio) which has been persistently condemned by thinkers as far back as the days of Seneca is wholly divorced from the more generous virtue which, under the same name, was commended by the Apostle St. Paul.
Neither was the Society free from the embarrassments inseparable from internal dissension. As fresh incidents in the work of social reform developed, difficult questions con- stantly arose as to the attitude which the Society should assume. The more active members, who generally appear in the end to have gained the upper hand, were persistently in favour of accepting fresh responsibilities and of enlarging the scope of the Society's functions. The more conservative and cautious elements in the Society held back, and, in the words of Lord Napier and Ettrick, feared the opposition they would excite and the enmity they would incur if they were "to take a prominent attitude in the advocacy of social innovations." Even so courageous a reformer as the veteran Lord Shaftesbury declared at one time that he could not "remain a member of a body so fearfully ambitious."
Nevertheless, in spite of external opposition and internal dissension, the Society, under the very able guidance of Mr. Loch, held together, and endeavoured to mitigate the vagaries of a public which, as one of its members put it, was "full of bad impulses." It would be an exaggeration to say that any very marked success has been achieved in the direction Of correcting those impulses. No such success was to be antici- pated. A Society which damped the enthusiasm of the benevolent by alleging that, in the words of Canon Barnett, the East of London had been "blighted " by Mansion Rouse Funds, could scarcely expect to win popular favour. More- over, the Society fell on evil days. It was brought into existence at a time when even stern economists began to recognize that the principles of Individualism, in spite of their unquestionable merits, had occasionally been carried to excess, and when the main error of the Manchester School of politicians, which consisted in an undue neglect of social reform, was becoming daily more apparent. The Charity Organization Society was, therefore, necessarily to some extent swept along with the flowing tide. It had to accept measures, such as free meals for schoolchildren and the in- discriminate grant of old-age pensions, which ran diametrically opposite to its most cherished principles. Nevertheless, the members of the Society held manfully on their way, and it cannot be doubted that in doing so they performed a most valuable public service. They have effected the salvage of some useful fragments which remain from the wreck of political economy. They have prevented the invaluable prin- ciples of self-help and self-reliance from being totally submerged by the wave of -unreflecting sophistry which has of late years swept over the country. They have achieved some considerable success in promoting methodicalinquiry, and in securing co-operation between State assistance and private charity. It is more than probable that as time goes on the beneficent nature of -their action and the soundness of their general principles will receive ever-increasing, albeit tardy, recognition from a public which is somewhat too prone to avow its allegiance over-hastily to attractive, but often highly fallacious, dogma. Mr. Loch and his associates may rest well content with the ungrudging eulogy bestowed on their work by one of the moat eminent of modern philanthropists. " I would rather," Miss °davit]. Hill said, in answering a warm tribute which had been paid to her unceasing exertions on behalf of the poor, "rest any claim for gratitude of the poor I may have on that portion of any work which I share with the much-abused Charity Organization Society than any other— namely, that I have not shrank from saying with them, what no one wishes to hear, and which yet is true, that too many of the money gifts to the poor of London just now are doing more
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