SOS

“ Now, we have obligated and pledged ourselves together not to let any sick or other disabled person suffer for the want of necessary attention, and the only thing we require of you is, if any other person should move into the country and locate, and should be taken down and confined through sickness or any other cause, that you help in furnishing such aid and [Pg 14] necessaries as they may need until they are able to again take care of themselves. ”

“ One five-minutes inadvertence will upset the painful work of years, and carry one away as with a flood. When I did not know this, I was constantly falling. Society through all its parts is full of traps and pitfalls for such as I, and the only refuge is in flight. ”

“ Poverty and sickness, twin sisters that so often go hand-in-hand, brought here their victims to ask for aid; and those who dwelt hard by paid little heed to pallid out-patients seeking their daily portion of advice, some on crutches, some leaning upon the arms of friends, some in cabs. ”

“ Who breathe of sympathy to those who are suffering, and relieve with the cup of sympathy the sorrowing ones of earth?” I do not think I have quoted that exactly, but it has been the motto of this Society ever to protect those who needed their protection; to care for those who needed their care and their bounty, and to-night we find the result of this care and protection, in the graduates of the Class of ’90-’91. ”

“ We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment.... The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts.... ”

“ I am sure the public at large will participate in, and mitigate, your sorrows; I assure you, my love, my sincerest endeavours have ever been directed to your welfare.—As we shall not meet any more in this world, I sincerely hope we shall do so in the world to come. ”

“ In the crisis of a disease, to mean well and lose the patient,—in the height of a tempest, to mean well and wreck the ship,—in a great moral conflict, to mean well and lose the battle,—these are things to be lamented. ”

“ Verily, if temperance pledges, tracts, and wash-tubs could save humanity, we had had the millennium long ago. Good, religious and well-meaning people talk very serenely, and with rare unction, about engaging in ‘rescue work.’ I doubt much if they know what they talk about. Have they ever thrown themselves into the very existence of a drink or vice-possessed man or woman? ”

“ We shall endeavour also to assist, as far as we have ability, the Wives and Children of persons who are undergoing sentences, by endeavouring to obtain for them employment, or otherwise rendering them help. Hundreds of this class fall into the deepest distress and demoralisation through want of friendly aid in the forlorn circumstances in which they find themselves on the conviction of relatives on whom they have been dependent for a livelihood, or for protection and direction in the ordinary affairs of life. ”

“ One society, formed for a distinct object, and finding a case needing quite a distinct mode of relief or assistance, could here at once ascertain where to transfer the case, or what the conditions of help were in another association. Here, individuals having difficult, perplexing, or doubtful cases of charity on hand would ascertain what they should do with them, and whether they were merely supporting a person now dependent on an association from such an office. ”

“ It is necessary to take into account all phases of the social emergency. The question is not merely one of physiology, or pathology, or diseases, or wages, or industrial education, or recreation, or knowledge, or commercial organization, or legal regulation, or lust, or social customs, or cultivation of will power, or religion. It is all of this and more. The danger is that we shall see only one or two sides of a many-sided problem. A solution may appear adequate because it leaves essential factors out of consideration. ”

“ But in many, perhaps most, of the families whom the social assistant attempts to befriend, there is a call for relief, for financial assistance, for money, food, coal, and clothes. This appeal like most medical appeals is apt to take the form of an emergency. ”

“ Then when temporary safety is seemingly assured, thoughts for the safety of others assert themselves. The desire for the safety of the loved ones—a wife, a husband, a child, a parent, a brother, a friend—becomes an agony. ”

“ The purpose of public charities, and the way to discover and apply to them, ought to be posted at the corner of every street. What do we know of public dinners and eloquent sermons and neatly printed circulars? Every now and then the ease of some forlorn creature (generally of a woman) who has committed suicide, within five minutes’ walk, perhaps, of an institution which would have opened its doors to her, appears in the newspapers, shocks you dreadfully, and is then forgotten again. ”

“ For many years I have worked amongst you, in sickness and in health, in prosperity and adversity, and your welfare is dear to me. Sometimes I have felt discouraged, acutely sensible of failure and disappointment. ”

“ The misery of the poor I had many occasions to be an eyewitness of, and sometimes, also, of the charitable assistance that some pious people daily gave to such, sending them relief and supplies, both of food, physic, and other help, as they found they wanted. ”

“ Two noble women of the Society of Friends have lately 435 been taking the gauge of suffering and misery in our land, visiting the hospitals at every accessible point, pausing in our great cities, and going in their purity to those midnight orgies where mere children are being trained for a life of vice and infamy. ”

“ Should you inquire for a family which has become compromised, you are told that “they are gone to the mountains,” and you understand at once that they are infected; and when numbers are daily dying about you, in reply to your desire to learn the amount of the evil, you are answered that there are so many, or so many “accidents.” ”

“ The process of tracing chains, of looking off and away from the patient's present pain, sorrow or [Pg 157] poverty for its causes and relations, tends to make us look over the head of the present fact. We all know people who always look over our heads when they talk, and we know how little they get into touch with us. We must not stare into the physical, economic, or mental background so constantly or so fixedly that we cannot see the present fact before us. ”

“ The cause of Social Service arouses that moral enthusiasm which cannot be bought and cannot be resisted, and which carries in itself the pledge of victory. The terrible magnitude and urgency of the evils with which we have to cope cannot be overstated. ”

“ Apart from all considerations connected with the man's own welfare, and the happiness of his family, there were those which were inseparable from the common safety, in the present state of the country. ”

“ Remember that your presence in the wards is only tolerated in order that you may learn to minister to the relief of those who in future days may need assistance, and that you are bound to exercise the greatest care, lest, by any harshness of manner, unkindness of remark, or roughness of conduct, you aggravate the distress of those poor sufferers who are now to form the subjects of your observation. ”

“ Others, consecrated to various works of charity, afford effective aid to eveiy physical and moral misery in the numberless houses wherein they tend the sick, the infirm and the aged, the orphan, the deranged, and the incurable, without allowing the danger or unpleasantness of their work or the ingratitude they may meet with to dampen their courage or check their ardor. ”

“ While I have done my duty from a worldly point of view, by my wife and family, I have been persistently injuring many hundreds of my fellow beings, and showing no consideration whatever for their moral or physical welfare. ”

“ I might tell you that there are certain persons—one in particular—who are deeply interested in your welfare. But what's the use? I will only tell you that there is one person whom, for years, it has been my aim and purpose to crush ”

“ They came openly, frankly and ready to stand the consequences, ready to give their own lives.
In diagnosing the true nature of our social disease I cannot condemn those who, through no fault of their own, are suffering from a wide-spread malady. ”

“ To discover groundless fears, then, fears of poverty, of ridicule, of marital unhappiness, and to cure them by bringing them to light, is the task that I think every social worker should consider as part of her job, in so far as she is connected with medical work, as she must be always so far as I see. ”

“ But practice assigns the most contradictory things to different people at different times as means to their welfare. What is welfare in one place, is disaster in another, and vice versa. Understanding, or reason, has nothing else to do in the matter than to number these various welfares as they are made real by sense perceptions in various persons and times, and degrees of intensity, in the order in which they appear, and thus to distinguish the small from the great, the essential from the unessential, the concrete from the general. ”

“ Indeed, when we call to mind the necessarily unguarded and unsuspecting intercourse and domestic privacy into which the medical attendant must, in many instances, be admitted,—the distressing scenes of dangerous disease,—of deathbeds,—of mental alienation,—in which he is imperatively called on to invoke the resources of mental and moral discipline, and of religious firmness and consolation ”

“ Do you spend much of your time during the day with your children? You do well if you spend one-tenth of the day!
The remaining time they are under the care of strangers, hired people, often taken from the street, or they are in institutions, open to the dangers of moral and physical infection. ”

“ Comme ce cri n’était arraché que par une sorte d’instinct dans les occasions pressantes, pour implorer du secours dans les grands dangers ou du soulagement dans les maux violents, il n’était pas d’un grand usage dans le cours ordinaire de la vie, où règnent des sentiments plus modérés. ”

“ But for those who walk in our streets, who visit our hospitals, who count the number of beggars and of suicides, of orphans and of criminals, of prisoners and of executioners, it is a painful necessity to reverse the picture, and to avow that nowhere, comparatively, can there be found so much collective misery. ”

“ Bearing others' burdens, if you undertake more than you can well carry, and are tried or over-wrought, they name it a hopeless task, and desert you; few arms are extended to your support, until you can help yourself and others, and have no need of aid. ”

“ To take care of the lower orders is essential to social safety, though the words, ‘Inasmuch as ye did it to the least of these,’ had never been spoken, and the thought of helping humanity should be some little comfort, though the recognition of a ‘cup of cold water’ had never been dreamed of. ”

“ In some cases the patient's friends and companions in work or school must also be understood. In other words, one must take account of the totality of influences in the patient's environment, the physical influences of nutrition, ventilation, clothing, but also the psychical influences exerted upon him by his family and friends, by his own half-conscious thoughts, by his worries, his remorse, his fears. ”

“ A thorough understanding of the two backgrounds involved enabled a social worker to effect a real reconciliation, with the woman's eyes opened to her ungenerous behavior and the man taking steps to improve his education in a night school.
6. Occupational Faults.—Closely allied to the foregoing, and in some respects growing out of it, are the shortcomings on the employment side that contribute to marital instability. Most of these can be referred back to lack of education or opportunity in youth, or to defects of character. ”

“ Clear as this duty is, hundreds of the sick of our great towns, in the most loathsome condition are shut in with their families or fellow-lodgers, with the worst chance for their own recovery, and the best chance of bringing down everybody about them to their own condition. ”

“ There are those, also, of all ages, who are incapacitated for self-support and for service by disease, or by physical or mental defects such as bodily deformities, blindness, or feeble- mindedness. In addition, there are some who, though physically able to perform service, deliberately prey upon the community in one manner or another without giving anything in return. ”

“ The Call for Preventive Work.—The new call for social service for the children that never grow up is along new lines of preventive work as truly as in demand for more tender care of all who cannot be helped radically toward self-control and 217self-direction. The family, once overwhelmed by tragedies of abnormality, can now be aided as never before in lessening or in bearing the burden of such troubles. ”

“ It is a sign that in the existing situation some one or more of the four wishes—security, new experience, recognition, and response—has not been and is not adequately realized. The fact that the symptom is social, that it is contagious, is an indication that the situations that provoke it are social, that is to say, general in the community or the group where the unrest manifests itself. ”

“ My present object, however, is to set out some elementary—and when stated fairly obvious—considerations bearing on social evils and their remedies under present conditions of society, the recollection of which if followed by practical action, would secure greatly increased efficiency in social work. ”