Reform (social work)

“ There are a lot of well-meaning theorists engaged in so-called Social reform who are largely responsible for many things that add to the unrest in the poorer sections of our cities. Far be it from me to criticize anyone who has the desire to better the condition of his less fortunate brothers, but the work of many of these reformers reminds me of the man who threw a panful of kerosene on a small fire with the idea of putting out the flames. To be a true Social reformer a man must be well informed on conditions which obtain on all sides of life. ”

“ Theories of reform which do not touch the conditions65 in which the people live, which do not make possible for them fuller lives in happier circumstances, are not satisfactory. The conversion of sinners—at any rate while the sinners are sought chiefly among the poor—the emigration of children, the spread of thrift and temperance among the workpeople, will still leave families occupying single rooms and the sons of men the joyless slaves of work; a state of society for which no defence can be made. ”

“ By a method different from that employed in either case or group work, though with the same end in view, social reform seeks to improve conditions in the mass, chiefly through social propaganda and social legislation. ”

“ Whether the immediate object be better housing, better working conditions, better use of leisure, or a long list of other objectives, the main purpose in these different social reforms still is to advance the development of our human kind by improving social relations. Finally, social research with its precious freight of original discovery in all the fields covered by social work, has also the secondary task of assembling known facts in order to reinterpret them for use in social reform, in group work and in case work. ”

“ Each step in the Reform movement, whether theological, social, or political, is educational in its effects even beyond the circle in which the step is taken. My advice would be: Seek justice; but refuse no point which may be conceded, for each concession gives you additional means and strength to enforce your claim. ”

“ The means, I repeat, is a matter for the future; the battle is to be won at the municipal elections; it is there the cry ‘The People, not Politics’ must be raised, and it is the councils of the town which can work the social reform. ”

“ Guardians want those who will consider the poor; men who will visit the workhouse to rouse those too idle or too depressed to work, and to find help for those who by sickness or ill-chance have lost their footing in the rush for living. They want those who, knowing what wages can do and cannot do, will serve on relief committees, will see the poor in their distress, and, giving or not giving, will try to make them understand that care does not cease. ”

“ The greatest reforms which could now be accomplished would consist in undoing the work of statesmen in the past, and the greatest difficulty in the way of reform is to find out how to undo their work without injury to what is natural and sound. ”

“ The battle ground of reform must be on another plain where the initiated see danger but the complaisant still need convincing.
“When once the worst is gone the second best becomes intolerable.” Gray, the historian of English philanthropy, describes the effective philanthropist as the ideal agitator, “It is his to discover those larger ends of common welfare which reach beyond the moral perceptiveness of ordinary men in their ordinary moods. ”

“ The Town Councils are, indeed, the modern representatives of the Church and of other societies, through which in older times individuals expressed their hope and work, and to these bodies falls the duty of effecting that social reform which will help the poor to grow to the stature of the life of men.
The problem before them is one much more of ways than of means. If poverty is depressing the lives of the people, the wealth by which it may be relieved is superabundant. On the one side, there is disease for the want of food and doctors ”

“ Such a simple practical reform might have great issues. Frequent meetings would result in action, weak local boards be strengthened, pressure brought to bear on neglectful officials, vacancies in the ranks of teachers and visitors filled, and a public opinion formed strong enough to condemn both luxury and suffering—both over and under work. If such a scope of action frightens those who are conscious of thin ranks and limited resources, let them remember that it is the thought of wider action which will tempt in recruits. ”

“ Many who have no taste for ‘case work’ and Committee forms will be glad co-operators when, in any way, they can be brought face to face with the poor; when they can feel that, by their organised effort, some steps are being made in social reform. ”

“ But I wish to make it clear, in closing this chapter, that the social worker as a citizen is as much interested in these hopes for radical economic reforms as any one else can be, though she does not regard them as her special business. ”

“ It is a challenge to fathers and mothers and all social workers to lift the burdens of labor from childhood and to make education universal.
It is a challenge to all citizens to rally to the leaders of social reforms, so as to secure for the nation civic righteousness, temperance, and health. ”

“ The reform that applies itself to the household must not be partial. It must correct the whole system of our social living. It must come with plain living and high thinking; it must break up caste, and put domestic service on another foundation. ”

“ We shall have, of course, to enlarge our family and social life, not in the petty spirit of present day Social Reform, hammering at small details and belittling our immediate past, but with a larger idea and more generous impulses. ”

“ The question of Social Reform has been very fully discussed in the public papers during the last few months, and one of the writers on this subject has happily explained it as meaning "securing for the slum-dwellers good air, good housing, good food, good clothes, and good education." ”

“ In fact, we are living in an era of small reforms of which little good and but little harm can be predicated. Can it not be made the eve of an era of reforms really great and far-reaching? If, as was indicated above, there is a general and profound realization of the threatening evils, is it not possible to evolve an agreement with regard to the irreducible minimum of social reform? ”

“ It is for reformers in every town to direct all their force on the Town Councils, to turn aside to no scheme, and to start no new society, but to urge, in season and out of season, that the care of the people is the care of the community, and not of any philanthropic section—is, indeed, the care of Society, and not of societies. ‘The People, not Politics,’ should be their cry; and they should see that the power is in the hands of men, irrespective of party or of class, who care for the people. ”

“ On the one hand, there are those who hope to accomplish the Social Revolution by means of the State: by upholding most of its functions, by even extending them and making use of them for the Revolution. And there are those who, like us, see in the State, not only in its actual form and in all forms that it might assume, but in its very essence, an obstacle to the Social Revolution: the most serious hindrance to the budding of a society based on equality and liberty; the historic form elaborated to impede this budding—and who consequently work to abolish the State, and not to reform it. ”

“ The true movement of the last fifteen years has been the progress of one idea,—Social Reform. There it advances with steady and noiseless march behind every louder question of constitutional change. Let us do justice to our time. There have been periods of more brilliant action on the destinies of States, but there is no time visible in History in which there was so earnest and general a desire to improve the condition of the great body of the people. In every circle of the community that healthful desire is astir. ”

“ The early years of the new century saw a tidal wave of reform sweep into all phases of American life. Agitation for the recall of judicial decisions and the introduction of such measures as the initiative and referendum attested new convictions in the realm of politics. The reform spirit found expression in muck-raking literature, movements for the betterment of dependents on society, legislation to alleviate unfortunate industrial conditions, and schemes of coöperation between employer and employee bore testimony to a new social consciousness and national morality. ”

“ They all possess prolonged and systematic experience in practical efforts to improve the condition of the poor, and they have all paid careful attention to the methods and principles of social reform. ”

“ The plan presented an outline of social reforms attainable through orderly process under a rehabilitated capitalist system—social insurance, housing, health, education, and the gradual socialization of life. ”

“ This then was the mental attitude with which I approached my duties as a reporter on the staff of a London daily newspaper of old standing and good progressive traditions. And my notion was that in every line written for publication, the end of social reform should be served, directly or indirectly. My [51] idea of attaining social reformation was that the people must be taught, urged, spurred into extracting further gifts from the State; that the public must be shown how to make their lives easier by getting the State to do more for them. ”

“ It is this third factor alone which need be seriously considered to-day, when we ask ourselves how far the material upon which social reform is working, that is, the masses of the people, may be ready to accept the change. ”

“ Hence it was that so many plans for general reform produced so little definite result, except on the one hand setting before the then rising generation a higher standard of social responsibility which was destined deeply to tinge the after conduct and social activities of that generation, and on the other hand much social experimenting upon a small scale which stored up information and experience for the future. ”

“ Hope is felt that some of the great reforms of the day, in which all thoughtful individuals take a special interest, will prove fundamental in their curative effects, and heal this gravest of our diseases. Thus free access to land, co-operation and abolition of interest, total abstinence, universal suffrage, emigration, arbitration, State-socialism, etc., are all amongst the popular panaceas of the present day, each important reform or theory being chiefly relied on by its special advocates, to change all social relations and eradicate any serious social disorder. ”

“ It also helps us to understand how limited was the victory which the Political Reform Party obtained over the Social Reform Party and that the view that social reform need not precede political reform is a view which may stand only when by social reform is meant the reform of the family. ”

“ Advanced and radical reformers of the new type all over the world, those who put forward a general plan of reform and wish to go to the common roots of our social evils, demand, first of all, reorganization. ”

“ Social reform will soon be the all-absorbing interest as the modern realization of the claims of human nature and the growing power of the people, will not tolerate many of the present conditions of industrial life. ”

“ If, therefore, in order to control the colored vote, the employer, or whoever he may be, is first obliged to concede to the freedman the great point of his own rights as a man and a free laborer, the great social reform is completed, the most difficult problem is solved, and all other questions it will be comparatively easy to settle. ”

“ All these conditions are abnormal, wholly unfavorable to a fair consideration of what will promote welfare. Even if socialistic methods might work fairly well when all were favorably disposed, there is great question whether they would work as well as present social methods, under equal good will. ”

“ But if we act on the principle of deferring all less important reforms until all the more important ones are accomplished, we shall be in danger of not reforming at all. Any reform that is well-timed and possible is important; for the complication of social relations makes all reforms of weight in their wider significance. ”

“ I do not mean that the mere meeting will in itself be a social reform, but it will tend to it, and that in the best way. Which of us having once been in a court disgraceful to our civilisation, and yet all that forty or fifty families have to call ‘home,’ would lose a chance of promoting a Sanitary Aid Committee or of getting the law enforced or amended? ”

“ A sameness of circumstances might not mean social reform (indeed, personally, I doubt if anything but love for God will mean social reform) , but reform is necessary, and with that we all agree. ‘Effort is bootless, toil is fruitless’; with that we do not agree—our very presence here denies it. There only remains then that organised effort should be directed towards reform, noticing, by the way, that, having swept the room, we do not leave the broom about! ”

“ But successfully to intervene in order to prevent—whether to prevent sickness, to prevent the neglect of children, to prevent the multiplication of the mentally unfit, or to prevent unemployment—involves the discovery of causes, the formation of large schemes of policy, the purposeful planning of collective action in modifying the environment of the poorer classes, together with scientifically diversified treatment of those individuals who fall below the recognized standards of civilized life. ”