Relief work

“ I have said that the first guide to helpful economic relief is a realization of its danger. The next is awareness of the advantages of self-help and the truth that next to self-help, assistance from those naturally and nearly related to one is best. ”

“ This is the very treatment that has brought them to their present pass, and only an experienced and intelligent almoner can tell how far it is wise to let the forces of nature work a cure, and how far it is wise to prevent extreme suffering by interference.
One trouble in the past has been that the agents employed by relief societies have not always been intelligent, but there have been great advances made in this regard, and now, in many communities, the agents of charitable societies are active, intelligent men and women, who have received special training for the work. ”

“ Work that is real work is better, of course, than any relief; but there should be a prejudice among charity workers against sham work, for which there is no demand in the market. Unless such work is educational, or is used to test the applicant's willingness to work, it is often better to give material relief. ”

“ Everything that concerns the welfare of its members concerns him, and that their energies should be paralyzed by a too plentiful supply of relief, or that the lack of it should cause unnecessary suffering, is a matter that concerns him vitally. To administer relief wisely one needs special training, and an inexperienced visitor should seek the advice of one who knows the charitable resources of his own particular community and the standard of living of the family's particular neighborhood. ”

“ Though the foregoing six relief principles could easily be extended to twenty, yet a {163} bookful of such generalizations would be of no value to the almoner without a detailed knowledge of the neighborhood into which relief is to go, and an intimate acquaintance with the lives of the poor. It is evident, therefore, that a beginner in charity should not decide relief questions except in consultation with an experienced worker. ”

“ This gives us three tolerably well-defined phases of charitable progress: the phases of indiscriminate relief, of individual service, and {6} of social service. In the first phase, we are charitable either for the sake of our souls or else to gratify our own emotions. In the second, we are charitable for the sake of the individual poor man. ”

“ When we consider the immense sums raised for every probable means of doing good which have p. 159hitherto been made public, we cannot doubt if a proper method should be proposed for the relief and ameliorating the state of these people it would meet with deserved encouragement. ”

“ By adequate relief charity workers do not mean that all apparent needs should be met. There are often resources that are hidden from the inexperienced eye, and by ignoring these we destroy them.
The fourth relief principle is that, instead of trying to give a little to very many, we should help adequately those that we help at all. ”

“ So far as experience can teach anything, it teaches us that both indoor relief and family aid, or outdoor relief, as properly practiced, are both indispensable in any comprehensive plan of public charity. ”

“ Better than any hard and fast classification, is the principle that our relief should always have a future to it, should be given as part of a carefully devised plan for making the recipient permanently better off. The only excuse for giving relief without a plan is that it is sometimes necessary to give what is called "interim relief," to prevent present suffering, until we can learn all the facts and a plan can be devised. ”

“ Your theory, my brother, no one can question; the difficulty seems in reducing it to practice. The sick, and the infant must ever be an exception, and those also, who devote themselves to their comfort. The class of roving mendicants would also evade it, until the community shall be so impressed as to erect houses for their restraint and labour. To the families of the poor, who have health, it applies itself, as the most natural, and efficacious system of relief. ”

“ Was all that labor more wearing to health and strength than the cruel bondage in which we live, while laboring to secure, from servants, the care and efficient work absolutely necessary to the present style of living? ”

“ Because I never feel satisfaction in my exertions and dispatch of business. For work I must for the welfare of all the folk ; and of that, again, the root is energy and the dispatch of business; for nothing is more essential than the welfare of all the folk. ”

“ So complicated is mind that what contributes to its welfare and removes obstacles to its well-being, at the same time creates new sources of unhappiness, which call for new means, new methods, of relief. ”

“ Health is essential for physical and mental labor. The maintenance of health consists in having proper food, proper clothing, and proper shelter. Work is a duty, nature demands it. Exercise that duty. ”

“ The rest, namely 91 per cent or so, regain their place as decent and useful members of society, a wonderful result which is brought about by the pressure of discipline, tempered with kindness, and the influence of steady and healthful work. ”

“ Such a choice of alternatives has little attraction for any one who approaches the question out of thoughtful experience with relief problems and the long struggle to procure for the widow and others who live in misery adequate reinforcements—reinforcements of income, health, recreation, education for children and decent living conditions. ”

“ But it is urged,—refuse altogether compulsory relief to the able-bodied, and the number of those who stand in need of relief will steadily diminish through a conviction of an absolute necessity for greater forethought, and more prudent care of a man's earnings. ”

“ The fifth relief principle is that we should help the poor to understand the right relations of things by stating clearly our reasons for giving or withholding relief, and by requiring their hearty coöperation in all efforts for their improvement. ”

“ Those who bring it to bear upon human conditions heal themselves and others, they change their environment and turn a lamp to the feet of the struggling, they help all to get health, wealth, love and success, not tomorrow nor next year but here and now. ”

“ Society now begins to demand a constructive process. With care and with regard for other men, we must produce the food and the other supplies in regularity and sufficiency; and we must clean up after our work, that the earth may not be depleted, scarred, or repulsive.
Yet there is even a more defenseless devastation than all this. ”

“ Near the homes of poverty, the streets where people live who cannot go far to seek aid in their extremest need, it receives those who, breaking down through sudden disease, or requiring medical and surgical skill to relieve the pain and weakness of recurrent malady, have no resource but this to enable them to fulfil their one great desire "to get back to work." ”

“ It has greatly meliorated the condition of the laborious part, that is to say, of the mass of every community, by procuring for them a day of weekly rest. In all countries in which it is professed it has produced numerous establishments for the relief of sickness and poverty ”

“ It is not your lot to do definite, physical good to suffering humanity, like a Red Cross nurse, or the Salvation Army. Nor is it necessary that you should work to earn your bread, like a teacher or a stenographer. ”

“ And here, in their hour of sickness and suffering, lay those whose health and strength are spent in unrequited labour for us—those who, perhaps even yesterday, were being urged onto their unpaid task—those whose husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, were even at that hour sweating over the earth, whose produce was to buy for us all the luxuries which health can revel in, all the comforts which can alleviate sickness. ”

“ They take care, or at least they know that they ought to take care, that the relief of poverty shall be of a kind to remove as far as possible the causes of poverty, and every new experiment they make for the relief of misery and the prevention of crime, widens their theories and improves their rules of practice. ”

“ Straightway as soon as I enter with these, men and women, into flourishing towns, I am reverenced and tens of thousands follow, to learn where is the path which leads to welfare, some desirous of oracles, others suffering from all kinds of diseases, desiring to hear a message of healing. ”

“ There will be found order, cleanliness, food, clothing, warmth, refuge for the homeless, medicine and attendance for the sick, rest and sufficiency for old age, and sympathy, the true and active sympathy which the poor show to the poor, for the unhappy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Real relief consists, to my mind, of nothing short of the stretching out of a helping hand and lifting some poor soul clean out of that miserable state where one’s very existence depends upon the fluctuating charity of one’s fellow-creatures. ”

“ But, in ordinary cases, the sight of suffering is avoided except where relief can be administered. In such cases, the desire of administering relief becomes the leading one, so that the mind is turned off from the view of the suffering to dwell on conceptions of modes of relief. ”

“ Think, friends, what it would be—yes, what it will be, when all the rough, sturdy men of danger, living every hour in the face of accident and death, shall know what to do in the moment for his writhing companion in toil; when the homes—the children in the streets and in the schools—shall all possess the knowledge which this method of human beneficence teaches—this is First Aid—this is what it stands for—the lessons which it inculcates and its faithful apostles teach. ”

“ They would leave to men the tilling of the soil, the building and navigation of marine or aerial ships, the working of mines and metals, the erection of houses, the construction of roads, railways, and communications, perhaps even the entire manufacturing work of the community. Medicine and the care of the sick might still be a charge to some; education to most; art, in one form or another, to almost all. ”

“ Work is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of human welfare. ”

“ For charitable relief, whatever form it takes, or whatever its effects, possesses at least this broad distinction from State relief, namely, that it is voluntarily provided, and usually comes from those who can best afford it. ”

“ And we may realize the cries of distress that come from great calamities by the experiences in our own history, even modified as they have been by our superior facilities for affording relief, and the comparative insignificance of the numbers who have required assistance. ”

“ But the Relief Society operates also on a plan of systematic visitation to the houses of the afflicted, extending aid in nursing, administering comfort in bereavement, and seeking in every possible way to relieve distress. ”

“ The investigation of every case requiring relief was undertaken by volunteer workers, assisted by skilled officers, and was not in the steam pig-killing style, but patient and exhaustive with true human brotherhood; in deserving cases the relief given was sufficient to make a guardian’s hair stand on end, but was given with the view to helping the man to a means of livelihood. ”

“ Then, again, large numbers of the recipients of outdoor relief are of such a class that they need help other than the mere relief they receive, and should have lessons in industry, sobriety, and economy, have employment obtained for them, have the chil- dren set to school, and be helped in hundreds of other ways that will make them useful and self-sustaining ”

“ The institution provides for the relief of the widest divided forms of want and distress. The wife and children unable to procure fuel will not be allowed to perish with cold; the immigrant arriving penniless will be enabled to get a meal and a bed until employment is available to him; the workman temporarily disabled will be able to get temporary relief; the convalescent will not be suffered to remain adrift on the world, unable, from the effects of illness, to cope with its stern necessities ”

“ We do not mean merely physical work. There is a great deal of higher work—the work of action and endurance, of trial and patience, of enterprise and philanthropy, of spreading truth and civilization, of diminishing suffering and relieving the poor, of helping the weak, and enabling them to help themselves. ”

“ To relieve the necessities in every way possible, keep the people at large in possession of reliable information, hold the field until relief has been given, and retire when all needed aid has been rendered. ”

“ In the world today what calls for more of love, sympathy, learning, sacrifice, and long-suffering than the care of children, the preparation of food, the cleansing and ordering of the home, personal attendance and companionship, the care of bodies and their raiment—what greater, more intimate, more holy Services are there than these? ”

“ THE HELPING HAND THE work that lies before us in every city waiting for the Helping Hand—the human wreckage, bankruptcy, age, sickness, poverty, which must always be forming anew however we may meet it and find alleviation—will certainly not decrease as the years roll on. ”

“ Our aim is, first, to lighten the load of existence for those thronging thousands of the human family whose experience of life is one long suffering, and then to 'add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier.' The poor, the ignorant, the weak, the hungry, the over-worked, all call for aid ”