rving person can
secure assistance through persons or agencies that either know about his
needs, or will take the trouble to look them up. When a stranger begs
from strangers he thereby confesses that he prefers to present his
claims where their merits are unknown; and the act proclaims him as a
fraud. To the beggar, to ourselves, and to the really deserving poor, we
owe a prompt and stern refusal of all uninvestigated appeals for
charity. "True charity never opens the heart without at the same time
opening the mind."

+The second principle is: Let the man you help know as much as he can of
you.+--Bureaus and societies are indispensable aids to effective
benevolence; without their aid thorough knowledge of the needs and
merits of the poor would be impossible. Their function, however, should
be to direct and superintend, not to dispense with and supplant direct
personal contact between giver and receiver. The recipient of aid should
know the one who helps him as man or woman, not as secretary or agent.
If all the money, food, and clothing necessary to relieve the wants of
the poor could be deposited at their firesides regularly each Christmas
by Santa Claus, such a Christmas present, with the regular expectation
of its repetition each year, would do these poor families more harm than
good. It might make them temporarily more comfortable; it would make
them permanently less industrious, thrifty, and self-reliant.

Investigations have proved conclusively that half the persons who are in
want in our cities need no help at all, except help in finding work.
One-sixth are unworthy of any material assistance whatever, since they
would spend it immediately on their vices. One-fifth need only temporary
help and encouragement to get over hard places. Only about one-tenth
need permanent assistance.

On the other hand all need cheer, comfort, advice, sympathy, and
encouragement, or else reproof, warning, and restraint. They all need
kind, firm, wise, judicious friends. The less professionalism, the more
personal sympathy and friendliness there is in our benevolence, the
better it will be. In the words of Octavia Hill: "It is the families,
the homes of the poor that need to be influenced. Is not she most
sympathetic, most powerful, who nursed her own mother through her long
illness, and knew how to go quietly through the darkened room: who
entered so heartily into her sister's marriage: who obeyed so heartily
her father's command