solved by
means of public institutions. The whole problem of poverty awaits only
intelligent, energetic, and united action for its successful solution.

READING REFERENCES

DEVINE: _Misery and Its Causes_, pages 3-50.

HUNTER: _Poverty_, pages 66-105, 318-340.

HENDERSON: _Dependents, Defectives, and Delinquents_, second
edition, pages 12-97, 160-209.

CARLTON: _History and Problems of Organized Labor_, pages 431-445.

MARTIN: "Remedy for Unemployment," art. in _The Survey_, 22:
115-117.

BOOTH: _Pauperism._

CHAPTER XXXVI

CHARITY AND THE SETTLEMENTS

285. =The Impulse to Charity.=--The first impulse that stirs a person
who sees another in want is immediately to relieve the want. This
impulse to charity makes public begging profitable. It is an impulse
creditable to the human heart, but its effects have not been approved
by reason, for indiscriminate charity provokes deception, and is
certain to result in chronic dependency. Wise methods of charity,
therefore, constitute a problem as truly as poverty itself. Experience
has proved so conclusively that the old methods of relief are
unsatisfactory, that it has become necessary to determine and
formulate true principles of relief for those who really desire to
exercise their philanthropy helpfully. How to help is the question.

286. =History of Relief.=--Some light is thrown on the subject from
the experience of the past. The whole notion of charity as a social
duty was foreign to ancient thought. Families and clans had their own
dependents, and benefit societies helped their own members. The Hebrew
prophets called for mercy and kindness, Jesus spoke his parable of the
good Samaritan, and the primitive Christians went so far as to
organize their charity, so that none of their members would fail of a
fair share. The church taught alms-giving as a deed of merit before
God, and all through its history the Catholic Church has done much for
its poor. In the Middle Ages it was a part of the feudal theory that
the lord would care for his serfs, but in reality they got most help
at the doors of a monastery. In modern times the church has shifted
its burden to the state. This was inevitable in countries where there
was no state church, and it was in accordance with the modern
principle that the state is organized society functioning for the
social welfare of all the people.

In America the colonies and then the States adopted the E