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Page 14
The greatest difficulty is experienced when the two standards come
sharply together, and when both sides make an attempt at understanding
and explanation. The difficulty of making clear one's own ethical
standpoint is at times insurmountable. A woman who had bought and sold
school books stolen from the school fund,--books which are all plainly
marked with a red stamp,--came to Hull House one morning in great
distress because she had been arrested, and begged a resident "to speak
to the judge." She gave as a reason the fact that the House had known
her for six years, and had once been very good to her when her little
girl was buried. The resident more than suspected that her visitor knew
the school books were stolen when buying them, and any attempt to talk
upon that subject was evidently considered very rude. The visitor wished
to get out of her trial, and evidently saw no reason why the House
should not help her. The alderman was out of town, so she could not go
to him. After a long conversation the visitor entirely failed to get
another point of view and went away grieved and disappointed at a
refusal, thinking the resident simply disobliging; wondering, no doubt,
why such a mean woman had once been good to her; leaving the resident,
on the other hand, utterly baffled and in the state of mind she would
have been in, had she brutally insisted that a little child should lift
weights too heavy for its undeveloped muscles.
Such a situation brings out the impossibility of substituting a higher
ethical standard for a lower one without similarity of experience, but
it is not as painful as that illustrated by the following example, in
which the highest ethical standard yet attained by the charity recipient
is broken down, and the substituted one not in the least understood:--
A certain charity visitor is peculiarly appealed to by the weakness and
pathos of forlorn old age. She is responsible for the well-being of
perhaps a dozen old women to whom she sustains a sincerely affectionate
and almost filial relation. Some of them learn to take her benefactions
quite as if they came from their own relatives, grumbling at all she
does, and scolding her with a family freedom. One of these poor old
women was injured in a fire years ago. She has but the fragment of a
hand left, and is grievously crippled in her feet. Through years of pain
she had become addicted to opium, and when she first came under the
visitor's care, was only held from the poorhouse by the awful thought
that she would there perish without her drug. Five years of tender care
have done wonders for her. She lives in two neat little rooms, where
with her thumb and two fingers she makes innumerable quilts, which she
sells and gives away with the greatest delight. Her opium is regulated
to a set amount taken each day, and she has been drawn away from much
drinking. She is a voracious reader, and has her head full of strange
tales made up from books and her own imagination. At one time it seemed
impossible to do anything for her in Chicago, and she was kept for two
years in a suburb, where the family of the charity visitor lived, and
where she was nursed through several hazardous illnesses. She now lives
a better life than she did, but she is still far from being a model old
woman. The neighbors are constantly shocked by the fact that she is
supported and comforted by a "charity lady," while at the same time she
occasionally "rushes the growler," scolding at the boys lest they jar
her in her tottering walk. The care of her has broken through even that
second standard, which the neighborhood had learned to recognize as the
standard of charitable societies, that only the "worthy poor" are to be
helped; that temperance and thrift are the virtues which receive the
plums of benevolence. The old lady herself is conscious of this
criticism. Indeed, irate neighbors tell her to her face that she doesn't
in the least deserve what she gets. In order to disarm them, and at the
same time to explain what would otherwise seem loving-kindness so
colossal as to be abnormal, she tells them that during her sojourn in
the suburb she discovered an awful family secret,--a horrible scandal
connected with the long-suffering charity visitor; that it is in order
to prevent the divulgence of this that she constantly receives her
ministrations. Some of her perplexed neighbors accept this explanation
as simple and offering a solution of this vexed problem. Doubtless many
of them have a glimpse of the real state of affairs, of the love and
patience which ministers to need irrespective of worth. But the
standard is too high for most of them, and it sometimes seems
unfortunate to break down the second standard, which holds that people
who "rush the growler" are not worthy of charity, and that there is a
certain justice attained when they go to the poorhouse. It is certainly
dangerous to break down the lower, unless the higher is made clear.
Just when our affection becomes large enough to care for the unworthy
among the poor as we would care for the unworthy among our own kin, is
certainly a perplexing question. To say that it should never be so, is a
comment upon our democratic relations to them which few of us would be
willing to make.
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