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Page 9
If a poor woman knows that her neighbor next door has no shoes, she is
quite willing to lend her own, that her neighbor may go decently to
mass, or to work; for she knows the smallest item about the scanty
wardrobe, and cheerfully helps out. When the charity visitor comes in,
all the neighbors are baffled as to what her circumstances may be. They
know she does not need a new pair of shoes, and rather suspect that she
has a dozen pairs at home; which, indeed, she sometimes has. They
imagine untold stores which they may call upon, and her most generous
gift is considered niggardly, compared with what she might do. She ought
to get new shoes for the family all round, "she sees well enough that
they need them." It is no more than the neighbor herself would do, has
practically done, when she lent her own shoes. The charity visitor has
broken through the natural rule of giving, which, in a primitive
society, is bounded only by the need of the recipient and the resources
of the giver; and she gets herself into untold trouble when she is
judged by the ethics of that primitive society.
The neighborhood understands the selfish rich people who stay in their
own part of town, where all their associates have shoes and other
things. Such people don't bother themselves about the poor; they are
like the rich landlords of the neighborhood experience. But this lady
visitor, who pretends to be good to the poor, and certainly does talk as
though she were kind-hearted, what does she come for, if she does not
intend to give them things which are so plainly needed?
The visitor says, sometimes, that in holding her poor family so hard to
a standard of thrift she is really breaking down a rule of higher living
which they formerly possessed; that saving, which seems quite
commendable in a comfortable part of town, appears almost criminal in a
poorer quarter where the next-door neighbor needs food, even if the
children of the family do not.
She feels the sordidness of constantly being obliged to urge the
industrial view of life. The benevolent individual of fifty years ago
honestly believed that industry and self-denial in youth would result in
comfortable possessions for old age. It was, indeed, the method he had
practised in his own youth, and by which he had probably obtained
whatever fortune he possessed. He therefore reproved the poor family for
indulging their children, urged them to work long hours, and was utterly
untouched by many scruples which afflict the contemporary charity
visitor. She says sometimes, "Why must I talk always of getting work and
saving money, the things I know nothing about? If it were anything else
I had to urge, I could do it; anything like Latin prose, which I had
worried through myself, it would not be so hard." But she finds it
difficult to connect the experiences of her youth with the experiences
of the visited family.
Because of this diversity in experience, the visitor is continually
surprised to find that the safest platitude may be challenged. She
refers quite naturally to the "horrors of the saloon," and discovers
that the head of her visited family does not connect them with "horrors"
at all. He remembers all the kindnesses he has received there, the free
lunch and treating which goes on, even when a man is out of work and not
able to pay up; the loan of five dollars he got there when the charity
visitor was miles away and he was threatened with eviction. He may
listen politely to her reference to "horrors," but considers it only
"temperance talk."
The charity visitor may blame the women for lack of gentleness toward
their children, for being hasty and rude to them, until she learns that
the standard of breeding is not that of gentleness toward the children
so much as the observance of certain conventions, such as the
punctilious wearing of mourning garments after the death of a child. The
standard of gentleness each mother has to work out largely by herself,
assisted only by the occasional shame-faced remark of a neighbor, "That
they do better when you are not too hard on them"; but the wearing of
mourning garments is sustained by the definitely expressed sentiment of
every woman in the street. The mother would have to bear social blame, a
certain social ostracism, if she failed to comply with that requirement.
It is not comfortable to outrage the conventions of those among whom we
live, and, if our social life be a narrow one, it is still more
difficult. The visitor may choke a little when she sees the lessened
supply of food and the scanty clothing provided for the remaining
children in order that one may be conventionally mourned, but she
doesn't talk so strongly against it as she would have done during her
first month of experience with the family since bereaved.
The subject of clothes indeed perplexes the visitor constantly, and the
result of her reflections may be summed up somewhat in this wise: The
girl who has a definite social standing, who has been to a fashionable
school or to a college, whose family live in a house seen and known by
all her friends and associates, may afford to be very simple, or even
shabby as to her clothes, if she likes. But the working girl, whose
family lives in a tenement, or moves from one small apartment to
another, who has little social standing and has to make her own place,
knows full well how much habit and style of dress has to do with her
position. Her income goes into her clothing, out of all proportion to
the amount which she spends upon other things. But, if social
advancement is her aim, it is the most sensible thing she can do. She is
judged largely by her clothes. Her house furnishing, with its pitiful
little decorations, her scanty supply of books, are never seen by the
people whose social opinions she most values. Her clothes are her
background, and from them she is largely judged. It is due to this fact
that girls' clubs succeed best in the business part of town, where
"working girls" and "young ladies" meet upon an equal footing, and where
the clothes superficially look very much alike. Bright and ambitious
girls will come to these down-town clubs to eat lunch and rest at noon,
to study all sorts of subjects and listen to lectures, when they might
hesitate a long time before joining a club identified with their own
neighborhood, where they would be judged not solely on their own merits
and the unconscious social standing afforded by good clothes, but by
other surroundings which are not nearly up to these. For the same
reason, girls' clubs are infinitely more difficult to organize in little
towns and villages, where every one knows every one else, just how the
front parlor is furnished, and the amount of mortgage there is upon the
house. These facts get in the way of a clear and unbiassed judgment;
they impede the democratic relationship and add to the
self-consciousness of all concerned. Every one who has had to do with
down-town girls' clubs has had the experience of going into the home of
some bright, well-dressed girl, to discover it uncomfortable and perhaps
wretched, and to find the girl afterward carefully avoiding her,
although the working girl may not have been at home when the call was
made, and the visitor may have carried herself with the utmost courtesy
throughout. In some very successful down-town clubs the home address is
not given at all, and only the "business address" is required. Have we
worked out our democracy further in regard to clothes than anything
else?
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