The interests of social work have wandered far from those of old-fashioned charity and “mere charity” has now a bad name, but we of this generation knew social work before it came of age and when we hear it repudiating charity we recognize the act of a thankless child denying an unfashionable parent. The oldest of the schools was called until 1919 the “New York School of _Philanthropy_” and the same word appeared in the names of the Chicago school and others. The “Survey,” the accepted general organ of the profession (if it is a profession), was until 1905 published as “Charities” and for three years more as “Charities and the Commons.” What is now the “National Conference of Social Work” was organized as the “Conference of Charities and Corrections” and kept that title right down to 1917. We may therefore push our investigation back a step farther and for the question “what is social work?” substitute the less difficult inquiries “what was charity and by what modifications did social work develop from it?” However far apart these two may at present seem it is a patent fact that social work developed from charity and along the route of that development there is hope of enlightenment as to the essential nature of social work. Charity in one sense is the name of a human quality--that which “suffereth long and is kind.” With this sense of the word the present inquiry is not concerned but with a more completely objective meaning. The dictionaries give it as “benevolence, liberality in relieving the wants of others, philanthropy,”[8] or “liberality to the poor, to benevolent institutions or worthy causes.”[9] The wording varies little. Philanthropy where it is described any differently from charity is merely a broader term not confined to the succor of the especially unfortunate, as “love of mankind especially as evinced in deeds of practical beneficence.”[10] If we look at this “charity” in action we find its performance to be directed to the same ends even though we follow it back through two millenniums of Christianity and Paganism.[11] Motive and policy vary, but the tasks of charity are recrudescent and impose themselves on each successive generation in terms of the contemporary conscience. We seem, for example, to have forgotten the question which haunted sixteenth century motivation--whether faith without works avails for salvation, but we might still subscribe to a contemporaneous plan of action which demanded “the suppression of vagrant beggars, the punishment of impostors” and “a rational organization of benefits under the control of the municipal authorities.”[12] The _task_ is still with us.