Some who are ready enough to recognize these rudimentary facts about the poor, question our right to go among them with the object of doing them good, regarding it as an impertinent interference with the rights of the individual. But those who hold to this view seldom have the courage of their convictions. When they see suffering, they are very likely to interfere by sending help, though this well-meant interference, unaccompanied by personal knowledge of all the circumstances, often does more harm than good, and becomes a temptation rather than a help. We must interfere when confronted by human suffering and need. Why not interfere effectively? Why not do our best to remove the causes of need? Many earnest workers in charity feel that social conditions could be wonderfully improved if, to every family in distress, could {13} be sent a volunteer visitor, who would seek out and, with patience and sympathy, strive to remove the causes of need. Such a visitor must have the courage and self-control to confine his work to a few families, for it is impossible to know many well, to understand all their temptations and difficulties, and so help them effectively. To supply every needy family with a friend may seem an impossible ideal, but if all who are undoing each other's work to-day by doing it twice over, and if all who now waste their time in unnecessary charities, were seriously to put themselves in training, and confine their work to the thorough treatment of a few families, the problem of how to help the poor would be solved. The introduction to such work might come in many ways. It might come through our natural relations as employers or neighbors or church members, or it might come through the district office of a charity organization society, for these societies usually make a specialty of training volunteers and of establishing friendly relations between volunteer {14} visitors and needy families. But come as it may, an introduction can be made for us, and we need not enter the poor man's home as an intruder.