3. Gathering facts about the poor without making any effort to use these facts for their good has been compared to harrowing the ground without sowing the seed. The facts should be made the basis of a well-considered plan. It may be necessary to modify our plans often, as circumstances change or new facts are discovered; but a plan of treatment {190} is as indispensable to the charity worker as to the physician. Our plans must not ignore the family resources for self-help. The best charity work develops these resources. If outside help is needed, it should be made conditional upon renewed efforts at work or in school, upon willingness to receive training, upon cleanliness, or upon some other development within the family that will aid in their uplifting. All this is suggested, not with a view to making the conditions of relief difficult, but with a view to using relief as a lever; or, as some one has put it, we should make our help a ladder rather than a crutch, and every sensible, reasonable condition is a round in the ladder. Our plans for the benefit of one family must not ignore the possible effects of our action upon other families. This is a hard lesson to learn, but a plan that might be kind and effective, if there were only one poor family in the city, is often unfair and even cruel, because it rouses hopes in others which can never be fulfilled. In other words, we must be just as well as merciful. A {191} knowledge of the neighborhood and of the circumstances of other poor families is necessary in judging of the justice of a plan, and here the criticism and advice of an experienced charity worker will be very helpful. It is necessary also to guard against making our plans with reference to nothing but the present emergency. We must have a view to the future of the family, and must think not only of what will put them out of immediate need, but of what is most likely to make them permanently self-supporting, if this be possible. There are, of course, families that can never be made entirely self-supporting. These, if we consider only the cases for which it is thought best to provide outside of institutions, will be the exceptions; but in making plans for the welfare of such families we must try to organize help that shall be as regular and systematic as possible. Next to having to depend upon charitable resources at all, the most demoralizing thing is to be dependent upon uncertain and spasmodic charity.