Second.--The self-support of weaker classes through voluntary
associations among themselves, such as labor movements.
Third.--The proper kind of legal protection, such as factory, and woman
and child labor laws, safeguards in factory work, the minimum wage, and
accident laws.
Fourth.--Rational charity, by which cases of unusual necessity can be
cared for. This charity should act as a temporary agency and should not
become permanent, as in that case it tends to pauperism.
Fifth.--Eugenics, by which the physically and mentally unfit, who
contribute largely to the pauper class, may be eliminated from society
and prevented from propagating a second generation.
Modern charity is more democratic than older charity, and in its
workings material aid is made subordinate to moral aid. It is optimistic
and believes that radical improvements in social conditions are
possible. It believes that the family should always be a self-supporting
group, that charity should try to make the poverty-stricken family
self-supporting, and that the family should be kept together.
One of the improvements in modern charity is what is known as organized
charity, which is a sort of clearing house for the charities of a
community. Organized charity does not extend material aid so much as it
attempts to find work for needy individuals and thus do away with
poverty by putting the family on a self-supporting basis. Organized
charity would do away with the begging pauper and require him to
present his case at the headquarters of the society, where an
investigation of the necessities of his particular case could be made
and an effort to find suitable employment for him undertaken. The
individual who wished to contribute to charity would contribute to the
central organization instead of to the wandering beggar. This would have
two distinct benefits to society, as it would prevent the disagreeable
sights often encountered where begging is allowed in public, and it
would prevent the individual member of society from being imposed upon
by a beggar who might be in sufficiently good physical condition to
undertake work which would bring in enough to maintain himself and his
family.
The question of organized charity in Porto Rico has been suggested at
different times, but it has never met with any great popular response,
due to the customs and traditions of a charity-giving people. The Island
to-day has a large number of paupers who are entirely dependent upon the
charity which they receive through begging, and the custom of giving in
response to the requests of these beggars is so widespread, that at the
present time organized charity would have a most difficult field of work
to undertake.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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