Poor -- New York (State) -- New York; Social settlements
Two years afterward one of the club officers was calling on a friend. "I am
so glad you came in," she exclaimed. "One of your club girls is in trouble
and is coming here with Miss ----, a mission worker in Dr. ----'s church,
this morning. Now you can help solve her problem." To have a member of a
working-girls' club go to an outsider for help is to have one of your own
family appeal to strangers in time of need. The club worker kept still. She
was covered with shame. She had failed to establish relations with one it
was her sole purpose to help. Who the girl was she did not know, as her
friend had forgotten the girl's name. The girl came. It was our old friend
of sixteen. She was, as may be imagined, not pleased to see the director of
the club. The history of that family is fairly indicative of how missions
were conducted at that time. How many of them are conducted at the present
with the same results? Originally this family was found by the workers of a
mission established by a wealthy church, and apparently in need. Rent was
paid; food and clothes provided; doctors sent when necessary. The return
for this, as tacitly agreed, was the presence of the children, as rapidly
as they were old enough, in the Sunday-school, and the father and mother at
the Sunday evening service, the only service this mission maintained.
The timidity of the first contact disappeared early. The wants soon outgrew
the needs of the family. The mission people failed to respond to the wants,
and watched more closely what it cost the church to meet the needs after
the first years of acquaintance. This was not to be borne. The family went
in a body to another mission of the same church ten blocks away. They made
not the slightest effort to deceive, for they did not change their address.
Here were nine persons to add to the roll of the mission, and they were
added. The family was enthusiastically welcomed. No impudent or intrusive
questions were asked. Shoes, coats, rent money in whole or part was
generously given. At the end of two years discoveries were made that led
the mission workers to question what was done with the supplies provided.
The family would not stand this. They went bodily to a church less than a
mile away, still living at the old address. The family was again taken up
without question. That the father could not work was accepted and
generosity was increased. The other missions contrasted unfavorably in
generous impulses; the girl urged her former classmates to join the last
mission. The church meanwhile was walking by faith in its treatment of the
poor; aiming to live up to the conception of its days; strengthening the
influence of its prayers with gifts of potatoes; certainly a great advance
on prayers and no potatoes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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