Chapter XI: The Friendly Visitor

I have tried to make a number of specific suggestions in the foregoing pages, but it is needless to say that only a few of these are likely to be useful to any one visitor, and it would be fatal to apply them all to one family. In the effort to be specific, I fear that I may have been as exasperating as the cook-books, which, in a similar effort, will suggest, "take a salamander," or "take a slip of endive," when neither is obtainable. Cook-books have their modest uses, however, and the cooks who are most skilful in skipping recipes not intended for them will turn the others to the best account.

In avoiding the danger of representing friendly visiting as a pleasant diversion, I may have gone to the other extreme, and represented it rather as an arduous and {180} exacting profession. It is so far from being this, that professional visiting can never be friendly. In fact, friendly visiting is not any of the things already described in this book. It is not wise measures of relief; it is not finding employment; it is not getting the children in school or training them for work; it is not improving sanitary arrangements and caring for the sick; it is not teaching cleanliness or economical cooking or buying; it is not enforcing habits of thrift or encouraging healthful recreations. It may be a few of these things, or all of them, but it is always something more. Friendly visiting means intimate and continuous knowledge of and sympathy with a poor family's joys, sorrows, opinions, feelings, and entire outlook upon life. The visitor that has this is unlikely to blunder either about relief or any detail; without it, he is almost certain, in any charitable relations with members of the family, to blunder seriously. Visitors have said to me that they could not see that they had been of any special service, though their friendly feeling for certain families made it impossible to stop visiting. These visitors {181} who have no story to tell have often done the greatest good. "One of the women we had not seen since she first came to us some four years before," writes Miss Frances Smith, "and we remembered her distinctly as quite ordinary then. Imagine our surprise in finding that a certain dignity and earnestness, akin to that of the visitor, had crept into this woman's life, and found expression in her face and bearing. Such transfigurations cannot take place in a few weeks or months; they are of slow growth, but they are the best rewards of friendship." [1]

The rewards of friendly visiting and the best results of such work are obviously not dependent upon the suggestions of a handbook. As Miss Octavia Hill has said, success in this depends no more on rules than does that of a young lady who begins housekeeping. "Certain things she should indeed know; but whether she manages well or ill depends mainly upon what she is." Life, therefore, is the best school. Meddlesomeness, {182} lack of tact, impatience for results, carelessness in keeping engagements and promises, will be as fatal here as anywhere.

When we are depressed by a family's troubles and are striving earnestly to find a way out, theirs seem quite unlike any other troubles. In a sense, it is true that they are unlike; but there are certain resemblances between human beings, even when a continent divides them; and, unsafe though it may be to administer charity by rule, it is more unsafe to administer it without reference to certain general principles. Many of the suggestions of this book are not of universal application, but, in bringing it to a close, I shall endeavor to state a few principles that apply quite universally to friendly visiting.

1. The friendly visitor should get well acquainted with all the members of the family without trying to force their confidence. A fault of beginners is that they are unwilling to wait for the natural development of trust and friendliness. "They expect to make a half dozen visits on a poor family inside of a month," says Miss Birtwell, "and see them {183} helped. Now, which one of us ever had our lives strongly influenced by a friendship of a month's standing? . . . I once heard a sermon which made an impression on my mind that has remained with me for years. One of its main ideas was to get your influence before you used it. Many people seem to think that if they can visit a poor family, by virtue of their superior education and culture, they must immediately have a very strong influence. They do not get it that way. They must get it just as our friends get an influence over us, by long, patient contact, and by the slow, natural growth of friendship." [2]

Patience is difficult where we see so many things to be done, and it is particularly difficult where there is actual need; but the visitor does not go to act as a substitute for the forces, charitable or other, that have kept the family alive so far. He must confer with sources of relief that are or can be interested, but beyond this he must have the courage to {184} do nothing until he knows what is the right thing to do.

It is not possible to visit many families, but there are definite advantages in visiting more than one--the usual limit should be not less than two nor more than four. An advantage in visiting two families is that the visitor is less likely to be feverishly active during the earlier stages of acquaintance, and the contrasts and resemblances between the two give the visitor a better grasp of principles. Not only is a new visitor liable to err in overvisiting a family, but some families have too many charitable visitors. The New York visitor, who refused to go to a family on whom three charity workers had lately called, was wise. There are families so clearly overvisited that all who are charitably interested in them should be persuaded to let them alone for a while.

It ought to be unnecessary to add that the winter is not the only time for charitable work. Our poor friends need us quite as much in summer, though many charities are less active then. When we are away in summer we can {185} write, and when we are in town for a short while we can often find time for a visit. Charitable work suffers from the tradition that the only time to be charitable is when it is cold.

Next to uninterrupted visiting as a means of getting acquainted, comes the power of taking our own interests with us when we visit. "In our contact with poor people we do not always give ourselves as generously as we might. Intent upon finding out about them, we forget that they might be interested to hear about us. Would it not be well if, instead of always giving sympathy, we sometimes asked it? It is often striking, if we tell them about the joys and sorrows of our friends, to note how they respond, often inquiring about them afterward. Such mutual relationship broadens their meagre lives, and makes our contact with them more human. A visitor, who has undertaken during the summer the families of another too far away to visit, wrote: 'I want to tell you what a matter of interest and pleasure it has been to me, in visiting your families, to find that what they {186} really seemed to value was your personal friendship for them, and how they treasured any little incident you had told them of yourself and your travels.'" [3]

One who visits in this spirit always wins more of pleasure and of profit from the work. In fact, it is never the visited only that are benefited.

2. In getting acquainted, the visitor has the definite object of trying to improve the condition of the family. This is impossible unless he has a fairly accurate knowledge of the main facts of the family history. Charity workers often come to me for advice about individual families, and reveal in a few minutes' conversation that they have no knowledge of the condition of those they would help. The head of the family is sick, it may be, and they expect prompt advice as to the best way to help him; but they have not taken the trouble to see the dispensary doctor who attends him, or to find out in some other way the nature of his disease; or perhaps the boy is out of work, but they have not seen his {187} former employer and know nothing of his earning capacity or references. Charitable skill is not a sort of benevolent magic; it is based on common sense, and must work in close contact with the facts of life. In other friendly relations we recognize this, and in our charity work too, whether by investigation of a trained agent or by our own inquiries, we must have the facts before we can find out the best way to help. One advantage of visiting under the guidance of a charity organization society is that a thorough investigation has been made of the family circumstances before the visitor is sent.

The following is a brief outline of the facts that should be known, if a plan is to be made for the family's benefit:

(a) _Social History._--Names; ages; birthplaces; marriage; number of rooms occupied; education; children's school; names, addresses, and condition of relatives and friends; church; previous residences.

(b) _Physical History._--Health of each member of the family; name of doctor; habits.

(c) _Work History._--Occupations; names {188} and addresses of present and former employers; how long and at what seasons usually in work; how long out of work now; earning capacity of each worker.

(d) _Financial History._--Rent; landlord; debts, including instalment purchases; beneficial societies; trade-union; life insurance; pawn tickets; has family ever saved and how much?; present savings; income; present means of subsistence other than wages; pensions; relief, sources, and amount; charities interested.

In addition to these detached facts, there is also needed whatever other facts will make a fairly complete brief biography of the heads of the family, including a knowledge of their hopes and plans. The statements of relatives and friends, their theory as to the best method of aiding, together with some definite promise as to what they themselves will do; the statements of pastor or Sunday-school teacher, of doctor, former employers, and former landlords; and the statements and experiences also of others charitably interested may be needed before an effective plan can be made.

{189}

Inquiries of present employers and landlords should be made with extreme care, if at all, as they might create prejudice against those we would help.

The outline here given of the facts needed is best filled in by a competent trained agent, rather than by the friendly visitor, whose relations with the family render searching inquiry difficult and often undesirable. But the mercifulness of a thorough investigation is that, once well done, it need not be repeated, and by saving endless blundering it also saves a family from much charitable meddling. Its seemingly inquisitorial features are justified by the fact that it is not made with any purpose of finding people out, but with the sole purpose of finding out how to help them.

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.

4. In plans looking to the removal of the causes of distress, the greatest patience is {192} needed, and we must learn also, if we would succeed, to win the coöperation of others charitably interested. If our plan with regard to a family is likely to prove permanently helpful, and we are able to persuade others to work with us in carrying it out, we are not only helping the family, but we are educating others in common-sense methods. In persuading to an important step, the value of coöperation is illustrated by an instance taken from the Fourteenth Report of the Boston Associated Charities:[4] "A respectable woman, who had struggled for a year to keep her insane husband with her and the little girls, at great risk to them and the neighborhood, was persuaded in but a few days to let him go to the lunatic hospital. Of course, as strangers, our opinions were entitled to little weight; but by collecting the doctor's opinions and those of her own friends, all of which she had heard singly, she was sufficiently impressed to take the long necessary step."

5. Though we must make plans looking toward self-support, these are not the only plans {193} within the scope of friendly visiting. Some of the best visiting can be done after families are no longer in need. The entry "dismissed--self-sustaining" on charitable records has a very unsatisfactory sound to those who realize the further possibilities of friendly help. After a family has learned to live without charitable aid, there is a better chance of introducing its members to thrifty ways of spending and saving, to better recreations, and to healthier and more cleanly surroundings.

6. Our work as friendly visitors is an intensely personal work, and, unlike other charity, it is best done alone. We cannot visit in companies of two or three, nor can we talk very much about our poor friends, except to those charitably interested, without spoiling our relations with them. The district system of visiting among the poor, which is still the system of German towns and of English parishes, assigns a certain geographical boundary to each visitor. It has been called the "space system" in contrast to the "case system" of friendly visiting. The main objection to it is that it is not personal enough. {194} One who is a friend to a whole street is not felt by the members of any particular family to belong peculiarly to them, and there is danger, moreover, of more official relations and of small jealousies and neighborhood entanglements that are avoided by the friendly visiting plan.

The district visitor is the ancestor of the friendly visitor. Brewing a bit of broth for an aged cottager, reading beside some sick-bed, sewing a warm garment for Peggy or Nancy--it is thus that our ancestors lightly skimmed the surface of social conditions. It would ill become us to speak slightingly of the work of those who have handed down to us a precious freight of human sympathy and tenderness. If heavier burdens of responsibility, more serious problems and more strenuous ideals are now imposed upon us, we have also many advantages that were undreamed of a hundred years ago. Now, if we would be charitable, and possess any power of using the forces at our command, there are hundreds of avenues of usefulness open to us where formerly there was only one, and there are hundreds of {195} agencies ready to help. We must know how to work with others, and we must know how to work with the forces that make for progress; friendly visiting, rightly understood, turns all these forces to account, working with the democratic spirit of the age to forward the advance of the plain and common people into a better and larger life.

Collateral Readings: "Friendly or Volunteer Visiting," Miss Zilpha D. Smith in Proceedings of Eleventh National Conference of Charities, pp. 69 _sq_. "Friendly Visiting," Mrs. Marian C. Putnam in Proceedings of Fourteenth National Conference of Charities, pp. 149 _sq_. "Class for the Study of Friendly Visiting," Mrs. S. E. Tenney in Proceedings of Nineteenth National Conference of Charities, pp. 455 _sq_. "The Education of the Friendly Visitor," Miss Z. D. Smith in Proceedings of Nineteenth National Conference of Charities, pp. 445 _sq_. "Friendly Visiting," Mrs. Roger Wolcott in Proceedings of International Congress of Charities, 1893, volume on "Organization of Charities," pp. 108 _sq_. Also Miss F. C. Prideaux in same volume, pp. 369 _sq_. and discussion, pp. 15 _sq_. "Continued Care of Families," Frances A. Smith in Proceedings of Twenty-second National Conference of Charities, pp. 87 _sq_. "Friendly Visiting as a Social Force," Charles F. Weller in Proceedings of Twenty-fourth National Conference of Charities, pp. 199 _sq_. "Company Manners," Florence Converse in "Atlantic," January, 1898. (This story is not a fair picture of associated charity methods, but points out one of the dangers of spasmodic visiting.)

[1] Proceedings of Twenty-second Conference of Charities, 1895, p. 88.

[2] Proceedings of International Congress of Charities, volume on "Organization of Charities," p. 21.

[3] Eleventh Report of Boston Associated Charities, p. 31.

[4] p. 27.

{197}