Chapter XXIX: Part V: Relief Work of the Associated Charities From June, 1907, to June, 1909 (2)

[245] Some grants of over $50 have been grouped with the emergency
relief cases.

The disaster case has many variations, but the common mark is that the applicant is thrifty, in fairly good health, and capable of self-support. Adventitious circumstances brought a reduction or a loss of income. With rare exceptions, when the grant was sufficient the family became entirely self-supporting. The policy of the office was to find what had been the former standard of living, and to aid so that not only would the same standard be maintained but a higher one if possible attained. The two cases that follow illustrate how in 18 or more cases a grant of from $75 to $500 gave the aid needed to make a fresh and successful start.

A peddler of imported linen goods, in poor health, with a wife also in poor health, and four children under fourteen years of age, who had been burned out, asked for no aid until 1908. He believed he could do without help, but when the wife became very ill the man knew that he must appeal for relief. He was granted at once $250 to purchase a stock of goods, though his plan for resuming his old business was vague. For about three months, as the family seemed able to care for itself, the case was not held under treatment. Then the wife died, leaving the man as sole caretaker of four ill children. The children, three suffering with typhoid fever and one with tuberculosis of the hip, were sent to a sanatorium and a grant of $150 was secured, which was supplemented later by a grant of $300. A large part of these two sums was spent for hospital treatment, but the remainder was invested in getting the man to make a fresh start at his old business of selling imported linens. When the family was revisited in June, 1909, the man’s sister-in-law reported him as making a good living. Having employed a housekeeper, he was able to keep his children properly and to give them a suitable education. This expenditure of $700 lightened burdens brought alone by disaster and illness.

An American widow fifty-nine years of age, with a daughter of forty stone deaf and in ill health, and the daughter’s three children under thirteen, had kept a boarding house before the fire in fairly comfortable quarters in one of the busier districts of San Francisco. The daughter, separated from her husband, an inebriate and a gambler, was entirely dependent on her mother. With high courage the fine woman planned to rent and furnish a hotel in one of the smaller watering places of the state. The Rehabilitation Committee gave her $400 for the purpose. The venture failed, so two years later she applied to the Associated Charities for rehabilitation. She was given $200 with which to move the furnishings saved from the first venture to a suburban town, where she now has a successful rooming and boarding house. She is valiantly carrying her own burdens.

* * * * *

There are some 20 or more cases whose success is dubious, because the money was used for purposes for which it was not intended; because the plan to keep a domestic group intact through the expenditure of a large grant was frustrated; or because defective character balked the rehabilitation plans. In most of these cases the investigation failed to unearth characteristics or resources which, if discovered, would have made a flat grant unnecessary or undesirable.

Pensions were granted of course for several different ends. In a good many instances they were given primarily to tide a family over the period during which one of the younger members was being given a good business training so as to be prepared to undertake the chief support of the group. These so-called “scholarship” grants had definite and satisfying results. A typical case will illustrate the method.

A Mexican seamstress of thirty-five and her three orphan sisters were living together at the time of the disaster. One of the sisters, aged thirty-three, had to be sent afterwards to a hospital for the insane. A married sister, aged thirty-four, with a child of three years, was deserted by her husband the day of the earthquake, and had to place the child in the Orphans’ Home. The deserted wife assumed charge of the household, and the two young sisters of fifteen and thirteen who were markedly intelligent were kept at school. The seamstress was very proud of her young sisters, so she borrowed $20 from a woman who worked in the same factory with her in order that she might send the elder to a business college. Later when taken ill she found herself in debt and unable to carry out her plan. She then applied to the Associated Charities and was given two grants of $75, one for general relief, the other to keep the girl in the business college. The girl graduated and her knowledge of Spanish and English then enabled her to get a specially advantageous position. All the sisters are the better for the grant which raised their social status.

The pension was given most often to persons who, because of the catastrophe, fell into dependency from which, unaided, it was impossible for them to extricate themselves. The unanswered question in connection with these pension cases was: What sum of money, in San Francisco, constituted an adequate monthly sum for the support of a needy family? If a semi-dependent, how much should have been spent before it could be proven whether the power of self-support was latent or was lacking? No one knew, as the community’s best practice furnished no guide. The Rehabilitation Committee and the Associated Charities acted on the general principle of granting such pensions as they felt they could afford. The Associated Charities hoped, moreover, that if the sum of $15 to $25 given as a pension were not sufficient, the usual neighborhood help would gradually develop so as to eke out the amount given. The pensions were most often given in the form of money, but in some cases in weekly food orders. The following pension case is illustrative:

* * * * *

A Greek aged thirty-five deserted his wife and five children under thirteen years of age at the time of the fire. Before the disaster the family was known to the Associated Charities as one in which the man was not meeting his responsibilities. The oldest child, a boy, was a decent, serious little chap; the second, also a boy, was so wild that he had later to be sent to a reformatory; and the three youngest were sickly, weak-eyed little creatures. When the woman made application immediately after the disaster she was given $75 for clothing. She was lost in the big body of refugees, but when found again in the fall of 1908, though pitifully destitute, was making a brave effort to support her children. The eldest boy was given a position as office boy at the Associated Charities at $4.00 a month, a baby from the children’s agency was put to board in the home at the rate of $11 a month, and $150 was appropriated, to be given in monthly sums of $20. With this monthly income of $35, $10 of which went for rent, she was enabled, having judgment in expenditure, to get along.

As is brought out in Part VI, an unusual number of old people had been thrown on the community for care. To some of these, who were invalids, pensions were given so that they need not go to the Relief Home.

In the two-year period covered by this study, from June 1, 1907, to June 1, 1909, the total receipts of the San Francisco Associated Charities amounted to $252,046.75.[246] As has been stated above,[247] this money was contributed almost exclusively by the Corporation and the Board of Trustees of Relief and Red Cross Funds. The Associated Charities disbursed, in the period dealt with, $236,303.72,[248] of which sum $180,577.78, or 76.4 per cent, was expended directly on relief work, and $55,725.94 was expended on salaries and other administrative expenses.[249] The expenditure for salaries amounted to $41,560.21 for the period,--a monthly average of $1,351.80 for the last seven months of 1907, of $2,023.19 for the year 1908, and of $1,563.86 for the first five months of 1909.

[246] A statement of the receipts of the Associated Charities from
June, 1907, to September, 1912, inclusive, is given in Appendix I, p.
419.

[247] See Part V, p. 283.

[248] The sum of $31,224.11 expended through the Associated Charities
for the payment of what were known as the “Red Cross Pensions” is not
included in this total.

[249] A statement of the disbursements of the Associated Charities
from June, 1907, to September, 1912, inclusive, is given in Appendix
I, pp. 419-421.

Data are not available for a complete classification of disbursements according to the nature of the relief afforded. It is impossible to state separately the expenditure for the purposes termed in this Part “emergency and temporary relief” and “aid given the unemployed.”

It appears from data available that there was a total expenditure by the Associated Charities for housing, from June 1, 1907, to June 1, 1909, of $59,556.06.[250]

[250] Compare with figures presented in Part I, p. 86. While the
amount given above covers all housing relief granted by the Associated
Charities for the period from June 1, 1907, to June 1, 1909, the
$55,963.50 mentioned in Part I relates to expenditures for moving or
repairing cottages during the entire period of the relief work.

4. RELIEF REFUSED

The policy behind a refusal to aid measures the quality of relief as well as the policy which shapes giving. The cases to which material aid was refused have therefore been segregated and an attempt is here made to state what the records show concerning the basis and utility of such refusal. It will be remembered that 5951 cases applied for relief and that 1704 of these were refused aid. The following table gives the number refused who had or who had not lived in the burned area and the number who had not made application for rehabilitation aid before June, 1907.

TABLE 111.--APPLICANTS FOR AID FROM THE ASSOCIATED CHARITIES TO WHOM AID WAS REFUSED, CLASSIFIED AS HAVING LIVED OR NOT HAVING LIVED IN THE BURNED AREA. JUNE 1, 1907, TO JUNE 1, 1909[251]

===========================================+======================
Classes of applicants |APPLICANTS REFUSED AID
+---------+------------
| Number | Per cent
-------------------------------------------+---------+------------
Applicants who had lived in burned area | |
With rehabilitation record | 571 | 35.4
Without rehabilitation record | 604 | 37.4
-------------------------------------------+---------+------------
Total | =1,175= | =72.8=
| |
Applicants who had not lived in burned area| =439= | =27.2=
-------------------------------------------+---------+------------
Grand Total | =1,614= | =100.0=
-------------------------------------------+---------+------------

[251] Data are not available as to the former place of residence of 90
of the 1,704 refused aid.

It must be borne in mind that the total number of applications made to the Associated Charities on the part of applicants who had been burned out was, 1,880 by those who had had a rehabilitation record before June, 1907, and 2,116 by those who had had no such record. The percentage of refusals is seen to be, therefore, very nearly the same,--about 30 per cent of refusals for the first class, 29 per cent for the second.

Although many of these applicants had rations until, and shelter perhaps for months after they had secured work, to refuse further aid to 1,175 applicants burned out, or 29 per cent of those who made application from June, 1907, to June, 1909, called for an exercise of courage and a holding firm to the well-defined principles of the relief administrators.

The following criticisms are typical of those that had to be answered:

A woman prominent in labor circles, speaking of a rejected case, said to one of the managers of the Associated Charities and voiced a rather widespread sentiment: “I can’t see the justice of this picking and choosing. My friend was burned out and was just as good as some of those who received help--and there was plenty of money! Who was it for, if not for the refugees?” Another in writing to the office said: “Mrs. X---- is old and ought not to have to work any more. Surely some of that relief money can be found for her.” The bitterness of the refugees themselves made, however, the loudest plaint in the chorus of discontent.

Two classes then, in one or other of which many San Franciscans are today, quarreled with this policy of investigating the claims of the refugees; on the one hand, those who held theoretically that all who had felt the blow should, if they asked, receive help; on the other, those who held concretely that they themselves, having been losers, had a “right” to a portion of the relief fund.

The natural desire to give generously to the limits of one’s capacity, especially to those whom disaster has robbed of competence, is what constructive charity work always has to face from those who “cease not to give without any regard.” As years make it possible to view without prejudice the aim and result of the more cautious, less emotional policy pursued, it seems demonstrable that time will vindicate the much criticized deliberation of the Rehabilitation Committee and the Associated Charities. As has been considered in Part I, the extent of need and of the sum to meet it were both unknown, and what was foreseen happened,--that a portion of the fund was needed to be held in reserve for those who at first courageously refrained from asking help, but who as the strain proved too great necessarily appealed. The dual risk of giving to the sham refugee and of carrying the man who could help himself and who was inclined to lean on relief could only be avoided by careful investigation and treatment, even though both raged at the refusals of an “unjust” committee. The final argument is that no relief should be so generous as to dry up the normal sources of aid in a community. That aid is wisest which rouses all the neighborhood and civic sources of help into effective action.

It is undeniable that the records show a certain number of persons to have been refused aid who seemed as entitled to help as some who by influence or persistence got at least a minimum. “Influence” is used with no invidious intention. In San Francisco as in every other community a certain number of wholly disinterested persons bear an enormous share of the burden of the charity work. When these asked aid for a case and gave their word that it was deserved, it was difficult, often impossible, to deny the aid. The Associated Charities did give help in a good many instances where in its own judgment aid could have been refused and the cases left for reconstruction to neighborship and individual capacities. Table 112 shows the causes for refusal to aid.

The first three reasons for refusal and the ninth and tenth could be brought under the heading “thirst for relief money,” and make the total for the type, 516, or 30.3 per cent of the refusals. The attitude of mind was expressed collectively by the naïve Italian woman who said frankly that she “thought they could get something nice,” and by the Irish woman who said with equal naïveté “they could get something for the asking.” The 77 applicants who asked for money for purposes of relief no longer being granted, asked aid too late for the building of a cottage or for the moving of a house or for furniture. Twenty-seven of these had not been burned out, and about two-fifths of the remaining 50 had had rehabilitation before June, 1907.

TABLE 112.--REASONS FOR NOT GIVING AID FROM ASSOCIATED CHARITIES TO APPLICANTS

==========================+===================+=======+=========+=====
Reason for not giving aid | APPLICANTS WHO | Appli-| Appli- |Total
| HAD LIVED IN | cants | cants |
| BURNED AREA |who had| whose |
+---------+---------+ not | former |
| With | Without | lived | place |
|rehabili-|rehabili-| in | of resi-|
| tation | tation |burned |dence is|
| record | record | area | doubtful|
--------------------------+---------+---------+-------+---------+-----
Applicant merely seeking | | | | |
more relief money | 54 | 36 | 21 | 3 | 114
Applicant has already had | | | | |
as much money as is | | | | |
justified | 29 | 4 | 1 | .. | 34
Applicant able to get | | | | |
along without help | 143 | 149 | 61 | 15 | 368
Applicant has relatives | | | | |
who can help or have | | | | |
helped | 27 | 54 | 30 | 2 | 113
Money no longer given for | | | | |
use desired | 19 | 31 | 25 | 2 | 77
Applicant would not accept| | | | |
aid offered | 24 | 27 | 11 | 3 | 65
Applicant’s plan | | | | |
unpracticable | 19 | 14 | 26 | 1 | 60
Applicant withdrew | | | | |
application | 25 | 30 | 43 | 5 | 103
Case reported without | | | | |
knowledge of applicant | 10 | 3 | 13 | 8 | 34
Pauperization feared | 7 | 3 | 3 | .. | 13
Applicant a professional | | | | |
beggar | 31 | 14 | 11 | 2 | 58
Applicant lazy | 4 | 12 | 4 | .. | 20
Applicant vicious | 5 | 11 | 8 | 1 | 25
Applicant a drunkard | 34 | 17 | 4 | 3 | 58
Applicant unthrifty | 3 | 11 | 4 | .. | 18
Applicant could not be | | | | |
found | 13 | 40 | 36 | 14 | 103
Aid received from other| | | | |
sources or case referred | | | | |
to other societies | 53 | 68 | 73 | 19 | 213
Disposal of application | | | | |
not known | 71 | 80 | 65 | 12 | 228
--------------------------+---------+---------+-------+---------+-----
Total | 571 | 604 | 439 | 90 |1,704
--------------------------+---------+---------+-------+---------+-----

In reading some of the cases of families burned out who had no rehabilitation record in the group of 368 “able to get along without aid,” the question often mooted was, “If these were not given, why were others?” This may be a feeling, not a judgment. It is probable that the records, though relatively complete, do not tell enough to permit a fair judgment, but it is one of the regrets of the analyst of these cases that in justice to the difficulties of the current work they could not be re-visited. The protest of the office was that re-visits would stir a whole neighborhood to descend upon it again in hope that there was a little more money to be distributed,--a protest voiced concretely by one visitor, who said, “We can scarcely be seen to pass along the street in a given neighborhood without receiving calls a few days later from people eager to know if there is any more relief money to give away.” The objection, based as it was on a recognition of human frailty, had to be respected. Other objections given to a re-visit were that some persons would be found to be so disgruntled that a fair statement could not be got from them; that others were too stupid to understand the questions or too indifferent to care to answer them. An attempt to re-investigate any of these groups would fairly seem to have been a waste of effort and money.

The small number, 13, refused on the ground of fear of pauperization may raise a smile, but the heading is a reflex of the dread in the minds of some of the visitors. “This is a very decent family who have never had aid,” writes one of the visitors, “and I do not think it well to begin for fear of pauperizing them.” It is noteworthy that of the 58 refused as “professional beggars,” 45 had lived in the burned area and of these 31 had rehabilitation records; that of the 58 refused on account of alcoholic habits, 51 had lived in the burned area, 34 of whom had a rehabilitation record. Whether these refugees had acquired the habits of begging and of drinking after the earthquake experience is not shown by the records. The individuals in these last two groups, many of whom were members of families, needed much more than they asked for, but the thorough investigation and constructive treatment they should have received could not be meted out to them at a time when material assistance was the overwhelming issue.

5. CONCLUSIONS

Positive questions have been asked; they have received but few definite answers. It is easy to question, but hard to answer positively, when past efforts are but meagerly recorded, and present efforts are too fresh for an accurate measure to be taken of their results. It is a simple task theoretically to define a line of inquiry; it is a complex one to separate human beings into classes and to determine just what circumstances of character and condition forced each into his appropriate place.

The notable facts for the inquirer as to the effect of the disaster upon the dependency situation are these: There were a little over three and one-half times as many applicants for aid at the Associated Charities during the two years from June, 1907, to June, 1909, as in those from April 18, 1904, to April 18, 1906.

It is not as plain as could be wished how many of the 3996 applicants to the Associated Charities who had lived in the burned area were charges on public or private charity before the fire, or would have become so in any case. The point seems hardly demonstrable.

What is plain beyond question is that the disaster brought for the two years a burden of dependency of over three times the ante-disaster proportions. What is not so plain is how far the relief funds swelled these proportions.

As to results, the records prove some definitely successful instances of aid given. Health restored; financial independence regained by the capable, temporarily dependent; and relatives or friends found to support dependent adults and minors, are achievements cheeringly demonstrable in 25 per cent of the cases.

A relief fund whose amount was fairly adequate to meet the need has had one patent result. A number of persons tottering toward dependency by reason of the failing health of a breadwinner, of a wife, or of children, who in ordinary times would not have been helped in San Francisco, at the right moment received the inspiration of friendly visitors and the instruction of trained nurses. The intellectual and physical care added to the material combined to stay deterioration, and in some instances to raise standards.

The more insistent call of the children for protection because of the demoralizing effects of the camp life brought response from the Associated Charities, which through its children’s agency found for each defenseless child a protecting friend, a foster home, or when nothing else was available or suitable, an appropriate institution.

For the remainder of the cases, results lie less within the range of demonstration. This much is certain; there was neither impulsive nor indiscriminate giving. Though the amount that was spent, inclusive of administration expenses, totals for the period from June 1, 1907, to June 1, 1909, a sum of $236,303.72, yet the first feeling on reading the history of the treatment of the average case was rebellion that in so many instances such niggardly doles had been given. When, as was of course true of adult dependence, the aim was restoration of financial independence, the means granted often seemed insufficient to warrant any hope of success. After this feeling has been for six months tried in the crucible of a careful investigation of the facts of cost of living[252] and habits of spending among persons of low income, it still seems not without foundation.

[252] A study made of the family budgets of 49 cases under care of the
Associated Charities from June, 1907, to June, 1909, could not, owing
to lack of space, be included in this Relief Survey.

One result of the disaster and of the use of the relief funds is the notably increased efficiency in relief work in San Francisco. Out of the widespread experience born of and bred by facing a large and varied round of relief problems, comes the first gain. While it is incorrect to say that San Francisco had no poverty in the days before the fire, it is true that the mass of those seeking aid were dependents because of unemployment and ill health, both due in many cases to ignorance or to vicious practices. The problem of destitution involved in the care of this type of cases does not stimulate a worker to any such broad and aggressive social policies as those which he must meet when handling the cases of capable and nearly self-directing people whom circumstances alone, loss of occupation, insanitary conditions, new situations, force to seek aid and guidance. Add to this fact of greater experience, that the relief funds enabled the work to be carried by a staff of visitors more nearly adequate than before the fire to meet the demand for investigation and treatment. Add the further fact that there had been enough not only to pay for relatively efficient office service but to give aid of a kind approximately sufficient. In a summary of these three gains will be found in part the value to the Associated Charities of San Francisco and to the people it serves of having been selected as the final agent of the San Francisco Relief and Red Cross Funds will in part be clear.

6. THE ASSOCIATED CHARITIES SINCE THE FIRE

When the Associated Charities set up its own office in June, 1907, the allowance of money made to it from the relief fund enabled the society to form a staff of from 12 to 15 experienced workers; to institute a division of labor among the office force which had never before been possible; to announce the formation of a new department, namely, a civic relief bureau; and to undertake to deal in a thorough-going way with all cases handled by this bureau, obtaining employment for applicants when necessary, and giving whatever relief might be called for by the exigencies of the case.

The co-operation of the Associated Charities with all the other philanthropic agencies of the city has been made much closer by the fire. In working together shoulder to shoulder under the Relief Corporation, the philanthropic agencies of the city became well acquainted with one another and the way was paved for important working agreements.

One such working arrangement is that by which various children’s institutions make use of the placing-out department of its children’s agency. During the years 1907-1909, 212 children were taken from orphanages and placed in family homes. Curiously enough, only four of these were children of refugees. The work of the placing-out department in 1909 was double what it had been before the fire.

The children’s agency has another department which demands mention here, because as a result of the disaster its work has also been doubled. This is the boarding-out department. Its expansion is due to two causes. On the one hand, children’s institutions could accept fewer children, having been cut down in capacity by their material losses; and on the other, there had been an actual increase in the number of foundlings, illegitimate infants, and children requiring protection. The records of the juvenile court for 1907-1909 show that 29 per cent of dependency cases came from residents of public camps. The boarding-out department of the Associated Charities had some of these to provide for. Among the candidates for public care were the children of ten insane mothers and the infants of ten unmarried mothers whose plight was thought to be directly traceable to the situation after the fire.

PART VI

THE RESIDUUM OF RELIEF

THE AGED, THE INFIRM, AND THE HANDICAPPED