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 EFFICIENT PHILANTHROPY 
 
 Extracts from an Address by 
 
 GEORGE HODGES, D.D. 
 
 Dean of the Episcopal Theological School of Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 Delivered at the 
 
 Annual Meetings of the Associated Charities of 
 Columbus, O., and Pittsburgh, Pa. 
 
 Published by the 
 
 Exchange Branch of Charity Organization Societies 
 
 Room 613, 105 East 22d Street, New York City • 
 
 1911 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/efficientphilantOOhodg 
 
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 EFFICIENT PHILANTHROPY 
 
 By George Hodges, D. D. 
 
 Two persons are involved in every philanthropic transaction: 
 one the giver, the other the receiver. It follows that there are two 
 kinds of philanthropy according as the emphasis is put upon one or 
 the other of these two. When the main thought is for the giver, it 
 is subjective philanthropy. When the main thought rests upon the 
 receiver, it is objective philanthropy. 
 
 SUBJECTIVE PHILANTHROPY. 
 
 The motto of subjective philanthropy is, “The Lord loveth a 
 cheerful giver.” The only requirement is to be cheerful when we 
 give. If we are, we will have an immediate reward: the Lord will 
 love us. We can never get along without the subjective element; 
 f we can never put that splendid saying out of mind. It is sub¬ 
 jective philanthropy which is glorified in Lowell’s poem of Sir Laun- 
 fal. This 'gallant knight starts out from his castle seeking the 
 Holy Grail, and as he rides out of the gate, he sees a beggar sitting 
 by the roadside and flings him a piece of gold; he rides on, and 
 after many years he comes back from a fruitless quest, a broken 
 man, and there, in the same place by the same roadside, sits the 
 same beggar. This time Sir Launfal, who has no piece of gold to 
 fling, whose only possession is a crust, sits down beside this poor 
 man, beggar with beggar, and shares his crust with him. Then 
 there is a shining vision and Sir Launfal is blessed. That is the 
 point of the story, that the giver is blessed. 
 
 Subjective philanthropy is also glorified in the miracle of St. 
 Martin. St. Martin is riding along a country road in France, and 
 he sees a beggar without a coat, who, kneeling by the wayside, 
 holds out his hand for alms. Martin’s heart is touched. He takes 
 off his own handsome cloak, severs it with his sword and gives half 
 to the beggar. Then in a shining vision St. Martin beholds the 
 Master of the Soul in paradise wearing half of his cloak, and St. 
 Martin is blessed. Again, the point of the story is that the giver is 
 blessed. 
 
 OBJECTIVE PHILANTHROPY. 
 
 But the new philanthropy in the hearts of the people who began 
 this movement was equally interested in the receiver of the gift. 
 
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 It began to ask what became of when it left the good hand 
 
 of the giver. It insisted that the gift should be measured not only 
 by the love that dictated it, but by the actual amount of good that 
 it did; that it should be judged by its practical efficiency. 
 
 The motto of objective philanthropy is, “He took him by the 
 hand and lifted him up.” The man had been down, but when the 
 Lord passed by and had done His deed of benefaction, that man was 
 on his feet. 
 
 The secretary of an Associated Charities once told of a needy 
 family that had been visited by thirty-six different persons, not 
 one of whom knew of the help being given by the others. If these 
 thirty-six people joining together had worked in concert, planning 
 how to rescue this family and putting all their small means to¬ 
 gether, they would have rescued the family. But when all these 
 thirty-six were through, the family was left in the same condition. 
 
 So objective philanthropy adds another canto to the story of 
 Sir Launfal. Sir Launfal’s soul is filled with benediction and he 
 makes up his mind that he will get that blessing every day he lives. 
 So he gives out word that anybody who comes to his castle gate 
 shall receive not a crust but a loaf of bread and something to drink 
 along with it. The next day two come and the next day ten or 
 fifteen, until by and by every honest farmer in the countryside has 
 found out that he does not need to work; all he has to do is to go 
 to Sir Launfal’s gate and be fed. Sir Launfal’s soul is abundantly 
 blessed, but all the honest farmers have turned beggars and the 
 countryside is cursed. 
 
 And objective philanthropy adds another chapter to the story 
 of St. Martin. St. Martin rides out the next morning and presently 
 he meets another beggar who has no coat. Remembering the beau¬ 
 tiful vision, St. Martin takes off the half of the coat that he has 
 left and bestows it upon this beggar and rides on. But this man, 
 instead of being the disguised Christ, is a disguised rascal who has 
 deserted his wife and six children, and who has no coat because he 
 sold the one he had for drink. He proceeds to take St. Martin’s 
 half-of-a-coat and pawn that for more drink, so that St. Martin 
 as a result has done more harm than good. 
 
 Now, what objective philanthropy insists on is that the deed 
 shall be estimated by its effects, that the benefaction shall be 
 judged according to the actual benefit which it confers. There is not 
 any true service—no matter how much love there may be in it— 
 there is not any true service unless it serves. That is objective 
 philanthropy; that is efficient philanthropy. The association in this 
 country which stands conspicuously for that sort of benefaction is 
 the Associated Charities. 
 
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 THE DISTINCTIVE FUNCTION OF THE ASSOCIATED CHARITIES. 
 
 The distinctive function of the Associated Charities is to give 
 advice. That may seem a cheap thing to give, but when you come 
 to think about it, good advice is not so cheap after all. The 
 Associated Charities came upon the scene some thirty-five years ago 
 and found that there was need of specialization in charity as well as 
 in other things. The relief side of philanthropy seemed to be fairly 
 well attended to. It was not very efficiently done, though it was very 
 generously done. The situation was similar to that in the old days 
 when there were no professional fire companies, but every gentleman 
 had a leather bucket hanging in his hall at home, with his name 
 elaborately emblazoned upon it. When the fire bells rang, he ran 
 home, got his bucket, and with all the other neighbors went to the 
 fire. They had a beautiful time, and gradually the fire went out. 
 But now there is a system; there is a company of men who are 
 trained to put out fires. 
 
 The people who organized the Associated Charities felt that 
 there ought to be a company trained for some kind of service in 
 philanthropy. They felt that the great thing was not so much to 
 give material relief as to give advice. They gave relief still, but 
 instead of accumulating a great store of material that they could 
 hand out to those that were needy, they took the position of showing 
 the needy where to go; thus bringing about a connection between 
 the persons whose needs were unknown on the one hand and the 
 place where those needs could be supplied on the other hand. Under 
 the conditions of disorder and confusion then existing, it was per¬ 
 fectly natural that persons with modest spirits and a great shrinking 
 from asking for anything would be overlooked; that Aquila and 
 Priscilla, excellent and godly persons in poverty, should be an¬ 
 hungered, while Ananias and Sapphira should be abundantly sup¬ 
 plied. And accordingly they felt that some system was needed in 
 ministering to the poor, and they decided that the best thing they 
 could offer was skilled advice. 
 
 THE VALUE OF TRAINED SERVICE. 
 
 When we say that the distinctive function of the Associated 
 Charities is to give advice, we clear away, I think, a very general 
 misunderstanding. When people look at the reports of the Associated 
 Charities, they see that a considerable amount of money is expended 
 every year for office expenses and salaries, and that only a small 
 amount of money goes for relief. Then they say, “Well, I don’t 
 propose to give my money to any such organization as that. I am 
 not going to give my money to support people at the office of the 
 
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 Associated Charities. What I want is to help the poor.” But the 
 truth is that judicious and timely advice is the most helpful thing 
 you can give, and that the art of helping is intimately akin to the art 
 of healing. 
 
 The difference between the Associated Charities and the Relief 
 Association is like that between the doctor’s office and the drug store. 
 You do not expect to carry away from the doctor’s office something 
 in a basket or in a brown paper parcel: you expect to get counsel 
 and advice, and perhaps a prescription that you may take to the 
 drug store. But the experienced doctor in making that prescription 
 takes pains to prescribe as few drugs as he can. He is afraid of 
 getting people into the drug habit. And the wise philanthropist 
 is just as afraid of getting people into the alms habit, which is closely 
 akin to the morphine habit in that it deprives people of self-respect. 
 
 Now, in order to give advice, we must have persons who are 
 competent to give that advice, and we must ask two things of them— 
 training and time. We ask them to undergo an extensive prepara¬ 
 tion in order that they may be of service to us, may give us advice 
 that is worth something. And then we ask them to give all their 
 time and their work to the community. That is the reason for the 
 salaries. If you want to, you can get any amount of free advice, 
 such as it is. If you are sick, any kind-hearted old woman will 
 come in and look after you in that fashion. If you want to be nursed 
 properly, you will have to get a trained nurse, and pay $21 a week 
 for her services. You can get advice on your legal affairs from any 
 one you please, but if you are wise you search for somebody who is 
 trained. And the thing for which you pay the lawyer is nothing 
 material at all. It is solely for his counsel, for showing you how 
 to get out of hard places or how to get other people into them. I 
 think that lawyer was quite within the limits of his proper charge 
 who set down in his bill this, that and the other thing, and then 
 added, “for lying awake at night thinking about your case, one 
 hundred dollars.” And the bill was paid. So when you see these 
 figures for the office expenses of the Associated Charities, you un¬ 
 derstand that you are paying for economic physicians; you are paying 
 for good advice; you are paying for the most expensive and at the 
 same time the most necessary thing that any community can have. 
 
 FIRST NECESSITY, KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 In order to give economic advice, three things are necessary. 
 The first is knowledge, the second is judgment, and the third is 
 sympathy. First you must have knowledge, and the beginning of 
 knowledge is the acquirement of facts. Accordingly, the physician 
 begins his treatment of the case by asking questions so that he may 
 know what is the matter and be able to deal not with the superficial 
 
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symptoms, but with the disease. And the social worker begins in 
 the same way with questions to find out what is the matter. These 
 are not the questions of a detective trying to find out who is worthy 
 and who is unworthy. In the eyes of a charity worker, there is no 
 unworthy person, not one, nobody who is unworthy of being helped; 
 just as in the eyes of the physician there is no one who is unworthy 
 of being cured. 
 
 But the question is how to deal with the case, and the only 
 answer to that question is, by acquiring facts concerning that case. 
 Then those facts are recorded. Some people think those records are 
 dreadful things. They say, “If the family of a friend of mine should 
 get their names on the charity list, they would be set down in the roll 
 of paupers.” This is no more true than that the presence of your 
 name on some doctor’s book enrolls you in his list of invalids. And 
 these records in the office of the Associated Charities are as sacred 
 as the records in the office of the doctor. The first thing the doctor 
 does when he comes back from your sick chamber is to put down in a 
 book the facts about your case, so that he may refresh his mind when 
 he goes again. There they are in his book, and there in his book 
 are the economic facts about persons who are brought to the 
 attention of the economic doctor, for the same purpose and under the 
 same sacred secrecy. The initial thing is to find out what the 
 people need. Without knowing the needs of the people, one is in 
 the same condition of hopeless confusion as the man who maintains 
 that the light of the moon is really stronger than the light of the sun, 
 because the moon shines in the night when it is dark and the sun 
 shines in the day-time when it is light anyhow. 
 
 The beginning, then, of knowledge is the accumulation of facts. 
 And next comes the arrangement of facts, for unless the facts are set 
 down in their logical places they may not tell a true story. They 
 may be like the placard on the breast of the lame soldier, on which 
 was inscribed, “One leg, four wounds, five children. Total ten.” 
 
 The facts, then, must be arranged so that they may be con¬ 
 sulted; so that others who are concerned with a certain family 
 may know what ought to be known about that family before they 
 begin to help them. The doctors do not need to do this because when 
 anybody is sick he is not likely to send for more than one doctor 
 unless he is very rich. But when people are very poor, the number 
 of the economic doctors for whom they may send knows no limit. 
 For this reason it is desirable when a needy family comes to our 
 attention to find out what has already been done. Accordingly the 
 office of the Associated Charities is described as a clearing house 
 of facts, so that whenever need in a family arises, it may be intelli¬ 
 gently met, and so that we may avoid the ills that come when many 
 people ignorant of each others’ existence try to deal with the same 
 case. 
 
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(■■ 
 
 We also bring the facts together in order that by assembling 
 them we may acquaint ourselves with the whole situation. No 
 wise commander will go to war without a map; and no social 
 worker will undertake any serious work in a community without 
 some wide knowledge of the community. Otherwise, he is working 
 in the dark. 
 
 You cannot carry on any large concern, even in philanthropy, 
 without organization. And in many cities what we call the Asso¬ 
 ciated Charities was begun with the name “Charity Organization 
 Society/’ that it might introduce the element of order into the situ¬ 
 ation. 
 
 AFTER KNOWLEDGE, JUDGMENT. 
 
 The second need is judgment. Judgment means interpretation 
 of the facts and knowledge of what to do with them after you have 
 them interpreted. To some persons that knowledge, that judgment, 
 come by intuition. They perceive by a kind of instinct how to deal 
 with the troubles of the needy; but those persons are few. For most 
 people, the only way to deal intelligently, and therefore efficiently, 
 with a case of need is to go through a course of preparation whereby, 
 in the first place, they shall gain a clear understanding of certain 
 great, proved principles, and then a knowledge of the way in which 
 those principles are to be brought into practice. 
 
 Great confusion is brought into the whole field of philanthropy 
 by the alacrity with which inexperienced and incompetent persons 
 attack the most complicated economic cases. There are in all com¬ 
 munities very simple cases. There are persons whom you have 
 known for many years, with all of whose circumstances you are 
 familiar, whose children you can call by their Christian names and 
 to whom you can minister as a friend, without doing them any very 
 serious harm. But when you find an unknown person standing on 
 your front steps, you have there a complicated, economic case. The 
 only thing to do under these circumstances is to send that person 
 where he will get competent treatment. Of course, I know that 
 there are sentences of the Bible which seem to contradict that ap¬ 
 parently hard-hearted proceeding: “Give, and it shall be given unto 
 you.” But we do not apply that to the cases of our children, nor 
 to the cases of sick persons who are hungry for something they 
 ought not to have. “I was anhungered and ye gave me no meat; 
 I was thirsty and ye gave me no drink.” Yes, we may be afraid 
 of being confronted by those voices at the last great day, but there 
 is another line of persons who may point their fingers at us, bring¬ 
 ing more terror to our souls, and say, “I was very hungry and ye 
 gave me meat which I ought not to have had. I was thirsty, and 
 ye gave me money to buy drink.” For you will remember in the 
 
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 story of the prodigal son that the point at which the prodigal son 
 comes to himself and returns to his father, is where no man gave 
 unto him. If there had been some soft-hearted person with a basket 
 of gold pieces at that moment, the prodigal son would never have 
 gone back to his father. 
 
 Now, no matter who the man is who appears as an unknown ap¬ 
 plicant for alms at your door, he is a complicated case, and you are in 
 the same position in relation to him that you would be if some mis¬ 
 erable person should knock at your door and say, “I am very sorry 
 to say that I am in great need. I am suffering from a severe case 
 of pneumonia.” You are very sorry for the poor man and you say, 
 “My good man, come in the house;” you bring him in and make him 
 sit down in the hall; you sit down beside him and you say, “Now tell 
 me all about it.” After he has told his story, to which you listen with 
 a heart full of compassion, you go upstairs and bring down a little 
 bottle of sugared pellets, and pouring eight of them into his extended 
 palm, you say, “There, my friend, is some aconite,” and then you 
 send the man upon his way. That is inconsiderate philanthropy. 
 You have satisfied, after a fashion, the impulses of a compassionate 
 nature, but you haven’t done a thing for the man. You have a rain¬ 
 bow in your soul, and he has a pain in his lungs just as he had before. 
 What we want is considerate philanthropy, in which we shall not be 
 looking for rainbows in our own souls so much as for practical re¬ 
 sults of a good kind in the lives of our neighbors. 
 
 CONSIDERATE PHILANTHROPY. 
 
 The thing to do is to say to this man, “My good man, you need 
 a doctor; that is what you need. I can’t do anything for you be¬ 
 cause I don’t know enough, but you’ll find a doctor at such and such 
 a number. You go there and he’ll give you what you need.” That is 
 all very plain. Now, there is another knock at the door and another 
 man on the step; he tells a more familiar story, and you proceed to 
 minister to him after either a wise or a foolish fashion. This man 
 who stands upon your step telling a tale of poverty is a very difficult 
 case; just as difficult economically as the man with pneumonia is 
 difficult medically. If he were not a difficult case he would not be 
 there. Again you must say, “My friend, I can’t do anything for 
 you because I don’t know enough, but you need to go where you 
 can get a doctor, an economic doctor, who can look up your case 
 and give you the two things that you need: care and continued 
 interest. Go where your case can be looked into and somebody 
 can find out what is really the matter with you. Then when the 
 difficulty is found, you can be followed up and dealt with until you 
 can be made a new man and you won’t have to go begging in this 
 fashion.” Now that is not impulsive philanthropy, but it is consider- 
 
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 ate philanthropy. It is considerate philanthropy because you are 
 not thinking about yourself. It takes a good deal of nerve, but that 
 is the plain, sensible and efficient thing to do. 
 
 SYMPATHY. 
 
 The next thing needed in order to give good, economic advice, 
 after knowledge and after judgment, is sympathy. Some people 
 think that the last place to go for sympathy is the office of the 
 Associated Charities. They have an idea that the office of the Asso¬ 
 ciated Charities is a place for the distribution of the milk of human 
 kindness sterilized. But whenever anyone has a just complaint of 
 this kind to make against the Charities office, there are two things 
 to be said. One is that objective philanthropy is a reaction from 
 the old sentimental kind. The trouble with reactions is that they are 
 always in danger of going too far, and you will find some people who 
 will be conscientiously over-severe in order to avoid being over-ten¬ 
 der-hearted. The other trouble with the Associated Charities is 
 just the trouble with the ministry, the source of supply. People talk 
 about the ministry and its shortcomings without remembering that 
 the only source from which to get ministers is the ranks of the lay¬ 
 men. They have to come out of the community. If we could make 
 them out of angels and archangels, that would be splendid, but we 
 have to take plain people and make them into ministers. The same 
 thing is true of the secretaries of the Associated Charities. They 
 come right out of the community, which means that they are all 
 liable to make mistakes, the same as we. When they do, let us re¬ 
 member the everlasting human fact that mistakes must be made, 
 and may be made by those who have the best intentions. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF ORGANIZED CHARITY. 
 
 Then, coming to the heart of the matter, organized charity is 
 tender-hearted and fraternal and sympathetic and compassionate and 
 considerate, as I said, but mainly considerate, with the consideration 
 of the physician who is caring for the best interests of his patient. 
 The doctor hurts because he has to. The hungry patient looks up and 
 asks for food, and the doctor says he cannot have it because he knows 
 he ought not to have it. The doctor has a considerate philanthropy, 
 and that is the kind of philanthropy the Associated Charities has. We 
 cannot expect all people to appreciate this. I wish we all did like the 
 things that are for our good; the world would be a great deal better if 
 we did, but we do not. And so long as this is true you are bound to 
 find people who have been dealt with out of consideration for their 
 best interests, and who have not appreciated it; we cannot expect them 
 to appreciate it. Back of it all, however, is the fact that the great 
 
 TO 
 
principle of the Associated Charities is expressed in the motto, “Not 
 alms, but a friend/' “Not alms”—that is, not giving little doles at 
 doors or other places, because those simple gifts are not enough to 
 produce any real effect. If you give doles, the result is the same 
 as if a doctor were to help his patients along so that they would all be 
 just about so sick, and none of them would be getting well. The 
 test of your own philanthropy is its result measured by that standard. 
 If the people whom you are helping are just about as poor at the 
 end of the year as they are at the beginning, then you are failing. 
 
 The purpose of true almsgiving is to follow the Great Word, 
 “He took him by the hand and lifted him up.” 
 
 The giving of alms in these small doles not only accomplishes 
 no true effect, but also has a very bad negative effect because it takes 
 people away from honest work and undermines their self-respect. 
 A man in Brooklyn dropped his cap on the pavement, and before 
 he had time to pick it up somebody dropped a dime in it. That man 
 found that he didn’t need to work; the people would pay his board 
 and lodging. A family in Philadelphia had turkeys sent to them on 
 Thanksgiving day, and the two able-bodied men quit working. Some¬ 
 body says, “These poor little children you see shivering at the street 
 corners—you should give them something.” Yes, if you want to keep 
 these children shivering at the corners, give them something, because 
 their parents will find out that the colder the weather and the more 
 they shiver, the better for the family treasury. But if, for a week, 
 the whole population passes by and does not give the children a cent, 
 there is an end of that kind of martyrdom on the part of those chil¬ 
 dren. “Not alms, but a friend.” The ideal is that every needy family 
 shall have its own friend who has been trained to do good by experi¬ 
 enced persons in the office of the Associated Charities. 
 
 Following out this process of giving wise advice, the Associated 
 Charities accomplishes results; results in the large social betterment 
 of the community. Every catastrophe like an earthquake or a fire 
 or flood brings to the attention of us all the fact that you cannot 
 minister to such conditions without system. That is perfectly plain, 
 but the conditions disclosed by the catastrophe exist in city after city 
 every day we live, and call with the same imperative demand for 
 order, system, organization, and the application of common sense in 
 dealing with them. That is what the Associated Charities gives to 
 the community at large and to the needy individual. It acts as a 
 guide to the sources of relief, of care, of protection, of employment. 
 To the citizen who desires to use the means at his disposal for the 
 good of others, the Associated Charities tells how he can use that 
 money without putting it to waste; how he can place it where it will 
 do the most good. And if the Associated Charities should follow the 
 example of the patent-medicine doctors of an early date and show 
 results labeled “Before and After”—a family before they undertook 
 
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 the treatment, and the family afterwards standing on their feet— 
 everybody would be convinced of the necessity of this effective 
 service. Such things the Associated Charities cannot tell because 
 they are sacredly confidential; but work like that is being done every 
 day, and the result is the slow but steady abolition of poverty. 
 
 Peter and John in the old story go up to the temple at the hour 
 of prayer, and find a beggar lying at the gate. At once they proceed 
 to help the man. He has been lying there by the gate week after 
 week and kind-hearted persons who come by have given him their 
 dole, but still he lies there. Peter and John go straight to the cause 
 of the man’s poverty. He is lame, and they say, “Stand up and 
 walk,” and that they say in the name of the Supreme Friend. They 
 took hold of the man and lifted him up, and from that day he 
 begged no more; that is, their philanthropy went to the heart of the 
 matter. They sought out the cause of the man’s poverty and cured 
 that. That is what organized charity is organized to do, to go to 
 the root of things, to help men, as Benjamin Franklin said, “not 
 so much in their poverty as out of their poverty;” to make it so 
 that they should beg no more. 
 
 That is efficient philanthropy. It considers the receiver as well 
 as the giver. What the Associated Charities asks of the people 
 of the city is, first, financial support, in order that you may have 
 increasingly in the midst of this community a body of trained per¬ 
 sons able to give sound economic advice. They will give material 
 assistance, too, where it is needed, and immediately when it is needed, 
 but mainly, they will help people to help themselves. The other 
 thing needed is the personal voluntary services of friendly visitors, 
 going out under the direction of the society and ministering to those 
 who are in peculiar need. By these two means—by material support 
 and by personal service—you will be bringing the city so much nearer 
 to the Kingdom of God.