THE HELP THAT HARMS. 729 



they were as remote from him as if they and he had been living 

 in different hemispheres. With every sympathy for their dis- 

 tresses, he had not come to recognize that, under those complex 

 conditions of our modern life, to which I have already referred, 

 a real knowledge of the classes upon whom need and misfortune 

 and the temptations to vice and idleness press most heavily has 

 become almost a science, in which training, experience, most surely 

 a large faith, but no less surely a large wisdom, are indispensable. 



In this work there is undoubtedly a place for institutional 

 charity, and also for that other which is individual. The former af- 

 fords a sphere for a wise economy, for prompt and immediate treat- 

 ment or relief, and for the utilization of that higher scientific knowl- 

 edge and those better scientific methods which the home, and espe- 

 cially the tenement house, can not command. But over against 

 these advantages we are bound always to recognize those inevitable 

 dangers which they bring with them. The existence of an insti- 

 tution, whether hospital, almshouse, or orphanage, to the care of 

 which one may easily dismiss a sick member of the household, or 

 to which one may turn for gratuitous care and treatment, must 

 inevitably act as strong temptations to those who are willing to 

 evade personal obligations that honestly belong to them. In con- 

 nection with an institution for the treatment of the eye and ear, 

 with which I happen to be officially connected, it was found, not 

 long ago, that the number of patients who sought it for gratuitous 

 treatment was considerably increased by persons who came to the 

 hospital in their own carriages, which they prudently left around 

 the corner, and whose circumstances abundantly justified the be- 

 lief that they were quite able to pay for the treatment, which, 

 nevertheless, their self-respect did not prevent them from accept; 

 ing as a dole. Such incidents are symptomatic of a tendency which 

 must inevitably degrade those who yield to it, and which is at once 

 vicious and deteriorating. How widespread it is must be evident 

 to any one who has had the smallest knowledge of the unblushing 

 readiness with which institutional beneficence is utilized in every 

 direction. A young married man in the West, I have been told, 

 wrote to his kindred in the East : " We have had here a glorious 

 revival of religion. Mary and I have been hopefully converted. 

 Father has got very old and helpless, and so we have sent him 

 to the county house." One finds himself speculating with some 

 curiosity what religion it was to which this filial scion was con- 

 verted. Certainly it could not have been that which is commonly 

 called Christian! 



And at the other end of the social scale the situation is often 

 little better. In our greater cities homes have been provided for 



