THE HELP THAT HARMS. 731 



The highest qualities in such a one — manhood, self-respect, frugal 

 and industrious independence — had been practically destroyed, and 

 an act of charity had made of one who was doubtless originally an 

 honest and hard-working young man, a mendicant, a loafer, and 

 a fraud. 



And yet for a sincere and self-sacrificing purpose to help our 

 less fortunate fellow-men there were never so many inspiring and 

 encouraging opportunities. Along with the undeniably increasing- 

 complexity of our modern life there have arisen those attractive 

 instrumentalities for a genuine beneficence which find their most 

 impressive illustrations in the improvements of the homes of the 

 poor in college settlements, in young men's and young girls' clubs in 

 connection with our mission churches, in the kindergartens and in 

 the cooking schools founded by these and other beneficent agencies, 

 in juvenile societies for teaching handicrafts and encouraging sav- 

 ings, and, best of all, in that resolute purpose to know how the 

 other half live, of which the noble service of Edward Denison in 

 England; of college graduates in England and in America, who 

 have made the college and university settlements their post-gradu- 

 ate courses; of such women here and in Chicago as Miss Jane 

 Addams, and the charming group of gentlewomen living in the 

 House in Henry Street, New York, maintained with such modest 

 munificence by Mr. Jacob Schiff; of such laborious and discerning 

 scrutiny and sympathy as have been shown in the studies and 

 writings of my friend Mr. Jacob Riis — are such noble and enkin- 

 dling examples. 



These and such as these are indicating to us the lines along 

 which our best work for the relief of ignorance and suffering and 

 want may to-day be done, and the more closely they are studied, 

 and the more intimately the classes with which they are concerned 

 are known, the more abundantly they will vindicate themselves. 

 For these latter have in them, far more commonly than we are 

 wont to recognize, those higher instincts of self-respect and of 

 manly and womanly independence that, in serving our fellow-men, 

 we must mainly count upon. There are doubtless instinctive idlers 

 and mendicants among the poor, as, let us not forget, there are 

 chronic idlers, borrowers, " sponges," among the classes at the other 

 end of the social scale. But the same divine image is in our brother 

 man everywhere, and the better, more truly, more closely we 

 know him, the more profoundly we shall realize it. During some 

 six weeks spent, a few years ago, in the most crowded ward in the 

 world, among thousands of people who lived in the narrowest quar- 

 ter and upon the most scanty wage, I gave six hours every day to 

 receiving anybody and everybody who came to me. During that 



