CHARITY— THEORY AND PRACTICE. 



BY CHARLES RICHMOND HENDERSON. 



[Charles Richmond Henderson, associate professor of sociology in the University of 

 Chicago, is one of the world's foremost authorities on scientific philanthropy; he is a 

 graduate of the old University of Chicago and of the University of Leipsic; he has 

 traveled extensively in Europe; and America investigating applied philanthropy more 

 especially in regard to prison conditions; he is probably the best known American 

 writer on philanthropic subjects.] 



American farmers have long known the importance of 

 importing the finest breeds of horses and cattle, of crossing 

 strains and exchanging seeds. We are at least beginning 

 to learn the value of cross fertilization in the realm of social 

 practice. The only reliable basis for a law or method of ad- 

 ministration, or for a social experiment, is knowledge of the 

 experience of the civilized world. The conditions of modem 

 life forbid provincialism in thinking and isolation of workers. 

 The so called self made man who boasts of being practical is 

 of all men frequently the most visionary schemer, because he 

 lives on an island without communication with the continent 

 and gives his petty vision validity for mankind. His ideas 

 become dwarfs, hke the hens described by Hawthorne to il- 

 ustrate the danger of in-and-in breeding. Dr. Lester F. Ward 

 uses the happy epithet, 'Hhe illusion of the"near, ' ' to designate 

 the mental myopia which comes from the habit of neglecting 

 large general views of world movements. One who, climbing 

 a mountain, loses himself in the tangles of brush and the gulches 

 of the seamed flank, does not enjoy the beauty of the purple 

 distance nor discover the order of the extended range. The 

 central purpose of this article is to indicate the direction in 

 which the apparently impulsive, emotional and chaotic efforts 

 of philanthropy are tending, the outlines of a system of orderly 

 approach to problems of management, and some of the unset- 

 tled problems which confront and halt us at the frontier of 

 present experience. 



Under the rule of thumb and the regime of merely prac- 

 tical people the propagation of the feeble minded stock went on 

 unchecked, with its accumulation of miseries. It was when 



Vol. 10—1 1 



