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American Charities

Creator: Amos G. Warner (author)
Date: 1908
Publisher: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York
Source: Straight Ahead Pictures Collection

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Although Professor Fawcett, as late as 1878, opposed from his seat in Parliament that part of the consolidated factory acts intended to protect adult women operatives, there is now substantial agreement among economists that Macaulay's position was well taken. Factory legislation, instead of ruining British industry, reestablished its foundations.

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Some of the parliamentary opponents of the early bills voted for the later ones, and, in publicly recanting, expressly said that they had been misled by the economists and "the gentlemen from Lancashire." The debt owing to the economists for the reform of the poor-laws, the philanthropists had paid.

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The experience of England in these two matters very well illustrates the interaction of sense and sympathy in the direction of human affairs. The discussions in the houses of Parliament, between the so-called "humanity-mongers" and the students of the so-called "dismal science," have their counterpart in the opposing considerations which suggest themselves to every thinking man who tries to aid the poor. If our instincts were all healthy, or our intellects all perfect, we could rely upon either side of our nature without fear of blundering. But, as in the case of English legislation, first one party blundered and then the other, so each man, in threading his way along the devious paths of conduct, must sometimes put rational restraints upon his emotions, and as other times must be content to let "his instincts save him from his intelligence." This principle, which holds in national and personal affairs, holds also in the formulation of a true social philosophy. Such a philosophy must recognize that the instincts of men very commonly have their origin or their justification in race experience, and that they are sometimes a more trustworthy guide than reasoning which is conceivably inaccurate, or which may be based on information which is possibly incomplete.

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If economics has had some influence on philanthropy, the philanthropic instincts of men are finally coming to have some influence in compelling the broadening of political economy. They dominate too much legislation and determine the expenditure of too much wealth to be left out of account. As we have seen, they are not only powerful, but at times indispensably helpful; and, even if it were possible to ignore them, it would be unwise to do so.

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But for two or three decades that branch of social philosophy known, as political economy seemed bound, so far as England was concerned, to discredit itself by not recognizing this truth. Its teachings were too final and dogmatic to be influential or even true. Cromwell's exhortation to the theologians of his time might properly have been addressed to the English economists from 1850 to 1880: "In the bowels of the Lord, I beseech you, brethren, consider it possible that you may be mistaken!" Indeed, equivalent exhortations were addressed to them, but without effect. In the United States a few professors of political economy echoed or attacked Manchestrian economics, but for the most part they had no influence. This country was too young to bother with industrial science. Its resources seemed to be so inexhaustible that no thought was given to conserving them. Least of all was it imagined that we need give serious attention to the matter of poor-relief. It was assumed that we were quarantined against poverty and distress by our glorious Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Scarcely a generation ago a writer in the New York Nation, when reviewing a work on French charities, half apologized for treating such a subject, but suggested in extenuation that, if we should ever have to organize a system of charities, French experience might be a useful guide. Nevertheless, at that moment were already arising problems of destitution, unemployment, and family disintegration, which have kept pace with the movement of population toward cities and manufacturing centres, and which were in part the result of an undistributed foreign immigration. With the beginning of the twentieth century, America has realized the possibility in these congested localities of conditions as desperate as those with which some parts of Europe have long been familiar.

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Thus, in the century following Malthus and Chalmers, philanthropy and economics have gradually been approaching each other, and are now welded into a friendly and indissoluble partnership. An increasing body of students, trained in a more generous political economy than that of Senior and Miss Martineau, are seeking technical discipline in schools of philanthropy in order to devote themselves to professional, administrative, and constructive work in charities. Dismal scientists and humanity-mongers have joined forces for the betterment of society; the economists, on the one hand, recognizing altruism as a fundamental motive of progress; the philanthropists, on the other, giving more and more weight to the economic bearings of all social reform. Simultaneously with increasing demands for systematic charity, a broader and more human political economy has been taking the place of that dismal laissez-faire which so vehemently opposed the reforms of English philanthropy. On this side of the Atlantic the renaissance in economics came even earlier than in England, and in many schools it has dealt more directly and thoroughly with the problems of philanthropy than is usual abroad. The Manchestrian economists made slight and for the most part merely negative contributions to the subject, but from the time of Marshall in England and Walker in the United States, every economist has given it a respectful and more or less extended treatment.

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