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The Relation Of Philanthropy To Social Order And Progress

Creator: C.R. Henderson (author)
Date: 1899
Publication: Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction
Source: Available at selected libraries

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Honored Colleagues, -- It is thought that this opening address should present a single co-ordinating idea which shall manifest the logical and natural relations of our various subjects to each other and to social welfare. Men and women of varied talents and training, each an enthusiast in a single vocation, have joined for a week of Conference under the impulse of a common motive. This Conference mirrors the universal law of unity in variety, of specialization of function attended by reciprocal dependence in the organization of a community. It is desirable and necessary that we should cultivate our specialties: it is just as necessary that we should avoid the wastes and dissipation of aimless and mob-like effort.

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Accept from one who is grateful beyond expression for this honor and opportunity a modest contribution to these deliberations, -- a contribution not of new ideas, but of a mode of organizing our multifarious interests about a common vital purpose.

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Let our theme be "The Relation of Philanthropy to Social Order and Progress."

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The word "philanthropy" is here used in the particular meaning, -- social sympathy expressed in the care of the dependent members of society, -- the physically, mentally, and morally defective. Among the "Three Reverences" of Goethe, it is that one which is shown in the downward look, which seeks for the essential signs of hope even in the lowest. "Social order" is a phrase chosen to indicate that arrangement of social activities which is adapted at a given hour to secure the normal satisfactions of the community. "Social progress" is intended to signify an absolute advance of the race in physical capacity, brain power, knowledge, invention, and ability to meet new demands of multiplying and refined desires.

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My thesis is this ethical claim which requires rather illustration than argument: It is the duty of philanthropists, in the humane care of dependants, to aim at the furtherance of social order and social progress. This thesis is not a commonplace, universally accepted. It runs directly counter to certain ideals of some good men, and the moment the theory touches practical life it meets obstruction in the impulsiveness and stubborn traditionalism of charity. There are noble and amiable persons who do not believe in progress as defined, -- "the multiplication and elevation of desires and of the material means of their gratification." They believe in a few wants and a low degree of effort. There are also generous and sympathic folk who bitterly and persistently antagonize any attempt to inquire about the effect of charity upon the indigent or on society at large.

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Therefore, my thesis requires defence; and, if it be accepted, it demands missionary zeal in its propagation. We may reiterate its substance in a different and more aggressive form. The supreme test of philanthropy is not found in the blind and instinctive satisfaction of a kind impulse, nor in the apparent comfort of dependent persons, but rather in the welfare of the community and of the future race. Deliberately, rationally, and with widest possible knowledge, we must try our success by this standard.

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Not that we admit any real conflict between the welfare of the defective and the good of the community. We follow the logic of the doctrine of solidarity to its extreme limits, and admit that every human being, even criminals and idiots, are members of the social body. To wound them is to hurt all, and the loss of the least of them would be a loss of the whole human race.

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But we know perfectly well that there is a deadly conflict between certain current methods of philanthropy and the common welfare. The agents of charity have during more than a thousand years poisoned the fountains of human life by false theories and methods of giving. This is the startling and discouraging discovery which every instructed philanthropist is sure to make at an early stage of his endeavor to help the weak and the wicked.

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We shall rightly judge our own success and pass under the solemn verdict of posterity, not according to the numbers to whom we have furnished food, clothing, and shelter, but according to a very much higher and more exacting standard. Indeed, the statistics of population in our almshouses and orphanages may some day be cited as evidence of defects in our methods and in our civilization. The best proof of highest success would be given if we could turn our prisons into schools, our insane asylums into palaces of delight, our orphanages into factories or places of technical instruction.

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The mitigation of misery has often been the most efficient cause of multiplying the hordes of the miserable. We may become so deeply absorbed in our cultivation of a little island of charity as to forget the rising tide of pauperism, insanity, and crime which threatens to overwhelm and engulf our civilization.

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It is not wise to exaggerate. At this moment we cannot absolutely affirm a rapid increase of dependants and criminals on the basis of statistics. Nothing is gained by sensational interpretation of unreliable tables. But with the most scrupulous avoidance of spectacular representations the sober reality is enough to arouse our attention, sustain our vigilance, and demand more adequate methods.

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