Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/337

 CERTAIN LIMITS TO CHARITY WORK 323

has entirely escaped, which have been fatal to several of them, and which have destroyed the strictly C. O. S. work in more.

The first and most serious of these dangers is one which also threatens aC. O. S., but it is much more formidable to the mixed society. It is that of coming to regard relief as an end instead of a means. Now, the consequence of taking a means for an end, in charitv work as well as in all other departments of human activity, is simply that effort rests with the means, and the true end is forgotten.

The history of many a mixed society, which began with the clearest C. O. S. principles, has been that the C. O. S. work has dwindled as the relief work has grown, until after a few years the former is, in extreme instances, practically extinct. The most striking and rapid instances of this decadence known to the writer occurred in the Associated Charities of Cincinnati, under its original organization (it is doing better now); in the first Associated Charities of Washington, D. C; and in some of the district organizations in Philadelphia. Many smaller and less prominent societies have met a similar fate, but those mentioned have been the most conspicuous sinners against light among the societies calling themselves by the titles of charity organization society or associated charities.

The history of most of the great charitable societies which were established in this country responsive to the wave of charitable emotion which began in Elberfeld (Prussia), and reached our shores about forty-five or fifty years ago, and which were variously known as societies for the improvement of the condition of the poor, provident societies, union relief socie- ties, etc., etc., was almost exactly like that of the decadent charity organization societies which I have mentioned. Begin- ning with excellent principles, which in their printed documents often read like extracts from the declaration of objects and methods of a charity organization society of today, they all degenerated in a few years into mere dole-relief societies. Some of them became well-managed and economical relief societies, but all of them, or almost all, forgot in practice the distinctive principles with which they set out, although they