The Social Work of the Salvation Army Part 18

The failure of the Army slum work to increase in the same proportion as its other branches of the social work, and its non-existence in many quarters of our cities where it is most needed, is due to two causes.

One is the fact that the Army slum post, more than the Army industrial home or the Army hotel, is a religious inst.i.tution, and is continually advertising and pressing on the public its peculiar doctrines. The slum officers are imbued with the idea that personal salvation according to the doctrines of the Army is the all-essential need. They would not be engaged in this work themselves were it not for the hold these doctrines have upon them. The slum post holds its regular meetings, exhorting its hearers to get "saved," in its own original way. At Sunday School, the children are taught that certain things are wrong and sinful, and these very things are common-place in their own homes though, possibly some of them of not much detriment. But, in a community almost entirely Catholic or Jewish, such aggressive evangelism is not likely to increase the influence of its advocates. Many settlements have learned with grief, this very same lesson. Another reason for the lack of success is the mental calibre of those engaged in the work. However, the devotion and self-sacrifice of the Army slum sisters is one of the most touching and sublime elements of the slums, and it is all the more touching when it is to some extent misdirected and misplaced. To see the tact, patience and perseverance of these "Slum Angels" as they are often called, is a divine object lesson in itself, and much of their work is not done in vain, as many would testify.

A useful experiment is under way at one former slum post, 94 Cherry Street, New York City. In place of the old building formerly rented by the Army here and used as a slum post, the Army has built a commodious six-story building, which it calls a settlement. One floor is given to a hall and parlor. Two floors are given over to rooms to be used as cla.s.s, club and kindergarten rooms. One floor is fitted up with a dining room and kitchen, and another with a large dormitory and living room, to be used as a Girls' Home. On the roof, preparations are under way for a roof garden and play-ground, while was.h.i.+ng facilities are provided in the bas.e.m.e.nt, where poor mothers can bring their clothes and wash them.

Already the New York Kindergarten a.s.sociation has two kindergartners busy here. Two sewing cla.s.ses, averaging thirty-five members, are organized. Mother's meetings are held, and a regular Army Corps is organized, consisting of sixty members. This settlement may prove an auspicious advance of the Army along these lines.

To sum up, the Army Slum Department is doing valuable work in the slums, tending the sick, exercising and bringing out some of the better traits of humanity, and offering relief in times of need; but it suffers from an over-desire to spread its own peculiar doctrines of salvation, and from the lack of grasping the whole situation which is characteristic of its workers.

FOOTNOTES:

[87] This number has continued the same for five years.

CHAPTER V.

THE SALVATION ARMY RESCUE DEPARTMENT.

In the United States and Great Britain, the question of the social evil has never been thoroughly investigated and faced systematically as a whole. In some of the large cities in the United States, notably in Chicago and New York, the question has been taken up in various ways by different reform societies. Probably the best investigation made thus far has been the work of the Committee of Fifteen, in New York City, which issued its report in the year 1902, but the problem does not appear to have been faced by us as a nation as it might have been. Other countries, especially France, have paid a great deal of attention to this form of vice. Nearly every phase of the question has been examined by some French investigator and reported on, but when we look for reports or investigations on the part of American or English students, we find very little of value.

As regards the United States, all attempts at reaching a true estimate of the extent of this evil have failed. Apparently, there is no way of obtaining such information. We have seen estimates regarding some of the cities in past years, and such estimates are given as 40,000 prost.i.tutes for New York City,[88] 30,000 for Chicago and 35,000 for San Francisco.

But these figures have evidently been derived in a very unscientific way. The evil is probably worse in the Western states than in the Eastern, but we are not satisfied of the accuracy of such estimates as 35,000 for San Francisco and only 30,000 for Chicago.

The work known as the Rescue Work of the Salvation Army is, to a certain extent, related to the Slum Work. The slum officers can often work hand-in-hand with the Rescue officers, inasmuch as their field is often on the same or adjoining territory. At the same time, it is essential that the Rescue officer be more highly specialized than the slum worker. During the past few years the percentage of successful cases of reform brought about by the Army Rescue Homes has reached as high as 80 or 85%, according to the Army's statistics. They, however, are unable to keep in touch with all the girls sent out, and hence this percentage would not be final, but even allowing 25% off for failures not known to the Army, it is doubtful if there is any other reform agency along this line which is as successful as is this force of trained rescue workers.[89] In the United States this force works in conjunction with twenty-two Rescue Homes scattered throughout the States. These homes are especially fitted for the work, some having been built for the purpose.

There are work rooms for the girls, where they can do sewing and laundry work. There is a reading room and sitting room, dining room, and different dormitories and sleeping apartments. Then special facilities are provided for the care of babies in the way of proper nurseries.

There are two ways in which these girls come under the influence of the Homes and Rescue workers: either the girls come voluntarily to the Homes, expressing their desire to leave this form of life for a better one, or they are brought to the Home by the direct influence and touch of the Rescue officer. These Rescue officers make regular tours through the districts where the girls are to be found. They watch their opportunities, and whenever they think it wise, they speak to the girls personally. When this is not possible, they make an advance by way of literature. One method is to open up a conversation by means of a little card, upon which is printed the address of the Rescue Home, and the offer of help to any girl who is in trouble of any sort. Some of the officers tell us that they get to know the faces of the girls through their regular tours, and whenever a new girl comes they are able to recognize her at once, both by her features and her actions. In this way there have been some instances of real prevention without the need of any curative means whatever; instances where young girls have been rescued from the very brink of their evil fate. One way of reaching the girls is visitation and nursing when they are sick. Another way is through the police courts. In some of the latter a woman Army officer is in regular attendance, and the judge frequently hands certain cases over to her charge.

Many of the girls received into the Home have had no practical training in life; many, very little moral training, and in the case of those who have had good training in earlier years, the life they have been leading has so undermined their old ideals, that the training must be repeated.

Hence, the aim of the Home is two-fold. First, the aim is to lay a strong foundation morally. When the girls reach the Home, in most cases they are already penitent, and ready for a change, but to make such a complete change as is necessary to lead them back to a normal life means the individual revolution of desire and interest. Here is where the importance of the moral influence of the Home is realized. Step by step the girl is led on by the simple teaching of Christian and social ideals, until in reality she is a changed individual. Often she looks back on her past life with such repugnance and shrinking, that her only desire becomes that of doing something to retrieve her past, and she becomes an active agent in the betterment of the conditions of other girls around her.

Meanwhile, the second aim of the Rescue Home is being realized. The girls are taught the means of practical livelihood. They are instructed in cooking, the care of the kitchen and nursery, and general housekeeping. Sewing is made a prominent feature, and in every Home a laundry is maintained, where the girls do their own was.h.i.+ng and sometimes outside was.h.i.+ng. In some Homes the fund realized from the laundry and from the sale of clothing made by the girls is quite a help toward defraying the general expenses. Again, at some of the Homes, such work as book binding and chicken raising has been successfully carried on. Independence is encouraged, and as soon as possible the girl is made to feel that, by aiding in the work of the Home, she can help meet the expense which she caused.

To the girl who has possibly never done sewing, never known anything about proper cooking or the care of a home, there is much that is new in this training, and, on the other hand, great patience is required on the part of her instructors. A fit of anger or despondency, and in a very short time she has left the Home and its care, and returned to her old life. Some do this even more than once and again return, having, upon reflection, realized the force of its love and shelter. Others, of course, leave and never return, but a large number are sent back to their own homes or out to fill situations of various kinds.

A great difference is found between one girl and another, due to the different status of life and surroundings from which they originally fell; hence, some girls are reformed with greater ease and in a shorter time than are others. The average time that a girl is retained in the Home is about four months. The Army aims at keeping in touch with them afterwards.

"Personally," says one of the leading Rescue officers writing on this point, "I attach by far the greatest importance to the work done with our girls after they leave the Home. If we ceased our care for them when they went out to service, we should have, I fear, many failures. I have by my elbow, as I write to you, a current record of 120 girls, not picked out but taken just as they come, which tells just where each one is, what she is doing, what was her spiritual condition when last seen or heard from, what day visited, etc. That list is taken from a record kept of every girl who pa.s.ses through our hands. On one page is her previous life story; on the other, her career after leaving the Home. It is the most important record we keep."[90]

Along with other departments of social service in the Army, this department has been considerably extended during the past few years.

Figures are at hand for the United States only. In 1896 there were five Rescue Homes with a total accommodation for 100 girls, and there were, in the Rescue Work, 24 officers. In 1904 we found twenty-two homes, with a total accommodation for 500 girls, and there were 110 specialized officers engaged in the Rescue Work. During the eight years prior to 1907 15,000 girls were helped.[91] Speaking of the year 1903-4, Commander Booth-Tucker says: "More than 1,800 girls pa.s.sed through the homes during the year, and of these 93% were satisfactory cases, being restored to lives of virtue, while some 500 babies were cared for."[92]

During the past few years, also, some valuable properties have been acquired for the purposes of Rescue Homes. Among these are two Homes in Philadelphia worth $20,000.00; the Home in Manhattan, New York City, valued at $35,000.00; the Home in Buffalo, costing nearly $40,000.00; the Home in Los Angeles, worth more than $15,000.00, and others.

In conclusion it may be said that although this great social question presents almost overwhelming problems for solution, yet there is no agency that deals with the evil in a curative way so successfully, and on such a scale, as does the Rescue Department of the Army. One difficulty of the work is that, while so many departments of the Army work are self-supporting, this work cannot be made so. Another difficulty is the lack of those who are willing to sacrifice their lives to such n.o.ble effort. Mrs. Catherine Higgins, former Secretary for this department, in her report, said that she had a great need of 100 more workers, and that she could use many times that number in the furtherance of the work.

While it is rather the part of society to strike at the very causes of this social evil and root it out entirely, still, such successful combating with the evil itself, right on the battle-field of flagrant vice, should receive the hearty support of all.

FOOTNOTES:

[88] Mentioned in Josiah Strong's Social Progress, 1906, p. 243.

[89] In Great Britain in 1903, the proportion of re-admissions in the Rescue Homes was about one in seven. In that year, about one-sixth of the new cases were unsatisfactory. (The S. A. and the Public, p. 131.)

[90] "Social Service in the Salvation Army," p. 71.

[91] Pamphlet "S. A. in the U. S."

[92] _Ibid._, p. 26.

CHAPTER VI.

SOME MINOR FEATURES OF THE SALVATION ARMY SOCIAL WORK.

There are a number of features of the Salvation Army Social Work, which for the sake of brevity we shall group together in one final chapter.

These are, (1): Christmas dinners, (2): prison work, (3): the employment bureau, and (4): work among the children. Taking up the subject of Christmas dinners, we find here what seems to be an advertising scheme more than a systematic form of relief. Sentiment, doubtless, has its place, even with the ma.s.ses, and yet, in this great winter feast, there is more sentiment than there is real practical good accomplished. To the quiet, calculating student the question arises whether it would not be far better to utilize the vast amount of energy and financial outlay, which it gives to gorging the mult.i.tude for one day, in a better and more lasting way; the question whether there is not, in these Christmas feasts, a likeness to the old time feast of pagan Rome. In every city of any size throughout the country the pots and kettles on the street corner are familiar objects. At each Corps or other location of the Army, tickets are given out ent.i.tling the bearer to a Christmas dinner, or, in certain cases, to a basket with a dinner for a family. A good deal of trickery is indulged in by the professional beggars, by means of which it often happens that several dinners go to the same person. And yet, as we have watched those 5,000 baskets containing food for 25,000 persons go out, to bring cheer and comfort to the hungry in their homes, and as we have gazed on that vast banquet of 3,000 guests seated at one sitting, we could not but feel glad that these poor brothers and sisters of ours might realize the force of human sympathy for once in the year at least.[93]

Another minor feature of the Salvation Army work is the prison work.

The majority of the jails, local, county and state, are visited at intervals by certain members of the Army set aside for that purpose in each community. In one State's prison there is a regularly organized corps of Salvation Army soldiers, who are all prisoners, some of them for a life term. In most prisons the Army provides literature, sees to the correspondence of the prisoners and holds meetings with them. But it is not so much the work with the prisoners in the jail that counts, as it is the influence gained over them, which leads them to come to the Army and make a new start in life when they get out. Many who find themselves behind the prison bars are not to be cla.s.sed as regular criminals. A man is often cla.s.sed as a criminal who is a victim of misfortune only, and has no inherent criminal instincts. It is with the criminal "by occasion," as Lombroso puts it,[94] that much successful work can be done in the way of reform. The Army has a regular organization known as the Prison Gate League. When a prisoner is discharged he is met by one of this league and invited to go to work at one of the Army's inst.i.tutions. After being influenced and helped in this inst.i.tution for a certain length of time, if he seems to justify it, he is sent out to work in some position. There are no definite statistics recorded of those of this cla.s.s who have been permanently bettered.

Still another minor feature is the employment bureau system. While mentioned here as merely one of a group of minor features, this system is one of great importance to the industrial world. It is being taken into consideration in many places by thoughtful men, and there is promise of its a.s.suming national, if not international proportions. The general term, employment bureau, serves to bring to our recollection the accompanying evils of the contract wage system and industrial slavery, against which there has been agitation in the past, but it is because of these accompaniments that the importance arises of securing a system which shall be free from them. In Germany considerable work has been done along these lines, munic.i.p.alities and provinces have taken up the work, and an all-round effort is being made to place labor in the right position for work at the proper time.[95] New York City is to-day swarming with many agencies, which are conducted by men and women, who may rightly be cla.s.sed as extortioners. In spite of the rigid rules on the subject, the ignorance and poverty of their victims makes evasion of the law comparatively easy. Jacob A. Riis, speaking of this subject, says:

"It is estimated that New York spends in public and private charity every year around eight millions. A small part of this sum intelligently invested in a great labor bureau that would bring the seeker of work and the man with work together, under auspices offering some degree of mutual security, would certainly repay the amount of the investment in the saving of much capital now much worse than wasted, and would be prolific of the best results."[96]

In regard to the work of the Army in this field every large city contains an employment bureau conducted by it and maintained for the free use of the unemployed. Some of the men, who secure positions have been in one of its own inst.i.tutions, and the Army workers know whether or not to recommend them for a certain position. Outside of giving men work in its own inst.i.tutions, the Army, during the year 1907, found employment for 55,621 persons in the United States alone.

Contrary to expectation, the children's work of the Army has not attained a magnitude in proportion to the other lines of work which have been developed. This may be accounted for in part by the fact that there are more inst.i.tutions open for children to which the Army can turn for help than there are inst.i.tutions of other types. Thus, while the Army can often get a child taken into some orphanage already existing, either public or private, in the case of the drunkard, the unemployed or the fallen woman, the Army finds it necessary to furnish its own inst.i.tutions. Again, the Army states that wherever possible, some friend is found who is willing to adopt a child. Of course, this is far preferable to placing the child in some inst.i.tution, inasmuch as adoption restores the home in a real sense.

The work among the children may be divided into temporary work and permanent work. By temporary work we do not mean work that is superficial, for it may be the most permanent and lasting in its results, but we mean work that is undertaken which influences the children for a limited amount of time only. The slum nursery or kindergarten is of this type, but as we have already described it in connection with the Slum Department, it needs only mention here. Another line of temporary work is the Sunday School work of the Army, but that comes under the religious work and not the social.

An important line of temporary work, however, is the summer outing for the poor children. In each of our large cities these excursions for the poor children have been carried out on a large scale. Arrangements are made with a railroad or a steamboat company; the children are collected, hundreds at a time, and cared for by parties of Salvationists, they are taken out to the country for the day. Children who have never seen the country, and who do not know what a tree, a green hill, or the running water looks like, are thus given an entirely new outlook upon the world, and a lasting impression is made on their minds. In Kansas City, this line of work has been developed still further. One of the large parks has been handed over to the Army by the city authorities, and in it has been established a summer camp. Tents are pitched on the gra.s.s under the trees, and poor families are brought out here for a week at a time. In this way hundreds of families have experienced a little of summer vacation who otherwise would never have left their slum dwellings.

The permanent handling of the children as opposed to the temporary, begins with the Maternity Homes which are managed in connection with the Rescue Homes, and continues on through the Orphanages. The children cared for in this permanent way are the babies from the Maternity Homes and orphans. From this it must not be supposed, with regard to the Maternity Homes, that there is any intentional separation or even a suggested separation of the child from the mother, but in many cases, after a time, a partial separation is necessary. The mother is influenced and taught to care for and love her offspring, but after spending some months in the Home, she may take a situation of some sort, often as a domestic servant, and here she cannot take her baby. Hence, in such cases, the mother is expected to visit her child frequently, and to provide for its support.

The other cla.s.s of children dealt with in a permanent way are those who are picked up from the street, or who otherwise fall into the hands of the Army, often after being deserted by their parents. While Orphanages, as already stated, are not an important item in the Army's work, there are several in England and four in the United States. For the situation of an Orphanage, a country location is sought. For instance, one near New York City is located on a beautiful piece of property at Spring Valley. Another is at Rutherford, N. J. One of the largest is situated near San Francisco, California, and one of the latest additions for this purpose has been the securing of a fine piece of property at Lytton Springs, Cal. In all, there is accommodation for two hundred and twenty-five children in the United States.

FOOTNOTES:

[93] The author refers here to the annual Christmas dinner given in New York.

[94] "The Criminal," p. 208.