THE PRESS AND CHARITABLE FUNDS.[1]

By Canon Barnett.July, 1906.

By Canon Barnett.

July, 1906.

1From “The Independent Review”. By permission of Messrs. Fisher Unwin & Co.

ThePress had been the Church’s ablest ally in its effort to fulfil the apostolic precept, and teach the nation to remember the poor. The social instinct may be native to humanity, but it requires an impulse and a direction. The Press has again and again stirred such an impulse and given such direction. Charity was never more abundant, and methods of relief were never more considered.

The Press has been the ally of the Church in creating the better world of the present. But the Press, caught in these later years (as so many persons and bodies have been caught) by the lust of doing and the praise thereof, has aspired to be an administrator of relief. It has not been content with the rôle of a prophet or of a teacher, it has taken a place alongside of Ladies Bountiful, Relief Committees, and Boards of Guardians. It has invaded another province, and rival newspapers have had their own funds, their own agents, and their own systems of relief.

The result is probably an increase in the volume of money given by the readers of the papers. A large fund may, however, be a fallacious test of sympathy. The money subscribed under the pressure of appeal may have been diverted from other objects; and gifts are sometimesmade, not for the relief of the poor so much as for the relief of the givers. People have been known to give, that they may enjoy themselves more comfortably; and they may relieve their feelings by a gift, so as to be free to spend a family’s weekly income on their own dinner. A large fund is not, therefore, a sufficient evidence of increased sympathy.

But let it be granted that the Press action has brought more money to the service of the poor. The question is: Has it been for good?

The first characteristic of a Press fund is that, when a newspaper undertakes the administration of relief, it has to create its own machinery. It may begin by sending down to the distressed district a clever young man with a cab-load of tickets. Nothing seems easier than to give to those who ask, and so money is poured into the hands of applicants, or sent to the clergy for distribution. A rough experience soon enforces the necessity of inquiry and organization. In West Ham, in the winter of 1904-5, when the Borough Council was spending £28,000 on relief, when the Guardians had 20,000 persons on their out-relief lists and 1300 men in the stone yard, the Press funds were distributed without any inquiry or any attempt at co-operation. I gather a few notes from reports made at the time by a resident in the district.

“Mr. C—— received a large sum from theD. T.He relieved 400 regularly; and there was no interchange of names.”

“I found one street in which nearly every one had relief.”

“I was asked to visit a starving case on Sunday; and found a good dinner stowed away under the table.”

“One man in receipt of 47s. a week in wages received twelve tickets from theD. N.on Christmas Eve, and did not turn up to his work for four days, though extra pay was offered for Boxing Day.”

“A man,” says a relieving officer, “came to me on Friday and had 3s. He went to the Town Hall and got 4s. His daughter got 3s. from the same source; his wife 5s. from a Councillor, and late the same night a goose.”

Another relieving officer reported:—

“Outside my office a 4-lb. loaf could be bought for 1d., and a 2s. relief ticket for two pots of beer.”

“The public-houses did far better when the relief funds were at work.”

“My impression is, that more than 500 people who were in receipt of out relief in my district received relief from the funds; but we were never consulted.”

“The relieving officers had to be under police protection for four months.”

Such an experience naturally forced the newspapers to consider their ways. The system of doles was abandoned, and local organizations were established to give relief in some approved method. Let it be granted, without prejudice, that the administration was made so effective as to justify a report of good work to the subscribers to the fund. Let it be granted that a large number of the unemployed were given work, that families were emigrated, and that the hands of existing agencies were strengthened. There are still two criticisms which may be directed against the Press position as an administrator of relief. The first is, that the experience by which it learns wisdom is disastrous to the people. The waste of money is itself serious, but that is a small matter alongside of the bitter feeling, the suspicion, the loss of heart, the loss of self-respect, thelying, which are encouraged when gifts are obtained by clamour and deceit. Gifts may be poisons as well as food, and gifts badly given make an epidemic of moral disease.

The second criticism is, that the organization, when it is created, disturbs, displaces, and confuses other organizations, while it is not itself permanent. The Press action leaves, it may be said, a trail of demoralization, and does not remain sufficiently long in existence to clear up its own abuses.

Another characteristic of a Press fund is, that a newspaper raises its money by word pictures of family poverty. Its interviewers break in on the sacredness of home. They come to the poor man’s house without the sympathy of long experience, without any friendly introduction, with an eye only to the “copy” which may best provoke the gifts of their readers. They write about the secrets of sorrow and suffering. They make public the bitterness of heart which is precious to the soul, and thus intermeddle with the grief which no stranger can understand. Their tales lower the standard of human dignity; they make the poor who read the tales proud of conditions of which they should be ashamed, and they make the rich think of the distress rather than of the self-respect of their neighbours.

The effects of the Press method of raising money by uncovering the secrets of private sorrow may be summed up under three heads.

(a) It increases poverty. Poverty comes to be regarded as a sort of domestic asset. The family which can make the greatest show of suffering has the greatest chance of relief, and examples are found of people who have made themselves poor, or appear poor, for the sake of the fund.

(b) It degrades the poor. A subtle effect of this advertisementof private suffering is, that people so advertised lose their self-respect. They, as it were, like to expose themselves, and make a show of what ought to be hidden; they glory in their shame, and accept at others’ hands what they themselves ought to earn. They beg, and are not ashamed; they are idle, and are not self-disgraced. They are content to be pitied.

(c) It hardens the common conscience. A far-reaching effect of these tales of suffering heaped on suffering is, that the public demands more and more sensation to move it to benevolence. The natural human instinct which makes a man care for a man is weakened; and he who yesterday shrank from the thought of a sorrowing neighbour, is to-day hardly moved by a tale of starvation, anguish, and death.

Feeling, we are taught, which is acted on and not actively used, becomes dulled; and the Press tales which work on the feeling of their readers at last dry up the fountain of real charity. The public in a way finds its interest, if not its enjoyment, in the news of others’ suffering.

A third characteristic of a Press fund is, the daily bold advertisement of the amount received. Rival funds boast themselves one against another; and rivalry is successful in drawing in thousands and tens of thousands of pounds. The magnitude of these sums is, however, always misleading; and people for whom the money is subscribed think there is no end to the resources for their relief. The demand is increased; people pour in from the country to share the benefit; workmen lay down their tools to put in their claims; energy is relaxed; greed is encouraged; and, when it is found that the relief obtained is small,there are suspicion and discontent. The failure of the funds which depend on advertisement suggests the wisdom of the Divine direction, that charity should be in secret.

Such are some of the criticisms which I would offer on the Press funds. I grant that they apply to all “funds”; and most of us who have tried to “remember the poor” have seen our work broken by the intrusion of some outside and benevolent agency. The truth is, that the only gift which deserves the credit of charity is the personal gift—what a man gives at his own cost, desiring nothing in return, neither thanks nor credit. What a man gives, directed by loving sympathy with a neighbour he knows and respects, this is the charity which is blessed; and its very mistakes are steps to better things. A “fund” cannot easily have these qualities of charity. Its agents do not give at their own cost; its gifts cannot be in secret; it cannot walk along the path of friendship; it is bound to investigate. When, therefore, any “fund” assumes the ways of charity, when it claims irresponsibility, when it expects gratitude, when it is unequal and irregular in its action, it justifies the strange cry we have lately heard: “Curse your charity”.

A “fund,” voluntary or legal—it seems to me—should represent an effort to do justice, and should follow the ways of justice. Its object should be, not to express pity, or even sympathy, and it should not ask for gratitude. Its object is to right wrong, to redress the unfairness which follows the triumph of success, and give to the weak and disherited a share in the prosperity they have done their part to create. A “fund” because its object is to do justice, ought to follow scientific lines; it ought to be guided by sound judgment; it ought to be administered by skilled officials; and it ought to do nothing which can lower any man’s strength and dignity. On the contrary, it ought to do everything to open to thelowest the way of honourable living. Its action must be just, and seem to be just; it must represent the mind, not of one class only, but of all classes.

There have been “funds” which more or less approach this ideal. The Mansion House Fund of 1903-4 issued a Report which stands as a model of what is possible; and its ideal is that of the ablest Poor Law reformers. Press funds created by excitement, and directed in a hurry, will hardly reach such an ideal. They will neither by their genesis nor by their action represent the ways of justice.

The Press, I submit, deserts its high calling when it offers itself as a means by which its readers may easily do their duty to the poor. The relief of the poor can never be easy—the easiest way is almost always the wrong way. The Press, when it makes it possible for rich people to satisfy their consciences by a donation to its “funds” lets them escape their duty of effort, of sacrifice, and of personal sympathy. It spoils the public, as foolish parents spoil children by taking away the call to effort.

The Press has great possibilities in teaching people to remember the poor. It might educate the national conscience to make a national effort to remove the causes of want of employment, physical weakness, and drunkenness. It might rouse the rich to the patriotism which the Russian noble expressed, when he said that “the rights of property must give way to national needs”. It might set the public mind to think of a heart of the Empire in which there should be no infant of days, no young man without hope, and no old man without the means of peace. The Press has done much. It seems to me a loss if, for the sake of the immediate earthly link, if for the sake of creating a “fund” to relieve present distress, it misses the eternal gain—the creation of a public mind which will prevent any distress.

Samuel A. Barnett.

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