The Girl Who Earns Her Own Living/Chapter 13
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Modern philanthropy presents a congenial method of self-support for educated, ambitious, earnest women. The organized uplift movement, generally known as social work, which is found in every industrial center, offers a field in which the intelligent, tactful woman may reap the double harvest of a fair livelihood and the knowledge that the world will be the better for her having worked in it. It is not work for the very young girl.
During recent years philanthropy has been reduced to a science. Charity is dispensed by methods as business-like as those employed by any great corporation. Time was when women who had failed at almost everything else were sent out as missionaries to foreign lands, to the poor whites of the South, to the neglected Indians of the West, and to the slum dwellers of the great cities. "Genteel" women with social backing and family name were given the preference as managers of homes for the dependent or refuges for girls; while the wealthy employed as their almoners perfectly ladylike relatives who had to be supported, anyhow, and might as well be paid a salary.
The untrained, tactless missionaries accomplished little beyond making trouble for ambassadors and consuls in the foreign countries to which they were sent. The "genteel" superintendents of homes and refuges failed because they did not know how to organize and manage affairs.
Then a few men and women brave enough to face the storm of public outcry against salaried positions in charity work began their struggle to put philanthropy on a business basis. Rich men and women were asked to help the poor and needy only through these charity associations, whose members had the courage and the time and the working force to investigate claims.
Such was the quiet, unostentatious beginning of the associated charity work which is now found in every city of any size in the United States. So immediate were the results from this movement, so quick were business men and women to grasp the municipal or civic possibilities of such an association, that not only is organized charity receiving general support from the masses who can give small sums, but men and women of great wealth are organizing their benefactions on similar lines. The Russell Sage Foundation is as well organized as any life-insurance office or great department store. The Carnegie benefactions are handled by directors, committees and paid investigators; so are most of the charities in which John D. Rockefeller is interested. The churches have fallen into line, establishing schools where missionaries, deaconesses, neighborhood workers, etc., are trained.
Just as it takes capable men and women to conduct great enterprises, so does it require high-grade workers, men and women of executive ability and special training, to manage the great charity movements of the hour, to dispense the magnificent philanthropies of the American multi-millionaire. There must be stenographers to handle correspondence, investigators to relieve the poor and encourage the wretched, studious workers to dig below the surface indications of squalor and filth and reach the cause, and head workers of peculiar executive ability to sift the reports brought in by investigators, and outline a more vigorous campaign as the world's needs are indicated by the reports.
I have emphasized the need for trained workers, not untrained enthusiasts, at the very beginning of this chapter, because I do not want to deceive any girl who feels that she must have something to do to-morrow or next day which will bring in immediate returns. This chapter on philanthropy as a profession is written especially for the girl of education who has time and money to specialize for social service work. To this explanation I want to add something more, the statement that not every woman, however ambitious, is suited to social service work.
She must have reasonably good health—at least no organic trouble. I use the word "reasonably" advisedly, for often the girl who is breaking down under the routine of office work or confinement of desk, counter or schoolroom, practically renews her youth and regains her strength in social work, which generally includes much outdoor life.
She must have tact. She will need this in securing funds from the rich, co-operation from the influential, and results from the poor to whom she dispenses charity.
She must be open-minded enough to suspend judgment in a case until she has learned every side of it, and yet she must be resourceful enough to act on her own responsibility when emergency demands. She must not be swayed by personalities—judging the need, not the individual—and she must not expect gratitude.
She must be willing to start for a mere pittance and prove her worth to those above her in authority.
She must be willing, nay, anxious, to study continually, for nearly every case will present a different sociological problem springing from a different sociological evil, and it is her work not to relieve the single case alone, but to do her part in reducing the evil which lies behind the case.
The work itself is varied. Here are some of the positions open to those who desire to engage in it:
Expert visitors for charity organization societies or other charitable institutions. Investigators of social conditions or institutions. Matrons or administrators in institutional work. Financial secretaries for private individuals or societies. Inspectors (tenement houses, factories, etc.). Executive secretaries of educational or philanthropic societies. Probation officers. Head workers and assistants in social settlements, institutional churches, welfare departments of manufacturing and mercantile establishments. The public service, State and municipal, especially those branches which deal with public welfare, such as health, charities and corrections. Members of boards of managers and committees of philanthropic institutions. Friendly visitors and volunteer workers in any field of service requiring an acquaintance with existing conditions and a knowledge of modern methods of social work.
In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the girls' branch of the house of refuge has been placed in charge of a woman trained for social work in Chicago, Martha P. Falconer, who has employed as teachers about eight Wellesley and Vassar graduates who specialized on sociology during their college course and later took postgraduate training for social work. In glancing over the bulletin of the Thirty-fifth National Conference of Charities and Corrections, held at Richmond, Virginia, in May, 1908, I find that among hundreds of offices held by women are these: Secretary charity organization society; clerk of juvenile court; assistant superintendent of industrial school for girls; truant officers; investigating clerk board of children's guardians; secretary of the same board; circulation manager of Charities and Commons; supervisor of playgrounds; superintendent State training-school for girls; district superintendent bureau of charities; superintendent nurses' association; matron of home for working-girls; matron of farm school and home for nervous and backward children; probation officer; superintendent I. O. O. F. home; agent soldiers' orphan home industrial school for girls; head resident neighborhood house; superintendent of probationers State industrial school; registrar tenement-house department; superintendent visiting nurses.
There are openings for trained workers in settlement or neighborhood houses, in consumers' leagues, in district nursing, in the child-labor movement, in public playgrounds, in summer schools for the poor, in free clinics for mothers who need to be taught how to care for their children, in country homes for convalescents and children, and in the anti-tuberculosis movement. The Russell Sage Foundation and similar benefactions give the preference to trained workers, and especially to investigators.
The charity organizations in large cities experience great difficulty in retaining the services of their trained workers, because from smaller cities just organizing charity associations, or from some private institutions being reorganized on practical, up-to-date lines, come better offers for the trained worker of city experience.
A man who stands close to the head of his profession, philanthropy, told me recently that he knew of not less than six societies or organizations ready to pay from eighteen hundred to three thousand dollars a year that were searching for the right men and women. And the right man or woman is not the untrained, however earnest, one.
The salaries paid in philanthropy or social service are about the same as those which prevail in schools and colleges, though for executive ability, especially among men, a little more is paid by the charity organization than by a college or school. A minimum salary for the beginner is six dollars a week, or three hundred and twelve dollars a year, but it is seldom that a worker draws so low a salary for any length of time. If she is worth training, she is quickly worth more money. From three hundred and twelve a year the salary usually jumps to five hundred dollars, and increases with the usefulness and executive ability of the worker, seven thousand dollars being the maximum salary.
The preparation consists of high-school education, or, better, special attention to sociology and anthropology and political economy, followed by a year's practical training in a school of philanthropy. The entrance requirements of the New York School of Philanthropy, which is conducted by the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York and affiliated with Columbia University, are as follows:
"Men and women are enrolled as regular students, without further examination, who present satisfactory credentials as to character, good health and earnestness of purpose, and belong to one of the following classes: First, graduates of a recognized college or university who have taken some courses in the social sciences—sociology, economics, etc. Second, persons of good general education—at least equivalent to a high school or normal school training—who have had considerable experience as volunteer managers, visitors or directors of charitable societies, or of social, educational, philanthropic or religious activities. Third, professional workers with at least one year's successful practice of the profession of social work who desire to improve their knowledge of the methods of social service."
In one or two other schools the entrance requirements are a trifle less rigid.
The plan of instruction employed in the New York School of Philanthropy, and practically in all similar schools, is as follows:
The one-year course offers supervised work to occupy the entire time of the student for eight months (October to May), six days in the week from nine o'clock to five. It comprises formal lectures by experts, classroom exercises and discussions, assigned readings and library work, field work in visiting institutions and carrying on investigations, practice work in the visitation of needy families and the practical administration of office work in the various special lines of the individual interest of each separate student. New York City offers doubtless the richest opportunities in the country for such practice work.
The tuition fee for such training averages fifty dollars a year, to which board and incidental expenses must be added—about five hundred dollars in all for the year. Sometimes the latter are reduced by a student living at a settlement or neighborhood house and earning part of her expenses as a helper, but the taking of outside employment during the training is not encouraged. Also several scholarships are granted annually to promising workers.
As I said before, graduates do not have to seek positions. The positions seek them. There is absolutely no period of uncertainty or waiting for the well-equipped and trained worker to face.
In conclusion, here is a word of suggestion to nurses, teachers and stenographers who have spent years preparing for their work, only to find it uncongenial and wearing. If you believe that you would enjoy social work, apply to the nearest charity organization and ascertain just what your experience would count for. If a teacher in graded schools change to a position in a State or private charity institution. If a private nurse, try visiting nursing among the poor. If a stenographer in a law office, try for a clerical position in a charity organization. If the call is meant for you, it will come to you, no matter what the position, and the means to answer will come with the call.