Community Civics and Rural Life Part 49

In LESSONS IN COMMUNITY AND NATIONAL LIFE:

Series A: Lesson 27, Concentration of social inst.i.tutions (including the school and the church).

Series B: Lesson 12, Impersonality of modern life.

Lesson 20, The church as a social inst.i.tution.

Lesson 29, Labor organizations.

Series C: Lesson 11, The effects of machinery on rural life.

Lesson 29, Child labor.

Lesson 32, Housing for workers.

"Sources of Information on Play and Recreation," by Lee F. Hanmer and Howard W. Knight; Department of Recreation, Russell Sage Foundation, New York (1915).

THE PLAYGROUND. A monthly publication of the Playground and Recreation a.s.sociation of America, 1 Madison Ave., New York ($2 a year).

NEIGHBORHOOD PLAY. A manual of rural recreation (The Youth's Companion, Boston).

McCready, S. B., Rural Science Reader. In "Rural Education Series," H. W. Foght, general editor (Heath).

Write the County Work Department, International Committee of the Y. M. C. A. for material.

Foght, H. W., THE RURAL TEACHER AND HIS WORK, Chapter VI (The rural school and community recreation).

Jackson, Henry E., A COMMUNITY Center--WHAT IT IS AND HOW TO ORGANIZE IT, U. S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1918, No. 11.

Quick, Herbert, "The rural awakening in its relation to civic and social center development." Bulletin No. 474, University of Wisconsin.

"Beautifying the Farmstead," Farmers' Bulletin No. 1087, U. S.

Department of Agriculture.

Proceedings First National Country Life Conference (address Dwight Sanderson, Secretary, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y.); "Play and recreation in rural life," p. 95; "Religious forces for country life," p. 83.

Jackson, Henry E., THE COMMUNITY CHURCH (Macmillan).

Numerous "surveys" of rural communities have been made by various agencies. Among them are those made by the Department of Church and Country Life of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church, 156 Fifth Ave., New York. Extensive surveys are being made by the Inter-Church World Movement, 45 West 18th St., New York.

Bulletin No. 184 of the Agricultural Experiment Station, Iowa State Agricultural College, Ames, Iowa, contains a social survey of Orange Towns.h.i.+p, Blackhawk County, Iowa.

Write your State Agricultural College or State University for possible materials of a local character.

CHAPTER XXII

DEPENDENT, DEFECTIVE, AND DELINQUENT MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY

In every community there are some members who are not self- supporting and who do not contribute materially to the community's progress (see Chapter V and Chapter XI).

WHO CONSt.i.tUTE DEPENDENTS, DEFECTIVES, AND DELINQUENTS

The very young and the very aged come within this group. Both are peculiarly dependent upon others, though the aged may, by thrift in earlier years, have acquired a competence with which to meet the needs of old age; and the young are expected, in later years, to compensate the community for the care they have received from others during childhood.

There are those, also, of all ages, who are incapacitated for self-support and for service by disease, or by physical or mental defects such as bodily deformities, blindness, or feeble- mindedness. In addition, there are some who, though physically able to perform service, deliberately prey upon the community in one manner or another without giving anything in return. The latter const.i.tute the DELINQUENT cla.s.s, and include criminals.

RELATION OF THE FAMILY TO THE PROBLEM

Normally, the needs of those who are unable to support themselves, whether because of extreme youth or old age or because of physical or mental defects, are provided for by the family. It frequently happens, however, that the family is unable to perform this service. It may be entirely broken up. Children may be left without parents, and the aged without children. The natural supporters of the family may be stricken by disease, or by accident, or by financial misfortune. Moreover, the proper care and treatment of many defectives require better facilities and greater skill than can be provided even by well-to-do families.

Thus a cla.s.s of DEPENDENTS is produced--dependents upon the community as a whole. They may or may not be DEFECTIVES, physical or mental. Dissipation and thriftlessness are two of the chief causes of dependency.

TREATMENT IN EARLY TIMES

In the lower stages of civilization it was not uncommon for the feeble and the helpless to be put to death, even sickly children and persons infirm from old age. This was done in the name of community interest. The struggle for existence was so severe that the presence of non-producing or non-fighting members endangered the entire group. Besides, it was the belief in most cases that the sacrifice of the helpless simply hastened their pa.s.sage into a happier life.

REDUCING THE WASTAGE OF HUMAN LIFE

Humane considerations now prevent such treatment of the helpless.

Moreover, with our increased skill in medicine and surgery and education, the diseased and defective may often be restored to health or fitted for some form of self-support that makes them happier and of use to the community. The wastage of human life has been greatly reduced in recent years. Many of the soldiers who returned from the war in Europe so broken in body or mind that in former times they would have dragged out the remainder of their lives a burden to themselves and to others have, by surgical skill and special forms of education, been restored wholly or partially to the ranks of the self-supporting and useful members of the community. This REHABILITATION of the dependent and defective members of the community, whether their misfortune is due to war or other causes, is the chief aim of the treatment given them by the community at the present time.

RESPONSIBILITY OF EACH COMMUNITY

It is an accepted principle that each community should, so far as possible, care for its own unfortunates, and the effectiveness with which it is done varies. But everywhere it has taken a long time to change from the old policy of mere RELIEF to the new policy of REHABILITATION (see above).

THE LOCAL ALMSHOUSE AND ITS DEFECTS

In New England and in a few other states the town, or towns.h.i.+p, is the unit for administering "poor relief," but elsewhere it is the county. The "almshouse," or "poor farm," or "county infirmary" is the usual local inst.i.tution for this purpose. Unfortunately it has been, as a rule, badly managed. Men and women, old people and children, healthy and diseased, blind and crippled, moral and immoral, even the insane, have been housed together, often mingling with one another with little restriction. The evils of such a system are apparent.

SHORT-SIGHTED POLICY

Moreover, the policy of the typical almshouse has been merely to give shelter and food and clothing to those who appeal for it, rather than to remedy the causes of dependency or to restore the unfortunate to a basis of self-support and usefulness. Medical treatment is of course given, but the means do not exist to give special expert treatment to particular cla.s.ses of defectives.

Little educational opportunity worthy of the name is afforded.

While able-bodied inmates usually have some work to do, it is seldom of a character to train for self-support or to create habits of industry.

REMEDIES PROPOSED

To provide this special treatment requires elaborate equipment and expert service, which cost a great deal of money, more than most counties or towns feel that they can afford. Communities must come to realize that they cannot afford to neglect their unfortunate members, no matter what it costs to care for them. But the cost need not be so great as it seems. A great deal of money is now WASTED on almshouses without adequate results. This can largely be remedied by insisting upon more expert supervision in such inst.i.tutions, and by a system of regular inspection by expert state officers. Greater care should be exercised with respect to those who are admitted to the inst.i.tutions. Only the deserving should be allowed to live on the public funds. It is not uncommon for some cla.s.ses of s.h.i.+ftless people to make a practice of seeking shelter in the almshouse during the winter, where they live in comparative comfort and idleness at the public expense, only to leave in the spring for a life of aimless indolence, imposing as beggars upon kind-hearted people.

PURPOSE OF STATE INSt.i.tUTIONS

Moreover, the county almshouse should be only a temporary place of detention for many of the people who now are kept there permanently. Those who need special treatment or training should be pa.s.sed on as quickly as possible to special inst.i.tutions that are equipped to care for them. Since most local communities could not well afford to maintain such special inst.i.tutions for the comparatively few who would need them, the state should maintain enough of them at central points to provide for the needs of all local communities.

The states do maintain such inst.i.tutions--hospitals and sanitariums for various types of mental disease, homes for orphans and for the aged, and for persons with incurable diseases, asylums and schools for the blind and the deaf-and-dumb, industrial schools for boys and girls. The problem of the state is, first, to develop such inst.i.tutions to the highest possible degree of efficiency for the REHABILITATION of their patients or inmates, and, second, to secure effective cooperation on the part of local authorities and inst.i.tutions in transferring those, and only those, who are ent.i.tled to state a.s.sistance.

COOPERATION FOR "OUTDOOR" RELIEF

When dependents are cared for in inst.i.tutions, it is called INDOOR RELIEF; when they are cared for outside of inst.i.tutions, in their homes, it is called OUTDOOR RELIEF. Outdoor relief requires community organization and cooperation and expert leaders.h.i.+p quite as much as indoor relief. The lack of these has often resulted in great harm both to the community and to the needy person.

Promiscuous giving of charity by well-intentioned persons often results in giving to the undeserving as well as to the deserving.