Almost Worthy: The Poor, Paupers, and the Science of Charity in America, 1877-1917

3 Friendly Visitors or Scientific Investigators? Befriending and Measuring the Poor

3 FRIENDLY VISITORS OR SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATORS? BEFRIENDING AND MEASURING THE POOR The Uncertain Authority of the Friendly Visitors Through daily encounters with the needy in dozens of North American cities from Vancouver to Atlanta, volunteers of the scientific charity movement investigated, registered, classified, and sometimes aided the poor. Far removed from the annual gatherings of leading reformers and academics at the National Conference of Charities and Correction, the efforts of COS investigators and the “friendly visitors” kept the movement running. Visitors were at once to befriend the poor, supervise their moral development with an eye especially toward matters of finances and cleanliness, and evaluate their worthiness for relief so that the local COS could fulfill its mission of aiding only the worthy poor. Contrary to the visitors’ historical anonymity today, leading members regarded visiting as the single most important component of the scientific charity movement, since it ideally put the scientific theories of pauperism and principles of scientific investigation espoused by reformers into action, via personal engagements that crossed class lines. As Haverford College professor of sociology and social work and NCCC stalwart Frank Dekker Watson explained, “Where there are the largest number of volunteers coming into firsthand and constant touch with the disadvan70 Friendly Visitors or Scientific Investigators? 71 taged groups, there you are likely to have a more intelligent interest in the poor and the causes of poverty.”1 Historianscommonlyinterpretscientificcharitymembers’useoffriendly visitingasaformofmiddle-classmeddlingjustifiedbythepoor’s supposed immorality and untrustworthiness. Befriending the poor amounted to serving as exemplars or enforcers of cleanliness, thrif, and sobriety. In theirpromotionalanddidacticwritingsonvisiting,scientificcharityauthors rarely bothered disguising those intentions beneath a veil of humanitarianism .Morecommonlytheyarguedthatinadditiontoitsmoralizing effect, visiting also helped the movement maintain a fresh and unprejudicedscientificperspectivetowardpoverty.Bykeepingfieldvolunteers in close proximity with their objects of charity, they would not be beguiled by the paupers’ contrived, emotional pleas, would not fall into fixed patterns of thought, and would better learn the causes behind “honest” poverty. Even as visiting kept the movement appropriately scientific ,italsopromisedtoactasabulwarkagainstanoverlymechanized charity. The theoreticians of scientific charity who sought to restore interclass harmony worried that the local COS tended to let their work “crystallize into fixed forms and methods,” as Oscar McCulloch put it. If such mechanization were to occur, the movement would become just another charitable group contributing to the glut of sources upon which thepauperpreyed.Visitingwastobeobjectiveyetalsopersonalizedand flexible.2 The friendly visitor played several roles: friend, moral instructor, snoop, scientific investigator. She aspired to know the poor in the subjective capacity of a neighbor, restoring the personal bond between giver and recipient that the movement thought characterized an earlier, nobler charity. Yet visitors might also serve as investigators, observing the conditions of the poor objectively, providing raw data to be interpreted by a committeeatthelocalCOSandthenperhapsatthenationallevel.Given these complex and ofen contradictory demands, her role, responsibilities , and the meaning of the data she collected became topics of much controversyandevengreaterpontification.Withtime,leadingmembers increasingly came to see her preparation as insufficient for the task of investigating pauperism. Much like the pauper, the visitors and investiga- 72 Almost Worthy tors required scientific intervention to be reformed and improved if the movement was truly to know the causes of poverty and distinguish the worthy from the unworthy. Many in the movement thought of friendly visitors’ work in terms of medical metaphors. Influenced by their biological analysis of pauperism and their ties first to the Sanitary Commission and then to the public health movement, several leading thinkers in scientific charity claimed that pauperism was a disease with causes that could be discovered by rigorous examination, that had regular symptoms to be diagnosed , and that potentially could be cured. At the 1885 meeting of the National Conference, Alexander Johnson, the general secretary of the Cincinnati COS who later became one of the most prominent members of the conference, a nationally recognized expert in charity as well as feeblemindedness, explained the “general law of social science,” that “the defective classes are to be considered, not as objects of punishment, but of treatment; diseased persons to be cured, or persons in danger of disease to be protected, quarantined, or disinfected.” Johnson claimed the laws of medicine were “especially applicable to scientific charity” and compared scientific charity’s investigators to physicians, since both sought diagnosis of a disease and prescription of a remedy. To staff the local charityorganizationsocieties,Johnsoninsistedon“acommitteeof clear-headed, warm-hearted men and women—a consultation of physicians carefully to consider and decide on the case.” Finally, scientific charity required...