The principles of relief / by Edward T. Devine.

  • Edward Thomas Devine
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The principles of relief / by Edward T. Devine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    become conscious of its responsibility for the relief of dis- tress, and is awakening to its obligation to devise effective and remedial systems of relief for such dependents. The class of social debtors is not recruited from any one occupation, or from any one economic or social group. The learned professions, the mercantile and clerical voca- tions, artisans skilled and unskilled, contribute each their fair quota of those who for a longer or shorter period are dependent upon public or private relief. Religion, race, nationality, and color require in the records of charitable societies as many subdivisions as in the census. By no means all of those who have small and irregular incomes become dependent. Meagre or irregular income is, of course, a usual precBdent condition of dependence, but there is an uncounted multitude whose earnings are irreg- ular or meagre who, nevertheless, do not become social debtors, and who maintain a standard of living which conserves their physical vitality, and enables their chil- dren to attain a better position than that which they have themselves occupied. The relief problem is not directly concerned with attempts to elevate the general standard of living, or to influence the general distribution of wealth. It deals rather with social accidents — with individual families, whatever their previous station, who, through sickness, death of breadwinner, or exceptional misfortune of some kind, lose their position and are either temporarily or permanently unable to regain it, or to adjust themselves to any other position of normal self-support. The aggregate number of those who are thus submerged in the onward movement of commerce and industry may be great, but it affords a relief problem only in those communities which are so far advanced in civilization as to recognize social obligations and in which there are at least some resources available for relief. Whether a particular family is dependent is to be judged not by an absolute standard, but with reference to the pre- vailing conditions. Where there is general prosperity and a considerable social surplus, it is possible to find families temporarily dependent and fairly entitled, in the interests of the community, to a helping hand from their fellows,
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