Our conceptions of morality, as all our other ideas, pass through a course of development; the difficulty comes in adjusting our conduct, which has become hardened into customs and habits, to these changing moral conceptions. When this adjustment is not made, we suffer from the strain and indecision of believing one hypothesis and acting2 upon another.
Probably there is no relation in life which our democracy is changing more rapidly than the charitable relation—that relation which obtains between benefactor3 and beneficiary; at the same time there is no point of contact in our modern experience which reveals so clearly the lack of that equality which democracy implies. We have reached the moment when democracy has made such inroads upon this relationship, that the complacency of the old-fashioned charitable man is gone forever; while, at the same time, the very need and existence of charity, denies us the consolation4 and freedom which democracy will at last give.
It is quite obvious that the ethics5 of none of us are clearly defined, and we are continually obliged to act in circles of habit, based upon convictions which we no longer hold. Thus our estimate of the effect of environment and social conditions has doubtless shifted faster than our methods of administrating charity have changed. Formerly6 when it was believed that poverty was synonymous with vice7 and laziness, and that the prosperous man was the righteous man, charity was administered harshly with a good conscience; for the charitable agent really blamed the individual for his poverty, and the very fact of his own superior prosperity gave him a certain consciousness of superior morality. We have learned since that time to measure by other standards, and have ceased to accord to the money-earning capacity exclusive respect; while it is still rewarded out of all proportion to any other, its possession is by no means assumed to imply the possession of the highest moral qualities. We have learned to judge men by their social virtues9 as well as by their business capacity, by their devotion to intellectual and disinterested10 aims, and by their public spirit, and we naturally resent being obliged to judge poor people so solely11 upon the industrial side. Our democratic instinct instantly takes alarm. It is largely in this modern tendency to judge all men by one democratic standard, while the old charitable attitude commonly allowed the use of two standards, that much of the difficulty adheres. We know that unceasing bodily toil12 becomes wearing and brutalizing, and our position is totally untenable if we judge large numbers of our fellows solely upon their success in maintaining it.
The daintily clad charitable visitor who steps into the little house made untidy by the vigorous efforts of her hostess, the washerwoman, is no longer sure of her superiority to the latter; she recognizes that her hostess after all represents social value and industrial use, as over against her own parasitic13 cleanliness and a social standing14 attained15 only through status.
The only families who apply for aid to the charitable agencies are those who have come to grief on the industrial side; it may be through sickness, through loss of work, or for other guiltless and inevitable16 reasons; but the fact remains17 that they are industrially ailing18, and must be bolstered19 and helped into industrial health. The charity visitor, let us assume, is a young college woman, well-bred and open-minded; when she visits the family assigned to her, she is often embarrassed to find herself obliged to lay all the stress of her teaching and advice upon the industrial virtues, and to treat the members of the family almost exclusively as factors in the industrial system. She insists that they must work and be self-supporting, that the most dangerous of all situations is idleness, that seeking one's own pleasure, while ignoring claims and responsibilities, is the most ignoble21 of actions. The members of her assigned family may have other charms and virtues—they may possibly be kind and considerate of each other, generous to their friends, but it is her business to stick to the industrial side. As she daily holds up these standards, it often occurs to the mind of the sensitive visitor, whose conscience has been made tender by much talk of brotherhood22 and equality, that she has no right to say these things; that her untrained hands are no more fitted to cope with actual conditions than those of her broken-down family.
The grandmother of the charity visitor could have done the industrial preaching very well, because she did have the industrial virtues and housewifely training. In a generation our experiences have changed, and our views with them; but we still keep on in the old methods, which could be applied23 when our consciences were in line with them, but which are daily becoming more difficult as we divide up into people who work with their hands and those who do not. The charity visitor belonging to the latter class is perplexed by recognitions and suggestions which the situation forces upon her. Our democracy has taught us to apply our moral teaching all around, and the moralist is rapidly becoming so sensitive that when his life does not exemplify his ethical24 convictions, he finds it difficult to preach.
Added to this is a consciousness, in the mind of the visitor, of a genuine misunderstanding of her motives26 by the recipients28 of her charity, and by their neighbors. Let us take a neighborhood of poor people, and test their ethical standards by those of the charity visitor, who comes with the best desire in the world to help them out of their distress29. A most striking incongruity30, at once apparent, is the difference between the emotional kindness with which relief is given by one poor neighbor to another poor neighbor, and the guarded care with which relief is given by a charity visitor to a charity recipient27. The neighborhood mind is at once confronted not only by the difference of method, but by an absolute clashing of two ethical standards.
A very little familiarity with the poor districts of any city is sufficient to show how primitive31 and genuine are the neighborly relations. There is the greatest willingness to lend or borrow anything, and all the residents of the given tenement32 know the most intimate family affairs of all the others. The fact that the economic condition of all alike is on a most precarious33 level makes the ready outflow of sympathy and material assistance the most natural thing in the world. There are numberless instances of self-sacrifice quite unknown in the circles where greater economic advantages make that kind of intimate knowledge of one's neighbors impossible. An Irish family in which the man has lost his place, and the woman is struggling to eke34 out the scanty35 savings36 by day's work, will take in the widow and her five children who have been turned into the street, without a moment's reflection upon the physical discomforts37 involved. The most maligned38 landlady39 who lives in the house with her tenants40 is usually ready to lend a scuttle41 full of coal to one of them who may be out of work, or to share her supper. A woman for whom the writer had long tried in vain to find work failed to appear at the appointed time when employment was secured at last. Upon investigation42 it transpired43 that a neighbor further down the street was taken ill, that the children ran for the family friend, who went of course, saying simply when reasons for her non-appearance were demanded, "It broke me heart to leave the place, but what could I do?" A woman whose husband was sent up to the city prison for the maximum term, just three months, before the birth of her child found herself penniless at the end of that time, having gradually sold her supply of household furniture. She took refuge with a friend whom she supposed to be living in three rooms in another part of town. When she arrived, however, she discovered that her friend's husband had been out of work so long that they had been reduced to living in one room. The friend, however, took her in, and the friend's husband was obliged to sleep upon a bench in the park every night for a week, which he did uncomplainingly if not cheerfully. Fortunately it was summer, "and it only rained one night." The writer could not discover from the young mother that she had any special claim upon the "friend" beyond the fact that they had formerly worked together in the same factory. The husband she had never seen until the night of her arrival, when he at once went forth44 in search of a midwife who would consent to come upon his promise of future payment.
The evolutionists tell us that the instinct to pity, the impulse to aid his fellows, served man at a very early period, as a rude rule of right and wrong. There is no doubt that this rude rule still holds among many people with whom charitable agencies are brought into contact, and that their ideas of right and wrong are quite honestly outraged45 by the methods of these agencies. When they see the delay and caution with which relief is given, it does not appear to them a conscientious48 scruple49, but as the cold and calculating action of a selfish man. It is not the aid that they are accustomed to receive from their neighbors, and they do not understand why the impulse which drives people to "be good to the poor" should be so severely50 supervised. They feel, remotely, that the charity visitor is moved by motives that are alien and unreal. They may be superior motives, but they are different, and they are "agin nature." They cannot comprehend why a person whose intellectual perceptions are stronger than his natural impulses, should go into charity work at all. The only man they are accustomed to see whose intellectual perceptions are stronger than his tenderness of heart, is the selfish and avaricious51 man who is frankly52 "on the make." If the charity visitor is such a person, why does she pretend to like the poor? Why does she not go into business at once?
We may say, of course, that it is a primitive view of life, which thus confuses intellectuality and business ability; but it is a view quite honestly held by many poor people who are obliged to receive charity from time to time. In moments of indignation the poor have been known to say: "What do you want, anyway? If you have nothing to give us, why not let us alone and stop your questionings and investigations53?" "They investigated me for three weeks, and in the end gave me nothing but a black character," a little woman has been heard to assert. This indignation, which is for the most part taciturn, and a certain kindly54 contempt for her abilities, often puzzles the charity visitor. The latter may be explained by the standard of worldly success which the visited families hold. Success does not ordinarily go, in the minds of the poor, with charity and kind-heartedness, but rather with the opposite qualities. The rich landlord is he who collects with sternness, who accepts no excuse, and will have his own. There are moments of irritation55 and of real bitterness against him, but there is still admiration56, because he is rich and successful. The good-natured landlord, he who pities and spares his poverty-pressed tenants, is seldom rich. He often lives in the back of his house, which he has owned for a long time, perhaps has inherited; but he has been able to accumulate little. He commands the genuine love and devotion of many a poor soul, but he is treated with a certain lack of respect. In one sense he is a failure. The charity visitor, just because she is a person who concerns herself with the poor, receives a certain amount of this good-natured and kindly contempt, sometimes real affection, but little genuine respect. The poor are accustomed to help each other and to respond according to their kindliness57; but when it comes to worldly judgment58, they use industrial success as the sole standard. In the case of the charity visitor who has neither natural kindness nor dazzling riches, they are deprived of both standards, and they find it of course utterly59 impossible to judge of the motive25 of organized charity.
Even those of us who feel most sorely the need of more order in altruistic60 effort and see the end to be desired, find something distasteful in the juxtaposition61 of the words "organized" and "charity." We say in defence that we are striving to turn this emotion into a motive, that pity is capricious, and not to be depended on; that we mean to give it the dignity of conscious duty. But at bottom we distrust a little a scheme which substitutes a theory of social conduct for the natural promptings of the heart, even although we appreciate the complexity62 of the situation. The poor man who has fallen into distress, when he first asks aid, instinctively63 expects tenderness, consideration, and forgiveness. If it is the first time, it has taken him long to make up his mind to take the step. He comes somewhat bruised64 and battered65, and instead of being met with warmth of heart and sympathy, he is at once chilled by an investigation and an intimation that he ought to work. He does not recognize the disciplinary aspect of the situation.
The only really popular charity is that of the visiting nurses, who by virtue8 of their professional training render services which may easily be interpreted into sympathy and kindness, ministering as they do to obvious needs which do not require investigation.
The state of mind which an investigation arouses on both sides is most unfortunate; but the perplexity and clashing of different standards, with the consequent misunderstandings, are not so bad as the moral deterioration66 which is almost sure to follow.
When the agent or visitor appears among the poor, and they discover that under certain conditions food and rent and medical aid are dispensed67 from some unknown source, every man, woman, and child is quick to learn what the conditions may be, and to follow them. Though in their eyes a glass of beer is quite right and proper when taken as any self-respecting man should take it; though they know that cleanliness is an expensive virtue which can be required of few; though they realize that saving is well-nigh impossible when but a few cents can be laid by at a time; though their feeling for the church may be something quite elusive68 of definition and quite apart from daily living: to the visitor they gravely laud69 temperance and cleanliness and thrift70 and religious observance. The deception71 in the first instances arises from a wondering inability to understand the ethical ideals which can require such impossible virtues, and from an innocent desire to please. It is easy to trace the development of the mental suggestions thus received. When A discovers that B, who is very little worse off than he, receives good things from an inexhaustible supply intended for the poor at large, he feels that he too has a claim for his share, and step by step there is developed the competitive spirit which so horrifies72 charity visitors when it shows itself in a tendency to "work" the relief-giving agencies.
The most serious effect upon the poor comes when dependence73 upon the charitable society is substituted for the natural outgoing of human love and sympathy, which, happily, we all possess in some degree. The spontaneous impulse to sit up all night with the neighbor's sick child is turned into righteous indignation against the district nurse, because she goes home at six o'clock, and doesn't do it herself. Or the kindness which would have prompted the quick purchase of much needed medicine is transformed into a voluble scoring of the dispensary, because it gives prescriptions74 and not drugs; and "who can get well on a piece of paper?"
If a poor woman knows that her neighbor next door has no shoes, she is quite willing to lend her own, that her neighbor may go decently to mass, or to work; for she knows the smallest item about the scanty wardrobe, and cheerfully helps out. When the charity visitor comes in, all the neighbors are baffled as to what her circumstances may be. They know she does not need a new pair of shoes, and rather suspect that she has a dozen pairs at home; which, indeed, she sometimes has. They imagine untold75 stores which they may call upon, and her most generous gift is considered niggardly76, compared with what she might do. She ought to get new shoes for the family all round, "she sees well enough that they need them." It is no more than the neighbor herself would do, has practically done, when she lent her own shoes. The charity visitor has broken through the natural rule of giving, which, in a primitive society, is bounded only by the need of the recipient and the resources of the giver; and she gets herself into untold trouble when she is judged by the ethics of that primitive society.
The neighborhood understands the selfish rich people who stay in their own part of town, where all their associates have shoes and other things. Such people don't bother themselves about the poor; they are like the rich landlords of the neighborhood experience. But this lady visitor, who pretends to be good to the poor, and certainly does talk as though she were kind-hearted, what does she come for, if she does not intend to give them things which are so plainly needed?
The visitor says, sometimes, that in holding her poor family so hard to a standard of thrift she is really breaking down a rule of higher living which they formerly possessed77; that saving, which seems quite commendable78 in a comfortable part of town, appears almost criminal in a poorer quarter where the next-door neighbor needs food, even if the children of the family do not.
She feels the sordidness79 of constantly being obliged to urge the industrial view of life. The benevolent80 individual of fifty years ago honestly believed that industry and self-denial in youth would result in comfortable possessions for old age. It was, indeed, the method he had practised in his own youth, and by which he had probably obtained whatever fortune he possessed. He therefore reproved the poor family for indulging their children, urged them to work long hours, and was utterly untouched by many scruples81 which afflict82 the contemporary charity visitor. She says sometimes, "Why must I talk always of getting work and saving money, the things I know nothing about? If it were anything else I had to urge, I could do it; anything like Latin prose, which I had worried through myself, it would not be so hard." But she finds it difficult to connect the experiences of her youth with the experiences of the visited family.
Because of this diversity in experience, the visitor is continually surprised to find that the safest platitude83 may be challenged. She refers quite naturally to the "horrors of the saloon," and discovers that the head of her visited family does not connect them with "horrors" at all. He remembers all the kindnesses he has received there, the free lunch and treating which goes on, even when a man is out of work and not able to pay up; the loan of five dollars he got there when the charity visitor was miles away and he was threatened with eviction84. He may listen politely to her reference to "horrors," but considers it only "temperance talk."
The charity visitor may blame the women for lack of gentleness toward their children, for being hasty and rude to them, until she learns that the standard of breeding is not that of gentleness toward the children so much as the observance of certain conventions, such as the punctilious85 wearing of mourning garments after the death of a child. The standard of gentleness each mother has to work out largely by herself, assisted only by the occasional shame-faced remark of a neighbor, "That they do better when you are not too hard on them"; but the wearing of mourning garments is sustained by the definitely expressed sentiment of every woman in the street. The mother would have to bear social blame, a certain social ostracism86, if she failed to comply with that requirement. It is not comfortable to outrage46 the conventions of those among whom we live, and, if our social life be a narrow one, it is still more difficult. The visitor may choke a little when she sees the lessened87 supply of food and the scanty clothing provided for the remaining children in order that one may be conventionally mourned, but she doesn't talk so strongly against it as she would have done during her first month of experience with the family since bereaved88.
The subject of clothes indeed perplexes the visitor constantly, and the result of her reflections may be summed up somewhat in this wise: The girl who has a definite social standing, who has been to a fashionable school or to a college, whose family live in a house seen and known by all her friends and associates, may afford to be very simple, or even shabby as to her clothes, if she likes. But the working girl, whose family lives in a tenement, or moves from one small apartment to another, who has little social standing and has to make her own place, knows full well how much habit and style of dress has to do with her position. Her income goes into her clothing, out of all proportion to the amount which she spends upon other things. But, if social advancement89 is her aim, it is the most sensible thing she can do. She is judged largely by her clothes. Her house furnishing, with its pitiful little decorations, her scanty supply of books, are never seen by the people whose social opinions she most values. Her clothes are her background, and from them she is largely judged. It is due to this fact that girls' clubs succeed best in the business part of town, where "working girls" and "young ladies" meet upon an equal footing, and where the clothes superficially look very much alike. Bright and ambitious girls will come to these down-town clubs to eat lunch and rest at noon, to study all sorts of subjects and listen to lectures, when they might hesitate a long time before joining a club identified with their own neighborhood, where they would be judged not solely on their own merits and the unconscious social standing afforded by good clothes, but by other surroundings which are not nearly up to these. For the same reason, girls' clubs are infinitely90 more difficult to organize in little towns and villages, where every one knows every one else, just how the front parlor91 is furnished, and the amount of mortgage there is upon the house. These facts get in the way of a clear and unbiassed judgment; they impede92 the democratic relationship and add to the self-consciousness of all concerned. Every one who has had to do with down-town girls' clubs has had the experience of going into the home of some bright, well-dressed girl, to discover it uncomfortable and perhaps wretched, and to find the girl afterward93 carefully avoiding her, although the working girl may not have been at home when the call was made, and the visitor may have carried herself with the utmost courtesy throughout. In some very successful down-town clubs the home address is not given at all, and only the "business address" is required. Have we worked out our democracy further in regard to clothes than anything else?
The charity visitor has been rightly brought up to consider it vulgar to spend much money upon clothes, to care so much for "appearances." She realizes dimly that the care for personal decoration over that for one's home or habitat is in some way primitive and undeveloped; but she is silenced by its obvious need. She also catches a glimpse of the fact that the disproportionate expenditure94 of the poor in the matter of clothes is largely due to the exclusiveness of the rich who hide from them the interior of their houses, and their more subtle pleasures, while of necessity exhibiting their street clothes and their street manners. Every one who goes shopping at the same time may see the clothes of the richest women in town, but only those invited to her receptions see the Corot on her walls or the bindings in her library. The poor naturally try to bridge the difference by reproducing the street clothes which they have seen. They are striving to conform to a common standard which their democratic training presupposes belongs to all of us. The charity visitor may regret that the Italian peasant woman has laid aside her picturesque96 kerchief and substituted a cheap street hat. But it is easy to recognize the first attempt toward democratic expression.
The charity visitor finds herself still more perplexed when she comes to consider such problems as those of early marriage and child labor97; for she cannot deal with them according to economic theories, or according to the conventions which have regulated her own life. She finds both of these fairly upset by her intimate knowledge of the situation, and her sympathy for those into whose lives she has gained a curious insight. She discovers how incorrigibly98 bourgeois99 her standards have been, and it takes but a little time to reach the conclusion that she cannot insist so strenuously100 upon the conventions of her own class, which fail to fit the bigger, more emotional, and freer lives of working people. The charity visitor holds well-grounded views upon the imprudence of early marriages, quite naturally because she comes from a family and circle of professional and business people. A professional man is scarcely equipped and started in his profession before he is thirty. A business man, if he is on the road to success, is much nearer prosperity at thirty-five than twenty-five, and it is therefore wise for these men not to marry in the twenties; but this does not apply to the workingman. In many trades he is laid upon the shelf at thirty-five, and in nearly all trades he receives the largest wages in his life between twenty and thirty. If the young workingman has all his wages to himself, he will probably establish habits of personal comfort, which he cannot keep up when he has to divide with a family—habits which he can, perhaps, never overcome.
The sense of prudence101, the necessity for saving, can never come to a primitive, emotional man with the force of a conviction; but the necessity of providing for his children is a powerful incentive102. He naturally regards his children as his savings-bank; he expects them to care for him when he gets old, and in some trades old age comes very early. A Jewish tailor was quite lately sent to the Cook County poorhouse, paralyzed beyond recovery at the age of thirty-five. Had his little boy of nine been but a few years older, he might have been spared this sorrow of public charity. He was, in fact, better able to well support a family when he was twenty than when he was thirty-five, for his wages had steadily103 grown less as the years went on. Another tailor whom I know, who is also a Socialist104, always speaks of saving as a bourgeois virtue, one quite impossible to the genuine workingman. He supports a family consisting of himself, a wife and three children, and his two parents on eight dollars a week. He insists it would be criminal not to expend95 every penny of this amount upon food and shelter, and he expects his children later to care for him.
This economic pressure also accounts for the tendency to put children to work overyoung and thus cripple their chances for individual development and usefulness, and with the avaricious parent also leads to exploitation. "I have fed her for fourteen years, now she can help me pay my mortgage" is not an unusual reply when a hardworking father is expostulated with because he would take his bright daughter out of school and put her into a factory.
It has long been a common error for the charity visitor, who is strongly urging her "family" toward self-support, to suggest, or at least connive105, that the children be put to work early, although she has not the excuse that the parents have. It is so easy, after one has been taking the industrial view for a long time, to forget the larger and more social claim; to urge that the boy go to work and support his parents, who are receiving charitable aid. She does not realize what a cruel advantage the person who distributes charity has, when she gives advice.
The manager in a huge mercantile establishment employing many children was able to show during a child-labor investigation, that the only children under fourteen years of age in his employ were protégés who had been urged upon him by philanthropic ladies, not only acquaintances of his, but valued patrons of the establishment. It is not that the charity visitor is less wise than other people, but she has fixed106 her mind so long upon the industrial lameness107 of her family that she is eager to seize any crutch108, however weak, which may enable them to get on.
She has failed to see that the boy who attempts to prematurely109 support his widowed mother may lower wages, add an illiterate110 member to the community, and arrest the development of a capable workingman. As she has failed to see that the rules which obtain in regard to the age of marriage in her own family may not apply to the workingman, so also she fails to understand that the present conditions of employment surrounding a factory child are totally unlike those which obtained during the energetic youth of her father.
The child who is prematurely put to work is constantly oppressed by this never ending question of the means of subsistence, and even little children are sometimes almost crushed with the cares of life through their affectionate sympathy. The writer knows a little Italian lad of six to whom the problems of food, clothing, and shelter have become so immediate111 and pressing that, although an imaginative child, he is unable to see life from any other standpoint. The goblin or bugaboo, feared by the more fortunate child, in his mind, has come to be the need of coal which caused his father hysterical112 and demonstrative grief when it carried off his mother's inherited linen113, the mosaic114 of St. Joseph, and, worst of all, his own rubber boots. He once came to a party at Hull115-House, and was interested in nothing save a gas stove which he saw in the kitchen. He became excited over the discovery that fire could be produced without fuel. "I will tell my father of this stove. You buy no coal, you need only a match. Anybody will give you a match." He was taken to visit at a country-house and at once inquired how much rent was paid for it. On being told carelessly by his hostess that they paid no rent for that house, he came back quite wild with interest that the problem was solved. "Me and my father will go to the country. You get a big house, all warm, without rent." Nothing else in the country interested him but the subject of rent, and he talked of that with an exclusiveness worthy116 of a single taxer.
The struggle for existence, which is so much harsher among people near the edge of pauperism117, sometimes leaves ugly marks on character, and the charity visitor finds these indirect results most mystifying. Parents who work hard and anticipate an old age when they can no longer earn, take care that their children shall expect to divide their wages with them from the very first. Such a parent, when successful, impresses the immature118 nervous system of the child thus tyrannically establishing habits of obedience119, so that the nerves and will may not depart from this control when the child is older. The charity visitor, whose family relation is lifted quite out of this, does not in the least understand the industrial foundation for this family tyranny.
The head of a kindergarten training-class once addressed a club of working women, and spoke120 of the despotism which is often established over little children. She said that the so-called determination to break a child's will many times arose from a lust121 of dominion122, and she urged the ideal relationship founded upon love and confidence. But many of the women were puzzled. One of them remarked to the writer as she came out of the club room, "If you did not keep control over them from the time they were little, you would never get their wages when they are grown up." Another one said, "Ah, of course she (meaning the speaker) doesn't have to depend upon her children's wages. She can afford to be lax with them, because even if they don't give money to her, she can get along without it."
There are an impressive number of children who uncomplainingly and constantly hand over their weekly wages to their parents, sometimes receiving back ten cents or a quarter for spending-money, but quite as often nothing at all; and the writer knows one girl of twenty-five who for six years has received two cents a week from the constantly falling wages which she earns in a large factory. Is it habit or virtue which holds her steady in this course? If love and tenderness had been substituted for parental124 despotism, would the mother have had enough affection, enough power of expression to hold her daughter's sense of money obligation through all these years? This girl who spends her paltry125 two cents on chewing-gum and goes plainly clad in clothes of her mother's choosing, while many of her friends spend their entire wages on those clothes which factory girls love so well, must be held by some powerful force.
The charity visitor finds these subtle and elusive problems most harrowing. The head of a family she is visiting is a man who has become black-listed in a strike. He is not a very good workman, and this, added to his agitator's reputation, keeps him out of work for a long time. The fatal result of being long out of work follows: he becomes less and less eager for it, and gets a "job" less and less frequently. In order to keep up his self-respect, and still more to keep his wife's respect for him, he yields to the little self-deception that this prolonged idleness follows because he was once blacklisted, and he gradually becomes a martyr126. Deep down in his heart perhaps—but who knows what may be deep down in his heart? Whatever may be in his wife's, she does not show for an instant that she thinks he has grown lazy, and accustomed to see her earn, by sewing and cleaning, most of the scanty income for the family. The charity visitor, however, does see this, and she also sees that the other men who were in the strike have gone back to work. She further knows by inquiry127 and a little experience that the man is not skilful128. She cannot, however, call him lazy and good-for-nothing, and denounce him as worthless as her grandmother might have done, because of certain intellectual conceptions at which she has arrived. She sees other workmen come to him for shrewd advice; she knows that he spends many more hours in the public library reading good books than the average workman has time to do. He has formed no bad habits and has yielded only to those subtle temptations toward a life of leisure which come to the intellectual man. He lacks the qualifications which would induce his union to engage him as a secretary or organizer, but he is a constant speaker at workingmen's meetings, and takes a high moral attitude on the questions discussed there. He contributes a certain intellectuality to his friends, and he has undoubted social value. The neighboring women confide123 to the charity visitor their sympathy with his wife, because she has to work so hard, and because her husband does not "provide." Their remarks are sharpened by a certain resentment129 toward the superiority of the husband's education and gentle manners. The charity visitor is ashamed to take this point of view, for she knows that it is not altogether fair. She is reminded of a college friend of hers, who told her that she was not going to allow her literary husband to write unworthy potboilers for the sake of earning a living. "I insist that we shall live within my own income; that he shall not publish until he is ready, and can give his genuine message." The charity visitor recalls what she has heard of another acquaintance, who urged her husband to decline a lucrative130 position as a railroad attorney, because she wished him to be free to take municipal positions, and handle public questions without the inevitable suspicion which unaccountably attaches itself in a corrupt131 city to a corporation attorney. The action of these two women seemed noble to her, but in their cases they merely lived on a lesser133 income. In the case of the workingman's wife, she faced living on no income at all, or on the precarious one which she might be able to get together.
She sees that this third woman has made the greatest sacrifice, and she is utterly unwilling134 to condemn135 her while praising the friends of her own social position. She realizes, of course, that the situation is changed by the fact that the third family needs charity, while the other two do not; but, after all, they have not asked for it, and their plight136 was only discovered through an accident to one of the children. The charity visitor has been taught that her mission is to preserve the finest traits to be found in her visited family, and she shrinks from the thought of convincing the wife that her husband is worthless and she suspects that she might turn all this beautiful devotion into complaining drudgery137. To be sure, she could give up visiting the family altogether, but she has become much interested in the progress of the crippled child who eagerly anticipates her visits, and she also suspects that she will never know many finer women than the mother. She is unwilling, therefore, to give up the friendship, and goes on bearing her perplexities as best she may.
The first impulse of our charity visitor is to be somewhat severe with her shiftless family for spending money on pleasures and indulging their children out of all proportion to their means. The poor family which receives beans and coal from the county, and pays for a bicycle on the instalment plan, is not unknown to any of us. But as the growth of juvenile138 crime becomes gradually understood, and as the danger of giving no legitimate139 and organized pleasure to the child becomes clearer, we remember that primitive man had games long before he cared for a house or regular meals.
There are certain boys in many city neighborhoods who form themselves into little gangs with a leader who is somewhat more intrepid140 than the rest. Their favorite performance is to break into an untenanted house, to knock off the faucets141, and cut the lead pipe, which they sell to the nearest junk dealer142. With the money thus procured143 they buy beer and drink it in little free-booter's groups sitting in the alley144. From beginning to end they have the excitement of knowing that they may be seen and caught by the "coppers," and are at times quite breathless with suspense145. It is not the least unlike, in motive and execution, the practice of country boys who go forth in squads146 to set traps for rabbits or to round up a coon.
It is characterized by a pure spirit for adventure, and the vicious training really begins when they are arrested, or when an older boy undertakes to guide them into further excitements. From the very beginning the most enticing147 and exciting experiences which they have seen have been connected with crime. The policeman embodies148 all the majesty149 of successful law and established government in his brass150 buttons and dazzlingly equipped patrol wagon151.
The boy who has been arrested comes back more or less a hero with a tale to tell of the interior recesses152 of the mysterious police station. The earliest public excitement the child remembers is divided between the rattling153 fire engines, "the time there was a fire in the next block," and all the tense interest of the patrol wagon "the time the drunkest lady in our street was arrested."
In the first year of their settlement the Hull-House residents took fifty kindergarten children to Lincoln Park, only to be grieved by their apathetic154 interest in trees and flowers. As they came back with an omnibus full of tired and sleepy children, they were surprised to find them galvanized into sudden life because a patrol wagon rattled155 by. Their eager little heads popped out of the windows full of questioning: "Was it a man or a woman?" "How many policemen inside?" and eager little tongues began to tell experiences of arrests which baby eyes had witnessed.
The excitement of a chase, the chances of competition, and the love of a fight are all centred in the outward display of crime. The parent who receives charitable aid and yet provides pleasure for his child, and is willing to indulge him in his play, is blindly doing one of the wisest things possible; and no one is more eager for playgrounds and vacation schools than the conscientious charity visitor.
This very imaginative impulse and attempt to live in a pictured world of their own, which seems the simplest prerogative156 of childhood, often leads the boys into difficulty. Three boys aged47 seven, nine, and ten were once brought into a neighboring police station under the charge of pilfering157 and destroying property. They had dug a cave under a railroad viaduct in which they had spent many days and nights of the summer vacation. They had "swiped" potatoes and other vegetables from hucksters' carts, which they had cooked and eaten in true brigand158 fashion; they had decorated the interior of the excavation159 with stolen junk, representing swords and firearms, to their romantic imaginations. The father of the ringleader was a janitor160 living in a building five miles away in a prosperous portion of the city. The landlord did not want an active boy in the building, and his mother was dead; the janitor paid for the boy's board and lodging161 to a needy162 woman living near the viaduct. She conscientiously163 gave him his breakfast and supper, and left something in the house for his dinner every morning when she went to work in a neighboring factory; but was too tired by night to challenge his statement that he "would rather sleep outdoors in the summer," or to investigate what he did during the day. In the meantime the three boys lived in a world of their own, made up from the reading of adventurous164 stories and their vivid imaginations, steadily pilfering more and more as the days went by, and actually imperilling the safety of the traffic passing over the street on the top of the viaduct. In spite of vigorous exertions165 on their behalf, one of the boys was sent to the Reform School, comforting himself with the conclusive166 remark, "Well, we had fun anyway, and maybe they will let us dig a cave at the School; it is in the country, where we can't hurt anything."
In addition to books of adventure, or even reading of any sort, the scenes and ideals of the theatre largely form the manners and morals of the young people. "Going to the theatre" is indeed the most common and satisfactory form of recreation. Many boys who conscientiously give all their wages to their mothers have returned each week ten cents to pay for a seat in the gallery of a theatre on Sunday afternoon. It is their one satisfactory glimpse of life—the moment when they "issue forth from themselves" and are stirred and thoroughly167 interested. They quite simply adopt as their own, and imitate as best they can, all that they see there. In moments of genuine grief and excitement the words and the gestures they employ are those copied from the stage, and the tawdry expression often conflicts hideously168 with the fine and genuine emotion of which it is the inadequate169 and vulgar vehicle.
As in the matter of dress, more refined and simpler manners and mode of expressions are unseen by them, and they must perforce copy what they know.
If we agree with a recent definition of Art, as that which causes the spectator to lose his sense of isolation170, there is no doubt that the popular theatre, with all its faults, more nearly fulfils the function of art for the multitude of working people than all the "free galleries" and picture exhibits combined.
The greatest difficulty is experienced when the two standards come sharply together, and when both sides make an attempt at understanding and explanation. The difficulty of making clear one's own ethical standpoint is at times insurmountable. A woman who had bought and sold school books stolen from the school fund,—books which are all plainly marked with a red stamp,—came to Hull House one morning in great distress because she had been arrested, and begged a resident "to speak to the judge." She gave as a reason the fact that the House had known her for six years, and had once been very good to her when her little girl was buried. The resident more than suspected that her visitor knew the school books were stolen when buying them, and any attempt to talk upon that subject was evidently considered very rude. The visitor wished to get out of her trial, and evidently saw no reason why the House should not help her. The alderman was out of town, so she could not go to him. After a long conversation the visitor entirely171 failed to get another point of view and went away grieved and disappointed at a refusal, thinking the resident simply disobliging; wondering, no doubt, why such a mean woman had once been good to her; leaving the resident, on the other hand, utterly baffled and in the state of mind she would have been in, had she brutally172 insisted that a little child should lift weights too heavy for its undeveloped muscles.
Such a situation brings out the impossibility of substituting a higher ethical standard for a lower one without similarity of experience, but it is not as painful as that illustrated173 by the following example, in which the highest ethical standard yet attained by the charity recipient is broken down, and the substituted one not in the least understood:—
A certain charity visitor is peculiarly appealed to by the weakness and pathos174 of forlorn old age. She is responsible for the well-being175 of perhaps a dozen old women to whom she sustains a sincerely affectionate and almost filial relation. Some of them learn to take her benefactions quite as if they came from their own relatives, grumbling176 at all she does, and scolding her with a family freedom. One of these poor old women was injured in a fire years ago. She has but the fragment of a hand left, and is grievously crippled in her feet. Through years of pain she had become addicted177 to opium178, and when she first came under the visitor's care, was only held from the poorhouse by the awful thought that she would there perish without her drug. Five years of tender care have done wonders for her. She lives in two neat little rooms, where with her thumb and two fingers she makes innumerable quilts, which she sells and gives away with the greatest delight. Her opium is regulated to a set amount taken each day, and she has been drawn179 away from much drinking. She is a voracious180 reader, and has her head full of strange tales made up from books and her own imagination. At one time it seemed impossible to do anything for her in Chicago, and she was kept for two years in a suburb, where the family of the charity visitor lived, and where she was nursed through several hazardous181 illnesses. She now lives a better life than she did, but she is still far from being a model old woman. The neighbors are constantly shocked by the fact that she is supported and comforted by a "charity lady," while at the same time she occasionally "rushes the growler," scolding at the boys lest they jar her in her tottering182 walk. The care of her has broken through even that second standard, which the neighborhood had learned to recognize as the standard of charitable societies, that only the "worthy poor" are to be helped; that temperance and thrift are the virtues which receive the plums of benevolence183. The old lady herself is conscious of this criticism. Indeed, irate184 neighbors tell her to her face that she doesn't in the least deserve what she gets. In order to disarm185 them, and at the same time to explain what would otherwise seem loving-kindness so colossal186 as to be abnormal, she tells them that during her sojourn187 in the suburb she discovered an awful family secret,—a horrible scandal connected with the long-suffering charity visitor; that it is in order to prevent the divulgence188 of this that she constantly receives her ministrations. Some of her perplexed neighbors accept this explanation as simple and offering a solution of this vexed189 problem. Doubtless many of them have a glimpse of the real state of affairs, of the love and patience which ministers to need irrespective of worth. But the standard is too high for most of them, and it sometimes seems unfortunate to break down the second standard, which holds that people who "rush the growler" are not worthy of charity, and that there is a certain justice attained when they go to the poorhouse. It is certainly dangerous to break down the lower, unless the higher is made clear.
Just when our affection becomes large enough to care for the unworthy among the poor as we would care for the unworthy among our own kin20, is certainly a perplexing question. To say that it should never be so, is a comment upon our democratic relations to them which few of us would be willing to make.
Of what use is all this striving and perplexity? Has the experience any value? It is certainly genuine, for it induces an occasional charity visitor to live in a tenement house as simply as the other tenants do. It drives others to give up visiting the poor altogether, because, they claim, it is quite impossible unless the individual becomes a member of a sisterhood, which requires, as some of the Roman Catholic sisterhoods do, that the member first take the vows190 of obedience and poverty, so that she can have nothing to give save as it is first given to her, and thus she is not harassed191 by a constant attempt at adjustment.
Both the tenement-house resident and the sister assume to have put themselves upon the industrial level of their neighbors, although they have left out the most awful element of poverty, that of imminent192 fear of starvation and a neglected old age.
The young charity visitor who goes from a family living upon a most precarious industrial level to her own home in a prosperous part of the city, if she is sensitive at all, is never free from perplexities which our growing democracy forces upon her.
We sometimes say that our charity is too scientific, but we would doubtless be much more correct in our estimate if we said that it is not scientific enough. We dislike the entire arrangement of cards alphabetically194 classified according to streets and names of families, with the unrelated and meaningless details attached to them. Our feeling of revolt is probably not unlike that which afflicted195 the students of botany and geology in the middle of the last century, when flowers were tabulated196 in alphabetical193 order, when geology was taught by colored charts and thin books. No doubt the students, wearied to death, many times said that it was all too scientific, and were much perplexed and worried when they found traces of structure and physiology197 which their so-called scientific principles were totally unable to account for. But all this happened before science had become evolutionary198 and scientific at all, before it had a principle of life from within. The very indications and discoveries which formerly perplexed, later illumined and made the study absorbing and vital.
We are singularly slow to apply this evolutionary principle to human affairs in general, although it is fast being applied to the education of children. We are at last learning to follow the development of the child; to expect certain traits under certain conditions; to adapt methods and matter to his growing mind. No "advanced educator" can allow himself to be so absorbed in the question of what a child ought to be as to exclude the discovery of what he is. But in our charitable efforts we think much more of what a man ought to be than of what he is or of what he may become; and we ruthlessly force our conventions and standards upon him, with a sternness which we would consider stupid indeed did an educator use it in forcing his mature intellectual convictions upon an undeveloped mind.
Let us take the example of a timid child, who cries when he is put to bed because he is afraid of the dark. The "soft-hearted" parent stays with him, simply because he is sorry for him and wants to comfort him. The scientifically trained parent stays with him, because he realizes that the child is in a stage of development in which his imagination has the best of him, and in which it is impossible to reason him out of a belief in ghosts. These two parents, wide apart in point of view, after all act much alike, and both very differently from the pseudo-scientific parent, who acts from dogmatic conviction and is sure he is right. He talks of developing his child's self-respect and good sense, and leaves him to cry himself to sleep, demanding powers of self-control and development which the child does not possess. There is no doubt that our development of charity methods has reached this pseudo-scientific and stilted199 stage. We have learned to condemn unthinking, ill-regulated kind-heartedness, and we take great pride in mere132 repression200 much as the stern parent tells the visitor below how admirably he is rearing the child, who is hysterically201 crying upstairs and laying the foundation for future nervous disorders202. The pseudo-scientific spirit, or rather, the undeveloped stage of our philanthropy, is perhaps most clearly revealed in our tendency to lay constant stress on negative action. "Don't give;" "don't break down self-respect," we are constantly told. We distrust the human impulse as well as the teachings of our own experience, and in their stead substitute dogmatic rules for conduct. We forget that the accumulation of knowledge and the holding of convictions must finally result in the application of that knowledge and those convictions to life itself; that the necessity for activity and a pull upon the sympathies is so severe, that all the knowledge in the possession of the visitor is constantly applied, and she has a reasonable chance for an ultimate intellectual comprehension. Indeed, part of the perplexity in the administration of charity comes from the fact that the type of person drawn to it is the one who insists that her convictions shall not be unrelated to action. Her moral concepts constantly tend to float away from her, unless they have a basis in the concrete relation of life. She is confronted with the task of reducing her scruples to action, and of converging203 many wills, so as to unite the strength of all of them into one accomplishment204, the value of which no one can foresee.
On the other hand, the young woman who has succeeded in expressing her social compunction through charitable effort finds that the wider social activity, and the contact with the larger experience, not only increases her sense of social obligation but at the same time recasts her social ideals. She is chagrined205 to discover that in the actual task of reducing her social scruples to action, her humble206 beneficiaries are far in advance of her, not in charity or singleness of purpose, but in self-sacrificing action. She reaches the old-time virtue of humility207 by a social process, not in the old way, as the man who sits by the side of the road and puts dust upon his head, calling himself a contrite208 sinner, but she gets the dust upon her head because she has stumbled and fallen in the road through her efforts to push forward the mass, to march with her fellows. She has socialized her virtues not only through a social aim but by a social process.
The Hebrew prophet made three requirements from those who would join the great forward-moving procession led by Jehovah. "To love mercy" and at the same time "to do justly" is the difficult task; to fulfil the first requirement alone is to fall into the error of indiscriminate giving with all its disastrous209 results; to fulfil the second solely is to obtain the stern policy of withholding210, and it results in such a dreary211 lack of sympathy and understanding that the establishment of justice is impossible. It may be that the combination of the two can never be attained save as we fulfil still the third requirement—"to walk humbly212 with God," which may mean to walk for many dreary miles beside the lowliest of His creatures, not even in that peace of mind which the company of the humble is popularly supposed to afford, but rather with the pangs213 and throes to which the poor human understanding is subjected whenever it attempts to comprehend the meaning of life.
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1
perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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benefactor
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| n. 恩人，行善的人，捐助人 | |
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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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ethics
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| n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准 | |
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formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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disinterested
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| adj.不关心的，不感兴趣的 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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parasitic
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| adj.寄生的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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ailing
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| v.生病 | |
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bolstered
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| v.支持( bolster的过去式和过去分词 )；支撑；给予必要的支持；援助 | |
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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ignoble
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| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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brotherhood
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| n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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recipient
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| a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器 | |
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recipients
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| adj.接受的；受领的；容纳的；愿意接受的n.收件人；接受者；受领者；接受器 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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incongruity
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| n.不协调，不一致 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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tenement
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| n.公寓；房屋 | |
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precarious
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| adj.不安定的，靠不住的；根据不足的 | |
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eke
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| v.勉强度日，节约使用 | |
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scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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savings
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| n.存款，储蓄 | |
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discomforts
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| n.不舒适( discomfort的名词复数 )；不愉快，苦恼 | |
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maligned
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| vt.污蔑，诽谤（malign的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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landlady
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| n.女房东，女地主 | |
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tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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scuttle
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| v.急赶，疾走，逃避；n.天窗；舷窗 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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transpired
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| （事实，秘密等）被人知道( transpire的过去式和过去分词 )； 泄露； 显露； 发生 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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outraged
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| a.震惊的，义愤填膺的 | |
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outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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scruple
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| n./v.顾忌，迟疑 | |
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severely
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| adv.严格地；严厉地；非常恶劣地 | |
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avaricious
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| adj.贪婪的，贪心的 | |
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frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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investigations
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| （正式的）调查( investigation的名词复数 )； 侦查； 科学研究； 学术研究 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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kindliness
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| n.厚道，亲切，友好的行为 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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altruistic
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| adj.无私的，为他人着想的 | |
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juxtaposition
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| n.毗邻，并置，并列 | |
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complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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deterioration
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| n.退化；恶化；变坏 | |
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dispensed
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| v.分配( dispense的过去式和过去分词 )；施与；配（药） | |
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elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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69
laud
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| n.颂歌；v.赞美 | |
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70
thrift
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| adj.节约，节俭；n.节俭，节约 | |
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71
deception
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| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
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72
horrifies
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| v.使震惊，使感到恐怖( horrify的第三人称单数 ) | |
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73
dependence
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| n.依靠，依赖；信任，信赖；隶属 | |
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74
prescriptions
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| 药( prescription的名词复数 )； 处方； 开处方； 计划 | |
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75
untold
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| adj.数不清的，无数的 | |
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76
niggardly
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| adj.吝啬的，很少的 | |
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77
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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78
commendable
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| adj.值得称赞的 | |
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79
sordidness
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| n.肮脏；污秽；卑鄙；可耻 | |
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80
benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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81
scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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82
afflict
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| vt.使身体或精神受痛苦，折磨 | |
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83
platitude
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| n.老生常谈，陈词滥调 | |
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84
eviction
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| n.租地等的收回 | |
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85
punctilious
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| adj.谨慎的，谨小慎微的 | |
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86
ostracism
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| n.放逐；排斥 | |
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87
lessened
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| 减少的，减弱的 | |
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88
bereaved
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|
| adj.刚刚丧失亲人的v.使失去（希望、生命等）( bereave的过去式和过去分词)；（尤指死亡）使丧失（亲人、朋友等）；使孤寂；抢走（财物） | |
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89
advancement
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| n.前进，促进，提升 | |
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90
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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91
parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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92
impede
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| v.妨碍，阻碍，阻止 | |
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93
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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94
expenditure
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| n.(时间、劳力、金钱等)支出；使用，消耗 | |
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95
expend
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| vt.花费，消费，消耗 | |
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96
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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97
labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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98
incorrigibly
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| adv.无法矫正地；屡教不改地；无可救药地；不能矫正地 | |
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99
bourgeois
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| adj./n.追求物质享受的(人)；中产阶级分子 | |
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100
strenuously
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| adv.奋发地，费力地 | |
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101
prudence
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| n.谨慎，精明，节俭 | |
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102
incentive
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| n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机 | |
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103
steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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104
socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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105
connive
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| v.纵容；密谋 | |
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106
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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107
lameness
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| n. 跛, 瘸, 残废 | |
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108
crutch
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| n.T字形拐杖；支持，依靠，精神支柱 | |
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109
prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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110
illiterate
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|
| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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111
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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112
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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113
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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114
mosaic
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| n./adj.镶嵌细工的，镶嵌工艺品的，嵌花式的 | |
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115
hull
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| n.船身；(果、实等的)外壳；vt.去(谷物等)壳 | |
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116
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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117
pauperism
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| n.有被救济的资格，贫困 | |
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118
immature
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| adj.未成熟的，发育未全的，未充分发展的 | |
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119
obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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120
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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121
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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122
dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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123
confide
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| v.向某人吐露秘密 | |
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124
parental
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| adj.父母的；父的；母的 | |
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125
paltry
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| adj.无价值的，微不足道的 | |
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126
martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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127
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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128
skilful
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| (=skillful)adj.灵巧的，熟练的 | |
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129
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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130
lucrative
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| adj.赚钱的，可获利的 | |
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131
corrupt
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| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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132
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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133
lesser
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|
| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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134
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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135
condemn
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| vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑 | |
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136
plight
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| n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定 | |
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137
drudgery
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| n.苦工，重活，单调乏味的工作 | |
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138
juvenile
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| n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的 | |
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139
legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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140
intrepid
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| adj.无畏的，刚毅的 | |
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141
faucets
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| n.水龙头( faucet的名词复数 ) | |
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142
dealer
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| n.商人，贩子 | |
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143
procured
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| v.（努力）取得， （设法）获得( procure的过去式和过去分词 )；拉皮条 | |
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144
alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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145
suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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146
squads
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| n.（军队中的）班( squad的名词复数 )；（暗杀）小组；体育运动的运动（代表）队；（对付某类犯罪活动的）警察队伍 | |
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147
enticing
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| adj.迷人的；诱人的 | |
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148
embodies
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| v.表现( embody的第三人称单数 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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149
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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150
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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151
wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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152
recesses
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| n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 )；（工作或业务活动的）中止或暂停期间；学校的课间休息；某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 )；将（墙）做成凹形，在（墙）上做壁龛；休息，休会，休庭 | |
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153
rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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154
apathetic
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| adj.冷漠的，无动于衷的 | |
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155
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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156
prerogative
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| n.特权 | |
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157
pilfering
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| v.偷窃（小东西），小偷( pilfer的现在分词 )；偷窃（一般指小偷小摸） | |
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158
brigand
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| n.土匪，强盗 | |
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159
excavation
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| n.挖掘，发掘；被挖掘之地 | |
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160
janitor
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| n.看门人，管门人 | |
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161
lodging
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| n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍 | |
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162
needy
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| adj.贫穷的，贫困的，生活艰苦的 | |
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163
conscientiously
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| adv.凭良心地；认真地，负责尽职地；老老实实 | |
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164
adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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165
exertions
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| n.努力( exertion的名词复数 )；费力；（能力、权力等的）运用；行使 | |
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166
conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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167
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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168
hideously
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| adv.可怕地，非常讨厌地 | |
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169
inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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170
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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171
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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172
brutally
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| adv.残忍地，野蛮地，冷酷无情地 | |
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173
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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174
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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175
well-being
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| n.安康，安乐，幸福 | |
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176
grumbling
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| adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的 | |
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177
addicted
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| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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178
opium
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| n.鸦片；adj.鸦片的 | |
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179
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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180
voracious
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| adj.狼吞虎咽的，贪婪的 | |
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181
hazardous
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| adj.(有)危险的，冒险的；碰运气的 | |
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182
tottering
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| adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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183
benevolence
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| n.慈悲，捐助 | |
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184
irate
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| adj.发怒的，生气 | |
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185
disarm
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| v.解除武装，回复平常的编制，缓和 | |
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186
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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187
sojourn
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| v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留 | |
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188
divulgence
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| v.透露，泄露 | |
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189
vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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190
vows
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| 誓言( vow的名词复数 )； 郑重宣布，许愿 | |
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191
harassed
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| adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
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192
imminent
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| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
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193
alphabetical
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|
| adj.字母（表）的，依字母顺序的 | |
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194
alphabetically
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| adv.照字母顺序排列地 | |
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195
afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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196
tabulated
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| 把（数字、事实）列成表( tabulate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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physiology
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| n.生理学，生理机能 | |
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evolutionary
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| adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的 | |
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199
stilted
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| adj.虚饰的；夸张的 | |
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200
repression
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| n.镇压，抑制，抑压 | |
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201
hysterically
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| ad. 歇斯底里地 | |
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202
disorders
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| n.混乱( disorder的名词复数 )；凌乱；骚乱；（身心、机能）失调 | |
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203
converging
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| adj.收敛[缩]的，会聚的，趋同的v.（线条、运动的物体等）会于一点( converge的现在分词 )；（趋于）相似或相同；人或车辆汇集；聚集 | |
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204
accomplishment
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| n.完成，成就，（pl.）造诣，技能 | |
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205
chagrined
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| adj.懊恼的，苦恼的v.使懊恼，使懊丧，使悔恨( chagrin的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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206
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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207
humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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208
contrite
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| adj.悔悟了的，后悔的，痛悔的 | |
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209
disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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210
withholding
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| 扣缴税款 | |
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211
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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212
humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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213
pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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