A definition of social work: A thesis in sociology

								

from the category of charity. Prisoners whose support was not provided
for by their own means or the concern of friends were for long
dependent upon charity.[16] A nicer sense of corporate responsibility
now requiring them to be fed at the public charge we see no charity
in their support but when private interest carries into the prisons
influences presumably improving and meets friendless prisoners at the
jail gate we recognize the unforced ministrations of charity removed
to another field. We still stand near the turn of the road in the
matter of caring for workmen injured during their work. A little while
ago any provision by the employer for the injured man or his family
was regarded as an act of charity. Latterly we have come to consider
it no more than right that an industrial establishment should share
the burden, as it does the fault, of such accidents, and state after
state has enacted laws compelling “compensation.” And as relief of
the injured man and his family has thus been made compulsory on the
establishment in which he works it has ceased to be charitable. The
act remains the same but with the loss of spontaneity its charitable
quality has disappeared.[17]
It is true that we have a very considerable development of so-called
“public charities.” But are not the services they render offered
through the body politic merely to secure a certainty and inclusiveness
of relief for which we dare not rely on private benevolence? And do we
not continue to call them “charity” precisely because we still regard
them as a free gift rather than as a routine purveyance which the
state is essentially committed to provide? Some of them are plainly
in process of transition and here and there we find the almshouse
becoming the “county hospital,” or the department of public charities
the “welfare department,” the nomenclature following a change in the
conception of function.
If, furthermore, we examine the public attitude toward those
undertakings which we have cited as having graduated from charity into
public purveyance, we will recognize that these are considered public
responsibilities in a different sense from any which so far attaches
to what we still call public charities. Public education is held to
be a natural prerequisite of democracy; the making of roads a thing
contributing impartially to the universal convenience; the feeding of
prisoners the inescapable responsibility of those who have cut them off
from the means of making a livelihood.
Moreover we make certain doles which we explicitly insist are not to
be counted “charity”--pensions given after military or government
service or to widows rearing children for the commonwealth--and in
disassociating them from charity it is the custom to point out that
they are not concessions but just deserts, something that can be
claimed as a right.
Charity then is a free gift. It need not be given in love, as its