Charity Organization Society

THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION Society started in England in 1869. It was originally designed to coordinate the work of various organizations that delivered charity and aid to the poor. It came to the United States in 1877 when a British cleric working in Canada named Samuel Humphrey Gurteens crossed the border and went to Buffalo, New York, to do welfare work. Gur-teens's work coincided with the increased call for public attention to the growing seriousness of social problems in the United States.

Gurteens went to Buffalo in 1875 to serve as an assistant minister in the small parish called St. Mary's. There, he witnessed the economic devastation caused by the 1876 depression. Gurteens formed an alliance with T. Guilford Smith, a moderately successful businessman who shared Gurteens's interest in the plight of the poor. They joined forces with several other young professionals and came to the decision that the British working in the charity organization held the key to solving poverty. Gurteens traveled to England where he studied these organizations and then refined their methods and changed their approach to fit the situation in Buffalo.

[Page 146]Gurteens traveled the city preaching his brand of poverty reform, detailing his answers in “the phases of poverty,” his response to the call for a comprehensive welfare reform program. The Buffalo Charity Organization Society, which opened in 1877, copied the British model, and had almost instant success. It served as a role model for other cities such as Baltimore, Boston, Detroit, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, and New York, dealing with staggering poverty rates. Gurteens and Smith traveled the country preaching the benefits of the Charity Organization Society. Gurteens's Phases of Charity and Handbook of Charity Organization served as the guidebook for those who established similar societies in their cities.

The Charity Organization Society anchored its support in what it called scientific charity. They believed that they could get rid of public charity and replace it with private philanthropy by coordinating relief. The Charity Organization Society emphasized seven fundamental ideas. They included: individualization, community education, interagency cooperation, preventive philanthropy, personal service, repression of mendicancy, and adequacy of relief. Because of its reliance on cooperation, the Charity Organization Society was totally dependent on registration so that people would know who was getting aid and from where.

Of equal importance was the need to be nonsectarian so that the cooperative spirit could be maintained. The Charity Organization Society workers were under strict orders not to provide aid. Instead, the “friendly visitors” who staffed the Charity Organization Society offices would investigate, and then after consultation come up with a course of action. They relied on education to teach both the poor and wealthy as the best way to provide aid to the poor.

Poor people were to be taught abstinence and diligence, while the wealthy were to learn to give modestly of their means, but liberally of their time. Charity Organization Society staff conducted stringent investigations into each request for aid. The staff was made up of friendly visitors, and later, agents that were responsible for investigations and getting aid for the families. The friendly visitor was supposed to be a semipermanent part of the family, providing instruction in nutrition, employment, healthcare, and education. The Charity Organization Society evolved into the most popular welfare organization in the country until its decline in the 1930s.

...