I.

President's Address.

THE EMPIRE OF CHARITY.

BY ROBERT TREAT PAINE.

Alliance full of potency for present good and rich in augury of better things to come is cemented here to-day between workers in the noble realm of charity and students eager to shape the ambitions of their youth for the great career of life. Precious privilege to me to welcome these two forces into auspicious union. Energy and wisdom join hands. Workers and students, each conscious of mutual need, aim at a single glorious purpose. Wisdom guided from on high seeks the noblest ambitions of life, while the energies of devoted workers in all the paths of charity feel the need of wisdom. Only an alliance of these two forces can aid each to fulfil its amplest functions. Both must be united to grapple with the stupendous tasks of modern social life, especially in great cities.

Members of the Twenty-second National Conference of Charities and Correction, I bid you welcome, and in your name offer hearty thanks to our hosts in this city renowned for noble culture and triumphant physical prowess.

Unable to meet with you last year at Nashville, when you ventured perhaps for the first time outside the high officers of State Boards of Charities to elect me only a volunteer to this honored office, I thank you from my heart, daring to believe that it sets the seal of your approval on my work in charity since, a quarter of a century ago, in the belief that this life on earth only came to us once and was too precious to be wasted, I abandoned business in the hope to aid a bit in the struggle to make things a little brighter in the neighborhood where my lot was cast.

May I speak one word out of my own experience to declare the

joy of such a life? Deep and pure sources of happiness are found in the constant contact with noble men and women working hard together for noble ends and delighting in the sympathy of mutual counsel, help, struggle, and achievement. Friendships of life are choicest gifts; and with God's noblemen, exalted by high thought, unselfish in aspiration, and tingling with vital energy, the friendships of our career offer exquisite reward.

What brings us to this trysting, over distant hills, out of the great valley, up from the sunny South, from the ocean so far away? Not to legislate, not to vote, still less to act, we meet for three purposes, strength, friendship, and wisdom.

First, to be stimulated by mutual zeal and to gain the great strengthening uplift which a few workers, in what might seem in a single city a hopeless and unaided task, feel poured into their souls. when they meet other resolute men and women, from so many other cities all over the land, fired with the same strong convictions.

Second, to renew and enjoy the warm friendships of admiration and respect for coworkers in charity which these Conferences have so greatly aided to create.

Third, to share in common counsel,-- a delight for specialists to meet specialists; but let me say strongly how necessary also for specialists to be forced to let their thoughts range out over the varied field and to study the whole group of related subjects, essential to the best solution of each problem.

What other introduction do men and women wish in this world than assurance of mutual zeal and love for what is best in life? By virtue of my office, therefore, I declare you all introduced each to all others in the strong bonds of a common cause dear to God and helpful to man, the badge we wear and honor, a token of mutual regard. What is the full significance of this fact that a great university city welcomes this Conference of Charities? Is it not an epoch? How few years ago it was that the first chair of Social Science was set up at Yale or Harvard! Now colleges for men and women are strongly equipped for this study. Is not the science of wealth, its production or distribution, sinking into a rank inferior to the science of man's welfare and social progress?

To-morrow evening Hon. Seth Low, president of Columbia College, in our great metropolis of New York, who has just dazzled and delighted the world of scholars and of public-spirited men by his

magnificent gift of a million of dollars for a library at his own Columbia, presides over the discussion on "Sociology in Institutions. of Learning." Think what it means when the young men of a great university are led in the training of their minds and motives by a man like Mr. Low, brilliant writer of able papers at these Conferences over fifteen years ago, president of the Associated Charities of Brooklyn, resigning that office to be the wise and fearless mayor of that city; and, with all this and other rich experience of a maturer life, developing the sociological courses of study at Columbia, and, in addition to mere study, devising a system for students to investigate face to face the tremendous social and labor problems of New York.

Sociology is no longer a soft study. It is the gate to the serious problems of our own and coming ages. No man can guide the people, or grapple with the supreme issues of either business or public life, who is not solidly trained in social science. We will not read over this grim gate Dante's inscription over the gates of hell: ---

Per me si va nella città dolente

Per me si va tra la perduta gente."

No! Not for an instant, in lightest fancy, let us yield to the attack of pessimism. Hope springs eternal, and can rest on no firmer foundation than the rising ranks of brave young men who enter any contest with indomitable will to win and are eager to study earnestly these tremendous problems of social life.

I ventured to make the following suggestions to writers of papers and speakers at this Conference:

May it not be well to aim to give a certain dominant trend of thought to the discussions of 1895? The Chicago Conference presented a most valuable series of papers of an historical nature. May not this Conference be made interesting and profitable if authors aim to make their papers, so far as it commends itself to their own good judgment, deal with the future, discussing the present status with especial relation to future evolution of charitable and correctional work, culling out the best features of present activities, that we may emphasize their value and urge their development?

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May not this be done with a certain free, bold, prophetic treatment, so that we may see and study a vision of the future, yet always

based solidly upon, connected with, and growing out of the best charitable attainments of the present time?"

In this spirit let us think: first, what charity can do and is doing; second, what thus far it does not know how to do; third, what it is doing wrong.

Is not charity exerting a visible influence over certain special branches of business, and also, better yet, creating a pervasive and potent atmosphere, not a usurper, not by any coup d'état, of course not claiming any exclusive right to guide affairs, as Phaethon, of fable, urged his right to drive alone through the realms of life and light, to be met with the rebuke:

Sors tua mortalis: non est mortale quod optas."

"Thy lot is mortal: what you wish is not for mortals." Rather let charity know its divine birth and certain heritage, and, therefore, remember that its influence is supreme, not so much when it issues commands as when it whispers in the still, small voice. Slowly, beautifully, charity grows conscious of its great heritage to be one of the ruling forces of the world.

No wonder charity feels the need of coming to college that before the advent of the twentieth century it may gain an all-round college training, especially in the direction of study, and be ready to enter on the present and approaching struggles to improve the social conditions of classes or of individuals in our terribly complex civilization, resolved to win at all hazards, and bringing to these transcendent tasks that glory of liberal thought, the modest but solid conviction of how tiny is the speck of knowledge already acquired, and how infinite is the realm of knowledge lying all around our atoms of acquisition and beckoning us with irresistible charm in every direction. "Know thyself" was the modest aim of Greek philosophy when intellect culminated.

The foolish and fatal division of the affairs of life between business and charity is breaking down, never to be set up. Charity summons business to its aid, fully aware of its own limitations. Business in its Protean shapes may thus far have almost monopolized the action of the world. The conquests of war not done yet, industrial struggles still in full force, the exploiting of men by man which built the Pyramids of Egypt and still sweats in sweaters'

dens all around the world, does not all this and other like business still absorb and enslave our race? But in its visions business sees that, when self-limited and seeking only its own ends, no matter how gorgeous, it is blighted.

What formula states

to charge all that the not this formula of

Here is a single illustration of this thought. the claim of pure business better than this,traffic will bear? Devised by railroads, will unlimited avarice apply elsewhere as well? In conquests what limits Japan against China or Germany against France? What else is dividing Africa between England, France, Germany, and Italy? What else governs the price of wheat, cotton, or hides, silks, laces, or bonnets?

Let me answer what else, if only in a small way as yet, may influence the price of money in loans to workingmen.

Ten years ago a carpenter came to me in sharp distress. He had borrowed one hundred dollars on chattel mortgage of all his furniture, even beds, chairs, table, carpets, and all he had, - he a married man with wife and four little children. He had been forced to pay and had paid 8 per cent. a month in advance, and this had gone on for two years and more. So he had really paid off the loan twice over in justice. Then he fell sick, could not work, and the shark was threatening to seize and carry away his furniture, and leave him and his family naked on the world. I said to myself: This is murder. If I live, I will do what I can to stop this thing in Boston.

Not long afterward, after an experiment of seven months, a charter was obtained for the Workingmen's Loan Association in February, 1888, to lend money on chattel mortgage or pawn; and capital was raised. The work rapidly grew and prospered, and proved its usefulness. $123,000 is now loaned out to working people on 1,774 loans. 1.305 loans were made last year. Repayments come in rapidly, $113,000 being repaid, and $119,000 reloaned in twelve months. The evils of this sad system of usury are already sensibly lessened in Boston. Secret enemies sought to create false and foolish fears that losses would be dangerously large. Happily, it turns out that the mass of men are honest. A few losses occur each year, less than 1 per cent. of the sum lɔaned.

Another marvellous item is that losses by fire are insignificant, a small "risk fund" to protect the company against fire loss, on loans of $100 or less, being found to result almost wholly in net profit.