# The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble/Chapter 12

I know a very pretty instance of a little girl of whom her father was very fond, who once when he was in a melancholy fit, and had gone to bed, persuaded him to rise in good humor by saying, "My dear papa, please to get up, and let me help you on with your clothes, that I may learn to do it when you are an old man." (James Boswell, in the Life of Samuel Johnson.)
A certain elderly gentleman was discovered by his relatives to be living a hermit's life on the top floor of a cheap and wretched rooming house. He was a university graduate, a person of taste and refinement, who had traveled widely and had been accustomed to wealth. Domestic troubles had left him without a home and he had drifted hither and thither as circumstance directed, until at last he had reached his present miserable quarters.
Here for three winters he had occupied two rooms which were without means of heating. He had furnished them—if it could be said that they were furnished—with the odds and ends that remained from the days when he had had a house of his own. The bed clothing consisted of a thin and ragged quilt. There were neither rugs nor carpet on the floor, and despite his retention ​of habits of personal neatness, there was dust and dirt everywhere, even vermin.
Gradually he had become isolated from intercourse with his kind. He went out less and less, and began to depend for his food upon sandwiches and fruit which a neighbor's boy brought to him. The paper bags in which his lunches had been carried formed a considerable part of the rubbish with which his room was littered. He was beset with aches and pains of many sorts, chiefly the result of this irregular way of living, and he was wretchedly unhappy. He spent the hours worrying about his present and his future, and regretting his past.
A social worker was asked to help him to move to an environment where he would be comfortable and where he would find friends, but when it came to the point, the old gentleman could not make up his mind to go. He was well acquainted with the facts of his situation. He knew what it would mean to pass another winter in unheated rooms. He was miserable in his loneliness and in the barrenness and the inconvenience of his quarters. He had none of the attachment for them that age frequently has for its home. He wanted to escape from the wretchedness of his ​present condition, but his desire to move was not strong enough to decide him in favor of a change.
It was to the quickening of this desire that the social worker addressed himself. Having discovered a possible boarding-house, he suggested that the old man go with him to inspect it, for there is nothing more effective in bringing an individual to a decision than the presentation of a concrete proposition which must be either accepted or refused.
The social worker set forth the arguments in favor of the new living place: its location in a suburb which was within a single fare by electric car of the center of the city, so that visits to town would be easy and cheap; the beauty of its surroundings, especially as contrasted with the neighborhood in which the old gentleman was now living; the convenience of the room that was to be had for rent, and the charming view from its windows; the advantage of being able to eat and sleep under the same roof, the regular living which this would make possible, and the influence it would have in restoring his health; the quietness of the place—there would be only three or four other boarders; and the pleasant character of the woman in charge, a registered nurse who ​would be able to take care of him when he was not feeling well. Why not at least go to look at the house?
The old gentleman feared that it was beyond his means. He was assured that the allowance which he received from his relatives would amply provide for this. Suppose that the allowance should stop? In reply he was told that his relatives had pledged themselves to his support, and, should by any chance the unforeseen occur, the social worker would see to it that he did not suffer thereby.
Then the social worker described how worried about him his niece was, and how happy it would make her to know that he was comfortable and well. The man's eyes filled with tears, but he looked at the furniture about the room and felt that he could not move. What was he to do with it all? It was like a rope around his neck.
The social worker promised to undertake the moving. He would bring an assistant and the old gentleman could sit in a chair and watch while they disposed of things as he desired. What he did not want to keep could be sold. He could move to his new home without any of the worry that having these possessions gave him.
​And what a terrible thing it was for a man of his tastes and his education to be living in this way. He should be in the sort of surroundings to which he had been accustomed, not in these dismal quarters.
Such were the suggestions which the social worker advanced to develop within the old gentleman the desire to move to a better environment. Back and forth over this ground the conversation went, the suggestions being introduced from different angles. Finally, after a discussion of more than two hours, the man promised to think over it by himself that night. The next day he called at the office of the social worker and said that he had decided to move.
Perhaps the inertia of the old gentleman—he said of himself that once he was settled in a place he was likely to stay—was unusual, but it serves to emphasize a fundamental fact in human nature. People may be convinced intellectually of the importance of a given course of action, yet they may not rally the energy necessary to carry it through. The truth of this, as applied to the breaking of habits, almost everybody will recognize. Moderation in eating and in the selection of proper foods is universally agreed to be essen​tial, yet hosts of men and women suffer from various afflictions and inconveniences because, while they realize that they ought to control their diet, they cannot bring themselves to do so. Those who are victims of the habit of retiring late find themselves, day after day, less effective than they might be, but although they want more sleep and realize the importance of this, they seem to be unable to go to bed at an appropriate hour. A knowledge of the facts, an appreciation of the relation between habits such as these and personal inefficiency is seldom alone enough to enable an individual to modify his manner of life. To overcome his trouble he must want to be free of it more than he desires to indulge himself. Other things being equal, if his wish to enter upon a new régime is strong enough he will change.
One way of aiding a man in such a situation is to reinforce his desire with other desires, to strengthen the influence of one motive by appealing to supporting motives. It was this which caused Tom Haverstraw to go to a sanitarium after he had become so suspicious of hospitals and other institutions that he had run away from several in which he had been staying. Tom was suffering from a form of hysteria which had ​twisted his arm and neck from their natural positions. Among the things prescribed for his cure was a regularized life and an environment in which he would find quiet and security. This he could not obtain at home; yet while he wanted to recover, he could not bring himself to leave his parents.
One day he happened to complain about insomnia.
"If I could only sleep," he sighed.
"When I can't sleep," said the social case worker, "I take a vacation and go to the country and I soon find that I can sleep." She then described the restfulness of the fields and woods and the quiet of the night.
"My, I wish I could go somewhere like that," the boy exclaimed.
"You can," the social worker assured him, and told him about a sanitarium situated in beautiful country where he could find the very peace and repose he was seeking. The boy decided to go. The wish to recover the use of his neck and arms was not enough to cause him to want to leave home, but as soon as the hope of recovering from insomnia was added to this wish he was ready to try the experiment.
​When he arrived at the institution, the superintendent used another motive as a means of strengthening his determination to regain his health. A few steps away two boys were shouting and running about apparently with every muscle and nerve under their command.
"Jim, Harry," the superintendent called. "Come here a minute, please."
The boys came up with leaps and skips.
"Boys?" asked the superintendent, "were you as badly off as Tom, here, when you came to us?"
"Oh, we were much worse," they replied.
"So you see, Tom," said the superintendent, "you can get well if you want to. If you really want to get well you will."
This was both an assurance and a challenge. The superintendent was using the age-old suggestion that "all may do what has by man been done." It was both a means of instifling confidence in the boy, and an appeal to the spirit of competition.
A typical use of this latter motive was that made by a social case worker in encouraging Mrs. Dorello to fix up her home. The house was in a most dilapidated state. It had not been papered for eight years. What paper was left on the walls ​was hanging in shreds. The paint was smudged with the grime of countless dirty fingers, but the landlord having no confidence in the capacity of the family for taking care of his property refused to make any improvements. The mattresses were filthy and there were only two sheets that even approached serviceability.
The social worker had tried to help Mrs. Dorello to find a better house, but the shortage of dwellings was so great that this was impossible. Knowing that Mrs. Dorello knew what earnest efforts had been made to secure a better home for the family the social worker suggested that she try to make the best of the one she had. Mr. Dorello was out of the city. Why not surprise him and welcome him back to a spick and span home? Why not try to do over everything before he should return? Partly it was the fun of surprising her husband and partly the spirit of competing against time which stimulated Mrs. Dorello's energy. She tore the remaining paper from the walls and whitewashed them. She painted the woodwork, washed the mattresses, obtained new sheets, and did many other things, so that when her husband returned he found a new home awaiting him.
​To make a game of a task is one of the easiest ways of accomplishing it. Parents, in particular, appreciate this, as is instanced by such familiar expedients in the lives of children as the race to get dressed in the morning, or the finishing of this or that before the mother or the father comes home. Competition against space, or time, or one's self, or somebody else, frequently, if not always, underlies the idea of the game. It is an exceedingly useful motive if not practiced to excess, and if the competition most often called into practice is competition against one's self.
With some people, the spirit of competition really becomes one of combativeness. The surest way to rouse their energies to is oppose them, and sometimes the best method of stimulating them to carry out what they have undertaken is to advocate an opposite course.
A delightful illustration of this is set forth by Boswell in his famous description of how he persuaded Dr. Johnson to dine with John Wilkes to whom the doctor was violently opposed, Wilkes being a strong Whig, while Johnson, of course, was a vehement Tory. "Two men more different could perhaps not be selected out of all mankind," says Boswell. "They had even attacked one ​another with some asperity in their writings." Indeed, when Boswell suggested to Mr. Edward Dilly that he invite Dr. Johnson to his house to dine with Mr. Wilkes, Mr. Dilly exclaimed:
"What! with Mr. Wilkes? Not for the world. Dr. Johnson would never forgive me."
Boswell, however, undertook to arrange the meeting.
"Notwithstanding the high veneration which I entertained for Dr. Johnson, I was sensible that he was sometimes a little actuated by the spirit of contradiction, and by means of that I hoped that I should gain my point. I was persuaded that if I had come upon him with a direct proposal, 'Sir, will you dine in company with Jack Wilkes' he would have flown into a passion, and would probably have answered, 'Dine with Jack Wilkes, Sir! I'd as soon dine with Jack Ketch.' I, therefore, while we were sitting quietly by ourselves at his house in an evening, took occasion to open my plan thus:—'Mr. Dilly, Sir, sends his respectful compliments to you, and would be happy if you would do him the honor to dine with him on Wednesday next along with me, as I must soon go to Scotland.' Johnson. 'Sir, I am obliged to Mr. Dilly. I will wait upon him—' Boswell. ​'Provided, Sir, I suppose, that the company which he is to have, is agreeable to you.' Johnson. 'What do you mean, Sir? What do you take me for? Do you think I am so ignorant of the world, as to imagine that I am to prescribe to a gentleman what company he is to have at his table?' Boswell. 'I beg your pardon, Sir, for wishing to prevent you from meeting people whom you might not like. Perhaps he may have some of what he calls his patriotick friends with him.' Johnson. 'Well, Sir, and what then? What care I for his patriotick friends? Poh!' Boswell. 'I should not be surprised to find Jack Wilkes there.' Johnson. 'And if Jack Wilkes should be there, what is that to me, Sir? My dear friend, let me have no more of this. I am sorry to be angry with you; but really it is treating me strangely to talk to me as if I could not meet any company whatever occasionally.' Boswell. 'Pray forgive me, Sir: I meant well. But you shall meet whoever comes, for me.' Thus I secured him, and told Dilly that he would find him very well pleased to be one of his guests on the day appointed."
Boswell's method of motivating Dr. Johnson was not unlike the means used to induce a man suffering from tuberculosis to enter a sanatorium. ​Argument and persuasion had been tried without any effect. Although at bottom the man knew that he ought to go his determination to stay where he was increased with each suggestion to the contrary. Finally the social worker said to him:
"I've tried my best to induce you to go to the sanatorium. But since you will not do so, I'm not going to try any longer. We'll do the best we can to make you comfortable at home and we'll not mention the sanatorium any more."
When the man found himself with nothing to oppose he became less certain about his desire to continue in the city, and very shortly he began to make plans for going away for treatment. After the social case worker had yielded, the man could not help feeling, now that he had succeeded in having his way, a little ashamed of his perverseness.
Pride, and its corollary shame, are among the strongest motives to which one can appeal.
"Why, you're a slacker, aren't you?" said a social case worker to a boy as he entered her office one morning during the war, coughing heavily.
The boy straightened up and took a step forward almost as if he were about to strike her.
​"What do you mean?" he asked.
"If you let that cough run on, the army won't accept you when your turn comes," was the reply.
"When can I go to the doctor?" was the boy's almost instant response. He stopped smoking, and recovered from his cough. The boy had wanted to be rid of his cough, but not until his pride had been touched at its most sensitive point, his courage, and at a time when courage was at a premium, was he willing to make the sacrifice upon which his recovery was contingent.
"Don't let the neighbors see you move anything into the house that isn't in first-class condition," urged the social worker upon Mrs. Dorello when at last another home had been found. "You are going into a new neighborhood. Don't let them think that you own anything that is dirty."
Mr. and Mrs. Dorello rose immediately to this suggestion. They washed the beds and painted them; they gilded the frames of their pictures; repaired furniture; scoured the pots and pans; and disposed of all the odds and ends that were not worth saving; and thus were able to make a fresh start in keeping house.
A similar appeal to pride and shame was that ​made to a man who, while his wife was ill in a hospital, asked:
"What about my wife? Must I still stay with that woman?"
"Would you go and leave her now that she's sick?" said the social worker.
"I don't like her and I don't want to stay with her."
"Does it mean nothing to you that she is the mother of all your children?" was the reply. "Think what she has endured to bring them into the world and what it has meant to her to take care of them. You wouldn't want people to say, 'There goes Hansen. Look at the kind of man he is. He just walked off and left his wife and family.'"
A simple appeal of this sort to a man's pride is obviously not alone enough to solve a problem of maladjustment between husband and wife. There were many other things that needed to be done, but the use of this motive was not without its effect, as was also a reference to the welfare of his children.
"If you and your wife quarrel, your children can't be happy. You must find a way to be happy yourself if you want to have a happy home."
​The part which the desire for the welfare of others may play in influencing people is illustrated by the story of Mr. and Mrs. Henshaw.
Mr. Henshaw had been a patient in the Hudson Tuberculosis Hospital. It became necessary to close the ward in which he was staying, and preparations for his transfer to another institution were made. He, however, decided to return to his home. As he was in an advanced stage of the disease, this plan would have jeopardized the health of the family. The social worker and the doctors who had been helping Mr. Henshaw did their best to persuade him to enter the other hospital. Finally, when he refused, they threatened to invoke the aid of the law permitting the compulsory removal of tuberculous patients from their homes. Mr. Henshaw responded by falling into a tremendous fury and leaving the ward. When the social worker called at his home, he refused her admission. Both he and his wife were enraged. Those who knew Mr. and Mrs. Henshaw said that they were stubborn, impossible people.
Another social case worker then undertook to change the attitude of Mr. and Mrs. Henshaw and to induce Mr. Henshaw to enter a sanatorium.
​Mrs. Henshaw received her.
"How are things going?" the visitor asked.
The only response was a shrug of the shoulders.
"Not very well?" suggested the social worker.
"No; how could they go well?" replied Mrs. Henshaw in a moody and aggrieved tone of voice. "My husband is no better, the damp weather has a depressing effect upon him. He has been in bed most of the week."
"What are you planning to do for him?"
"He is to stay at home," replied Mrs. Henshaw. "I know that I can take care of him." She then burst into a torrent of feeling. "He has been in the Hudson Hospital all winter and is no better. The doctors have done him no good. When he wanted to leave, they threatened him with the law. If he could have gone to Mount Huron last summer as I wanted, he would be all right now. It is the one place away from home where he would be happy. I don't see why you won't send him there."
"Do you believe he has tuberculosis?"
"I know he has," admitted Mrs. Henshaw.
She had never been willing to acknowledge this before. It was for this reason that the social case worker had asked the question. Had she told ​Mrs. Henshaw that her husband had tuberculosis, the statement would probably have been hotly contradicted. By this method of approach the social worker had avoided an issue.
"There is no sanatorium at Mount Huron," she now explained, "and there is no other place there where a person with consumption can go."
"Well, if he can't go to Mount Huron," returned Mrs. Henshaw, "he won't go to the Mercy Hospital"—this being the institution to which the doctors had tried to induce Mr. Henshaw to go.
Having learned Mrs. Henshaw's plan and having by inference at least obtained from her the recognition of its impossibility, the social worker began to prepare the way for inducing Mrs. Henshaw to encourage her husband to enter an institution.
"What about the children?" she began. "Are you going to risk exposing them to tuberculosis? You wouldn't expose them to measles or scarlet fever, and tuberculosis is a much more dangerous disease."
"That's not true!" exclaimed Mrs. Henshaw, raising her voice. "He's no more a danger than the other patients, and the hospital discharged them without asking any questions."
​Evidently this was not a good start. With some women the argument of the welfare of their children is unanswerable. With others, the welfare of the husband comes first. Mrs. Henshaw had in spirit suffered all the pain and discomfort that Mr. Henshaw had experienced.
"Wouldn't you like your husband to get away from the city before the hot weather?" was the next suggestion. "He now has a middle room with very little air, and he might be in a place where he would not feel the heat so much. Wouldn't you like something of that sort for him?"
"Yes, I would," Mrs. Henshaw admitted.
"Do you think he would consider the Lakeview Sanatorium?"—a pleasant institution near the country which would be favorably known to Mrs. Henshaw. To have suggested the Mercy Hospital would have been merely to arouse old antagonisms, and by asking Mrs. Henshaw's advice in this way the social worker was in a sense making her a partner in the effort to persuade Mr. Henshaw.
"I'll talk to him about it," Mrs. Henshaw replied.
At this point the man appeared and said that he wanted to go to Mount Huron.
​Mrs. Henshaw answered for the social worker.
"You can't go because of your TB."
"But wouldn't you like to go to the Lakeview Sanatorium?" the social worker suggested. "Mrs. Henshaw and I have been talking it over."
"I guess it's the next best place," Mrs. Henshaw said.
While the conversation was far more devious and prolonged than these quotations indicate, this remark clinched the matter, and before the social worker left, Mr. Henshaw had signed the application for his admission to the sanatorium where ten days later he was comfortably established.
If in a situation of this sort one is known and liked by the individual in trouble there frequently comes the temptation to make a personal appeal to him: "Do this because I want it." Nothing is weaker, less constructive and less permanent. The contact between helper and helped usually is temporary. Remove the personality of the one who makes this plea and the reason for the course of conduct which he urges is likely also to disappear. This objection obviously does not hold where, as in the interview with the ​old gentleman described at the beginning of the chapter, the motive appealed to is that of making happy some one with whom there is a continuing relationship. The social worker was justified in emphasizing the wish of the old gentleman's niece that he move to more comfortable quarters. The tie between the two had always existed and would endure as long as life lasted. To please her would be a constant source of pleasure to himself, but for him to have acquiesced for no other reason than because he recognized the well-intentioned earnestness of the social worker would have been a scant guarantee of his holding to the plan that had been proposed. Personality, in the sense of the unconscious attraction which one human being exercises over another, must almost inevitably be a factor in motivation, but it should seldom, if ever, be deliberately used to influence decisions.
Often that which prevents people from entering institutions is the fear of the unknown. One way of overcoming such a difficulty is to suggest a visit to the hospital or the home in question. Seeing the place gives it a concreteness and definiteness that clears away the disturbing element of vagueness and uncertainty. Its inherent attrac​tiveness both allays fear and provides an additional reason for seeking admission.
As a positive stimulus fear is one of the strongest of motives. It is responsible for many successful careers, careers that have found their genesis in the very fear that they would not be successful. The fear of what people might say, the fear of consequences has been a stabilizing force in countless lives and many a boy and girl brought up in country, village, or town has learned the beginnings of foresight and thrift through the haunting fear of the poorhouse.
Powerful though this motive is the use of it is the least desirable of all the ways of influencing individuals. Back of an appeal to it usually is the implication of force, and to apply force, as pointed out in Chapter X, is generally to confess a lack of skill and understanding. The use of all other motives partakes in greater or less degree of the nature of inspiration. To arouse fear is to command. The appeal to most motives leaves a man free to choose. It is a form of leadership. Fear drives.
Reward is a far sounder method of reinforcing an individual's desires. Lacking the same compulsory element, it can be used with greater justi​fication. Obviously, opportunity for increased income is a more satisfactory way of developing a man's industrial efficiency than is the threat of the loss of his job. Interesting the individual in the task itself, work for the sake of work, would be still more constructive.
The influencing of a person through an appeal to his desires is seldom so clear cut and direct a process as the illustrations thus far would perhaps indicate. Actually, the shortest interview may involve calling upon such a variety of motives as to make it hard to classify them. While a knowledge and an understanding of the individual in need of help will usually indicate the appeal that may be most effective, one must frequently rely upon trial and error, stimulating this desire and that, until success is achieved. Often, as with the encouraging of the old gentleman to move to the suburbs, it is impossible to tell what motive has been decisive. Seldom is a man influenced by any one thing. Usually he is moved by a complexity of considerations. The part of the person who would help him is to make sure that all appropriate suggestions have been presented and that he has had the opportunity which the motives carry with them, an opportunity of the greatest ​potentiality; for under the influence of a quickened desire men have frequently accomplished—are, indeed, constantly accomplishing—tasks to which otherwise they would have never dreamed themselves to be equal.