A better plan is to bulwark the beleaguered mom by enabling her to provide a better present. Charity volunteers a century ago usually were not assigned to massive food-dispensing tasks but were given the narrow but deep responsibility of making a difference in one life over several years. Today, when an unmarried pregnant teenager is dumped by her boyfriend and abandoned by angry parents who refuse to be reconciled, she needs a haven, a room in a home with a volunteer family. When a single mom at the end of her rope cannot take care of a toddler, he should be placed quickly for adoption where a new and permanent bonding can take place, rather than rotated through a succession of foster homes. The work test, along with teaching good habits and keeping away those who did not really need help, also enabled charities to teach the lesson that those who were being helped could help others.
Programs have the chance to succeed only when categories are established and firmly maintained.
If drink has made a man poor, money will feed not him, but his drunkenness. Poverty fighters a century ago trained volunteers to leave behind a conventional attitude toward the poor, seeing them through the comfortable haze of their own intentions. If people were paid for not working, the number of nonworkers would increase, and children would grow up without seeing work as a natural and essential part of life. Today, programs that stress employment, sometimes in creative ways, need new emphasis. Some who start in vigorous programs of this sort drop out with complaints that too much sweat is required.