convictions which we no longer hold. Thus our estimate of the effect of
environment and social conditions has doubtless shifted faster than our
methods of administrating charity have changed. Formerly when it was
believed that poverty was synonymous with vice and laziness, and that
the prosperous man was the righteous man, charity was administered
harshly with a good conscience; for the charitable agent really blamed
the individual for his poverty, and the very fact of his own superior
prosperity gave him a certain consciousness of superior morality. We
have learned since that time to measure by other standards, and have
ceased to accord to the money-earning capacity exclusive respect; while
it is still rewarded out of all proportion to any other, its possession
is by no means assumed to imply the possession of the highest moral
qualities. We have learned to judge men by their social virtues as well
as by their business capacity, by their devotion to intellectual and
disinterested aims, and by their public spirit, and we naturally resent
being obliged to judge poor people so solely upon the industrial side.
Our democratic instinct instantly takes alarm. It is largely in this
modern tendency to judge all men by one democratic standard, while the
old charitable attitude commonly allowed the use of two standards, that
much of the difficulty adheres. We know that unceasing bodily toil
becomes wearing and brutalizing, and our position is totally untenable
if we judge large numbers of our fellows solely upon their success in
maintaining it.

The daintily clad charitable visitor who steps into the little house
made untidy by the vigorous efforts of her hostess, the washerwoman, is
no longer sure of her superiority to the latter; she recognizes that her
hostess after all represents social value and industrial use, as over
against her own parasitic cleanliness and a social standing attained
only through status.