The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble/Chapter 10
A man ought to express himself, ought to live his own life, say his own say, before silence comes. The 'say' may be bad—a mere yawp, and silence might be more becoming. But the same argument would make a man dissatisfied with his own nose if it happened to be ugly. It's his nose, and he must content himself. So it's his yawp, and he must let it go. (Walter H. Page in a letter to William Roscoe Thayer, The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page.)
There is no phase of the art of helping people out of trouble that is more delicate or that cuts closer to the roots of one's philosophy than that which has to do with the development of the plans by which an individual makes his way out of difficulty. As soon as a man appears to hesitate and to be uncertain about his future, there comes the temptation to suggest an appropriate course of action to him. The more obvious the course of action, the greater the temptation. Frequently his friends succumb to it and undertake to tell him what to do, urging and even insisting that he adopt their advice.
To try to help a man in this way is to overlook one of the fundamental human impulses. This is that everybody wants to govern his own life and to make his own decisions. Puzzled, bewildered, and buffeted though a man may be he never loses the urge to self expression. No matter how submissive he may have become to another's suggestions, no matter how prone he may be to turn to some one else for the solution of his problems, when he reaches that which to him is vital he wants to be the arbiter of his own desires.
How can he enter enthusiastically into a plan that is wholly the creation of some one else? He must have had at least a part in its conception. He must feel a sense of ownership in it. Without this there is little hope that the plan will be successfully executed or have anything of permanence about it.
People vary greatly in the ability to devise ways of overcoming their difficulties. Some persons are quick to discover what they should do and need only freedom and opportunity to carry out their decisions. Others find it hard to originate or to develop solutions of their problems. In any event it is by freeing a man so that he can express himself and by stimulating him to do his own thinking that the best plans are developed. We may suggest, we may advise, but only as a subsidiary part of the process by which the individual in trouble is working out his own way of life.
The application of this principle is as various as are human beings. In one of its aspects it is illustrated by the manner in which George O'Brien came to arrange for the care of his motherless baby.
He had fallen in love with Mrs. Ledoux, whose husband had deserted her, and the young people—for they were still in their early twenties—had become parents without marriage. A few months after the baby's birth, Mrs. Ledoux entered the last stages of consumption. She lived with her widowed mother and eight brothers and sisters. For her own comfort and for the protection of the other members of the family, it was important that she go to a hospital. This she hesitated to do.
The social case worker who had been asked to help decided to discuss the situation with Mr. O'Brien, both because she knew that Mrs. Ledoux would enter the hospital if he wanted her to do so, and because it was important that some plan be made for the future of the baby.
"I've been quite anxious to have a talk with you about Mrs. Ledoux's illness," she said as she shook hands with Mr. O'Brien. "She's very sick and her mother doesn't seem to realize it. I felt that you ought to know about her condition."
"What did the doctor say?" asked O'Brien who knew that the social worker had consulted Mrs. Ledoux's physician.
"He said that both her lungs were affected. She has scarcely any use of her right lung and her left lung is not much better. I'm afraid that he doesn't feel hopeful. He talked very seriously to me about her. I fear that he doesn't think she is going to get well."
For a moment O'Brien was too shocked to reply.
"I didn't have any idea," he began. "I knew she was sick. I didn't think it was anything like that."
The social worker waited until he had recovered himself. Then she said:
"You know that her home is no place for her in that condition."
"I certainly do," the man agreed. "It makes me sick to go there. I hate even to sit down there."
"We ought to give her every chance, and make her comfortable. Won't you see whether you can persuade her to go to the hospital?"
O'Brien promised to do so, and the social worker continued:
"It's going to be hard for the baby with her mother away. Have you any plan for taking care of the little girl?"
O'Brien seemed to be greatly embarrassed by this turn in the conversation. His face flushed, and it was evident that it was a subject which was not easy for him to discuss. The best way of helping him would probably be to recognize his difficulty:
"I know it's hard for you to speak about this, but I also know how devoted you and Alice are to each other, and I want you to feel that you can talk plainly to me about everything and that I will always understand."
"Yes," O'Brien teplied, "I think you would understand. I'm awfully ashamed of having anything like that happen, but I really don't want to do anything until after Alice is in the hospital."
"I think you're right," the social worker agreed. "Of course you will first want to see that Alice is comfortable, but after she goes to the hospital I am afraid that the baby won't get the care she ought to have."
"I've always felt," O'Brien said, "that if anything happened to Alice I would try to do what was right about the baby."
"I'm not surprised to hear you say that. I've respected you ever since I heard about the way you've stuck to Alice and how you helped her after the baby came."
"You're the first one that ever gave me credit for acting white. The whole neighborhood is down on me. They blame me for Alice's being sick."
"That's because they don't understand. You know how the neighbors gossip. If only you could take your little girl away from it all. Do you think your mother could be persuaded to take her?"
"I've never talked to her about it," the man replied. "I don't know how she'd feel about it."
"I know you'd rather have one of your own people take care of the baby, but of course you could always place her with a foster mother. I'm sure I could help you to find one if ever you should want me to."
O'Brien listened thoughtfully.
"As soon as Alice is in the hospital, I will come to see you."
A few days later he told the social worker that his sister with whom he had decided to make his home had agreed to care for the baby. The plan was carried out, and Mrs. Ledoux had the satisfaction of knowing before she died that the child would be reared by its father, and that its name would be Alice O'Brien.
In all that was essential, the plan for taking care of the child was O'Brien's. The social worker helped him to see that the time for planning had come. She confirmed him in his intention "to do what was right about the baby," but she only suggested. She did not even advise. She was merely the means by which he began to think about what he should do, not an inconsiderable service, to be sure, when it is remembered that most unmarried fathers leave to the mother the responsibility of caring for the child.
Such was the experience of Mrs. Darnell. She had, however, no difficulty in making a plan. What she needed was freedom for carrying it out. She had never been free. She had been so carefully sheltered at home that she had been unprepared for life. At an early age she married a man who soon proved to be unfaithful to her, and after several years of unhappiness she obtained a divorce. The members of her family regarded the whole experience as a reflection upon her ability to direct her own affairs, and they proceeded to manage them for her. They instituted a system of chaperonage and supervision which would have been irksome to a child, but the very man with whom, because he was married, Mrs. Darnell's relatives thought she was safe, became the means of her seduction.
Mrs. Darnell left her home and went to another city where her baby was born. Inasmuch as marriage with the father of the child was impossible, she decided that she would try to make a home for herself and the baby. The only means was a place at service. No one in all her relationship had ever earned a living in this way, and when the members of the family learned about it, they felt that they had been doubly disgraced. Mrs. Darnell's uncle hastened to call upon the social case worker to whom she had turned for advice.
"This must all stop," he announced. "We have everything planned for Edith. She is to come back home where we will take care of her. We'll place the baby in an institution and nobody need know that anything has happened."
Then he asked the social worker to persuade Mrs. Darnell to give up her plan and adopt the one that he suggested. The social worker refused. She pointed out that the family had just witnessed the cost of repression. Why repeat the experiment? Mrs. Darnell now had in her love for the baby a controlling purpose and a reason for living. It was something that would steady and strengthen her. To deprive her of her child and the opportunity to plan her future would be to take away the greatest asset in her life.
The man was unconvinced, but Mrs. Darnell was allowed to carry out her plan. She remained at service until she found employment which enabled her to establish a home for herself and her baby, and there, in less than a year, she entertained the members of her reconciled family. The service of the social worker had been to see that Mrs. Darnell's relatives left her free. Frequently the greatest assistance one can give the person in trouble is to see that other people keep hands off and that he has a chance to work out his own salvation.
It is seldom that a man can act without reference to the ideas of some one else. Often plans must be developed by an interchange of thought between the persons affected. The art of helping may then consist in bringing the interested individuals together so that they may discuss the situation. This was what the social worker did for Peter and Annie Ainsley (described in Chapter IX), when she sat as the chairman of a family council in which a policy and a procedure for helping them were evolved.
Although it is important to leave an individual free to make his own plans, this does not mean that one should blindly endorse every idea that is proposed by the person who comes for advice. The plan must be genuine and must have a reasonable chance of success. What results when these elements are absent is illustrated by the following incident.
A social worker had been endeavoring to aid Harry Wallou, a boy of nineteen years, to discover his vocation. Perhaps because Harry felt that something was expected of him, he said that he would like to be a wireless telegraph operator. It was more a statement at a venture than the expression of a profound desire. It was not a genuine plan. The social worker obtained a job for him in a telegraph office from which, after six months, he was discharged as being utterly incapable of acquiring even the rudiments of wireless telegraphy. The boy's lack of the necessary intelligence and the appropriate educational background could easily have been ascertained before his plan was endorsed. He had not originally suggested it with conviction and it would not have been difficult to show him that the idea was unwise. He might have been spared the additional handicap of the sense of failure which the experience brought him. Only too often a sanguine and enthusiastic personality will embark a man upon plans in which he has no fundamental interest, mistaking his acquiescence for a positive desire. Once the buoyancy and optimism of the helper is removed, the individual slackens his efforts because he has never really made the plan his own.
Sometimes the person in trouble will have a plan which is genuine, but which is unsound. He is so eager to start upon the project that neither persuasion nor advice is enough to make its undesirability evident. Under such circumstances it may be wisest to help him to learn in the only way by which, after all, most people learn, that is, by experience.
A widow with two children was invited by her sister and her brother-in-law to make her home with them. They lived in a city three hundred miles distant. A social case worker learned that the real purpose of the invitation was to use the widow as a servant and that the personality and character of the sister and of her husband were such as to make living with them anything but congenial. She told these things to the widow, but when in spite of this the woman persisted in her wish to carry out her project the social worker helped her to prepare for the journey. Three months later the widow returned to her native city. She had been convinced of her mistake, and was now ready to develop a better plan.
To learn by experience is expensive, and when health and morals are at stake it would seem dangerous to assume the responsibility of making an unwise experiment possible. Would it not be better then to force the individual to adopt the plan that is in his own best interest?
The use of force is always a confession of failure. It implies that one has not at the moment the skill or the knowledge to solve the problem which has been presented, for after all there usually is a solution.
A man who was ill with tuberculosis was unwilling to go to a sanatorium. Yet his carelessness and his failure to take precautions were menacing the health of his children. A social agency which had been supporting the family refused to continue to supply financial assistance so long as he remained at home. The man agreed to enter the sanatorium. After he had been there three months, he returned. When persuasion did not succeed in inducing him to go back, the refusal of support accomplished this purpose. Again he came home, and again the process was repeated. Altogether he was admitted three times to the sanatorium. Three times he returned, and, doubtless, it was only his death at the sanatorium which prevented him from coming back once more. This shows both the effectiveness and the ineffectiveness of force. The man went to the sanatorium, but he had nothing within himself to keep him there; yet, on the other hand, the use of force sent him back and saved his wife and children from contracting his disease.
Sometimes the very fact that a man in such a predicament has a wife and children makes the use of force questionable, for the hardship which the lack of money may cause the family may injure the health of the children more than the presence of the father. The cure is worse than the disease, and there always remains the question, suppose force fails, what then?
Because a person says 'no' to-day does not mean that he will not say 'yes' to-morrow. This was certainly true of John Ellsworth. His mother had died leaving him with seven brothers and sisters, the youngest, a baby. He was only twenty-two years old. His sister Gertrude, was seventeen. She was a stenographer.
"What are you going to do?" asked the social worker.
"Gertrude will give me ten dollars a week," John replied confidently, "and I'm going to take care of the family."
"Have you thought it out thoroughly? It takes a lot of money to clothe and feed so many children and to pay the rent and buy coal."
"I don't care," said John, "that's what I'm going to do."
"Sometime you'll want to marry and have a family of your own. Could you ask a wife to take care of your brothers and sisters? What would you do if Gertrude married and left you to support the whole family? I think you're splendid to have the idea, but don't you think it would be better if the youngest four children were sent to live with some other family? I'll be glad to help you place them."
"There isn't any use talking," John insisted. "I know what I'm going to do and that's keep the children."
The social worker, seeing how determined he was, decided not to press him.
Three or four days later she called again, but did not mention the subject. To do so would only strengthen John in his determination and weaken her influence with him.
A little later John raised the issue.
"You know, I've been thinking that it costs an awful lot of money to keep a family going, and I think the best thing I can do is to put the children away somewhere," and when the social worker offered to help him, he continued, "maybe you could do it better than I could—you just go ahead."
People are hardly ever convinced by argument. When a man has positive opinions, it is seldom wise to oppose him. It is vastly better to wait until more opportunity for thought or the logic of events convinces him. Then, when he arrives at a decision, the plan is his own.
The more difficult the plan is of execution, the more vital to the individual in trouble does the sense of personal identity with it become. It was this which caused a social case worker to wait a year and a half for a family to decide upon a course of action, which during all this time she felt was necessary to their happiness. Husband and wife had begun to jar each other's nerves. With rest and recuperation for the woman and a stay in a sanatorium for the man, the physical basis of their oversensitiveness to each other might be removed. But in order to accomplish this it would be necessary to break up the home and place the children temporarily with some private family. This would be a difficult step for the parents to take. The social worker knew that if she persuaded them to do it they would not be nearly so likely to hold to their decision as if they arrived at it of their own accord. Therefore, she suggested the plan and then waited until at last they came to see that it was the only possible solution of their difficulties.
The more one works with people the more one realizes that the way of freedom is the only sure road to success. The plan that carries through is the plan that is a man's own. Suggest it to him, perhaps, but only as a thought for him to digest and to make a part of himself. Offer him the stimulation that comes from a meeting of minds, from the action and reaction of ideas, from the thinking out aloud with some one who understands; edit, perhaps criticize, but let the authorship remain with him. It is both his right and the way of his salvation.