Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III INDIVIDUALISTIC SAVINGS AGENCIES A French sociologist has carefully elaborated the theory that the social growth of man has its root in economic life, and that, therefore, the first social phenomena to be developed were the economic, and that only gradually have been added, in the order named, the genetic, the artistic, the religious, the moral, the juridic, and the political. If such a theory be accepted, one has to appreciate that it is very difficult to effect a change in habits which are regulated by economic traditions, and that conversely it is in material prosperity that men's interests are really centred. Let it be clearly realized, therefore, that if one wish to change the conditions that surround the poor, one must not attempt to overturn suddenly their economic life, and that one must have a very definite knowledge of the conditions that influence the 3 class among whom one feels called on to work. The worker in order to be successful must appeal, in a rational way, to the most vital interests of the poorer classes, and he must look only for a gradual raising of the standard of life. Though an appeal to the pocket may seem to be a low basis for action, let the philanthropist appreciate that the surest way to reach any class of persons is to make it realize that by following a prescribed course there will be a financial gain. Reformers who have appreciated that men must be reached through the natural interests before they can assimilate mental and moral teaching, have tried to develop savings agencies, not only that the savers may have a reserve fund for future contingencies, but that they may have the consciousness of being removed by their savings from the burden of relief-receiving. Just as far as the savings agencies are divorced from mere rel...