This past week, by illegal (in my opinion) executive order, the president gutted the welfare reform passed in the 1990s and signed (and taken credit for) by Bill Clinton, removing the requirement of working or showing effort to find work. The president wants it to be a pure handout, an entitlement, separated from the idea of work.
I don’t know his motivations precisely, but I do know this about human nature: work brings dignity. Working for wealth is more meaningful to the human soul than a free handout, particularly an expected one received without gratitude. A handout with no strings attached is a disincentive to work—and the result is a depressive effect on the soul, turning an otherwise productive human being into a mere parasite.
Rather than deal with the numbers on and off welfare during this current depression, I’d like to look at an exemplary private program, begun 76 years ago during the last Great Depression. This is the welfare program of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons. The program was highlighted last night in a segment of Rock Center with Brian Williams.
According to the Church’s website,
The objective of the welfare program is to care for the needy while teaching principles that will help people become self-reliant and retain their self-respect.
That’s the “teach a man to fish” principle, so he can eat for a lifetime, as opposed to the “give a man a fish” strategy, where he eats just for a day.
How does the Church do what it does? By living the principles of civilization: donating time, money, and caring. Every month a Sunday is dedicated to fasting—skipping two meals. The cost of these two meals is donated—above and separate from tithing—as fast offerings. In other words, actual food is given up, voluntarily, to provide food and other needs for the poor. It may be easier for rich people to give up the cost of two meals (and some are much more generous, because they can afford to be), but it helps the soul to feel the hunger for the sacrifice. No one asks or checks up to see who is hungry (and people with health reasons for not fasting, such as diabetics or pregnant moms, are not expected to), and while records are kept for tax deduction purposes, no one is forced or expected to pay any specific amount. There is value in generosity by choice that simply can’t be there with coercion.
The Church’s welfare program has been visited as an example by presidential administrations and other visitors for many decades. It’s kind of mind-boggling. The stores of food and supplies are used worldwide, and are distributed to storehouses around the world. We have one in Houston.
Besides the storehouses, there are also production facilities. Where I grew up, we had fruit farms; that was true when we lived in Washington State as well. My husband grew up in an area with a tuna canning facility (not still in use). Here in Houston we have a peanut butter cannery. [The facilities and equipment were upgraded last year; I wrote about it here. The cannery is also used in a joint project with the Houston Food Bank, to produce about 100,000 jars that go directly into the hands of local families in need.]
There was a month, during graduate school, when a summer internship fell through. I was working part-time, but until a job in his field materialized, we were in dire straits, with a small baby. We had counted on the summer money to get us through not only the summer, but the coming school year. We turned to the local bishop, the lay pastor of the congregation. He got us what we needed. The Relief Society president, the leader of the women’s auxiliary, came and met with me and filled out a “shopping list,” food and supplies we would receive without cost. This included cloth diapers, which I was used to using but needed more of. (Today I think disposable diapers are more likely to be on the list.) Most of the food was produced by voluntary labor of church members, and then some products were purchased by the Church, but not by us.
In exchange, we served where we could. Mr. Spherical Model got assignments on various Saturdays to work, along with some youth and other leaders, on the pig farm an hour away that produced pork products for the storehouse. It was messy, filthy work—that makes me appreciate farmers who do the work all the time. They mucked out barns. They separated the pigs from the bores. They identified the ones due for, uh, removal of reproductive organs. The volunteers didn’t have to perform that surgery, just helped the full-time workers.
It was a hot Indiana summer (90 degrees and 90% humidity that we called 90/90 days), and we had no air conditioning in our little car. There was a traffic stall on the way home from one of these assignments, and Mr. Spherical Model and his cohorts had to spend an extra hour sitting in the heat, smelling one another. Fortunately we had vinyl upholstery, but it took a lot of cleaning and a long time to get the odor out. I refused to let Mr. Spherical Model into our apartment with those filthy clothes. I made him drop all but underwear in the hallway, which I then carried quickly to the laundromat in the next building over. (Fortunately, at that time no one lived in the apartment across the hall, so no indecent exposure took place.)
It was honest labor. If we had not taken the assignment, someone else would have, whether they had received storehouse help or not. Serving is what Mormons do.
We were fortunate that summer work in the department came through, and we had only that single month as receivers of help. But many people are not so fortunate. As with the rest of the population, Mormons are suffering high unemployment today in rates similar to the rest of the population. The Church has an employment specialist in every congregation, to help individuals with their resumes, to practice interview skills, and other employment help. In addition, there is online help, also employment centers—available not just to Mormons, but to anyone in need. It’s helpful that, during these times of extended crisis, there are opportunities to serve—to feel the dignity of being useful—while also gaining work experience.
There’s an anecdote from To Kill a Mockingbird, that I wrote about in one of my first blog posts, that talks about real charity:
The young girl, Scout, learns how her father, Atticus, has helped someone too poor to pay for legal help Scout’s father had done. The man feels his debt, and periodically brings stove wood (because he can’t pay with money, since he doesn’t have enough). And eventually both Scout’s father and the man will know that the debt has been duly paid.
I say it was still charity, in the good sense. Atticus Finch did his work as a lawyer, knowing the client had no money but had a need. He could have gotten stove wood for himself. But he allowed the repayment as a kindness, to show he respected the man’s willingness to work, to show the man wasn’t demanding help he couldn’t pay for. Their good will toward one another is charity (caring), in both directions.
The Rock Center story referenced above says that 600,0000 orders a year are distributed through storehouses, and in addition funds are made available to local leaders, for purchasing goods where storehouses aren’t in close proximity. Additionally, worldwide humanitarian aid is given as disaster relief, as well as long-term help. (Information here). As a hurricane starts threatening the US coastline, trailer trucks full of relief supplies are filled and sent out on the road to be in place in the first hours after the storm—often before either Red Cross or government help arrives. All donations to LDS Humanitarian Aid go 100% to the people in need. Most help is volunteer, but where there is overhead, it is paid for through tithing donations so that no aid donations go to overhead costs.
When people assume that government must supply an economic safety net, I don’t argue that such a net should exist; but I know, because I’ve seen the example, that it can be provided better by private volunteer charity than by government redistribution.
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