The Charity Organization Society

1. The Charity Organization Society was based in the scientific movement of organizations. Workers believed that charity work needed more definition and organization and that charity should be focused more on individual need rather than as a whole population. Focusing on individual need was intended to improve relief operations while making resources more efficient. They also intended to eliminate public outdoor relief. With the promotion of more organization and efficiency the new Charity Organization Societies were born. Trattner states that these new requirements for organization and efficiency spread so “rapidly that within 6 years 25 cities had such organizations and by the turn of the century there were some 138 of them in existence” (Trattner, 1999).

The reformation of the Charity Organizations didn’t grant relief themselves however they served as a resource to simplify the transaction of relief to relief applicants by: maintaining relief applicant requests, records of the aid given to them, and referring those worthy or unworthy to the proper agencies (Trattner, 1999). Their goal was to eradicate fraud and duplicity of services while also maintaining efficiency and treating poverty. The charity organization movement intended to treat poverty by enacting “friendly visitors” to look into each case and define the cause of destitution while also watching for overlapping relief. These “friendly visitors” and their investigations were the cornerstone of the Charity Organization Society’s (C.O.S) treatment; granting aid without investigation was like giving medicine without diagnosis (Trattner, 1999).

“Friendly visitors” were relied on heavily within the C.O.S in order to effectively assign services and determine which serv...

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...mp in California a crowd of children crowded around Tommy’s mother while she was making soup and told all of them they could have some and to go get dishes. This was something that no one had really done for the Joads but it seemed they felt it was important to help those like themselves. Another scene that depicted cultural awareness was when they met the police officer at the gas station who explained to them he was from Indiana, where they had come from, and informed them to leave that town and go to the transient camp a few miles away so as they didn’t get a ticket. This was something that the officer may not have shared if they weren’t from the same region.

After being dislocated from their home the Joads lost their home, their grandfather, their grandmother, and their son. Besides these things they also lost a part of their dignity but never their spirit.