Book Description

"At the beginning the Salvation Army was a purely religious body; but those at its head were driven into social work because of their sympathy with suffering. They had not planned out their work from the outset; they took it up, piece by piece, just as their hearts responded to appeal after appeal made by the suffering people with whom they were endeavoring to get into touch. They prayed with and preached to men and women weighed down by the sorrows and misery of dire poverty, and then they found that they simply could not leave these men and women without stretching out a helping hand to them. They were brought in contact with wrong-doers and criminals, they learned their secret history, they found how great a proportion of human sin is connected with wretched surroundings; and then they felt ill at ease until they tried to help and reform those who had been even more sinned against than sinning. Thus by degrees their social work increased and took on a multitude of different forms, and their constant endeavor was, not only to regenerate the individual, but also in practical ways, by experiment and trial, to find out how best to do away with the circumstances responsible for the individual's fall. They steadily developed their work along the lines of self-help, self-management, self-support, for one of their great underlying principles is that the individual must cooperate in order to bring about his own moral and physical redemption." -Theodore Roosevelt TABLE OF CONTENTS. Preface Introduction CHAPTER I The Salvation Army Industrial Department CHAPTER II The Salvation Army Hotels and Lodging Houses CHAPTER III The Farm Colonies of the Salvation Army CHAPTER IV The Salvation Army Slum Department CHAPTER V The Salvation Army Rescue Department CHAPTER VI Some Minor Features of the Salvation Army Social Work CHAPTER VII Conclusion