ABSTRACT
Modern philanthropy took shape in the years between about 1885 and 1915 as multimillionaires like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and other rich men and women sought practical, socially useful ways of disposing of surplus wealth. Traditional chanty was no more popular with some of the groups engaged in dispensing aid to the poor than with millionaire philanthropists. During and after the 1880s relief agencies in many American cities banded together in federations patterned after the London Charity Organization Society in order to eliminate duplication of effort and to reduce competition among their members. Charity is a simple problem when looked at from the standpoint of religion, he wrote in 1896, but very complex when viewed from the perspective of citizenship and public policy. Charity is no substitute for social responsibility but the attitude of sympathy and concern for the unfortunate that has traditionally animated charity is essential to an extension and humanization of public poor relief.
