A Public Scrutiny of the Relief Home
A club woman challenges the management and endowment of the Ladies' Relief Society home, questioning its financial transparency and restrictive admissions.
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Your proposal to the women to get to work and raise the subsidy for the Stubblefield home puts many of us to thinking and asking questions. We learn that the endowment fund is given at $135,000, but in the same breath, the income is stated as $4,000. In what is it invested to bring only this low per cent? We hear that one man has said there would only be income enough at present to pay a matron. What woman in Walla Walla or state of Washington secures this munificent salary? How many widows do you know who would be glad to act as matron for her home and clothes? Not indigent, decrepit widows, but young, efficient, industrious, and anxious to be independent and self-supporting. Do you doubt that the Relief Society could furnish all the help needed in kitchen, laundry, sewing, hospital, and housework from just such needy persons? Could not the other departments be administered upon this idea of helping the poor to help themselves? These questions are asked on every hand and it seems to the club women of Walla Walla that with a $4,000 donation from the women that the men might manage to raise the balance, and not let this endowment slip away from us.
“Could not the other departments be administered upon this idea of helping the poor to help themselves?”
This letter highlights a recurring tension in Walla Walla’s history between private charitable endowment and public accountability. The author's critique of the 'stewardship' of the Stubblefield Home resonates with modern debates over how non-profit organizations manage assets versus their mission of service to the vulnerable.
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