Kennewick Women Organize to Aid the Needy
A local charitable effort reveals hidden poverty in the community, prompting a call for the destitute to set aside pride and seek help.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Quietly and unostentatiously, some of the good women of Kennewick have set about the work of lightening the burdens of the community’s deserving poor. Like all honest charitable enterprises, this effort is worthy and the good women merit alike the gratitude of the needy and the support of the thrifty. To this paper and to many others, it is a surprise to know that there are any cases of destitution in our midst. It is here that we, with all our good intentions, fail. Often it may be, misery cries out at our very doors and is unheeded and unanswered because it is unobserved. Honest poverty, like charity, suffereth long and vaunteth not itself, and we know after it is too late that there were empty little stomachs that might have been filled, frosted little feet that might have been shod, cramped little hands that might have been mittened and weakened manhood and sickened womanhood that might have been strengthened and healed. In opening our eyes to gaunt hearthstones, the women have done a good work. The response to the call of the charitable workers has been spontaneous and distribution, not contribution, has become the problem. It is the false pride of the needy, and not the selfishness of the provident that is hampering the work. Poverty is no disgrace and the man who permits those dependent upon him to suffer when their sufferings might be relieved for the asking, is cast in no finer mould than the man who feasts in the face of starvation.
“Poverty is no disgrace and the man who permits those dependent upon him to suffer when their sufferings might be relieved for the asking, is cast in no finer mould than the man who feasts in the face of starvation.”
This 1914 editorial highlights a recurring tension in Kennewick’s history: the invisibility of poverty in a growing town and the social stigma attached to seeking assistance. Today, as housing and cost-of-living pressures mount in the Tri-Cities, the challenge of connecting resources to those in need remains a critical civic concern.
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