Excerpt from Social Work in London, 1869 to 1912: A History of the Charity Organisation Society The first part of the record has been devoted to chronicling the origin and internal development of the Society itself. It is in a certain sense a domestic record, a sort of family history, which may naturally be of more interest to members of the family than to the outside world. It must lack, too, the human appeal which attends upon revelations of the private life of individuals; we all like to read about a man's early struggles to establish himself in life, especially when he is encom passed about by the machinations of enemies and rivals; and our sympathies are easily roused by his subsequent difficulties with his family - with the sons who get into debt or repudiate his authority, and the daughters who fall in love with the wrong curate or demand a latchkey. It is less stimulating to hear how a Society achieves success in the face of manifold difficulties, and how its committees become insolvent or do bad case work, or take up with unorthodox views, or set themselves up as rivals to their parent; although to those who have taken part in these various crises the anxieties and passions involved may be intensely keen. Our appeal, therefore, is to an inner and an outer circle of readers, and should any find himself upon the wrong track it will be easy for him to move to more congenial ground. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.