Helping Hands

The Helping Hands organization is an international organization of community service clubs, founded in Akron, Ohio in 1836. Local chapters accept the charter of the international umbrella organization but are largely autonomous. Chapters typically include a locality’s prominent businessmen and professionals. Members raise money for charity and perform volunteer work. As an unadvertised bonus, membership confers prestige and respectability. The Helping Hands supports worthy but uncontroversial causes, mostly related to the treatment of childhood diseases.

New members find it an invaluable source of business connections. Helping Hands chapters exist in large cities but are not as vital to their communities as those in smaller centers. The movement boasts hundreds of thousands of members worldwide. Although the depression has blunted its fundraising capacities, its members cling to it as a pillar of normalcy in troubled times.

The Helping Hands is primarily a middle class phenomenon: Mariette's credit rating is too low to join; both Seamus and Matthew may be eligible candidates, but because of Matthew Deveraux's family's Credit Rating, he may be considered "slumming it" if trying to join up. (Persons of Credit Rating 6+ rarely seek membership.)