This I 
 
 SOUTHERN BRANCH 
 
 VERSiTY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 LIBRARY 
 
 LOS ANGELES, CALIF.
 
 AMEEICAN CHARITIES 
 
 BY 
 
 AMOS G. WARNER, Ph.D. 
 
 LATE PKOFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AXD SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE LELAND STANFORD 
 
 JTTNIOK UNIVERSITY ; FORMERLY SUPERINTENDENT OF CHARITIES FOR THE 
 
 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, GENERAL AGENT OF THE CHARITY 
 
 ORGANIZATION SOCIETY OF BALTIMORE ; ETC. 
 
 REVISED BT 
 
 MARY ROBERTS COOLIDGE, Ph.D. 
 
 FORMERLY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OP SOCIOLOGY IN 
 THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY 
 
 WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL PEEFACE 
 BT 
 
 GEORGE ELLIOTT HOWARD, Ph.D. 
 
 HEAD PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF NEBRASKA 
 
 /734^ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
 I ' C 1908
 
 4 59 
 
 COPTRIOHT, 1894 AND 1908, 
 
 By THOMAS Y. CliOWELL & COMPANY. 
 
 PCBl.lSUED, Sei'temhkr, 1908.
 
 ¥2,4 a X 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 TO 
 
 FORMERLY CHAIRMAN OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 
 
 OF THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY 
 
 OF BALTIMORE
 
 " The subject has great attractions : As science, because it links 
 phenomena to phenomena, and reveals their laws ; as philanthropy, 
 because the knowledge of these laws may be used as a weapon to 
 conquer the vice, the crime, the misery which science investigates." 
 
 — Richard L. Dugdale. 
 
 " If I have rightly conceived the dominant idea of the modern 
 
 philanthropy, it is embodied in a determination to seek out and to 
 
 strike effectively at those organized forces of evil, at those particular 
 
 causes of dependence and intolerable living conditions which are 
 
 beyond the control of the individuals whom they injure and whom 
 
 they too often destroy." 
 
 — Edwahd T. Devine.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 
 
 On the appearance of Warner's "American Charities" four- 
 teen years ago, its unique character was at once recognized. 
 For that work is the first thoroughgoing scientific treatment 
 of the most difficult and perhaps the most important of the 
 ever widening group of sociological arts to which happily 
 Professor Henderson has given the generic name of " social 
 technology." It possesses an enduring, a vital quality 
 which in the judgment of scholars has already won for it 
 the rank of "classic in philanthropy." With remarkable 
 clearness Dr. Warner perceived the new dynamic tendency 
 which was destined soon to revolutionize economic and 
 sociological thought. In the outset with trenchant phrase 
 he exposes the sterility of the prevalent laissez faire dogma. 
 " People are tired of the gospel of inaction," he exclaims, 
 " and the teacher has been compelled to heed their demand 
 for guidance in the doing of constructive work. . . . Stu- 
 dents must be trained in a more generous political economy 
 than that of Senior and Miss IMartineau," if they are to 
 achieve success in organized philanthropy. 
 
 Therefore the time is ripe for a new edition of the "Ameri- 
 can Charities." It is significant that in the statement of 
 principles no essential change is required. The book de- 
 serves to be perpetuated because of its perennial scientific 
 quality. This is the more remarkable considering that only 
 two years ago, in Ward's epoch-making "Applied Sociology," 
 appeared the first systematic discussion of the basic law 
 which must govern all wise effort for social reform. The 
 real function of education, of opportunity, is now better
 
 vi BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 
 
 understood ; and in clearer view of the fact that intellectual 
 man, as opposed to the lower animal, is capable of " trans- 
 forming his environment," the pitiless and hopeless dogma 
 of social laissez /aire is effectually discredited. On the 
 other hand, the statistics, illustrations, and other details 
 have required many additions and a thorough revision. 
 During the decade and a half since Warner wrote, an im- 
 mense mass of work in special lines has been done. Almost 
 every month adds to the number of organizations and swells 
 the volume of technical or popular literature devoted to 
 social self-help in its many related forms. Moreover, if 
 there is need of putting the book abreast of the available 
 materials, in a few cases there has been a decided change 
 of public attitude which likewise demands recognition. 
 This is true, notably, regarding the causes of poverty. 
 " What Warner wrote on the causes of poverty," suggests 
 the editor, " is now accepted as the best statement so far 
 as it goes ; but the discussion now centres around the 
 standard of living." 
 
 In every way it is fortunate that Mrs. Coolidge has 
 accepted the call to prepare the second edition of this 
 standard work. It is fitting that the pupil, colleague, and 
 friend of the author should take his place. By professional 
 training and experience she is admirably equipped for the 
 successful discharge of a public service which her relations 
 with the author and his family must make a loving duty. 
 After gaining valuable experience as teacher at Wellesley 
 College, Mrs. Coolidge comi)leted her academic training at 
 Stanford, where Warner was then head of the department 
 of economics. Under his direction, she studied for a year 
 or more before taking her doctorate in practical sociology. 
 This led to her being asked to undertake the course in 
 charities when, on account of illness, Warner was com- 
 pelled to give n\) his university duties. Afterwards she 
 studied in the School of Philanthropy in New York, did
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. Vll 
 
 some practical charity work in that city, became closely 
 connected with the Associated Charities of San Francisco, 
 and gave the courses in Charities, Penology, the Family, 
 and Race Problems at Stanford from 1897 to 1904. In 
 1906-1907 she acted as head of the South Park Settlement 
 in San Francisco, while also taking part in the charity 
 movements there. It is proper, likewise, to mention the 
 more important of Dr. Coolidge's own published writings. 
 Her monograph on " Almshouse Women " (1895), her study 
 of the "Statistics of College and Non-College Women" 
 (1901), and her book on the " History of Chinese Immigra- 
 tion" (1908) afford ample evidence of her literary and 
 scientific powers. In preparing the original edition of the 
 "American Charities," she aided Professor Warner in read- 
 ing proof, verifying materials, and in making suggestions 
 upon the last few chapters. Furthermore, before his death 
 Warner expressed the wish that should the book ever go to 
 a second edition Mrs. Coolidge might be asked to revise it. 
 
 Amos Griswold Warner was born at Elkader, Iowa, 
 December 21, 1861. Three months earlier his father, a 
 physician, had been instantly killed in an accident while 
 returning from a professional visit. The son's salient traits 
 of mind and character may readily be traced in those of 
 his parents. The father, Dr. Amos Warner, was endowed 
 with sound common sense and discriminating judgment. 
 With independence of thought and great tenacity of opinion, 
 he combined the happy faculty of winning friendship and 
 of strongly attaching his friends to himself. These char- 
 acteristics were enhanced in the son by the rich legacy 
 which he inherited from his gifted mother. Mrs. Esther 
 Carter Warner was a woman of rare strength and beauty 
 of character. According to a friend who knew her for 
 twenty years, "she was kindly and sympathetic, cheerful 
 and active, tolerant, intelligent, firm and uncompromising
 
 vili BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 
 
 when principle was at stake, strong in body and in mind." ^ 
 She was of the best material of which builders of new states 
 are made ; and her active interest in the great moral and 
 social movements of the day was maintained almost to the 
 time of her death, in 1901, at the age of eighty-two. 
 
 In 1864: the mother, with her four children, removed to 
 the Territory of Nebraska, settling on a " homestead " near 
 the present village of Roca, some twelve miles south of the 
 plain on which Lincoln, the capital of the state, now stands. 
 Here Warner grew to young manhood, gained a fair com- 
 mon school training, and conceived for country life the 
 passionate fondness which he never lost. In 1878 he en- 
 tered the preparatory department of the University of 
 Nebraska. Outwardly, he was then a typical farmer lad : 
 awkward of manner, his face tanned and freckled by 
 exposure to sun and wind, his clothes of the severest 
 country type. Yet soon it was perceived by us all that 
 a rare mind had come among us. The enthusiastic youth 
 threw himself heart and brain into all the larger and nobler 
 activities which make up the modern academic life. He 
 found himself citizen of a democratic society — a microcosm 
 of the larger world beyond — in which he might enjoy the 
 rights and privileges of a full franchise. He soon became 
 a leader in student affairs — a pioneer in the upbuilding of 
 collegiate institutions. Very important for him is the part 
 which a youth takes in the making of the institutions which 
 form the academic life. As he is strong or weak in that 
 life, so is he likely to be in the future civic life. In many 
 directions Warner made his influence felt, and always in 
 a wholesome way, on the institutional growth of the Uni- 
 versity. In debate, on the college press, in the daily routine 
 of the classroom, he bore his part ably and modestly as 
 became the future leader of men. 
 
 To the discerning eye, Warner's work in college bore the 
 1 Prufessor Luurence Fussier, in his Wuruer memorial address.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. ix 
 
 stamp of originality; but in the conventional sense he was 
 not brilliant. Instead of aiming at uniform excellence in 
 all his studies, he preferred to dwell upon those which 
 appealed to him as most fruitful and most inspiring. His 
 mind refused to be hampered by the shackles of routine. 
 " His powers of concentration were great," writes one who 
 was successively fellow-student, teacher, and colleague; 
 " but he looked for the main point only — the central idea. 
 He wasted little time on non-essentials or on useless details. 
 Yet it would be an error to conclude that he did not master 
 details when necessary ; but for him they were only a means 
 to an end. This power of discrimination between the im- 
 portant and the non-essential was one of the most charac- 
 teristic traits of his genius. Strength and initiative marked 
 his student career, rather than technical scholarship." ^ 
 
 Warner had a delicate sense of humor which has seldom 
 been equalled. In later years it gave a pungent flavor to 
 his speech and writing. In his student days it made him 
 a leader in college fun — in true college fun ; the kind 
 which gives free expression to the joy and good-will of a 
 manly but gentle soul never unmindful of the rights or the 
 feelings of others. He was not found among those who, in 
 the name of a college joke, delight in tormenting persons 
 mentally or physically weaker than themselves ; nor among 
 those whose only claim to academic distinction is the wear- 
 ing of good clothes ; nor among those who seek a reputation 
 for " manliness " by venturing on forbidden paths. 
 
 In another way Warner's originality and strength of 
 character were disclosed. It was not his early purpose to 
 enter on one of the so-called "higher" professions. He 
 had decided to graduate and then to carry the culture which 
 he had gained into a farmer's life. Only in his senior year, 
 apparently, was this purpose given up. He then became 
 deeply interested in historical studies. The influence which 
 
 1 Professor H. W. Caldwell, on Warner, " The Teiuher and Scholar."
 
 X BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 
 
 definitively fixed his growing inclination to prepare himself 
 for a scholar's career came to him through a piece of research 
 work done in connection with a course of study in the his- 
 tory of the French Revolution. His thesis on the " Causes 
 of the Jacobin Conquest" led him on to further mental 
 achievement. 
 
 Accordingly, in the autumn of 1885, — three months after 
 taking the bachelor's degree, — he entered the Johns Hop- 
 kins University as a graduate student in economics. Very 
 soon, among the thirty or forty men gathered around the 
 seminary table, by common consent Warner was cheerfully 
 conceded the first rank.^ His unusual success won for him 
 a fellowship at the close of the first year of study. A few 
 months later, in the beginning of 1887, — with more than 
 a year's work yet to do before reaching the doctorate, — he 
 received his first call to public service. One Sunday a 
 characteristic address on some social problem attracted the 
 notice of Mr. John Glenn, member of an old Maryland 
 family, and deeply interested in practical philanthropy. 
 As a result, Warner accepted an invitation to become the 
 General Secretary of the Charity Organization Society of Bal- 
 timore. The plough-boy of Roca undertook this extremely 
 difficult social service for the Southern metropolis, and 
 he discharged his task with conspicuous success. His work 
 drew the attention of the philanthropists of the entire 
 country. His was essentially the creative task of a pioneer. 
 An effective organization was developed. " He did not 
 confine himself entirely to the sifting of the honest and 
 deserving paupers from among the more numerous frauds," 
 — for he drove vagrants from the city, — "but he became 
 a student of the problems involved in pauperism, writing 
 much and speaking frequently of his conclusions." ^ In the 
 work of the Society he remained until the summer of 1889, 
 
 1 According to the testimony of a fellow-stmient, Judge Lincoln Frost. 
 3 Judge Lincoln Frost, ou Warner, " The Graduate."
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. xi 
 
 the year after he had taken the Ph.D. degree. Meantime, 
 through mutual respect and admiration, Warner and Glenn 
 had become fast friends. At the latter's instance, the 
 General Secretary was permitted to name his own suc- 
 cessor; and, equally significant, the "American Charities" is 
 dedicated to " Mr. John Glenn, Chairman of the Executive 
 Committee of the Charity Organization Society of Balti- 
 more." "While he was secretary," declared the Society 
 after Warner's death, " a great impetus was given to our 
 work ; and the progress made since his departure is largely 
 due to the foundation laid by his good sense, energy, and 
 devotion." 
 
 Now came his first call to teach. In September, 1889, as 
 associate professor, Warner was placed in charge of the 
 department of economics in the University of Nebraska. 
 During the two years that he held this chair, he gave abun- 
 dant proof of his originality of mind and of his extraordi- 
 nary power as a teacher. He developed his course in the 
 scientific study of industrial corporations — the first ever 
 offered in an American university. His strength as a teacher 
 was displayed, not so much in the ordinary routine of 
 didactic instruction, but chiefly in the promotion of original 
 research. Hence his personality and his methods appealed 
 most powerfully to the graduate students of his seminary, 
 where his alert and fertile mind fairly teemed with inspir- 
 ing hints and with fruitful subjects for investigation. In 
 harmony with this view is the judgment of Professor Edward 
 Alsworth Koss, his colleague in the department of econo- 
 mics at Stanford. As evidenced by his writings, "Dr. 
 Warner had the pioneering mind." His " teaching, too, 
 was original. He loved to cut loose from texts and get 
 at things. He had his students visit jails, almshouses and 
 asylums, police courts and city halls, that they might see 
 and judge for themselves. In these first-hand investiga- 
 tions and reports, his students developed a power they will
 
 xii BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 
 
 never lose. All who came near Dr. "Warner felt the bracing 
 ozoue of his great common sense. Life on the farm had 
 given him an instinct for reality which no doctrinaire could 
 destroy. He was of the new victorious younger school of 
 economists, and in his hands economics never became life- 
 less or dismal. In a day when isms were more rife than 
 they are now, he kept his head clear and sent folly flying 
 with a homely illustration or a pungent epigram." ^ 
 
 Then followed the second and most important call to 
 public service. In 1891 he was selected by President Har- 
 rison to become the first Superintendent of Charities for 
 the District of Columbia under the act which Congress had 
 recently passed. The appointment Avas in no sense politi- 
 cal. In fact it was opposed by both senators from Ne- 
 braska, who desired the office as a ''plum" for an "old 
 soldier" of their party. Through the influence of such 
 men as John Glenn, Professor Ely, President Gilnian, and 
 Senator Dawes, the place came to him in recognition of 
 the preeminent fitness which his administration of the 
 charities of Baltimore had disclosed.'^ It was a post de- 
 manding hard work, signal ability, and rare tact in the 
 management of men. The charities of the District were 
 in a chaotic condition. The appropriations of Congress 
 were distributed in a haphazard and ineffective way among 
 a number of ecclesiastical and private philanthropic insti- 
 tutions. Any plan of the superintendent to apportion 
 equitably and scientifically the funds hereafter to be pro- 
 
 1 Ross, in the Charities Review, x. (March, 1900), p. 1. 
 
 2 " Our friend, who was not an applicant for the place and merely knew 
 that his name was on file with the President, was awiikened at midnight 
 one night and came down town to read the press despatch telling of his 
 appointment. He took it witli his usual calmness, hut with a little more 
 than his usual seriousness. The surprise did not throw him off his balance 
 in the least. He saw not the honor that had come to him, hut the respon- 
 Bibility. His thought was not of elation, but of determination to suc- 
 ceed." — Will Owen Jones, on Warner, " The Friend."
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. xiil 
 
 vided by Congress was sure to provoke selfish opposition. 
 A powerful hostile lobby had to be overcome. How all 
 difficulties eventually were surmounted and the great task 
 of carrying out the design of the federal statute finally was 
 accomplished cannot here be described. It must suffice 
 to say that the suggestions regarding the details of organiza- 
 tion and the appropriations of money submitted in Warner's 
 two special reports were adopted and put in force by Con- 
 gress ; and thus a model system of organized charities was 
 created for the national capital. Meantime he had achieved 
 a supplementary w^ork of great social value to the city. 
 At his instance Congress had been induced to found a 
 Board of Children's Guardians, an institution only second 
 in importance to the charity organization itself. 
 
 Warner's second call to teach came from Stanford Uni- 
 versity in 1893, two years before his term as superintendent 
 had expired. While serving the government in Washing- 
 ington, he told the writer that he had decided not to take 
 up professional academic work again. The influence which 
 changed his mind and determined his comiug to Stanford 
 was the gift to that institution of the Hopkins Eailway 
 Library. Warner was deeply interested in railroad prob- 
 lems, as he was in all questions connected with industrial 
 corporations; and now he saw an opportunity for a new 
 institution — a railway school of unique character, one 
 whose curriculum should comprehend not merely financial 
 and economic problems, but practical courses in administra- 
 tion and engineering as well. Had his life been spared, 
 probably in due time this ideal would have been realized, 
 and so Stanford University would have had in history the 
 distinction of founding the first railway school. 
 
 But this was not to be. W^hen he began his work at 
 Stanford, in the spring of 1893, his physical strength was 
 already impaired by too strenuous labors in Washington. 
 Toward the close of the academic year, in 1894, he wrote
 
 xiv BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 
 
 the " American Charities." It was a fatal tour de form. 
 Although in large measure the fruit of years of thought 
 and experience, in its published form it was struck off in 
 a very few weeks of incessant toil. Under this fearful 
 strain his constitution began to yield, and during the en- 
 suing summer its ruin was made complete through the 
 exposure endured in an outing trip. In November, 1894, 
 under his physician's advice, he gave up teaching and began 
 what proved to be five years' vain search for health. The 
 pathetic story of that heroic struggle is known and need be 
 known only to his dearest friends. More and more brightly 
 shone out the nobility of his character. Bravely and cheer- 
 fully he faced the inevitable, while always he was accom- 
 panied and cherished by his wise and courageous wife. 
 His mind was ever busy with the great social problems 
 which filled his intellectual life ; and during much of this 
 period his family was supported on the money earned by 
 his remarkable articles in the Record and Guide. In the 
 fall of 1897 he ventured to return to Stanford in the hope 
 of taking up his teaching work again. The hope was vain ; 
 although it was at this time that he wrote and delivered 
 those " Lay Sermons " in which so clearly his white soul is 
 revealed. The end came after three more years of waiting 
 and wandering. He died at Las Cruces, New Mexico, 
 January 17, 1900. "Now he lies in the soil of his dear 
 Nebraska, on a beautiful hill overlooking the little village 
 of Roca and the broad valley and prairies beyond." ^ 
 
 On the fifth day of September, 1888, Warner married 
 Miss Cora Ellen Fisher, an alumna of his alma mater. Two 
 children, a girl and a boy, were born of their marriage. 
 The wife and children are still living. 
 
 It would perhaps be misleading to assert that in the mere 
 volume of his writings Warner's short life was uniquely 
 productive as compared with other scholars of the first rank, 
 
 1 Professor Laurence Fossler, in his Warner memorial address.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. XV 
 
 Yet his published bibliography,' though not exhaustive, 
 shows that his pen was ever busy with helpful work. His 
 reputation as an author and as a constructive scientific 
 thinker must, of course, always rest chiefly on the "American 
 Charities." Still, many of his minor papers and monographs 
 are of distinct and lasting value. They hold an honorable 
 place in the literature of the new dynamic economics and 
 in that of the new scientific philanthropy. Ever Warner 
 had an eye on the practical, striving to render science help- 
 ful to men. His thought is pervaded by the spiritual utili- 
 tarianism which is the mark of the fruitful scholarship of 
 the modern age. 
 
 Among the writings of the formative period of his uni- 
 versity life, giving earnest of his powers and displaying 
 the characteristics of his style, are the " Sketches from 
 Territorial History" (in Transactions and Reports of the 
 Nebraska State Historical Society, 1887, ii., 18-63), an en- 
 lightening discussion from the sources of the episode of 
 "wild-cat banks" and of some other incidents of Nebraska 
 frontier days ; and the " Three Phases of Cooperation in 
 the West," published by the Johns Hopkins University 
 in the useful pioneer volume devoted to the " History of 
 Cooperation in the United States " (Studies, 1888, vi., 363- 
 439). Perhaps the best examples of his utilitarian handling 
 of scientific problems are " Some Experiments on Behalf 
 of the Unemployed " (in Quarterly Journal of Economics, 
 October, 1890), and " Kail way Problems in a Western State " 
 (in Political Science Quarterly, March, 1891). The last- 
 named paper is still the only helpful discussion of the early 
 phase of railroad building in Nebraska through the aid of 
 subsidies supplied by local taxation. It is fitting also 
 to emphasize the " Economic Notes regarding Luxury " (in 
 A.A.A.S., 1889, xxxviii.,) ; for, although during the two 
 
 1 Appended to the " Lay Sermons " (1904), 67-70; also in Johns Hopkins 
 University Studies (1904), xxii., 481-484.
 
 xvi BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 
 
 decades -which have since elapsed the meaning of luxury 
 among human wants considered as social forces has become 
 more and more important as a factor in the problem of 
 social evolution, Warner's luminous discussion remains one 
 of the most helpful which the sociological student can take 
 in hand. Nor should the hundred unsigned editorials con- 
 tributed to the Kew York Record and Guide be overlooked.^ 
 Many of these were produced, partly in solution of the 
 bread-and-butter question, during that long and tragic 
 grapple with the dread disease. They teem with the wise 
 and brave thoughts of a sane and well-filled mind. Often 
 written when the author was far away from books, yet 
 always the subject is handled with a firm grasp. More- 
 over, there was no dearth of topics ; for upon his eager and 
 open mind ever crowded more themes than his bi-weekly 
 manuscript could compass. 
 
 The four " Lay Sermons " (Johns Hopkins University, 
 1904), with a bibliography and an introductory biographical 
 sketch, were published as a memorial by his friends. These 
 sermons were delivered at Stanford University in the autumn 
 of 1897, and the author must have felt they were a fare- 
 well message to his students. They are indeed a precious 
 legacy from a teacher whose daily life was a sermon inspir- 
 ing to noble effort. His character expresses the ethical 
 value of the clean-hearted, single-minded, brave, and cul- 
 tured teacher. "Others have spoken of the justness of his 
 judgments," exclaims Professor Charles Newton Little; " to 
 me he was the sane man always." To the present writer, 
 who had the honor of being counted among his teachers, his 
 colleagues, and his intimate friends, there is no more inspir- 
 ing lesson than that afforded by the brief career of Amos 
 Griswold Warner. Behold the country lad as he swiftly 
 rises to the highest academic honors ! See him as with 
 
 1 Only about two-thirds of the whole number of these articles are listed 
 in the printed bibliography.
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. xvil 
 
 master hand he skilfully grapples with the hard social prob- 
 lems of two great cities ! lu his " American Charities " he 
 laid the lasting foundation of a science, while in his course 
 on Industrial Corj)orations he organized an important branch 
 of another. But there is something more precious than all 
 these things : the influence for social righteousness ever 
 reflected from his pure heart and lofty mind. One may 
 compare it in its results to a diamond cast into the water. 
 The circling waves of moral and intellectual influence recede 
 and spread away until they break on the uttermost shores 
 
 of time. 
 
 GEORGE ELLIOTT HOWARD. 
 
 University of Nebraska, 
 July 1, 1908.
 
 REVISER'S NOTE. 
 
 Warner's "Charities" was the first attempt to cover sys- 
 tematically the field of American charities and to formulate, 
 at the same time, the principles of relief which had been 
 evolved from a century of benevolence. Since it was writ- 
 ten, — and, in part, because it was written, — the horizon 
 of charities has immensely widened ; many valuable books 
 dealing with special lines of charity have been published, 
 and a few, from different points of view, have treated the 
 same subjects. 
 
 In bringing the book down to date, the reviser has been 
 careful not to alter the distinctive color which Professor 
 Warner gave to his book and which constitutes its chief 
 value and charm. Nor has there been occasion, except in 
 a few instances, to restate the principles laid down by him. 
 Warner saw what was permanent and vital, but the devel- 
 opments of the past fifteen years have made it necessary 
 to insert a wholly new chapter on the Facts and Conditions 
 of Poverty, in order to round out his discussion of the 
 causes of poverty in a direction for which no material of 
 record existed when he wrote. 
 
 This second edition is re-dedicated to Professor Warner, 
 in acknowledgment of the debt which the reviser owes to 
 him as a student, and in the hope that with it his influence 
 upon American charity will be perpetuated. 
 
 ^ix
 
 o^iAiE NORMAL SCHOOL, 
 
 UOS HnOBUBS, Cflll, 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Part I. 
 HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Philanthropy axd the Sciences ..... 3 
 
 II. Causes of Poverty ....... 33 
 
 III. Symptomatic Causes of Degeneration ... 66 
 
 IV. Some Characteristic Social Causes of Degenera- 
 
 tion .......... 115 
 
 V. Facts and Conditions of Poverty .... 149 
 
 Part II. 
 
 THE DEPENDENT CLASSES. 
 
 VI. The Almshouse and its Inmates . . . » . 195 
 
 VII. Public Relief of the Poor in their Homes . . 226 
 
 VIII. The Unemployed and the Homeless Poor . ^ , 244 
 
 IX. Dependent Children ....... 263 
 
 X. The Destitute Sick 297 
 
 XI. The Insane . . . . . . . . .317 
 
 XII. The Feeble-minded, Epileptic, and Inebriate . . 336 
 
 XIII. Further Differentiation and Summary . . . 354 
 
 Part III. 
 
 ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCIERING. 
 
 XIV. Public Charities ........ 363 
 
 XV. Private Charities ... .... 377 
 
 xxi
 
 Xxil CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XVI. Endom'ments 389 
 
 XVII. Public Subsidies to Private Charities . . . 399 
 
 Part IV. 
 
 THE SUPERVISION, ORGANIZATION, AND 
 BETTERMENT OF CHARITIES. 
 
 XVIII. Agekcies for Supervision and Control . . . 423 
 
 XIX. The Charity Organization Movement . . . 437 
 
 XX. The Trend of Modern Charitt .... 457 
 
 Bibliography .......... 467 
 
 Index 495
 
 PART I. 
 HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL.
 
 PART I. 
 
 HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES. 
 
 The science of political economy, as we know it, is hardly 
 more than a century old ; while the art of aiding the poor 
 has been practised from time immemorial. When the 
 patriarch Job was justifying himself, he spoke of his work 
 for the unfortunate in language which is still considered 
 suitable for describing an ideal philanthropist, and which in 
 part is now used as a motto by several charity organiza- 
 tion societies.^ Before Christianity was a power, and far 
 beyond the influence of the Hebrew faith, the instinct of 
 sympathy for those in distress prompted to kindly acts 
 which philosophers commended and religious leaders en- 
 joined. An imposing array of texts exhorting to charity, 
 and prescribing the methods of it, may be gleaned from the 
 pagan writers of antiquity. The beggar is known to almost 
 all literatures with which we are acquainted ; and where 
 beggars are, there must also be those that give. In China, 
 long before the Christian era, there were refuges for the 
 aged and sick poor, free schools for poor children, free 
 eating-houses for wearied laborers, associations for the dis- 
 
 1 " When the ear heard me, then it blessed me ; and when the eye saw 
 me, it gave witness to me: because I delivered the poor that cried, and 
 the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him 
 that was ready to perish Ctame upon me: and I caused the widow's heart 
 to sing for joy. ... I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. 
 I was a father to the poor : and the cause which I knew not I searched out." 
 
 3
 
 4 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 tribution of second-hand clothing, and societies for paying 
 the expenses of marriage and burial among the poor.^ 
 
 Intermittently from the first, the altruistic instinct 
 seems to have been reeuforced, or its acts counterfeited, 
 by egoistic instincts, originating in educational, or political, 
 or religious considerations. The first of these subsidiary 
 motives was doubtless the weakest of the three. The desire 
 to promote self-culture by development of the benevolent 
 impulses is largely a modern form of selfishness, and yet 
 we find traces of it among the ancients. 
 
 Formerly, as now, political considerations frequently led 
 to acts of charity when the motive was absent. Free or 
 greatly cheapened corn for the Roman people, though nomi- 
 nally only rendering to them what was their own, was, 
 in fact, a mischievous gratuity; and while sympathy for 
 the people undoubtedly actuated many who favored the 
 largesses, yet the efficient cause of their continual increase 
 was political self-seeking.^ So the legislation for the better 
 care of exposed infants, and for the support of young Avomen 
 with children (Puellae Faustinianae), of the later Roman 
 Empire resulted partly from sympathy for tlie unfortunates, 
 and largely from a wish to fill up the depleted ranks of the 
 Roman and Italian population. 
 
 The commonest and most powerful incentive to benevo- 
 lence has been everywhere and at all times that supplied 
 by religion. Any impulse or habit that is for the good of 
 the race is likely in the course of time to be fixed and 
 intensified by religious sanctions. Almost all customs, in- 
 cluding the organization of the family and of the govern- 
 ment, and even habits of dress, diet, and cleanliness, have 
 
 ^ See Crooker, " Problems in American Society," chapter on " Scientific 
 Charity," for this and other references to antiquity. 
 
 2 The indiscriminate granting of pensions to the Union soldiers of the 
 Civil War results from tlie same mixed motives, among which political 
 considerations are the final and efficient cause of mischievously reckless 
 disbursements.
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES. 5 
 
 been thus confirmed. For present purposes we need not 
 bother ourselves with teleological considerations, nor inquire 
 whether the useful impulses and habits originated in a 
 divine command supernaturally revealed, or whether they 
 had their origin in spontaneous variation or rational adap- 
 tation, and were then seized upon, and perpetuated by the 
 religious instincts. To whatever source we may trace the 
 sentiment of pity and the desire to relieve the destitute, it 
 certainly had not been in existence long before its cultiva- 
 tion was enjoined by religious authority. 
 
 Religion, however, like the subsidiary motives based on 
 educational or political considerations, has too frequently 
 substituted self-seeking for self-sacrifice as the motive power 
 in aiding the poor. Mr. Crooker well says that the charity 
 of antiquity was very largely " a means of obtaining merit." 
 " The riches of the infinite God," says the Vendidad, "will 
 be bestowed upon him who relieves the poor ; " or, according 
 to a Hindu epic, " He who giveth without stint food to a 
 fatigued wayfarer, never seen before, obtaineth merit that 
 is great." It was when Job was justifying himself that he 
 enumerated his works of mercy. 
 
 On the other hand, while rewards were offered for benevo- 
 lent work, punishments were promised for hard-heartedness. 
 The grim threat of the Talmud, " The house that does not 
 open to the poor shall open to the physician," is typical of 
 many passages that might be quoted from the earlier reli- 
 gious writings. Under the influence of such threats or of 
 more direct ones, believers felt constrained to aid the poor 
 for purely selfish reasons, to do some overt act that seemed 
 to have been prescribed, in order that it might be accounted 
 to them for righteousness. Subjectively considered, the act 
 itself was not one of charity, but of penance ; its motive was 
 not a desire to aid the distressed, but to propitiate a more 
 or less unreasonable deity or fate. 
 
 The influence of religion upon the benevolent instincts of
 
 6 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 man can be studied in nearly all its phases in the history 
 of charities administered by the Christian church ; and in 
 that history can be traced the power of an accepted theol- 
 ogy both to exalt and to degrade the charitable impulse. 
 MVhile the antiquarian may be able to point out many traces 
 of active beuevolence before the Christian era, while there 
 is much genuine philanthropy outside of Christianity, and 
 while it may even be said that the church of the present 
 day that administers its charities most wisely is not Chris- 
 tian at all, but Jewish, — it yet remains true that charity, 
 as we know it, gets its chief religious sanction and incentive 
 from Him who gave as the summary of all the law and 
 prophets the coordinate commands to love God and to love 
 our neighbor, and who, in explaining these commands, pro- 
 nounced the parable of the Good Samaritan/ At first, 
 Christianity brought to the world a purified and enno- 
 bled charity, a love of fellow-men very different from 
 the semi-selfish motives that prompted to prayer, penance, 
 and almsgiving as means to a common end — that of se- 
 curing divine favor. The diaconate of the early church 
 seems to have been a satisfactory way of organizing what 
 is now called " friendly visiting." 
 
 But the voluntary and congregational charity of the early 
 churches before Constantine was soon replaced by the med- 
 iaeval ecclesiastical methods of parishes, bishops, monas- 
 teries, orders, and institutions, and with the worldly success 
 of the church came degeneration.^ As the church became 
 an institution administering progressively large revenues, 
 its service of the poor degenerated, partly from worldliness, 
 and partly from "other-worldliness." Overt worldliness, 
 leading to the misapplication of revenues designed for the 
 relief of the poor, sometimes attained great proportions and 
 was a tendency that honest ecclesiastics found it necessary 
 to fight continually. But such palpable evils wrought little 
 harm, as compared with the dry rot of spiritual selfishness, 
 1 Henderson, " World Currents in Cliarity."
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES. i 
 
 which caused charity to degenerate into almsgiving for the 
 benefit of the one who gave. The doctrine of Augustine 
 that " alms have power to extinguish and expiate sin," 
 though taught only with qualifications, became the motive 
 power in the charities of the Middle Ages. Gifts to the 
 church for charitable purposes became merely a method of 
 securing a satisfactory balance on the books of the recording 
 angel, a way of getting one's self or others out of purgatory. 
 
 As an agent for securing gifts both of property and of 
 personal service the church was almost incredibly success- 
 ful. If the devotion of material wealth to the relief of the 
 poor could alone have cured destitution, it would have been 
 cured. But we are all familiar with the disastrous results 
 that followed so much indiscriminate giving. A rich church 
 among a multitude of poor, which Emminghaus declares to 
 have been always the ecclesiastical ideal, did not prove a 
 satisfactory arrangement. When Hubert- Valleroux, in dis- 
 cussing the rural charities of France, shows that all the 
 great charitable institutions of that country originally owed 
 their existence to the influence of Christianity through the 
 church, he is historically correct. But when he makes this 
 statement of fact the basis of a plea for the non-intervention 
 of the state in the present administration of charitable in- 
 stitutions, he is wrong ; for the history of charitable insti- 
 tutions shows that, while they originated through the 
 influence of the church, it was also through ecclesiastical 
 influence that they degenerated and became mischievous. 
 
 The state interfered for many reasons, some of them 
 certainly unworthy ; but one sufficient cause was everywhere 
 present — ecclesiastical mismanagement, and the necessity 
 the community was under to protect itself from the spread- 
 ing disease of pauperism. ^' In no case," says Lecky, " was 
 the abolition of monasteries effected in a more indefensible 
 manner than in England, but the transfer of property, that 
 was once employed in a great measure in charity, to the
 
 8 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 courtiers of King Henry was ultimately a benefit to the 
 English poor; for no misapplication of this property by 
 private persons could produce as much evil as an unre- 
 strained monasticism." ^ 
 
 In almost every European country, the state first tried 
 to stop beggary and vagabondage by repressive measures, 
 and only when these failed was obliged to assail the evil at 
 one of its sources by taking charge of relief work. This 
 work was taken in hand by the state in Scandinavia at a 
 very early period, in England at the time of the Reforma- 
 tion, in France at the time of the Eevolution, and in Italy 
 within the last few years. In Germany, Luther suggested 
 that the church and state should work together to root out 
 beggary, and to lessen as much as possible the misery caused 
 by destitution and disease. The religious wars that followed 
 the Reformation in that country interfered with the im- 
 mediate transfer of relief work to the state. " The Protes- 
 tant authorities," says Emminghaus, " were not more prudent 
 than their predecessors where valuable property of the 
 church for the benefit of the poor remained ; and wher- 
 ever the care of the poor was still in ecclesiastical hands, 
 the only alteration in the way in which it was conducted 
 arose from the fact that the church had less abundant 
 means at its disposal. But," he adds, " this fact alone 
 may be considered a great gain, for abundance of means 
 is the greatest danger of all in the relief of the poor."^ 
 
 From what has been said regarding the failure of the 
 church as an almoner, it must not be inferred that its 
 influence was wholly perverse and mischievous. On the 
 contrary, even Lecky, whose opinion as to the good effects 
 of the secularization of the monastic properties in England 
 has been already noticed, says that the value of Catholic 
 services in alleviating pain and sickness and the more excep- 
 
 1 " History of European Morals," vol. ii., pp. 94-95. 
 8 " Poor Relief in Different Parts of Europe," p. 13.
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES. » 
 
 tional forms of suffering can never be overrated ; and even 
 in the field of cliarity he says : " We must not forget the 
 benefits resulting, if not to the sufferer, at least to the donor. 
 Charitable habits, even when formed in the first instance 
 from selfish motives, even when so misdirected as to be 
 positively injurious to the recipient, rarely fail to exercise 
 a softening and purifying influence on character. All 
 through the darkest period of the Middle Ages, amid feroc- 
 ity and fanaticism and brutality, we may trace the subduing 
 influence of Catholic charity, blending strangely with every 
 excess of violence and every outburst of persecution." ^ In 
 fact, the church educated the community up to a point 
 where it insisted that a large amount of relief work must 
 be done, and only in attempting to administer large funds 
 did the ecclesiastical machinery work badly and break down. 
 It was inevitable that the state should undertake relief 
 work, but that relief work, and the great access of sympathy 
 for our fellow-men which compelled it, would never have 
 existed except for the influence of the church. But the 
 change from ecclesiastical administration of relief to ad- 
 ministration by the state hardly seemed for a time to be an 
 improvement at all. In various parts of Europe public 
 charities w^ere at times as inadequate to meet the necessities 
 of the poor or to improve their industrial condition as those 
 under the church had been. In England at the beginning 
 of the nineteenth century as much was heard of the failure 
 of the poor law as of the monastic system of poor-relief. 
 This administrative weakness had already drawn attention to 
 the economic aspects of poor-relief. Defoe, for example, in 
 his paper on "Giving Alms Xo Charity," said that the reason 
 why so many pretended to want to work was that they could 
 live so well with the pretence of wanting work. Ricci, in a 
 book on the reform of the institutions of charity in Modena,'^ 
 traced the gigantic development of mendicancy in Italy to the 
 1 Lecky, vol. ii., p. 95. ^ Published in 1787.
 
 10 AMEIilCAN CHARITIES. 
 
 excessive charity of the people. He seemed to regard as an 
 evil "all charity which sprang from religious motives, and 
 was greater than would spring from the unaided instincts 
 of man." ^ 
 
 This appeal to a natural man back of the actual man 
 influenced by religion and law, marks Ricci as one moved 
 by the spirit of the times which immediately preceded the 
 French Revolution. This time-spirit influenced the relief 
 of the poor in two ways : one through politics, and one 
 through economics or political economy. Liberty and equal- 
 ity were the two words which represented the regnant ideas 
 of the times. The religious dogma of the brotherhood of 
 man was paralleled by the political dogma of the equality 
 of man, and the result was a tendency to relieve distress 
 with greater promptness and completeness. The revolution- 
 ary governments of France guaranteed to all not only oppor- 
 tunities to work, but security against starvation, and the 
 facile manner in which the state in that country still 
 assumes the care of abandoned infants perhaps shows the 
 influence of such philosophers as Rousseau, who believed 
 that children should be raised by the state, and who gladly 
 turned over his own children to be brought up by that 
 agency. Indirectly it is probable that the belief in the 
 political dogma of the equality of men also influenced the 
 administration of the English poor-law, until it culminated 
 in the great abuses which compelled the reforms of 1834. 
 But liberty, not equality, was the first word in the sociolog- 
 ical creed of the revolutionary period from 1789 to 1848. 
 And while this word was constantly used by the politicians, 
 the group of men who stood most consistently for it in in- 
 dustrial affairs were the students of the new-born science of 
 political economy. 
 
 The earlier economists had little to say regarding the re- 
 lief of the poor, though the subject was mentioned by Sir 
 1 Cited by Lecky, vol. ii., p. 98.
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES. 11 
 
 James Steuart and Adam Smith, and others took up the 
 subject of the English poor-laws. It received very full con- 
 sideration, however, in Malthus's work on the " Principle of 
 Population," where he gave two chapters to the English 
 poor-law and two other excellent ones to the considera- 
 tion of certain proposals for improving the condition of the 
 poor. Many of the extracts from chapter nine of the sec- 
 ond edition of his work might serve as mottoes for modern 
 charity organization societies ; though it would not be ex- 
 pedient to use them, since people have insisted on connecting 
 with the name of this English clergyman so much that is 
 brutal and materialistic and hopeless. As a matter of fact, 
 he does not deprecate the exercise of charity, and would 
 even give to it a much broader field than that recently ac- 
 corded to it by Herbert Spencer ; but he calls attention to 
 the fact that there is no direction in which human ingenuity 
 has been more exerted than in the endeavor to ameliorate 
 the condition of the poor, and that there is certainly none in 
 which it has so completely failed. "There is no subject," 
 he adds, " to which general principles have been so seldom 
 applied ; and yet, in the whole compass of human knowl- 
 edge, I doubt if there be one in which it is so dangerous to 
 lose sight of them, because the partial and immediate effects 
 of a particular mode of giving assistance are so often 
 directly opposite to the general and permanent effects." ^ 
 
 Among the economists of the first quarter of the nineteenth 
 century, Whately and Chalmers dealt quite extensively with 
 the poor-law and the problems of poor-relief. Chalmers re- 
 enforced his teachings in this matter by doing away with 
 public relief of the poor in his parish, and providing for 
 their care entirely through voluntary contributions. He 
 believed that all public relief of the poor was bad ; and, 
 besides what is contained in his political economy, he wrote 
 upon the subject at length in the three volumes which appear 
 
 1 " Principle of Population," 2d ed., p. 583.
 
 12 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 under tlie title of ''The Christian and Civic Economy of 
 Large Towns." 
 
 In the second quarter of the century the economists and 
 philanthropists were destined to come into direct collision. 
 They joined issues on two questions, and the victors in one 
 case were vanquished in the other. Curiously enough, each 
 party was defeated on the ground that seemed especially to 
 belong to itself. The economists won in the fight for the 
 reform of the poor-laws, and the philanthropists won in the 
 fight for the protection of women and children in the mines 
 and factories of England. The English economists in their 
 contention for the limitation of the poor-law relief, and for 
 a repeal of the corn-laws, rendered great services to English 
 industry by simply abolishing governmental interference. 
 It is not strange, therefore, that they should have been in- 
 clined to go to the extreme in thinking that government 
 could never interfere without doing more harm than good. 
 
 The English poor-law, before its reform in 1834, is used 
 by Francis A. Walker to point the moral that while " the 
 legislator may think it hard that his power for good is so 
 closely restricted, he has no reason to complain of any 
 limits upon his power for evil." Describing the opera- 
 tions of the act. Walker says : — 
 
 " All its details were unnecessarily bad. The condition of the per- 
 son who threw himself flat upon public charity was better than that 
 of the laborer who struggled on to preserve his manhood in self- 
 support. The disposition to labor was cut up by the roots. All 
 restraints upon increase of population disappeared under a premium 
 upon births. Self-respect and social decency vanished before a money 
 premium on bastardy." 
 
 Professor Senior was an active member of the commission 
 of inquiry regarding the operations of the poor-law, and for 
 some time the reports of the poor-law commission were 
 written in line with the views of the economists. It was 
 while reviewing these reports that Carlyle characterized
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES. 13 
 
 political economy as " the dismal science." He thus sum- 
 marizes the teachings of the economists as evidenced in the 
 reports : — 
 
 " Ours is a world requiring only to be well let alone. Scramble along, 
 thou insane scramble of a world ; thou art all right and shall scramble 
 even so. And whoever in the press is trodden down has only to lie 
 there and be trampled broad ; such at bottom seems to be the chief 
 social principle, if principle it have, which the poor-law amendment 
 act has the merit of courageously asserting, in opposition to many 
 things." 
 
 A similar view of the disastrous effects of the poor-law 
 administration is expressed by Cunningham, who says : — 
 
 "It is impossible to overestimate the irreparable mischief which 
 was done to Englishmen for many generations through the demoraliz- 
 ing influences exercised by some of the administrative methods then 
 in use. The granting of allowances per child has been freely stigma- 
 tized as a mischievous stimulus to population ; as a matter of fact, it 
 was much worse ; there is abundant evidence to show that it acted as 
 a direct incentive to immorality. But the evil of the whole system was 
 most patent from the various ways in which it conspired to render 
 the inefficient pauper comfortable at the expense of the good work- 
 man who tried to earn a living. The allowance must have had an ex- 
 traordinary effect in diminishing the rate of wages and forcing men to 
 depend upon supplementary payments out of rates ; and an even worse 
 mischief in some ways was the labor rate ; by this system a rate- 
 payer was obliged to employ a certain number of pauper laborers in 
 accordance with his assessment and to pay them regular wages with- 
 out reference to their work. An employer might thus be forced to 
 dismiss good hands in order to give employment to inefficient 
 paupers." ^ 
 
 It may be questioned, however, whether the earlier inter- 
 pretation of the results of the poor-laws has not overlooked 
 other factors of equal if not superior importance in the 
 wretched condition of the English working-classes of this 
 period. Marshall declares : — 
 
 "Year by year the condition of the working-classes in England be- 
 1 " Growth of English Industry and Commerce," vol. ii., pp. 662-663,
 
 14 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 came more gloomy : an astonishing series of bad harvests, a most 
 exhausting war, a change in the methods of industry that dislocated 
 old ties, combined with an injudicious poor-law to bring the working- 
 classes into the greatest misery they have ever suffered, at all events 
 since the beginning of trustworthy records of English social history." ^ 
 
 In a brief historical review of the political and industrial 
 changes which took place just before the reform of the 
 English . poor-laws, Devine protests against the dominant 
 idea that the lax administration of relief was solely or even 
 chiefly responsible for the deplorable prevalence of pauper- 
 ism in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 
 He says : — 
 
 " England was saved from pauperization, revolution, and other 
 unforeseen disasters, not by deciding to distribute less relief or by 
 deciding that the able-bodied poor, if assisted at all, should be 
 assisted only in the workhouse, wise as these decisions were, but by 
 the rise of religious and political liberty, by introducing in advance of 
 other countries modern forms of agi'iculture and industry, by develop- 
 ing her commerce and trade, by the adoption of a more nearly demo- 
 cratic organization of society, and by listening to the voice of humane 
 and public-spirited counsels. The lessening of the poor rates was 
 made practicable by and was not the principal cause of the progress 
 of the period." 2 
 
 Seligman regards the abuses of the early nineteenth 
 century as chiefly due to the change from the domestic to 
 the factory system. " The old poor-law," he says, " did 
 not create English poverty, and the new poor-law did not 
 abolish it."^ 
 
 But whatever view be taken of the relative significance 
 of the poor-law and of poor-law reform as an explanation of 
 the misery of English laborers and their subsequent prog- 
 ress, the economists of the time were right in standing out 
 for the restriction and modification of public poor-relief. 
 
 1 "Principles of Economics," p. 233. 
 
 2 " Principles of Relief," pp. 276-277. 
 * " Principles of Ecouomics," p. 594.
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES. 15 
 
 The laxness of administration may have come in part from 
 the humanitarian bearings of the doctrine of political 
 equality and in part from greater actual need, resulting 
 from the war taxes, the primitive methods of agriculture, 
 industry, and commerce, and other unreformed features of 
 English life of that period ; but whatever its cause, it had 
 become by 1832 wholly mischievous. Even if regarded as 
 merely one element in a transitional period, it still is no 
 exception to the established principle that the offer of re- 
 lief upon easy terms is demoralizing. 
 
 In the other struggle of the same period, that for factory 
 legislation, the economists and philanthropists were dis- 
 tinctly opposed ; but this time it was the economists that 
 were deservedly beaten. The issue involved the welfare of 
 three hundred thousand operatives, male and female, in the 
 factories of England, and of forty thousand children under 
 thirteen years of age. The question was complicated with 
 many political considerations and was championed by the 
 conservatives, not so much perhaps because the country 
 gentlemen sympathized with the mill-hands, as because it 
 seemed a method by which they could get even with the 
 representatives of the manufacturing towns for the repeal 
 of the corn-laws. Lord Ashley, afterward the Earl of 
 Shaftesbury, leader in the fight for the protection of the 
 operatives, is now acknowledged to have been actuated by 
 the purest motives ; but at the time he was bitterly attacked 
 as a " humanity-monger " by the practical men who opposed 
 him. Cobden, in a private letter, sneered at this " canting " 
 and joined with Professor Senior and Miss Martineau in 
 supplying the scientific weapons of offence and defence for 
 such men as John Bright and Gladstone and Peel and Lord 
 Brougham among the politicians. 
 
 A majority of economists, both in and out of Parliament, 
 were against the factory acts. Indeed, nearly all the argu- 
 ing that was done on economic grounds was against the acts.
 
 16 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Ill a paper which, curiously eno\Tgh, is the Cobden prize 
 essay for 1891, Jeans observes : — 
 
 " Lord Shaftesbury and his opponents played a veritable game of 
 cross questions. They attacked him, for instance, with the threatened 
 ruiu of English trade, and the pauperization of the working-class, 
 and he would reply by pointing to the great sanitary or moral or 
 religious benefits which must accrue." ^ 
 
 As the Earl of Shaftesbury himself said : " To practical 
 prophecies of overthrow of trade, of ruin to the operatives 
 themselves, I could only oppose 'humanity' and general 
 principles." ^ Sir John Kussell is said to have been con- 
 verted to support the acts, not by labored arguments, but by 
 being induced to walk back and forth in his parlor for a time 
 over a track similar to that which many of the child opera- 
 tives had to travel for twelve or more hours a day. 
 
 It was sympathy for the operatives, not an appreciation of 
 the good results to be got for English industry by the factory 
 acts, that secured their passage. As the Encyclopaedia Bri- 
 tannica puts it, " they were passed. in the name of the moral 
 and physical health of the community." Yet Shaftesbury's 
 speech of May, 1847, and Macaulay's speech on the ten-hour 
 bill, gave evidence of what a strong case might have been 
 made out for the acts on economic grounds ; but these were 
 almost the only examples of such argumentation.^ 
 
 Although Professor Fawcett, as late as 1878, opposed from 
 his seat in Parliament that part of the consolidated factory 
 acts intended to protect adult women operatives, there is 
 now substantial agreement among economists that Macau- 
 lay's position was well taken. Factory legislation, instead 
 of ruining British industry, reestablished its foundations. 
 
 1 " Factory Act Legislation," p. 20. 
 
 2 Hodder, "Life of Shaftesbury," vol. ii., p. 209. 
 
 8 The key-note of Macaulay's telling speech is struck in this sentence 
 from it: "Never will I believe that what makes a population stronger 
 and healthier and wiser and better can ultimately make it poorer." — 
 Speeches, vol. xi., p. 28.
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES. 17 
 
 Some of the parliamentary opponents of the early bills voted 
 for the later ones, and, in publicly recanting, expressly said 
 that they had been misled by the economists and " the gen- 
 tlemen from Lancashire." The debt owing to the economists 
 for the reform of the poor-laws, the philanthropists had paid. 
 
 The experience of England in these two matters very well 
 illustrates the interaction of sense and sympathy in the di- 
 rection of human affairs. The discussions in the houses of 
 Parliament, between the so-called "humanity-mongers" and 
 the students of the so-called " dismal science," have their 
 counterpart in the opposing considerations which suggest 
 themselves to every thinking man who tries to aid the poor. 
 If our instincts were all healthy, or our intellects all perfect, 
 we could rely upon either side of our nature without fear of 
 blundering. But, as in the case of English legislation, first 
 one party blundered and then the other, so each man, in 
 threading his way along the devious paths of conduct, must 
 sometimes put rational restraints upon his emotions, and at 
 other times must be content to let " his instincts save him 
 from his intelligence." This principle, which holds in na- 
 tional and personal affairs, holds also in the formulation of 
 a true social philosophy. Such a philosophy must recognize 
 that the instincts of men very commonly have their origin 
 or their justification in race experience, and that they are 
 sometimes a more trustworthy guide than reasoning which 
 is conceivably inaccurate, or which may be based on in- 
 formation which is possibly incomplete. 
 
 If economics has had some influence on philanthropy, 
 the philanthropic instincts of men are finally coming to have 
 some influence in compelling the broadening of political 
 economy. They dominate too much legislation and deter- 
 mine the expenditure of too much wealth to be left out of 
 account. As we have seen, they are not only powerful, but 
 at times indispensably helpful ; and, even if it were possible 
 to ignore them, it would be unwise to do so.
 
 18 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 But for two or three decades that branch of social philosophy- 
 known as political economy seemed bound, so far as England 
 was concerned, to discredit itself by not recognizing this 
 truth. Its teachings were too final and dogmatic to be influ- 
 ential or even true. Cromwell's exhortation to the theolo- 
 gians of his time might properly have been addressed to the 
 English economists from 1850 to 1880 : " In the bowels of 
 the Lord, I beseech you, brethren, consider it possible that 
 you may be mistaken ! " Indeed, equivalent exhortations 
 were addressed to them, but without effect. In the United 
 States a few professors of political economy echoed or at- 
 tacked Manchestrian economics, but for the most part they 
 had no influence. This country was too young to bother 
 with industrial science. Its resources seemed to be so inex- 
 haustible that no thought was given to conserving them. 
 Least of all was it imagined that we need give serious atten- 
 tion to the matter of poor-relief. It was assumed that we 
 were quarantined against poverty and distress by our glorious 
 Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Scarcely a 
 generation ago a writer in the New York Nation, when re- 
 viewing a work on French charities, half apologized for 
 treating such a subject, but suggested in extenuation that, 
 if we should ever have to organize a system of charities, 
 French experience might be a useful guide. Nevertheless, 
 at that moment were already arising problems of destitution, 
 unemployment, and family disintegration, which have kept 
 jmce with the movement of population toward cities and man- 
 ufacturing centres, and which were in part the result of an un- 
 distributed foreign immigration. With the beginning of the 
 twentieth century, America has realized the possibility in 
 these congested localities of conditions as desperate as those 
 with which some parts of Europe have long been familiar. 
 
 Thus, in the century following Malthus and Chalmers, 
 philanthropy and economics have gradually been approach- 
 ing each other, and are now welded into a friendly and in-
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES. 19 
 
 dissoluble partnership. An increasing body of students, 
 trained in a more generous political economy than that of 
 Senior and Miss Martineau, are seeking technical discipline 
 in schools of philanthropy in order to devote themselves to 
 professional, administrative, and constructive work in char- 
 ities. Dismal scientists and humanity -mongers have joined 
 forces for the betterment of society ; the economists, on the 
 one hand, recognizing altruism as a fundamental motive of 
 progress ; the philanthropists, on the other, giving more and 
 more weight to the economic bearings of all social reform. 
 Simultaneously with increasing demands for systematic 
 charity, a broader and more human political economy has 
 been taking the place of that dismal laissez-faire which so 
 vehemently opposed the reforms of English philanthropy. 
 On this side of the Atlantic the renaissance in economics 
 came even earlier than in England, and in many schools it 
 has dealt more directly and thoroughly with the problems 
 of philanthropy than is usual abroad. The Manchestrian 
 economists made slight and for the most part merely nega- 
 tive contributions to the subject, but from the time of Mar- 
 shall in England and Walker in the United States, every 
 economist has given it a respectful and more or less extended 
 treatment. 
 
 In all the larger American colleges courses in causes of 
 poverty, charities, and penology are now given either by the 
 professors of the economics department or by a separate staff 
 in a distinct department under the title of sociology; and in 
 a few, other courses of a more constructive character de- 
 velop still further the economic aspects of altruism. As a 
 recent economist expresses it : — 
 
 " The modern theory of economic life fits in not only with the facts 
 of the business world, but with the demands of social reform. The 
 economics of to-day has finally reached the stage where it seeks to re- 
 tain the cold passivity of science and yet to reflect the warm glow of 
 human interests and living ideals,"
 
 20 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 "While philanthropy and economics, starting from opposite 
 poles, have been approaching each other and have at last found 
 a common meeting ground, both have at the same time been 
 strongly influenced by the biological sciences. Setting aside 
 the effect of the evolutionary hypothesis upon economic 
 thought, its immediate application to philanthropy raised the 
 question as to whether the ultimate influence of charity in the 
 natural history of mankind was good or evil.^ Spencer's 
 dictum that the result of shielding people from the conse- 
 quence of their folly is to fill the world with fools, was indeed 
 no new alarm. Plato, more than two thousand years ago, 
 warned his countrymen of the degradation in store for any 
 nation which perpetuated the unfit by allowing its citizens to 
 breed from enervated stock ; and he sketched for them an im- 
 aginary republic in which no considerations of inheritance, of 
 family ties, or of pity were permitted to stand in the way of 
 the elimination of the weak and the perfection of the race.^ 
 But the evolutionists used the new scientific phraseology, de- 
 claring that philanthropy and science promoted the survival 
 of the unfit, who reproduced themselves in an enfeebled 
 progeny, and that this interference with the struggle for 
 existence was pernicious. They maintained that civilization 
 itself developed sympathy, which, in turn, devised methods 
 for protecting the weak, and thus the law of progress was 
 reversed. Moreover, it was said that philanthropy not only 
 perpetuated the weak, but in its essence sacrificed the strong 
 to the weak, as shown by the increase of institutions for the 
 insane, the defective, and incapable, and the devotion of 
 humane persons and vast sums of money to their care.^ 
 
 At this period, from the biological point of view, there 
 were only two ways of improving the human race : the one 
 by selection, the other by heredity. If the selective pro- 
 
 1 Bagehot, " Works," vol. iv., p. 556. 
 
 2 Cummings, Quar. Jotir. of Economics, vol. xii., 1898. 
 8 Ely, " Evolution of Industrial Society," p. 165.
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES. 21 
 
 cesses were suspended from philanthropic raotives, there 
 was still opportunity to improve the race, independently of 
 selection, by seeing to it that individuals acquired the 
 characteristics that it was desirable for them to transmit. 
 Just when it seemed to be settled that the only way to 
 improve mankind was by training in a carefully adjusted 
 environment. Professor Weismann appeared with his denial 
 that there was any proof of the transmission of acquired 
 characters. He showed that many of the resemblances of 
 children to parents which had been attributed to heredity 
 were merely the result of similar environment, contending 
 that change of environment and special training affected 
 only the individual, whose life-history could not be passed 
 on to the offspring. 
 
 This view not only made valueless much that had been 
 written on the bearing of heredity upon social life and en- 
 vironment, but to some it seemed to make the improvement 
 of the race painfully slow, if not almost hopeless, since the 
 only permanent gain must be made through the selective 
 processes. Others, with a better understanding of the full 
 import of the theory in its application to human life, pointed 
 out that whatever environment might not do for the race it 
 was concededly of the highest importance for the individual. 
 Professor Warner, in the first edition of this book, written 
 shortly after Weismann's conclusions had been published, 
 said : — ■ 
 
 " It should also be remembered that among the higher animals, 
 and especially among human beings, the individual is more plastic than 
 in the lower orders ; his life-history, and especially the history of his 
 very early life, has more influence upon his character. Therefore, while 
 we must give attention to selection, we cannot conclude that certain 
 families are degenerate and essentially unfit to survive until we have 
 given their offspring the very best opportunities for right development. 
 I would say, then, that to assume Weismann to be right — acquired 
 characteristics to be not transmitted — is possibly the safest working 
 hypothesis, because, on the one hand, it does not limit our efforts
 
 22 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 to improve environment, while, on the other hand, it gives us a 
 sharp realization of the importance of selection, a factor which we are 
 otherwise prone to forget or to undervalue. To whatever extent hered- 
 ity may be ascertained to he a factor in determining character and 
 the consequent career, substantially to that extent the problem of pre- 
 venting the suffering that comes from destitution is a question of hu- 
 man selection." 
 
 A part of the confusion arising from the application of 
 later biological theory came from the inaccurate use of the 
 term " natural selection," as though nature were something 
 apart from man to which he must submit and might not 
 modify. In this sense, natural selection is not only a harsh 
 but expensive way of improving the species. Among men, 
 however, natural selection, in the sense in which that term 
 would be applied to the killing off of young oak trees, is 
 very much modified by two important factors : instinct and 
 reason. The best example of the first is the parental 
 instinct, which causes the parent to stand between the off- 
 spring and the remorseless operations of nonsentient nature. 
 Instinctive selection is a step toward something better than 
 natural selection, something more economical of time and 
 energy and life ; but it is still a blind and wasteful advance. 
 The excessive development of the sexual instinct, which at 
 one time is necessary to the survival and dominance of the 
 race, may at another become a menace to its welfare. It 
 must then be dominated by reason or by otlier instincts, or 
 the race will disappear. The instinct of the fighter, once 
 necessary to preserve him in the rude struggles of the time, 
 may at another time leave him a savage in a society which 
 hangs the too combative individual as a murderer. Reason, 
 the second factor in natural selection as applied to human 
 beings, is illustrated when a state enacts laws against mur- 
 der, or endeavors to establish any other rule of justice than 
 that of the strongest ; when it drains a malarial swamp, or 
 provides for sanitary inspection in order to lower the death-
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES. 23 
 
 rate ; whenever, in short, any action is taken for the set 
 purpose of affecting the death-rate, or the birth-rate, or of 
 promoting the public health. Mr. Ritchie has reminded us 
 that if we are to let purely "natural " selection do its per- 
 fect work, we must abolish marriage laws and all laws rela- 
 tive to the inheritance of property. 
 
 Rational selection at first, and at its poorest, is only a 
 shade better than instinctive selection. But it is manifest 
 that, at its best and in its possibilities, it is the superior of 
 the other two forms ; and those races will eventually survive 
 which practise it most constantly and most wisely. This 
 indicates what is the simple truth, that human " natural 
 selection," could we but understand the latter term in its 
 broadest sense, includes all three, — nonsentient, instinctive, 
 rational, — being made up of the total of selective forces 
 operating upon the human species. 
 
 Benevolence has usually operated only on the plane of 
 instinctive selection ; but on the whole, even so, it has intro- 
 duced some improvements into human selection, made that 
 selection less wasteful, and reached results with less expen- 
 diture of energy and life. Its services to the species in 
 keeping those who were "fit," from the standpoint of race 
 improvement, from being crushed by temporary and local 
 conditions, overbalance its tendency to keep the essentially 
 " unfit " in existence. 
 
 The most obvious result of charity as a selective force has 
 been to lengthen the lives of the individuals cared for. 
 There are many who believe it to be in and of itself a uni- 
 formly desirable result. They hold that no spark of human 
 life can be extinguished without greater indirect loss than 
 the direct gain which comes in freedom from the necessity 
 of supporting the individual. They would care with all 
 tenderness for the most misshapen, physically and morally, 
 until death could no longer be postponed. As the author 
 has stood by the beds of consumptive or syphilitic children,
 
 24 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 he has w^ondered if it was a kindness to keep life in the pain- 
 racked body. Cure was out of the question so far as medi- 
 cal science now knows, and one wonders why days of pain 
 should be added to days of pain. The same questions 
 recur as one passes through the incurable wards of an alms- 
 house, especially as one studies the cases of the cancer 
 patients. The answer of religion to such questions is easy, 
 and it seems very sure that without religious incentive we 
 should not have entertained our present views regarding the 
 sanctity of human life. 
 
 But now that the feeling is developed, even science can ex- 
 plain in some sort how it is expedient that it should exist. 
 We cannot extinguish or in any wise connive at the extinc- 
 tion of human life without injury to all the instincts and 
 sensibilities that render it possible for us to live together 
 with our fellows in civilized society. The decline of the 
 death penalty as punishment for the most heinous crimes, 
 the secrecy in which its rare enforcement is now enshrouded, 
 and the substitution of the electric current for the axe and 
 the rope testify to the recognition of this principle. Mod- 
 ern society can afford to incur any expense and trouble to 
 preserve the humane instinct in those who represent its 
 laws. Frequently physicians and matrons and superinten- 
 dents of institutions become so callous to suffering, and so 
 worn oiit by overstrain, that they almost connive at the ex- 
 tinction of human life. For instance, in the case of a child 
 suffering from hydrocephalus and beyond hope of cure, only 
 the most constant attention could keep him alive ; the matron 
 finally somewhat relaxed her vigilance in seeing that he was 
 properly cared for, and indigestion carried him off. This 
 failure to do all that is possible to combat disease is common 
 in many institutions, usually without any consciousness of 
 a willingness to facilitate death, but none the less with a 
 latent feeling that possibly those that die are happier tha^ 
 those that live.
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES. 25 
 
 All such neglect of duty is a coming short of the high- 
 est ideal of philanthropy, no less than of religion. While 
 physicians may sometimes be justified in chloroforming a 
 monstrous birth, and while, far off, philosophers think they 
 see the coming of a day when we may have legal suicides, 
 and when we can take human life because we are pitiful, 
 and not because we are selfish,^ yet for the present it must 
 be held that science justifies and philanthropy corroborates 
 Christianity in holding that each spark of human life must 
 be conserved in all tenderness and with all care.- 
 
 Eventually this policy compels us to search for causes of 
 degeneration and suffering. Could we cheaply rid ourselves 
 of incapables and close our hearts to the appeal of distress, 
 we might never have the compulsion put upon us of seeking 
 out the wiser plans, which may eventually give us a more 
 uniformly healthy race. Extermination might be an easy 
 cure for pauperism, but it would be a costly remedy bio- 
 logically ; and if we allow our instincts to compel us to 
 forego the use of it, we may ultimately be driven to preven- 
 tive measures. As we shall see in the subsequent chapters, 
 in proportion as the burden of the dependent has increased 
 and the standard of care risen, the search has spread from 
 symptoms to causes, from causes to conditions of poverty, 
 and culminated in a concerted demand for prevention rather 
 than relief. 
 
 The influence of charity in diminishing the death-rate 
 has probably had much to do with the increase in the pro- 
 portion of insane and feeble-minded persons to the total 
 population. The mere lengthening of the lives of lunatics 
 by better care greatly increases their absolute and relative 
 numbers. Badly administered charities, however, may have 
 
 1 Cf. views of Felix Adler. 
 
 2 On the powerful and pervasive influence of the altruism born of 
 Christianity upon social and industrial development, see Kidd, " Social 
 Evolution."
 
 26 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 exactly the opposite result. An unclean hospital may re- 
 sult in the death of an undue number of the sick brought to 
 it. In one maternity hospital the death-rate rose as high 
 as two women for each five confinements. Previous to and 
 during the sixties, European experience in maternity hospi- 
 tals gave a mortality rate of about one death to twenty- 
 nine confinements ; in some large hospitals it was as high 
 as one in seven. It is only recently that hospital service 
 has become better than home service in this branch of 
 medical practice. Undoubtedly the actual result of many 
 foundling hospitals is to kill more infants than would 
 meet death did such hospitals not exist — the death-rate 
 is fearfully high; sometimes ninety-seven per cent of the 
 children fail to reach the age of three years. Many who 
 support charities designed to save infant life might con- 
 clude, if they studied all the facts, that they were contrib- 
 uting to its destruction. 
 
 The influence of charity upon the birth-rate is much more 
 obscure. Long before natural selection was discussed under 
 that name, Chalmers called attention to the fact that the 
 relief of the poor from public funds resulted in taking money 
 from the thrifty and giving it to the thriftless. Under the 
 unreformed English poor-law the additional allowance per 
 child was so large as to make it pecuniarily profitable to 
 have large families. As the allowance for illegitimate 
 children was somewhat larger than for those born in wed- 
 lock, a premium was put upon illegitimacy. The demon- 
 stration was then complete, that a population might be 
 degraded by the charity-induced propagation of the unfit, 
 and that the influence of charity upon the birth-rate is a 
 factor to be reckoned with. A system of charity which 
 might be admissible, could it be applied to an existing gen- 
 eration alone, is wholly inadmissible if it multiplies the 
 number of dependents in succeeding generations. Both 
 Mr. Dugdale and Mr. McCulloch found that the pauper
 
 PUILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES. 27 
 
 families they investigated got permission to live from the 
 lavish giving of public outdoor relief, supplemented by 
 indiscriminate giving on the part of individuals. 
 
 In the worst-managed almshouses there is sometimes 
 not adequate means of separating the sexes, and the breed- 
 ing of paupers goes on upon the premises. Formal mai*- 
 riages between almshouse paupers have very frequently 
 received the sanction of both church and state. A much 
 commoner abuse, as we shall find when we come to study 
 these institutions, — one, in fact, from which few American 
 almshouses are free, — is the facility with which the dis- 
 solute and diseased can go there until sufficiently recuper- 
 ated to be able to have children and then discharge 
 themselves. The doors of the hospitals and almshouses 
 swing freely both ways, and the result is a succession of 
 children, especially from half-witted women. These per- 
 sons would have been able to have no children or few if 
 left entirely without help, and would have been allowed to 
 have none at all had they been properly taken care of. It 
 is coming to be seen that the feeble-minded (a much larger 
 class than many suppose) must have custodial care through 
 life. 
 
 While the infant death-rate is known to be increased 
 through institutions that receive without question all chil- 
 dren brought to them, it is more of a question, or at least one 
 that is more difficult to answer definitely, whether or not 
 their influence tends to increase the number of illegitimate 
 and abandoned infants. Lax morals and open foundling 
 hospitals usually are found together ; but it is not so easy to 
 demonstrate the causal influence of the institutions in pro- 
 ducing laxness of morals, though that they have such an in- 
 fluence is usually believed. The extreme facility and secrecy 
 with which a child could be disposed of to French foundling 
 hospitals of the older type is alleged to have had this result. 
 The author's own observation leads him to think that found-
 
 28 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 ling hospitals of the kind usual in America, because of the 
 high death-rate already mentioned, tend to exterminate 
 rather than to multiply the progeny of unfit stock. 
 
 A distinct influence upon the quantity and quality of the 
 population is had by those institutions that bring defectives 
 together to be trained, and after training them for self-sup- 
 port, encourage them to marry and to intermarry. This is, 
 of course, most noticeable with the deaf because of the nature 
 of their defect. It does not by any means incapacitate them 
 for self-support, while at the same time it makes the com- 
 panionship of deaf with deaf especially congenial. The 
 congregate system of education of the deaf has brought them 
 together in a way calculated to promote extensive acquaint- 
 ance, and sign language tends to make them a peculiar 
 people. It thus comes about that the institutions for the edu- 
 cation of the deaf become very definite factors in promoting 
 the propagation of deaf-mutism through inheritance. The 
 latest educational tendency, and one favored by Dr. Howe, 
 is to abandon the sign language to a considerable extent, and 
 to encourage as far as possible the education of the deaf in 
 day schools. This tends to assimilate them with the ordi- 
 nary population, and their defect is more likely to prove a bar 
 to marriage than under the conditions of boarding-schools. 
 In general it may be said that the managers of charitable 
 institutions do not sufficiently discourage marriage among 
 the dependent and defective classes. The duty of being 
 childless is not one they try to impose upon dependents. 
 
 In 1893 Kitchie suggested as a possible beginning of the 
 work of making the definition of a mesalliance scientific, 
 that all persons receiving a marriage license should be re- 
 quired to present a medical certificate giving evidence of 
 freedom from a hereditary tendency to insanity.^ Since 
 then several states have passed such laws. In 1899 Michi- 
 gan forbade the marriage of insane and idiotic persons and 
 1 Ritchie, " Pauperism," etc.
 
 PHILANTHROPY AND THE SCIENCES. 29 
 
 persons afflicted with syphilis and gonorrhoea and not cured. 
 The law of Connecticut, passed in 1902, forbids the mar- 
 riage of epileptics and imbeciles under a penalty of three 
 years' imprisonment, with a penalty for other persons aiding 
 such a marriage, and forbids illegitimate intercourse with 
 a defective woman under equally heavy penalties. Indiana 
 also forbids the issuance of a license not only to imbeciles and 
 insane, but also to indigents of five years' standing.^ 
 
 Members of the medical profession frequently recommend 
 castration as a punishment for certain offences, and as a 
 method of treatment for " sexual perverts." Dr. Kerlin, in 
 addressing the Association of Medical Officers of Institutions 
 for the Feeble-minded, said : — 
 
 "While considering the help that advanced surgery is to give us, I 
 will refer to a conviction that I have, that life-long salutary results to 
 many of our boys and girls would be realized if before adolescence the 
 procreative organs were removed. My experience extends to only a 
 single case to confirm this conviction ; but when I consider the great 
 benefit that this young woman has received, the entire arrest of an 
 epileptic tendency, as well as the removal of inordinate desires which 
 made her an offence to the community ; when I see the tranquil, well- 
 ordered life she is leading, her usefulness and industry in the circle in 
 which she moves, and know that surgery has been her salvation from 
 vice and degradation, I am deeply thankful to the benevolent lady 
 whose loyalty to science and comprehensive charity made this opera- 
 tion possible." "Whose state," he asks further on, "shall be the 
 first to legalize oophorectomy and orchitomia for the relief and cure of 
 radical depravity ? " ^ 
 
 Indiana appears to have been^the first state to apply this 
 remedy. In 1901 a law was passed providing that upon 
 the recommendation of certain physicians the operation 
 necessary to sterilization should be performed upon crimi- 
 nals adjudged to be unfit to procreate. Dr. H. C. Sharp of 
 the Indiana Reformatory reports that besides six prisoners 
 
 lEly, "Evolution of Industrial Society," p. 170 £f . ; N. C. C, 1905, 
 p. 594. 
 
 2 Report, 1892, pp. 277-278; see also Barr, " Mental Defectives."
 
 30 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 operated upon under the authority of the law, two hundred 
 and seventeen others were so treated at their own request.^ 
 The proposal of a law in Pennsylvania providing for the 
 asexualization of imbeciles and idiots who are dependent 
 inmates of a state institution, brought out a vigorous pro- 
 test from Alexander Johnson, an authority on the care of 
 the feeble-minded. Mr. Johnson urges the sanctity of the 
 individual human being and argues that, if sterilized, the 
 most powerful incentive to their proper care would be re- 
 moved. Segregation, he thinks, the better way : — 
 
 " It has far wider possibilities than the way of surgery since it may 
 be applied, as that could not or at present would not be, to the many 
 cases on the border line between imbecility and normality, for it is 
 not necessarily final in any case. And it is precisely the border-line 
 cases, as every institution man knows, for whom, if for any, surgery 
 might be desirable. Besides segregation will still be necessary, no 
 matter how much the knife may be used. It is only by the chloroform 
 method that we may escape the burden of the care of these men and 
 women children, the idiots and the imbeciles. So that method would 
 be the next logical step." 2 
 
 Whenever, as in the cases cited, it appears that these 
 operations can be performed with benefit to the individual, 
 public opinion will doubtless sanction them ; and the result 
 of such experimentation may ultimately be to extend their 
 use very widely in the treatment of the diseased and crimi- 
 nal classes. To argue for the introduction of such methods 
 on grounds of social selfishness will not be the best way 
 to hasten their introduction. 
 
 Pending such experimentation, the sterilizing of the es- 
 sentially unfit who may be dependents seems likely to be 
 carried forward bj^ the humaner methods of sequestration 
 and of custodial care through life. The permanent isola- 
 tion of the essentially unfit has cojnmended itself to men as 
 
 1 N. C. C, 1905, p. 594; Proceedings American Prison Association, 1907 ; 
 "Charities," vol. xviii., 1!K)7, No. 2(5, p. 7(3'2. 
 
 2 " Charities," vol. xiii., pp. 595-596.
 
 PHILANTBEOPT AND TBE SCIENCES. 31 
 
 different as Euskin and General Booth, and already the 
 movement to establish these philanthropic monasteries and 
 nunneries for the feeble-minded is becoming the substitute 
 for natural selection. The prevention of the marriage of 
 the unfit, the sterilization of criminals, and the custodial 
 care of the imbecile are initial steps in prevention — 
 that the unfit may cease to be produced and to produce. 
 As Cummings puts it : from him that hath not shall be taken 
 away the power of degrading himself and society. Certain 
 it is, that while charity may not cease to shield the children 
 of misfortune, it must, to an ever increasing extent, reckon 
 with the laws of heredity, and do what it can to check the 
 spreading curse of race deterioration. The desire to prevent 
 suffering must extend to the desire to prevent the suffering 
 of unborn generations. 

 
 CHAPTER II. 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 
 
 The combined result of the rise of humanitarianism, the 
 science of political economy, and the evolutionary theory, 
 was a new interest in the causes of dependence. Neither 
 philosophers nor charity workers were satisfied to accept 
 any longer the misused dictum, " The poor ye have always 
 with you," as an excuse for merely palliative measures in 
 dealing with them, nor with the current explanations of their 
 misery. The students of the social sciences who have sought 
 to ascertain the causes of poverty have employed three 
 tolerably distinct methods. First, there are those deductive 
 or philosophical thinkers who, from the well-known facts 
 of social organization, have sought to deduce the causes 
 tending to poverty, as a systematic writer on pathology 
 seeks to set forth the inherent characteristics of the bodily 
 organism which tend to make disease likely or inevitable. 
 Secondly, there are those who make an inductive study of 
 concrete masses of pauperism, usually separating the mass 
 into its individual units, seeking to ascertain in a large 
 number of particular cases what causes have operated to 
 bring about destitution. This work resembles that of the 
 practising physician, endeavoring to ascertain the causes of 
 sickness by a careful diagnosis of the cases under his care. 
 Thirdly, there are those who study the classes not yet pau- 
 perized, to determine by induction what forces are tending 
 to crowd individuals downward across the pauper line, as 
 the health officer of a city might undertake, by an examina- 
 tion of the drainage system or an analysis of the water or 
 
 32
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 33 
 
 food supply, to ascertain the causes of disease in a given 
 locality. 
 
 Examples of the philosophical or deductive method are 
 found in the writings of men like Malthus, or Karl Marx, 
 or Henry George, who, while they describe actual con- 
 ditions at great length, still make the philosophical reason- 
 ing which is the heart of their work antecedent to their 
 facts. Their facts are given by way of illustration rather 
 than of proof. Writers of this class are prone to think 
 that they can find some single underlying cause of all the 
 misery and destitution that exist. The three names just 
 mentioned recall three explanations of poverty, each 
 alleged to be universal, and the three mutually exclusive. 
 Malthus was too wise a man to put forth his principle of 
 population as an all-sufficient explanation of distress ; but 
 his followers have not been so wise. In the writings of 
 certain economists it has been a fundamental thought that 
 poverty exists mainly, if not entirely, because population 
 tends to increase faster than food supply. All other causes 
 are held to contribute to this, or to be derived from this. 
 The pressure of population against the means of subsistence 
 is held to guarantee that there shall always be a vast 
 number of persons who can just manage to live miserably. 
 A rise of wages will promote early marriages and rapid 
 increase among laborers, until population is again checked 
 by overcrowding and consequent misery and death. So 
 wise a man as John Stuart Mill allowed his economic 
 philosophy to be overshadowed by this idea. 
 
 Henry George ridiculed the Malthusian explanation of 
 poverty, and offered an all-sufficient explanation of his own, 
 which is, substantially, that poverty exists, on the one hand, 
 because the landlord receives in rent so large a share of the 
 annual product ; on the other, because private property in 
 land encourages the withholding of natural resources from 
 use, the owners waiting to obtain an unearned increment.
 
 34 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Since the owner of land receives wealth without labor to 
 an increasing extent with the development of society, there 
 must be an increasing number of those who labor but 
 receive little or nothing. 
 
 Opposed to both these explanations of the existence of 
 poverty is that of the socialists, who follow for the most 
 part Karl Marx's analysis of capitalistic production. Re- 
 duced to a sentence by Dr. Aveling, this explanation of 
 poverty may be stated by saying that labor is " paid for, 
 but not paid." The consumer pays enough for the product 
 to remunerate the laborer, but the capitalist retains all 
 except what will barely suffice to keep the laborer alive. 
 
 No one who has studied carefully modern industrial 
 society can doubt that each one of these causes may pro- 
 duce a very considerable amount of destitution. But no 
 one of them, nor all three of them together, can be taken as 
 an adequate explanation of the existence of poverty. Pro- 
 fessor Seligman states their fundamental defects in the 
 following paragraph : — 
 
 " Modern poverty is bound up with the facts of modern economic 
 life, and modern economic life is a complex product. To select any 
 characteristic feature of the present industrial system and to single it 
 out as responsible for poverty is naive, but worthless. The Malthu- 
 sian seizes upon redundant population, the communist upon private 
 property, the socialist upon property in means of production, the 
 single taxer upon property in land, the cooperator upon competition, 
 the anarchist upon government, the anti-optionist upon speculation, 
 the currency reformer upon metallic money, and so on. They all 
 forget that widespread poverty lias existed in the absence of each one 
 of these alleged causes. Density of population, private property, 
 competition, government, speculation, and money have each been 
 absent at various stages of history without exempting society from 
 the curse of poverty. Each stage has had a poverty of its own. The 
 causes of poverty are as complex as the causes of civilization and the 
 growth of wealth itself." ^ 
 
 1 Seligman, " Principles of Economics," p. 591.
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 35 
 
 The explanations of poverty offered by theology are 
 equally unsatisfactory. TNIinisters frequently inform us 
 that all poverty comes primarily from vice and immorality, 
 — " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteous- 
 ness ; and all these things shall be added unto you." They 
 quote David as saying, " I have been young, and now am old ; 
 yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed 
 begging bread." The temperance lecturer specializes upon 
 the preacher's theory, and assures us that ninety-nine per 
 cent of all poverty comes from the abuse of intoxicants. 
 The propagandist of the White Cross League tells us that it 
 is undoubtedly the abuse of the sexual nature that leads to 
 most of the social degradation and consequent poverty of our 
 times. These different students of social science, if such they 
 may be called, all say that what men need to make them 
 prosperous is moral reformation or spiritual regeneration. 
 
 To illustrate the complexity of the conditions of poverty 
 more concretely : Suppose a second Robinson Crusoe on a 
 desert island under exactly the same material conditions as 
 the friend of our childhood ; suppose he spent his time in 
 distilling some kind of liquor, and subsequently getting 
 drunk ; suppose he allowed his mand to wander in dreamy 
 and enervating revery upon debasing subjects ; suppose that 
 in consequence of these habits he neglected his work, did 
 not plant his crops at the right time, and failed to catch fish 
 when they were plentiful. Manifestly he would become poor 
 and miserable, might become diseased from having insuffi- 
 cient food, and finally die in abject want. Poverty in such 
 a suppositious case could not be traced to the fact that an 
 employer had cheated the laborer of wages honestly earned, 
 or to the fact that a landlord had robbed him by exacting 
 rent, nor could it be traced to an excessive increase of 
 population. Moreover, if Crusoe No. 2 had simply lacked 
 judgment or skill, he might have become poor, although 
 thoroughly pious and moral. If he had built a canoe that
 
 86 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 would not float, or a cave that crumbled in and injured him, 
 or constructed a summer-house that he did not need, or had 
 not the ingenuity to devise tools for his varied purposes, he 
 might have failed to secure the necessaries of life, and have 
 died in miserable destitution. 
 
 Now, if all these various causes are conceivably operative 
 in the case of an isolated person, it is manifest that in actual 
 industrial society as now organized, where the individual 
 suffers not only from his own mistakes and defects, but also 
 from the mistakes and defects of a large number of other 
 people, the causes of destitution must be indefinitely numer- 
 ous and complicated; and the man who says that he has found 
 one all-embracing cause discredits himself as promptly as the 
 physician who should announce that he had found a single 
 universal and all-sufficient explanation of bodily disease. 
 
 The second method, the inductive study of concrete masses 
 of dependents, or case-counting, as it may be called, grew 
 naturally out of contact with relief work. Although it has 
 been in use for twenty years in this country, it must be 
 acknowledged that it has not yielded as comprehensive 
 results as were first expected of it, yet within its somewhat 
 narrow scope those results are surprisingly uniform and 
 definite. When allowances are made for differences of 
 nationality and age constitution in the population, for 
 locality as between city and country, and for variations be- 
 tween incipient and chronic dependence, certain immediate 
 causes recur in case schedules in proportions which can be 
 almost predicted by the trained student and charity worker. 
 
 Its limitations as a method suggest themselves, if we 
 reflect on the analogy of the physician standing by the 
 sick-bed, and trying to learn the cause of the disease merely 
 from an examination of the patient. He may learn the 
 immediate or exciting cause or causes of sickness, but back 
 of these are the remoter causes which can only be learned 
 by other methods of investigation. The competent physi-
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 
 
 37 
 
 %i 
 
 cian will look for these in the hereditary constitution of 
 the patient, or in bad conditions of public sanitation or 
 personal hygiene, or in exposure to contagion, or in the 
 revelations of bacteriology, or in unhealthy climate or oc- 
 cupation. But however thorough, he will scarcely be able 
 to go farther afield than this to ascertain those ultimate 
 economic and social conditions which may account for the 
 patient's lack of physical resistance to disease. This will 
 become clear if we glance at the following analysis of the 
 causes of poverty. It is not intended to be complete, but 
 only to give in general outline a map of the field. 
 
 ANALYSIS OF THE CAUSES OF POVERTY. 
 
 1. Undervitalization and indolence. 
 
 2. Lubricity. 
 Characteristics. -f 3. Specific disease. 
 
 4. Lack of judgment. 
 
 5. Unhealthy appetite. 
 
 1. Shiftlessness. 
 
 2. Self-abuse and sexual excess. 
 
 3. Abuse of stimulants and narcotics. 
 
 4. Unhealthy diet. 
 
 5. Disregard of family ties. 
 
 Inadequate natural resources. 
 
 Bad climatic conditions. 
 
 Defective sanitation, etc. 
 
 Evil associations and surroundings. 
 
 Defective legislation and defective judicial and punitive 
 
 machinery. 
 Misdirected or inadequate education. 
 
 a. Variations in value of money. 
 
 b. Changes in trade. 
 Bad indus- c. Excessive or ill-managed taxation. 
 
 trial con-< cZ. Emergencies unprovided for. 
 ditions. e. Undue power of class over class. 
 /. Immobility of labor. 
 
 g. Inadequate wages and irregular employment. 
 Unwise philanthropy. 
 
 Habits produc- 
 ing and i^ro- 
 duced by the 
 above. 
 
 18.
 
 38 AMEBIC AN CHARITIES. 
 
 A statistical analysis of cases gives more light concerning 
 the subjective causes of poverty than the objective causes, 
 for in dealing with individuals their character is apt to be 
 more studied than their environment. But even when en- 
 vironment is the primary cause of poverty, the immediate 
 cause or coordinate result is often deterioration of char- 
 acter. As sickness is more obvious than bad sanitation, so 
 is laziness than a malarial atmosphere, inefficiency than a 
 defective educational system. One who attempts the analy- 
 sis of cases is apt to be confused by the fact that under 
 the operation of exactly similar general causes some fami- 
 lies are destitute and some are not. One man is able to 
 secure an adequate income under the most adverse circum- 
 stances — unhealthy climate, bad housing, unjust taxation, 
 or lack of opportunities for education. Another man, un- 
 der exactly the same conditions, will become destitute, and 
 the observer must put down as the final and determining 
 cause some defect in physique or character. Untrained 
 charity workers who come immediately in contact with the 
 poor are very prone to take short-sighted views of the 
 causes of poverty. On the other hand, those who study 
 the question from a philosophical standpoint are apt to lay 
 too much stress on a single factor of environment; while 
 a third class, chiefly composed of philanthropists living 
 among the poor, arraign the organization of society as 
 tending to submerge below the poverty line those who have 
 no power to defend themselves. The extreme opposition 
 of the different views is well illustrated by certain re- 
 cent writers. Mrs. Bosanquet declares, "A man's cir- 
 cumstances depend upon what he himself is," and quotes 
 Professor William James's phrase, " we are spinning our 
 own fates," to support her contention that the economic 
 position of a class depends upon the moral qualities of 
 the individuals. Thomas W. jMackay regards it as an act 
 of " unpardonable scepticism " to assume that whole classes
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 39 
 
 are inflicted with an inherent incapacity for the honorable 
 interdependence of a life of contract and exchange, and 
 points to the increasing reward of labor and the increasing 
 purchasing power of its reward. 
 
 AVith an emphasis no less powerful, Robert Hunter places 
 the responsibility for dependence upon environment : — 
 
 "It is obvious to inquiring persons that society, as a result of its 
 industries, its tenements, its policy of almost unrestricted immigration, 
 and its system of education, ill-adapted in so many ways to the needs 
 of the people, causes a large part of the poverty which exists among us. 
 For instance, the aged, after years of honest and exacting toil, may 
 find themselves at last thrown out of work, propertyless, and some- 
 times penniless. Dangerous trades cripple the bodies and undermine 
 the health of large numbers of workmen, and almost unrestricted 
 immigration helps to increase an already too intense competition for 
 wages in the underpaid, unskilled trades, with the result that the 
 whole mass is more or less in poverty all the time, and a certain per- 
 centage finds it necessary actually to apply periodically for charitable 
 relief. The greed for profits on the part of the owners of tenement- 
 house property has so interfered with the enactment and enforcement 
 of laws establishing certain minimum sanitary standards that a con- 
 siderable number of working people have their labor power diminished 
 or destroyed by tuberculosis and other diseases. It would be impos- 
 sible to question the responsibility of society for such common and 
 widespread causes of poverty. After the economic independence has 
 been destroyed, so-called charity undermines the character of the poor 
 either by private alms or by public outdoor relief." ^ 
 
 Each of these types of observers has, indeed, seized upon 
 a portion of the truth ; the questions of character are very 
 far from insignificant, but so long as it is impossible to 
 measure accurately all the forces within and without the 
 individual which tend to push him above or below the line 
 of economic independence, it will be necessary to study the 
 combined operation of character, circumstance, and environ- 
 ment in accounting for his failure. 
 
 The third and latest method of studying the causes of 
 
 1 Hunter, " Poverty," pp. 66-67.
 
 40 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 poverty is also statistical, but on a much broader basis than 
 the classification of dependents. Beginning with the com- 
 prehensive work of Charles Booth in London, it has been 
 applied to the city of York, England, by Rowntree ; more 
 recently to the anthracite coal regions of Pennsylvania by 
 Peter Eoberts, and to a district of New York City by Mrs. 
 Louise Bolaud More. Its essential feature is the compara- 
 tive study of a whole section of population in order to 
 ascertain the proportion of the poor and the conditions 
 of their life which tend to drive them into a position of 
 dependence. To this class of studies belongs the report of 
 1903 of the United States Bureau of Labor on the Cost 
 of Living and many other labor reports, the investigations 
 of occupational morbidity and mortality, and nearly all the 
 first-hand descriptions of the industrial strata of society. 
 
 It is evident that such a method has a breadth and per- 
 spective which give it superior value; but it, too, has its 
 pitfalls and limitations. If pursued on a scale large enough 
 to give a true picture of a representative section of the pop- 
 ulation, it is liable to lack the intimate personal knowledge 
 of individuals without which all statistics may become mis- 
 leading. If pursued on a small scale, intensively, by workers 
 familiar with the people themselves, it may be distorted by 
 local peculiarities and by the bias of the investigator. Re- 
 turning once more to the analogy of medical practice : in 
 the first case, the physician is in the position of a health 
 ofiicer gathering information for the determination of birth 
 and death rates and for the prevention of epidemic diseases ; 
 in the second, he is a specialist in danger of diagnosing all 
 ailments as partaking of the characteristics of his specialty. 
 
 As the case-counting method tends to emphasize unduly 
 the subjective and immediate causes, so the pictorial method 
 is apt to bring out the industrial and environmental causes; 
 but all these methods, beginning with the inductive, have 
 had a natural historical sequence. The early social phi-
 
 CAUSES OF FOVEUTY. 41 
 
 losophers sketched from afar some conspicuous feature of 
 the field; the relief workers fixed their attention upon the 
 miserable in need and their obvious characteristics ; the 
 latest comers are trying to present a complete pictiire of 
 the whole territory. With the contribution of each observer, 
 the details of the picture are becoming more accurate as well 
 as complete ; with the result that, on the one hand, the 
 treatment of dependents is becoming more adequate and 
 sympathetic, while, on the other, all philanthropists alike 
 are uniting in a concerted attack upon those conditions of 
 society which make dependence inevitable. 
 
 Turning from the discussion of the various methods of 
 ascertaining the causes of poverty, we take up the considera- 
 tion of the investigations conducted on the case-counting 
 principle. The conclusions from these will vary widely 
 according to the particular class of destitute persons under 
 observation. Professor Henderson, after enumerating four 
 general classes of dependents, — dependent children, those 
 receiving partial relief in their homes, those receiving insti- 
 tutional relief, and the abnormal and defective classes, — 
 remarks that a general average of the grand totals of the 
 causes of poverty of these classes would not only be of no 
 value, but would be positively misleading, as among these 
 different classes a principal cause of poverty would vary 
 widely, and in particular instances might not exist at all. 
 The first precaution, therefore, in drawing conclusions from 
 charity cases, as in every other kind of statistics, is to make 
 sure that the classes compared are fairly comparable. 
 
 But when this difficulty is overcome, a greater one arises 
 — the difficulty of deciding what is the principal cause of 
 dependence in particular cases. A man is drunk and breaks 
 his leg ; is the cause of his helplessness accident or drink ? 
 When this question was submitted to a group of charity 
 organization workers, it was promptly answered by two of 
 them ; but their answers were different. A man is out of
 
 42 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 work because he is lazy and inefficient ; one has to know 
 him quite well before one can be sure that laziness is the 
 cause. An experienced charity agent asked in conference 
 how far back it was necessary to go to determine the prin- 
 cipal cause in the following instances : — 
 
 "I have a widow and six children ; her husband fell off a wagon 
 when drunk and was killed ; should I put down drunkenness as the 
 cause ? I have a case of a boy who received no proper training be- 
 cause his father was a drunkard ; shall I put that poverty to drunken- 
 ness? I have a case of a family where four girls, one after the other, 
 died of consumption, and I believe the cause to be that they had a 
 drunken father who did not feed them, and who left them to live in 
 improper conditions, but who died ten years ago. Shall I say that 
 the cause in that case is drunkenness or sickness ?" ^ 
 
 Among thousands of dependants it has been found that 
 there are very few whose destitution resulted from a single 
 cause. In order to represent the variety and relative pro- 
 portions of the factors leading to pauperism, several ways 
 of combining principal and subsidiary causes have been 
 devised. Charles Booth, in his study of the pauperism of 
 Stepney and St. Pancras, tabulated the contributory with 
 the principal causes ; and as indicating the results to be got 
 from this method, his table is given on the opposite page. 
 
 In this table sickness, which operated as a principal cause 
 in 26 per cent of all cases, was a contributory cause in 13 
 per cent more ; drink, which accounted in the first place for 
 the dependence of 12.6 per cent, aggravated the situation of 
 13 per cent more. In short, after a survey of the table, it 
 can readily be believed that some, as Mr. Booth says, have 
 been the foot-ball of all the causes in the list. 
 
 Professor Mayo-Smith tabulated 884 applicants of the 
 New York Charity Organization Society for the year 1897 
 in a similar way, but with less striking results. At the 
 suggestion of Professor Warner a quantitative method was 
 
 1 See discussion, N. C. C, 1899, pp. 374-375.
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 
 
 43 
 
 TABLE I. 
 
 Principal Causes of Pauperism at Stepney. 
 {Adaptedfrom Booth's " Pauperism and the Endowment of Old Age," p. 10.) 
 
 PRINCIPAL 
 
 
 
 
 
 CONTRIBUTORY 
 
 CAUSES. 
 
 
 it 
 
 
 
 OR OBVIOUS CAUSES. 
 
 u 
 
 < 
 
 ■< 
 S 
 H 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 Z 
 ft 
 
 a 
 
 OS « 
 
 a." 
 
 5 
 
 2 
 o 
 
 11 
 
 1. Drink 
 
 53 
 
 27 
 
 80 
 
 12.6 
 
 
 23 
 
 11 
 
 2. Immorality .... 
 
 6 
 
 10 
 
 16 
 
 2.6 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 1 
 
 3. Laziness 
 
 10 
 
 2 
 
 12 
 
 1.9 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 4. Incapacity, Temper,etc. 
 
 17 
 
 7 
 
 24 
 
 3.8 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 5. Extravagance . . . 
 
 7 
 
 1 
 
 8 
 
 1.3 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 
 3 
 
 6. Lack of Work or Trade 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Misfortune . . . 
 
 26 
 
 2 
 
 28 
 
 4.4 
 
 4 
 
 
 5 
 
 13 
 
 7. Accident 
 
 25 
 
 5 
 
 30 
 
 4.7 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 14 
 
 8. Death of Husband . 
 
 
 26 
 
 26 
 
 4.1 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 10 
 
 8 
 
 9. Desertion .... 
 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 .6 
 
 3 
 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 10. Mental Derangement 
 
 3 
 
 8 
 
 11 
 
 1.7 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 P8 
 
 71 
 95 
 
 169 
 208 
 
 26.7 
 32.8 
 
 24 
 
 22 
 
 38 
 18 
 
 5 
 44 
 
 41 
 
 12. Old Age 
 
 113 
 
 13. Pauper Asso. and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Heredity .... 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 7 
 
 1.1 
 
 1 
 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 14. Other Causes . . . 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 12 
 
 1.9 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 Total Number .... 
 
 373 
 
 261 
 
 634 
 
 100 
 
 85 
 
 106 
 
 87 
 
 107 
 
 Per cent of Total Cases . 
 
 
 
 
 
 13.0 
 
 16.0 
 
 13.0 
 
 16.0
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 
 ^ 
 
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 CO 
 
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 M 
 
 
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 r^ 
 
 
 
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 ou 
 
 
 
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 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 
 
 45 
 
 adopted by Mrs. Coolidge in Table 11.^ The sviin of the 
 causes in each case was assumed to be 10. The principal 
 cause might count for 5 or more units, while the contribu- 
 tory causes might be 5 or less ; as, for instance, case 48, 
 principal cause sickness 5, contributory causes neglect by 
 relatives 3, old age 2. , 
 
 Although this method undoubtedly presented the pro- 
 portion of each influence with somewhat greater accuracy, 
 it was found to be too complicated for general use in the 
 Charity Organization Societies. 
 
 A third source of error in charity statistics is the varia- 
 tion between the cause of distress as given by the applicant 
 and the causes afterward registered by the relieving agents. 
 This discrepancy is illustrated by the following tabulation 
 of 800 cases in New York City. 
 
 TABLE III. 
 
 Alleged and True Causes of Poverty. 
 
 800 cases, C. O. S., New York, 189&-1897 * 
 
 
 fa S 
 o £ 
 
 S 2 
 
 ■< a. 
 
 m 
 Z; 
 
 IB 
 
 1 ^ 
 
 a] 
 
 
 li 
 
 Cause alleged by Applicant . . 
 
 Cause as determined later by 
 Charity Agents 
 
 313 
 184 
 
 222 
 164 
 
 25 
 166 
 
 101 
 
 121 
 
 240 
 64 
 
 * Lindsay, N. C. C, 1S99, p. 372. 
 
 The alleged cause is often merely a measure of the ability 
 of the applicant to gauge the intelligence of the charity 
 agent, but it is of some slight value in throwing light upon 
 the character of the applicant. 
 
 1 The same method was later adopted by A. F. 
 Weller, Aiyi. Jour, of Soc, March, 1898, 
 
 Simons and C. F.
 
 46 
 
 AMEEICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 After making all possible allowance for the personal 
 equation of the applicant and the investigator, and for the 
 limitations and inconclusiveness of figures alone, they have 
 nevertheless a considerable value as representing the judg- 
 ments of those who are studying dependence at first hand. 
 When it has been found that a great number of investigators, 
 at different times, in different places, have reached conclu- 
 sions which, while varying in many and often inexplicable 
 ways, are yet in agreement on certain points, it must be con- 
 cluded that the figures to some extent reflect actual conditions. 
 Without pressing these conclusions too far, and constantly 
 remembering that statistics are only the formal skeleton 
 of truth, we may proceed to discuss what results have 
 been reached by the case-counting method in the study of 
 
 dependence. 
 
 TABLE IV.* 
 
 Causes of Poverty in Buffalo. 
 
 Total. 
 
 18T8-188T. 
 
 Feb 
 Cent. 
 
 Lack of Employment .... 
 
 Sickness 
 
 Accident 
 
 Insanity of Breadwinner . . 
 Insufficient Earnings .... 
 
 No Male Support 
 
 Imprisonment of Bread-winner 
 
 Intemperance 
 
 Shiftlessness 
 
 Physical Defects 
 
 Cause Undetermined .... 
 
 1873 
 1268 
 208 
 51 
 451 
 397 
 108 
 700 
 440 
 525 
 176 
 
 30.2 
 
 20.5 
 
 3.4 
 
 .8 
 
 7,3 
 
 6.4 
 
 1.7 
 
 11.3 
 
 7.1 
 
 8.4 
 
 2.9 
 
 Total Number of Cases 
 
 0197 100.0 
 
 'Condensed from Table III., p. 33, let ed., "Anieiican Charities."
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 
 
 47 
 
 Although the causes of pauperism had been enumerated 
 and discussed in occasional reports of charitable societies,^ 
 the first systematic investigation and tabulation of results 
 through a term of years appears to have been made by the 
 Charity Organization Society of Buffalo, New York. The 
 table (see p. 46) is interesting as showing that the more 
 obvious causes, i.e. sickness, lack of employment, intem- 
 perance, and shiftlessness, stood in almost the same order 
 and proportion in 1887 as they appear in the Charity Organi- 
 zation Society statistics of a later time. 
 
 The systematic registration of decisions in large numbers 
 of cases brought out certain conclusions as to the general 
 needs of applicants for relief. Table V. shows decisions 
 averaged for a total of 42,031 cases between 1887 and 1900. 
 
 TABLE V. 
 
 Decisions in Cases of Applicants for Relief.* 
 
 SHOULD HAVE 
 
 C. 0. s. 
 1887. 
 
 Baltimore, 
 Boston, 
 
 New York, 
 Average, 
 1891-1892. 
 
 New York 
 
 C. O. 8. 
 
 189T-1900. 
 
 2T,9G1 Cases. 
 
 S294 Cases. 
 
 5776 Cases. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 Continuous Relief (not Indoor) 
 Intermittent Relief (not Indoor) 
 Temporary Relief (not Indoor) 
 Work rather than Relief . • . 
 
 Indoor Relief 
 
 Transportation 
 
 Visitation and Advice only . . 
 
 Discipline 
 
 No Relief 
 
 10.3 
 26.6 
 
 40.4 
 
 22.7 
 
 4.0 
 
 2.9 
 
 20.6 
 
 35.1 
 
 11.6 
 
 3.6 
 
 7.4 
 
 5.8 
 
 9.0 
 
 1.2 
 
 .7 
 
 28.2 
 
 32.3 
 
 8.9 
 
 1.8 
 
 6.6 
 
 4.4 
 
 15.9 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.0 
 
 * Columns 1 and 2 from Warner's "American Charities," 1st ed., pp. 29-32. Column 3, 
 N.Y. C. 0. S. Pveports, 1S97-1900. 
 
 1 Devine, " Principles of Relief," pp. 278-293, Tenth Report, New York 
 State Board of Charities, 1877.
 
 48 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 The table shows that approximately oue-third of all appli- 
 cants needed work rather than relief, and nearly another 
 third needed intermittent or temporary relief only, while 
 almost one-fifth needed either " discipline " or no relief at 
 all. Charles D. Kellogg of the New York Charity Organiza- 
 tion Society, when submitting a report on 27,961 cases in 
 1887 (column 1) to the National Conference of Charities and 
 Corrections, stated that the logical deduction from these facts 
 was that two-thirds of the real or simulated destitution could 
 be wiped out by a more perfect adjustment of the supply 
 and demand for labor, and a more enlightened police 
 administration. The table further indicates that charity 
 organization societies were dealing largely then as now, 
 not with chronic pauperism, but with those on the verge of 
 dependence. 
 
 The question most commonly in the minds of the inex- 
 perienced students of this subject is whether dependence is 
 a misfortune or a fault. In the first edition of this book 
 Professor Warner compiled an elaborate table from English, 
 German, and American sources, classifying the causes of 
 poverty under two main heads as indicating misconduct or 
 misfortune. A table condensed from the original, so as to 
 show its essential features, is given on pp. 50, 51. 
 
 The unsatisfactoriness of the table arises in part from the 
 fact that the groups of cases are not fairly comparable. The 
 American cases were applicants for relief, the English were 
 inmates of institutions for the chronic and aged poor, and 
 the German comprised all cases of public relief. The trained 
 charity worker would expect, therefore, that drink and 
 matters of employment would rise high in American cases 
 and fall among inmates of European institutions, and the 
 expectation is to a certain extent fulfilled. The very low 
 per cent for drink in Germany (1.3) is balanced partly by 
 the high per cent for sickness (45.8), for Bohmert explains 
 that intemperance was a predisposing cause in many cases
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 49 
 
 where the immediate cause set down was lack of work, 
 accident, imprisonment, sickness, or abandonment. The 
 wide variation in the totals for misconduct and misfortune 
 — from 12 per cent to 42 per cent — indicates the extreme 
 differences of judgment among charity agents as to the re- 
 sponsibility of the individual for his own dependence. 
 
 This is only another phase of the difficulty of deciding 
 between principal and contributory causes. For instance, 
 back of sickness may be either misconduct or misfortune ; 
 the imprisonment of the breadwinner indicates misconduct 
 on his part, but may be only misfortune on the part of his 
 wife and children who apply for relief ; similar confusion 
 arises in cases of children abandoned and old persons 
 neglected by relatives. Professor Warner stated that the 
 table was compiled only " in deference to popular inquiry," 
 and declared his own opinion that its value consisted chiefly 
 " in showing how little it was worth." It. has, however, a 
 certain historical importance as showing the decline of a 
 tendency which was once very stroug among charity workers 
 to try to apportion carefully the degree of moral blame of 
 the individual applicant for relief. 
 
 Although the results of the table are wholly negative as 
 regards the determination of misconduct or misfortune, when 
 stripped of unessential details and insignificant variations, 
 it shows clearly that in a large body of applicants for relief 
 in American cities, certain immediate causes of poverty 
 tend to recur in very nearly the same order and proportion 
 for a term of years. Among such dependents from 25 
 to 35 per cent will ask for relief because of physical and 
 mental incapacity, 20 to 30 per cent because of lack of or 
 unsatisfactory employment, and 20 to 25 per cent because of 
 defects of character. The fact that certain specific causes, 
 especially drink, vary widely in the different cities does not 
 invalidate this deduction. Intemperance, of all the list of 
 causes, is the one most likely to be affected by the personal
 
 50 
 
 AMERICAN CHABITIES. 
 
 TABLE VI.* 
 Causes of Poverty. — Misconduct vs. Misfortune. 
 
 Locality . 
 
 Baltimore 
 
 Boston 
 
 Buffalo 
 
 
 
 Report of 
 
 C. 0. S. 
 
 A. C. 
 
 C. 0. S. 
 
 Number of Cases 
 
 1385 
 
 2083 
 
 8235 
 
 
 1890-2 
 
 1890-2 
 
 1878-92 
 
 
 
 CAUSES. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 Drink 
 
 8.0 
 
 20.5 
 
 ' 7.2 
 1.4 
 
 .8 
 
 7.8 
 
 ImrDorality . 
 
 
 Crime and Dishonesty 
 
 Roving Disposition 
 
 13.0 
 
 .8 
 
 1.4 
 
 4.3 
 
 Total Misconduct 
 
 23.2 
 
 29.9 
 
 12.1 
 
 Imprisonment of Breadwinner . . . 
 Orphans and Abandoned Children . . 
 
 Neglect by Relatives 
 
 No Male Support 
 
 .4 
 
 .9 
 
 1.7 
 
 4.6 
 
 1.6 
 .7 
 .9 
 
 6.0 
 
 2.0 
 
 13.8 
 
 Total — No Normal Support . . 
 
 7.5 
 
 9.2 
 
 15.8 
 
 Insufficient Employment 
 
 Poorly Paid Employment 
 
 Unhealthy and Dangerous Employment 
 
 12.5 
 
 8.5 
 
 5.0 
 
 .3 
 
 14.2 
 
 5.5 
 
 .9 
 
 .4 
 
 27.5 
 1.7 
 6.0 
 
 Total — Employment .... 
 
 26.3 
 
 21.0 
 
 35.2 
 
 Ignorance of English 
 
 Sickness or Death in Family . . . 
 Insanity 
 
 .4 
 
 4.0 
 
 20.2 
 
 6.0 
 
 .8 
 6.0 
 
 .8 
 
 2.9 
 
 24.0 
 
 2.4 
 
 .6 
 4.1 
 
 4.6 
 
 24.6 
 
 5.3 
 
 .9 
 
 Old Age 
 
 
 
 
 Total — Personal Capacity . . . 
 
 37.4 
 
 34.8 
 
 35.4 
 
 Total Misfortune 
 
 71.2 
 
 65.0 
 
 86.4 
 
 Unclassified or Unknown 
 
 5.6 
 
 5.1 
 
 1.5 
 
 ♦ Condensed from Table IV., p. 86, Ist ed. of Warner's " American Charities."
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 
 
 51 
 
 TABLE VI. {Continued). 
 Causes of Poverty. — Misconduct vs. Misfortune. 
 
 Cincinnati 
 
 New York 
 
 Stepney 
 
 St. Pancras 
 
 76 German 
 Cities 
 
 Total 
 
 A. C. 
 
 C. 0. s. 
 
 Booth 
 
 Booth 
 
 Bohmert 
 
 
 4844 
 
 1412 
 
 634 
 
 736 
 
 95,845 
 
 
 1890-92 
 
 1891 
 
 1892 
 
 1892 
 
 1886 
 
 Average 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 11.1 
 
 12.9 
 1.9 
 5.3 
 
 10.7 
 
 ' 7.2 
 1.4 
 3.3 
 
 12.6 
 2.5 
 
 7.0 
 
 21.9 
 
 6.9 
 
 13.4 
 
 1.3 
 * 1.4 
 
 11.6 
 ' 9.2 
 
 31.2 
 
 22.6 
 
 22.1 
 
 42.2 
 
 2.7 
 
 23.2 
 
 .7 
 1.0 
 
 .8 
 7.1 
 
 .6 
 .1 
 .5 
 
 7.2 
 
 " 4.6 
 
 '2.8 
 
 1.7 
 
 5.6 
 
 .6 
 
 2.5 
 
 
 9.6 
 
 8.4 
 
 4.6 
 
 2.8 
 
 10.4 
 
 8.5 
 
 10.5 
 
 7.2 
 
 4.2 
 
 .5 
 
 29.0 
 6.1 
 2.5 
 
 4.4 
 
 2.2 
 
 12.5 
 
 . . . 
 
 22.4 
 
 37.6 
 
 4.4 
 
 2.2 
 
 12.5 
 
 20.8 
 
 .8 
 
 2.3 
 
 15.0 
 
 2.5 
 
 .6 
 3.0 
 
 .4 
 
 3.3 
 18.5 
 
 2.7 
 
 .7 
 
 3.3 
 
 ' 4.7 
 26.7 
 
 i.7 
 
 32.8 
 
 '2.6 
 
 20.7 
 
 '4.3 
 23.4 
 
 ' i.i 
 
 45.8 
 2.4 
 3.4 
 
 15.8 
 
 24.4 
 
 24.2 
 
 28.9 
 
 64.9 
 
 51.0 
 
 68.5 
 
 43.1 
 
 56.2 
 
 74.9 
 
 74.0 
 
 56.0 
 
 91.4 
 
 71.0 
 
 12.6 
 
 2.5 
 
 4.0 
 
 1.8 
 
 5.9 
 
 . . .
 
 62 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 bias of the relief agent, and about which there is a wide dif- 
 ference of opinion as to whether it is a true cause — in the 
 sense of moral responsibility — or merely a symptom. It 
 exhibits more than any other cause the limitations of the 
 case- counting method. 
 
 The fact that sickness, unemployment, and moral defect 
 tend to recur in a definite order and proportion is more 
 clearly shown in Table VII., in which 31,637 cases are 
 arranged and averaged in the same way as in Table VI. and 
 compared with Professor Warner's averages from 7225 cases 
 of the same class. 
 
 We notice first that all causes definitely reflecting the char- 
 acter of the individual vary only between 23.3 and 25.1. The 
 most important of these, drink, averages 14.6, going as low 
 as 7.2 in Baltimore and as high as 21.7 in Boston. Nearly, 
 but not quite so important, is shiftlessness and inefficiency ; 
 it ranges between the relatively narrow limits of 6.1 and 
 9.5. The lack of normal support has, too, a tolerably con- 
 stant influence of 6.3 to 8.3. 
 
 The causes grouped under the heading " matters of employ- 
 ment" account for a third of the destitution dealt with by 
 American societies. The percentage for Boston is lowest 
 and for New York highest, but the results for New York 
 show the effect of the five years, 1893-1898, following the 
 panic, which are only partially covered by the figures for 
 Boston and Baltimore. 
 
 Under incapacity, insanity and physical defect exert a 
 minor but quite constant influence. The small though con- 
 stant percentage attributable to old age is probably due to 
 the fact that these societies are for the most part dealing 
 with people who are still struggling against pauperism, or 
 are at any rate still mixed with the ordinary population of 
 the cities where they live. 
 
 So far as Table VI. and Table VII. show, the most constant 
 causes of poverty, everywhere, at all times, and according
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 
 
 53 
 
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 CO 
 
 
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 CD 
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 Average 
 
 OP Baltimore, 
 
 New York, New 
 
 Haven, Boston. 
 
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 54 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 to all investigators, are sickness and unemployment. The 
 percentage of sickness falls to 17.6 in New York and reaches 
 26.0 in Boston — the average is 22. This is one of the 
 most significant results from these tables. It was not an- 
 ticipated by the author when the collection of the statistics 
 began ; but it has been confirmed and reconfirmed, not only 
 by Professor Lindsay's later table, but in so many other 
 ways, that the conclusion seems inevitable that the figures 
 must approximately set forth the facts. Personal acquaint- 
 ance with the destitute classes has deepened the conviction 
 that most of the causes of poverty result from or result in 
 weakened physical and mental constitution, often merging 
 
 into actual disease. 
 
 TABLE VIIL 
 
 13,252 Dependent Children in German Cities. 
 (Bohmert, pp. 115-116 and 127-128.) 
 
 Cause of Povkrty. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 Orphanage 
 
 Fault of Guardian 
 
 Abandonment by guardian 
 
 Imprisonment of 
 
 Abuse and neglect by 
 
 Laziness of 
 
 Drunkenness of 
 
 Incapacity of Guardian 
 
 Lack of work . . . . ' . 
 
 Large family 
 
 Advanced age 
 
 Defect, mental or physical 
 
 Other Causes 
 
 38.75 
 25.89 
 
 17.12 
 18.24 
 
 
 100.00 
 
 Nearly all of the causes named might furthermore be 
 grouped under the general heading "incapacity." Those 
 indicating misconduct can be so classed if we are willing to
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 55 
 
 include under the term infirmities of character as well as of 
 body. The causes which indicate lack of normal support 
 may also be said to show that the dependents are personally 
 incapable of self-support, and that, through fault or mis- 
 fortune on the part of their natural guardians, they have 
 been left to themselves. The close relation between defects 
 of character and the failure of support is illustrated by 
 Bohmert's analysis of the causes of dependence in children. 
 
 The four causes grouped as "matters of employment" in 
 Table VII. would seem at first to be of a different nature, 
 and to indicate that capable persons may suffer from en- 
 forced idleness to the extent of becoming paupers. There 
 are, of course, such instances; but those who have under- 
 taken the work of finding employment for the unemployed, 
 and who are intimately acquainted with the people about 
 whom information is given in these tables, know that most 
 of those out of employment are not capable in any complete 
 sense of the term. They may be able-bodied, but they are 
 not able-minded. They may lack one thing or another, but 
 they almost always lack something ; it may be skill, or 
 strength, or judgment, or reliability, or even-temper. Often 
 the incapacity seems to consist in nothing more than a lack 
 of ingenuity, which prevents the person from fitting himself 
 into the industries of the time. Give him a set task requir- 
 ing little skill, and he will do it gladly. But such set tasks 
 are very few in modern industry, and the result is that the 
 individual is unemployed. If one wanted thoroughly effi- 
 cient help, male or female, he would hardly expect to find 
 it among the "out-of-works" with whom the charitable 
 societies deal. Back of the cause " lack of work," ordinarily 
 and in ordinary times, will be found some perversion of 
 character, or some limitation of capacity. 
 
 The figures most nearly comparable with those of Bohmert 
 and Booth are those of the New York almshouses in 1874- 
 1875 and 1903-1904. In the earlier study the immediate
 
 56 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 causes of poverty are given ; in that of 1903-1904, merely 
 the classes of almshouse inmates, from which they may be, 
 to some extent; inferred. 
 
 TABLE IX. 
 Paupers in Almshouses in New York in 1874-1875 and 1903-1904. 
 
 Classes of Inmates. 
 
 1S7-4-18-5.* 
 
 190.3-1904.t 
 
 % BY 
 
 Groups. 
 
 NCMBEK. 
 
 % 
 
 Number. 
 
 % 
 
 Children — Orphans or Abandoned 
 
 2030 
 
 16.1 
 
 .578 
 
 2.6 
 
 
 Homeless Women 
 
 278 
 
 2.2 
 
 
 
 
 Total — No Support . . . 
 
 
 18.3 
 
 1 
 
 2.6 
 
 Insane 
 
 4047 
 
 32.1 
 
 304 
 
 1.3 
 
 
 Feeble-minded 
 
 978 
 
 7.7 
 
 2232 
 
 9.7 
 
 
 Epileptic 
 
 268 
 
 2.1 
 
 304 
 
 1.3 
 
 
 Blind 
 
 303 
 
 2.4 
 
 617 
 
 2.7 
 
 
 Deaf Mute 
 
 29 
 
 .2 
 
 114 
 
 .4 
 
 
 Paralytic 
 
 322 
 
 2.5 
 
 1208 
 
 5.2 
 
 
 Crippled, Maimed, and Deformed 
 
 257 
 
 2.0 
 
 3482 
 
 15.2 
 
 
 Old and Infirm 
 
 2081 
 
 16.5 
 
 4920 
 
 21.4 
 
 
 Bedridden or Diseased . . . 
 
 1258 
 
 9.9 
 
 356 
 
 1.5 
 
 
 Rheumatic 
 
 
 
 1879 
 
 8.2 
 
 
 Total — Defect and Disease . 
 
 
 75.4 
 
 
 
 66.9 
 
 Vagrant and Idle 
 
 767 
 
 6.1 
 
 
 
 
 Able-bodied 
 
 
 
 4000t 
 
 17.4 
 
 
 Other and Unknown .... 
 
 
 .2 
 
 2872 
 
 13.2 
 
 
 Total in Almshouses . . . 
 
 12,614 
 
 100.0 
 
 22,866§ 
 
 100.0 
 
 
 * From Report N.T. State Board of Charities, 1877. 
 t From U. S. Census, 1904, "Paui)ers in Almshouses." 
 X Estimated on basis of percentage for whole North Atlantic Division. 
 § Comprises 10,793 enumerated in almshouses, Dec. 81, 1908, plus 12,073 admitted 
 in 1904. 
 
 Although these figures are not in all respects comparable, 
 they show that the lack of normal support formerly accounted 
 for 18 per cent of the inmates ; but since the removal of
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 57 
 
 children to other institutions, the percentage has fallen to 
 2,5. In 1874-1875 75.4 per cent of the inmates were defec- 
 tive or diseased — one-third of them being insane ; with the 
 removal of the insane from almshouses to hospitals, the per- 
 centage of the incapacitated has fallen to 66.9. The table 
 indicates further how widely the causes of dependence 
 among inmates of institutions vary from those who are only 
 applicants for relief. 
 
 Of 51,460 paupers admitted to almshouses in the United 
 States in 1904, 67 per cent were " incapacitated." In such 
 institutions "drink," as a direct cause of poverty, is of 
 slight importance, although it may have been the original 
 cause of much of the incapacity. Of those enumerated in 
 almshouses in 1903 only 15.8 per cent were able-bodied, and 
 of those admitted during 1904, 30 per cent; but a very 
 large proportion of these were unquestionably shiftless, 
 inefficient, and vagrant, unemployable rather than the 
 unemployed. 
 
 As the first question popularly asked regarding the causes 
 of poverty would probably be whether poverty indicates 
 misconduct or misfortune, so the second would probably be : 
 What are the indications as to the tendency of different 
 nationalities or races to become poor? For the purpose of 
 finding what answer could be obtained to this question, 
 Table X. was prepared, giving the facts regarding 7225 
 American cases. Of the Americans, Germans, Colored, 
 Irish, and English there were enough cases in each column 
 to make the percentages tolerably trustworthy ; while of the 
 French, Polish, Spanish, Italian, Scandinavian, and other 
 nationalities the numbers were too small to make the 
 relative figures of much value. 
 
 As to " drink," we find a general average of 15.28 per 
 cent. The Americans are slightly below, and the English 
 slightly above, this average. The Irish have a larger per- 
 centage under this head than any other nationality, 23.62.
 
 58 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
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 P
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 59 
 
 The Germans are far below it, 7.83 per cent, and the Colored 
 still farther, 6.23 per cent. This low percentage has been 
 corroborated by the investigations of John Koren, whose 
 conclusions are : that comparatively few negroes are habitual 
 drunkards ; that intemperance is only accountable for a 
 small part of the negro's poverty ; and that only in excep- 
 tional cases are drinking habits a barrier to steady employ- 
 ment.^ 
 
 In " shiftlessness and inefficiency " the Americans lead 
 all other well-represented nationalities, having here a per- 
 centage of 9.19, as against an average of 7.51. The Irish 
 here fall much below the average, 5.78 per cent. 
 
 " Matters of employment " vary less in relative importance 
 as between the different nationalities, and the same is true 
 of "accident" and " physical defects." Under the very im- 
 portant heading of '^ sickness " we find one decided variation. 
 The average for this cause is 22.27 per cent, and all the 
 largely represented nationalities conform quite closely to this 
 average with one exception: the cases of colored people 
 show a percentage for sickness of 39.63, a rate that comes 
 near to being the double of the average, and is the double of 
 the percentage for this cause among the Irish. 
 
 Those who know the colored people only casually or by 
 hearsay may be surprised to find the misconduct causes 
 running so low among them, while sickness as a cause is of 
 greater relative importance than in any other nationality. 
 But to one who has worked in Baltimore or Washington it 
 seems a natural result, and indeed a confirmation of the re- 
 liability of the statistics. The colored people are weak 
 physically, become sick easily, and often die almost with- 
 out visible resistance to disease. At the same time they 
 have a dread of being assisted, especially when they think 
 an institution will be recommended ; and this, together with 
 a certain apathy, will often induce them to endure great 
 
 1 Koren (Committee of Fifty), " Economic Aspects," etc., p. 176.
 
 60 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 privations rather than ask for help. Besides this, there are 
 many associations among them for mutual help, and the 
 criminal and semi-criminal men have a brutal way of making 
 their women support them. That the percentage for '' lack 
 of work," 17.42, is the lowest, and that for " insufficient 
 employment " is the highest, under these two heads, per- 
 haps reflects their hand-to-mouth way of working at odd jobs 
 rather than taking steady work. 
 
 In order to find out whether the differences we have noted 
 between the nationalities are constant for different places 
 and according to different observers, the same figures were 
 arranged by causes and cities for each nationality. On the 
 whole, there were no variations that need destroy our con- 
 fidence in the general average. 
 
 A classification in Table XI. of 4176 Boston and New 
 York cases according to the number of persons in a family, 
 and by nationality, confirms the indication of Table IV., 
 that large families is a relatively unimportant cause of 
 destitution. 
 
 Unmarried persons with no one dependent upon them are 
 not included in this table. The largest single family is 
 found among the colored people ; but the largest proportion 
 of relatively large families, those numbering from five to 
 nine persons each, is found among the Italians and the 
 Poles and Russians. The families of paupers or semi- 
 paupers usually average smaller than those of the popula- 
 tion as a whole, partly because the number among classes 
 degenerate enough to be dependent is not as large as is or- 
 dinarily supposed, partly because of a high infant mortality, 
 and partly because the families of these classes tend to 
 disintegrate rapidly, children drifting away from parents, 
 and aged parents in their turn being shaken off by adult 
 children.^ The " family," therefore, which applies for relief 
 
 1 In a study of Almshouse Women in San Francisco, it was found that 
 out of a hundred and eighty-four living children, forty were "some-
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 
 
 61 
 
 
 < ^ 
 
 •93evo 
 'ivxox 
 
 
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 62 
 
 AMERICAN CHABITIES. 
 
 is often only the fragment of a family. That large families 
 are not a principal cause of dependence is still further 
 illustrated by the experience of the Associated Charities of 
 Boston : ^ 
 
 MARRIED COUPLES: BOTH MAN AND "WOMAN 
 
 BETWEEN 20 AND 40 TEARS OF AGE. 
 
 Without Children . . . . 
 
 With One Child . . . . 
 
 With Two Children . . . 
 
 With Three Children . . 
 
 With Four Children . . . 
 
 With Five Children . . . 
 With Six or More Children 
 
 Number. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 39 
 
 12.71 
 
 
 56 
 65 
 
 18.3 
 21.3 
 
 ■70.9 
 
 57 
 
 18.6 J 
 
 
 50 
 
 16.3] 
 
 20 
 
 6.5 [28.7 
 
 18 
 
 5.9 
 
 
 The society reported that in at least two out of three of 
 these families distress was due to preventable causes, of 
 which moral delinquency was the chief. 
 
 Table XII. gives a classification of applicants for relief 
 by marital condition and nationality. 
 
 Of those applying to the charity organization societies 
 more than half are married people living together, about 
 one-half the remainder, or one-quarter of the whole, are 
 widows, and nearly one-tenth are deserted wives. In recent 
 years much attention has been given to family desertion, and 
 it is believed that it is increasing. Several studies of such 
 families have been made, notably one in 1905 by Lilian 
 Brandt, in which the typical male deserter is described as 
 "young, able-bodied, more or less dissipated, capable of 
 earning good wages, but rarely in the mood for making the 
 exertion, and above all, he is lacking in the quality which 
 
 where " ; that is, they had been separated from the mother in one way or 
 another and she no longer knew where they were. — American Statistical 
 Association, vol. iv., 1895, p. 237. 
 
 1 Twenty-third Annual Report, 1902, p. 62.
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 
 
 63 
 
 makes an obligation to others outweigh considerations of 
 personal comfort or preference." As to the consequence of 
 desertion in these 574 families, " 259 received relief amount- 
 ing to nearly f 9000 and this was a mere fraction of the 
 total; 90 of the families were broken up temporarily or 
 permanently ; 132 children were introduced to institution 
 life or boarded out. Other children were deprived of a fair 
 start in life." ^ 
 
 TABLE XII. 
 
 Cases by Marital Condition and Cities. 
 Charity Organization Society Reports. 
 
 
 New York,* 
 
 
 
 
 Boston, 
 
 Baltimobe, 
 
 New Haven, 
 
 1890-1892. 
 
 New York, 
 1S96-1900. 
 8638 Cases. 
 
 Boston, 
 
 1S99-1905. 
 5529 Cases. 
 
 
 8028 Cases. 
 
 
 
 Married 
 
 47.7 
 
 64.71 
 
 53.5 
 
 Widows 
 
 23.7 
 
 23.21 
 
 24.7 
 
 Deserted Wives 
 
 6.9 
 
 6.89 
 
 9.4 
 
 Single Women 
 
 5.6 
 
 2.39 
 
 6.6 
 
 Deserted Husbands and Widowers 
 
 4.8 
 
 2.30 
 
 2.9 
 
 Single INIen 
 
 10.6 
 
 1.02 
 
 2.9 
 
 Orphans 
 
 .3 
 
 .31 
 
 .2 
 
 Divorced 
 
 .4 
 
 .13 
 
 .7 
 
 Miscellaneous 
 
 .2 
 
 
 
 Total 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.00 
 
 100.0 
 
 * Arranged from Table XII., "Warner's 1st ed. 
 
 The small percentage of single men in later years, as shown 
 in Table XII., is due to the differentiation of charities, this 
 class being treated by other agencies than the charity or- 
 ganization societies. 
 
 1 " Five Hundred and Seventy-four Deserters and Their Families," 
 pp. 61-62.
 
 64 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 A matter which is not brought out by the tables thus far 
 given, but which is well shown by the collateral investiga- 
 tions of the different agencies, is the large number of chil- 
 dren either dragged into pauperism by the destitution of 
 their parents or entirely abandoned by them. In the in- 
 vestigation of almshouse pauperism, of course, this is not 
 brought out, as the children have been put in other institu- 
 tions, and are beyond the view of the investigator. But 
 where the cases are studied as they cross the pauper line, 
 the large number of children is striking. Of 8638 persons 
 dealt with by the New York Charity Organization Society 
 in 1896-1900, 48 per cent were under fourteen ; and in Bos- 
 ton from 1899-1905, of 5529 cases coming under the care of 
 the Associated Charities, 46 per cent were under fourteen. 
 On the whole, it may be concluded that, while the leading 
 cause of confirmed pauperism, as investigated by Mr. Booth 
 in England, is the weakness of old age, the leading cause of 
 incipient pauperism, as investigated by the American Charity 
 Organization Societies, is the weakness of childhood. 
 
 Taking this in connection with the large percentage of 
 pauperism which is constantly and everywhere attributed to 
 sickness and physical defect, we have a striking confirma- 
 tion of the conclusion reached by Dugdale in his study of 
 the Jukes. He says : — 
 
 " 1. Pauperism is an indication of weakness of some kind, either 
 youth, disease, old age, injury, or, for women, childbirth. 
 
 "2. Hereditary pauperism rests chiefly upon disease in some form, 
 tends to terminate in extinction, and may be called the sociological 
 aspect of physical degeneration." 
 
 We find, phrasing our conclusions in medical terms, that 
 the commonest exciting cause of the poverty that approaches 
 pauperism is incapacity, resulting in most chronic cases from 
 sickness or other degenerate and degenerating conditions. 
 "Weakness of some sort is the most typical characteristic 
 of the destitute classes. The predisposing causes of this
 
 CAUSES OF POVERTY. 65 
 
 degeneration and weakness are next to be sought for. A 
 physician turns from diagnosing a case to inquire for pre- 
 disposing causes, first in the habits and heredity of the in- 
 dividual, and secondly in the nature of his occupation, or 
 other conditions of life. In Chapter III. we will consider 
 some of the predisposing causes of degeneration which per- 
 tain to the individual ; and in the succeeding chapter some 
 of those which pertain to environment.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OP DEGENERATION. 
 
 In the preceding chapter we have dealt with the principal 
 causes of poverty and their relative proportions as ascertained 
 by the case-counting method. In order to gather up the 
 results of this method still more completely we shall now 
 consider personal habits and characteristics, and the influence 
 of stock and family through heredity ; that is, the charac- 
 teristics and habits of the individual himself which render 
 him incapable or likely to become so ; first, as to their nature, 
 and, finally, as to their origin. For it is to bad habits that 
 the ordinary observer attributes a large part of the misery 
 of the world ; and as immediate causes of degeneration, they 
 undoubtedly have great influence. Intemperance, that is, 
 the abuse of alcoholic drinks, has long been held to be a 
 principal cause — by many the cause — of crime, pauperism, 
 and poverty. The earlier American observers attributed 
 from 50 to 75 per cent of misery to it, but these were esti- 
 mates merely, not based on statistics.^ During the last dec- 
 ade of the nineteenth century a number of careful statistical 
 inquiries were made which reduced the factor of drink to 
 surprisingly low percentages. In Table VI. (pp. 50, 51) the 
 figures range from 20.5 per cent to 8 per cent — an average for 
 five cities of 11.8 per cent; in Professor Lindsay's table (p. 
 53) the average for New York, Boston, and Baltimore is 13.7 
 per cent. The figures of foreign tables go as low or lower. 
 
 1 De Gerando, "Bienfaisance Publique," 1839, vol. i., p. 318; Brace, 
 "Dangerous Classes of New York," 1872, pp. 05-06; Boies, "Prisoners 
 and Paupers," 1893, p. 137. See Devine, " Principles of Relief," pp. 285, 
 292, for other historical references. 
 
 66
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 67 
 
 Bohmert's tables of 77 cities of Germany (1888) give drink 
 as chief cause in only 1.3 per cent of 90,000 cases. Charles 
 Booth concluded that 14 per cent of primary poverty, 13 
 per cent of secondary poverty, and 15 per cent of pauperism 
 in workhouses was due to intemperance. Rowntree omits 
 drink altogether as an immediate cause of primary poverty, 
 but says that it is a predominant one of secondary poverty. 
 Without attempting for the present to account for the ap- 
 parent decline of the percentages of drink as a cause of 
 poverty, we may turn to a very thorough study of intem- 
 perance as related to crime, pauperism, and poverty made in 
 1896-1898 for the Committee of Fifty by John Koren.^ The 
 statistics for the section on the liquor problem in its relation 
 to poverty were secured by 33 Charity Organization Societies 
 representing the same number of cities in 18 states and the 
 District of Columbia. 
 
 The general conclusion of these figures was that of the 
 29,923 cases, 18.46 per cent owed their poverty to the 
 personal use of liquor, 2.07 per cent to the intemperate 
 habits of one or both parents, .45 per cent to the intemper- 
 ate habits of natural or legal guardians, and 7.39 per cent to 
 the intemperate habits of others, not parents or guardians. 
 The general average percentage of poverty due directly or 
 indirectly to drink was 25.06. Table XIII., rearranged 
 from Koren, shows the direct and indirect effect of the use 
 of liquor by race. 
 
 In respect to race, Table XIII. shows conclusively that 
 drink, both as a direct and indirect cause of poverty, is more 
 prevalent among the white than among the colored, almost 
 in the proportion of two to one. The figures for the seven 
 
 1 Koren, " Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem," 1899. The Com- 
 mittee of Fifty is an organization of distinguished private persons, of 
 varied religious and social vievrs, who have supplied the money, engaged 
 expert service, and published the results of a comprehensive research into 
 the liquor question. See Bibliography for the four publications already 
 issued.
 
 68 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
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 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF BEGENEBATION. 69 
 
 cities containing the largest number of colored applicants 
 are even more favorable to the negro race ; and the average 
 (7.1) corresponds quite closely to that of Professor Warner 
 (6.23) already noted. 
 
 It is generally accepted that intemperance is preeminently 
 a masculine vice; and among these applicants for relief, 
 only 12.5 per cent of women as against 22.7 per cent of 
 men have become dependent through drink. It is, however, 
 when we note the percentages of drink as an indirect cause 
 that the misery of women on account of it becomes apparent. 
 Of the female applicants, 17 per cent as compared with 3.8 
 per cent of the male applicants owed their condition to the 
 intemperate habits of others.^ 
 
 Table XIV. exhibits the intemperate habits of applicants 
 for relief by nativity. The comparison of nationalities is 
 somewhat unsatisfactory, owing to the small numbers repre- 
 sented. For instance, Poland, Italy, Russia, and Austria, 
 which show the smallest percentages of poverty due to 
 liquor, show also small total numbers. If, however, we 
 take the other countries which are represented largely, we 
 see that Ireland leads with 29 per cent and is followed by 
 Canada and Scotland with 21 per cent and England with 18 
 per cent. The native-born, of whom a majority are of foreign 
 parentage, divide the table in the middle with a percentage 
 of 17, followed by Sweden 16 per cent and Germany 14 
 per cent. It is noticeable that the order of countries is only 
 slightly altered in column 4 which represents the poverty 
 indirectly due to intemperance. 
 
 In order to ascertain the relation of intemperance to 
 pauperism Mr. Koren obtained statistics of 8420 inmates of 
 fifty institutions (mostly almshouses) in ten states. As 
 regards race, sex, and nationality, the results correspond very 
 closely to those of the investigation of applicants for relief. 
 The total number of negro paupers was only 285, and less 
 1 Koren, " Economic Aspects," etc., pp. 65-66.
 
 70 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 
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 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 71 
 
 than half as many colored as white paupers owed their 
 condition to personal nse of liquor and to the intemperate 
 habits of others. The same nationalities appear in practi- 
 cally the same order as in Table XIV., but the percentages 
 for pauperism due to personal use and intemperance of 
 others are uniformly much higher. The general average 
 percentage of pauperism due directly or indirectly to drink 
 is 37 per cent, with 5.23 per cent of the total number of 
 cases unaccounted for. 
 
 In 1895 the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics 
 undertook an investigation of the connection between 
 pauperism and drink in the state pauper institutions, the 
 results of which are corroborated on a larger scale by the 
 Committee of Fifty, as shown below : — 
 
 PAUPERISM AND INTEMPERANCE. 
 
 
 Mass. Bureait 
 
 OF Labok, 1895. 
 
 3280 Cases. 
 
 KoREN " Eco- 
 nomic Aspects," 
 1895. 
 8420 Cases. 
 
 Pauperism caused by : 
 
 (1) Personal use of liquor 
 
 (2) Intemperate habits of parents . . 
 
 (3) Intemperate habits of guardians . 
 
 (4) Intemperate habits of others . . 
 
 39.44 
 4.82 
 1.4.5 
 3.06 
 
 32.84 
 
 3.60 
 
 .27 
 
 5.31 
 
 The only comparable foreign statistics which are available 
 are those of workhouse pauperism in England.^ Charles 
 Booth found 12.6 per cent of 634 inmates at Stepney, Lon- 
 don, to have been pauperized by drink and 21.9 per cent of 
 736 inmates of St. Paucras. These j)ercentages seem very 
 small when compared with American experience, but Mr. 
 Booth himself said that it was probable that research into 
 
 1 Mr. Koren discusses German statistics of pauperism on pp. 124-125, 
 and shows that comparison is impossible.
 
 72 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 the history of these people might disclose a greater connec- 
 tion between pauperism and the public house.^ 
 
 Table XV. shows the effect of intemperance in producing 
 destitution and neglect of children. The data of 5136 cases 
 were obtained from three groups of institutions : (1) societies 
 for the prevention of cruelty to children or humane societies 
 which deal with children of the most depraved ; (2) state 
 organizations of the National Children's Home Society, under 
 whose treatment come a large number of illegitimate infants ; 
 (3) two state public schools which are, in fact, asylums for 
 orphaned and dependent children. 
 
 Although the number of colored children represented in 
 Table XV. is too small to be significant of itself, yet the 
 smaller percentage of destitution due to drink is in harmony 
 with statistics previously quoted. Comparing native-born 
 with foreign-born children, there is a difference of 6 per 
 cent in favor of the former ; comparing children of native 
 parentage with those of foreign parentage, the difference 
 rises to 13 per cent. As in the case of women, the mere 
 arithmetical fact that nearly one-half the destitution of 
 5000 children was due to the drinking habits of those hav- 
 ing charge of them does not adequately represent the con- 
 comitant misery. Irrespective of transmitted tendencies to 
 degeneration, the children of drunken parents fare badly be- 
 cause of neglect and privation. Whether the mother her- 
 self drinks, or is merely linked to a drunken husband, her 
 life during the period of gestation is almost inevitably such 
 as endangers the well-being of the child. The fact that 
 when a large part of the family income goes for liquor, other 
 branches of expenditure must be curtailed, is so obvious 
 that it only needs to be mentioned. Moreover, the irrational 
 and often brutal treatment received by children of the 
 intemperate makes right development almost impossible for 
 them. One fact brought out by the statistics of the Reg- 
 1 Booth, "Pauperism," etc., p. 11.
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OJ?* DEGENERATION. 73 
 
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 74 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 istrar General of England may be given as showing in an 
 extreme instance the perils attending child life when parents 
 drink : a much larger number of children are suffocated in 
 bed on the nights of Saturday and holidays than on other 
 nights of the week. This prompt extinguishing of infant 
 life is hardly a greater misfortune than for the child to 
 grow up with irrational guidance and the evil example of 
 drunken parents. 
 
 In addition to being ill nourished and often cruelly treated, 
 such children grow up under the influence of a degenerating 
 personality. Wilson says : — 
 
 "Typically the action induced in the brain [by alcohol] is of the 
 nature of a progi-essive paralysis, beginning with the highest level and 
 its most delicate functions, and spreading gradually downward through 
 the lower. Moral qualities and the higher processes of intelligence 
 are, therefore, first invaded." i 
 
 Children growing up under the influence of parents sub- 
 ject to such degeneration are not likely to develop the higher 
 qualities at all, since the development of such qualities comes 
 very largely from imitation. The utter lack of foresight, 
 and the impossibility of postponing present gratification 
 for the sake of future gain, is one of the pronounced char- 
 acteristics of the drunkard, and is also common among the 
 distinctly pauper class. 
 
 It has been repeatedly pointed out that the latest social 
 development, especially in the United States, tends to 
 separate the community into two classes, — the total ab- 
 stainers and the hard drinkers. The tenser nervous organi- 
 zation of the modern man is in a state of less stable 
 equilibrium than that of his progenitors, who lived largely 
 out of doors, used their muscles in heavy work, ate large 
 quantities of coarse food, and drank large quantities of 
 mildly alcoholic liquor. In America, climatic conditions 
 
 1 "Drunkenness," pp. 15-16.
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 15 
 
 intensify the tendency indicated. A dry atmosphere and 
 extremes of heat and cold produce nervous diseases vmknown 
 to European medical practice, or, at least, known here in 
 advance of their appearance in Europe.^ It is a matter of 
 common observation that the children of European immi- 
 grants usually drink either less or more than their parents, 
 and those who drink resort to the stronger liquors. 
 
 The results of the inquiries into the interrelations of 
 poverty, pauperism, and intemperance, made under the aus- 
 pices of the Committee of Fifty and presented in a most 
 condensed form in the preceding pages, are seen to occupy 
 a middle ground between the extreme views entertained by 
 the older writers and those of Booth and Warner. It is 
 not difficult, indeed, to account for the wide variations of 
 opinion. The older opinion was held at a time when there 
 was little knowledge of the social and economic causes of 
 poverty — when it was accepted as inevitable rather than 
 inquired into. Drunkenness was of all causes the most 
 obvious and the most unpleasant, and being intermingled 
 with the others, was therefore liable to be used as an ex- 
 planation of all the rest. 
 
 On the other hand, Charles Booth and Amos G. Warner, 
 representing two different types of scientific observers, were 
 profoundly impressed with the deeper causes of misery and 
 with the necessity of getting at the facts behind such 
 obvious causes as drunkenness. They were inclined con- 
 sequently to give intemperance no more than its numerical 
 value in apportioning the causes of poverty. Mr. Booth, 
 having set down as statistically true his percentages of 12.6 
 and 21.9 for drink as a cause of workhouse pauperism, ap- 
 parently felt that it did not represent the whole truth and 
 thereupon wrote that striking paragraph which has been 
 
 1 Patten, "Economic Basis of Prohibition," Annnls, vol. ii., p. 59 ff. ; 
 Beard, "Physical Future of American People," Atlantic Monthly, vol. 
 xliii., p. 718.
 
 76 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 quoted ever since as the true expression of the effect of 
 drink upon the poor : — 
 
 " Of driuk in all its combinations, adding to every trouble, under- 
 mining every effort after good, destroying the home, and cursing the 
 young lives of the children, the stories tell enough. It does not stand 
 as apparent chief cause in as many cases as sickness and old age ; but 
 if it were not for drink, sickness and old age could be better met." i 
 
 The general average of 15.98 per cent, in Table VI., in- 
 dicating quantitatively the proportion of intemperance 
 among applicants for relief, was taken from Charity Organi- 
 zation Society records, made with the purpose of showing 
 all the causes and for the use of charity workers, and the 
 indirect effect of drink was not included. Of the five 
 Charity Organization Societies which furnished Professor 
 Warner with data on the causes of poverty in 1890-1892 
 four also supplied Mr. Koren with data on the relation of 
 drink to poverty in 1896-1898. The difference in the fig- 
 ures of these societies taken in the one case incidentally to an- 
 other object, and in the other with the utmost care — some- 
 times by a specially trained person — for the sole purpose 
 of ascertaining the proportion of intemperance among ap- 
 plicants for relief, is considerable, amounting in three 
 cities to a total excess of 9 per cent, in Koren's tables. 
 This fact alone would account for the difference of 3 per 
 cent between Warner's general average of 15.2 and Koren's 
 of 18 per cent for drink as a direct cause. 
 
 DRINK AS A CAUSE OF POVERTY. 
 Charity Organization Society Records. 
 
 
 Balti- 
 more. 
 
 Buffalo. 
 
 Cincin- 
 nati. 
 
 New 
 
 York. 
 
 New 
 Haven. 
 
 Drink — Warner's Schedules 
 Drink — Koren's Schedules 
 
 9.69 
 11.3 
 
 8.1 
 21.3 
 
 11.1 
 13.7 
 
 13.66 
 19.59 
 
 15.4 
 14.4 
 
 + 1.8 
 
 + 13.2 
 
 + 2.6 
 
 + 5.9 
 
 -1.0 
 
 1 Booth, " Pauperism," pp. 140-141.
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 77 
 
 Whatever the reasons for these differences of statistics, 
 the experience of many American charity workers seems to 
 corroborate Mr. Koren's results, especially as to the indirect 
 influence of drinking habits in producing need. The fre- 
 quent use of such phrases as "a great curse and the cause 
 of great misery," " intemperance is a conspicuous factor," 
 etc., in the reports of charity workers whose phraseology is 
 otherwise restrained, indicates a strong conviction. Pro- 
 fessor Devine sums up forcibly the attitude of those who 
 are in daily contact with distress, when he says : — 
 
 " It is a conservative estimate that one-fourth of all cases of desti- 
 tution with which private agencies have to deal are fairly attributable 
 to intemperance. This estimate includes only the cases in which 
 there is an obvious connection between the use of alcohol and the 
 dependent condition in which the family is found. The question as 
 to how much should be added to cover the cases in which there is 
 only a partial or indirect responsibility is a matter for conjecture, and 
 estimates on this point are likely to differ according to the standpoint 
 of the one who makes them. It is a matter for conjecture also, and 
 estimates differ here again, as to what other evil consequences, aside 
 from poverty and destitution, are due to drink. That there is an 
 endless train of evils aside from the burden of pauperism and de- 
 pendence which it entails, cannot be gainsaid. Insanity, suicide, and 
 death in other forms result from the use of alcohol, in many instances 
 in which no question of relief arises. Cruelty, neglect, and unhappi- 
 ness result directly from the use of alcohol in families which are by 
 no means near the verge of dependence. Crimes are committed under 
 its stimulus, and demoralizing associations are formed or strengthened 
 under conditions in which the use of alcohol is an important element, 
 and it makes easier the path to vice and the indulgence of every 
 debasing appetite. Certain diseases, such as tuberculosis and pneu- 
 monia, are far more likely to attack those who are subject to alcohol- 
 ism, and it greatly impedes the recovery of those who are attacked. 
 These consequences are not exhausted in the lives of the intemperate 
 themselves, but are bequeathed to posterity in various forms of 
 degeneracy, spiritual and physical." ^ 
 
 In this paragraph Professor Devine was writing, not of 
 
 1 "Principles of Relief," pp. 144-145.
 
 78 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 confirmed inebriety, but of the effect of intemperance upon 
 those who, being on the poverty line, came intermittently 
 to the Charity Organization Societies for relief. The 
 effects of drink are most plainly traced in the classes not 
 yet pauperized. It is among artisans and those capable of 
 earning good wages that the most money is spent for beer 
 and whiskey, and the most vitality burnt out by it. Rown- 
 tree and Sherwell estimate that among the English working- 
 classes, six shillings per week represents the average 
 expenditure for drink, of families whose income ranges 
 between twenty-one and thirty shillings.^ The American 
 negroes, though relatively temperate laborers, are kept poor, 
 or at least poorer than they would otherwise be, by occasional 
 extravagance in this direction. A colored man of very 
 large experience estimates that poor "renters" in the South, 
 corresponding to laborers in the North, spend an average of 
 fifty cents a week (buying ten drinks) or about $25 a 
 year for whiskey ; that is, " One bale of five-cent cotton, 
 raised by very hard labor on three acres of land, goes to 
 whiskey. Ten bales of cotton being an average yield from 
 a one-mule farm of thirty acres in Lowndes County, the 
 renter tithes his income to the liquor seller." ^ 
 
 In enumerating the effects of intemperance it must not 
 be overlooked that it is at once an effect and a cause, a 
 symptom and a source of degeneration. In a majority of 
 cases where the drinking habit has become uncontrollable, 
 it is a symptom of deeper disorganization. Dr. Brantwaite, 
 His Majesty's Inspector under the Inebriates Act, in charge 
 of all inebriates under legal detention in England, states 
 his conviction in the following paragraph : — 
 
 "The more I see of habitual drunkards, the more I am convinced 
 that the real condition we have to study, tlie trouble we have to fight 
 and the source of all the mischief, is inherent defect in mental 
 
 1 "The Temperance Problem," p. 20. 
 
 2Koren, "Economic Aspects," etc., p. 163; see also More, " Wage-- 
 earners Budgets," p. 140.
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 79 
 
 mechanism, generally congenital, sometimes acquired. Alcohol, far 
 from being the chief cause of habitual inebriety, is merely the medium 
 which brings into prominence certain defects which might otherwise 
 have remained hidden, but for its exposing or developing influence. 
 In the abstinence of alcohol the same persons, instead of meriting the 
 term inebriate, would have proved unreliable in other ways. They 
 would have been called ne'er-do-weels, profligates, persons of lax 
 morality, excitability, or abnormally passionate individuals, persons of 
 melancholic tendencies or eccentric. I do not believe that any drunkard 
 of all the 8000 or more I have known has voluntarily and of intention 
 made himself so ; on the contrary, I am convinced that all who 
 possess a sufficiently developed mental equilibrium to appreciate the 
 seriousness of their condition have urgently and honestly desired to 
 live a sober life, and have fought to this end and failed in a struggle 
 against weakness, the strength of which a normal man is quite in- 
 capable of realizing." ^ 
 
 In corroboration of this opinion, Dr. Brantwaite presents 
 the accompanying table of 2277 inebriates committed to 
 special care, previous to 1907 : — 
 
 TABLE XVI. 
 
 Inebriates under Legal Detention : Admitted to 
 Reformatories. 
 
 Classification according to Mental State.* 
 
 
 Number. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 1. Insane — certified and sent to asylums . . 
 
 2. Very Defective — imbeciles, degenerates, 
 
 epileptics 
 
 3. Defective — as above, but less marked, 
 
 eccentric, silly, dull, senile, or subject 
 to periodical paroxysms of ungovernable 
 temper 
 
 4. Of Average Mental Capacity — on admis- 
 
 sion or after six months' detention . . 
 
 61 
 315 
 
 1060 
 
 581 
 
 16.1 
 62.6 
 
 46.5 
 37.4 
 
 Total Admissions 
 
 2277 
 
 100.0 
 
 * Il,k!., \>. 250. 
 1 Journal of Inebriety, Winter, 1907, p. 254.
 
 80 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 He concludes that in at least 62 per cent of these cases 
 mental defect or disease was the cause of their inebri- 
 ety ; that a majority of insane inebriates became alcoholic 
 as a result of their tendency to insanity, not insane as a 
 result of alcoholism ; that in the case of defective inebriates, 
 there is commonly present the same physical abnormalities 
 as are found among the feeble-minded, only in a less degree, 
 and that their drunkenness is the direct result of mental 
 defect for which they are not virtually — though legally — 
 responsible. In these cases. Dr. Brantwaite enumerates 
 three characteristic mental symptoms: an impaired moral 
 sense, imperfect control over impulse, and defective power 
 of judgment — the first being the one most likely to have 
 existed previous to drunken habits. He continues : — 
 
 " The early history of all cases where this symptom is marked has 
 justified a probability of congenital origin. Odd and peculiar from 
 birth, these persons have always seemed incapable of acting like other 
 people. There is often a history during childhood of fits, chorea, or 
 other neuroses ; as children they have proved uneducable, and as adults 
 unemployable from incapacity to learn the details of a wage-earning oc- 
 cupation. They appear to be unable to tell the truth and cannot be 
 made to see any reason why they should do so. They are filthy in 
 habits, and require supervision, even force to insure a moderate amount 
 of cleanliness when under detention. They do not care in the least 
 for the opinion of others in matters relating to conduct, nor can they 
 be induced to see any reason why dictation from others should be 
 obeyed." i 
 
 The number of habitual drunkards is, however, compara- 
 tively small, and destitution occasioned by them, though 
 serious enough, is not the real menace to society. On the 
 other hand it must be acknowledged that by far the larger 
 proportion of those who drink do not fall into distress. It 
 is only when it accompanies idleness, incompetence, sickness, 
 neglect of family obligations, that the effects of casual and 
 
 1 Similar descriptions are given by Palmer, "Inebriety," pp. 24, 27; 
 Wilson, "Drunkenness," p. 53.
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 81 
 
 social drinking become obviously destructive. When we 
 know why the average man drinks, we shall be on the road 
 to thorough temperance reform. Does the laboring man spend 
 his margin in drink because of exhaustion in his trade, or 
 because he has nowhere to go except to the saloon, or because 
 it is the only cheap and pleasurable mental stimulus open to 
 him ? Mr. Booth mentions that the bicycle has been a pre- 
 ventive of drinking among clerks in London. To sum up : 
 intemperance, as a cause of dependence, is symptomatic ; on 
 the one hand of defect and deterioration of personal character, 
 on the other of those wasting, monstrous, and oppressive 
 social conditions which produce abnormal appetites and 
 antisocial conduct. 
 
 In the tables of the causes of poverty, the column next to 
 the one giving the percentages for intemperance includes 
 under "other moral defects" the very small number of 
 cases in which poverty has been traced directly to " immo- 
 rality." This term is here used to stand for sexual licen- 
 tiousness, or other perversion of the sexual instinct. But 
 the small number of cases of poverty directly attributable 
 to this factor in no wise reflects its importance. Careful 
 observers believe it to be a more constant and fundamental 
 cause of degeneration than intemperance. It certainly pro- 
 duces degeneration of a more or less pronounced type in a 
 much larger number of persons. It persists almost to the 
 end in the most degenerate stock, while at the same time it 
 is operative among the healthier classes. A reference to 
 the accounts quoted later on, describing the habits of the 
 Rooneys, the Jukes, and the Ishmaels, will show that in 
 these distinctly pauper families sexual vice plays a part in 
 degradation more important than intemperance. 
 
 The medical profession has given us even less of scientific 
 exposition of the degeneration which results from perversion 
 of the sexual instincts than of that which comes from the 
 abuse of stimulants and narcotics. The changes which must
 
 82 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 undoubtedly take place in the structure of the nervous and 
 circulatory systems, as a consequence of self-abuse or sexual 
 excess, have not been sufficiently studied. Venereal disease 
 has been treated at length, but the effect upon the physical 
 and mental man of vice as vice has been neglected. The 
 great bulk of literature existing upon the subject is simply 
 the output of advertising quacks. 
 
 No boy among boys, or man among men, can have failed 
 to have evidence thrust upon him showing that a very great 
 amount of vitality is burnt out by the fires of lust. Among 
 the rougher classes of day laborers upon railroads, in 
 quarries, and even upon the farms, the whole undercurrent 
 of thought, so far as conversation gives evidence of it, is 
 thoroughly base and degrading. In many cases inefficiency 
 certainly results from the constant preoccupation of the 
 mind with sensual imaginings. At the present day, a given 
 amount of such preoccupation will diminish a man's indus- 
 trial efficiency more than ever before, because of the increas- 
 ing importance of the mental element in all work. If a man 
 has brute strength, he can shovel dirt quite passably, even 
 though his thoughts are elsewhere. But most of the occupa- 
 tions of the present require alertness and sustained attention. 
 Railroad day laborers, and others of a similar class, are very 
 commonly kept from rising in the industrial scale by their 
 sensuality, and it is this and the resulting degeneration that 
 finally converts many of them into lazy vagabonds. The 
 inherent uncleanness of their minds prevents them from 
 rising above the rank of day laborers, and finally incapaci- 
 tates them even for that position. It may also be suggested 
 that the modern man has a stronger imagination than the 
 man of a few hundred years ago, and that sensuality destroys 
 him the more rapidly. A highly developed nervous system 
 makes him a more powerful man, if it is properly used, but 
 it enables him to destroy himself more promptly if that be 
 his tendency.
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 83 
 
 In addition to the direct effect of the perversion of the 
 sexual instincts must be reckoned the ravages of venereal 
 disease. Among the degraded class it is accounted a mark 
 of manlinesss to have had syphilis until exposure to it 
 is no longer dangerous. From 25 to 30 per cent of 
 the Juke family were tainted with it. It is this disease 
 cooperating with drunkenness that finally brings the pros- 
 titute and her consort through the hospital to the alms- 
 house. There are probably few almshouses in the country 
 where some of the inmates are not paupers in part because 
 of its effects upon them ; it is not easy to visit a foundling 
 hospital of any size, or a children's hospital, where this 
 disease is not especially excluded, without finding children 
 in bitter and hopeless misery because of congenital syphilis. 
 The doctors administer remedies which give temporary re- 
 lief, but the doctors themselves often express a belief that 
 the best thing that can be hoped for such children is an early 
 death. 
 
 The following statements made by high scientific authority 
 and published for the information of teachers by the Ameri- 
 can Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis sufficiently 
 describe the extent and the effects of venereal disease in 
 this country : — 
 
 " Syphilis is estimated by different authorities as affecting from 
 5 to 18 per cent of the whole population. It is usually very slowly de- 
 veloped, and the final stages may appear as late as fifty or sixty years 
 after infection. It is a curable disease if properly treated for the nec- 
 essary length of time. That the later lesions are so common is because 
 adequate treatment is often not received, which is of the greatest 
 consequence, since syphilis is the one disease inherited in full virulence. 
 ' Gonorrhoea is one of the most widespread and devious of transmis- 
 sible diseases and more than any other a cause of chronic ill-health and 
 permanent disability ' (Osier) . This disease, too, is curable if treat- 
 ment is begun early and persisted in long enough and with suflBcient 
 skill. Beyond a certain stage in both sexes there is no cure, although 
 in some cases the possibility of transmission ceases."
 
 84 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 "The larger proportion of pelvic troubles among women and of 
 surgery of the pelvic organs is due to gonorrhoea ; probably oue-half 
 of childless marriages and of ' one-child families ' are due to this cause. 
 It is certain that a large proportion of abortions and miscarriages are 
 due to syphilis ; also a considerable percentage of early mortality, in- 
 ferior mentality, degeneracy, and insanity. We have more than 10,000 
 totally blind from gonorrhoea ; this does not include those partially 
 blind from gonorrhoea and syphilis. "^ 
 
 The social evil and the diseases resulting from it have 
 been recognized as corrupting and degenerative forces in 
 society for many centuries, but in modern times there has 
 grown up what has been called " a conspiracy of silence " 
 on the part of the press, the clergy, public educators, and 
 even of physicians concerning them. In spite of the fact 
 that these diseases are as virulent and more widespread than 
 smallpox, or leprosy, and that their ultimate victims are 
 innocent women and children, no measures are taken to pre- 
 vent their inception or their dissemination. 
 
 In the fall of 1900, the city of New York was startled by 
 discoveries of the extent and flagrancy of offences against 
 morality and decency in certain districts. At a citizens' 
 meeting a Committee of Fifteen was appointed to institute 
 an inquiry, publish the facts, promote legislation, and suggest 
 measures for lessening the allurements and incentives to 
 vice and crime. Their report took the form of an extensive 
 study of the history of the regulation of vice by Professor 
 Alvin S. Johnson, concluding with an outline of a policy for 
 the control of the social evil in New York.^ At about the 
 same time the New York Tenement House Commissioners 
 published in their report an account of prostitution as a 
 tenement-house evil.^ The coincidence of these revelations, 
 with an unusual awakening of interest in venereal diseases 
 
 1 Educational Pamphlet No. 2, " Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophy- 
 laxis," p. 7. Similar facts in Morrow, " Social Diseases." 
 
 2 "The Social Evil," preface, pp. v-vii, 1902. 
 
 3 De Forest and Veiller, vol. ii., pp. 15-25, 1903.
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 85 
 
 among the medical profession both in Europe and America, 
 resulted in the formation of the American Society of Sanitary 
 and Moral Prophylaxis in 1905.^ For the first time, in this 
 country, this subject is being studied and discussed by lay- 
 men as well as physicians of the highest standing without 
 hesitation and without concealment. 
 
 Professor Johnson shows that vice, so far from being a 
 constant and invariable element in social life, has varied 
 widely at different periods in response to social, economic, 
 and religious changes, and has a direct relation to war, 
 commercial disturbances, congestion of population, and em- 
 ployment. He infers that since the causes of vice do not 
 operate with uniform force, it is probable that even if vice 
 cannot be eradicated, it cati nevertheless be controlled and 
 therefore limited. Modern prostitution is shaped by the 
 industrial and social conditions of city life — the masculine 
 factor made up of the army of unmarried workers, the 
 feminine factor, of girls and women who have made " a 
 quasi-voluntary choice of prostitution as a means of liveli- 
 hood." The conditions which develop masculine vice are 
 complex and intimately connected with the cityward move- 
 ment of population. The country boy, already informed 
 by the vulgar talk of older men, goes to the city ; his in- 
 come for some years will be too small to marry upon ; his 
 interests are usually self-centred ; the cheap amusements 
 open to him are generally more or less suggestive and he is 
 influenced continually by the prevalent theory that the sex 
 instinct must be satisfied for the sake of health. At the 
 same time the principal check upon conduct — the opinion 
 of one's neighbors — is lacking, while the allurements of 
 vice are constantly present. 
 
 As for the feminine element, there is a small, probably 
 very small, number who are sexual perverts ; but Professor 
 Johnson declares that the victim of force or fraud, or of 
 1 "Transactions," etc., vol. i., 1906.
 
 86 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 adverse social and economic conditions, soon reaches a 
 point where she cannot be distinguished from the congenital 
 pervert. By far the larger number of prostitutes were 
 originally not different from normal women; one type is 
 thus described : — 
 
 "There is a large class of women who may be said to have been 
 trained for prostitution from earliest childhood. Foundlings and 
 orphans and the offspring of the miserably poor, they grow up in 
 wretched tenements, contaminated by constant familiarity with vice 
 in its lowest forms. Without training, mental or moral, they remain 
 ignorant and disagreeable, slovenly and uncouth, good for nothing in 
 the social and economic organism. When half matured, they fall the 
 willing victims of their male associates and inevitably drift into 
 prostitution." ^ 
 
 Another section consists of those whose wages are often 
 not enough for a living, much less to afford any pleasure. 
 These are the " occasional prostitutes " which are said to 
 outnumber the permanent class in Berlin. A third class, 
 more common in American cities, consists of those attracted 
 by the appearance of luxury and ease of the life of a mis- 
 tress and disinclined to the low-paid and monotonous labor 
 which alone they can perform. These two latter sections 
 without resources or industrial competence are inordinately 
 desirous of marriage, and are, therefore, the more easily 
 induced to become mistresses, or seduced under promise of 
 marriage. It is most significant that not less than one- 
 fourth of the prostitutes in New York City have been 
 domestic servants — a class of workers who have no nor- 
 mal home life or pleasures of their own and who must go 
 upon the street to be courted.^ 
 
 In the discussion of remedial measures it is customary 
 to enumerate only three ways of dealing with the social 
 evil — absolute freedom, entire prohibition, and reglemen- 
 
 1 " The Social Evil," p. 10. 
 
 2 A careful analysis of the different classes of prostitutes in London is 
 found in Booth, "Life and Labor," final volume, pp. 121-131.
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 87 
 
 tatiou. The first is not to be tolerated in modern society ; 
 the second has never been successfully enforced, even sup- 
 posing that people could be made virtuous by law ; and 
 thus there is apparently left only the system of regulation 
 which generally prevails in Europe. There is, in fact, a 
 fourth measure termed the " moral control " of vice which 
 partakes of the essence of both prohibition and regulation. 
 The object of reglementation is to check disease, and its 
 essential features are the periodical examination of the 
 prostitute and treatment in lock hospitals for venereal 
 diseases.^ Aside from the legal difficulties which would 
 arise in this country if the prostitute would not volunta- 
 rily submit to examination and treatment, there is the far 
 greater one of suppressing clandestine prostitution. In 
 those cities of Europe where reglementation is most effec- 
 tively organized, the clandestine and the unregistered women 
 far outnumber those under the control of the Morals police. 
 Moreover, the public prostitute is not the only or even the 
 chief source of contagion. It is generally conceded that 
 the clandestine prostitute is the more dangerous from a 
 sanitary standpoint, and Dr. Prince A. Morrow says of the 
 masculine factor : — 
 
 "The health officer of a port might as well attempt to prevent the 
 importation of infectious disease from a plague infected vessel by quar- 
 antining the infected women while permitting the infected men to go 
 free." 2 
 
 Nor does European experience show that reglementation 
 has been to any considerable extent effective in its primary 
 aim of checking disease. Professor Johnson, quoting the 
 most trustworthy authorities, finally concludes that they 
 claim for it " merely a modicum of good, or look upon it as 
 a stock upon which really useful control may be grafted."^ 
 
 1 For description of reglementation in Paris, Berlin, and other European 
 cities, see " The Social Evil," Chap. III. and Chap. IV. 
 
 2 " Social Diseases," p. 334. 3 " The Social Evil," p. 134.
 
 88 AMEBIC AN CHARITIES. 
 
 Without pursuing further the results of foreign experi- 
 ments, it is enough to say that reglementation is wholly 
 impracticable for the reason that an American community 
 would be hostile to it. The Anglo-Saxon attitude is illus- 
 trated in the English Contagious Diseases Acts in 1866-1877 
 and the experiment in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1870-1874, 
 which were both overthrown by the extreme opposition of 
 public opinion. Even if practicable and desirable, regie- 
 mentation involves the arrest of any woman on suspicion, 
 a degree of arbitrary police power, an interference with 
 personal liberty, and a fundamental injustice, which would 
 not be tolerated in this country. 
 
 Under the title of " Moral Control," the Committee of 
 Fifteen, and the leaders in the movement for Prophylaxis, 
 have agreed upon certain preventive and ameliorative 
 measures, based upon the elements of agreement in all 
 parties, and making moral rather than sanitary considera- 
 tions of paramount importance. The Committee of Fifteen 
 recommends : (1) Strenuous efforts to prevent in the tene- 
 ment houses the overcrowding which they believe to be the 
 prolific source of sexual immorality ; (2) the provision of 
 purer and more elevating forms of amusement to supplant 
 the attractions which stimulate sensuality ; (3) the im- 
 provement of the material conditions of the wage-earning 
 class, especially of young wage-earning women ; and finally 
 they regard a better system of moral education as an im- 
 perative necessity. They point out that in the whole of 
 Greater New York there were in 1902 only twenty-six 
 hospital beds available for women suffering from venereal 
 diseases and recommend an increase of such facilities on 
 grounds of public health. They recommend further that 
 minors who are notoriously debauched be confined in asy- 
 lums and reformatories; and above all, they recommend 
 a change in the attitude of the law, Avhich at present re- 
 gards prostitution as a crime. On this point the Commit-. 
 tee declares : —
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 89 
 
 "If we are ever to escape from the present impossible conditions, it 
 seems imperative to draw the distinction sharply between sin and 
 crime. ... A sin is not less odious because it is not treated as a 
 crime. Sins may even be incomparably more heinous than offences 
 which the law visits with punishment. Nevertheless, some of the most 
 grievous sins are not subjected to legal penalties, simply because it is 
 recognized that such penalties cannot be enforced, and a law on the 
 statute book that cannot be enforced is a whip in the hands of the 
 blackmailer. Corruption in the police force can never be extirpated 
 until this prolific source of it is stopped."! 
 
 The acceptance of these recommendations as a programme 
 of action involves driving prostitution Tvholly from tene- 
 ment houses and the homes of the poor ; repressing all 
 obtrusive manifestations of prostitution as a public nui- 
 sance ; and the creation of a special and select body of 
 Morals Police, analogous to sanitary police, to exercise the 
 duties of repression and surveillance. It does not contem- 
 plate the suppression of scattered houses of ill-fame because 
 the Committee believe this to be at present impracticable. 
 
 Professor Johnson suggests the prohibition of women in 
 saloons and in dance-halls, wherever immorality becomes 
 conspicuous ; that citizens or parents should be able to 
 bring complaint against tenants suspected of harboring 
 vice ; the extension of public education, especially to fit 
 young girls for more efficient lines of industry; and, for 
 the protection of the family, a requirement of a health 
 certificate for both parties, before a marriage license may be 
 issued. Dr. Prince A. Morrow not only concurs in all these 
 proposals, but goes farther. He would penalize the trans- 
 mission of venereal disease on the same grounds that 
 fornication and spitting in public places are forbidden. 
 He points out that venereal diseases, unlike smallpox, for 
 instance, are transmitted by a voluntary act; and he con- 
 cludes that whether communicated through culpable igno- 
 rance, or criminal imprudence, their transmission should be 
 1 "The Social Evil," p. 177.
 
 90 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 punishable. Dr. Morrow thinks the entering wedge of 
 social control would be the compulsory notification of 
 these diseases by physicians as of other contagious dis- 
 eases (without the name of the patient) and enforced isola- 
 tion. But he chiefly emphasizes, as do all other recent 
 American writers, the necessity for the dissemination of 
 knowledge and education in self-control, among the young. 
 Since the majority of prostitutes fall before the age of 
 eighteen, and a majority of infected men are infected before 
 twenty-one, the responsibility of parents, and of society, is 
 infinitely greater than that of these ignorant and immature 
 individuals. The far-off remedy lies in the social ostracism 
 of the libertine, and the decline of the double standard for 
 men and women. 
 
 After drink-crave and sensuality, we might enumerate a 
 large number of characteristics or habits which result from 
 and result in a tendency to degenerate. On the side of ap- 
 petites would be the craving for opium, and for various 
 kinds of unwholesome food. On the side of defects, would 
 be all those sufficiently pronounced to have been enu- 
 merated in the table of causes, and in addition the mental 
 incapacity to judge wisely in the ordinary business affairs 
 of life. This last is one of the most vexatious causes of 
 poverty with which the ordinary friendly visitor for a char- 
 ity organization society has to deal. It sometimes mani- 
 fests itself in the form of extravagance, but oftener in pure 
 blundering, which does not even bring the satisfaction of 
 temporary indulgence. " Against stupidity the gods them- 
 selves are powerless." A proverbial saying, which has a 
 very direct bearing on the subject, asserts that "Poor folks 
 have poor ways." This cause is widely operative; yet 
 writers upon social pathology seldom give it distinct treat- 
 ment, apparently thinking that it is an individual and not 
 a social phenomenon. The social results of it, however, are 
 not to be ignored. The development of modern industries
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 91 
 
 puts upon the judgment of individuals an ever increasing 
 burden. Tiie breaking down of the barriers of custom, the 
 rapid changes in the methods of industry, the increasing 
 amount of purchasing to be done to obtain family supplies, 
 the increased need of wise bargaining in the selling of ser- 
 vices, the extension of the borrowing habit both for good 
 and evil : these and a hundred other features of modern 
 industry tend to add to sobriety and industry as prerequi- 
 sites of industrial success, a further requisite — that of good 
 judgment, and a judgment that acts not only surely but 
 promptly. From the proprietary farmer all the way down 
 to the disease-burdened man who decides whether or not he 
 will go to a hospital, mistaken judgments are constantly 
 pushing people toward and across the pauper line. One of 
 the commonest mistakes is an utter failure to appreciate in 
 advance the burden of a debt at compound interest. The 
 chattel mortgage shark, the pawnbroker, and the " instal- 
 ment plan" houses thrive because of this failure.^ 
 
 Allied to craving on the one hand and to lack of judg- 
 ment on the other are gambling and speculation, of which 
 Mr. Booth says that they are irrepressible and only to be 
 stopped by changing human nature. In the San Francisco 
 almshouse were found several working women whose sav- 
 ings had all gone in speculation in mining stocks, and 
 among the men a considerably larger number. Betting on 
 the races, buying lottery tickets, and gambling may not ap- 
 pear in the tabulated causes of poverty, but like drink 
 they consume a large portion of the margin which would 
 serve to lift the family out of poverty. 
 
 Shiftlessness and inefficiency, the last of the personal 
 characteristics to which special reference need be made, is 
 due to a variety of defects : it may be lack of judgment, 
 stupidity, lack of ambition ; in not a few cases to lack of 
 
 1 Brown, "Development of Thrift," Chap. I. ; Ward, " Psychic Factors 
 of Civilization," p. 169 ff.
 
 92 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 proper training. Often it seems to be the manifestation of 
 undervitalization simply, which in turn may go back to bad 
 heredity, sickness, malnutrition, or bad habits. Whatever 
 its origin, it manifests itself in general incompetence, in 
 lack of the New England faculty of getting along, in want 
 of persistence, in a chronic " ill-luck." A Boston district 
 agent well describes these general incompetents : — 
 
 " They are not intelligent enough or strong enough or skilful enough 
 or energetic enough to do work that employers can afford to pay a 
 living wage for or to manage their own income in such a fashion as to 
 make both ends meet ; the men and women who are unable to do the 
 simplest thing efficiently, who are unable to spend a single dollar 
 wisely ; the men and women who go ' slatting ' through life, who are 
 always thinking they can do what they cannot do, or who do not half 
 try to do the things they are set to do — these are society's burden." ^ 
 
 As we have alread}'" pointed out in discussing unemploy- 
 ment, the tendency of intermittent and irregular work is to 
 produce a progressive deterioration. The weightiest charge 
 which many vagabonds might bring against the modern in- 
 dustrial organization is that they have become what they 
 are through the effect of involuntary idleness ; for idleness, 
 voluntary or involuntary, tends to produce a degeneration, 
 physical, mental, and moral, which perpetuates the condi- 
 tion that begets it. Besides intermittent labor, none of the 
 causes of inefficiency, not even sickness, says Professor De- 
 vine, is so important as defective education — the entire 
 lack of training for some and the wrong kind of training 
 for others.^ 
 
 Thus far we have not needed to inquire whether the evil 
 propensities and bad habits which result in degeneration 
 have come through free choice on the part of the individual, 
 or have been the result of foreordination in the theological 
 or the scientific sense of the term. We have been concerned 
 
 1 Report of Associated Charities, Boston, litOi, p. 24. 
 
 2 " Charities and the Commons," vol. xv., p. 150 (1905).
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 93 
 
 simply with their interactions and their effects. Ignoring 
 all discussion as to the freedom of the will in any absolute 
 sense of the term, it is our present business to trace causes 
 just as far as they are found to be traceable. As an insur- 
 ance company is justified in refusing to take a risk upon the 
 life of a man who comes of a sickly family, or is engaged 
 in some peculiarly dangerous occupation, so the student of 
 social science is justified in concluding that certain in- 
 fluences of heredity and environment have an effect 
 upon the character of the individual that is often mani- 
 fest, and that is frequently to some extent measurable. 
 
 From the time of birth, or even from the time of concep- 
 tion, the characteristics of race and of sex are fixed; and 
 these are not without influence on the industrial history of 
 the individual, as our tables show. Beyond this, every man 
 has his own individuality — the combination of physical 
 and mental peculiarities which make him a different indi- 
 vidual from every other. Since, by the law of sex, he has 
 twice as many ancestors as his father or mother had, he 
 could inherit anything which either of them had received. 
 His share from both will form a sort of mosaic, composed 
 of their species and race characters added together and 
 divided by two, plus an approximate half of the personal 
 peculiarities of each. 
 
 Dr. David Starr Jordan, in a chapter entitled " The 
 Heredity of Richard Roe," has concisely and admirably 
 stated what is known of heredity, and we shall quote from 
 him certain paragraphs which have a direct bearing on the 
 question of the relative influence of heredity and environ- 
 ment in the production of social degeneration.^ 
 
 "So in the chromatin of his two parent cells Richard Roe finds his 
 potentialities, his capacities, and his limitations. But latent in these 
 are other capacities and other limitations handed down from earlier 
 
 1 The Arena, June, 1897; also reprinted in "Footnotes to Evolution," 
 Chap. V.
 
 94 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 generations. Each grandfather and grandmother has some claim on 
 Richard lloe, and, behind these, dead hands from older graves are still 
 beckoning in his direction. . . . The bluer the blood, that is, the 
 more closely alike these ancestors are, the gi'eater will be the common 
 factor, ... in perfect thorough-breeding the individual should have 
 no peculiarities at all. . . . Weakness or badness is more often 
 thoroughbred than strength or virtue. The bluest of blood may run 
 in the veins of the pauper as well as in those of the aristocrat. . . . 
 Too narrow a line of descent tends to intensify weakness. Vigor and 
 originality come from the mingling of variant elements. ..." 
 
 "Again, at the time of Richard Roe's birth, the formula of his 
 father was slowly changed under the reaction toward activity or 
 toward idleness, resulting from his efforts and his environment. 
 Changes constantly arise from the experiences of life, the stress of 
 environment . . . the growth through voluntary effort, the depres- 
 sion from involuntary work or idleness, the degeneration caused by 
 stimulants or vice . . . and each may have left its mark on him. 
 Through these influences every man is changed from what he was or 
 what he might have been to what he is." 
 
 " It seems to be true that any great physical weakness on the part 
 of Richard Roe's parents would tend to lower his constitutional vigor, 
 whatever the origin of such weakness might be. If so, such weakness 
 might appear as a large deficiency in his power of using his equip- 
 ment. His vital momentum would be small. It may be, too, that 
 any high degree of training, as in music or mathematics, might de- 
 termine in the offspring the line of least resistance for the movement 
 of his faculties. ..." 
 
 "There are many phenomena of transmitted qualities that cannot 
 be charged to heredity. Just as a sound mind demands a sound body, 
 so does a sound child demand a sound mother. Bad nutrition before 
 as well as after birth may neutralize the most valuable inheritance 
 within the germ-cell. Even the father may transmit weakness in 
 development as a handicap to hereditary strength. The many physi- 
 cal vicissitudes between conception and birth may determine the rate 
 of early growth or the impetus of early development. In a sense the 
 first impulse of life comes from such sources outside the germ-cell and 
 therefore outside of heredity. . . . The plan of Richard Roe's life as 
 prepared at birth admits of many deviations. . . . Experiences of 
 life will tend to reduce or destroy some of these elements. Some of
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 95 
 
 them will be systematically fostered or checked by those who deter- 
 mine Eichard Roe's education. . . . The Ego, or self, in the life of 
 Richard Roe, is the sum of his inheritance bound together by the re- 
 sultant of the consequences of the thoughts and deeds which have 
 been performed by him and perhaps by others also. . . . The greater 
 heredity is the heredity made by ourselves. . . . With all this, we 
 may be sure that the stream of Richard Roe's life will not rise much 
 above its fountain. He will have no powers far beyond those poten- 
 tial in his ancestors. But who can tell what powers are latent in 
 these ? It takes peculiar conditions to bring any group of qualities 
 into general notice. The men who are famous in spite of an unknown 
 ancestry are not necessarily different from this ancestry. . . . Real 
 greatness is as often the expression of the wisdom of the mother as of 
 anything the father may have been or done." 
 
 For the purpose of studying hereditary tendencies toward 
 degeneration the points to be especially noted are, then, what 
 Richard Roe receives from his parents of racial and personal 
 qualities, plus the degree of vital momentum determined by 
 the nutrition and conditions of his mother during the period 
 of gestation ; and after birth, the environment which his 
 parents and society provide for him. The tendency of chil- 
 dren to suffer from certain varieties of bodily and mental 
 weakness the same as or analogous to those of their family 
 stock has long been recognized. Beyond this, occult charac- 
 teristics, tending to inefficiency and therefore to pauperism, 
 are believed to be transmitted, although their exact nature 
 either in parent or child has not been described. 
 
 The transmission of hereditary tendencies to degeneration 
 can most easily be traced where some palpable defect is both 
 the result and evidence of degeneration. In his book on 
 " The Marriages of the Deaf in America," Edward Allen 
 Fay has collected with thoroughness and caution the avail- 
 able facts which show the transmissible character of deaf- 
 ness ; and has corroborated the essential conclusions of 
 Professor Alexander Graham Bell. Table XVII. gives the 
 facts collected by him.
 
 96 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
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 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 97 
 
 Mr. Fay concludes that the married deaf have married 
 deaf rather than hearing partners, chiefly from the sym- 
 pathy engendered by their condition and only secondarily 
 because of opportunities for acquaintance afforded by the 
 schools for the deaf. On the whole, the marriages of these 
 persons are slightly less productive than ordinary marriages, 
 but their offspring are much more liable to be deaf than those 
 of ordinary marriages in the proportion of 8.6 to .01 per cent. 
 
 The table shows that congenitally deaf persons, whether 
 they are married to one another, to adventitiously deaf, or 
 to hearing partners, are far more liable to have deaf off- 
 spring than adventitiously deaf persons, the percentage of 
 deaf children of the one ranging from 6 to 25 per cent, in 
 the other from 2.3 to 4.3 per cent. Deaf persons having 
 deaf relatives, however they are married, and hearing per- 
 sons having deaf relatives and married to deaf partners, are 
 very liable to have deaf offspring. The marriages of the 
 deaf most liable to result in deaf offspring are those in which 
 the partners are related by consanguinity. The extremes 
 of liability are found in the two classes last named in the 
 table, i.e. both partners adventitiously deaf without deaf 
 relatives having .3 per cent deaf children, while the con- 
 sanguineous partners had 30 per cent deaf children.^ 
 
 Dr. Strahan regards congenital deafness as a sign of 
 general decay, which, if deepened by intermarriage, must 
 extinguish the family ; ^ and he names as transmissible by 
 inheritance — and as at once results, evidences, and causes 
 of degeneration — a list of diseases such as insanity, imbe- 
 cility, epilepsy, drunkenness, deaf-mutism, blindness, cancer, 
 scrofula, tuberculosis, gout, rheumatism, and instinctive 
 criminality. While his facts do not support all of his con- 
 tentions, they show the interdependence of many of these 
 
 1 " Digest of Fay's Conclusions," Chap. VII. 
 
 2 " Marriage and Disease," p. 171; see also Boies, "Prisoners and 
 Paupers," pp. 281-282, where a number of Strahan's diagrams of families 
 are reproduced.
 
 98 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 diseases. The evidence of other medical men as to the 
 transmissibility of certain neurotic tendencies is unanimous. 
 Dr. Samuel G. Howe, in 1848, collected information showing 
 not only the hereditary tendency to idiocy in certain fami- 
 lies, but also the interchangeability of this and other forms 
 of degeneration. 
 
 TABLE XVIII. 
 
 Idiocy in Massachusetts. 
 
 Condensed from Howe's Report, 1848. 
 
 Idiotic Persons. 
 
 Idiocy 
 Congen- 
 ital. 
 
 Idiocy 
 Super- 
 vened. 
 
 Total. 
 
 Of decidedly Scrofulous Families . . . 
 
 Parents Habitual Drunkards 
 
 One or Both Parents Idiotic or Insane . . 
 
 Parents advised to marry because of Ill- 
 health 
 
 Parents Near Relatives (having One to Five 
 Idiotic Children) 
 
 Some Relatives Idiotic or Insane .... 
 
 Who have One to Five Near Relatives Idiotic 
 
 Who have Five to Ten Near Relatives Idiotic 
 
 Who have Ten to Nineteen Near Relatives 
 Idiotic 
 
 355 
 99 
 
 12 
 
 17 
 
 177 
 
 71 
 
 6 
 
 4 
 
 64 
 15 
 
 34 
 13 
 
 419 
 
 114 
 50 
 
 12 
 
 17 
 
 211 
 
 84 
 
 6 
 
 4 
 
 Parents having Two to Four Idiotic Children 
 
 Parents having Five to Nine Idiotic Children 
 
 Parents having Eleven Idiotic Children 
 
 Families in which All the Children of One 
 
 Marriage were Idiotic or Very Puny, 
 
 while Those of Another Marriage, by the 
 
 Surviving Healthy Parent with a Healthy 
 
 Person, were Sound in Body and Mind . 
 
 61 
 3 
 
 5 
 1 
 
 66 
 3 
 1 
 
 15 
 
 Idiotic Persons who are Parents .... 
 
 
 
 21 
 
 Table XIX., condensed from Dr. Barr's recent work, shows 
 these same facts more conclusively.
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 99 
 
 
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 100 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 This table shows that from 40 to 65 per cent of all 
 feeble-mindedness is due to hereditary neuroses, from 8 
 to 14 per cent to abnormal conditions of the mother during 
 gestation — a total of 55 to 71 per cent due to prenatal 
 inJBueuces. Dr. Barr explains that the divergence in the 
 English and American cases between the percentage at- 
 tributed to hereditary causes and abnormal condition of the 
 mother is more apparent than real. On this point he 
 says : — 
 
 "Poverty, hard work, not infrequent intemperance, and many 
 anxieties added to the sufferings of the period (of gestation) might so 
 press upon the mother as for tlie time to reduce lier to a state of quasi- 
 imbecility. If to this slie sliould have brought to her office of mother- 
 hood exhausted vitality, such a condition would provide fruitful soil 
 for such a development of neuroses latent in the mother, as to consti- 
 tute in her offspring almost a direct inheritance of defect." 
 
 Dr. Barr regards tuberculosis as a preeminent cause of 
 defect, in that it lessens all the physical forces and tends to 
 cooperate with any latent neuroses, thus conducing to a 
 condition of " poverty of being " more to be dreaded than 
 the inheritance of actual disease. He finally sums up his 
 view as follows : ^ 
 
 " The transmission of imbecility is at once the most insidious and 
 the most aggressive of the degenerative forces, attacking alike the 
 physical, mental, and moral nature, enfeebling the judgment and the 
 will, while exaggerating the sexual impulses and the perpetuation of 
 an evil growth ; a growth too often parasitic, ready to unite with any 
 neuroses it may encounter, and from its very sluggishness and inertia 
 refusing to be shaken off, lying latent it may be, but sure to reappear, 
 as Haller recounts, through a century to the fourth and fifth genera- 
 tion." 
 
 Dr. Ireland thinks that idiocy is of all mental derange- 
 ments the most frequently propagated by descent, and agrees 
 with Dr. Barr that the tubercular diathesis is the influence 
 most likely to conduce to it. He points out that the heredi- 
 1 " Mental Defectives," pp. 95, 102.
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 101 
 
 tary predisjjosition alone is, in most cases, insufficient to be 
 the cause of idiocy without the assistance of other influences, 
 and that these influences act with unusual force upon individ- 
 uals of a neurotic tendency, and they probably determine 
 whether the resultant disease is to be insanity, epilepsy, or 
 deafness, or some other nervous disorder.^ Again, we learn that 
 the causes of congenital deafness and of epilepsy aremuchthe 
 same as those of idiocy. If we turn to the authorities on epi- 
 lepsy, we find them reiterating heredity as the chief cause in 
 from one-fourth to one-half of all cases ; and as we have al- 
 ready seen. Dr. Brantwaite adds inebriety to the list of these 
 interdependent neuroses.^ 
 
 Mr. F. H. Wines, in discussing a class of unbalanced peo- 
 ple on the border line of degeneracy, declares that there is 
 a clear connection between crime, pauperism, insanity, and 
 vice of all sorts, and that all persons of these classes have 
 one characteristic in common : incapacity to govern them- 
 selves — to hold their appetites, instincts, and passions in 
 firm check under the guidance of sound judgment. These 
 unbalanced people are unfit for social life, they cannot make 
 the necessary adjustments, and often make themselves in- 
 tolerable to others. He finally concludes : " Self-indulgence, 
 egotistic self-gratification, is the root of bitterness from which 
 springs every social ill. It is the mother of degeneracy." ^ 
 Yet the facts just cited would seem to show that it is quite 
 as much the offspring of degeneracy. 
 
 When we turn from the palpably defective to measure 
 as accurately as may be the influence of heredity in deter- 
 mining the success or failure of apparently normal individ- 
 uals, the difficulties are much increased. Homer Folks 
 has remarked that the only experiments which would 
 allow us to test fully the influence of heredity in de- 
 termining the character of individuals must be made 
 
 1 " Mental Affections of Children," p. 20. 2 p. 80 ante. 
 
 8 " Unbalanced People," Charities Review, vol. v., 1895, pp. 57 ff.
 
 102 AMERICAN CBARIT1E8. 
 
 in the cases of infants whose parentage is known and 
 who have been adopted into good homes. ^ The child 
 who is born in an almshouse and grows up there is 
 almost always a pauper, and would probably be so re- 
 gardless of its heredity, though in such cases the latter 
 agency usually reenforces the influence of environment. 
 The child that grows up in an infant asylum or orphans' 
 home has at most an imperfect opportunity for right 
 development, and the original possibilities of its nature 
 are but faintly reflected by its career. With a child 
 boarded out in a private family, or given to foster par- 
 ents while still an infant, the conditions of life are bet- 
 ter, and more might be inferred if we could compare its 
 characteristics with those of its parents. But usually 
 the facts regarding the parents are matters of inference 
 rather than knowledge, and foster parents are inclined to 
 fix as deep a gulf of ignorance as possible between the 
 child and its progenitors. 
 
 Galton has cited the case of D'Alembert, who was a 
 foundling, and put out to nurse as a pauper baby to the 
 wife of a poor glazier : — 
 
 "The child's indomitable tendency to the higher studies could 
 not be repressed by his foster-mother's ridicule and dissuasion, nor 
 by the taunts of his schoolfellows, nor by the discouragements of 
 his schoolmaster, who was incapable of appreciating him, nor even by 
 the reiterated, deep disappointment of finding that his ideas, which he 
 knew to be original, were not novel, but long previously discovered by 
 others. Of course we should expect a boy of his kind to undergo ten 
 or more years of apparently hopeless strife, but we should equally ex- 
 pect him to succeed at last ; and D'Alembert did succeed in attaining 
 the first rank of celebrity by the time he was twenty-four." ^ 
 
 But Galton has not many examples of this sort to fortify 
 his belief : — 
 
 1 See discussion, Charities Review, vol. ix., Nos. 3 and 4. 
 
 2 " Hereditary Genius," pp. 4;M4.
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 103 
 
 " If the eminent men of any period had been changelings when 
 babies, a very fair proportion of those who survived, and retained 
 their health up to fifty years of age, would, notwithstanding their 
 altered circumstances, have equally risen to eminence." ^ 
 
 Mr. Eitchie, in commenting on this opinion, suggests that 
 while it might be true that restless, energetic natures, 
 like D'Alembert or Lord Brougham, would make their 
 way up in spite of all obstacles, it may be doubted if 
 such would be the case with a nature like that of Charles 
 Darwin. He suggests that under many circumstances the 
 struggle for existence may be so severe that strength is 
 exhausted, even in the man of ability.^ 
 
 Since there are no data concerning infants of known de- 
 scent to warrant any final conclusions as to the force of 
 heredity in pushing the individual away from pauperism or 
 toward it, two other methods of observation, less conclusive 
 but more practicable, have been resorted to. The first is to 
 study the family relations of a large number of conspicu- 
 ously successful or unsuccessful persons, and learn as far as 
 possible what influence heredity has had in bringing about 
 success or failure. The second method is to study the 
 careers of all the children of a family whose members are 
 in general conspicuous for success or failure, in order to see 
 whether or not the manifest tendency can be accounted for 
 by the influence of environment. This second method is, 
 for the most part, only a way of checking the results obtained 
 by the first. As examples of the first we may summarize, 
 (a) the investigations of Gal ton regarding relationships of 
 the English judges, and of Woods into the heredity of royalty; 
 (ft) Booth's summary of the "Stories of Stepney Pauperism "; 
 (c) the investigation of the almshouse population of New 
 York. As illustrating the results to be got by the second 
 method, some account is given of the study of the Jukes of 
 New York and the Ishmaels of Indiana. 
 
 1 " Hereditary Genius," p. 38. 2 '< Darwinism and Politics," p. 61.
 
 104 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Mr. Galton undertook a study of the English judges 
 between the accession of Charles II. and the year 1864. 
 He found that a very large number of these men were 
 related one to another, and an analysis of the facts showed 
 that a very eminent man was more likely to have eminent 
 relations than one who had attained a less degree of success. 
 Out of the two hundred and eighty-six judges, more than 
 one in every nine had been either father, son, or brother to 
 another judge, and the other high legal relationships had 
 been even more numerous. " There cannot remain a doubt," 
 he declares, " but that the peculiar type of ability that is 
 necessary to a judge is often transmitted by descent." 
 
 Of the persistence of capacity in certain families he 
 says : — 
 
 " The names of North and Montagu, among the judges, introduce 
 us to a remarkable breed of eminent men, set forth at length in the 
 genealogical tree of the Montagus, and again that of the Sydneys 
 (see the chapter on "Literary Men"), to whose natural history — if 
 the expression be permitted — a few pages may be profitably assigned. 
 There is hardly a name in those pedigrees which is not more than 
 ordinarily eminent ; many are illustrious. They are closely tied 
 together in their kinship, and they extend through ten generations. 
 The main roots of this diffused ability lie in the families of Sydney 
 and Montagu, and, in a lesser degree, in that of North." 
 
 F. A. Woods, in a recent study of " Mental and Moral He- 
 redity in Royalty," while avoiding some of Galton's scientific 
 errors, has corroborated his general conclusions. Professor 
 Woods has taken individuals merely by blood relationship 
 and included every one about whom anything could be 
 found. His estimates of their mental and moral qualities 
 are based on the adjectives used in describing them by his- 
 torians and biographers, and are expressed in a series of 
 grades from one to ten, i.e. low to high, for intellect and 
 morals separately. The accompanying table shows briefly 
 his most important results: —
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF UEGENERATION. 105 
 
 TABLE XX. 
 
 Correlation of Mental and Moral Qualities 
 
 in 608 Royal Persons.* 
 
 Grades foe Virtues. 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 5.43 
 
 4 
 
 5.51 
 
 5 
 5.29 
 
 G 
 5.66 
 
 7 
 5.87 
 
 8 
 6.37 
 
 9 
 6.66 
 
 10 
 7.32 
 
 Average 
 Intellectual Grades 
 
 3.92 
 
 4.34 
 
 The persons whose grade for virtue was as low, for in- 
 stance, as 3, averaged 5.43 for intellect, but in proportion as 
 the grades for virtue rose, the grades for intellect averaged 
 higher. 
 
 Woods concludes not merely from these figures but from 
 the history of these persons which he carefully investigated 
 that : (1) there is a very distinct correlation in royalty be- 
 tween mental and moral qualities ; (2) analyzing all grades, 
 the higher grades for virtues possess a higher average of 
 intellectual grading, and this rise is almost perfectly uniform 
 for both male and female groups taken separately ; (3) among 
 royalty, where large families are always desired, maximum 
 fertility, on the whole, runs hand in hand with general 
 superiority, when tested by the number of children who 
 reached the age of twenty-one years ; (4) the rich are not 
 more vicious than the poor, and as to morality, royalty does 
 not make a bad showing. 
 
 While thus corroborating Galton's general conclusions, 
 Woods goes much farther when he says : — 
 
 " The greater survival of the morally superior and the correlation 
 between mental and moral qualities . . . would always tend toward 
 raising their average, if all be considered as a unit and if all branches 
 of descent be traced out ; though great and exceptional geniuses might 
 be less frequently expected. ... In the inheritance of mental and 
 moral excellence we see ground for a belief in the necessary progress 
 of mankind."
 
 lOG AMElilCAN CIIAIUTIES. 
 
 In contrast to those instances of conspicuously successful 
 families the following details of the degenerate Roouey 
 family are reprinted from Charles Booth's "Stories of 
 Stepney Pauperism " : — 
 
 " Martin Koonoy, aged 85, now in Bromley Workhouse, married 
 Eliza King, and this family has been prolific in paupers. 
 
 " First there is Mary Hooney, the wife of Martin's brother James, 
 who was deserted by him in 1807, and has had relief in various forms 
 since, including residence in the sick asylum for several years. She 
 also applied on behalf of her married daughter, Mrs. Wilson, and her 
 sou Michael appears on the books ; but with this branch we do not go 
 at present beyond the second generation. 
 
 " The old man Martin, who is now blind, applied for admission in 
 1878. His wife was then in hospital, having broken her leg when 
 intoxicated. He had been a dock laborer, and had received £21 from 
 the company on breaking a leg in 1857. He was admitted to Poplar 
 Workhouse. A month later his wife, who is twenty-four years his 
 junior, came out of hospital, and was also admitted. The relieving 
 officer makes a note that he does not know a more drunken, disrepu- 
 table family than this one. He has seen the woman ' beastly drunk ' 
 at all times of the day. From this time the old man remains in the 
 house ; but the woman goes out several times, and when out, was 
 more than once seen in the streets in a drunken condition. She 
 works sometimes at the lead-works, sleeping occasionally with her 
 sons, at other times in various places — water-closets, on stairs, etc. 
 When her son Patrick was sent to prison for two months, she went 
 into the lu)use. In 1888 she absconded, but in March, 1880, applied 
 for roadmiasion ; she had fallen down and cut her face on the Satur- 
 day night before. 
 
 " This couple had three children, Patrick, James, and Bridget. 
 Patrick, born in 18r):>, by trade a stevedore, is now in Poplar Work- 
 house. He was living with his mother in 188(>, and she made appli- 
 cation for medical attendance for him. He was suffering from 
 rheumatism. He became worse, and was sent to the sick asylum ; 
 was discharged, and again admitted a unuuh or two later. Next year 
 he was sent to Bromley Workhouse. He bears a bad character, and 
 was in prison two months in 1888, and had one month in 1889 for 
 attempting to steal some ropes. On coming out of prison he again 
 applied for admission to the workhouse, and was sent to Poplar. He 
 had a bad leg. He got Mork on the day he w;is dischai'ged from the
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 107 
 
 sick asylum, injured his log, and was readmitted to workhouse. He 
 served fourteen or fifteen years in the Uoyal Marines, ami was dis- 
 charged in 1885 for striking a petty officer. lie was for this sentenced 
 to six months' imprisonment by court-martial. 
 
 " James, the second son, is a laborer, not married. lie used to 
 live with a woman named O'Keill, but left her, or she him, and is 
 at present living with another woman. 
 
 "Bridget, the eldest, born in 1847, married Jt)hn Murdock, a brick- 
 layer's laborer, eight years older than herself, and there are four 
 chiltlren, all hoys. Murdock deserted his wife several times, and has 
 been sent to prison for it. She in turn left him in 1877, and has been 
 living with another man since. After this he was in Bromley House 
 with the children. The two eldest were emigrated to Canada in 1880. 
 The man's sister married Richard Bardsley, whose mother, a widow, 
 is living at Bromley, and whoso brother and brother's wife both had 
 relief there." ^ 
 
 Another degenerate group is described in the study of the 
 inmates of the almshouses of New York, made by repre- 
 sentatives of the State Board of Charities in the early 
 seventies. At that time many insane and many childreii 
 and many of the defective classes were still in the local 
 almshouses. In the rural communities it was found 
 possible to get information as to the relationsliii)s of these 
 persons with tolerable fulness, while in the cities little 
 could be learned bearing upon the subject. Although the 
 classes under investigation are those in which the ties of 
 relationship are peculiarly loose and untraceable, yet it 
 was found possible to collect very conclusive facts as to the 
 iuiiuence of heredity in perpetuating paui)erism. Of the 
 12,()1.4 persons examined, it was ascertained that 397, or 
 nearly 3.15 per cent, were the offspring of pauper fathers ; 
 130 1, or 10.79 per cent, of pauper mothers. The depend- 
 ence dated back to the third generation in 55 cases on the 
 paternal, and 92 cases on the maternal side. 1122 had 
 (living or dead) pauper brothers ; 951, pauper sisters ; 113, 
 pauper uncles ; and 133, pauper aunts. 
 
 1 " Pauperism," pp. 14-15; see also for similar stories, pp. 18-43.
 
 108 AMEBIC AN CnARITIES. 
 
 The total number of families was 10,161. The total 
 number of persons in these families, including three gen- 
 erations (living and dead) who were known to have been 
 dependent upon public charity, was 14,901. The total 
 number of the insane in the same families (living and 
 dead), 4968 ; the total number of idiots in the same families 
 (living and dead), 844 ; and the total number of inebriates 
 in the same families (living and dead), 8863. The number 
 of heads of families in the poorhouses at the tiiue of 
 inquiry, consisting of both parents, was 2746; these were 
 said to have in all 7040 living children. The condition 
 of these children were stated to be as follows : in poor- 
 houses, 1010 ; in asylums, 149 ; in hospitals, 2 ; in refuges, 
 29 ; in prisons and penitentiaries, 9 ; bound out, 346 ; self- 
 supporting, 4586 ; condition unascertained, 909. Thus 
 about 22 per cent of the children of poorhouse parents 
 were found to be of the dependent or delinquent classes. 
 Taking only those whose condition was ascertained, the 
 percentage of those who were a charge upon the public 
 rises to a little more than 25. It should also be noted that 
 a considerable number of those self-dependent at the time 
 would probably with advancing years become public 
 charges ; and while some of those in a condition of depend- 
 ency would perhaps eventually become self-supporting, 
 they would hardly become so as a permanent thing. It is 
 doubtful if half these children would get through life with- 
 out some taint of dependency. 
 
 Two investigations have been made in this country into 
 the histories of individuals descended from distinctly pauper 
 families.^ 
 
 The first, conducted by Mr. R. L. Dugdale, concerning 
 the family of the Jukes, doubtless included many of the 
 same persons or their progenitors as those found in the New 
 
 1 An investigation of a similar character in Germany is referred to in 
 N. C. C, 1897, p. 236.
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 109 
 
 York almshouses in 1875.^ The Juke family has been traced 
 back to a man whom Dugdale calls Max, a descendant of the 
 early Dutch settlers, born between the years 1720 and 1740. 
 He is described as a hunter and fisher, a hard drinker, jolly 
 and companionable, averse to steady toil, working hard by 
 spurts and idling by turns, becoming blind in his old age, 
 and entailing his blindness upon his children and grandchil- 
 dren. Two of his sons married two of the Juke sisters, of 
 whom there were six in all. The progeny of five of them 
 have been traced with more or less exactness through five 
 generations. The number of descendants registered includes 
 540 individuals who were related by blood to the Jukes, and 
 169 connected with the family by marriage or cohabitation ; 
 in all 709 persons of all ages, alive and dead. The aggre- 
 gate of this lineage reaches, says Mr. Dugdale, probably 
 1200 persons, but the dispersions that have occurred at 
 different times have prevented the following up and enumer- 
 ation of many of the lateral branches. They grew up in the 
 rural districts of New York, and outdoor life probably aided 
 the degenerate stock to resist the tendencies to extinction. 
 The family, as indicated by the statement of its origin, may 
 be considered distinctly American. 
 
 From the statistical summary of the facts collated by Mr. 
 Dugdale, it appears that, whether we consider pauperism, or 
 crime, or harlotry, or prostitution, this family produced a 
 number of dependents and delinquents out of all proportion 
 to the numbers of individuals it contributed to the popula- 
 tion. For instance, taking only the cases of ascertained 
 dependence in the Juke family, it is shown that pauperism 
 was nearly seven times as common in this family as in the 
 population of the state at large. Under the head of X, Mr. 
 Dugdale classes all families not related to the Jukes who 
 
 1 Dugdale, "The Jukes " (1888), out of print; a summary of this paper 
 will be found in N. C. C, 1877, pp. 81-95. The Jukes were the descendants 
 of Ada Juke, better known as Margaret, the Mother of Criminals.
 
 110 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 married into tlie family ; taking people of the Juke blood 
 simply, pauperism was 7.37 times as common among them 
 as in the population as a whole ; taking X blood only, that 
 is, those families that married into the Juke family, pauper- 
 ism was only 4.89 times as common as in the total popula- 
 tion. Of the adult women of Juke blood 52.40 per cent are 
 found to have been harlots, while only 41.76 per cent of the 
 women of the X blood were found to be such. Turning to 
 the matter of crime, there are within the family itself some 
 distinctly criminal and some distinctly pauper strains. In- 
 termarriage between people of the Juke blood, that is, breed- 
 ing within the family, intensified the tendency to pauperism, 
 while marriage with non-related stocks usually resulted in a 
 larger proportion of criminals among the descendants. This 
 is probably to be accounted for by the greater constitutional 
 vigor that resulted from marriage with non-related groups. 
 Since pauperism rests upon weakness of some sort, the ten- 
 dency to degeneration is ifitensified by in-and-in breeding. 
 
 Leaving the basis of ascertained fact, Mr. Dugdale tried 
 to calculate the cost to society of the entire family of the 
 Jukes, assuming that they number about twelve hundred 
 persons of characters similar to the careers of those he had 
 ascertained. He estimated that in seventy-five years the 
 family cost the community over a million and a quarter of 
 dollars, without reckoning the cash paid for whiskey, or 
 taking into account the entailment of pauperism, crime, 
 and disease of the survivors in succeeding generations. 
 
 The second investigation of a group of pauper relatives 
 by Oscar C. McCulloch, of Indianapolis, was suggested by 
 Mr. Dugdale's study of the Jukes, aud modelled in some 
 sort after that study, but it has not the scientific accuracy 
 or completeness of its model. The following passage from 
 " The Tribe of Ishmael " ^ characterizes the family suffi- 
 ciently for our purpose : — 
 
 1 McCulloch, N. C. C, 1888; see also Wright ou "Marriage Relation- 
 ships ia the Tribe of Ishmael," N. C. C, 1890, p. 435.
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF BEG EN EH AT ION. Ill 
 
 " Members of this extensive group have had a pauper record in 
 Indianapolis since 1840. They have been in the ahnshouse, the 
 House of Refuge, the Woman's Reformatory, the penitentiaries, and 
 have received continuous aid from the township. The Ishmaels are 
 intermarried with 250 other families of similar habits and tendencies. 
 In the family history are murders, a large number of illegitimacies, 
 and out of the 1092 individuals whose cases have been investigated, 
 121 are known to have been prostitutes. The members of the family 
 are generally diseased. The children often die young. They live by 
 petty stealing, begging, ash-gathering. In summer they 'gypsy,' or 
 travel in wagons east or west. We hear of them in Illinois about 
 Decatur, and in Ohio about Columbus. In the fall they return. 
 They have been known to live in hollow trees on the river-bottoms, 
 or in empty houses. Strangely enough they are not intemperate. 
 The individuals already traced are over 5000, interwoven by descent 
 and marriage. They underrun society like devil-grass." 
 
 Of this pauper family, Mr. McCulloch said he had seen 
 three generations of beggars among them ; each child tended 
 to revert to the same life when taken away, and he knew of 
 only one who had escaped and become an honorable man. 
 
 If the results of these five studies — two of conspicu- 
 ously successful, and three of conspicuously degenerate 
 groups — should be accepted at their apparent face value, 
 the conclusion would be inevitable that heredity is the 
 determining factor in any career ; and yet a critical ex- 
 amination of them will show a number of sources of error. 
 The first of these is the loose and confusing use of the 
 term " heredity." Heredity, as commonly used, means that 
 which the individual has at birth ; but this equipment, ac- 
 cording to the scientist, is from two sources : ancestral, 
 that is, that which he receives from the uniting germ-cells 
 of his parents, and second, that contributed by his mother 
 during the period of gestation. In the table on p. 99 it 
 appears that from 8 to 14 per cent of all feeble-mindedness 
 is the result of the inadequacy of the mother, and it is not 
 denied that a large part of this is due to poverty and 
 uuhappiness of her environment. Although a transmitted
 
 112 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 quality, it may be due to environment rather than 
 heredity. 
 
 In such studies the fact is often ignored that the child 
 inherits, in most cases, an environment that tends to per- 
 petuate his innate qualities. Mr. Booth, in his study of 
 Stepney pauperism, could not separate " pauper heredity 
 and association." The children of the Rooneys, the Jukes, 
 and the Ishmaels, unless removed at birth from family 
 associations, had no chance whatever of escaping a degener- 
 ate career. Contrariwise, the royal babies had not only 
 the best physical care, but every opportunity for education, 
 and — most important of all — they were disciplined and 
 guarded by superior people. 
 
 Again, confessedly, in most of these studies, no account 
 is taken of the members of the family of whom nothing was 
 known. Mr. Dugdale ascertained something of the history 
 of 709 individuals, but in estimating the cost of this family to 
 the state of New York he " assumed" that 500 more, of whom 
 he knew nothing, were equally degenerate. It is an assump- 
 tion equally tenable that the reason they could not be found 
 was because they had escaped from their wretched environ- 
 ment and had been absorbed in the decent but incon- 
 spicuous average. In the study of New York almshouse 
 inmates, 10,000 families were represented, and 14,000 persons 
 were known to have been dependent in three generations; 
 but the sum total of persons in these families in the first 
 generation alone could not be less than 50,000 persons. In 
 one generation, therefore, the unknown element is more than 
 twice the number of the known. But perhaps the most fun- 
 damental error underlying the deductions commonly made 
 from such studies is that heredity and environment are 
 independent forces, each impelling the individual in a dif- 
 ferent direction. Of the contradictory notions about the 
 relation of society to the individual, arising from this erro- 
 neous conception. Professor Charles H. Cooley says : —
 
 SYMPTOMATIC CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 113 
 
 " A man's nature is like a seed, and his circumstances like the soil 
 and climate in which the seed germinates and grows ; the co-working 
 of the two is indispensable to every vital process whatever, and they 
 are so different in their functions that they cannot without inaccuracy 
 be said to be in opposition. It would be absurd to ask whether the 
 seed or the soil predominates in the formation of the tree. . . . Rather 
 we may say that a child — to improve a little on the first comparison 
 — is like a vine whose nature is to grow, but to grow not in any pre- 
 determined direction, as east or west, up or down, but along whatever 
 support it finds within reach. We have emulation by nature, but the 
 direction in which emulation will lead us depends entirely upon the 
 ideals suggested to us by our social experience. The well-nurtured 
 boy emulates his own father and George Washington, but the child of 
 a criminal, for precisely similar reasons, emulates his father and 
 Blinkey Morgan or some other illustrious rascal. It is not necessary 
 to suppose any organic difference between the two. . . . 
 
 " The point is, that a social career is not the sum and resultant of two 
 forces similar in kind but more or less opposite in direction ; it comes 
 by the intimate union and cooperation of forces unlike in kind and 
 hence not comparable in direction or magnitude. So soon as a child 
 is born, the nature he brings with him begins to unite with the world 
 into which he comes to form an indivisible product ; that is to say, a 
 character and a career. The union of nature and nurture is not one 
 of addition or mixture but of growth, whereby the elements are alto- 
 gether transformed into a new organic whole. One's nature acts 
 selectively upon the environment, assimilating materials proper to itself ; 
 while at the same time the environment moulds the nature, and habits 
 are formed which make the individual independent, in some degree, 
 of changes in either. 
 
 "It may seem that one does, after all, select the objects of his 
 imitation and emulation, and that in this way the individual nature 
 determines its own destiny as moral or criminal. But this is only 
 true with many limitations and conditions. Some of us are much 
 freer than others and some periods of life afford more freedom than 
 other periods ; but no man at any time has anything like unrestricted 
 freedom in the choice of the influences that control his life. A real 
 freedom cannot exist until the individual is born into a world where 
 there is opportunity for the development of his highest faculties through 
 access to all the necessary influences. There are many children now 
 growing up who are no more free to choose a moral career than an 
 American baby is free to speak the Chinese language." ^ 
 
 1 " Nature vs. Nurture," etc., N. C. C, 1896, pp. 399 ff.
 
 114 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 It must be concluded that the attempt to attribute the 
 social career of an individual chiefly to heredity on the one 
 hand or to circumstances on the other, and to apportion to 
 each an approximate per cent of influence, is a matter of 
 scientific interest rather than practical value at the present 
 time to those engaged in social reforms. That there are 
 children so instinctively degenerate that neither instruction 
 nor discipline can restore them to normality, is certainly true ; 
 but their number is relatively very small. It is even more 
 certain that a large part of the degeneration which is dealt 
 •with by philanthropy could have been mitigated, if not 
 wholly prevented, by a good environment. Professor Woods, 
 in the endeavor to explain the overweening influence of 
 heredity in the case of royalty, suggests that it may be that 
 environment is most powerful in the lowest orders of nature, 
 and that heredity becomes more and more influential in the 
 higher orders. Whatever may be thought of this hypothe- 
 sis it is undoubtedly true that the standard of fitness for 
 those who are to survive and the environment which is to 
 intensify or nullify their heredity tendencies are both within 
 the control of a civilized society, and consequently, subject 
 to change and improvement.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SOME CHARACTERISTIC SOCIAL CAUSES OP DEGEN- 
 ERATION. 
 
 In^ order to give any complete view of the social and in- 
 dustrial influences which tend to push the individual below 
 the poverty line, it would be necessary to review nearly the 
 whole of political economy, descriptive and theoretical ; but 
 we shall concern ourselves at present only with some of the 
 more conspicuous external conditions which produce inca- 
 pacity and degeneration in the individual. We must there- 
 fore pass by without consideration all the poverty-begetting 
 causes that reside in the fluctuation of the purchasing power 
 of money, although many concrete examples could be given 
 of families pushed from the propertied class even across the 
 pauper line by this influence. Neither can we concern our- 
 selves with those changes in industry which have displaced 
 large numbers of individuals, although presumably benefiting 
 the community as a whole, and even laborers as a class. 
 Neither can we take up the undue power of class over class, 
 although it results in conditions which tend to degeneration 
 in the individual, and may push him below the line of self- 
 dependence; but our view for the most part must be limited 
 to the direct influence of occupation and uncertain employ- 
 ment upon health, character, and capacity. 
 
 The economic saving which could be made by the conser- 
 vation of human strength, the prolongation of life, and the 
 prevention of disease, has recently been demonstrated sta- 
 tistically by Frederick Hoffmann. He estimates that the 
 average annual net gain to society of each male wage-earner 
 
 115
 
 116 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 employed in manufacturing and mechanical industries is 
 three hundred dollars; and has collated the approximate 
 value of workmen of different grades of efhciency for the 
 years from 15 to 65. Table XXI. condensed from this cal- 
 culation will serve to illustrate the principle. 
 
 TABLE XXI. 
 
 The Economic Value or Industrial Labor and Life.* 
 
 Age. 
 
 I. Estimated Average 
 
 Annual Economic 
 
 Gain, $200. 
 
 II. Estimated Avekage 
 
 Annual Economic 
 
 Gain, $300. 
 
 III. Estimated Average 
 
 Annual Econo.mic 
 
 Gain, $500. 
 
 Annual Net 
 
 Economic 
 
 Gain. 
 
 Estimated 
 
 Future 
 Economic 
 
 Value. 
 
 Annual Net 
 
 Economic 
 
 Gain. 
 
 Estimated 
 Future 
 
 Economic 
 Value. 
 
 Annual Net 
 
 Economic 
 
 Gain. 
 
 Estimated 
 Future 
 
 Economic 
 Value. 
 
 15 
 20 
 25 
 30 
 35 
 40 
 45 
 50 
 65 
 60 
 64 
 
 $50 
 100 
 170 
 250 
 300 
 300 
 300 
 275 
 150 
 80 
 50 
 
 $10,000 
 
 9,650 
 
 8,980 
 
 8,015 
 
 6,590 
 
 5,090 
 
 3,590 
 
 2,090 
 
 965 
 
 326 
 
 50 
 
 $75 
 130 
 225 
 350 
 400 
 400 
 400 
 380 
 330 
 260 
 170 
 
 $15,000 
 
 14,505 
 
 13,695 
 
 12,320 
 
 10,395 
 
 8,395 
 
 6,395 
 
 4,405 
 
 2,600 
 
 1,090 
 
 170 
 
 $90 
 200 
 400 
 600 
 675 
 675 
 650 
 625 
 540 
 475 
 300 
 
 $ 25,000 
 
 24,275 
 
 22,950 
 
 20,625 
 
 17,425 
 
 14,050 
 
 10,735 
 
 7,485 
 
 4,575 
 
 1,975 
 
 300 
 
 * Am. Jour, of Soc, vol. xxvii., p. 4S5. 
 
 From this theoretical estimate it is possible to calculate 
 the economic loss due to premature death or impaired effi- 
 ciency as the result of illness. If the wage-earner should 
 die at the age of 35, the net loss to society would be, accord- 
 ing to his wage-earning capacity, $6590, or $10,395, or 
 $17,425. In addition to this there is the strain on the 
 family resources for medical and funeral ex2:)enses, and if 
 the family is driven to apply for charity, there is the cost of
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 117 
 
 relief. Eowntree ascertained that 15 per cent of the primary 
 poverty in York was due to the death or disability of the 
 wage-earner ; at least 25 per cent of the applicants for relief 
 in cities in the United States are widows, and in 20 per cent 
 of all cases treated by the Kew York Charity Organization 
 Society in 1905, a part of the relief given was to improve 
 the physical condition of the family. The total economic 
 loss and expense entailed upon society by the death or dis- 
 ability of an adult wage-earner is from ten to twenty thou- 
 sand dollars. Even a man of sixty is potentially worth one 
 thousand dollars to society in economic gain, not to speak of 
 his greater value to his family. 
 
 A relatively small but permanent condition of industry in 
 modern times, which tends to produce a residual class, is the 
 rising standard of efficiency. An increasing amount of 
 heavy work formerly done by men is now done by machinery. 
 Although there may be ultimately an increase in the number 
 of laborers employed in industries in which this takes place, 
 yet not all the workmen once employed in them can lind a 
 place. Professor Seligman says : — 
 
 " The immediate result is often a temporary over-supply in the 
 particular trade and the discharge of workmen who for the time being, 
 and until they finally drift to new openings, swell the ranks of the un- 
 employed. One of the most serious problems of the modern industrial 
 system is how to miligate the evils of this transition period." ^ 
 
 Another phase of a rising standard of efficiency which ex- 
 cludes the least competent, especially the foreign immigrants 
 in America, is the swifter pace demanded of workmen. In 
 any group of laborers, as in draught horses, the gait has been 
 adjusted to the hours of labor required and the expenditure 
 of energy demanded. 
 
 In proportion as machine processes supersede the heavier 
 manual processes, and as the hours of labor are shortened, 
 
 1 " Principles of Economics," p. 299; Alden, " The Unemployed," 
 p. 66; Hermann, " Oekonomische Fragen und Probleme der Gegenwart."
 
 11^ Amebic AN charities. 
 
 the pace is quickened — men must think faster in order to 
 tend machinery, as a rule, than to perform manual labor. 
 Among a body of laborers accustomed in their own country 
 to manual labor, there will always be a certain number who 
 cannot speed themselves up to the intensity required in 
 America. Mere strength and sinew, if not accompanied by 
 the adaptability of a high nervous organization, may, there- 
 fore, be at a discount in the modern labor market.^ 
 
 Along with these tendencies has come the formation of 
 trades unions. The development of modern industry has 
 forced higher organization; and just as Franklin said to the 
 thirteen colonies, so now the conditions of industry say to 
 the laborer, "join or die." Those who in consequence of 
 conditions or character cannot organize, and who for the 
 most part belong to the ranks of low-skilled labor, find it 
 constantly more and more difficult to maintain themselves. 
 Although at the start they may have possessed a degree of 
 efficiency that formerly would have won them place and 
 living, they are now unable to get work, and through 
 involuntary idleness their incapacity is intensified and per- 
 petuated. 
 
 The most palpable means by which occupation lessens the 
 capacity of the individual is accident. The industry in 
 which this is most conspicuous is transportation, and no 
 country in the world offers more illustrations of such injury 
 to railroad employees than the United States, as will be 
 seen by reference to Table XXII. 
 
 The figures vary from year to year. For example, Den- 
 mark's railways killed no passengers in 1903-1904, but did 
 kill one for 1904-1905. Tasmania killed none in 1903 and 
 Victoria only one to twenty million journeys. 
 
 1 See also ou effect of speeding up machinery, O'Connell, Jour, of Soc, 
 vol. xxvii., p. 491 ; greater tension in glass-blowing, Hayes, p. 498.
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 
 
 119 
 
 TABLE XXII. 
 Railway Accidexts,* 1902-1904. 
 
 
 Passengers. 
 
 Employees. 
 
 Killed, 1 in 
 
 Injured, 1 In Kille 
 
 d, 1 in Injure( 
 
 ,lin 
 
 United States . . 
 
 1,957,441 
 
 84,424 
 
 364 i 
 
 22 
 
 Great Britain . . 
 
 8,073,000 
 
 445,000 
 
 736 J 
 
 i8 
 
 Germany . . . 
 
 11,701,354 
 
 2,113,471 1 
 
 199 451 
 
 Belgium . . . 
 
 33,151.173 
 
 431,937 2 
 
 266 98 
 
 Austria-Hungary 
 
 9,432,303 
 
 1,328,551 1 
 
 908 363 
 
 France .... 
 
 5,260,000 
 
 1,062,000 
 
 964 355 
 
 Switzerland . . 
 
 12,237,515 
 
 849,820 1 
 
 070 42 
 
 Denmark . . . 
 
 18,935,151 
 
 9,467,000 
 
 
 
 Norway .... 
 
 7,690,000 
 
 4,360,000 
 
 
 
 Sweden .... 
 
 6,667,000 
 
 3,450,000 
 
 
 
 Russia .... 
 
 1,080,000 
 
 250,000 
 
 
 
 Spain .... 
 
 2,000,000 
 
 308,000 
 
 
 
 Canada .... 
 
 1,120,000 
 
 158,000 
 
 
 
 Victoria . . . 
 
 20,000,000 
 
 208,000 
 
 
 
 Tasmania . . . 
 
 
 271,000 
 
 
 
 New South Wales 
 
 5,000,000 
 
 589,000 
 
 
 
 South Australia . 
 
 6,667,000 
 
 2,500,000 
 
 
 
 * Parsons, " The Railways, " etc., p. 444. 
 
 Mr. Parsons comments as follows upon these figures : — 
 
 " It appears from these figures that railroad travel is safest in Den- 
 mark, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria- 
 Hungary, and Australia, that it is more dangerous in Great Britain 
 than in any of the above-named countries, and that in the United 
 States it is most dangerous of all ; about six times as dangerous as in 
 Germany, seventeen times as dangerous as In Belgium, three times as 
 dangerous as in France, and four times as dangerous as in Great Britain. 
 ... In the United States the control by the law is not effective, and 
 we see . . . the tendency to look first, last, and all the time at the 
 cost and to avoid the expenditure necessary to abolish grade crossings, 
 etc., if they think it will be cheaper to pay damages." 
 
 Many of these accidents occur because the railway com- 
 panies do not wish to go to the expense of newer equipment,
 
 120 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 such as block signals and automatic couplers ; and others 
 because of excessively long hours of labor, reaching, in 
 emergencies, even to twenty or thirty hours of continuous 
 duty. Not the least serious aspect of these injuries is the 
 fact that railway employees are comparatively young men, 
 at the age of highest economic value to their families and to 
 the state. 
 
 One of the largest Life Insurance Companies in the 
 United States estimates the fatal accident rate, as a whole, 
 from 80 to 85 to every 100,000 of the population. The per- 
 centage of fatal to total accidents varies from 2.1 in factory 
 labor to 40.2 per cent in accidents from boiler explosions. 
 Assuming that 25 are injured to one killed on the average, 
 there is the result that not less than 1,600,000 persons are 
 killed or injured annually in this country. And this does 
 not take into account minor accidents. It seems to be the ex- 
 perience of accident insurance companies that the ratio of 
 fatal to non-fatal accidents claims are as one to one hundred.^ 
 
 Many of these cases were probably provided for by bene- 
 fit associations maintained by the men or by the relief work 
 of the companies ; but such relief is always partial and tem- 
 porary, and of course makes no atonement to the industry 
 of the country as a whole for the amount of personal ca- 
 pacity destroyed. It would not usually be easy to trace 
 pauperism in a given case to an accident on a railroad, 
 although the author has himself been called to deal with 
 some cases of destitution resulting directly from such acci- 
 dents ; but frequently pauperism does not result until years 
 afterwards, when a widowed mother has broken down in the 
 attempt to support her family, or when some aged or in- 
 capable relative has been turned adrift from the incapacity 
 of the family to maintain him longer. 
 
 In 1907 Francis H. McLean made a report of a detailed 
 investigation of 736 cases of industrial accident leading to 
 dependency, which had come to the notice of charitable 
 1 Hunter, "Poverty," Appencjix, pp. 344-345.
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 121 
 
 societies. The nature of these disabilities is shown in the 
 following list : ^ — 
 
 Trade disease 13 
 
 Building 82 
 
 Electrical 6 
 
 Transportation 25 
 
 Machinery 76 
 
 Street (drivers and messengers) 37 
 
 Dock work 11 
 
 Explosions 2 
 
 Elevator (attendants only) 7 
 
 Blasting 13 
 
 Lifting, strains, blows (result hernia) 388 
 
 Miscellaneous 77 
 
 736 
 
 It is of special significance that about one-half of these 
 accidents occurred to men under 40, belonging to the un- 
 skilled trades, whose wages were less than $15 per week. 
 Of the total number 421, or 57 per cent, were permanently 
 disabled : Amputation of fingers and toes, 7 ; amputation 
 of legs, feet, hands, or arms, 20 ; brain injured, 10 ; partially- 
 crippled, 8; paralyzed, 5 ; blinded, 53; permanently injured 
 by lead poisoning, 2; spine injured, 2; internal injuries, 3; 
 loss of hearing, 1 ; deaf and dumb, 1 ; hernia resulting in 
 partial loss of wage-earning ability, at least 250 ; insane, 21 ; 
 killed, 45. What the inevitable cost of public and private 
 relief for these persons and their families would be, it is im- 
 possible to estimate, but there had been spent already an 
 average of $50 per person in 92 cases ; 111 had received 
 hospital care for periods of one month to one year, 53 blind 
 and 20 insane persons must be supported, and there were 
 varying amounts of medical expenditure for all the remain- 
 der. But this is not all ; there was a marked deterioration 
 in a considerable number of families, resulting from these 
 injuries, shown. in chronic dependency, intemperance not 
 
 1 Report to N. Y. State Conf. of Charities and Corrections, 1907, pub- 
 lished in part in " Charities and the Commons," vol. xix., pp. 1203 £f.
 
 122 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 before present, lowering of standards of living^ widow's 
 health broken, family disrupted, habits of begging devel- 
 oped, savings used, furniture pawned, and families evicted. 
 
 Accidents in mining, though very common, have not been 
 statistically tabulated as thoroughly as railway injuries. 
 The occurrence of four mining disasters within a period of 
 less than three weeks, in December, 1907, in which alone 
 650 persons were killed, will illustrate the economic loss in 
 wage-earning capacity and the consequent burden of depend- 
 ence. In one town of 3000 inhabitants the monthly wage 
 cut off amounted to $17,500; 130 resident families and 
 probably 120 families in the old country were left without 
 means of support. 
 
 It is acknowledged that a large part of the injuries incident 
 to such occupations as transportation, mining, and factory 
 labor are preventable, and if there were as much direct profit 
 in life-protecting devices as there is in inventions for economy 
 of production, the number of such catastrophes would 
 rapidly decline. With the aspects of prevention and 
 compensation we are not at the moment concerned, but 
 there is already promise of remedy in legislation making 
 employers liable in industrial insurance and in propositions 
 for workingmen's compensation, the cost of which will be 
 added to the expense of production and finally borne by the 
 consumer. 
 
 There is a destruction of personal capacity and a strong 
 tendency to degeneration in a large number of occupations 
 because of the disease-begetting conditions that surround 
 the work. Much more has been done in England and Euro- 
 pean countries in searching out the source of diseases that 
 have their origin in occupation than in this country. From 
 the time Kamazzini published his memorable work, "De 
 Morbis Artificum Diatriba," in the latter part of the seven- 
 teenth century, to Dr. Arlidge's " Diseases of Occupations," 
 published in 1892, and the weighty volume on " Dangerous
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 123 
 
 Trades " by Thomas Oliver and his collaborators in 1902, 
 there has been a series of careful studies of the disease- 
 engendering conditions of the trades and professions. 
 
 In this country, however, only a few of the labor bureaus 
 have investigated this feature of the conditions of labor. 
 Among the first to do so carefully was the New Jersey 
 Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the results appear in its 
 Annual Eeports for 1889, 1890, and 1891. The effect of 
 occupations upon the health and duration of the trade life 
 of workmen was traced in three industries — pottery, hat- 
 making, and glass-blowing. As specimens of the facts 
 brought to light by the investigation of these trades may 
 be cited that of pot-makers, who prepare the pots in 
 which the raw material for glass is melted. These pots are 
 made of fine clay, which requires a great deal of care in 
 its preparation, involving grinding, pulverizing the dry 
 clay, its mixture, and tempering. At that time little 
 attention was paid to the improvement of the machinery 
 in use and the buildings in which these processes were 
 conducted, so as to keep the workmen from inhaling the 
 dust. As a consequence, from ten to fifteen years was 
 about the length of time a man could work at the trade 
 continuously in health. The report of the same Bureau 
 in 1905 shows a most encouraging decline of the worst 
 conditions in this dangerous trade. While there are a 
 few establishments in which "lead colic," ''potter's asthma," 
 and tuberculosis, the characteristic diseases of this oc- 
 cupation, are still produced by antiquated methods of 
 manufacture, and by excessive dust, in the majority 
 of them the trade is now fairly healthful. It is particu- 
 larly significant that in proportion as the trade has 
 become less deadly, intemperance has declined among the 
 employees. 
 
 In recent years the Massachusetts State Board of Health 
 has made a careful investigation of conditions affecting
 
 124 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 health or safety of employees ^ in a large number of occupa- 
 tions. The textile industries, in which Massachusetts stands 
 first in point of production, employ more women and minors 
 than men and are generally regarded as unhealthful because 
 of irritating dust which tends to produce disease of the 
 lungs. In the mill towns it appears, however, that the 
 death-rates of mill operatives are not abnormally high, nor 
 do the general death-rates of these towns comj)are unfa- 
 vorably with those of towns engaged in other lines of 
 industry. Of the 93 manufacturing establishments inves- 
 tigated, 19 carry on their manufacture under nearly ideal 
 conditions, and 23 under conditions designated as good; 
 moderately bad conditions prevail in 35, and distinctly bad 
 in 16 ; in all of the two latter classes, the report declares, 
 marked improvement is possible without unreasonable ex- 
 penditure. The unwholesome conditions in these establish- 
 ments consist of poor light, impure air, non-regulation of 
 artificial moisture (i.e. excess of moisture and undue heat 
 or no artificial moisture and excessive heat), more or less 
 dust (some " infectious " dust), lack of cleanliness, and poor 
 ventilation. In this report, as in almost every other on the 
 same subject, mention is made of the reckless indifference 
 of the employees themselves to ordinary hygienic precau- 
 tions, even when prescribed as rules of the factory. This 
 apathy of workmen and the neglect of employers have made 
 it necessary for the state to interfere and fix the plane of 
 competition below which employers are not allowed to go 
 nor workmen to permit themselves to be employed. The 
 Massachusetts Board of Health proposes that when there is 
 any question as to the interpretation of the law requiring 
 factories to be well lighted, clean, and sanitary, the inspect- 
 ors shall use as a standard the conditions existing in those 
 factories carrying on a similar business, in similar buildings, 
 where the health, safety, and welfare of the working people 
 are most completely protected. 
 
 1 Reports, 1905 and 1907.
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 125 
 
 The influence of occupation upon health may be studied 
 by means of mortality statistics, especially those of occupa- 
 tional mortality and morbidity. It is generally recognized 
 that there is a higher death-rate among laboring classes than 
 among the well-to-do, but a careful search among statistics 
 collected by American bureaus of labor and for the Federal 
 census shows that we have no vital statistics that are a safe 
 guide in considering occupational mortality. This results 
 from the fact that a person frequently changes his occupa- 
 tion before death. Thus, if we were to take the average 
 age of students at death, it would be very low ; but this 
 would not prove that it was unhealthf ul to be a student, but 
 only that nearly all students are comparatively young — 
 those that die included. The average age at death of judges 
 must manifestly be greater than that of lawyers, irrespective 
 of the healthfulness of the two occupations. The average 
 age at death of almshouse paupers would be very high. In 
 the case of female operatives the low average is no doubt 
 partly due to the fact that many women leave the mills after 
 the cares of a family come to them, and if they die in ex- 
 treme old age as the mothers of families, their early service 
 in the mills is forgotten ; whereas, if they had died young, 
 while in the mills, their cases would have helped to keep 
 down the average age at death of female operatives. 
 
 English statisticians have been giving much attention to 
 this subject for a generation. Dr. Farr gives the data for 
 the following table as to the number surviving at certain 
 age-periods in certain occupations. 
 
 According to this calculation, Avhich is based upon very 
 wide inductions, the most unhealthf ul business is that of an 
 innkeeper, or, as we would say, saloon-keeper. This illus- 
 trates again the interaction of personal and occupational 
 causes of degeneration. Next to this comes the business of 
 the butcher, and so on up, the most healthful occupation 
 being that of a farmer.
 
 126 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 TABLE XXIII.* 
 Number Living at Stated Ages out of 1000 Living at Age 25. 
 
 Ages. 
 
 35. 45. 55. 60 
 
 Farmer . . 
 Shoemaker 
 Weaver . . 
 Grocer . . 
 Blacksmith 
 Carpenter • 
 Tailor . . 
 Laborer 
 Miner . . 
 Baker . . 
 Butcher 
 Innkeeper . 
 
 898.5 
 908.8 
 920.3 
 923.7 
 918.8 
 905.5 
 883.7 
 902.1 
 915.1 
 924.1 
 887.0 
 861.7 
 
 821.19 
 812.45 
 822.78 
 826.G8 
 804.84 
 812.18 
 758.17 
 789.35 
 810.79 
 787.35 
 740.64 
 684.99 
 
 730.06 
 690.65 
 696.04 
 690.02 
 672.02 
 676.58 
 6.31.58 
 652.85 
 646.97 
 620.51 
 569.47 
 491.13 
 
 639.54 
 591.64 
 581.20 
 61 7. .38 
 547.02 
 576.38 
 544.10 
 557.51 
 535.69 
 518.04 
 451.41 
 395..38 
 
 * Based on table given by William Farr, " Vital Statistics," p. 397. 
 
 Another table (see p. 127) based on English experience 
 gives a much wider range of occupations, taking the rate of 
 clergymen as 100 for a basis of comparison. 
 
 It will be seen that the mortality in different industries 
 varies widely ; if the mortality of clergymen, for instance, 
 be taken as one hundred, that of men engaged in earthen- 
 ware manufacture is three times as great and of inn and 
 hotel servants almost four times as great. Dr. Ogle grouped 
 the causes of high mortality under the following general 
 heads : — 
 
 1. Working in a cramped or constrained attitude, as silk- 
 weavers. 
 
 2. Exposure to the action of poisonous or irritating sub-
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 
 
 1-Z 
 
 TABLE XXIV. 
 Comparative Mort-alitt ix Certaix Occupatioxs.* 
 
 OcCrPATIOK. 
 
 > >; 
 
 OccrPATios. 
 
 Clergymen, Priests. Min- 
 isters 
 
 Lawyers 
 
 ^ledical Men 
 
 Gardeners 
 
 Farmers 
 
 Agricultural Laborers . . 
 
 Fishermen 
 
 Commercial Clerks . . . 
 
 Commercial Travellers . . 
 
 Innkeepers, Liquor Dealers 
 
 Inn, Hotel Service . . . 
 
 Brewers 
 
 Butchers 
 
 Bakere 
 
 Corn Millers 
 
 Grocers 
 
 Drapers 
 
 Shopkeepers generally . . 
 
 Tailors 
 
 Shoemakei-s 
 
 Hatters 
 
 Printers 
 
 Bookbindei's 
 
 Builders, Masons, Brick- 
 lavers 
 
 lOd 
 152 
 202 
 108 
 114 
 126 
 143 
 179 
 171 
 274 
 397 
 245 
 211 
 172 
 172 
 139 
 159 
 168 
 189 
 166 
 192 
 193 
 210 
 
 174 
 
 Carpenters, Joiners . . . 
 
 Cabinet-makers, Uphol- 
 sterers 
 
 Plumbers, Painters, Gla- 
 ziers 
 
 Blacksmiths 
 
 Engine, Machine, Boiler 
 Makers 
 
 Silk Manufacture . . 
 
 Wool, "Worsted Manufac- 
 ture 
 
 Cotton Manufacture . . 
 
 Cutlers. Scissors-makei-s . 
 
 Gunsmiths 
 
 File-makers 
 
 Paper-makers .... 
 
 Glass-workers .... 
 
 Earthenware-makers . . 
 
 Coal Miners 
 
 Cornish Miners .... 
 
 Stone, Slate Quarries . 
 
 Cab, Omnibus Service . . 
 
 Railway, Eoad, Laborers . 
 
 Costermongers, Hawkei-s, 
 Street Sellers .... 
 
 148 
 
 173 
 
 216 
 175 
 
 155 
 152 
 
 180 
 10(3 
 229 
 186 
 300 
 129 
 214 
 314 
 160 
 331 
 202 
 267 
 185 
 
 308 
 
 * Calculation made by Dr. Ogle for ISSO-lSSl and reproduced in Mayo-Smith, " Statis- 
 tics and Sociology," p. 165. 
 
 stances, such as phosphorus, mercury, lead, or infected 
 hair or -wool, as dippers of lucifer matches, hatters, file- 
 makers.
 
 128 AMERICAN CIIARITIES. 
 
 3. Excessive work, mental or physical, especially such as 
 involves sudden strains, as among fishermen. 
 
 4. Working in confined or foul air, as tailors, printers. 
 
 5. The effect of alcoholic drinks, as innkeepers, spirit 
 dealers. 
 
 6. Liability of fatal accidents, as miners. 
 
 7. Inhalation of dust, increasing the mortality from 
 phthisis and diseases of the lungs ; the effect varying greatly, 
 according to amount and character of dust ; most injuri- 
 ous is metallic dust, as in cutlery, and dust of stone, as in 
 pottery-making. 
 
 A recent study made by Dr. John Tatham illustrates the 
 excessively dangerous character of dusty occupations. 
 
 As compared with the mortality figures for twenty-three 
 occupations, that of the farmer stands the lowest ; assuming 
 the mortality of agriculturists to be one hundred, the ratio 
 of mortality of all the other occupations is shown. As com- 
 pared with farmers, the mortality in the first seven occupa- 
 tions — pottery-makers, cutlers, file-makers, glass-makers, 
 copper-workers, gunsmiths, and iron and steel manufactur- 
 ers — is from three to four and a half times as great, 
 and twelve others more than twice as great. The high 
 rate from certain diseases is shown in columns 3 and 4. 
 
 The effect of inhaling foul air and of a constrained posi- 
 tion is shown in Table XXVI. in the high mortality figures 
 of certain occupations as compared with agriculture. 
 
 But the entire story regarding the degenerative influences 
 brought to bear upon the weaker classes of the community 
 is not brought out by the study of occupational mortality, 
 but of class mortality. In occupational mortality we deal 
 only with the diseases and deaths of adults, whereas in class 
 mortality we deal also with the diseases and deaths of mi- 
 nors and of incapable nienibers of the families. Ansell 
 shows that out of 100,000 children born in the upper classes, 
 nearly 10,000 more will reach the age of fifteen than in the
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 
 
 129 
 
 TABLE XXV.* 
 
 Certain Dcsty Occupations. 
 
 Comparative Mortality from Specified Causes. 
 
 OcCrPATION. 
 
 Manu 
 
 Agriculturist . . . . 
 
 Potter, Earthenware 
 
 Manufacturer 
 Cutler . . . 
 File-maker . 
 Glass-maker . 
 Copper-worker 
 Gunsmith 
 Iron and Steel 
 
 facturer . 
 Zinc-worker . 
 Stone-quarrier 
 Brass-worker 
 Chimney-sweep 
 Lead-worker 
 Cotton Manufacttxrer 
 Cooper and Wood Turner 
 Eope-maker . . . 
 Bricklayer, Mason 
 Carpet Manufacturer 
 Tin-worker . 
 Wool Manufacturer 
 Locksmith . . . 
 Blacksmith . . . 
 Baker, Confectioner 
 
 Mortality Figures. 
 
 100 
 
 453 
 407 
 373 
 335 
 317 
 294 
 
 292 
 266 
 261 
 250 
 249 
 247 
 244 
 238 
 220 
 215 
 213 
 204 
 202 
 194 
 177 
 177 
 
 106 
 
 333 
 
 382 
 402 
 295 
 294 
 324 
 
 195 
 240 
 269 
 279 
 260 
 148 
 202 
 250 
 219 
 225 
 226 
 217 
 191 
 223 
 159 
 185 
 
 Diseases of 
 
 Respiratory 
 
 System. 
 
 115 
 
 668 
 518 
 423 
 445 
 406 
 325 
 
 450 
 347 
 307 
 273 
 291 
 397 
 338 
 276 
 267 
 251 
 245 
 234 
 256 
 205 
 233 
 207 
 
 Diseases of 
 Circulatory 
 
 System. 
 
 227 
 167 
 204 
 157 
 186 
 153 
 
 162 
 126 
 137 
 126 
 142 
 272 
 152 
 137 
 118 
 130 
 87 
 124 
 131 
 104 
 136 
 130 
 
 * From Oliver's "Dangerous Trades," p. 135. 
 
 population at large.^ For our purpose perhaps the most con- 
 venient class-mortality statistics are those prepared by Dr. 
 i"Rate of Mortality," etc., in the Upper and Professional Classes, 
 Table II.
 
 130 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Grimshaw, Registrar-General of Ireland, giving the experi- 
 ence in Dublin for the four years 1883 to 1886.^ The death 
 rates per 1000 for children under five years of age were 
 found to be, in the professional class, 20.52 ; middle, 58.25 ; 
 
 TABLE XXVI.* 
 Certain Unhealthful Occdpations. 
 Comparative Mortality from Several Causes. 
 
 MOKTALITT FiGlTKBS. 
 
 
 
 
 Diseases of 
 
 Diseases of 
 
 Occupation. 
 
 Ratio. 
 
 Phthisis. 
 
 Respiratory 
 System. 
 
 Circulatory 
 System. 
 
 Agriculturist . . 
 
 100 
 
 106 
 
 115 
 
 83 
 
 Bookbinder . 
 
 
 
 246 
 
 325 
 
 218 
 
 115 
 
 Printer . . . 
 
 
 
 244 
 
 326 
 
 214 
 
 133 
 
 Musician , . 
 
 
 
 236 
 
 322 
 
 200 
 
 191 
 
 Hatter . . . 
 
 
 
 231 
 
 301 
 
 210 
 
 141 
 
 Hairdresser 
 
 
 
 221 
 
 276 
 
 213 
 
 179 
 
 Tailor . . . 
 
 
 
 211 
 
 271 
 
 196 
 
 121 
 
 l^raper . . . 
 
 
 
 200 
 
 260 
 
 181 
 
 135 
 
 Shoemaker . . 
 
 
 
 198 
 
 256 
 
 181 
 
 121 
 
 * Oliver, p. 149. 
 
 artisan class, 69.05 ; general service and pauper class, 108.73. 
 The death-rates were such as to give a specially high percent- 
 age of persons tinder fifteen in the second and third classes, 
 and the death-rate of children under five years of age is so 
 excessive in the last-named class that the percentage of per- 
 sons under fifteen was there not up to the average. Thus 
 pressure is brought to bear upon the poor, and especially 
 upon the artisan class, in a fourfold way. First, the number 
 under fifteen years of age, and therefore of non-producers, 
 is relatively high ; second, the expense of a disproportionately 
 large number of deaths is im})0sed upon the poor ; third, the 
 1 British Medical Journal, vol. ii., 1887, p. 241.
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 
 
 131 
 
 amount of sickness is disproportionately large ; and, fourth, 
 the number of births is larger than in the upper classes. 
 The effect these influences will have upon a population of 
 1000 in each class appears in Table XXVII. 
 
 TABLE XXVII. 
 
 Burdens and Burden-bearing Power of 1000 Persons in 
 Various Classes, Population of Dublin (1883-1886). 
 
 Class. 
 
 
 « > 
 
 Deaths. 
 
 Tears of 
 Sickness. 
 
 Years of 
 Health 
 
 FOB 
 
 Persons 
 OVER 15. 
 
 Ratio of 
 Sickness to 
 Effective 
 
 Health. 
 
 Professional and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Independent . 
 
 229 
 
 771 
 
 16.20 
 
 30.40 
 
 746.6 
 
 1:24.5 
 
 Middle . . . 
 
 300 
 
 700 
 
 26.21 
 
 52.42 
 
 663.3 
 
 1:12.6 
 
 Artisans and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Petty Shop- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 keepers . . 
 
 322 
 
 678 
 
 23.00 
 
 46.00 
 
 646.6 
 
 1:14 
 
 General Service 
 
 277 
 
 723 
 
 37.79 
 
 75.58 
 
 665.6 
 
 1:08.8 
 
 By " effective health," as used in the table, is meant the 
 health of persons fifteen years of age or over ; that is, of per- 
 sons capable of doing something for their own support, and 
 possibly for the care of relatives. It seems that in Class I. 
 there will be one year of sickness to 24.5 of effective health ; 
 in Class II. one to 12.6 ; in Class III. one to 14 ; and in Class 
 IV. one to 8.8. Thus we have some explanation of how the 
 high death-rate among the unfortunate classes operates to 
 impose burdens that crush them. 
 
 It has already been pointed out how constant and con- 
 spicuous a factor sickness is in bringing persons to apply 
 for relief and compelling them to become inmates of institu- 
 tions.^ The incidence of this burden upon those least able 
 to bear it is again illustrated in a table derived from 
 
 1 p. 42, Chap. II., case-counting.
 
 132 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 material supplied by Korosi, the eminent statistician of 
 
 Budapesth. 
 
 TABLE XXVIII. 
 
 Mortality and Morbidity in Five Occupations.* 
 
 
 No. 
 
 No. 
 
 Years of 
 Life, 25-GO. 
 
 Years of 
 
 Years OF 
 
 Ratio of 
 
 Occupation. 
 
 Living 
 AT 25. 
 
 Living 
 AT 60. 
 
 Health, 
 25-60. 
 
 Sickness 
 25-60. 
 
 Health to 
 Sickness. 
 
 Merchants . 
 
 1000 
 
 587.7 
 
 28,501.23 
 
 27,676.63 
 
 824.6 
 
 33.5 : 1 
 
 Tailors . . 
 
 1000 
 
 421.2 
 
 25,673.45 
 
 24,515.91 
 
 1157.5 
 
 21.1: 1 
 
 Shoemakers . 
 
 1000 
 
 376.2 
 
 23,872.38 
 
 22,624.78 
 
 1247.6 
 
 18.2 : 1 
 
 Servants . . 
 
 1000 
 
 290.2 
 
 22,416.92 
 
 20,997.32 
 
 1419.6 
 
 14.7: 1 
 
 Day Laborers 
 
 1000 
 
 253.3 
 
 22,317.04 
 
 20,823.64 
 
 1493.4 
 
 13.9 : 1 
 
 * Josef Korosi, "Mittheilungen uber Individuale Moi-talitats — Beobachtungen,'" 
 Budapesth, 1ST6, p. 26. 
 
 This table shows that if we start at the age of 25 with 
 1000 persons of each class, there will be living at the end of 
 35 years : of the merchants, 587 ; of the tailors, 421 ; of the 
 shoemakers, 376 ; of the servants, 290 ; and of the day labor- 
 ers, only 253. During this time the total number of years 
 of life lived by the merchants was 28,501.23, and by the 
 day laborers only 22,317. But worse than this, of the years 
 of life falling to the lot of the day laborer, 1493 will be 
 years of sickness ; while of the years of life lived by the 
 merchants, only 824 will be years of sickness. Or to state 
 the same thing in another way, the merchant will have 33^- 
 years in which to provide for one of sickness, while the 
 day laborer will have only 13.9 years of health in which to 
 provide for one of sickness. 
 
 More recent figures are afforded by Watson who has care- 
 fully investigated the experience of the Manchester Unity 
 Independent Order of Odd Fellows, which is representa- 
 tive of English workingmen generally. 
 
 It is seen that after fifty years of age, sickness becomes 
 a very serious economic factor", rising rapidly in the next
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 
 
 133 
 
 fifteen years from two to ten weeks per annum. Moreover, 
 it must be remembered that these are probably somewhat 
 superior workmen and that the experience of friendly soci- 
 eties underestimates the amount of prevailing sickness. 
 
 TABLE XXIX. 
 
 Mortality and Sickness Rates.* 
 
 Manchester Unity Independent Order of Odd Fellows (Watson, 1893-1897). 
 
 Ages. 
 
 Annual 
 Eate of Mortality 
 PEE 1000 Members. 
 
 Annual 
 
 Eate of Sickness 
 
 PER Member 
 
 (Weeks) 
 
 16-19 
 
 2.5 
 
 .92 
 
 20-24 
 
 3.7 
 
 .90 
 
 2^3-29 
 
 4.6 
 
 .95 
 
 ;]()-34 
 
 5.5 
 
 1.06 
 
 35-39 
 
 7.0 
 
 1.27 
 
 40-44 
 
 9.5 
 
 1.58 
 
 45-49 
 
 11.7 
 
 1.99 
 
 50-54 
 
 16.9 
 
 2.75 
 
 55-59 
 
 24.2 
 
 4.02 
 
 60-64 
 
 35.6 
 
 6.31 
 
 05-69 
 
 54.1 
 
 10.59 
 
 70-74 
 
 80.9 
 
 17.40 
 
 75-79 
 
 120.4 
 
 25.15 
 
 80-84 
 
 176.6 
 
 32.27 
 
 85-89 
 
 232.6 
 
 36.12 
 
 90-94 
 
 284.7 
 
 38.89 
 
 95 and over 
 
 440.0 
 
 38.57 
 
 * Reprinted in Am. Jour, of Soc, vol. xxvii.. p. 4^'.t. 
 
 Of all the forms of illness to which the laboring classes 
 are liable, tuberculosis is the most devastating. In Ham- 
 burg, Germany, the people who pay taxes on an income under 
 1000 marks have a death-rate from tuberculosis almost four 
 times as great as that of the people with an income over 
 3500 marks. In Glasgow casual laborers have double the
 
 134 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 average city death-rate from this disease and between the 
 ages of 45 and 55 their rate is twelve times that of the pro- 
 fessional class. In the last census year there were in the 
 United States 110,000 deaths from consumption, and statis- 
 ticians believe that there are not less than 330,000 living 
 persons affected with the disease. Between the ages of 
 15 and 30, one-third, and between 30 and 45, one-fourth, 
 of all deaths of American males is from this cause. The 
 close relation between this disease and the different classes 
 of occupations is illustrated in a table collated from Eng- 
 lish experience, 
 
 TABLE XXX, 
 
 Mortality from Consumption. 
 
 In Certain Groups of Occupations, English Experience (1890-1892).* 
 
 Rate per 1000 at each age. 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 J 
 
 
 .; 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 < 
 
 • 
 
 b 
 
 (C 
 
 
 
 
 Jj; 
 
 a 
 
 ►J Z H 
 
 &. . 
 
 
 b b . 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 t3 
 
 2 ^ s 
 
 H s 
 
 
 a o CO 
 H o « g 
 
 1 « 
 
 AOES. 
 
 i 
 
 ►J 
 
 § 1 s 
 
 1-1 Q 
 ■< < 
 
 
 ►4 5 B a 
 5 » -< 
 
 
 
 w 
 
 
 § 5 5 
 
 Cd » 
 
 z « 
 
 B ^ z; « 
 
 o 1 
 
 
 o 
 
 < 
 
 
 
 
 
 O ►-! 
 
 15-19 . . 
 
 1.2 
 
 A 
 
 0.8 
 
 1.0 
 
 .8 
 
 .6 
 
 .6 
 
 20-24 . . 
 
 2.2 
 
 1.3 
 
 2.0 
 
 2.6 
 
 1.8 
 
 1.4 
 
 2.0 
 
 25-34 . . 
 
 2.1 
 
 1.7 
 
 2.7 
 
 3.4 
 
 2.7 
 
 1.5 
 
 3.2 
 
 35-44 . . 
 
 2.4 
 
 2.0 
 
 3.8 
 
 4.5 
 
 3.2 
 
 2.1 
 
 4.7 
 
 45-54 . . 
 
 2.0 
 
 1.7 
 
 4.0 
 
 4.5 
 
 3.4 
 
 2.9 
 
 4.9 
 
 55-64 . . 
 
 1.5 
 
 1.5 
 
 3.2 
 
 3.8 
 
 2.8 
 
 3.2 
 
 3.4 
 
 65 and over 
 
 .7 
 
 1.0 
 
 1.8 
 
 2.2 
 
 1.7 
 
 2.8 
 
 2.0 
 
 * Ilofifmann, Am. Jo. of Soc, vol. .\xvii., p. 489. 
 
 Here the unhealthful trades and common labor show a 
 death-rate more than twice that of the agricultural class on 
 the one hand and the professional class on the other, and 
 this in those years of life when wage-earners are of most 
 value not only to their families but to society. The further 
 loss entailed by the long and costly sickness which precedes 
 death may be demonstrated by the experience of a single
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 135 
 
 trade. President G. "\Y. Perkins of the International Cigar- 
 makers Union reported that 51 per cent of all deaths in that 
 trade in 1888 were due to tuberculosis ; and although the 
 per cent of deaths had fallen in 1905 to one-half, a total 
 amount of $73,000 was paid in that year in sick and death 
 benefits on account of consumption.^ Yet cigar-making is by 
 no means the most unhealthy of trades. Kef erring again to 
 Table XXV. on p. 129, we see that the worst of the dust-pro- 
 ducing occupations — pottery and earthenware manufacture, 
 cutlery and file-making, glass-blowing, copper-working — 
 have a mortality from tuberculosis alone, two to four times 
 that of farm-workers ; and from respiratory diseases, two to 
 six times as great. 
 
 Yet excessive dustiness is only one of many causes of 
 tuberculosis. It is primarily a disease of under-vitalization, 
 due to underfeeding, overwork, congestion, and bad sanitary 
 conditions. Dr. Hull and Dr. Hedger, in an investigation 
 of certain poor districts of Chicago, named as conditions of 
 employment tending to spread and increase consumption: 
 low wages, high rents, and consequent crowding ; excessive 
 fatigue from long and irregular hours of work, and unsani- 
 tary conditions of the place of employment, such as deficient 
 daylight and sunlight, foul air, and poor food.^ 
 
 Having studied the effect of certain unhealthf ul conditions 
 of labor in producing disease among adults, we turn to the 
 consideration of the employment of children. Child-labor 
 was one of the first causes of degeneration attacked by the 
 English philanthropists of the nineteenth century, and at the 
 beginning of the twentieth century in the United States it 
 continues to be a conspicuous point of attack for social work- 
 ers. Until very recently the discussion of the question has 
 been based on inadequate information as to the facts, but in 
 1907, Bulletin 69 of the United States Census Bureau pre- 
 
 1 Charities, vol. xvi., p. 207, 1906. 
 
 2 Jbia., vol. XTi., pp. 205-209.
 
 136 
 
 AMERICAN CHAEITIES. 
 
 TABLE XXXI. 
 Child Labor in the United States (1900).* 
 
 OCCUPATION. 
 
 Number. 
 
 Per Cent 
 Distribution. 
 
 1,760,178 
 
 100.0 
 
 1,054,446 
 
 60.2 
 
 25,656 
 
 1.5 
 
 8,232 
 
 0.5 
 
 11,566 
 
 0.7 
 
 5,365 
 
 0.3 
 
 128,617 
 
 7.3 
 
 7,011 
 
 0.4 
 
 42,021 
 
 2.4 
 
 23,371 
 
 1.3 
 
 24,209 
 
 1.4 
 
 7,241 
 
 0.4 
 
 3,240 
 
 0.2 
 
 6,279 
 
 0.4 
 
 20,322 
 
 1.2 
 
 138,065 
 
 7.9 
 
 82,004 
 
 4.7 
 
 44,427 
 
 2.5 
 
 8,267 
 
 0.5 
 
 8,938 
 
 0.5 
 
 6,625 
 
 0.4 
 
 13,747 
 
 0.8 
 
 35,070 
 
 2.0 
 
 6,698 
 
 0.4 
 
 3,227 
 
 0.2 
 
 7,661 
 
 0.4 
 
 3,635 
 
 0.2 
 
 10,913 
 
 0.6 
 
 2,936 
 
 0.2 
 
 11,462 
 
 0.7 
 
 11,920 
 
 0.7 
 
 104,081 
 
 5.9 
 
 All Occupations 
 
 Agricultural Laborers 
 
 Bookkeepers, Clerks, Stenographers, etc. 
 Boot and Shoe Makers and Repairers . 
 Draymen, Hackmen, Teamsters, etc. . 
 
 Glass-workers 
 
 Laborers (not specified) 
 
 Launderers and Laundresses .... 
 Messengers and Errand and Office Boys 
 
 Metal-workers 
 
 Miners and Quarrymen 
 
 Packers and Porters 
 
 Painters, Glaziers, and Varnishers . . 
 Printers, Lithographers, and Pressmen 
 
 Salesmen and Saleswomen 
 
 Servants and Waiters 
 
 Textile Mill Operatives 
 
 Cotton Mill 
 
 Hosiery and Knitting Mill . . . 
 
 Silk Mill 
 
 Woollen Mill 
 
 All other 
 
 Textile Workers 
 
 Dressmakers 
 
 Milliners 
 
 Seamstresses 
 
 Shirt, Collar, and Cuff Makers 
 Tailors and Tailoresses . . 
 All other 
 
 Tobacco and Cigar Factory Operatives 
 
 Woodworkers 
 
 All Other Occupations , 
 
 ♦Continental U.S. Biilletiu G9 (1907), U.S. Census, p. 16.
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 
 
 13T 
 
 sented the essentials for a clear understanding of the extent 
 and location of the evil. Table XXXI. shows the number of 
 children, i.e. persons over ten and under sixteen years of 
 age, engaged in gainful occupations in the United States in 
 1900. 
 
 It is apparent that by far the most important occupation for 
 children is that of agricultural laborers. Of the 1,750,178 
 children at work, 60.2 per cent were on the farm, four- 
 fifths of them assisting their parents. Since farm work for 
 children is not generally regarded as injurious to health or 
 morals and does not necessarily interfere with school attend- 
 ance, attention should be fixed upon the occupations of the 
 688,207 children employed in other occupations. The dis- 
 tribution of this group by age and sex is shown in Table 
 XXXII. 
 
 TABLE XXXII. 
 
 Breadwinners 10 to 15 Years of Age, exclusive of those Em- 
 ployed IN Agricultural Pursuits, in Continental United 
 States (1900).* 
 
 Age. 
 
 Total. 
 
 Male. 
 
 Female. 
 
 Per Cent 
 Distribution. 
 
 Num- 
 ber. 
 
 Per 
 Cent. 
 
 Num- 
 ber. 
 
 Per 
 
 Cent. 
 
 Total. 
 
 Male. 
 
 Fe- 
 male. 
 
 Total . . 
 
 10 years . . 
 
 11 years . . 
 
 12 years . . 
 
 13 years . . 
 
 14 years . . 
 
 15 years . . 
 
 688,207 
 
 409,721 
 
 59.5 
 
 278,486 
 
 40.5 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.0 
 
 20,683 
 26,971 
 49,670 
 89,034 
 191,023 
 310,826 
 
 11,706 
 15,754 
 29,756 
 53,029 
 113,429 
 186,047 
 
 56.6 
 58.4 
 59.9 
 59.6 
 59.4 
 59.9 
 
 8,977 
 11,217 
 19,914 
 36,005 
 77,594 
 124.779 
 
 43.4 
 41.6 
 40.1 
 40.4 
 40.6 
 40.1 
 
 3.0 
 
 3.9 
 
 7.2 
 
 12.9 
 
 27.8 
 45.2 
 
 2.9 
 
 3.8 
 
 7.3 
 
 12.9 
 
 27.7 
 45.4 
 
 3.2 
 4.0 
 
 7.2 
 12.9 
 27.9 
 44.8 
 
 Bulletin 09, p. 9. 
 
 The evils of child-labor depend partly upon the age and 
 sex of the child employed and partly upon the character of 
 the occupation. About 45 per cent of these children were 
 15 years of age, and a majority of them boys; for such as
 
 138 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 these labor is not necessarily objectionable, except as it cuts 
 them off from all but the most elementary education. If 
 the occupation were an apprenticeship at a trade under health- 
 ful conditions, it might be equivalent in value to a year 
 of formal school training at this period of life; but under 
 the conditions of modern industry this is seldom the case. 
 
 There remain at least 377,381 children under 14, of whom 
 153,707 are girls, whose employment outside the home may 
 be regarded as almost inevitably injurious. To these should 
 be added the 124,779 girls between 15 and 16 to whom 
 wage-earning employment is likely to be far more dangerous 
 than to boys of the same age. Of the total number of girls at 
 work, 42 per cent were servants and waitresses. The degree 
 of injury from such employment depends upon a variety of 
 conditions, but is on the whole probably less than that to 
 which textile operatives (16.8 per cent) and textile-workers 
 (10.7 per cent) are exposed. The boys under 16 are chiefly 
 engaged as laborers, messengers, errand and office boys (9.2 
 per cent), textile-mill operatives (8.6 per cent), miners and 
 quarrymen (5.9 per cent), and metal-workers (5.2 per cent). 
 
 In order to ascertain more in detail the family relationships 
 and social conditions, 23,657 child breadwinners between 10 
 and 14 engaged as cotton-mill operatives, messenger boys, 
 coal-mine workers, dressmakers, etc., tobacco and silk mill 
 operatives, and glass-workers were classified by the census 
 bureau. The results show that these children belonged as 
 a class to large families of six to eight persons, that as a whole 
 they were far more illiterate than non-working children, and 
 that two-thirds of them belonged to families in which there 
 were two, three, and even more older breadwinners. The vari- 
 ations range from 188 families with no older breadwinner, in 
 which the child was apparently the sole dependence, to 264 
 families having no dependent members, in which all the 
 older members were wage-earners, and in which the labor of 
 children ought to be entirely unnecessary.
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 139 
 
 Beyond these figures there are no authoritative American 
 studies as there are in England, France, and Germany, 
 showing the physical deterioration in those who are early 
 put to work at tasks which are too heavy for them or 
 which, by their nature, prevent normal development. Mr. 
 Frederick Hoffmann, the statistician, has contended that 
 there is a tendency in the discussion of child labor, as in 
 all social agitation, to overlook the necessity for a basis of 
 facts and to exaggerate exceptional instances of abuse. On 
 this ground he argues that no legislation on radical lines 
 should be made until it has been ascertained whether chil- 
 dren employed at different trades are really physically in- 
 jured, stunted in their growth, or hindered in their develop- 
 ment.^ 
 
 Dr. Felix Adler, on the other hand, declares that it is 
 a "sheer humiliation" to have to prove by argument that 
 a child of ten or twelve years is stunted and crippled by 
 laboring ten hours a day.^ It would seem that the facts 
 of English experience during the whole of the nineteenth 
 century should be sufficient to prove the contention of 
 reformers that child labor is an inevitable cause of degen- 
 eration. As early as 1796 the Manchester Board of Health 
 embodied among their resolutions the following statement 
 of facts : — 
 
 "The large factories are generally injurious to the constitution 
 of those employed in them, from the close confinement which is en- 
 joined, from the debilitating effects of hot or impure air, and from 
 the want of the active exercises which nature points out as essential 
 in childhood and youth to invigorate the system, and to fit our species 
 for the employments and duties of manhood. The untimely labor of 
 the night and the protracted labor of the day, with respect to chil- 
 
 1 " The Social and Medical Aspects of Child Labor," N. C. C, 1903. 
 For the historical arguments in favor of child labor, see Annuls, vol. 
 xxvii.. No. 2, pp. 313-320; pp. 281 ff. 
 
 2 Address, National Child Labor Committee, Second Annual Conven- 
 tion, December, 1905.
 
 140 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 dren, not only tend to diminish future expectations as to the sum of 
 life and industry, by impairing the strength and destroying the vital 
 stamina of the rising generation, but it too often gives encouragement 
 to idleness, extravagance, and profligacy in the parents, who, contrary 
 to the order of nature, subsist by the oppression of their offspring." i 
 
 English philanthropists continued to prophesy the penalty 
 that must follow belated and imperfect legislation for the 
 protection of factory children. At the end of a century, 
 the physical degeneration of the English population was 
 revealed by the enlistments for the Boer War and the 
 masses of degenerate unemployables.^ 
 
 In the United States, there has been recently accumulat- 
 ing a quantity of descriptive literature on this subject. 
 Dr. Daniel, from personal observation, thus describes the 
 evils of certain tenement sweat-shops : — 
 
 " The finishers are made up of the old and the young, the sick and 
 the well. As soon as a little child can be of the least possible help, it 
 must add to the family income by taking a share in the family toil. A 
 child three years old can straighten out tobacco leaves or stick the 
 rims which form the stamens of artificial flowers through the petals. 
 He can put the covers on paper boxes at four years. He can do some of 
 the pasting of paper boxes, although as a rule this requires a child of six 
 to eight years. But from four to six years he can sew on buttons and 
 pull basting threads. A girl from eight to twelve can finish trousers 
 as well as her mother. After she is twelve, if of good size, she can 
 earn more money in a factory. The boys do practically the same work 
 as the girls, except that they leave the home work earlier, and enter 
 street work, as pedlers, bootblacks, and newsboys. I have seen but 
 two children under three years of age working in tenements, one a boy 
 two and one-half years old, who assisted the mother, and four other 
 children under twelve years, in making artificial flowers. The other, 
 an extraordinary case of a child of one and one-half years, who as- 
 sisted at a kind of passementerie. 
 
 1 Reprinted in Annals, vol. xxvii., p. 316; see Hutcheson and Harrison, 
 " History of Factory Legislation." 
 
 2 McKelway, Am. Assoc. Adv. of Sci., 1906; reprinted Annals, vol. 
 xxvii., pp. 312 ff. ; Lindsay, Annals, pp. 331-336; Dennis, Everybody's 
 Magazine, February, 1905.
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 141 
 
 "The sick, as long as they can hold their heads up, must work to 
 pay for the cost of their living. As soon as they are convalescent, 
 they must begin again. A child from three to ten or twelve years 
 adds by its labor from fifty cents to 81.50 per week to the family 
 income. The hours of the child are as long as its strength endures or 
 the work remains. A child three years old can work continuously 
 from one and one-half to two hours at a time ; a child ten years old 
 can work twelve hours. Obviously under such conditions the child is 
 deprived of the two greatest rights which the parents and the state 
 are bound to give each child : health and an education. 
 
 "The particular dangers to the child's health are such as can be in- 
 duced by the confinement in the house, in an atmosphere always foul. 
 The bad light under which the child works causes a continual eye- 
 strain, from the effects of which the child will suffer all its life. The 
 brain of the child under eight years of age is not developed sufficiently 
 to bear fixed attention. Hence it must be continually forced to fix its 
 attention to the work, and in doing this an irreparable damage is done 
 to the developing brain. A child forced to earn its bread has neither 
 the time nor the opportunity to obtain an education." ^ 
 
 Mr. Owen R. Lovejoy cites as the results of different 
 kinds of premature employment : ^ — 
 
 " The wrecking of the nervous system in young girls who spend the 
 years of adolescence bent over sewing machines run at lightning speed ; 
 the bronchial and pulmonary affections of the child of the coal-break- 
 ers ; the languor and backwardness of the little street-trader ; the fail- 
 ing vision of the tenement-house worker, and the diseases of the feet 
 and spine which have been recently so strikingly traced by Dr. Frei- 
 burg to the unnatural exactions of factory labor upon boys and girls." 
 
 In some industries the chief danger to children lies in 
 accident. A report on anthracite mines in Pennsylvania 
 showed that one-half of the slate-pickers in the breakers 
 were under sixteen years of age ; yet 75 per cent of the 
 accidents were to boys under sixteen years of age.^ Mr. 
 Lovejoy further points out that the subnormal wages of 
 
 1 Report of National Consumers' League, 1905, pp. 28-29. 
 
 2 " Child Labor and Philanthropy," N. C. C, 1907, p. 198. 
 
 8 Lovejoy, "Child Labor in the Coal Mines," Annals, vol. xxvii., No. 2, 
 pp. 293 ff.
 
 142 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 these children not only tends to lower the standard of living, 
 but fosters the idleness of older boys, floods the market with 
 unskilled laborers who had neither time nor opportunity to 
 learn a trade in their youth, and thus precipitates labor 
 conflicts. 
 
 The interdependence of child labor and illiteracy is illus- 
 trated by Mrs. Florence Kelley,^ who shows that arranging 
 all the states in four groups according to the numbers of 
 their illiterate children, five leading manufacturing states, 
 New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, and New Jersey, all 
 stand near the bottom, and have more than 20,000 illiterate 
 children ; while the great cotton manufacturing states of the 
 South stand at the very bottom. Massachusetts alone, of 
 the great manufacturing states, lies in group two at the 
 middle of the list. 
 
 Miss Jane Addams, from observation of tramps in lodg- 
 ing-houses, concludes : — 
 
 " This inordinate desire to get away from work seems to be con- 
 nected with the fact that the men have started to work very early, be- 
 fore they had the physique to stand up to it, or tlie mental vigor with 
 which to overcome its difficulties, or the moral stamina which makes a 
 man stick to his work whether he likes it or not. ... It is no figment 
 of the imagination to say that the human system breaks down . . . 
 and that general debility and many diseases may be traced to pre- 
 mature labor." 2 
 
 Miss Addams shows that the employment of children in 
 factory labor often pauperizes the parents.^ The immigrant 
 peasantry from Europe and the poor white farmers in the 
 South have been accustomed to farm work from their child- 
 hood, and they see no difference between it and factory 
 labor to which they consign their children. The children 
 adapt themselves to the new conditions more easily than 
 the parents, so the parents drop out, with the result that 
 
 1 Kelley, " Illiterate Children," etc., Charities, March 14, 1903. 
 
 2 " Child Labor and Pauperism," N. C. C, 1903, pp. 114-121. 
 8 Corroborated by Lindsay, Annals, vol. xxvii., No. 2, p. 333.
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 143 
 
 the parents become more and more dependent on the chil- 
 dren's earnings. The parasitic character of sweating indus- 
 tries and of child labor has been pointed out by many- 
 modern writers. Sidney Webb, in discussing the labor of 
 children who live at home and work for less than the cost 
 of subsistence and nurture, and of adult women working 
 at wages insufficient to keep them in full efficiency, who 
 are, in fact, partially maintained by another class, says : — 
 
 " An industry, to be economically self-supporting, must maintain its 
 full establishment of workers, unimpaired in numbers and vigor, with 
 a sufficient number of children to fill vacancies caused by death or 
 superannuation. If the employers in a particular trade are able to 
 take such advantage of the necessities of their work people as to hire 
 them for wages actually insufficient to provide enough food, clothing, 
 and shelter to maintain them in average health ; if they are able to 
 work them for hours so long as to deprive them of adequate rest and 
 recreation ; and if they can subject them to conditions so dangerous 
 and unsanitary as positively to shorten their lives, that trade is clearly 
 obtaining a supply of labor force which it does not pay for. Such 
 parasitic trades are not drawing any money subsidy from the incomes 
 of other classes, but in thus deteriorating the physique, intelligence, 
 and character of their operatives they are drawing on the capital stock 
 of the nation." i 
 
 In reply to the objections of many modern manufacturers 
 that a particular industry will be ruined if children cannot 
 be employed, we may point to the prosperity of the cotton 
 industry in England and such industries as glass-making in 
 the United States, which appear to thrive in proportion as 
 child labor has been dispensed with.^ But if some check 
 to certain industries were involved in the strict limitation of 
 child labor, it must be questioned whether the service to 
 society is not after all worth the cost. If a particular in- 
 dustry does not justify the employment of adults at a living 
 wage under decent conditions, the community would suffer 
 little from the loss of it, as compared with the destruction of 
 
 1 Webb, " Industrial Democracy," vol. ii., p. 749. 
 
 2 Lovejoy, " Child Labor iu the Glass Industry," Annals, pp. 303-304.
 
 144 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 character and physique involved in parasitic labor. The 
 time is certainly not far off when we shall demand and en- 
 force by effective legislation, that every industry shall bear 
 the full cost of legitimate production. We cannot afford, 
 says McKelway, to put colts to the plough. 
 
 A study of the labor of adalt women has disclosed a simi- 
 lar tendency to deterioration of health and capacity as the 
 result of inadequate wage, long, irregular hours of labor, and 
 exposure to physical and social hardships. But since space 
 is lacking to consider all the social tendencies toward de- 
 generation, we must turn to a phase of employment affect- 
 ing most injuriously wage-earners of both sexes and all ages 
 in a great number of industries. Intermittent, irregular 
 labor may arise from seasonal variations, or from the spas- 
 modic nature of modern industry, or from the inclination of 
 employing companies, as in the bituminous coal regions and 
 the meat-packing industries, to keep a large number of men 
 partially employed rather than a small number occupied all 
 the time. Of the same nature is the unemployment from 
 industrial crises, which leave behind a legacy of individual 
 degeneration and personal unthrift. 
 
 TABLE XXXIII. 
 
 Applicants for Relief and Industrial Displacement 
 
 (1895-1896). 
 
 
 NUMBEK 
 
 OF Cases. 
 
 Pee 
 Cent. 
 
 Cases of displacement indicating industrial con- 
 traction 
 
 106 
 
 159 
 
 128 
 
 80 
 
 22.4 
 
 33.6 
 27.1 
 16.9 
 
 Cases of insufficient, irregular, or poorly paid em- 
 ployment 
 
 Replacement indicating no character weakness . 
 Replacement indicating character weakness . . 
 
 473 
 
 100.0
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 145 
 
 In a study of industrial displacement made by Francis H. 
 McLean from the records of the Xew York Charity Or- 
 ganization Society, the different classes are shown as in 
 Table XXXIII. From further information it appears that 
 40 per cent of these men were only irregularly employed 
 even when they last had employment.^ 
 
 But if it be thought that such statistics as these overstate 
 the proportions of uncertain employment, we have only to 
 rehearse the facts of seasonal unemployment in New York 
 City in 1905 to see how serious the situation is even in pros- 
 perous years. Mr. Frank J. Warne writes as follows: — 
 
 "The seasonal nature, of unemployment is indicated in the fact 
 that of the 365,000 members of trade unions reporting to the New 
 York State Bureau of Labor in 1905, as many as 32,000, or 8.7 per 
 cent, were idle in the January-March period, while for July-Septem- 
 ber only 7500, or but 2 per cent, were out of work. The report of the 
 State Bureau of Labor shows that for the four years since 1901 
 as many as 20 to 25 per cent of the membership of the labor 
 unions have been idle in January. The year 1905 was an ex- 
 ceptionally favorable one for employment at this season (March), and 
 yet among brick-layers and masons 43 per cent were idle, carpenters 
 and joiners more than 20 per cent, and painters and decorators more 
 than 29 per cent. Out of more than 400,000 working men and women 
 reporting from all trades throughout the state in 1907, more than 77,000, 
 or 19 per cent, were not at work at the end of March of that year, 
 while more than 55,000 did not work at all during the first three 
 months of the year." ^ 
 
 But it is with the effect of these conditions that we are 
 at present concerned. Dr. Tatham shows that the mor- 
 tality of unoccupied males is two and a half times as great 
 as that of occupied males. Mr. Percy Alden declares that 
 the relation between inefficiency and unemployment is as 
 close as that of drink and poverty, and quotes a large em- 
 ployer of labor as saying : — 
 
 1 Quoted by Devine, "Principles of Relief," pp. 156, 160. 
 * Charities and the Commons, vol. xix., 1908, p. 1585.
 
 146 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 " Between five and six per cent of my skilled men are out of work 
 just now. During the long spell of idleness any one of these men in- 
 variably deteriorates. In some cases the deterioration is very marked. 
 The man becomes le.ss proficient and less capable, . . . nothing has a 
 worse effect upon the caliber of such men than a spell of idleness." ^ 
 
 The warden of Kings County Jail, New York, said : — 
 
 "Over fifty per cent of the commitments to this institution are for 
 vagrancy — the crime (?) of being out of work and homeless. I am 
 convinced from seeing the efficient work of some of these men while 
 here, that they never would be here, could they have secured employ- 
 ment outside. By our treatment of the unemployed we are making 
 criminals of men who have hitherto been honest, self-sustaining mem- 
 bers of the community." 
 
 Idleness during a short period, for hard-working people, 
 would be no inevitable injury if their leisure could be turned 
 to account in recreation and culture ; but in the situation of 
 the poor it means first of all discouragement and that fear 
 of want which Robert Hunter has said is the essence of 
 poverty. The man must spend his time tramping in search 
 of work, or idling in streets, saloons,. and lodging-houses, for 
 the tenement offers no inducements for home-staying. As re- 
 sources dwindle, he will be less and less well nourished and 
 clothed, and when at last he is able to resume work, he is 
 physically and mentally debilitated. If the process be re- 
 peated season after season, each is likely to find him pro- 
 gressively less competent and ambitious. 
 
 Nor will the deterioration affect him alone. If he have a 
 family, the wife must take any kind of casual labor that may 
 be available, however exhausting it may be and regardless of 
 her own physical fitness, while at the same time the whole 
 family will have less food, fuel, and clothing. This extra 
 labor and great thrift on the wife's part may tide over the 
 period of the husband's out-of-work for one season, or two, 
 
 1 "The Unemployed," p. 6.
 
 SOCIAL CAUSES OF DEGENERATION. 147 
 
 or three even ; but sooner or later, sickness or some other 
 common vicissitude is liable to drain the last resources and 
 deprive the household of its independence. Mrs. Bosanquet 
 says that it takes a very high order of intellect to be self- 
 supporting on an intermittent income ; to what extent ir- 
 regular employment and its accompaniment, intermittent 
 income, operate in enervating the working-class, can be 
 fully known only by those who live among them and see 
 dependents in the process of making.^ 
 
 In the foregoing outline of a few conspicuous social 
 causes of degeneration, the element of personal habits and 
 character has been omitted. It is obvious that individuals 
 of strong physique or judgment may escape the diseases 
 incident to their trades, while others who are careless or 
 intemperate will succumb to them. It has often been 
 observed that the victims of tuberculosis are lacking in 
 judgment and as a class more deficient in the practice of 
 personal hygiene than well persons. In other words, dis- 
 ease, accident, unemployment — all the environmental causes 
 of deterioration and incapacity — seem to have an affinity 
 for the relatively unfit. Yet every worker is enmeshed in 
 a network of fateful conditions for which he is not respon- 
 sible and from which he could not escape were he of ever 
 so immaculate character and habits, of tireless industry, or 
 even of a considerable degree of capacity. 
 
 We found that disease produces poverty, and we now 
 find that poverty produces disease ; that poverty comes 
 from degeneration and incapacity, and now that degenera- 
 tion and incapacity come from poverty. Yet it is not with- 
 out benefit to trace the whole dismal round of this vicious 
 circle, for it well illustrates the interaction of social forces. 
 A produces B, and B reacts to increase A. In biblical 
 phrase, "The destruction of the poor is their poverty." 
 
 1 " Aspects of the Social Problem," p. 97.
 
 148 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 The " unfit " aid in accomplishing their own extermination. 
 But in tracing the long circle the number of those forces 
 which are distinctly preventable constantly grows, and in- 
 cludes not only the diseases of occupations, but also many 
 of those pertaining to the manner of living, concerning 
 which nothing has yet been said.
 
 CHAPTER Y.i 
 
 PACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 
 
 Thus far, in the study of the causes of poverty, the larger 
 part of the American material has been derived from the 
 Charity Organization Society schedules devised in 1888. Al- 
 though the general conclusions drawn from them have not 
 been disputed, the limitations of the case-counting method 
 have been increasingly evident. In 1899 the committee of 
 the National Conference revised and rearranged the sched- 
 ules, throwing out a number of the minor causes, and re- 
 grouping the more conspicuous under " Causes within the 
 Family and outside the Family," instead of under " Miscon- 
 duct and Misfortune." ^ 
 
 CAUSES OF DISTRESS. 
 
 I. Causes xcithiyi the Family. 
 
 Disregard of family ties (desertion, neglect to contribute by chil- 
 dren, brothers, sisters, or other natural supporters). 
 
 Intemperance (abuse of stimulants or narcotics). 
 
 Dishonesty or other moral defects. 
 
 Lack of thrift, industry, or judgment. 
 
 Physical or mental defects (blind, deaf, crippled from birth, insane, 
 feeble-minded). 
 
 Sickness, death, or accident. 
 
 II. Causes outside the Family. 
 
 Lack of employment not due to employee (changes in trade, intro- 
 duction of machinei-y, hard times, strike or lockout, partial or 
 complete shut-doAvn, removal of industry, etc. 
 
 Defective sanitation. 
 
 1 Interpolated by the Reviser. 
 
 2 Schedule form reproduced in Charities Review, vol. viii., 1898, p. 470. 
 
 149
 
 150 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Degrading surroundings. 
 Unwise pliilanthropy. 
 Public calamity. 
 III. Unclassified. 
 
 The schedule as thus modified was less mechanical and the 
 assumption of the family rather than the individual as the 
 unit of observation was a great gain in logic, but it did not 
 remove the fundamental objections to the method. Between 
 1899 and 1907 the rapidly changing view of poverty caused 
 several leading societies to discontinue the use of the new 
 schedules, and the scientific errors of the method were finally 
 set forth fully in an address made by Miss Lilian Brandt, 
 Statistician of the New York Charity Organization Society, 
 before the Philadelphia Conference of Charities in 1907.^ 
 
 Miss Brandt attacked the method on several grounds, but 
 chiefly that case-counting reflected the mind of the agent 
 who set down the cause, rather than the cause itself, and 
 that it assumed both that it is possible to decide on a prin- 
 cipal cause and that the person who has the task can do it. 
 She says ; — 
 
 " What the decision as to the cause of need will be in any case de- 
 pends not on the facts of the case, but on the knowledge of them sev- 
 eral generations back by the person making the decision, plus his own 
 bias, determined by natural temperament and education, plus his abil- 
 ity to recognize a cause when he sees it. In other words, the decision 
 is merely an expression of opinion, and is of no scientific value." 
 
 Describing the effect of the altered views of poverty Miss 
 Brandt continues : — 
 
 " In general the change has consisted in moving the causes in the 
 first group over into the second, placing them under the head, ' outside 
 the famQy.' Behind ' disregard of family ties ' we see defective edu- 
 cation of both boys and girls, instability of employment, the influence 
 of institution life ; behind ' intemperance ' we see poor food, congested 
 living, lack of opportunities for wholesome recreation, and the power 
 of the liquor trust ; in the place of ' licentiousness ' and ' dishonesty ' 
 
 1 To be published in the Quar. Jour, of Econ., 1906.
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 151 
 
 and ' other moral defects ' (when they are causes of poverty, being 
 much more frequently devices for escape from poverty) we are in- 
 clined to put primarily our ridiculously ineffectual penal methods, and 
 again defective education, and again unwholesome conditions of mod- 
 ern city life ; ' lack of industry, thrift, and judgment ' appear in many 
 cases to be really the results of poverty — the lack of imagination 
 induced by years of privation showing itself in shiftlessness, under- 
 nourishment in laziness and mental sluggishness, and premature em- 
 ployment, which we would doubtless have commended as thrift a 
 generation ago, in lack of industry in the grown man. 'Physical and 
 mental defects ' are to us now the outward and visible signs of inade- 
 quate provision for the segregation and education of defectives, careless 
 neglect of the welfare of school children, unintelligent and indiffer- 
 ent methods of instruction in the public schools. ' Sickness, accident, 
 and death ' we analyze : the sickness is traced to ignorance of the 
 causes of preventable disease, to bad sanitary conditions in dwelling 
 and workshop, to insufficient provision for curing certain kinds of ill- 
 ness, to the ignorance of great numbers of mothers concerning the care 
 of their babies, to the action of commercial interests which make it a 
 difficult matter for even the well-to-do to get pure milk and food, to 
 governmental inefficiency exhibited in a contaminated water-supply 
 and dirty streets ; for accident we read neglect to provide safety de- 
 vices or to permit them to be used, and an evasion of responsibility for 
 the results which is none the less criminal because legalized by the con- 
 struction of the courts ; and almost every death that is a cause of de- 
 pendence we know now is preventable, which is equivalent to saying 
 that we have found a cause farther back than 'death,' and that we 
 have also found out how that cause may be controlled. 
 
 " The renowned causes of poverty are, in short, largely symptoms 
 and results of poverty. They are, to be sure, potent to produce more 
 poverty, but they are not the beginning." 
 
 At the meeting of the National Conference of Charities 
 and Corrections in 1906, Dr. Lee K. Frankel offered a new 
 classification of the causes of dependence which still further 
 reflects the more modern attitude. It consists of four divi- 
 sions only : ignorance, industrial inefficiency, exploitation 
 of labor, and defects of governmental supervision. Miss 
 Brandt thinks this should be reduced to two, cutting out 
 ignorance and inefficiency as the result of the other two ; but
 
 152 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 she would add a third heading to express : " the defective 
 ■will which chooses vinwisely iu the face of knowledge and 
 the selfishness which evades responsibility." She pro- 
 phesies, moreover, that when exploitation of labor and de- 
 fective governmental supervision have been eliminated, 
 " the irreducible minimum of natural depravity, moral de- 
 fects, or whatever it may be called, will not be large enough 
 to constitute a serious problem." 
 
 Her conclusion is : *' the removal of the existing visible 
 effects of the ' underlying causes ' will do almost as well as 
 the removal of the causes themselves, or, in other words, 
 poverty is itself the most potent cause of poverty and the 
 most responsive to treatment." What philanthropy has 
 to deal with, then, is " adverse conditions," which may be 
 studied by observing dependent families or by pursuing 
 some injurious feature of city life to its effects — " These 
 adverse conditions in the city are the 'underlying causes'; 
 the adverse conditions in the families are effects." What 
 we need to know is, not what amount of poverty is due to 
 this or that " cause," but, for instance, how much siclcness 
 or unemployment there is at work producing poverty and 
 how to remedy it. 
 
 The first study made from this point of view to ascertain 
 the " adverse conditions " of dependent families was made 
 by Miss Brandt for the Committee of Social Research of 
 the New York Charity Organization Society in 1905.^ Of 
 the 1531 district cases studied, 44.54 per cent had not been 
 recorded in the Registration Bureau previous to the present 
 application, which corroborates Professor Warner's state- 
 ment that those who apply for relief to the Charity Organ- 
 ization Societies are not permanently dependent, but such 
 as are ordinarily self-supporting, and require help only at 
 critical times. Diagram I. shows that a majority of them 
 
 1 Report N. Y. C. O. S., 1904-1905, pp. 6.3 ff. ; the most important part of 
 this valuable report is reprinted in Cliarities and the Commons, vol. xv., 
 1906, pp. 62 ff, Diagrams I., II., and III. are reproduced from this report.
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVFRTT. 
 
 153 
 
 (54.23 percent) are normal family groups ; widows form one- 
 quarter of the whole number; married couples without 
 children are chiefly aged persons ; and the absence of 
 single men and women is explained by their treatment in 
 another bureau. 
 
 DIAGRAM I. 
 
 Married couples 
 with 
 
 children 
 
 Wdow« 
 
 25.G7Af 
 
 Deserted wives 
 a25^ 
 
 Married 
 
 \\ 
 
 couples, , 
 without 
 ctiildren 
 
 7.19^ 
 
 Diagram II., of the Age of Heads of Families by groups, 
 shows that a large proportion of them are young persons — 
 75 per cent under 50, and 11 per cent under 30, years of age. 
 
 Of the 4253 children of these families under 21 years 
 of age, 95.21 per cent were at home, 1.5 per cent with
 
 154 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 relatives, leaving only 3.29 per cent (a very small number) 
 who had been placed in institutions. Twenty per cent of 
 the families with children had five or more, indicating that 
 large families were a factor in producing dependence. 
 Elsewhere Miss Brandt discusses the social influences tend- 
 ing to narrow the wage-earning period by curtailing both 
 
 DIAGRAM II. 
 
 It^S 223 312 274 ifiS 140 l(i;) 66 
 
 Under 30 
 
 30 -S4 
 
 35-39 
 
 50-59 
 
 6U-60 
 
 70 end over 
 
 ends. Society is constantly raising the age limit of work 
 for children, while the tendency of industry is to throw out 
 a larger and larger section of old men, thus lengthening the 
 periods of normal dependence at the expense of the produc- 
 tive years. Fifty-two per cent of the children of these fami- 
 lies were under 14 years of age ; while very few instaiires 
 of capacity for full self-support are found among the individ- 
 uals who were over 60 years of age. In these respects, this 
 dependent group is abnormal, as shown by Diagram III.
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 155 
 
 DIAGRAM III. 
 
 Proportion of Depexdexts of Wage-earning Age 
 As compared with General Population of New York City. 
 
 Age composition of 1527 families in charge of the Charity Organi- 
 zation Society in 1905 (circle A), and of the aggregate population of 
 New York City in 1900 (circle B). The black segment of each circle 
 indicates roughly the proportion of the population of wage-earning 
 age ; the white segment the proportion which is naturally dependent. 
 
 It is seen that children among the dependents constitute 
 more than half of the whole number, while they are less 
 than a third of the general population ; and that the propor- 
 tion of men and women in the prime of life is considerably 
 smaller among the first class as compared with the second. 
 In other words, the number of the naturally dependent is 
 large, and the number of wage-earners relatively small. 
 
 Finally the investigator concluded that lack of em- 
 ployment was perhaps the most constant characteristic of 
 dependent families. In 71 per cent of them the chief wage- 
 earner was out of work at the time of the application. Al- 
 though the reason for idleness was rarely stated, the concur- 
 rent circumstances were frequently illness and injury due to 
 accident. There was frequently a disinclination to work regu- 
 larly, usually connected with intemperance. Sometimes the
 
 156 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 man was incapacitated, sometimes of less than average 
 ability, occasionally there was no market for his peculiar 
 talents, or there was a slack season in his trade. 
 
 It seemed clear that most of the idleness was due to inca- 
 pacity of some sort rather than to industrial conditions ; and 
 the incapacity, in turn, to illness or physical disability. The 
 characteristic illnesses were tuberculosis, rheumatism (ac- 
 companied generally by intemperance), and childbirth. The 
 impossibility of distinguishing between shiftlessness as a 
 moral defect and shiftlessness as a result of under-nourish- 
 ment made it difficult to determine the degree of moral 
 defects ; but as written down, one-fourth were intemperate, 
 one-fifth deserted their families, a small proportion were 
 shiftless, unreliable, or bad-tempered. To make the picture 
 truer must be included : " those intangible and ill-detined 
 defects . . . perversities of temper and peculiarities of tem- 
 perament which in a millionnaire may pass unnoticed, but 
 which in a man on the poverty line are of vital significance 
 to his economic standing." ^ 
 
 The second way of studying the adverse conditions of the 
 poor is the pursuit of a single evil from its effects backward 
 through the network of municipal, industrial, commercial, or 
 political influences which promote or suffer or superinduce 
 it. Of this character are the reports on unsanitary housing, 
 on tuberculosis, desertion, child labor, sweating industries, 
 and similar evils, which are the premonition and the basis 
 of intelligent reform. 
 
 We have been chiefly concerned in the three preceding 
 chapters with the historical development of the explanations 
 of poverty and pauperism, and in setting forth the conclu- 
 sions so far attained by the statistical method from the 
 study of dependents. It is impossible to say to what ex- 
 tent the rapid evolution of these latest views of social rather 
 than individual responsibility for poverty is the logical 
 1 Ibid., pp. 79-81, digest of conclusions.
 
 FACTS AXD CONDITIONS OF POVEBTY. 157 
 
 result of democratic theories in this country ; or how far 
 they have been influenced by economics and biology. But 
 unquestionably the work of Charles Booth and B. Seebohm 
 Rowntree in England has been the crystallizing force to de- 
 termine the form which social research has assumed so sud- 
 denly in America. 
 
 Since the publication of the first edition of Warner's 
 "American Charities," in 1894, Charles Booth has completed 
 his monumental study of the life and labor of the people of 
 London, and this has been followed by other studies on a 
 smaller scale but of a more intensive character both in Eng- 
 land and America. 
 
 The pictures drawn . by Booth and Rowntree, of whole 
 cross-sections of the population of London and York, fur- 
 nished for the first time a basis for an estimate of the 
 amount and proportions of absolute and relative poverty. 
 Mr. Booth and his assistants, between 1886 and 1903, col- 
 lated an immense mass of material concerning the wage- 
 earning classes of East London in their family, social, and 
 industrial life, with the purpose of picturing the conditions 
 of each class and the relation of welfare to earnings. He 
 divided the population of London into eight classes accord- 
 ing to the earnings of the head of the family, as follows : — 
 
 A. Lowest class — occasional laborers, loafers, and semi- 
 criminals. 
 
 B. Casual earnings — " very poor." 
 
 C. Intermittent earnings ) , „ 
 
 D. Small regular earnings f ^ 
 
 E. Regular standard earnings — unskilled labor. 
 
 F. Higher-class labor — foremen and skilled artisans. 
 
 G. Lower middle class. 
 
 H. Upper middle or " servant-keeping " class. 
 
 Having determined that an income of 21s. per week was 
 the minimum amount which would barely maintain a family 
 of five persons, he estimated, on the basis of his investiga-
 
 158 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 tions, the proportions of the population belonging to these 
 several classes : — 
 
 ^-the lowest I ^^1^^ jg^_ ^ ^^^^ 37,610 or 0.7 o/, 
 
 5_verypoor J 316,834 or 7.5% 
 
 C and Z) — poor, 18s. to 21s. a week 938,293 or 22.8% 
 
 In Poverty 30.7% 
 
 E — working class — 22s. to 30s. a weekl „ igfi 503 or 51 5°/ 
 F — working class — 30s. to 60s. a week i 
 
 Q and IT— middle class and above 749,930 or 7.8% 
 
 In Comfort 69.3% 
 
 Inmates of institutions 99,830 
 
 Total 4,309,000 
 
 From this classification it appears that classes A to D — 
 " those sinking into want " — constituted 30.7 per cent or 
 nearly one-third of the whole population; while classes E to 
 H — those " in comfort rising to affluence" — constituted 
 69.3 per cent of the whole. 
 
 In 1899 Mr. B. Seebohm Eowntree, with his assistants, 
 made a house-to-house inquiry, covering 11,560 families, 
 two-thirds of the population of the city of York, England. 
 His tables are not directly comparable with those of Mr. 
 Booth, owing to the fact that they are based on the total 
 family income, instead of the weekly wages of the chief 
 wage-earner, and owing also to his different division of 
 classes. Table XXXIV. presents the results of his classi- 
 fication by income. 
 
 Applying Mr. Kowntree's minimum income standard of 
 21s. 8d. — estimated on the basis of scientifically determined 
 food values — to this table, it appears that 7230 persons had 
 less than this amount weekly, and 2312 others not more 
 than 2s. above it. Mr. Rowntree finally concluded that 27.84 
 per cent of the population of York below the " servant-keep- 
 ing " class were in poverty ; that is, were " living in a state 
 of poverty (total earnings insufficient to supply adequate 
 food, clothing, and shelter for the maintenance of physical
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 
 
 159 
 
 efficiency) or so near to that state that tliey are liable to sink 
 into it at any moment." 
 
 TABLE XXXIV. 
 
 Classification of the Popllatiox of York bt Income. 
 
 (Boioitree, p. 21.) 
 
 
 Family Income fob Moderate 
 
 Number 
 
 Percentage 
 IN Each 
 
 Percentage 
 
 CLASS. 
 
 Family, i.e. Two Adults plus 
 
 Each 
 Class. 
 
 Class of 
 
 OF Total 
 
 
 Two to Foue Children. 
 
 Total Wage- 
 earners.* 
 
 Population, 
 
 A 
 
 Under 18s. per week . . . 
 Earning Money, Average 
 
 lis 1589 
 
 Dependent on Charity, 368 
 
 1,057 
 
 4.2 
 
 2.6 
 
 B 
 
 19s. and under 21s. . . 
 Above 21s. and under 
 21s. 8(; 781 
 
 4,492 
 
 9.6 
 
 5.9 
 
 C 
 
 21s. and under 30s. . . . 
 
 15,710 
 
 33.6 
 
 20.7 
 
 D 
 
 Over 30s 
 
 24,595 
 
 52.6 
 
 32.4 
 
 E 
 
 Female Domestic Servants . 
 
 4,29G 
 
 
 5.7 
 
 F 
 
 Servant-keeping Class . . 
 
 21,8.'30 
 
 
 28.8 
 
 G 
 
 In Public Institutions . . 
 
 2,932 
 
 
 3.9 
 
 75,812 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.0 
 
 * Excluding domestic servants and those in public institutions. 
 
 As to the amount of poverty in the United States there is 
 not even an approximate measure. Mr. Robert Hunter made 
 an estimate of the number of persons in distress in New 
 York and Boston in recent years, by collating the figures of 
 institutional and outdoor relief, with these results : — 
 
 1903 20 per cent of the people of Boston in distress. 
 
 1897 19 per cent of the people of New York State in distress. 
 
 1899 18 per cent of the people of New York in distress. 
 
 1903 14 per cent of the families of Manhattan evicted every year. 
 
 10 per cent (about) of those who die in Manhattan have pauper 
 burials.
 
 160 AMEUICAN CBAUITIES. 
 
 On this basis he estimated — " conservatively " — that cer- 
 tainly not less than 14 per cent of the people in prosperous 
 times, and probably not less than 20 per cent in bad times, 
 are in distress.^ The number of unknown and variable 
 factors in such an estimate make it of no value for the pur- 
 pose of comparison, but it has served, nevertheless, to direct 
 attention to the question as to how much of this distress is 
 remediable. 
 
 Mr. Frederick L. Hoffmann, statistician, has recently 
 called attention to the available statistics on pauperism in 
 the State documents, especially those of Massachusetts, New 
 York, Connecticut, and Indiana. ^ The annual reports of the 
 Massachusetts State Board of Charity show that the number 
 of paupers in institutions increased from 4.3 per 1000 of the 
 population in 1877-1886 to 4.4 during 1887-1896 and finally to 
 5.1 during the last ten years. At the same time there has been 
 a material increase in the per capita cost of support. In the 
 city of Boston, on the other hand, the number of paupers per 
 1000 of the population declined from 2.3 in 1888 to 1.5 in 
 1905. Mr. Hoffmann does not argue from these and other 
 interesting data which he quotes that poverty or pauperism 
 is increasing or decreasing, but merely urges that here exists 
 the material for ascertaining the causes and progress of 
 pauperism in certain localities and for a history of poor-law 
 administration. 
 
 From the standpoint of prevention and relief it is of far 
 less importance to know just how many people are in dis- 
 tress than to know how to save them from falling into it or 
 how to extricate them from it. In recent years relief work- 
 ers have laid increasing emphasis on the necessity of 
 adequate relief; while neighborhood workers, with equal in- 
 sistence, have declared that the total income of many decent 
 and hard-working people was so much below a living stand- 
 
 1 Hunter, " Poverty," pp. 20-27. 
 
 2 N. C. C, 1907, p. 132 ff. ; 12 valuable tables.
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 161 
 
 ard that degeneration, if not dependence, must be the result. 
 As we have seen, in the studies of Booth and Rowntree, a 
 " poverty line " was established, below which the struggle 
 for existence must inevitably end in a degree of failure. 
 Stimulated by these studies and influenced by their own ex- 
 perience, charity agents, settlement workers, and philan- 
 thropists generally have concentrated their research upon 
 the determination of the poverty line in American cities. 
 
 It has generally been conceded that the standard of living 
 of the working classes in the United States is considerably 
 above that of Europe, but there has been very little accurate 
 information as to what that standard was in given localities 
 or what its relation was to the standard of compensation. In 
 this country the first step has been to ascertain the incomes 
 of considerable bodies of the population and how those in- 
 comes were spent. Three studies on the standards and cost 
 of living have already been published : one, of 25,440 work- 
 ingmen's families throughout the United States having less 
 than $1200 a year income, by the United States Commis- 
 sioner of Labor ; a second, of 200 families in New York 
 City, by Mrs. Louise Boland More, under the auspices of the 
 Greenwich House Committee on Social Investigations ; and 
 a third, of 612 families (chiefly in New York City), by the 
 Special Committee on Standard of Living of the New York 
 State Conference of Charities and Corrections.^ It would 
 be impossible to compare the results of these studies with 
 the European investigations because of differences of methods 
 and of standards both of living and compensation ; but they 
 are readily comparable with each other. 
 
 Out of the total 25,440 families investigated by the Bureau 
 of Labor, 11,156 were selected as " normal " families ; that 
 
 1 Eighteenth Annual Report U. S. Commissioner of Labor, 1903. More, 
 " Wage-earners' Budgets," 1907. Frankel, Preliminary Report of Special 
 Committee on Standard of Living, N. Y. Conference of Charities and 
 Corrections, 1907.
 
 162 
 
 AMEBICAN CHABITIES. 
 
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 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 
 
 163 
 
 is, families having the husband at work ; a wife ; not more 
 than five children and none over 14 years of age ; no de- 
 pendent, boarder, lodger, or servant ; and expenditures for 
 rent, fuel, lighting, food, clothing, and sundries. 
 
 Table XXXV. shows the expenditure per family for vari- 
 ous purposes, by classified income. 
 
 Translating the table into per cents, a comparison of the 
 
 per cent expended for each purpose according to the size of 
 
 the family income can easily be made in the following 
 
 table : — 
 
 TABLE XXXVI. 
 
 Per Cent of Expenditure for Various Purposes in 11,156 
 Normal Families, by Classified Income. 
 
 Classified Income. 
 
 
 
 6 
 3 
 
 o 
 
 6 
 z 
 
 H 
 
 s 
 
 « 
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 Z 
 to 
 CO 
 
 
 Under $200 .... 
 $200 or under $300 
 $300 or under $400 
 $400 or under $500 
 $500 or under $600 
 $000 or under $700 
 $700 or under $800 
 $800 or under $900 
 $900 or under $1000 
 $1000 or under $1100 
 $1100 or under $1200 
 $1200 or over . . . 
 
 Total .... 
 
 
 
 16.93 
 18.02 
 18.69 
 18.57 
 18.43 
 18.48 
 18.17 
 17.07 
 17.58 
 17.53 
 16.59 
 17.40 
 
 6.69 
 6.09 
 5.97 
 5.54 
 5.09 
 4.65 
 4.14 
 3.87 
 3.85 
 3.77 
 3.63 
 3.85 
 
 1.27 
 1.13 
 1.14 
 1.12 
 1.12 
 1.12 
 1.12 
 1.10 
 1.11 
 1.16 
 1.08 
 1.18 
 
 50.85 
 47.33 
 48.09 
 46.88 
 46.16 
 43.48 
 41.44 
 41.37 
 39.90 
 38.79 
 37.68 
 36.45 
 
 8.68 
 8.66 
 10.02 
 11.39 
 11.98 
 12.88 
 13.50 
 13.57 
 14.35 
 15.06 
 14.89 
 15.72 
 
 15.58 
 18.77 
 16.09 
 16.50 
 17.22 
 19.39 
 21.63 
 23.02 
 23.21 
 23.69 
 26.13 
 25.40 
 
 100.0 
 100.0 
 100.0 
 100.0 
 100.0 
 100.0 
 100.0 
 100.0 
 100.0 
 100.0 
 100.0 
 100.0 
 
 18.12 
 
 4.57 
 
 1.12 
 
 43.13 
 
 12.95 
 
 20.11 
 
 100.0 
 
 A study of these percentages shows that all of the eco- 
 nomic propositions laid down by Dr. Engel, the German sta- 
 tistician, in 1857, which have been a standard of comparison 
 ever since, do not hold for American families. 
 
 Dr. Engel's propositions were : — 
 
 First. — That the greater the income, the smaller the per- 
 centage of outlay for subsistence.
 
 164 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Second. — That the percentage of outlay for clothing is 
 approximately the same, whatever the income. 
 
 Third. — That the percentage for lodging or rent and for 
 fuel and lighting, is invariably the same, whatever the income. 
 
 Fourth. — That as the income increases in amount, the 
 percentage of outlay for sundries becomes greater. 
 
 The first and the fourth are confirmed in the United States, 
 for the per cent for food falls from 50 to 36, as income in- 
 creases, and for sundries rises from 15 to 25 ; but the second 
 does not hold, for the expenditure for clothing rises with 
 income from 8 to 15 per cent. The third appears to be only 
 partially true, for the percentage of rent only varies slightly 
 as the income rises and that for lighting even less, while 
 the expenditure for fuel falls from 6.69 to 3.85 per cent. 
 
 Setting aside for the present the question of whether the 
 lower grades of income are sufficient to maintain even 
 physical efficiency, we notice that the surplus income over 
 necessities in the higher grades is spent chiefly in clothing 
 and sundries. It must be remembered that the clothing 
 expenditure is for two adults and from two to five children ; 
 and that " sundries " includes savings and all outlay for 
 sickness, insurance, dues, church, charity, equipment, educa- 
 tion, and pleasure. Table XXXVII. shows the average 
 expenditure for these purposes for 2567 families reporting 
 in detail. 
 
 Scanning these expenditures in detail and measuring 
 them by the American idea of decency, it does not seem 
 that those families had too much to eat and to wear or 
 too many luxuries. Certainly 16.7 cents per day per person 
 for food is not overfeeding, even if 3.31 of those persons 
 are not adults. Professor Jaffa, investigating the food 
 standards of three groups of Chinese in California, meas- 
 ured them by Professor Atwater's standard for a man at 
 moderate work, and concluded that they were just suffi- 
 ciently fed on 18 to 21 cents per person per day. If
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 
 
 165 
 
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 166 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 $193.93 seems at first sight an ample amount for sundries, 
 a consideration of the separate items certainly dispels the 
 idea. For instance, $20.54 for sickness and death must 
 include the expense of child-bearing, of accidents, — to 
 which laborers are especially liable, — and of children's 
 diseases, — to which the workingman's children are fre- 
 quently exposed. Even with the recourse of free clinics and 
 dispensaries, this amount would scarcely cover a single case 
 of serious illness in the year, much less provide for good 
 nursing or food and care to restore a wage-earner to effi- 
 cient condition. Nor does $12.28 seem an undue amount 
 to spend in a year for the recreation of five persons ; even 
 if liquor and tobacco, for which $23.37 on the average is 
 expended per year, be included as the "recreation" of the 
 man, it leaves only $2.85 apiece for the amusements and 
 vacation of the rest of the family. The category of 
 " Other Purposes " — $45.13 — must include car fares, which, 
 as we shall see from other studies, varies in New York City 
 from $14.00 to $18.84 per family, dentistry, tools, educa- 
 tion, and " spending money," — in short, all the miscella- 
 neous expenses of the family. 
 
 In comparison with the 9062 families in Table XXXV., 
 p. 162, whose incomes were less than $800, these 2567 
 families must be relatively well off, yet nearly one-fifth of 
 them had a deficit in the year 1901. Table XXXVIII. 
 shows how some of them met it. 
 
 It appears that more than half of the 507 families having 
 a deficit were in debt. The showing of the families in Table 
 XXXV. is even less favorable, for, of 25,440 reporting on 
 this subject, almost one-sixth had an average deficit of 
 $65.68 each, and a third just came out even. 
 
 The most intensive study yet made of the standards and 
 cost of living in this country is that by Mrs. More, of Green- 
 wich Settlement House, New York City. It presents a 
 detail picture of the conditions of life of 200 families in the
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY, 167 
 
 TABLE XXXVIII. 
 
 Surplus or Deficit of 2507 Families 
 
 Having an Average Income of $827.19 and an Average Family of 5.31 
 Persons. 
 
 Having a Surplus 1559 
 
 Having neither Surplus nor Deficit 482 
 
 Having Deficit but Making Payment on Owned House . 19 
 
 Having Deficit 507 
 
 Manner of Meeting Deficit : 
 
 Obtained Credit 244 
 
 From Former Savings 94 
 
 Mortgage on Real Estate or Furniture ... 3 
 
 Borrowed Money 13 
 
 Other Methods 3 
 
 Not Reported 150 
 
 Total 2567 607 
 
 years 1903-1905, in a city where the struggle for existence 
 is most intense, and it has the merit of an unusual degree 
 of critical thoroughness because of the investigator's friendly 
 relations with the neighborhood. Professor Franklin H. 
 Giddings has pointed out that whatever error is involved 
 in this study is necessarily an error of vinder- rather than 
 over-statement, since the 200 families making up the final 
 list were those able and cordially willing to cooperate with 
 Mrs.. More ; they were, therefore, in point of intelligence 
 and character, somewhat above the average of the class in 
 which their economic lot was cast.^ 
 
 As in all such studies, by far the most valuable portion 
 of the work is the comment upon the statistical tables, 
 which, in this case, shows a rarely sympathetic and judicial 
 attitude of mind. Only the briefest summaries can be 
 reproduced here for the purpose of ascertaining the condi- 
 tions of poverty which tend to produce dependence. The 
 income and expenses of these 200 families are shown in 
 Table XXXIX. 
 
 1 Preface by Professor Giddings, pp. iii-v.
 
 168 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
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 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 169 
 
 This summary shows that as the income increases the 
 size of the family increases also, and that all expenditures 
 for all purposes increase as the income increases, the family 
 becoming larger at the same time. It shows further that 
 the deficit natural to the group of smallest incomes, hav- 
 ing an average of $344.09 for 4.2 persons in the family, de- 
 creases quite steadily until the group having an average 
 income of $746.78 is reached, in which the size of the 
 family has only increased to 5.3 ; then there begins to be 
 a surplus, which remains a surplus, though not a regularly 
 increasing one, until the income is between $1000 and 
 $1200, from which point it increases rapidly. The point 
 of most importance to be noted is the constant interde- 
 pendence of the size of the family and the income, and of 
 the resulting surplus or deficit.^ The summary shows also 
 the total results of the entire investigation. The total 
 average income is $851.38, of which $836.25 was expended, 
 leaving a surplus of only $15.13, unless the amount paid 
 for insurance — $32.25 — be added, which is considered by 
 the people a form of savings. 
 
 The income and expenditure of these families by nativity 
 of the chief wage-earner is shown in Table XL. (p. 170). 
 
 Some interesting racial comparisons are suggested by this 
 table, which shows that 52.5 per cent of the 200 families 
 were native and 47.5 per cent foreign born. The foreign 
 families had the largest average income, $ 889.81, as com- 
 pared with $816.61 for the native, and the largest families, 
 6 persons as against 5.3 persons for the native. Making 
 allowance for this, the foreigners still have the larger income 
 and the larger surplus. Omitting the nationalities having 
 only 1 to 4 families, it is noticeable that the Irish have the 
 largest per cent of income expended and the largest average 
 deficit, while the German and Italian families were the most 
 
 1 More, pp. 60-61, a digest rather than full quotation of the most 
 striking conclusions.
 
 170 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 TABLE XL. 
 
 Summary of Income and Expenditures in 200 Families by the 
 Nativity of the Head of the Family. 
 
 
 Total 
 Fami- 
 lies. 
 
 Average 
 Income. 
 
 Total 
 Expendi- 
 tures. 
 
 Average 
 Surplus 
 
 OR 
 
 Deficit. 
 
 Average 
 Size op 
 Family. 
 
 United States . . . 
 Ireland 
 
 105 
 
 $816.61 
 
 $804.15 
 
 $12.46 
 
 5.3 
 
 35 
 
 852.83 
 
 867.22 
 
 - 14. .39 
 
 6.4 
 
 England .... 
 
 15 
 
 927.80 
 
 929.20 
 
 -1.40 
 
 5.9 
 
 Germany .... 
 
 17 
 
 1032.14 
 
 982.43 
 
 49.71 
 
 5.9 
 
 Italy 
 
 15 
 
 846.80 
 
 841.05 
 
 5.75 
 
 6.6 
 
 France 
 
 4 
 
 558.50 
 
 554.75 
 
 3.75 
 
 4.0 
 
 Norway and Sweden 
 
 4 
 
 1171.75 
 
 854.25 
 
 317.50 
 
 3.5 
 
 Switzerland . . . 
 
 2 
 
 792.00 
 
 774.50 
 
 17.50 
 
 5.0 
 
 Austria 
 
 1 
 
 731.00 
 
 731.00 
 
 0.00 
 
 6.0 
 
 Scotland .... 
 
 1 
 
 832.00 
 
 832.00 
 
 0.00 
 
 8.0 
 
 Cuba 
 
 Total Foreign . 
 Total U. S. and For- 
 
 1 
 
 450.00 
 
 460.00 
 
 - 10.00 
 
 4.0 
 
 95 
 
 $889.81 
 
 $871.74 
 
 $18.07 
 
 6.0 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 eign 
 
 200 
 
 $851.38 
 
 $836.25 
 
 $15.13 
 
 5.6 
 
 provident. The English families were scarcely able to keep 
 out of debt and saved nothing, although the deficit is owing 
 to the exceptional circumstance of three deaths in one 
 family.^ The contrast between the Irish and Germans is 
 especially striking, as shown by the comparison on page 171. 
 
 The Irish families spent more for food, light and 
 fuel, clothing, and sundries and had a deficit, and the 
 German families spent more for rent and insurance and 
 saved $30. 
 
 There were only 23 families out of the 200 where the 
 father's earnings were the sole source of income. Of the 
 total average income of $851,885 63.5 per cent came from 
 
 1 More, pp. 66-74.
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 
 
 171 
 
 
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 172 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 the husbands' labor, 9.4 per cent from that of the wives, 
 11.5 per cent from the children, 9.2 per cent from boarders or 
 lodgers, and 6.4 per cent from other sources. It is customary 
 for the wage-earning children over 14 to give all they earn 
 to the mother, the boys vmtil they are 18 years old and the 
 girls until 21, after which they pay board and keep the 
 rest for themselves. On the whole the husbands furnish 
 the greater part of the income, but the amounts from the 
 other members of the family is surprisingly large. On the 
 effect of this system Mrs. More says : — 
 
 "The popular impression, outside the worlcing class, seems to be 
 that the entire income of the workingman's family is from the earn- 
 ings of the head of the family. This implies that if the head of the 
 family is an unskilled day laborer, the income of his family is of that 
 grade. On the contrarj', some of the largest incomes in this study are 
 of this class. The fact is there are comparatively few families of wage- 
 earners who are entirely dependent on the earnings of the head of the 
 family. This may be true in families where there are several young 
 children, and the wife's strength is needed at home, but even then it is 
 surprising how frequently other sources of income are added, such as 
 gifts from friends, from emi^loyers at Christmas, presents of clothing for 
 the children, help from relatives or churches and charitable societies 
 in the poorer families, etc. As the children grow older and require less 
 care at home, the mother takes in sewing or goes out washing, secures 
 a janitor's place, cleans offices, and does whatever she can to increa.se 
 the weekly income. She feels this to be her duty, and often it is neces- 
 sary, but frequently it has a disastrous effect on the ambition of the 
 husband. As soon as he sees that his wife can help support the family, 
 his interest and sense of responsibility are likely to lessen, and he 
 works irregularly or spends more on himself. There are, of course, 
 many families in which this united income is needed when the man's 
 illness or incapacity makes it imperative for the wife to help. Some- 
 times it is due to thrift and an ambition to save money for the future 
 or for some definite purpose. Charitable societies generally deplore the 
 prevalence of this custom because of its economic and moral results on 
 the head of the family." 
 
 Table XLII. shows the financial condition of the 200 
 families at the end of the year.
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 
 
 173 
 
 TABLE XLII. 
 
 Surplus or Deficit, 200 Families. 
 (More, p. 108.) 
 
 Total 
 Families. 
 
 No. OP Families Eepoeting. 
 
 Average 
 SuEPHrs. 
 
 Average 
 Deficit. 
 
 Average 
 Surplus 
 FOE 200 
 
 Families. 
 
 Surplus. 
 
 Deficit. 
 
 Neither 
 
 Surplus 
 
 nor Deficit. 
 
 200 
 
 47 
 
 55 
 
 98 
 
 §104.37 
 
 .$34.18 
 
 $16.13 
 
 Only 47 families had a surplus at the end of the year, 
 leaving 153, of whom 55 had a deficit and 98 just made ends 
 meet. 
 
 Among the 200 families, 27 were technically dependent ; 
 that is, they had received aid during the year from an organ- 
 ized charity. Concerning the difficulty of deciding just what 
 families were in this class, Mrs. More says : — 
 
 " Almost every family of small income received some help or other 
 from friends or relatives in the shape of clothing for the children, 
 money for the rent, or occasional gifts to carry the family over a tight 
 place. In the entire number investigated there were over sixty in- 
 stances discovered of this fraternal helpfulness. To each of these 
 families personal friends or relatives had given from $5 to $150 in 
 money or clothing. Frequently, were it not for their friends, these 
 families would have been obliged to go to some organized charity for 
 aid, but as they did not, they cannot properly be classed as dependents, 
 according to our definition of dependency. In addition to gifts from 
 more prosperous parents, relatives, sons away from home, and friends, 
 this assistance often came in the form of small legacies, gifts from for- 
 mer employers, Christmas gifts from landlords and present employers, 
 allowances from sick-benefit societies, gifts to the children from their 
 godparents, and so on. Assistance of this nature cannot be considered 
 as making the recipients dependent. All these families did not ask for 
 aid, but it was voluntarily given by a church, settlement, or district 
 worker who knew the needs of the family." ^ 
 
 1 "Wage-earners' Budgets," p. 117,
 
 174 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Omitting two families whose circumstances were excep- 
 tional, the facts in regard to average income, expenditure, 
 deficit, and aid given are shown in Table XLIII. for 25 
 families. 
 
 The causes of dependency were illness in 6 cases and 
 death in 6 cases, drink a principal cause in 5 and contributory 
 in 5 others, unemployment in 3 — '• generally due to intem- 
 perance." Estimated by the unit-method,^ sickness and 
 death accounted for 42 per cent and drink and unemployment 
 for 40 per cent of all cases. In addition, the size of the 
 family and the fact that few of the children were of wage- 
 earning age was contributory in familes having medium 
 incomes. Among the 36 children in the 7 families having 
 incomes over $600, only 5 were old enough to contribute to 
 the family income. This is strikingly in agreement with 
 Miss Brandt's analysis of 1527 Charity Organization 
 Society cases in 1905.^ The largest family had also the 
 largest income and the largest deficit. Mrs. More says of 
 it: — 
 
 " This family of 10 is the most completely pauperized one in the 
 study. Owing to a most irregular income and a large family under 
 14 years of age, with only two wage-earners, the father and one son 
 (one or the other of whom was generally out of work), this family re- 
 ceived charity from whatever source it could be obtained. As its 
 character was well known to charitable societies, they gave relief 
 only in small amounts which we have estimated at ^36 a year. In 
 addition to this, the woman's parents sent them $55 and even with 
 this outside aid the debts of the butcher, grocer, etc., amounted to 
 §75. This is a striking example of a truly dependent family in 
 spite of a fair-sized income. The causes of dependency were a large 
 family under working age, lack of ambition and perseverance on the 
 part of the father, which resulted in irregular and infrequent employ- 
 ment and unsteady income. The wife was a good manager, but was 
 handicapped by such an irregular income." * 
 
 The relation between dependence and income and ex- 
 
 1 See p. 44, ante. 2 gee p. 155, ante. 
 
 8 " Wage-earners' Budgets," p. 119.
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 
 
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 176 AMEBIC An CBARITIE8. 
 
 penditure of dependent and independent families having in- 
 comes vmder $600 and under $900 is shown in Table XLIV. 
 From this comparative table Mrs. More concludes: (1) 
 in dependent families, the families are larger and the 
 income smaller ; (2) while their expenditures are smaller 
 for the various purposes named, their deficits are larger, 
 showing careful management and justifying the receipt of 
 charity ; (3) the averages of the expenditures of the 23 so- 
 called independent poor families having incomes under 
 $ 600 (11 of whom had received aid from friends and 
 relatives) represents a fair average minimum expenditure 
 for existence in New York City without receiving charity 
 aid. But, she adds : — 
 
 " The writer does not consider these expenditures sufficient to main- 
 tain physical efficiency with the present cost of living in this city, for 
 each one of these families suffered moral and physical deterioration, 
 and some of them are in a state of disintegration which must prove 
 fatal to the family group unless conditions change and a larger and 
 steadier income is possible in the immediate future. The average 
 size of these families was 4.1. Families of 2 or 3 with wonderful 
 management might live on this income without going to pieces, but 
 it does not seem possible for families of 4 or over. How much 
 worse is the condition of the dependent families in this group. Even 
 with the help i-eceived, they tried to support an average family of 5.6 
 on an average income of 8439.52. Their expenditures for the 
 necessaries of life fell below the normal standard of other poor families, 
 and even then they were burdened with a deficit of §16.53. The 
 statistics of dependent families and of all those having incomes of less 
 than §600 a year show how inadequate such incomes are to support 
 families of average size without assistance or without indebtedness." ^ 
 
 The third study, also of conditions in Kew York City, 
 made by the Committee on Standard of Living of the State 
 Conference of Charities and Corrections in 1907, covers a 
 larger number of families than Mrs. More's. It was made, 
 however, by interviewers among scattered families, and 
 
 1 "Wage-earners' Budgets," p. 124.
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 
 
 177 
 
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 178 AMERICAN CRABITIES. 
 
 lacks, on the one hand, the breadth of view of the Bureau 
 of Labor inquiry and, on the other, the intimate personal 
 knowledge shown in Mrs. More's investigation. The pre- 
 liminary report — which is all that is yet available — is of 
 distinct value, nevertheless, and is in several important 
 points directly comparable with the others. The Committee 
 states that very early in the inquiry it was decided to limit 
 the schedules to a family of five persons — "husband, wife, 
 and three children under working age " — with an income 
 over $600 and under flOOO. The schedules showing in- 
 comes from $300 to $600 were thrown out because they 
 indicated that these families had an exceptionally low 
 standard of living and were not independent of outside 
 assistance. Table XLV. summarizes tlie results for 230 
 " normal " families in Greater New York. 
 
 Group I., having the lowest income and a deficit, ex- 
 pended 22^ cents per day per man for food and $13 per 
 month for rent. For this they can obtain in Manhattan 
 from 2 to 3 rooms, — " low and comparatively small and one 
 room with no window to the outer air or none at all," — 
 without bathing or toilet facilities. They spend $91 a 
 year for clothing and washing materials, and one-third of 
 them received gifts of clothing from relatives, churches, or 
 charities — " if more clothing is desired, it must be pur- 
 chased on the instalment plan or by cutting down the 
 other important items in the budget, particularly food." 
 
 Only $11 is expended for sickness, and if illness lasts 
 any length of time the family runs into debt ; $5 for 
 education, — chiefly the daily newspaper, — 50 cents to $1 
 for postage and school supplies, nothing for books. When- 
 ever there are any savings at all, it is due to exceptionally 
 favorable conditions. The conclusion of the Committee as 
 to this group may be stated in its own words : — 
 
 "The Committee is of the opinion that an income between 
 1 600-700 per annum is insufficient for a family of five to maintain a
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 
 
 179 
 
 . TABLE XLV. 
 Cost of Living of 230 Families in Greater New York.* (1907.) 
 
 Five Persons in 
 
 
 
 
 Family — Hus- 
 band, Wife, 3 
 Children under 
 
 Group I. 
 $600 - $700. 
 
 Group II. 
 
 $700 -$800. 
 
 Group III. 
 $800 - $900. 
 
 14 Tears of Age. 
 
 
 
 
 Average income 
 
 $650.00 
 
 $746.00 
 
 $845.00 
 
 No. of families 
 
 76 
 
 83 
 
 71 
 
 Expenditure for 
 
 Amount 
 Expended. 
 
 Per 
 
 Cent. 
 
 Amount 
 Expended. 
 
 Per 
 
 Cent. 
 
 Amount 
 Expended. 
 
 Per 
 Cent. 
 
 Food .... 
 
 $288.00 
 
 43.9 
 
 $342.00 
 
 45.8 
 
 $367.00 
 
 45.4 
 
 Rent .... 
 
 154.00 
 
 23.5 
 
 156.00 
 
 20.9 
 
 167.00 
 
 20.7 
 
 Clothing . . 
 
 91.00 
 
 13.9 
 
 102.00 
 
 13.6 
 
 112.00 
 
 13.8 
 
 Liglit and Fuel 
 
 35.00 
 
 5.8 
 
 37.00 
 
 4.9 
 
 39.00 
 
 4.8 
 
 Insurance . . 
 
 18.00 
 
 2.7 
 
 19.00 
 
 2.5 
 
 19.00 
 
 2.5 
 
 Sundries . . . 
 
 70.00 
 
 10.7 
 
 90.00 
 
 .12.0 
 
 103.00 
 
 12.7 
 
 Total Expended 
 
 $666.00 
 
 100.0 
 
 $746.00 
 
 100.0 
 
 6807.00 
 
 100.0 
 
 Deficit or Sur- 
 
 
 
 
 plus . . . 
 
 -6. 
 
 ± 
 
 + 38. 
 
 * Preliminary Report, p. 12. 
 
 proper standard of living in the Borough of Manhattan. Leaving aside 
 the exceptions, it is apparent that on an income of $600-700 many- 
 families in Manhattan have a fierce struggle for existence. The maxi- 
 mum of food purchases approximates the minimum set up by authorities 
 on this subject. The narrowest marghi is allowed for other essentials. 
 No provision can be made for accident or emergency. If either of 
 these occur, the family runs into debt. Were it not for the charity of 
 friends, relatives, employers, or philanthropic organizations, the ex- 
 penditure of the family would be, and frequently is, larger than the 
 income. 
 
 ' ' Such a family literally lives a band-to-mouth existence, with neither 
 opportunity nor means for enjoyment or recreation. It can make no 
 provision for repairs to equipment. The health of its members cannot
 
 180 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 be safe-guarded from its own resources. The housing accommodations 
 barely prevent crowding. It requires no citation of elaborate statistics 
 to bring convincing proof that §G00-§700 is wholly inadequate to 
 maintain a proper standard of living, and no self-respecting family 
 should be asked or expected to live on such an income.'''' ^ 
 
 Without discussing the situation of Group II. and Group 
 III. in detail, we may quote the Committee's conclusions : ^ 
 
 "Group II. — The Committee believes that with an income of • 
 $800 a family can barely support itself, provided that it is subject to 
 no extraordinary expenditures by reason of sickness, death, or otlier 
 untoward circumstances. Such a family can live without charitable 
 assistance through exceptional management and in the absence of 
 emergencies. 
 
 " Group III, — In view of all these facts, the Committee is of the 
 opinion that it is fairly conservative in its estimate that $825 is 
 sufficient for the average family of 5 individuals, comprising the 
 father, mother, and 3 children under 14 years of age to maintain a 
 fairly proper standard of living in the Borough of Manhattan. The 
 extent to which this would be changed in other boroughs of Greater 
 New York would be measured largely by the item of rent and not by 
 the other items in the budget." 
 
 In Table XL VI. the results, of the three American investi- 
 gations are summarized for the class whose incomes ranged 
 from $800 to $900. This is the group called "representative" 
 by Mrs. More, and whose income is believed by the Special 
 Committee to be sufficient to maintain a "fairly proper" 
 standard of living in New York City. 
 
 The uniformity of the three studies on almost every item 
 of expenditure is remarkable ; for the food of 5 to 5.6 persons 
 the expenditure was $326-f 367 ; that is, from 42 to 45 per 
 cent of the total income. The outlay for rent was $162 to 
 $167 in New York, — about 20 percent of income, — but 
 from $99 to $131, or only 13 to 16 per cent of income, in the 
 United States at large. Clothing ranged from $88 to $112 
 for a family, that is, from 10 to 14 per cent of income ; fuel 
 
 I Preliminary Report, pp. 17-18. 2 Preliminary Report, p. 20.
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 181 
 
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 182 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 and light scarcely varied from 5 per cent. Insurance and 
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 In Table XLVII. the results of the three inquiries are 
 summarized by incomes. It must be remembered that Mrs. 
 More's families averaged 5.6 persons, while the others are 
 the " normal " families of 2 adults and 3 children under 
 14 years of age. 
 
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 $600 from two-thirds to three-fourths of the total must be 
 spent for food and rent alone, and this means, according to 
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 poorly clothed, and wretchedly housed, if they succeed in 
 remaining independent ; or that they must receive assist- 
 ance from their friends and intermittently from charitable 
 societies. The second group, having incomes from $600 to 
 $900, spent 41 to 45 per cent for food and 17 to 23 per 
 cent for rent ; the bare necessities of life — food, shelter, 
 clothing, warmth, and light — took 80 to 85 per cent of the 
 entire income. If these remain independent, it can only be 
 through escaping all emergency demands, doing without all 
 comforts and pleasures, and having no savings, — in short 
 they are constantly on the verge of dependence. . Until the 
 grade of $800 to $900 is reached, there is no margin left for 
 thrift, education, and pleasure, and even then the margin 
 will be small unless the income is very carefully expended. 
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 tablished that whenever the expenditures for the bare 
 necessities of life — food, housing, clothing, light and fuel —
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 
 
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 184 AMERICAN CHARITIES, 
 
 take more than 80 per cent of the income, the family is on 
 the verge of dependence. 
 
 What, then, is an adequate income for a family of five ? 
 The Special Committee concluded that $600 to f 700 was to- 
 tally inadequate, $700 to $800 a bare minimum efficiency in- 
 come, and $825 per year just sufficient. The report of the 
 Commissioner of Labor showed that of 25,440 families of 
 five persons, having an average income of $749.50, one-half 
 had a deficit or just came out even ; and of 2567 selected 
 families of 5.3 persons and $827.00 average income, 1089 
 either had a deficit or just came out even. Mrs. More con- 
 cludes that a well-nourished family of five in a city neigh- 
 borhood needs $6.00 a week for food. The total necessary 
 expenditure on this scale would be $720.00, that is, a steady 
 income of $14.00 per week, and if there were to be any 
 savings the income should be $800 to $900 per year. 
 
 Just preceding the New York investigations, a number of 
 estimates of a " fair-living wage " were made by different 
 authorities : Robert Hunter, in 1904, set $460 as the mini- 
 mum " physical efficiency " wage ; the New York Bureau 
 of Labor set the living wage at $520 ; John Mitchell, ex- 
 president of the United Mine Workers of America, and 
 Father John A. Ryan, the author of '' A Living Wage," at 
 $600; the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor at $724 for a 
 family of five ; the Maryland Bureau of Statistics $742 for 
 a family of six in Baltimore ; and Miss Caroline Goodyear 
 at $1054 for a family of five in New York. The significant 
 thing is that in proportion as accurate detailed information 
 of the actual conditions of the poor is obtained the estimate 
 of an adequate living income is steadily rising. 
 
 The primary factors in the cost of living are food and 
 rent. Food is the elementary necessity, and the question 
 of adequate income is primarily determined by the amount 
 and cost of food required for proper nutrition. Not only the 
 wage-earner's fitness for work, but the mother's fitness for
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 185 
 
 child-bearing and the children's growth and fitness for 
 future wage-earning depend upon their being sufficiently 
 • fed. The item of food will be the first affected by any 
 necessity for reducing expenses. On the subject of what is 
 an adequate dietary standard there are many studies, but it 
 is possible to mention here only the conclusions of those 
 which refer to workingmen's families in Xew York City. 
 Professor W. 0. Atwater concluded from his dietary studies 
 in New York in 1896 that a family could be sufficiently fed 
 on 15 to 17 cents per man per day.^ But this was in the 
 year of lowest prices, and allowing 16 per cent for the rise 
 in the general cost of living since then, the estimate should 
 be not less than 17.5 to 20 cents. Measured by this standard, 
 Mrs. More's 200 New York families spent 24.6 cents per 
 man per day. " Assuming that Mr. Atwater's estimate is 
 correct," Mrs. More says, "they were therefore extravagant 
 through ignorance of dietary values and the nourishing quali- 
 ties of different foods." 
 
 Miss Caroline Goodyear, in order to determine what is 
 the minimum income which is sufficient for all the reason- 
 able needs of dependent families in the care of the Kew 
 York Charity Organization Society, made a study of the 
 dietary habits of tenement-house families. In the typical 
 case of dependence — a widow with three children — she 
 concludes that an adequate supply of food would cost per 
 week $1.54, and that the presence of a workingraau in the 
 family would raise this estimate to $6.00 or $6.50.^ This 
 agrees with Mrs. More's estimate. 
 
 Shelter, unlike food and clothing, does not depend on the 
 individual efforts of the family, but chiefly on the available 
 tenements. Society may be said to have established the 
 principle of a minimum standard of housing, although the 
 
 1 Bulletin No. 46, Department of Agriculture, "Dietary Studies in 
 New York," 1896. 
 
 2 " Charities," etc., vol. xvi., 1906, pp. 191 ff. ; vol. xvii., 1906, pp. 315 S.
 
 186 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 standard is nowhere strictly enforced.^ According to the ac- 
 cepted definition of overcrowding — more than two per- 
 sons in a room — only thirty-seven out of the two hundred 
 New York families were overcrowded ; yet the description 
 of their homes given by Mrs. More shows that a much larger 
 number were wretchedly housed. The New York Tene- 
 ment-house Commission in its report for 1900 named the 
 most serious evils in New York City : insufficient light and 
 air, danger from fire, lack of separate toilet and" washing 
 facilities, overcrowding, and generally foul and unsanitary 
 conditions. As a result of this report, a Tenement-house 
 Department was created for the city of New York, which 
 has accomplished important reforms. Although in most of 
 the other cities in the United States there is no such tene- 
 ment-house problem,yet the high death-rates — ^especially 
 those of tuberculosis — indicate that unsanitary conditions 
 of the most serious nature exist in them.^ 
 
 The relation of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions 
 to poverty is close and unmistakable. Charles Booth has 
 shown that 30 per cent of the population of East London 
 was in poverty, 31 per cent overcrowded, and that both 
 the birth-rate and the death-rate were high in proportion 
 to poverty and congestion. Overcrowding leads to early 
 marriage and a high birth-rate ; while unsanitary conditions 
 and ignorance on the part of the young mother create a high 
 death-rate among babies and young children. " All the in- 
 fluences (except the death-rate) on natural increase," 
 says Mr. Booth, " have the effect of multiplying the number 
 of the poor almost, it would seem, in proportion to their 
 poverty, and operate in the other direction in the case of 
 those who are better off, almost in proportion to their 
 wealth."^ The net increase of the very poor, owing to 
 their high death-rate, may be no greater than that of the 
 
 1 Deviiie, " Principles of Relief," Chap. V. 
 
 2 See Bibliography for the study of housing, p. 480. 3 Final volume, p. 23.
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 187 
 
 comfortable working class, but the waste of life is terrible. 
 If to the cost of illness and death be added the expendi- 
 ture of energy in child-bearing and the withdrawal of the 
 mother from wage-earning, the mere economic loss involved 
 in these conditions is incalculable. 
 
 The welfare of the family depends on the physical and 
 moral quality of the parents. Among the poor there is a 
 very clear understanding of their relative duties. The man. 
 must find the major part of the income ; and if he is 
 " respectable," he will take pride in bringing it home and 
 giving all but a very small portion of it to the wife. If he 
 is an unskilled laborer he will, as a rule, be inadequately 
 paid and irregularly employed ; if poorly paid and inter- 
 mittently employed, he tends to become discouraged and to 
 fall into shiftless if not vicious habits. Concerning em- 
 ployment in her two hundred families Mrs. More says : — 
 
 " Employment was so irregular during these two years that wages 
 could scarcely ever be relied upon for the entire year. Often a man 
 worked only two or three daj's in a week, during the months of the 
 slack season, and then for some weeks during the rush season made 
 a great deal working overtime. In estimating the total income, 
 allowance has been made for these exceptions. It was interesting to 
 find that many men had two occupations, summer and winter ; for 
 example, oysterman and tentmaker, . . . carpenter and longshoreman, 
 etc. Wages in certain occupations rarely rise above a certain point. 
 One man had been truckman for one firm for thirty-two years and his 
 wages are now only $14 per week. This is true in practically all 
 unskilled occupations." ^ 
 
 Under such circumstances the wife must supplement the 
 income until one or more children become of working age, 
 and in proportion as the wife and children eke out the in- 
 come the man is liable to become less energetic or to bring 
 less of his wages home. If the family gets to the point of 
 asking charitable aid, it will often be found that the man 
 will not stand the test of work when it is provided. A 
 1 "Wage-earners' Budgets," p. 135.
 
 188 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 crude measure of the degree of poverty is the amount of 
 rough work done by mothers outside the home and by chil- 
 dren under sixteen years of age. 
 
 The woman's share is, everywhere among the poor, the 
 financial management. What the family gets out of the 
 income depends almost wholly upon her intelligence. If 
 she goes from a factory, store, or office to her new home, she 
 has usually had no domestic training. She will make mis- 
 takes of ignorance and extravagance, but if conscientious, 
 she will frequently manage wonderfully well, when necessity 
 has given her some training.^ There is often no margin for 
 thrift, as all the observers have pointed out, but at the same 
 time good management goes far toward making adequate 
 an insufficient income. Yet at what personal sacrifice of 
 strength and health this economy of the insufficient is 
 attained can scarcely be measured. The mother seldom 
 goes even to a free hospital for confinement, though she 
 may have a free physician, and she is nursed by a midwife 
 who is willing to be paid in instalments. 
 
 A considerable number of families in any congested dis- 
 trict in American cities are liable to fall into extreme pov- 
 erty two or three times in their lives : during childhood, — 
 if the parents are very poor, — in the prime of life, and in 
 old age. Mr. Rowntree has expressed this fact for the city 
 of York in the following: diairram:^ — 
 
 Marries 
 
 Children begin 
 to earn 
 
 Primarvi 
 
 AJ( 
 
 Povi 111 
 
 OJIdren manij 
 ond leave home 
 
 ^ — ^^J^borer ps5l wDrK 
 
 \0 16 20 '25 30 36 40 45 
 
 65 60 63 70 
 
 1 " Wage-earners' Budgets," p. 265. 
 
 2 " Poverty." A Study of Town Life, p. 13.
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 189 
 
 The first drop below the poverty line is apt to occur just 
 before the eldest children become of earning age, and while 
 the mother is bearing other children. If the husband is 
 underpaid or unemployed the family will be underfed, — the 
 mother at the time when she needs good food and freedom 
 from worry, the children at the time when their growth will 
 suffer most. If the wife goes to work outside in order to 
 raise the income, she injures her health under the double 
 strain of wage-earning and child-bearing. The older chil- 
 dren will go to work at the earliest possible age, and if not 
 stunted by it, will lose the opportunities for education which 
 might carry them into a higher industrial class. From the 
 time when the children begin to earn till they marry the 
 family will be relatively comfortable ; but shortly after 
 they leave home, the father and mother begin to lose their 
 efficiency through the premature old age which falls upon 
 those who are overworked or underfed, and that at a time 
 when the married children, with their own family burdens, 
 are least able to help them. 
 
 One of the effects upon growing children of the life amid 
 such vicissitudes is well described by Miss Lauderburn, 
 District Agent of the Associated Charities of Boston, in dis- 
 cussing incompetence as a cause of poverty. She says : — 
 
 " The fault is not all due to the incompetents. To a great extent 
 it is due to environment. And it is, perhaps, due also to the very- 
 organization of society. A child with a poorly nourished body, with 
 a bringing up lacking in ideals, set in an environment of poverty, dirt, 
 drunkenness, compelled to leave the education of the schools and go 
 to work when he has reached the mature age of fourteen — should a 
 society that permits that be surprised if the boy turns out an incom- 
 petent? Surely, it is not surprising if that boy does not know how to 
 work well, how to save, how to spend, but stumbles along through 
 life, seeing only the thing (whether good or bad) nearest his eyes, 
 and not seeing that very clearly — incompetent, physically, mentally, 
 morally, to meet the difficulties of this world, and wage successfully 
 the battle of life." i 
 
 1 Twenty-fifth Annual Report Associated Charities, Boston, 1904, 
 pp. 24-25.
 
 190 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 The physical and mental deterioration, inevitable in the 
 lower grades of poverty, is indicated not only by the death- 
 rate, especially infant mortality, but also by the marked 
 inferiority of the children in height, weight, and general 
 physical condition. Dr. Kuborn, in discussing the maladies 
 of English miners, says that they originate largely in the 
 kind of life the men lead, their neglect of hygiene in their 
 homes and person, excesses of various kinds, inadequate 
 clothing and feeding, — " causes to which the want of edu- 
 cation greatly contributes." ^ Moreover, the evils of poverty 
 are cumulative : — 
 
 " The worse fed are the children of one genei'ation, the less they 
 will earn when they grow up, and the less will be their power of 
 providing adequately for the material wants of their children ; and, 
 again, the less fully their own faculties are developed, the less will 
 they realize the importance of developing the faculties of their children 
 and the less will be their power of doing so. . . . The importance of 
 a good start in life is nowhere seen more clearly than in a comparison 
 of the futures of the sons of artisans and of unskilled workers." 2 
 
 Nor are the effects of the moral conditions of poverty 
 confined to the poorest class. In all these recent pictures 
 of poverty, frequent reference is made to the generosity and 
 mutual helpfulness of the poor. The weakness and misfor- 
 tune of the poorest continually drains the resources of their 
 more competent and prosperous neighbors. If the rent can- 
 not be paid, the family will be taken in by their friends or 
 relatives, who have little enough room already ; and the rent 
 will remain unpaid to the loss, not of the landlord usually, 
 but of the sub-lessee, who is also poor. The competition 
 of the least competent is the most injurious in the labor 
 market, and their lower standards of decency a menace 
 to the self-respecting poor. Thus the cost of the residuum 
 of poverty is not merely the tax on public and private^ 
 
 1 Oliver, " Dangerous Trades," p. 17. 
 
 2 Marshall, "Principles of Economics," vol. i., p. 595.
 
 FACTS AND CONDITIONS OF POVERTY. 191 
 
 charity, but the tax upon the wage-earners of the higher 
 stratum.^ 
 
 At the beginning of the study of the causes of poverty 
 the personal causes, as we have seen, were chiefly empha- 
 sized. As relief became systematized and the case-count- 
 ing method of study was adopted, the causes which stood 
 out most conspicuously in a definite proportion were sick- 
 ness, unemployment, defects of character, and lack of 
 normal support. And finally in the pictorial studies of pov- 
 erty we find that the chief causes of dependency are illness 
 and death of the chief wage-earner, irregularity of work 
 due to industrial conditions or drink and incapacity, low 
 wages, and large families on small incomes with few chil- 
 dren of wage-earning age. In so far as the immediate 
 causes are concerned the results of the descriptive method 
 are not fundamentally different from those of case-counting, 
 but its value lies in that it goes farther and deeper. The 
 intensive study shows the associated conditions of poverty 
 and raises the larger questions : To what extent has society 
 a right to reap the benefit of methods of production, and 
 of a scale of wages which involve the inevitable degradation 
 of a section of the population ? How far should human char- 
 acter be expected to withstand the corrosion of hardships 
 and discouragement? Has not society the charitable bur- 
 den which it deserves ? 
 
 Setting aside the fundamental economic and industrial 
 questions with which, however vital, this chapter is not 
 concerned, the study of the causes of poverty has arrived at 
 the immediate problem of the determination of the standard 
 of living for the localities in which relief is to be given. 
 Philanthropic workers are generally agreed that a living 
 income must include not merely the necessaries of life for 
 maintaining physical efficiency, but something for sickness, 
 
 1 Bosanquet, "Aspects of the Social Problem," p. 97; Booth, final 
 volume, pp. 206-209.
 
 192 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 for pleasure, and for emergencies and savings. What this 
 amount will be in a given communit}' will depend not only 
 on the cost of necessities, but upon the intelligence and 
 ideals of the family itself. The standard of living must be 
 established not on the low plane of life to which the family 
 has been driven by stress of circumstances, but on a level of 
 physical and social efficiency for the present and the future. 
 If such an ideal as this be set, it is evident that the charity 
 standard of adequate relief must be considerably raised. 
 Niggardly and superficial relief may save from desperate 
 misery those who have already fallen below the line, but it 
 can never prevent the helpless young from being drawn into 
 the chasm after them. The larger charity goes farther than 
 relief, and finds its consummation in the abolition of the 
 causes of poverty and ultimately, we hope, of poverty itself. 
 Professor Simon N. Patten has expressed that hope in a 
 prophecy : — 
 
 " Our children's children may learn with amazement how we 
 thought it a natural social phenomenon that men should die in their 
 prime, leaving wives and children in terror of want ; that accidents 
 should make an army of maimed dependents ; that there should not be 
 enough houses for workers ; and that epidemics should sweep away 
 multitudes as autumn frost sweeps away summer insects. They will 
 wonder that the universal sadness of such a world should have appealed 
 to our transient sympathies, but did not absorb our widest interests. 
 They will ask why there was some hope of succor for those whose 
 miseries passed for a moment before the eyes of the tender-hearted, 
 but none for the dwellers beyond the narrow horizon within which 
 pity moves. And they will be unable to put themselves in our places, 
 because the new social philosophy, which we are this moment framing, 
 will have so moulded their minds that they cannot return to the phi- 
 losophy that moulds ours."
 
 PART II. 
 THE DEPENDENT CLASSES.
 
 PAET 11. 
 
 THE DEPENDENT CLASSES. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 
 
 The almshouse is the fundamental institution in Amer- 
 ican poor-relief. It cares for all the abjectly destitute not 
 otherwise provided for. Outdoor relief, although preced- 
 ing it in point of time, is the resort of those who still, nomi- 
 nally at least, need only temporary assistance or partial 
 support at home.^ Since the almshouse is the guarantee 
 against starvation which the State offers tor all, no matter 
 how unfortunate or degraded, its inmates are often the most 
 sodden driftwood from the social wreckage of the time. It 
 is ordinarily a depressing experience to visit an almshouse, 
 and accordingly we find it an institution that even the be- 
 nevolent willingly forget. In many of the country alms- 
 houses no clergyman comes the year round ; and no friendly 
 visitor appears to encourage the superintendent to be faith- 
 ful, or to bring to light abuses that may exist. Yet, since 
 the institution is so fundamental, and since the number of 
 its inmates is necessarily considerable, it may be doubted 
 whether a more profitable work can easily be found than 
 the right organization and proper management of alms- 
 houses. The benevolent too frequently hurry away to make 
 excellent provision for special classes, leaving to the malad- 
 
 1 For slightly different view see Devine, " Principles of Relief," p. 282. 
 
 195
 
 196 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 ministration of the local almshouse a large assortment of 
 destitute people under evil conditions.^ 
 
 In New England, except ISTew Hampshire, where there 
 are both county and town institutions, the town (township) 
 is the local political unit to which the care of the poor is 
 intrusted, and the almshouse is accordingly managed by the 
 town officers. In the other States the almshouse is usually a 
 county institution. It is not uncommon for several town- 
 ships or counties to form themselves into an association, and 
 establish what is called a district almshouse. 
 
 The tendency since 1890, especially in States where the 
 town system of control prevails, is more toward the consoli- 
 dation of small almshouses than toward the building of new 
 ones. Of the 2373 almshouses enumerated at that time, 200 
 have since been discontinued, while the actual growth of 
 such institutions has been slight.^ 
 
 In 1880 there were 66,203 inmates of almshouses in the 
 United States, or one almshouse pauper to 758 inhabitants ; 
 in 1890 there were 73,015 almshouse inmates, or one to 857 
 inhabitants ; in 1903 there were 81,764 almshouse inmates, 
 or one to 920 inhabitants. The decrease in proportion to 
 population does not necessarily indicate a general diminution 
 of pauperism, but merely that a historical development, al- 
 ready in progress, has been continued.^ "When the work 
 
 1 Many attempts have been made to avoid the stigma attaching to the 
 almshouse by changing its name. " Almshouse " itself, although thought 
 to be a better term than " poorhouse " or the English " workhouse," has 
 in its turn degenerated, so that in many States the term " County In- 
 firmary," or "County Home," is substituted. But until the disre- 
 putable classes are drafted out of it, to call it a "home " or "retreat" 
 will no more remove the disgrace of inmateship than it will remove the 
 "institution smell" from the suds-soaked floors of the building. The 
 " stigma," whatever it may be, comes primarily from the average char- 
 acter of the inmates, and secondarily from the low-grade character and 
 want of skill of the officers in charge. 
 
 2 Census, " Paupers in Almshouses," 1904. 
 
 8 For fuller historical account of this movement see Deviue, " Principles 
 of Relief," Chap. II.
 
 THE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 197 
 
 of relief is first begun by the newly formed political units 
 of an American settlement, it is usual to board, out such 
 dependents as must be supported entirely. Farmers or 
 others are paid to care for old people, for imbeciles, and even 
 for sick persons who have no homes of their own. Chiefly 
 with a view to providing a place for the better care of the 
 dependent sick, especially incurable cases, and also to 
 economy, a public almshouse is established. During the 
 first stage of its development, it acts as the charitable catch- 
 all for the community. Idiots, epileptics, incurables, incom- 
 petents, the aged, abandoned children, foundlings, women 
 for confinement, and a considerable number of the insane, 
 the blind, and the deaf and dumb are all dumped together 
 into some old farmhouse that has been bought by the authori- 
 ties, and put to this use. The public then goes on its way, 
 and thinks as little about the institution as possible, only 
 grumbling annually at the expenses perhaps, when it happens 
 to review public accounts. 
 
 In some populous cities even yet the almshouses are 
 hardly more than enlarged specimens of this same type. 
 The different classes of dependents are still assembled in 
 one great institution, and the public assumes it has discharged 
 its whole duty by giving enough food and fuel to keep the in- 
 dividuals that make up the incongruous mass from hunger 
 and cold.^ 
 
 The next stage in institutional development has been de- 
 scribed in the following words : — 
 
 " When this humble home was out-grown or worn-out in the older 
 States about the middle of the century and for a generation later, a 
 new almshouse would be built ; and the stage exemplified by the new 
 building may be called that of the ' imposing edifice.' The architecture 
 of this period was from the outside in ; the building was planned for 
 the admiration of the passers-by rather than for the comfort of the in- 
 habitants. It was generally four or five stories high, regardless of the 
 infirmities of its inmates ; perfectly symmetrical, though the male 
 
 1 Ellwood, Bulletin on " Almshouses in Missouri," pp. lS-14,
 
 198 AMEBIC AN CHARITIES. 
 
 population was generally two or three times the female, and in other 
 respects planned without apparent reference to the uses to which it was 
 to be put." 1 
 
 A third stage, as regards architecture, entered upon in the 
 last quarter of the nineteenth century, is the cottage plan, 
 — a plan which seems to combine the advantages without 
 the defects of the older practice. It is, concisely speaking, 
 a group of houses, sometimes connected by passages, permit- 
 ting the complete separation of the sexes, separate hospital 
 cottages, and a central administration building. To this 
 class belongs the New York City Farm Colony established 
 on Staten Island as a branch of the Home for the Aged and 
 Infirm.^ 
 
 While this evolution of the almshouse buildings has been 
 taking place, a much more important movement to differen- 
 tiate the inmates has been developed. The classification of 
 the inmates may be divided into two parts — the drafting 
 out of the almshouse those who do not belong in it, and the 
 differentiation of those that do belong in it. In the first 
 division stand three groups which are gradually being taken 
 over into institutions where they can receive more appropri- 
 ate care. The first group includes all those requiring special 
 scientific treatment; of these the defective classes of teach- 
 able age, the deaf, the dumb, and the blind, were the first 
 to be drafted off to educational institutions, usually supported 
 by the State. Next an effort was made to have the State 
 take care of the insane. This is now usually done so far as 
 the acute insane are concerned, but the great expense of 
 providing for the increasing numbers of the chronic insane 
 led to a suspension of their transfer from the almshouses to 
 specialized asylums. The State of New York, as a result of 
 the Willard report in 1865, determined to remove all insane 
 
 1 Clark, M. V., "The Almshouse," N. C. C, 1900, p. 156. Hibberd, 
 Charities Review, vol. x., 1900, p. 515 ff., 571 ff., "The Almshouse System." 
 
 2 Tower, E., Charities and the Commons, vol. xviii., 1907, p. 329.
 
 THE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 199 
 
 from almshouses to State institutions, but the great expense 
 of their transfer checked the movement, and it was thirty- 
 years before it was able to assume the exclusive care of all 
 insane not in private hospitals.^ In 1900 Massachusetts 
 provided that all insane should be cared for by the State. 
 The Commissioners of Public Charities of Illinois in 1907 
 made a thorough report on the conditions surrounding the 
 insane in county almshouses.^ Among the fifteen reasons 
 for complete State care, they enumerate the following : — 
 
 " Because, while this General Assembly has been sitting, a girl in an 
 Illinois almshouse has been hobbled with chains, padlocked to her 
 bare ankles, because her stamping disturbed other inmates in the insane 
 department. 
 
 "Because,. . . a rude box, with wooden slats across the top, supplied 
 with iron hinges, hasps, and bolt, is ready, in a certain almshouse, to 
 receive any insane man who becomes unruly, a service it has per- 
 formed for others. 
 
 "Because, to-day there are almshouses in Illinois where steel hand- 
 cuffs, barred cells, cages, and padlocks are in service when required to 
 restrain the insane. Imagine an insane girl 20 years old locked in a 
 steel cage ! This happened recently in Stark County. 
 '^"~" Because, in 54 almshouses there is no provision to separate the 
 insane from plain paupers. 
 
 " Because, any insane resident of Illinois should have just as good 
 care as any other insane resident." 
 
 The State of Illinois is, however, no worse than a number 
 of others in respect to abuses in almshouses. In a thorough 
 and impartial investigation of the almshouses of Missouri, 
 Professor Ellwood found over 1177 insane persons — about 
 one-third of all inmates — in almshouses, and a tendency 
 toward an increased almshouse care of the indigent lunatic. 
 
 Of the treatment of the insane he says : — 
 
 " I learned of one almshouse superintendent who declared that he 
 found the horsewhip to be the most efficacious means of quieting in- 
 
 1 Assembly Documents, No. 19, N. Y., 1865. Report of State Committee 
 in Lunacy, 1889. 2 Bulletin Illinois Board of Charities, April, 1907.
 
 200 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 sane inmates. In another, I found that an insane woman had been 
 kept strapped in bed for over six years. According to the first annual 
 report of the Missouri State Board of Charities, on one county poor- 
 farm an insane man was found who had been kept in a stockade, open 
 to the sky, winter and summer, with hardly a shred of clothing on him, 
 for several years. According to the same report another insane man 
 was found chained to a stump in a poorhouse yard. . . . In general, my 
 investigation disclosed that in a majority of Missouri almshouses there 
 are cells for their confinement ; that in many cases manacles and chains 
 were put on the insane, under which restraint they are kept for years ; 
 and tliat they are, if not brutally treated, grossly neglected." i 
 
 Professor Ell wood places the responsibility for this con- 
 dition of things where it belongs, when he says that the 
 superintendents have to manage as best they can the persons 
 turned over to them by the county authorities, and that the 
 blame nltimately rests with the people of the whole State, 
 who permit by law the commitment of the indigent insane 
 to almshouses." 
 
 Many States have entered upon a policy of State care, and 
 then failed to make appropriations large enough to carry out 
 such a policy. The result has been that, after some State 
 institutions were built, a large number of insane still remain 
 in the almshouses, because the special institutions are over- 
 crowded and can receive no more. This is practically the 
 situation in Illinois. In California the lunacy commissioners 
 frequently refuse to adjudge an almshouse inmate insane, be- 
 cause the State institutions are so overcrowded that they 
 say he is better left in the almshouse. 
 
 The movement for State educational institutions for the 
 feeble-minded has only recently made much headway, and 
 the custodial care of feeble-minded adults in special institu- 
 tions is attained in only a fe^v States. The first public in- 
 stitution for epileptics was opened in Ohio in 1893, and since 
 1900 the movement to establish colonies has gained consider- 
 
 1 Ellwood, " Alnishouse Abuses," N. C. C, 1903, p. 387. 
 
 2 Ellwood, Bulletin on " Almshouses in Missouri," 1904, pp. 9-11.
 
 THE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 201 
 
 able momentum. The present proportions of the classes 
 needing scientific treatment, who are still found in alms- 
 houses, is shown in Table XL VIII. (p. 202). 
 
 It will be seen that 10 per cent of almshouse inmates 
 are insane and 22 per cent feeble-minded or epileptic, con- 
 stituting nearly one-third of the whole institution's popula- 
 tion, who should obviously be provided for elsewhere. 
 
 The second group requiring special care, and therefore to 
 be removed from the almshouse, is the children. It was 
 long ago seen that their mimetic tendencies, and the utter 
 lack of education in the almshouse or of anything to stimu- 
 late ambition or provoke energy, guaranteed their ruin. 
 Placing them out by the local poor-law officers gave very 
 unsatisfactory results, as they were spoiled by the time they 
 were old enough to work, and the class of people applying 
 for them at the almshouse seldom wanted them for purposes 
 other than service. There was consequently much agitation 
 and some legislation to get children out of the almshouses, 
 either into special institutions, public or private, or into 
 suitable homes. 
 
 Homer Folks wrote in 1902 : — 
 
 " The delay in the removal of children from almshouses is a lament- 
 able illustration of the slowness with which such reforms proceed. 
 Thirty-five years have passed since Ohio enacted the first law in the 
 United States looking toward the removal of all children from alms- 
 houses, but as yet barely a dozen States — about one-fourth of the 
 whole number — have followed her example, and even in these States 
 the laws are not, in all cases, fully enforced. . . . Contrary to the 
 general opinion the States, . . . which are the worst offenders in this 
 regard, include ten of the sixteen which comprised the Union in 1801." ^ 
 
 Mr. Folks's statement was based upon the Census returns 
 of 1890. Table XLIX., which includes the figures from the 
 enumeration of 1903, gives a more favorable vieAv. 
 
 It appears that the largest proportion of children, rela- 
 
 1 Folks, "The Care of Destitute . . . Children," pp. 72-82.
 
 202 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 
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 TBE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 
 
 203 
 
 tively though not absolutely, at both dates, was found in 
 almshouses in the South Atlantic and South Central di- 
 visions, and the smallest in the Western. In all the divi- 
 sions, however, there was a marked decrease in both the 
 proportionate and absolute number of children. Many who 
 have been interested in the agitation for the removal of 
 children from these institutions will be disappointed at 
 finding that 2091 children under 16 years of age are still so 
 cared for — or rather so neglected. But it should be noted 
 that nearly one-third are under one year of age. 
 
 TABLE XLIX.* 
 
 Children under 10 Years of Age in Almshouses. 
 
 1880-1903 Census. 
 
 Year. 
 
 United 
 States. 
 
 North 
 Atlantic 
 Division. 
 
 South 
 Atlantic 
 Division. 
 
 North 
 Central 
 Division. 
 
 South 
 Central 
 Division. 
 
 Western 
 Division. 
 
 1880 
 1890 
 1903 
 
 6902 
 4338 
 2081 
 
 3021 
 
 1654 
 
 741 
 
 933 
 779 
 473 
 
 2358 
 
 1375 
 
 399 
 
 517 
 492 
 420 
 
 73 
 
 38 
 42 
 
 * Arranged from tables in Census Bulletin 154, p. 4, 1890, and Special Report, 
 " Paupers in Almshouses," 1904. For Census purposes the United States are arranged 
 In the following groups : North Atlantic Division, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, 
 Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania; 
 South Atlantic Division, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West 
 Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida ; North Centr.al Division, 
 Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, 
 South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas ; South Central Division, Kentucky, Tennessee, 
 Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Indian Territory, Arkansas, Oklahoma ; West- 
 ern Division, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, 
 Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California. 
 
 The large number of infants indicates that many alms- 
 houses serve also the purpose of maternity hospitals, and 
 that the children are not retained there after one or two 
 years of age. On the whole, the showing of progress is 
 fairly satisfactory. In those communities where the burden 
 of general pauperism is light, the proportion of almshouse
 
 204 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 inmates who are children is large, indicating that this con- 
 dition is tolerated in communities where relief work has not 
 drawn the interested attention of the community. A com- 
 parison of the following table with the one just given will 
 make this point clear : — 
 
 TABLE L. 
 
 Paupers in Almshouses, 1880, 1890, and 1903. 
 U. S. Census. 
 
 Geographical 
 Divisions. 
 
 1S80. 
 
 1890. 
 
 1903. 
 
 
 S § !5 
 A, ® O 
 (E a H 
 K O -< 
 « 3 J 
 
 ^ ^ S 
 
 i 
 
 
 PL, 
 
 s ^ i 
 
 »: o o 
 
 00 !S H 
 
 a o < 
 
 m 
 
 <:? P 
 
 p2 
 
 Sib 
 
 P ;i a. 
 0^ 2Ph 
 
 North Atlantic 
 South Atlantic 
 .North Central . . 
 South Central . . 
 Western. . . . 
 United States . . 
 
 33,933 
 6,975 
 
 19,811 
 3,676 
 1,808 
 
 66,203 
 
 2339 
 918 
 
 1141 
 412 
 
 1023 
 
 1320 
 
 31,143 
 8,100 
 
 25,615 
 5,049 
 3,138 
 
 73,045 
 
 1789 
 914 
 
 1145 
 460 
 
 1036 
 
 1166 
 
 33,278 
 8,298 
 
 27,745 
 6,457 
 5,986 
 
 81,764 
 
 1489 
 754 
 
 1001 
 427 
 
 1346 
 
 1014 
 
 All the geographic divisions except the Western show de- 
 clining ratios of paupers to population ; the decrease is most 
 marked in the North Atlantic, amounting to 300 per mill- 
 ion. The South Atlantic States come next with a decline 
 of 160. Mr. John Koren, Special Expert Agent of the 
 Census, thus summarizes the comparison : ^ — 
 
 " The fact stands out that the ratio of almshouse paupers to popula- 
 tion has decreased, not only in the United States as a whole, but in 
 most of the States. With very few exceptions (Rhode Island and 
 Connecticut) the increased ratios appear in the newer commonwealths, 
 and are attributable for the most part to the ampler institutional pro- 
 
 1 Special Report, "Paupers in Almshouses," liX)4, p. 8. On page 7 is 
 given a detailed table of the uumber and ratios of paupers to population 
 by States.
 
 THE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 205 
 
 visions for dependents and not to an exceptional increase of pauperism. 
 On the other hand, it would be equally a mistake to read in the de- 
 creased ratios observable elsewhere merely evidence of correspondingly 
 decreasing wanl. . . . The rise or fall in the ratios of almshouse 
 paupers to population can only remotely serve as a general index of 
 prevailing distress or prosperity so long as many other factors entering 
 into the problem of poverty remain unknown." 
 
 In general, it may be inferred that the decrease in the 
 proportionate almshouse population comes not so much from 
 a diminution of pauperism, as from the differentiation al- 
 ready described. But undoubtedly, better legislation and 
 administration have contributed to the diminution; and 
 finally the development of charity organization societies 
 and of private agencies for the care of children and of needy 
 families has saved a considerable number of dependents from 
 institutional life. Koren calls attention to the fact that in 
 States with the best-equipped systems of organized charity, 
 the pauper ratios have decreased, notwithstanding that some 
 of them contain the largest urban centres in the country. 
 
 A third group, which should manifestly be excluded from 
 the almshouse, is the pauper-delinquent. In most States, 
 tramps and disorderly persons are accommodated here be- 
 cause of the lack of any place of safe-keeping between the 
 almshouse and the jail. In the more advanced States such 
 persons are sent to workhouses or reformatories. The dis- 
 grace that attaches to almshouse relief will not be lifted until 
 differentiation has been carried a step farther, and there is 
 some classification of inmates on the basis of character as 
 disclosed in individual and family history. Reformatory 
 institutions to which habitual drunkards, prostitutes, and 
 other misdemeanants can be sent, and in which they must 
 remain until reformation or death supervenes, would relieve 
 the almshouse of many inmates, and the worthy poor of a 
 very considerable portion of the disgrace which attaches to 
 going there.
 
 206 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 The effect of the drafting off of the special classes to other 
 institutions is seen in the altered character of the residuum. 
 The general average age of 81,412 paupers admitted in 1904 
 was 49.4 years — much higher than formerly; the largest 
 proportion admitted in 1904 is found in the age group, 60 
 to 64 years, and 36 per cent of the total admissions were 
 above 60. Of the paupers in all almshouses in the United 
 States in 1904, 43 per cent were over 60 years of age ; 
 while in Missouri, where the inmates of almshouses are still 
 of all classes, the per cent of persons over 60 is only 37. 
 
 When carried far enough the policy of differentiation 
 leaves in the almshouses only the infirm and incapable. 
 Table LI. illustrates this tendency. 
 
 TABLE LI. 
 
 Paupers by Wouking Capacity. 
 
 
 Paupers at least 10 Tears op Age in 
 Almshouses, 1904. 
 
 Class. 
 
 Conti- 
 nental 
 United 
 St-ates. 
 
 North 
 
 Atlan- 
 tic. 
 
 South 
 Atlan- 
 tic. 
 
 North 
 Central. 
 
 South 
 Central. 
 
 West- 
 ern. 
 
 
 Pee Cent Distribution of those enumerated, 
 Dec. 81, 1903. 
 
 All Classes, 81,704. 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.0 
 
 100 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.0 
 
 Able-bodied .... 
 Incapacitated .... 
 Unknown 
 
 11.7 
 
 85.0 
 
 3.3 
 
 15.8 
 
 81.0 
 
 3.2 
 
 7.2 
 
 88.6 
 
 4.2 
 
 9.8 
 
 87.7 
 2.5 
 
 6.1 
 
 89.9 
 
 4.0 
 
 10.0 
 84.3 
 
 5.7 
 
 
 Per Cent Distribution of those ad.mitted 
 
 DURING 1904. 
 
 All Classes, 81,412. 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.0 
 
 100.0 
 
 Able-bodied . . . . 
 Incapacitated .... 
 Unknown 
 
 23.6 
 
 67.4 
 
 9.0 
 
 29.4 
 
 62.6 
 
 8.0 
 
 10.6 
 
 76.8 
 12.6 
 
 16.5 
 
 77.1 
 6.4 
 
 12.0 
 72.3 
 
 15.7 
 
 31.2 
 57.9 
 10.9
 
 THE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 207 
 
 As tramps and other wayfarers were excluded throughout 
 from the enumeration, the percentages in the table refer to 
 bona fide inmates. 
 
 The table shows, as might be expected, that the great 
 urban districts furnish the largest proportion of able-bodied 
 inmates. The high percentage in the Western division is 
 explained by the fact that the almshouses are used as con- 
 valescent wards and sometimes are the resort for acute ill- 
 ness. When all is said, however, there remain far too many 
 able-bodied in these institutions, as shown by the chart on 
 the following page, representing the classes in the alms- 
 houses of the city of Boston. 
 
 One of the completest pictures of an almshouse popula- 
 tion ever presented was published by the New York State 
 Board of Charities in 1877. It gave the basis for an agita- 
 tion which resulted in the removal of children and insane 
 persons from State almshouses. Of the 12,614 inmates in- 
 cluded in this inquiry, 422 were born in almshouses, and 
 1650 were admitted when less than ten years old; nearly 13 
 per cent were then under 10, and almost the same pro- 
 portion were over 70. The average time of dependence 
 for all inmates amounted to 4.88 years, not including the 
 time when they had been public charges in other institutions, 
 or as outdoor paupers — a total of 61,595 years of alms- 
 house care. Of the males, 84 per cent, and of the females, 
 42 per cent, were believed to have been intemperate ; 79 
 per cent and 21 per cent, respectively, were insane ; 65 per 
 cent were unquestionably permanently dependent. Few of 
 the inmates had ever owned property to any considerable 
 extent, some were known to be pauper stock, while the mass 
 confessed to idle and shiftless habits in early life.^ 
 
 While no State at the present time presents as terrible 
 conditions as this, nearly all of the States still retain abuses 
 similar in kind if not in degree. The committee appointed by 
 
 1 Tenth Annual Report, 1877. See Table IX., p. 56, and pp. 108-9, ante.
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 1000 
 
 - 
 
 
 950 
 
 - 
 
 "J54 
 
 900 
 
 - 
 
 
 850 
 
 - 
 
 
 800 
 
 - 
 
 
 750 
 
 - 
 
 
 700 
 
 - 
 
 
 660 
 
 - 
 
 
 600 
 
 - 
 
 
 550 
 
 - 
 
 
 500 
 
 - 
 
 
 450 
 
 - 
 
 
 400 
 
 - 
 
 
 350 
 
 - 
 
 
 SCO 
 
 - 
 
 
 250 
 
 - 
 
 
 200 
 
 - 
 
 
 150 
 
 - 
 
 
 100 
 
 - 
 
 
 50 
 
 - 
 
 
 DIAGRAM v.* 
 
 Showing the Proportion of Able-bodied In- 
 mates, AND of those incapacitated FOR SeLF- 
 
 suppoRT, TO the Total Adult Population of 
 Almshouse and Hospital at Long Island, and 
 of Almshouse at Charlestown, Massachu- 
 setts, on Jan. 31, 1907. 
 
 165 
 
 650 
 
 Note. — These categories, 
 though not given as medical 
 statements, are yet, we believe, 
 accurate for all practical pur- 
 poses, and have been carefully 
 determined by the superintend- 
 ents of the two institutions. 
 Each individual is counted in 
 one category only, although 
 many might fairly appear in two 
 or even three categories ; as, for 
 instance, a man who is old may 
 be lame, and also be suffering 
 from acute bronchitis, which 
 would place him under three 
 categories, while he appears in 
 this chart under but one. 
 
 34 
 
 76 
 
 29 
 
 * Tenth Annual Eeport, " Pauper Institutions Department," Boston.
 
 THE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 209 
 
 the town of Hartford, Connecticut, to report upon outdoor 
 relief in that place in 1891, made a careful examination of the 
 almshouse and its inmates. They found that a considerable 
 number of the insane and imbecile were kept there under 
 very unsatisfactory conditions, also some children suffering 
 from paralysis or other incurable disease ; that some wards 
 of the building were used as a prison to which police-court 
 cases were sent; and that the most notorious police-court 
 recidivists were most likely to be or to have been in the 
 almshouse.^ 
 
 A recent and thorough study of the condition of the 
 county almshouses of Missouri made by Professor Charles 
 A. Ellwood presents a picture of conditions which are typical 
 of those existing in more than half the States.^ Table LIT. 
 (p. 210) gives the more important facts in condensed form. 
 
 It appears that 54 per cent of all inmates are males, 37.7 
 per cent are over 60, and 4.6 under 18 years of age. 
 Very few of these persons — not more than 15 per cent — 
 are able to do any work; 71 per cent are defective, two- 
 thirds of all almshouses having insane inmates, and more 
 than half of them having cells for the violent insane. 
 Feeble-minded and epileptics constitute 20 per cent of the 
 total, and there were noted instances of feeble-minded 
 women who had become mothers of illegitimate children 
 while in almshouses. Fourteen per cent are blind, crippled, 
 and paralytic ; yet only two almshouses in the State have 
 nurses for the sick, and these are not trained nurses. 
 
 Turning from statistics of inmates to the provision made 
 for them, it appears that the cost of one-third of all these 
 almshouses was less than $1500; one only is on the cottage 
 plan, fifteen of the institutional type, and all the rest are 
 old farmhouses in different stages of repair. Only five 
 have modern sanitary arrangements. As to management, 
 
 1 Report of Committee, pp. xiii-xiv. 
 
 2 Bulletin on the " Condition of County Almshouses in Missouri," 1904.
 
 210 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 TABLE LII. 
 
 Statistics of Missouri Almshouses, 1903. 
 
 
 89 
 
 
 
 
 
 Counties 
 
 HAVING 
 
 less than 
 200 Alms- 
 house 
 
 PaUI'EES 
 
 St. 
 Louis 
 City. 
 
 Total. 
 
 Pee Cent 
 OF Total 
 Number 
 
 OF 
 
 Inmates. 
 
 
 Each. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Number. 
 
 Number. 
 
 Number. 
 
 
 Total Inmates 
 
 1083 
 
 1545 
 
 3348 
 
 
 Males 
 
 1044 
 
 795 
 
 1819 
 
 54.0 
 
 Females 
 
 759 
 
 770 
 
 1529 
 
 46.0 
 
 White 
 
 1593 
 
 1463 
 
 3056 
 
 
 Colored 
 
 210 
 
 82 
 
 292 
 
 8.7 
 
 Age of Inmates : 
 
 
 
 
 
 Above GO 
 
 669 
 
 593 
 
 1262 
 
 37.7 
 
 Between 18 and GO . . . 
 
 1037 
 
 885 
 
 1922 
 
 57.7 
 
 Under 18 
 
 87 
 
 67 
 
 154 
 
 4.6 
 
 Between 2 and 14 ... . 
 
 72 
 
 20 
 
 92 
 
 
 Defective Classes : 
 
 
 
 
 71.2 
 
 Insane 
 
 293 
 
 884 
 
 1177] 
 
 
 Feeble-minded 
 
 504 
 
 47 
 
 551 i 
 
 57.0 
 
 Epileptic 
 
 96 
 
 85 
 
 181 
 
 
 Blind 
 
 92 
 
 22 
 
 114] 
 
 
 Crippled 
 
 187 
 
 76 
 
 263 [ 
 
 14.2 
 
 Paralytic 
 
 67 
 
 31 
 
 98 J 
 
 
 Able to do Some Work . . 
 
 
 
 
 15.0 
 
 Management : 
 
 
 
 
 
 By Lease System .... 
 
 Yes, 55 
 
 No 
 
 
 
 Cells for Insane .... 
 
 Yes, 54 
 
 Yes 
 
 . . . 
 
 
 Employment of Able-bodied 
 
 Op., 74 
 
 Op. 
 
 
 
 Religious Services .... 
 
 Yes, 35 
 
 Yes 
 

 
 THE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 211 
 
 a majority are under the lease system, that is, let out to the 
 lowest bidder, which makes the superintendent dependent 
 upon what he can save from the inmates. 
 One superintendent wrote candidly : — 
 
 " A few years ago the poor were let at $38.00 per head per year. 
 Under that treatment there were nine out of nineteen that died, and 
 the county had to pay doctor's bill and burial expenses, which cost 
 more than board and clothes. They now pay $72.00 a head per year. 
 and see that it is cheaper and more humane." 
 
 As to classification, Professor Ellwood reports that in 
 14 out of 90 almshouses there is none — not even separa- 
 tion of the sexes ; in 50 the only segregation is by sex, in 
 20 by sex and color ; 3 only have adequate classification by 
 sex, race, age, and character. In only 16 almshouses is 
 work required of the able-bodied ; the rules of admission are 
 lax and indefinite, and of discharge even more so. As the 
 final touch to this dreary picture, it is reported that only 
 1 has a library, only 4 have weekly religious services, and 
 55 have none at all, while amusements and recreation are 
 almost wholly lacking. 
 
 A study of 228 almshouse women in San Francisco made 
 in 1895 gives a somewhat different view, and adds some in- 
 formation concerning more modern types of paupers.^ In 
 San Francisco, the jail, the hospital, and the almshouse are 
 each, in turn, the resort of the typical inmate. They come 
 to the latter to recuperate so long as any vitality remains, 
 and finally return there to die, when completely wrecked 
 by dissipation and irregular living. The women are much 
 completer wrecks than the men, because prostitution gives 
 the idle and vicious an alternative career until the last. Of 
 the conditions which brought them to this pass, Mrs. 
 Coolidge says : — 
 
 1 Coolidge, M. R. (Smith), " Almshouse Women," American Statistical 
 Association, 1895, vol. iv,
 
 212 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 " One of the commonest results of immigration seems to be that the 
 children acquire a public-school education, become prosperous, and 
 rise in social station ; the old mother or father — foreign, uneducated, 
 often vulgar, and unpresentable — becomes an unwelcome reminder 
 of their common origin, and does not fit into the American life of the 
 children. They are therefore quietly thrown back into the alms- 
 house, where they will be reasonably comfortable and unknown to the 
 children's friends. The old people are often resigned to their fate be- 
 cause they are led to beheve that the almshouse is a State institution, 
 and that it is the business of the State to take care of them. Often it 
 hurts their pride less to be dependent on that abstract thing, ' the 
 State,' than upon children and relatives who are ashamed of them. 
 Five have quarrelled with daughters or grandchildren, and are in the 
 almshouse because of spite on one side or the other. This again is a 
 larger factor than appears in numbers. A crotchety, quarrelsome, 
 sensitive old woman, who can do very little work and who thinks 
 much should be done for her, is a serious burden in any poor family, 
 and a source of family trouble anywhere. The majority of women in 
 the almshouse are diificult of temper, and doubtless this was originally 
 a cause of separation from their families in many cases where it does 
 not appear in their stories. Three could be partially supported by 
 tlieir children if they could do even a little housework well or could 
 be left alone at home. In twelve cases there were children who were 
 able, from the mother's own story, to support her, but no satisfactory 
 reason why they did not do so was given. 
 
 " Of the 184 children, 40 are ' somewhere ' ; that is, they have been 
 separated from the mother in one way or another, and she no longer 
 knows where they are. In the majority of cases this occurs because 
 the mother cannot write, or writes with diflSculty, not having the 
 habit, and does not therefore keep her connection with her children. 
 The children, usually of the laboring class, drift from one place to an- 
 other at work, write less and less often, until finally an illness, a lost 
 letter, a wrong address, some trivial accident, breaks the last link 
 which bound them together. The fact that the parent is usually a 
 foreigner, the immensity of this country, and the mobility of the 
 laboring classes, all tend to produce the same pitiable result, — a con- 
 dition undoubtedly peculiar to American pauperism." 
 
 It is encouraging to note that in some of the older States, 
 the almshouse is approaching the practicable ideal. The 
 almshouses of Massachusetts are controlled by the local
 
 THE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 2lS 
 
 Overseers of the Poor, and supervised by the State Board of 
 Charity. For this purpose an inspector is employed who 
 makes regular annual visits and detailed reports ; frequent 
 visits are also made by the members of the Board. In addi- 
 tion, there are employed in a large proportion of towns hav- 
 ing almshouses, women visitors, who give their services 
 without pay, and whose chief office is that of personal sym- 
 pathy and comfort for the inmates. In 1908 the State 
 Board of Charity reports as follows : — 
 
 " Notwithstanding the continued existence of certain defects and 
 the occasional failure of voters and officials to appreciate the impor- 
 tance of maintaining satisfactory almshouses, during the seven years 
 since the passage of the law specifically providing for almshouse visita- 
 tion there has been a steadily increasing feeling of confidence in the 
 Board's work on the part of Overseers of the Poor, and a steady j 
 improvement in almshouse conditions. 
 
 " Of the 197 almshouses, the large majority have wooden buildings. 
 About three-quarters of them are provided with sitting-rooms and 
 bath-rooms, either fully or partly equipped. One hundred and twenty- 
 one have water-closets. Three-quarters of them are heated by steam, 
 hot air, or hot water, and the remainder by stoves. In nearly all cases 
 where fire-escapes are a matter of importance they are provided. Only 
 35 almshouses have special hospital accommodations. The whole 
 number of inmates of all the almshouses at the time of visitation was 
 4324, viz. 2402 men, 1829 women, and 93 children, or persons under 
 twenty-one years of age. The whole number of inmates of all the 
 almshouses during the year was 8442. There were 3868 reported as 
 permanent and 456 as temporary ; and 2782 were stated to have rela- 
 tives in town. Friends and relatives paid for the board of 99. Weekly 
 bathing was generally required. Work of greater or less value was 
 done by a total of 376 inmates. In all the almshouses there was a total 
 of 860 defective inmates, of whom 275 were reported as idiotic, 57 
 epileptic, 471 crippled, 12 blind, 13 insane, 12 idiotic and crippled, 5 
 blind and crippled, 2 epileptic and idiotic, 1 feeble-minded and crip- 
 pled, 1 feeble-minded, 1 feeble-minded and blind, 7 epileptic and crip- 
 pled, 1 deaf, blind, and crippled, 1 deaf and dumb, and 1 blind and 
 deaf. There was a total of 139 consumptive cases, who in the large 
 majority of Instances received special treatment and diet. Almshouse 
 officials are gradually but surely becoming persuaded of the necessity
 
 ^14 AMERICAN CBARITIES. 
 
 of separating consumptives from other almshouse inmates, and of pro- 
 viding the best possible treatment and care for them. The number 
 of vagrants in ahnshouses has steadily decreased from 34,504 in 1901 
 to 3127 during the last year. Two years ago 89 almshouses cared for 
 15,491 vagrants, a year ago 61 almshouses cared for a total of 7900, 
 and during the last year 26 almshouses cared for 3127. This reduction 
 has been accomplished both by new legislation and by a stricter en- 
 forcement of the law." 1 
 
 The Massachusetts Board reports that owing to closer 
 supervision and stricter enforcement of the law, the old 
 '' rounder " has practically disappeared from the almshouses ; 
 and that the removal of the insane under the act of 1902 
 leaves the almshouse to provide for the old, infirm, and crip- 
 pled, and for temporary cases of poverty, chiefly women 
 with one or more children. For the most part, the 4324 
 inmates were '' worthy poor people to be suitably cared for." 
 Judging from the report, the two most serious defects of the 
 Massachusetts system are the lack of provision for the feeble- 
 minded and epileptic, and of sufficient hospital equipment. 
 
 The most significant fact in connection with this steady 
 improvement in recent years is that it has been accom- 
 plished almost entirely by the voluntary service of the 
 philanthropic citizens of the State. 
 
 Probably a majority of the grave evils which could be 
 charged at the present time to the American almshouse 
 have their origin in a lack of proper classification of in- 
 mates. Classification, which takes selected cases out of the 
 almshouses altogether and puts them in specialized insti- 
 tutions, has already been discussed at length, and exist- 
 ing faults arise chiefly from the fact that many of the 
 States have not kept pace with the march of opinion among 
 specialists. 
 
 In the main, it may be said that, wherever the blind, the 
 deaf and dumb, the insane, epileptics, idiots, the feeble- 
 
 1 Twenty-ninth Annual Report, 1907, pp. 6-7.
 
 THE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS IN3IATES. 215 
 
 minded, and children are left in the local almshouse, grave 
 abuses are sure to result, unless there is very efficient supervi- 
 sion ; and even then the condition of affairs must be far from 
 satisfactory. While they remain, therefore, they must be 
 given a degree of special care. Idiots should be entirely 
 separated from other inmates, under constant supervision; the 
 feeble-minded should be kept employed, according to their 
 ability, and the women especially must be strictly super- 
 vised and separated from men ; epileptics should never be left 
 alone, and should be kept employed as much as possible. 
 
 In proj)ortion as these classes have been removed, classi- 
 fication within the almshouse will be simplified, but it is 
 always important and demands constant care and readjust- 
 ment. There are four lines of segregation generally laid 
 down as fundamental : by sex, by color, by health, and by 
 mental and moral character. The neglect to separate the 
 sexes is partly the result of unsuitable construction of build- 
 ings, and partly of the low-grade character of the officials in 
 charge. White and colored inmates should be distributed 
 in duplicate cottages or wards. 
 
 As we have already seen, two-thirds of all almshouse in- 
 mates are incapacitated in one way or another, and 37 per 
 cent of them are over GO years of age. With the elimina- 
 tion of all special classes, the almshouse becomes primarily 
 what is called in Ohio an infirmary. The Visiting Medical 
 Staff of the Long Island (Massachusetts) Hospital state the 
 situation clearly : — 
 
 "In addition to the large number suffering from well-defined dis- 
 ease, there are many others who, through infirmities of age, should be 
 classified as hospital or infirmary patients. . . . The number of the 
 chronic sick is evidently increasing year by year. . . . Are they to 
 be treated simply as city charges, or are they to be given the advan- 
 tages of the best possible modern medical treatment under conditions 
 which will remove them from the social stigma of pauperism ? . . . 
 Ordinary justice requires that the latter course be adopted." ^ 
 
 1 Ninth Annual Report, " Pauper Institutions Department," 1906, p. 12.
 
 216 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Mrs. Alice N. Lincoln for some years urged that the sick 
 poor, no matter where they may be found, should receive the 
 same care as other sick persons ; that they need the same 
 nursing, the same nourishing food, and the same cleanliness 
 and care — in short, there should be no difference between 
 an almshouse hospital and a general hospital.^ 
 
 Although extensive hospital facilities are not practicable, 
 nor required in small almshouses, there are certain provi- 
 sions essential everywhere. A special w^ard for general dis- 
 eases is often necessary, even in small institutions ; cancer 
 patients must be isolated because of the offensive nature of 
 their malady in the later stages ; and tubercular inmates 
 should not only be in separate cottages, but should have their 
 own attendants. 
 
 A classification on the basis of habits, character, and a 
 degree of refinement is usually not attempted, although it 
 is of great importance to the inmates. It is a great hardship 
 for the respectable who have seen better days to associate 
 with the intemperate, diseased, and disreputable ; but aside 
 from this obvious demarcation, the almshouse inmate is often 
 sensitive about social distinctions and has as strong pref- 
 erences as to companionship as other people. Such pecu- 
 liarities must be considered if the inmates are to be kept 
 comfortable, and the utmost tact, patience, and ingenuity 
 are required to adjust these relations satisfactorily. In the 
 San Francisco almshouse, instead of wards they have a large 
 number of rooms — a form of construction which is unde- 
 sirable, but which was at one time used to good purpose to 
 give the self-respecting and improvable cases a semi-privacy 
 which they valued.^ 
 
 1 N. C. C, 1902, " The Almshouse Hospital." 
 
 2 This large institution was in charge of Mr. and Mrs. P. L. Weaver 
 from 1889-1897. Especially on the women's side, Mrs. Weaver's methods 
 of classification wrought notable results. Those who were ambitious in a 
 way, and anxious to keep their rooms in good order, were groujjed in the
 
 THE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 217 
 
 But no amount of ingenuity on the part of the managers 
 can wholly overcome the difficulties arising from unsuitable 
 construction of buildings. ]N^either the converted farmhouse 
 nor the institutional dormitory, several stories in height, ad- 
 mits of proper classification of the aged, sick, and infirm. 
 It is now agreed that the cottage plan is best adapted for 
 the purpose by its greater flexibility. Not the least of its 
 minor advantages is the fact that it permits the superin- 
 tendent and attendants to be "segregated" also, in their 
 hours off duty. 
 
 This leads to the discussion of the amount of land which 
 should be attached to the institution. The original idea of 
 the "poor-farm" was that the able-bodied should earn a 
 portion of their living, and the manager should also earn 
 a portion of his own salary by cultivation of the land — as 
 ministers often did in former times. In proportion as the 
 able-bodied, the young, and the special classes generally 
 have been excluded, the ability of the inmates to work has 
 been declining. The result of this is that the superin- 
 tendent is chiefly engrossed in farming to the neglect of 
 the inmates. It is, moreover, a doubtful economy, since sup- 
 plies can be purchased cheaply in bulk. But the greatest 
 disadvantage is that it necessitates the location of the alms- 
 house in the country, where it is rarely visited, and where 
 
 rooms along one corridor, while certain women who had no ambition and 
 no willingness to do anything unless compelled to it, had rooms along 
 another corridor. The inmates themselves called the first " Grand Hall," 
 and the second, "Pauper Alley." Women of one of these localities were 
 disinclined to associate with those of the other. In filling the various 
 rooms, constant effort was necessary to adapt properly the dispositions of 
 the several occupants. Mrs. Weaver at one time had quite a number of 
 inmates with whom no one wished to room because they were such terrific 
 snorers. They were not even congenial associates for each other. She 
 finally hit on the device of putting a snorer in a room with a woman who 
 was hard of hearing. This almost absurd illustration shows what in- 
 ventiveness and constant personal attention are necessary in order to fit 
 the inmates of an institution properly together.
 
 218 AMERICAN CHARlTim. 
 
 the provision of amusement and religions services are made 
 difficult. There should be only enough land retained to fur- 
 nish occupation for the few semi-able-bodied and for pleasant 
 grounds about the cottages.^ 
 
 Of the almshouse abuses which result from the mistakes 
 or wrong-doing of individual officials, we shall say but little. 
 Among them may be enumerated dishonest or wasteful man- 
 agement of the funds ; culpable stinginess, resulting in inad- 
 equate or unhealthful food, lack of proper buildings, heating 
 apparatus, clothing, and so forth ; insanitary conditions, in- 
 cluding dirt and vermin ; and finally, actual cruelty, result- 
 ing from either brutality or neglect on the part of the offi- 
 cials in charge. Few understand how easy it is for an official 
 in charge of the utterly helpless to do cruel things without 
 intentional cruelty. In the rural districts especially, abuses 
 are apt to arise because so few persons concern themselves 
 with the institution. The superintendent has dreary work, 
 small pay, and practically no general recognition of his 
 services, whether they be good or bad. A sensitive, high- 
 minded, ambitious man is not likely to apply for or accept 
 such a place. The incumbent is, therefore, almost of neces- 
 sity a tolerably stolid, unsympathetic person, and one who 
 has not been very successful in other lines. The officials 
 under whom he works send to him a miscellaneous assort- 
 ment of the diseased, defective, and incapable, but do not 
 give him the proper facilities for providing for these various 
 classes. They cut his appropriations to the lowest possible 
 point, and he fears that any vigorous protest would lose him 
 the place. He therefore concludes that he may as well get 
 along as best he can, since to object would only bring some 
 more docile man into his place. On the other hand, most 
 of the inmates with whom he has to deal are bad-tempered, 
 unreasonable, and inveterately querulous. They would com- 
 
 1 An account of a profitable county poor-farm is given in Bulletin of 
 Illinois Board of Charities, October, 1907.
 
 THE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 219 
 
 plain, no matter what might be done for them ; and he grad- 
 ually acts on the unrecognized impression that it does not 
 matter what is done for them — that anything is good 
 enough for them. He becomes brutal unconsciously, and 
 almost in self-defence. After a few years he does, without 
 question, things that would have seemed absolutely awful 
 to him when he first entered on his duties. Ko influential 
 person reviews and criticises his conduct, and he not unnat- 
 urally settles into the conviction that he is managing the 
 almshouse as well as the community cares to have it man- 
 aged. One can but sympathize with such an official, even 
 when very grave abuses have grown up under his manage- 
 ment. 
 
 All these tendencies are exaggerated wherever the alms- 
 house is managed under the lease system, making the wages 
 of the superintendent dependent upon what he can make 
 off the farm and save from the inmates. In Missouri the 
 system has been shown to be uneconomical, and as Professor 
 Ellwood. says, — nobody claims that it is humane ; if it is not 
 cheaper, the only argument in its defence falls to the ground. 
 
 The second great evil which springs, not from the char- 
 acter of the officials, but from the nature of our almshouse 
 organization, is laxness regarding admission and discharge 
 of inmates. Slnce^ivery person is enFitled to "be savedfrom 
 starvation and from death by exposure, — which is nearly 
 all that the almshouse does for its beneficiaries, — any one 
 may claim its shelter. But as it is not a penal institution, 
 and as it is to the interest of no one to have persons stay 
 there who can support themselves outside, an inmate wish- 
 ing to discharge himself is allowed to do so. To the average 
 almshouse official this justification of our laxness is entirely 
 conclusive. Whatever official or board may have the legal 
 right of admitting or discharging inmates, the right of ap- 
 plicants to be admitted or discharged is regarded as in- 
 alienable.
 
 220 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 The results of this apparently defensible practice are 
 thoroughly bad. Of the abases to which it gives rise, we 
 may mention as of least importance the support by the 
 county of persons having pensions or property, or relatives 
 able to support them. In some States, even where it is 
 found after death that an almshouse inmate had considerable 
 property, no attempt is made to recoup the county or town, 
 for the outlay.^ A second and more serious abuse is the 
 making of the almshouse a winter resort for tramps, and a 
 place where the drunkard and the prostitute can recuperate 
 between debauches. 
 
 The accompanying table, showing the mobility of the 
 almshouse population in San Francisco, is typical of the 
 conditions in many other cities. 
 
 TABLE LIII. 
 
 Number of Times admitted and readmitted after Discharge.* 
 
 San Francisco Almshouse, 1889-1894. 
 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 ■1 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 T 
 
 8 
 
 9 
 
 10-18 
 
 Total Number 
 Per cent . . 
 
 2819 
 64.3 
 
 701 
 16.1 
 
 306 
 7.0 
 
 157 
 3.6 
 
 113 
 2.6 
 
 64 
 1.5 
 
 48 
 1.1 
 
 41 
 .9 
 
 28 
 .6 
 
 88 
 2.0 
 
 * Coolidgre, "Almshouse Women,"' p. 2'25. 
 
 The Federal Census of almshouse inmates in the United 
 States shows that in the course of the twelve months after 
 Dec. 31, 1903, the admissions almost equalled the total 
 almshouse population on that date, and the discharges 
 were only a few thousand less. Excluding deaths and 
 transfers to other institutions, there were 54,199 permanent 
 or temporary discharges, of whom only one-fourth were dis- 
 
 1 A number of San Francisco miners liave been supported at the alms- 
 house, and twelve women were found tliere whose children should have 
 supported them.
 
 THE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 221 
 
 charged to the keeping of relatives or friends.^ The Hart- 
 ford Committee reported a man whose clothing, supplied at 
 public expense while he came and went at pleasure for two 
 years, amounted in value to $85.28, while the man was 
 receiving at the same time a federal pension of $8 per month. 
 The final and worst result of permitting the destitute to 
 admit and discharge themselves at will is that it enables 
 the dissolute and degenerate to have offspring " after their 
 kind." The results are most manifest in the cases of feeble- 
 minded women. Mr. Charles Booth gives an instance of an 
 English woman who in a little more than eight years pre- 
 sented the rural workhouse at Ashby-de-la-Zouch with five 
 illegitimate children. In the workhouse this woman was 
 capable and industrious, and a good nurse.^ After giving 
 numerous examples in her paper entitled "One Means of 
 Preventing Pauperism," Mrs. Lowell says : — 
 
 "I speak chiefly of women, because they form the visible links in 
 the direful chain of hereditary pauperism and disease ; but it must not 
 be forgotten that the treatment here prescribed for them (indeter- 
 minate sentence to reformatory institutions) should also be applied 
 to the reformation of the men, whose evil propensities are likewise 
 handed down from one generation to another." ^ 
 
 A special committee of investigation in Boston reported 
 the cases of two women who had been admitted to the Home 
 for Paupers eight and four times respectively in six years, 
 and commented as follows : — 
 
 " These two young women, one of whom is now at liberty on the 
 city streets, have cost the city for the board of their five illegitimate 
 children, still at Marcella Street Home, the sum of $1,855.53. Two 
 of these children are defective and will long be a care to the city. 
 Women like these have no will-power of their own ; they need re- 
 straint for their own good. They are too weak to withstand temptation, 
 and should not thus needlessly be allowed to walk into it." * 
 
 1 Special Report, " Paupers in Almshouses," p. 11. 
 
 2 " Pauperism," etc., pp. 117-118. 3 N. C. C, 1879, p. 195. 
 
 * Report Special Committee to inspect Public Institutions, 1892, pp. 28- 
 29,40.
 
 222 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 There is probably no almshouse in the country which has 
 not one or more such records to show. 
 
 The remedy for the abuse of the privileges of admission 
 and discharge is investigation of the history of all appli- 
 cants for admission, a legal commitment and discharge by a 
 board or committee, of which the superintendent and matron 
 shall be eoc-qfficio members. In proportion as the irrespon- 
 sible and the delinquent are drafted off to special institutions, 
 the decent remainder may be granted greater liberty, such 
 as is safely permitted in German almshouses.^ 
 
 A third very prevalent evil in the management of Ameri- 
 can almshouses is lack of a work test, and a failure to 
 enforce proper discipline among the inmates. While in 
 some places an energetic and specially capable official may 
 overcome all obstacles and enforce discipline and compel 
 work, yet such an undertaking is usually discouraged, or at 
 least not encouraged, by the authorities, and the sentiment 
 of the community and the nature of legislation are 
 usually such as to make this course difficult. Under the 
 average superintendent, as a rule, it costs more to set the 
 inmates of an almshouse to work than their work is worth. 
 That is, a given number of inmates can be supported more 
 cheaply in idleness than when they are put to work. It is 
 for this reason that the labor in the English " workhouse " 
 has degenerated so persistently into mere task-work. 
 
 The principal advantage in obliging all inmates capable 
 of doing anything to work consists in the deterrent influence 
 of this policy upon would-be applicants. Its influence is 
 especially valuable in preventing tramps from using the 
 institution as a winter club-house. In most almshouses 
 the main part of the work that can be offered to men is on a 
 farm or in the garden. This kind of work is unavailable in 
 the winter, just at the time when a rigid work test is most 
 essential. In many institutions no inmate is required to 
 
 1 Lincoln, N. C. C, 1898.
 
 TBE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 223 
 
 work unless he is willing to do so. Some superintendents 
 seem to think it the height of brutality to ask an inmate to 
 do anytliing against his will ; and such service as can be 
 utilized is usually obtained by offering extra rations of food 
 and tobacco. The amount of patience, ingenuity, and energy 
 necessary to make such work profitable, and to fit such 
 laborers — who for the most part have failed to fit any- 
 where else in the industrial world — into some task suited 
 to their limited capacity, requires a degree of ability and 
 moral fibre rarely to be found in an almshouse official. 
 Under the management of Mrs. Ellen Armstrong Weaver, 
 the women of San Francisco almshouse reached a high degree 
 of industrijil_efficieiicy, considering their capacities. A pros- 
 titute nursed a bedridden girl to whom she had become 
 attached ; a deaf and difficult old woman washed, dressed, 
 and fed, as if she were a baby, a deaf, dumb, and blind girl ; 
 a woman nearly blind and knotted with rheumatism braided 
 rag rugs ; a feeble-minded Swedish woman made fine lace; 
 a well-educated woman did fine sewing and read the daily 
 paper aloud to the women in the sewing room. All the 
 sewing and mending for the 900 inmates, and all the clean- 
 ing of the women's wards, was done by the women. 
 
 From the side of the inmates, work for all is desirable 
 because they are happier for having it. About the only happy 
 persons one finds in an almshouse are those who are occupied. 
 Idleness conduces to restlessness, sensuality, bad temper, 
 and various forms of nervous disorder. In almshouses, as 
 well as in prisons, insane asylums, and other kinds of in- 
 stitutions, discipline is doubly hard when the inmates are 
 idle. That idleness in and of itself brings misery, can be 
 seen by any one who passes through one of our Soldiers' 
 Homes, especially the magnificent one for soldiers of the 
 regular army at Washington. So well is this fact now 
 ascertained that special societies are formed in the large 
 cities for giving employment to the inmates of the great
 
 224 American ChAritiM. 
 
 public institutions. Efforts in this direction were begun in 
 1893 at the City Hospital on Blackwell's Island, New York, 
 by the County Visiting Committee of the State Charities 
 Association, and during the last three years the work has 
 been greatly enlarged. Teachers have been sent to munici- 
 pal hospitals and homes for the aged and infirm to instruct 
 the inmates in a variety of handicrafts. The effect of em- 
 ployment in Ward L, a ward at the home for the aged and 
 infirm on Blackwell's Island, is thus described : ^ — 
 
 " Ward L is the ward devoted to the crippled, paralyzed, rheumatic, 
 epileptic cripples. ... I found sixty men sitting there doing nothing, 
 the very picture of desolation. ... To speak a cheery word in such an 
 atmosphere seemed mockery. . . . There has come about, in process of 
 time, what I call the transformation or the transfiguration of Ward L, 
 and all this has taken place through the introduction of the bead work. 
 . . . With some persuasion, they induced one or two to enter into the 
 work. The interest spread until 20 out of the 60 were engaged in it. 
 . . . They were impatient when the supply of beads gave out. The 
 clamor was for more beads and more looms. The whole character of 
 the ward was changed. A joke was in order, cheeriness and good 
 will were the rule." 
 
 Many other handicrafts have been introduced : one man 
 illuminates texts; another man has earned a phonograph 
 for the ward by his knitting ; others make rafBa and osier 
 baskets, Smyrna rugs, and carved wooden articles. The 
 disciplinary and curative results of the work are highly en- 
 couraging, and the avenues for the development of the work 
 are many. There ought to be similar societies, or at least 
 similar work done, in our rural communities ; if it accom- 
 plished nothing else, it would at least interest some of the 
 influential classes in the neglected institutions of the 
 locality. 
 
 It is evident that many of the abuses which we have been 
 discussing will still occur even when capable and conscien- 
 
 1 Charities, March 4, 1905 ; Charities and the Commons, 1906, May 12, 
 November 17.
 
 THE ALMSHOUSE AND ITS INMATES. 225 
 
 tious officials are in charge, primarily because of neglect by 
 the general public. Professor Elhvood suggests three lines 
 of effort toward correction: the visitation of almshouses 
 by local boards of visitors, inspection of state officials, i.e. 
 Board of Charities, and mandatory and prohibitive legisla- 
 tion. The three methods will naturally be evolved and 
 become effective in the order indicated. Following the 
 example of English administration, there is some tendency 
 in America to State control of almshouse administration. 
 
 If there could be in American almshouses thorough investi- 
 gation of all applicants for admission and all applications for 
 dismissal ; if within the institution there could be a thorough 
 discipline and an intelligent and kindly application of the 
 work test to all capable of doing anything at all, there would 
 be no danger that almshouses would be overcrowded; if in 
 addition there could be a higher class of officials in charge, 
 if the standard of medical care and nursing could be raised 
 to that of the general hospital, and if some means of reliev- 
 ing the dreary monotony of the life were afforded, the alms- 
 house would afford cleanly and honorable relief to the real 
 children of misfortune.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PUBLIC RELIEF OF THE POOR IN THEIR HOMES. 
 
 Outdoor relief does not have the same meaning in 
 different places and according to different laws. In Eng- 
 land, it usually means all relief that is given outside of the 
 workhouse. The indigent insane, consequently, who are 
 relieved in special institutions, are classed among those 
 receiving outdoor relief. The same policy is followed in 
 the parts of the United States where English precedents 
 have obtained. For instance, in Massachusetts what is 
 called " State outdoor relief " is given to the poor who 
 have no local settlement, such as the sick and diseased who 
 are placed in hospitals ; and the administrative expenses of 
 the department are reckoned in with the amount spent 
 for outdoor relief ; consequently, only a small modicum of 
 the expenditure really goes in temporary aid to the poor 
 in their own homes. Those who dispute about the advis- 
 ability of outdoor relief create confusion by sometimes in- 
 cluding and sometimes excluding such relief when given 
 from private funds. Unless otherwise specified, the terra ' 
 *' outdoor relief," as used in this volume, will mean the relief • 
 given from public funds to the poor in their homes, not 
 including medical relief. s>v-«^->W = t^l^^^ ^kM^ ^-^i f'*^ ^ 
 
 Outdoor relief in the United States is given by county 
 and township officials ; and from its nature the bookkeep- 
 ing is likely to be faulty, especially as to the number of 
 persons aided. In most Western States, as, for instance, in 
 California, there is no State official to whom the county 
 and township authorities are called upon to report. They 
 
 226
 
 PUBLIC BELIEF OF POOR IN THEIR HOMES. 227 
 
 publish no annual accounts, except sucli as may be found 
 in the local papers annually or semi-annually ; and those 
 who have undertaken to study the problem of outdoor 
 relief in these States have had to get their facts by personal 
 visits or correspondence with the local officials.^ 
 
 In twenty-four States, relief of the poor in their homes 
 is legally authorized, and several others may authorize it at 
 discretion ; only a few Southern States give outdoor relief. 
 As pointed out in the previous chapter, its fundamental 
 principle is that the aid shall be temporary or only partial. 
 The evils connected with this form of relief have long been 
 a matter of controversy, and in this country the agitation 
 against it has gained headway in almost direct proportion 
 to the density of population. The flagrant abuses of the 
 system in the large Eastern cities led to a concerted move- 
 ment for doing away with it from 1878 onward. 
 
 In order to make clear the chief points involved, the 
 arguments for and against the method will be set down 
 categorically. The following are the principal reasons 
 given by those who believe in retaining it as a fundamental 
 part of the relieving system : — 
 
 1. It is the natura l and therefore the kindly way to help, 
 because it grows out of the neighborly relations of rural 
 communities. The poor person is not separated from relatives 
 and friends, families are not broken up, and the receipt of 
 relief is not as conspicuous and consequently as disgrace- 
 ful as it is where resort must be had to an institution. 
 
 2. It is ecQnomi^l. Many families can almost support 
 themselves, and it seems folly to dismember them and 
 place the children in refuges or board them in private 
 families, and compel the adults to resort to the poorhouse, 
 when a little relief given in the home would keep the 
 
 1 In 1880 the Federal Census published some fragmentary statistics on 
 this subject, but none were collected in 1890 or in 1900; there are, con- 
 sequently, no figures for the country as a whole.
 
 228 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 family together and enable them to make part of their 
 support by ordinary methods. Mr. P. B. Sanborn, in 1890, 
 cited the example of INIassachusetts, where the average 
 annual cost of each outdoor pauper, or recipient of family 
 aid, was less than $40 a year, while the cost for each in- 
 door pauper was $139 ; and if the interest on the institu- 
 tional plant and equipment were added, would be at least 
 $180 yearly. 
 
 3. There are not institutions enough. The demand for 
 relief always keeps considerably in advance of the supply ; 
 and it would be uneconomical, and in fact impossible, to 
 have buildings enough to accommodate all who should be 
 relieved from time to time. Especially in the winter 
 months, a large number of persons need relieving for a 
 short time; and if the almshouses were large enough to 
 accommodate them during the winter, there would be great 
 buildings vacant during the summer. 
 
 4. Individual priyate^charitiy, — the other alternative of 
 public outdoor relief — is unreliable and, in times of 
 special distress, insufficient. Some of the worthy poor are 
 likely to be neglected, while relief to others will be dupli- 
 cated, and these latter are sure to be pauperized. 
 
 This gives certainly a good prima facie case for the re- 
 tention of a certain amount of outdoor relief. On the 
 other side, the following considerations are urged : — 
 
 1. The kindness is apparent rather than real, for, except 
 in the smallest communities, the administration is in the 
 hands of officials who have no personal knowledge of the 
 applicant and who can neither investigate nor discriminate. 
 It has long been a principle that any work was suitable for 
 a government to do in proportion as it could be reduced 
 to a routine and done in a serai-mechanical way. As the 
 work of giving outdoor relief should not be done in this 
 semi-mechanical way, it is unsuitable for public officials to 
 undertake.
 
 / ^ / U J 
 
 PUBLIC RELIEF OF POOR IN THEIR HOMES. 229 
 
 2. It tends to increase the number of applicants, because 
 it is less manifestly disgraceful than the indoor system, 
 and is much more pleasant to receive. The saving in cost 
 for a single person supported is more than made up by the 
 additional number of persons that will claim to require 
 relief. It is a suflBciently pleasant form of being relieved, 
 so that if no requirement except indigency is made, a large 
 number of persons will become duly indigent in order to 
 qualify for the receipt of alms. 
 
 3. Corruption of politics invariably results from the sys- 
 tem, and the whole tone of the population is likely to be 
 lowered. In many cases, it is unworthy motives favoring 
 the retention of the system that makes it difficult to secure 
 its abolition. 
 
 4. Where outdoor relief has been given lavishly, as in 
 England at some times and places, it has simply resulted 
 in reducing the rate of wages, the amount given in relief 
 being reckoned on as a possible resource, so that the 
 employee would accept lower wages than would otherwise 
 have been possible. 
 
 5. It is not educational either to the recipient or the 
 official donor. In the one it tends to destroy thrift and 
 self-restraint; in the other it encourages a spirit of com- 
 placent generosity without any corresponding personal 
 sacrifice and exercise of judgment. Any charitable 
 method which does not develop both sympathy and dis- 
 crimination is about equally injurious to the administrator 
 and the recipient. 
 
 A comparison of the two general lines of argument for 
 and against public outdoor relief makes it apparent that 
 those who favor the system of outdoor relief usually argue 
 upon theory, or draw their facts from rural communities, 
 where the problems are comparatively simple, and where 
 abuses are readily checked. They generally lay the empha- 
 sis upon institutional care as the alternative method, while
 
 230 
 
 AMEBIC A N^ CHARITIES. 
 
 as a matter of practice in communities where public relief 
 in homes does not exist, the alternative is outdoor relief 
 by organized charity. 
 
 The opponents of the system, on the other hand, point 
 to the facts, especially the experience in dispensing outdoor 
 relief in large cities. The most instructive experiments 
 that have been made in this matter in the United States 
 have consisted chiefly in cutting off peremptorily the supply 
 of outdoor relief. The historic illustration of this sort is 
 the city of Brooklyn, first reported to the National Con- 
 ference of Charities in 1879 by Seth Low. The statistics 
 of outdoor relief in Brooklyn from 1870 to 1884 are given 
 in Table LIV. 
 
 TABLE LIV. 
 Brooklyn Poor Relief, 1870-1884.* 
 
 
 Population. 
 
 Outdoor 
 Relief. 
 Persons 
 Aided. 
 
 Indoor 
 Relief. 
 Persons 
 
 Aided. 
 
 Cost of 
 Outdoor 
 Relief. 
 
 Asbocia'iion fob 
 Improving the 
 
 Condition of the 
 
 Poor. Amount 
 
 Distributed. 
 
 1870 
 
 396,000 
 
 38,170 
 
 8,642 
 
 $163,437 
 
 $21,851 
 
 1871 
 
 414,000 
 
 35,658 
 
 9,234 
 
 141,208 
 
 22,011 
 
 1872 
 
 432,000 
 
 22,803 
 
 8,999 
 
 95,771 
 
 21,821 
 
 1873 
 
 450,000 
 
 25,033 
 
 7,487 
 
 100,555 
 
 22,211 
 
 1874 
 
 468.000 
 
 30,411 
 
 7,343 
 
 134,935 
 
 23,466 
 
 1875 
 
 485,000 
 
 35,850 
 
 7,923 
 
 116,967 
 
 24,366 
 
 1876 
 
 501,000 
 
 44,208 
 
 9,155 
 
 98,815 
 
 23,000 
 
 1877 
 
 518,000 
 
 46,330 
 
 9,208 
 
 141,137 
 
 20,818 
 
 1878 
 
 534,000 
 
 46,093 
 
 9,700 
 
 57,054 
 
 18,824 
 
 1879 
 
 551,000 
 
 stopped 
 
 10,231 
 
 stopped 
 
 16,640 
 
 1880 
 
 567,000 
 
 
 8,730 
 
 
 14,774 
 
 1881 
 
 684,000 
 
 
 10,347 
 
 
 17,716 
 
 1882 
 
 601,000 
 
 
 11,121 
 
 
 18,050 
 
 1883 
 
 619,000 
 
 
 11,678 
 
 
 22,246 
 
 1884 
 
 639,000 
 
 
 11,190 
 
 
 19,061 
 
 ♦From Devine, " Public Outdoor Relief," Charititu Ilci-Uic, vol. viii , jj. 1S3.
 
 PUBLIC RELIEF OF POOR IN THEIR HOMES. 231 
 
 From these figures it is seen that between 1872 and 1877, 
 inclusive, the number of beneficiaries increased 100 per cent. 
 In 1877 one person in every sixteen of the population was 
 receiving outdoor relief. The description of the abuse is 
 given in Mr. Low's own words : — 
 
 " The system had become furthermore a sore on the body politic. 
 The friends of politicians received help whether needy or not, and so 
 the system was perpetuated. Families with voters were the first 
 served. The ' outdoor relief ' appropriations became a vast political 
 corruption fund. Large numbers of the population were taught to 
 rely on the county help, and sought it for no other reason than that 
 the county gave it. One woman received help under nine different 
 names. Many sold what they received. Men came from the country 
 every autumn to live at the expense of the city during the winter, 
 because the city was offering a premium to the idle to come there and 
 live in idleness. The poor did not get the chief benefit of increased 
 appropriations. Most of it went to underlings connected with the 
 work of distribution. In every way, and in every direction, the effect 
 was hopelessly bad. 
 
 "In 1875 the Commissioners of Charity employed paid visitors to 
 investigate the cases of applicants for relief ; and it cost sixty cents to 
 distribute every dollar's worth of food or fuel. This was so monstrous 
 that public clamor compelled a change. In 1876 the visiting system 
 was abandoned, and all applicants were compelled to take oath that they 
 were paupers. As may be imagined, the result was horrible. More- 
 over, many who lived in New York availed themselves of such easy 
 opportunity to be fed by Brooklyn.'" 
 
 At the urgency of an association formed under the au- 
 spices of the State Charities Aid Association, between 200 
 and 300 volunteer visitors were set at the work of inves- 
 tigation in 1876-1877. As a result, the visitors were con- 
 vinced that many families habitually applied for relief 
 merely because their neighbors were receiving it, and they 
 recommended the abolition of outdoor relief, by stages, 
 if necessary. The Commissioners of Charities did not 
 accept the recommendation, but in 1878, the whole system 
 
 IN. C. C.,1879, pp. 202ff.
 
 232 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 having been discovered to be illegal, it was suddenly dis- 
 continued. 
 
 To the surprise of all, no increased demand fell upon the 
 private relief agencies during the winter following, no suf- 
 fering appeared, and the numbers in almshouses did not in- 
 crease. In fact, the figures in Table LIV. show a steady 
 decrease of relief per capita in the years following. This 
 was due, no doubt, partly to the return of business prosper- 
 ity after the panic of 1873 ; but it is believed that it also 
 represents to some extent a recovery from the pauperism 
 induced by lavish and indiscriminate public relief. 
 
 The experience of the State of Indiana, which has re- 
 cently applied to the administration of outdoor relief the 
 principles of organized charity, is even more instructive 
 than that of Brooklyn. Under the law of 1853 in Indiana, 
 poor relief was given by the trustees of more than 1000 
 townships ; the amount was left to their judgment, and they 
 might in their own discretion send the applicants for relief 
 to the county poor asylum or grant them relief in their 
 homes or transportation to the next township. The Boards 
 of County Commissioners were also permitted to give 
 annual allowances and medical aid. Under this system, 
 very serious abuses grew up. The township trustee, elected 
 by popular vote, was inexperienced, poorly paid, and subject 
 to political pressure and the demands of friends ; the 
 County Commissioners often gave when the trustee refused. 
 Under this system, the average amount paid in outdoor 
 relief between 1890 and 1895 was f 550,000 annually. The 
 first step toward reform was a law secured by the State 
 Board of Charities in 1894, requiring accurate statistics of 
 the relief given to be reported to a State officer. The in- 
 formation obtained was startling: one in every 31 of the 
 State's inhabitants was receiving relief, the proportion in 
 different counties varying from 1 in 13 to 1 in 208 ; in some 
 of the richest counties the number aided was 1 in 16 to 1
 
 PUBLIC RELIEF OF POOR IN THEIR HOMES. 233 
 
 in 20. As a result of agitation on the basis of this informa- 
 tion, a law was passed in 1890, which is said to be the first 
 application of charity organization principles to an entire 
 State. The law provided for the investigation of each case 
 by the overseer of the poor ; for securing the help of the 
 friends and relatives of the applicant ; for compelling the 
 able-bodied members of the family to work ; for refusing 
 transportation to all except the sick, aged, injured, or 
 crippled, and then only in the direction of his legal residence; 
 for cooperation with private relief societies ; for limiting 
 the relief power of the County Commissioners, and the 
 amount of temporary aid.^ The law has been strengthened 
 and improved in recent years, and the results are shown in 
 the following comparative summary for 1895 and 1905 : — 
 
 1895 1905 
 
 Cost of relief to each state inhabitant |.29 fl.lO 
 
 Highest per capita cost 68 .29 
 
 Lowest per capita cost 06 .Oo 
 
 Counties in which per capita cost was below 10 cents . 2 49 
 
 Counties in which per capita cost was above 30 cents . 35 
 
 The relation of the total cost to taxation is shown in 
 
 Table LV. 
 
 TABLE LV. 
 
 Outdoor Relief in Indiana. 
 
 
 
 Total 
 
 Townships 
 
 Levy 
 
 Levy 
 
 
 Total Cost 
 
 Number 
 
 No Tax 
 
 UNDER 
 
 5 Cents 
 
 
 Outdoor Relief. 
 
 Townships. 
 
 Levy. 
 
 5 Cents. 
 
 AND Over. 
 
 1898 
 
 1375,206 
 
 1014 
 
 64 
 
 515 
 
 435 
 
 1899 
 
 320,667 
 
 1014 
 
 50 
 
 607 
 
 357 
 
 1900 
 
 209,956 
 
 1016 
 
 146 
 
 644 
 
 226 
 
 1901 
 
 236,723 
 
 1014 
 
 154 
 
 620 
 
 240 
 
 1902 
 
 266,876 
 
 1015 
 
 181 
 
 611 
 
 223 
 
 1903 
 
 245,745 
 
 1015 
 
 233 
 
 617 
 
 165 
 
 1904 
 
 281,105 
 
 1017 
 
 224 
 
 649 
 
 144 
 
 1905 
 
 249,884 
 
 1016 
 
 289 
 
 681 
 
 146 
 
 1 For full text of law, see Indiana Bulletin of Charities, etc., March, 1905.
 
 234 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 The sudden decrease of outdoor aid from $375,206 in 
 1898 to $209,956 in 1900, shown in this table, would 
 naturally have been reflected in an increased population in 
 the county poor asylums. Indeed, when the law of 1899 
 was passed, there was considerable anxiety felt as to the 
 adequacy of the poor asylums to receive the number that 
 would be thrown into them. Yet, in spite of a decrease of 
 34 per cent in outdoor relief between 1899 and 1900, the 
 number in asylums also decreased from 3133 to 3096, and 
 from year to year since, as the administration of outdoor 
 relief has become more business-like, the number in county 
 asylums has not increased, although there has been a con- 
 siderable increase of general population. The State Board 
 of Charities reports an improvement in the condition of the 
 poor themselves, although the administration of the law is 
 not yet wholly free from abuses.^ 
 
 An example of outdoor relief, well administered, but still 
 held to be injudicious and harmful, is found in the town 
 of Brookline, a suburb of Boston, The administration of 
 relief was in the hands of certain women trustees, who gave 
 outdoor relief with a work test during a series of years. 
 Previous to 1883 full or partial support was given to 150 
 persons. These were warned three months in advance that 
 no pauper rent would be paid after May 1, but that the 
 almshouse would be open to any one needing shelter. On 
 the 1st of May, 22 adults and 7 families, numbering 33 per- 
 sons, became self-supporting ; 10 adults and 9 families, 
 consisting of 39 persons, assumed the payment of their own 
 rent, asking only partial support from the town, and in no 
 case was the offer of the almshouse accepted. The total ex- 
 penditure for poor relief for the town fell from $8487.50 
 in 1882 to $7794.49 in 1883, and in 1893 was $7218.28.^ 
 Mrs. Codman says : — 
 
 1 For full account, see Indiana Bulletin of Charities, etc., March, 1906, 
 which contains statistics, maps, and bibliography. 
 
 2 Pamphlet by Joyce, pp. 3-5.
 
 PUBLIC RELIEF OF POOR IX THEIR HOMES. 235 
 
 "I have no hesitation in saying that the whole tone of the popula- 
 tion has been raised, and that to 'come upon the town,' at one time 
 regarded as the natural and proper thing to be done, is now looked 
 upon as a disgrace. . . . Self-respect and independence have been en- 
 couraged, and the race of paupers within our limits has very nearly 
 disappeared." i 
 
 There is no well-authenticated instance where outdoor 
 relief has been stopped and any considerable increase either 
 of private charity has been required, or any marked increase 
 of the inmates of institutions has occurred. The only sug- 
 gestion that has ever been made as to evil results from the 
 experiment in Brooklyn is that the number of dependent 
 children increased after outdoor relief had ceased to be 
 given. But the number of dependent children also increased 
 in other parts of New York, where no change in outdoor 
 relief administration had occurred, indicating that it was a 
 change in the laws affecting dependency among children that 
 produced the increase. As administered in the United 
 States, it is found, apparently, that public outdoor relief 
 educates more people for the almshouse than it keeps out of 
 it, and that therefore it is neither economical nor kindly. 
 
 It is equally evident that institutional care alone will 
 never be sufficient, even if desirable, to provide for all the 
 poor. The question raised is not between public outdoor 
 and institutional relief, but between public and private out- 
 door relief. It must be confessed that the abuses resulting 
 from private charity have often been quite as serious as 
 from public relief. Moreover, the evils of public relief, as 
 illustrated in the cases already described, merely show that 
 uninvestigated public aid is harmful, but do not prove that, 
 if carefully administered, it might not be preferable to 
 individual charity. 
 
 1 Mrs. Codman, N. C. C, 1891, p. 49. It should he said that Brookline 
 is a thriving and fashionable residence suburb of Boston, and the char- 
 acter of the population added from year to year has not been such as to 
 lead one to expect a proportionate increase of pauperism.
 
 236 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 There is a consensus of opinion that relief in homes is, for 
 those on the verge of dependence, the ideal method; and an 
 almost equal agreement that it is difficult to administer, and 
 must be limited in amount. Whether it can best be sup- 
 plied by the State or by private charity, can only be answered 
 by experience. Frederick Almy, of the Buffalo Charity 
 Organization Society, presented at the National Conference 
 in 1900 a table of the forty largest cities in the United 
 States, first, in the order of least public relief, and second, 
 in the order of least private relief.^ The results are repre- 
 sented in the diagram on the opposite page. 
 
 Mr. Almy's conclusions, as shown by the figures and the 
 diagram, are that a city which gives no public outdoor re- 
 lief must give a considerable amount of private outdoor 
 relief ; and vice versa, when there is no private relief, public 
 relief increases. It seems clear that public relief checks 
 private charity, for of the ten cities that give liberal public 
 outdoor relief, there is not one that gives liberal private 
 relief, and of the ten that give liberal private outdoor relief, 
 there is not one that gives liberal public relief. 
 
 The dotted curved line of the diagram shows that private 
 relief averages little more than one-third the cost of public 
 relief. The average per capita cost of the cities which de- 
 pend wholly upon private relief is Of cents, and of those 
 which depend wholly upon public relief, 17^ cents.^ 
 
 Although it has been shown that liberal public relief 
 tends to check private charity, it does not appear that 
 abundant private relief reacts in any degree to diminish 
 public outdoor relief. In the city of Boston, where the per 
 
 1 About one-half of the cities having over 200,000 population give no 
 public relief: viz., New York, Phihidelphia, Brooklyn, St. Louis, Balti- 
 more, San Francisco, New Orleans, Washington, Kansas City, and 
 Louisville. 
 
 2 For details and discussion from which these conclusions are extracted, 
 see two valuable articles by Almy in Charities Review, vol. ix., 1899, 
 Nos. 1 and 2 ; and articles in N. C. C, 1900, pp. 13i ft.
 
 PUBLIC RELIEF OF POOR IN THEIR HOMES. 237 
 
 DIAGRAM VI. 
 
 Relation of Private to Public Outdoor Relief.* 
 
 
 « ® S3 ^ 
 
 The heavy line, starting at the top on the left, represents public 
 outdoor relief, which stands at thirty -four cents per capita at Syracuse 
 and falls to nothing at San Francisco and the eight following cities. 
 The related movement of private outdoor relief is shown by the dotted 
 line starting at the bottom on the left. Thus, where public relief of 
 thirty-four cents per capita is given (Syracuse), the private relief stands 
 at zero ; where public relief is thirteen cents (Boston, Scranton, 
 Omaha), the corresponding amounts of private relief given vaiy, 
 standing approximately at twenty-four cents in Boston, zero in Scran- 
 ton, and four cents in Omaha. The name of each city is printed 
 * Almy, Charities Review, vol. ix., p. 31, 1899,
 
 238 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 capita expenditure for private charity is probably higher 
 than anywhere in the country, and where public relief is 
 administered with intelligence and thoroughness, it does not 
 decline perceptibly in amount. In Table LVI. the total 
 amounts expended for public outdoor relief are shown for 
 a period of years. 
 
 TABLE LVI. 
 
 Outdoor Relief, Boston, 1877-1907.* 
 
 Tear Ending 
 
 Amount. 
 
 Number of 
 Families. 
 
 Amount 
 PER Family. 
 
 Population. 
 
 Apr. 30, 1877 
 
 $80,341.89 
 
 6,627 
 
 $12.12 
 
 341,919(1875) 
 
 " " 1880 
 
 56,777.36 
 
 4,277 
 
 13.28 
 
 362,839 
 
 " " 1885 
 
 64,292.96 
 
 4,132 
 
 15.55 
 
 390,393 
 
 " " 1890 
 
 56,414.96 
 
 2,509 
 
 22.48 
 
 448,477 
 
 Jean. .31, 1895 
 
 75,900.47 
 
 4,006 
 
 18.95 
 
 496,920 
 
 " " 1900 
 
 64,502.42 
 
 2,8.36 
 
 22.53 
 
 560,892 
 
 " " 1901 
 
 63,298.30 
 
 2,707 
 
 23.38 
 
 
 " " 1902 
 
 64,391.41 
 
 2,637 
 
 24.42 
 
 . . . 
 
 " " 190.3 
 
 63,499.14 
 
 2,420 
 
 26.24 
 
 
 " ." 1904 
 
 70,041.91 
 
 2,346 
 
 29.86 
 
 
 " " 1905 
 
 67,668.86 
 
 2,248 
 
 30.10 
 
 620,000 
 
 " " 1906 
 
 68,148.89 
 
 2,202 
 
 30.84 
 
 
 " " 1907 
 
 66,079.13 
 
 2,060 
 
 32.07 
 
 
 * Reports of Board of Overseers of the Poor. 
 
 Between 1880 and 1907 the number of families declined 
 from 4277 to 2060, while the per capita relief rose from 
 .'j?13.28 to $32.07. This would indicate a policy of making 
 
 directly under the points in the lines showing the amounts at which 
 the public and private relief, respectively, stand in that city. Dividing 
 the cities into four groups of ten each (excepting Boston, which will 
 be explained later) and averaging the private relief of each group, 
 four points are obtained. Connecting these by a curved line, the 
 result (slightly idealized) is the dotted line shown on the diagram. 
 This may be taken to represent the average movement of private 
 relief in relation to the decrease of public relief.
 
 PUBLIC RELIEF OE POOR IN THEIR HOMES. 239 
 
 relief more adequate, but does not suggest that public out- 
 door relief is economical. In spite of the fact that the 
 Overseers of the Poor are an excellent body of officers, the 
 opinion of the leading charity workers in Boston is almost 
 unanimous against outdoor relief. They hold that private 
 charities could do the work as well, that public relief is too 
 easily assumed to be a right, and that in the matter of relief 
 the Overseers do not supply either ideals or inspiration. 
 
 The effect of careful investigation upon the amount of 
 relief given is illustrated by the history of outdoor aid in 
 Buffalo. In 1876 Buffalo, then a city of 140,000 inhabitants, 
 was aiding 14,375 persons at a cost of $112,054, or .799 cents 
 per capita of the population. This extravagant outlay was 
 one of the chief causes of the establishment of a Charity 
 Organization Society, which has now for thirty years, contin- 
 uously, investigated the applications for city relief. Table 
 LVII. (p. 240) shows in detail the expenditures and the 
 remarkable decline in the amount of public outdoor relief. 
 
 This table shows that more than 10 per cent of the popu- 
 lation of Buffalo were receiving outdoor city aid in 1876, 
 and less than 1 per cent in 1907 ; 3778 families were aided 
 in 1876; only 775 in 1907. The first great falling off from 
 $112,000 in 1876 to $29,000 in 18S0 was due to the substitu- 
 tion of investigated for uninvestigated city aid ; the second 
 drop from $118,000 in 1898 to $38,000 in 1902 was due to a 
 vigorous attempt to develop constructive work as a substi- 
 tute for charity among those who were conceded to be poor. 
 Mr. Almy, of the Buffalo Charity Organization Society, 
 in commenting on these figures, says, that the chief differ- 
 ence between charity organization outdoor relief and city 
 outdoor relief is that the former always carried with it a 
 plan and follow-up work, while city aid has neither. He 
 adds : " I have never heard of any one from the city poor 
 office interviewing a landlord, or the holder of a mortgage, 
 looking for employment, overhauling the plumbing which
 
 240 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 TABLE LVII. 
 Outdoor Relief in Buffalo, 1875-1907. C. 0. S. Records. 
 
 Year. 
 
 Population 
 
 OF 
 
 Buffalo 
 
 Number of 
 Families 
 eeceiving 
 City Aid. 
 
 Total 
 Expenditure 
 FOR Outdoor 
 
 Kelief.* 
 
 Expenditure 
 PER Capita 
 
 of 
 Population. 
 
 1875 
 
 136,426 
 
 
 §73,277 
 
 .5371 
 
 1876 
 
 140,168 
 
 3,778 
 
 112,054 
 
 .7995 
 
 1877 
 
 143,911 
 
 2,030 
 
 100,637 
 
 .6993 
 
 1878 
 
 147,653 
 
 1,967 
 
 61,489 
 
 .4164 
 
 1879 
 
 151,396 
 
 1,589 
 
 41,784 
 
 .2759 
 
 1880 
 
 155,137 
 
 1,139 
 
 29,296 
 
 .1888 
 
 1881 
 
 165,872 
 
 1,089 
 
 42,849 
 
 .2583 
 
 1882 
 
 176,607 
 
 1,058 
 
 32,360 
 
 .1832 
 
 1883 
 
 187,342 
 
 1,048 
 
 36,496 
 
 .1948 
 
 1884 
 
 198,077 
 
 1,395 
 
 40,557 
 
 .2047 
 
 1886 
 
 208,812 
 
 1,857 
 
 52,700 
 
 .2523 
 
 1886 
 
 219,547 
 
 1,247 
 
 47,889 
 
 .2181 
 
 1887 
 
 230,284 
 
 1,355 
 
 45,195 
 
 .1962 
 
 1888* 
 
 
 
 41,924* 
 
 
 1889 
 
 
 
 41,402 
 
 
 1890 
 
 255,664 
 
 
 43,522 
 
 .1706* 
 
 1891 T 
 
 1892 J 
 
 
 
 
 . . . 
 
 
 • . . 
 
 79,728 t 
 
 . . . 
 
 1893 
 
 
 2,861 
 
 67,336 
 
 
 1894 
 
 
 3,368 
 
 81,492 
 
 
 1895 
 
 
 2,764 
 
 102,200 
 
 
 1896 
 
 
 3,876 
 
 82,870 
 
 
 1897 
 
 
 4,106 
 
 108,918 
 
 
 1898 
 
 
 3,699 
 
 118,803 
 
 
 1899 
 
 . . . 
 
 2,188 
 
 104,107 
 
 
 1900 
 
 362,387 
 
 1,686 
 
 64,586 
 
 .1832 
 
 1901 
 
 
 1,296 
 
 49,312 
 
 
 1902 
 
 
 1,102 
 
 38.851 
 
 
 1903 
 
 . . . 
 
 1,092 
 
 34,473 
 
 
 1904 
 
 
 1,179 
 
 36,115 
 
 
 1905 
 
 
 1,102 
 
 33,246 
 
 
 1906 
 
 400,000 
 
 880 
 
 32,099 
 
 .0824 
 
 1907 
 
 
 775 
 
 31,418 
 
 
 * Totals from 18S7 to 1S9T do not include " sundries." 
 
 t This figure $79,728 covers 18 months, from January 1, 1S91, to June 30, 1892.
 
 PUBLIC RELIEF OF POOR IN THEIR HOMES. 241 
 
 causes disease, or visiting a family after aid stopped." In 
 a paper at the National Conference of Charities and Correc- 
 tions in 1904, Mr. Almy suggested tliat the overseers of the 
 poor in cities and towns should try the experiment of district 
 committees and volunteer cooperation for investigation and 
 constructive work, or even attempt the Elberfeld system 
 outright. 
 
 Charity workers in the smaller cities are generally in 
 favor of private rather than public relief, even where they 
 feel that the community is not yet quite prepared to abolish 
 it. In the rural and sparsely populated districts of the 
 West especially, the county system of local government adds 
 to the difficulty of administration. In the smaller area of a 
 township the officials are measurably well acquainted with 
 the people, at least until the population becomes dense, and 
 the people scrutinize public expenditures quite carefully ; 
 but under the county system, until the population is large 
 enough to compel the employment of special officials, the 
 writing of orders for outdoor relief is frequently left to the 
 individual supervisors or commissioners. As a rule, each 
 one attends to all applications from the district from which 
 he is elected, and the approval of the entire board is a mere 
 formality. The payments are sometimes made in money, 
 sometimes in orders on stores, and sometimes relief is given 
 in goods purchased by the authorities under contract. Ob- 
 viously this latter method lends itself least readily to abuse. 
 Where orders are given on stores, the goods selected by the 
 beneficiary are often absurdly unsuitable to his conditions,^ 
 
 1 See Hartford Report, pp. xix, xx, and Table VII. On 594 orders, 132 
 articles were drawn, among which were canned lobster, green peas, pie, 
 pineapple, canned salmon, and tobacco. There was also some e^^dence 
 that the orders were used in trade and payment of debts. This system 
 prevailed until recently in the urban county of Alameda, California. In 
 1905 three supervisorial districts placed the investigation of out-relief 
 applicants in the hands of the Associated Charities, with the result that 
 the amount disbursed fell from $22,930 in 1904 to $10,157 in 1906.
 
 242 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 and in the State of California such orders are frequently- 
 traded for liquor. 
 
 It is not without significance that the movement to do 
 away with public outdoor relief has kept pace with the de- 
 velopment of charity organization. The older type of pri- 
 vate outdoor relief — unsystematic, purely palliative — is 
 rapidly being replaced by the constructive ideal of organized 
 charity. Of this ideal, relief — even adequate relief — is 
 the smaller part, since it aims to restore, develop, and edu- 
 cate the family. The excuse for outdoor relief is the typi- 
 cal dependent widow with young children; but in such a 
 case, though public relief may pension the family, it does not 
 do the constructive work of a district agent and a friendly 
 visitor. 
 
 In all large centres of population there are certain soci- 
 eties which, together with the churches and private indi- 
 viduals, do a considerable amount of relief work. These 
 agencies dispense an amount which is not large as compared 
 with the total public expenditures for the relief of the poor, 
 but which is sufficient to aecomy)lish a great deal of good or 
 evil in the populations among which it is scattered. Those 
 who insist that public outdoor relief should be abolished, 
 believe that these private associations, in conjunction with 
 the Charity Organization Societies, should care for the cases 
 to whom the alternative of going to the almshouse would be 
 an unmerited hardship. They insist that the private associ- 
 ations are more economical, sympathetic, and discriminating, 
 and since their treasuries are not replenished from the pro- 
 ceeds of taxation, but from free-will offerings, the poor can- 
 not make demands upon theiii as of right. The experience 
 of Chalmers has often been pointed to as showing that pub- 
 lic relief can be swept away entirely, and private benevo- 
 lence take its place. While those who would imitate him 
 would not go as far as he did, they do ask for the substitu- 
 tion of private for public outdoor relief.
 
 PUBLIC RELIEF OF POOR IN THEIR HOMES. 243 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that private associations are best 
 fitted to deal with incipient dependency. But at just what 
 point the line should be drawn between public and private 
 charity, it is difficult to say. If the State should assume the 
 care of those who need control as well as support, as Miss 
 Richmond has suggested, then outdoor relief would be left 
 to private undertaking. 
 
 On the whole, it must be admitted that the advisability 
 of giving outdoor relief is chiefly a question of administra- 
 tion. Under the Elberfeld system in Germany, and with 
 the great care exercised by the Bureaux de Bienfaisance of 
 France, it has been successful. But it must be remembered 
 that the people of the United States have a larger share of 
 administrative awkwardness than any other civilized popu- 
 lation. Nearly all the experiences in this country indicate 
 that outdoor relief is a source of corruption to politics, of 
 expense to the community, and of degradation and increased 
 pauperization to the poor. Even at its best, it has not been 
 found a satisfactory method of relieving distress. In the new 
 communities of the West it has seemed to be almost neces- 
 sary ; but it is always to be watched with care, to be kept at 
 a minimum, and in large cities to be definitely prohibited. 
 
 But it should not be forgotten that private charities are 
 just as open to abuse as public ones, though not to exactly 
 the same abuses. In places where the State has relegated 
 much of the work of relieving the poor to private benevo- 
 lence, and especially to the church, abuses have grown up 
 of as great magnitude as those that preceded the reform of 
 the English poor-law in 1834, while at Elberfeld the present 
 excellent public system originated in a breakdown of the 
 private system. There is a possibility of success or failure 
 by either method ; but experience seems to indicate that in 
 the United States, at the present time, private is much safer 
 and more helpful than public outdoor relief, and indeed 
 that the latter should usually be discontinued.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED AND THE HOMELESS POOR. 
 
 In all times of industrial depression, the number of the 
 unemployed is apt to be exaggerated. During the depression 
 of 1873-1878 it was alleged that there were 300,000 mechan- 
 ics out of employment in Massachusetts ; and the statement 
 went unchallenged for more than a year, while figures then 
 available would have shown that there were only 318,000 
 men in the State engaged in the mechanical pursuits, and 
 the investigation made later by the State Bureau of Labor 
 indicated that the number of unemployed mechanics was 
 less than 30,000. During the depression following the 
 crisis of 1893, the trade-union estimates put the number out 
 of work at about 4,500,000; more conservative estimates, at 
 about 1,000,000. Keturns made to Bradstreet's, the results of 
 which were published in December, 1893, show that in 119 
 cities 801,055 men, with about 1,956,110 persons dependent 
 on them, were out of employment. Carlos C. Closson found 
 in sixty cities 523,080 idle men, an estimate sufficiently 
 close to Bradstreet's return for the same cities to make it 
 probable that these figures actually reflected the facts. 
 
 A careful investigation of enforced idleness was made by 
 the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor during the depression 
 of 1885. There were during that year, in Massachusetts, 
 816,470 persons engaged in gainful occupations ; of these, 
 241,589 were unemployed during part of the year. The 
 time lost, if we consider only the principal occupation of 
 each individual, was 82,744 years ; but many persons, when 
 unable to Avork at their principal occupation, had some 
 
 244
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED AND THE HOMELESS POOR. 245 
 
 subsidiary work. Making the proper deductions for the 
 time thus put in, the net absolute loss of working time 
 amounted to 78,717.76 years. If this loss were averaged 
 among the 241,590 who lost a certain amount of time, the 
 loss per man was 3.91 months. The IMassachusetts Census 
 of 1895 showed that 27 per cent of all workmen (in the 
 factory towns from 39 to 62 per cent) were idle some portion 
 of the year. 
 
 While these figures indicate a state of things less dismal 
 than would be inferred from some of the exaggerated state- 
 ments, yet the actual loss is sufficiently great. The Fed- 
 eral Census of 1890, which is now believed to have been 
 incomplete as to unemployment, showed that, of all workers 
 over ten years of age, 15 per cent were unemployed during 
 some part of the year ; the Census of 1900 found 22 per 
 cent were idle a part of the year, while 39 per cent of the 
 male workers were unemployed from four to six months of 
 the year. 
 
 Until there is more accurate discrimination between the 
 different classes of the unemployed, all statistics regarding 
 them must be somewhat ambiguous. It is not easy for the 
 ordinary observer to distinguish the honest unemployed 
 from the tramp and the semi-criminal. The men who get 
 their living by looking for work and failing to find it — as 
 Dr. Gladden describes them — are the most in evidence 
 always ; while, on the other hand, the genuine unemployed 
 are almost invariably the second-rate and least competent 
 workmen, the first discharged, and therefore in process of 
 deterioration. But until a clear distinction is drawn, in 
 practice as well as in theory, between the unemployable 
 and unemployed, slight progress will be made in meeting 
 the needs of either class. 
 
 Geoffrey Drage divides the unemployed into (1) those 
 temporarily without employment, and (2) the chronically un- 
 employed who may be either unskilled and inefficient casual
 
 246 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 laborers tending to become unemployable or the chronically 
 unemployable. Percy Alden, while drawing the general 
 line between (1) genuine workers unable to find work, and 
 (2) the unfit, physically and morally, subdivides the latter 
 class into its comp(ment parts, — the deficient, the semi-crim- 
 inal, and the incorrigibly lazy. The deficient, in their turn, 
 may be separated into the aged — often prematurely so from 
 bad conditions and bad habits ; the weak and maimed, that is, 
 the " handicapped " ; the epileptic ; and the drunkard. Pro- 
 vision is made to a slight extent for this relatively small 
 and miscellaneous body of incompetents in 'almshouses, 
 special employments for the handicapped,^ epileptic colo- 
 nies, and inebriate asylums. 
 
 The largest part of the problem of the unemployable in 
 past times, as well as at the present, has to do with the 
 sturd}^ beggar, the " hobo," or tramp. In England it was 
 estimated years ago that there were 30,000 persons con- 
 tinually on the tramp; and General Booth estimated — 
 probably overestimated — the number of the homeless for 
 the United Kingdom at 105,000. If we cross the English 
 Channel and go to Germany, we hear the same complaint of 
 an extraordinary number of wandering beggars. A great 
 system of friendly inns, provident wood yards, and labor 
 colonies has there been established to provide for them. 
 The same complaint of the curse of vagrancy comes from 
 Russia, and the consular report on vagrancy shows that it 
 prevails almost everywhere. 
 
 If, instead of extending our inquiries geographically, we 
 had extended them historically, we should have found the 
 same complaint of an exceptionally large number of wan- 
 dering beggars made in nearly every age of which we have 
 record. But in recent times the means of cheap transporta- 
 tion, and the consequent breakdown of the passport system 
 
 1 Special Employment Bureau for the Handicapped, see Charities and 
 the Commons, vol. xv., pp. 582 ff. ; vol. xvi., 1906, pp. 470 ff.
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED AND THE HOMELESS POOR. 247 
 
 and of settlement laws, have given a new character to vaga- 
 bondage. It is increasingly easy for men to get away from 
 their duties to families and neighbors, and it is getting to 
 be easier to wander than to work. " Mobility of labor " 
 is a good thing, but it is having some unfortunate results. 
 
 In the United States not only in thickly populated dis- 
 tricts, but throughout the Far West, where work is abundant 
 and wages high, there is a constant procession of able-bodied 
 men along the lines of railroad begging, intimidating, steal- 
 ing, and destroying property ; some of them willing to work 
 for short periods at high rates and not without skill, but 
 thoroughly inoculated with the wander disease. In times 
 of industrial depression, the number of this class is greatly 
 increased by the addition of discharged workingmen — 
 drinkers first, good single men next, married men last — 
 who tend to become incapable of steady industry. In 1893 
 Professor McCook estimated the number of tramps in the 
 United States at 46,000 ; in 1895, at 86,000 ; and their cost 
 at seventeen millions. In 1905 Major Pangborn, represent- 
 ing the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, estimated, on the basis 
 of the total number of trespassing tramps annually killed on 
 all railroads, that not less than 430,000 infested the railways 
 in that year ; and that their cost, in damage to property 
 and in police protection, was not less than eighteen and a 
 half millions per year.^ 
 
 As a consequence of the lack of distinction between the 
 wilful vagrant and the genuine unemployed, the one is not 
 properly repressed, nor is the other adequately helped. 
 The ordinary citizen vacillates between the easy dole and 
 a disbelief that any able-bodied man in so rich a country 
 can really need help. There are four tolerably distinct 
 ways in which various communities in the United States 
 have tried to deal Avith the homeless and wandering poor. 
 The first and favorite way is to get rid of them as promptly 
 1 N. C. C, 1907, " Discussion on Vagrancy," pp. 73-74.
 
 248 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 as possible by sending them on. Nearly every large town 
 makes an appropriation for the transportation of paupers, 
 and the poor-law officers of rural communities also devote 
 some money to the same purpose. Such funds are fre- 
 quently spent without any adequate investigation. The 
 officials having authority simply consider whether it will be 
 cheaper to ship a given person to a place where he says he 
 wishes to go, or to take care of him. In the smaller cities 
 and in rural communities it is the common custom for jus- 
 tices to order vagrants to move on within twenty -four hours, 
 the consequence of which is, that each community receives in 
 turn what the others get rid of. 
 
 The obvious objection to this manner of providing for 
 the homeless poor is that it does not provide for them ; it 
 is simply a way of shifting burdens from one neighborhood 
 to another. But each community, while recognizing this 
 fact, thinks itself bound to keep up the foolish work, so 
 that it may not serve as the dumping-ground for the poor 
 of all the adjacent communities. 
 
 The second way of dealing with the homeless poor is to 
 punish them as misdemeanants — " vag. 'em," as the police 
 say ; that is, arrest them as vagrants and commit them to 
 the jail and workhouse. This is the old English method 
 of dealing with what were called " sturdy beggars." But 
 in the early days it was not a comfortable jail to which 
 tramps were committed, and wanderers who could give no 
 account of themselves were flogged out of the boundaries 
 of the parish in which they were apprehended. They were 
 also liable to be branded, have their ears cut off, or be 
 treated in some similar fashion which would now be re- 
 garded as barbarous. The experience of Massachusetts in 
 1880 and the years following well illustrates the limitations 
 of such repressive legislation. In 1880 the daily average 
 of tramps lodged was 461 ; severe tramp laws were passed, 
 and in 1881 the average fell to 105 ; then enforcement began
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED AND THE HOMELESS POOR. 249 
 
 to be relaxed, and the number rose in 1886 to nearly the 
 same height as in 1880. Other repressive legislation was 
 passed, the number fell, fluctuated, and finally in 1893 was 
 again at the original figure. 
 
 This method, if rigidly applied, may cause tramps to dis- 
 appear for a time ; but there is always a doubt in the minds 
 of the community as to whether or not many cases of honest 
 destitution are not dealt with too harshly. Such stringent 
 laws are very apt to become dead letters, and the evil at 
 which they were aimed flourishes while they are in abeyance. 
 
 A third very common way of dealing with the homeless 
 poor is to give them indiscriminately the relief they ask. 
 If a man rings the door-bell and asks for food, give him 
 some ; if he asks the price of a night's lodging, let him have 
 it ; if men apply for lodgings at the station-house, fit up a 
 room and let them fill it as full as they can fill it and still 
 live ; start a free lodging-house, and supplement the lodgings 
 with free meals. If a man comes when it is cold and asks 
 admission to the almshouse, take him in, give him comfort- 
 able shelter for the winter, and then, when spring comes, let 
 him depart. This was the method employed in mediaeval 
 monasteries, and is still more or less practised in most of 
 our American cities. The trouble with this method is that 
 " we can have as many tramps as we will pay for." 
 
 A Western farm-hand once gave an account of his ex- 
 perience during three months when he had wandered about 
 with tramps as a tramp. After telling of the way in which 
 he got a living, and of the many sharp practices resorted 
 to, he concluded in a meditative and almost puzzled way, 
 " Oh, it was a good deal of fun, but somehow or other I 
 didn't like it." He had stood at the parting of the ways. 
 It had been in his power to become a laborer or to become 
 a tramp, and he chose the better part. He now has con- 
 siderable property and a family. Now, if the persons to 
 whom he applied had been a little more liberal and equally
 
 250 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 thoughtless, if the jails to which he was liable to have been 
 committed had been a little more comfortable, if in the cities 
 he happened to visit he had found a few more institutions 
 for furnishing free lodgings and free soup, his choice might 
 have been different. His case is not a typical one, for the 
 average man does not consciously decide, but rather drifts 
 into the life of vagabondage through following the line of 
 least resistance. In this, as in other cases, indiscriminate 
 giving is to be deplored, not so much because it wastes 
 money as because it corrupts men. 
 
 The fourth method, which is, in fact, a modification and 
 improvement upon the one just described, is to give indis- 
 criminately, but never to give without applying the work 
 test. It is substantially the method of the English Casual 
 Ward and of the Boston Wayfarers' Lodge in the United 
 States. In Boston each man must take a warm bath on 
 entering, and receives a bed and a wholesome breakfast, in 
 return for which he cuts and saws wood for one or two hours. 
 In Philadelphia the Society for Organizing Charity has 
 placed in charge of its two Wayfarers' Lodges a charity 
 worker of experience, who gives his whole time to personal 
 work among the men, making every effort, especially for 
 the younger ones, to get them out of the wayfaring life into 
 regular work or back into home surroundings.^ 
 
 On reviewing these methods of dealing with the homeless 
 poor already mentioned, it is apparent that each is adapted 
 to certain classes of applicants : some should be given 
 direct relief, some should be punished, and some should be 
 sent to other places. There are tramps and tramps ; any 
 method that enables us to deal with them properly must 
 enable us to discriminate among them. 
 
 1 A tabular view of the methods of eradicating vagrancy in the United 
 States is given in N. C. C, 1903, p. 415. In 1905-1906 the Philadelphia 
 lodges handled 4100 men, 70 per cent of whom were native-born and under 
 40 years of age ; 55 per cent were unskilled, ;30 per cent more only " some- 
 what skilled" ; 23,000 lodgings and 56,000 meals were worked for.
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED AND THE HOMELESS POOR. 251 
 
 The most recent and thorougli discussion of the vagrancy 
 problem is that by Orlando F. Lewis before the ISTational 
 Conference of Charities and Corrections in 1907. Mr. Lewis 
 considers wood yards, lodges, and city lodging-houses good 
 and necessary as means of temporary relief, but thinks they 
 do not materially diminish the army of tramps. Such 
 methods merely drive the vagrants from one community to 
 another and do not solve the national problem. He presents 
 a constructive programme for dealing with the vagrant un- 
 employable who should be first attacked. Briefly stated 
 this is as follows : ^ — 
 
 The treatment of vagrancy should be deterrent, and to 
 that end the laws against tramping should be strengthened, 
 enforced strictly, and made national in their scope. Trespass 
 on railroads, especially, should involve sentence to imprison- 
 ment at hard labor, which must be secured by the cooperation 
 of railway and toAvn authorities, at the expense of the 
 State ; and sentences should be cumulative. Vagrants should 
 not be lodged in police stations, but in a municipal lodging- 
 house, under the control of the State Board of Health ; or 
 if in almshouses, the}^ must be in separate quarters. Com- 
 mon lodging-houses should also be carefully supervised by 
 the Health Board in respect to ventilation, sanitation, and 
 cleanliness ; and all charitable lodgings should be models of 
 their class. In each State should be established at least 
 one compulsory labor colony and one hospital for inebriates. 
 Finally, there should be an exchange among charitable 
 societies of important facts regarding vagrants, and the State 
 Board of Charity should exert themselves actively to secure 
 proper legislation and treatment. 
 
 In 1905 the State of JNIassachusetts passed laws embody- 
 ing the more importaut of these principles, which resulted 
 
 1 Almost all of the remedies proposed by Mr. I-ewis had been proposed 
 singly by others at some time, but he has the distinction of bringing them 
 together and unifying them into a programme for immediate action.
 
 252 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 in a decrease of 60 per cent in tramps lodged in almshouses 
 and of 90 per cent of those lodged in towns. In Chicago 
 the establishment of a municipal lodging-house, and the 
 prohibition of police stations as lodgings for tramps, resulted 
 in a decline of the number of free lodgings from 92,591 to 
 11,097. This lodging-house was able to find casual employ- 
 ment for about 30 per cent of its lodgers. 
 
 Mr. Lewis's programme further includes the cooperation 
 of special railway and State police officers, with the town 
 police and city mendicancy police officers in the enforcement 
 of vagrancy laws. "What can be done by a single experiment 
 to repress and cure local vagrancy may be illustrated by 
 the mendicancy squad of the New York Charity Organi- 
 zation Society. This was a small body of " plain clothes " 
 men detailed to the Society to arrest beggars. In 1904-1905 
 they arrested 18G3 persons, of whom GO per cent were not 
 physically defective but normally able-bodied persons. Of 
 these 1476 were committed by the magistrates to some 
 institution (generally penal). This work resulted in driving 
 from the city the " yegg " or criminal mendicant who had 
 formerly thriven there. The constructive work of the 
 Mendicancy Committee consisted in helping such of the 
 beggars as showed some hope of reform to become self- 
 supporting. ^ They also published a confidential bulletin 
 
 1 Two stories will serve to show the character of the constructive work 
 of the committee: (1) "Twist, so known in the criminal world because 
 of his club feet, is now, one year after the operation which made him a 
 normal physical being, — apparently, — settled in his old home earning 
 $13.50 per week in his father's mill. This man, for fourteen years a thief 
 and a beggar, endured terms in State Prison and workhouses with the 
 stoicism of the criminal, but could not successfully withstand the kindness 
 which recognized in him a human being with possibilities for good." 
 
 (2) "X,a young German of honest parentage, who, disappointed in lack 
 of success in establishing liimself in congenial employment from the first, 
 took to the hazardous chances of the ' road,' lost both legs, and became a 
 beggar. Two years have elapsed since his arrest by a social police, and 
 to-day, after honorable service in a social Settlement, he has commenced 
 business in a Southern city." — Report N. Y. C. O. S., 1903-1904.
 
 «^ 
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED AND THE HOMELESS POOE. 253 
 
 for the use of other cities in identifying the professional 
 beggar and impostor who travels from city to city.^ 
 
 However useful such isolated efforts may be to a par- 
 ticular community, the immediate result is to increase the 
 same evils in adjoining States and cities. The need for a 
 national movement to suppress vagrancy is now recognized, 
 and much may be hoped from the work of the National 
 Vagrancy Committee appointed in 1907. It is expected 
 that the first effort of this body will be devoted to securing 
 cooperation among railway, city and town authorities, and ^ 
 boards and societies of public and private charities for better .^ ^ 
 legislation and enforcement. ^ .••-,?=»4 t 
 
 The machinery necessary for dealing properly with the C=«^ ^ 
 local problem of the homeless poor can be adapted to any ^-^ t 
 community with comparative ease. It consists of an in- ^ \ 
 stitution or place where the work test can be rigidly applied, ^^ ^ 
 and where a man can earn his support pending an investi- 5*^ t 
 gationof his case. Secondly, it includes facilities for giving ^ ? 
 meals and lodgings ; thirdly, facilities for bathing and 
 for disinfecting clothing ; and fourtlily, some person to in- 
 vestigate the case of each applicant thoroughly, and to act 
 as circumstances require. If the applicant claims to have 
 a residence, or to be able to get work somewhere else, or 
 if he admits having relatives and friends elsewhere, or 
 whatever may be his story, he should be sent to the wood 
 yard to earn his living while it is being investigated. No 
 man should be assisted to leave the city unless it appears 
 on some authority, additional to his own, that he would be 
 better off in the place to which he is sent. Many men, 
 after telling their story and taking the card which would 
 admit them to the lodging-house and wood yard, never 
 
 1 The Police Commissioner of New York City discontinued the mendi- 
 cancy squad in February, VM6, on the ground of economy, The arrests 
 fell off 50 per cent in the year following. 
 
 2 Charities and the Commons, vol. xviii., 1907, pp. 342 ft. 
 
 
 '■»• «, 
 
 (
 
 254 AMERICAN CHABITIES. 
 
 present it. Some are conscious that their story will not bear 
 investigation, and some do not care to work while it is 
 being investigated. All cases of honest destitution, whether 
 the applicant be a boy, a man, or a woman, may be dealt 
 with in the same kindly but thorough- going fashion ; and the 
 result is help for the deserving and disappointment for the 
 loafer and impostor. 
 
 Many of those interested in the establishment of munici- 
 pal lodging-houses have thought that the whole tramp 
 problem would be solved by their institution ; but there are 
 certain difficulties attendant upon their management not 
 usually reckoned with. In the first place, it is almost im- 
 possible to find anything that is really profitable for the 
 men to do. If they saw wood, they come in competition 
 with steam-saws, and if they break stone, with steam stone- 
 crushers. In some places it was found that it cost more 
 per cord to supply the district with sawed wood from the 
 yard in connection with the municipal lodging-house than 
 it did to get sawed wood direct from the contractor. Other 
 societies find continual difficulty in disposing of their wood 
 supply in competition with the regular dealers. Where 
 every stick of wood that a man saws costs a little more 
 than if the man did nothing at all, we have manifestly not 
 reached any real solution of the difficulty. It is just this 
 impossibility of finding remunerative work for labor which 
 is on the whole incompetent that has induced the English 
 workhouses to give pure task-work to the inmates of their 
 casual wards. But work which is avowedly task-work is 
 not only unprofitable, but it is almost as degrading to the 
 man who does it as to receive relief for which he makes no 
 return. Its only justification is its deterrent influence. It 
 is profitable because it reduces the number of applicants. 
 Where wood yards have been made to pay expenses, it is 
 because some man has donated to the work sufficient mana- 
 gerial ability to make up for the poor quality of the labor 
 and methods used.
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED AND THE HOMELESS POOR. 255 
 
 Another reason why the lodging-house and wood yard 
 does not solve all the difficulty, is that its management 
 seems to have an inveterate tendency to become mechan- 
 ical. Interest is lost in the individuals; and they are 
 ground through the regular routine without any real 
 attempt being made to get hold of the helpable, and to 
 punish habitual and degraded vagrants. As a conse- 
 quence, there comes to be a very considerable army of 
 intermittently drunken loafers who rely upon the lodging- 
 house and wood yard as a place where they can always get 
 something to eat and a lodging for the night. They are 
 not unwilling to work for a short time and in a perfunctory 
 way. The multiplication of this class, or at least the tolera- 
 tion of it as it multiplies, is said to be one of the serious 
 evils connected with the Naturalverpflegungsstatsionen in 
 Germany.^ Where small account is taken of individuals, 
 men can come repeatedly to the lodging-house in spite of a 
 rule limiting their residence there to not more than three 
 days at any one time. 
 
 The chief advantage of the wood-yard and lodging-house 
 arrangement is that it gives the citizens of the locality an 
 opportunity to refuse all unknown applicants for relief, and 
 to send them to the lodging-house. More than that, if there 
 be but one of these lodging-houses in a city, or if those that 
 exist cooperate one with another, it is possible to stop that 
 drifting about from one place to another in the same town, 
 which enables a vagrant to stay there through the whole 
 winter. This centralization is one of the very best things 
 resulting from the establishment of municipal lodging- 
 houses. 
 
 The machinery described is necessary machinery ; but it 
 
 will not run itself, and it will not solve the tramp problem. 
 
 It gives the basis for proper action, but does not insure it. 
 
 As already suggested, proper action can come only after 
 
 1 Aldea, " The Unemployed, " pp. 55-56.
 
 256 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 there has been a careful discrimination between cases. 
 Thorough dealing with the tramp problem in the United 
 States is impossible until we have reformed our infamous 
 system of county jails. At present, a man who is sen- 
 tenced for vagrancy is usually sent for from ten to ninety 
 days to a warm and pleasant jail, where he can play cards, 
 chew tobacco, discuss crime, and tell indecent stories with 
 his peers. To threaten a vagabond with arrest under such 
 circumstances, is merely a promise to do him a favor. 
 
 There are probably resources sufficient in almost any 
 American community to deal with the problem of the 
 homeless poor efficiently and completely, if they could only 
 be organized so as to meet the genuine needs. The trouble 
 has been that here, as in England, we have vacillated be- 
 tween excessive severity and excessive leniency, oftener 
 erring on the latter side than on the former, until the 
 tramp has become an institution, and appears to think that 
 he has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit 
 of vagabondage. 
 
 If there were the proper punitive methods in operation 
 for removing the tramp and the beggar summarily to in- 
 stitutions where they must work, a large amount of chari- 
 table energy and resource would be released to assist the 
 honest unemployed. Under normal industrial conditions 
 and except in a few congested districts, lack of employment 
 in America will usually be found connected with some per- 
 sonal deficiency of character, or with incompetence and 
 lack of adaptability, although there is always a number — 
 relatively small — who are out of work through no fault of 
 their own. 
 
 There are those who, being engaged for short periods 
 only, have finished one job and not yet entered on another. 
 Others belong to trades in which the volume of work fluctu- 
 ates, because of seasonal changes, most commonly during a 
 year, but sometimes during longer periods, as in the ship-
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED AND THE HOMELESS POOE. 257 
 
 building trades, and sometimes during periods of less than 
 a year. Still others are economically superfluous, from too 
 many learning such trades, from changes in trade processes, 
 or from local shifting of industries. The best 1000 unem- 
 ployed members of a given group of trades at any given 
 time are less efficient, whether from physical, moral, or in- 
 tellectual defects, than the worst 1000 who are in actual 
 employment at the same time. To a very large extent, 
 manifestly, the problem is an industrial rather than a 
 charitable one. It is only when non-employment results 
 in destitution that its treatment is germane to our present 
 purposes. 
 
 During the years immediately succeeding the crisis of 
 1893, special relief work for the destitute unemployed was 
 carried forward on a scale never before known or needed in 
 this country. The work of the New York East Side Relief 
 Committee and of the Commercial Club of Indianapolis il- 
 lustrate the most satisfactory of these emergency under- 
 takings.^ The East Side Relief Committee was made up 
 of persons of experience in charity, settlement, and educa- 
 tional agencies in the locality in which relief was required. 
 In order not to draw the unemployed from other districts, 
 it avoided advertising and distributed tickets entitling the 
 recipient to relief in work, through trade-unions, churches, 
 and charities. Workers were paid in money, and no food 
 stations were opened. Several classes of work were pro- 
 vided : street-cleaning in cooperation with the city street- 
 cleaning commissioner ; tailoring in shops, the products of 
 which were sent partly to the cyclone sufferers in South 
 Carolina, and partly distributed among the destitute through 
 churches and charitable societies ; sewing, knitting, mat and 
 quilt making for women at home ; renovating tenement 
 houses (with the permission of landlords) by whitewashing 
 
 1 Details will be found in CharitiPf! Review, vol. iii., 1894, pp. 323 ff. ; 
 Deviue, "Principles of Relief," pp. 412 ff,
 
 258 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 and removal of refuse. About 5000 men and women were 
 employed at a total cost of $118,000. 
 
 In Indianapolis the undertaking took quite different 
 form. The first step consisted in registration of the un- 
 employed and temporary relief in cooperation with the 
 Charity Organization Society. Tramps were arrested and 
 sent to the workhouse, where a stone-pile provided work. 
 In January, 1894, a food market was organized in two 
 departments, — one for registration and investigation, the 
 other to issue food. A corps of visitors investigated the 
 claim to residence and the need of the applicant, and when 
 found bona fide, an account book was issued to him. In 
 this book was an agreement, wliich the applicant was re- 
 quired to sign, that he would pay on demand, in labor, at 
 a specified price, for all supplies charged to his account. A 
 little later when arrangements for providing work on the 
 streets, in excavation, etc., had been made, the applicant 
 was given a card directing him to report to the Street 
 Commissioner for work. Credits for work entitled him to 
 supplies for his family at the food depot. 
 
 As the Indianapolis Committee were obliged to give 
 credit for rations for some time before work was required, 
 they found shortly that there was a disposition on the part 
 of many men not to Avork, and of women to draw rations 
 as " widows " and " deserted wives." This compelled the 
 enforcement of a rule of '^ no work, no rations," and a 
 requirement of labor in washing for the women. 
 
 The organization of emergency relief in such times of 
 financial depression is sufficiently beset with difficulties, 
 but there is always some time in which to anticipate and 
 provide for the most serious of these if the community will 
 avail itself of experienced social workers. In the emer- 
 gency created by flood, cyclone, fire, and earthquake, the 
 problem is much more serious, because relief must be in- 
 stantly organized, and often by persons with slight expert-
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED AND THE HOMELESS POOR. 259 
 
 ence in dealing with destitution. A considerable portion 
 of any hitherto self-supporting population will be so demor- 
 alized by the disaster as to expect, if not demand, relief 
 without work. The greatest problem, therefore, as soon as 
 the necessary food and shelter have been provided for the 
 immediate need, is how to prevent those who have been 
 self-supporting from deteriorating through hardships, dis- 
 location, and lack of work ; and how to restore to normal 
 self-support those who have been temporarily demoralized by 
 free relief. In such emergencies it is obvious that the assist- 
 ance of trained workers from other localities, who have had 
 experience in dealing with such a situation, is of the high- 
 est value. It is of almost equal importance that such 
 experience should be carefully registered as history, and 
 that ultimately these histories should be the basis on which 
 shall be formulated some principles of emergency relief to 
 guide all workers in subsequent disasters. 
 
 For the guidance of those devising special relief in 
 times of financial depression resulting in widespread 
 unemployment, certain general principles have already 
 emerged as the result of English and American experi- 
 ence. The successive steps and the general methods 
 may be briefly summarized : — 
 
 1. Registration and investigation of all applicants in 
 order to determine the degree of need, and to enforce a 
 requirement of residence. Without this precaution, relief 
 of any sort will tend to draw outsiders to the place where 
 it is offered. 
 
 2. Work of at least two classes — more, if possible — 
 should be provided. Frequently the work available is too 
 heavy, or is unsuitable for men who are not strong, or who 
 have been accustomed to indoor trades. In this respect the 
 kinds of work offered by the New York East Side Commit- 
 tee are particularly suggestive. 
 
 3. Wages and hours should be as nearly as possible at
 
 260 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 the standard rate ; if the pay is too low, the families will 
 deteriorate ; if at normal rates, some men will not make the 
 effort to get back into regular industry, and outsiders will 
 try to press in. 
 
 4. Good superintendents, in sufficient number to control 
 the employees, and to select and place them at work ac- 
 cording to character and ability, are absolutely necessary. 
 
 5. Relief works should be necessary and productive, 
 and it is better if the work can be made continuous for 
 some time for each individual. 
 
 6. Whenever public authorities or private persons see 
 an opportunity to do at unusually low rates, because of the 
 hard times, work that needs doing, they ought to push such 
 work, on business and not relief principles, and in the gen- 
 eral following of this policy is to be found a radical remedy 
 for trade depression. If it can be work such as would not 
 otherwise be done at all, or not immediately, it will inter- 
 fere the less with regular employments. Mr. Percy Alden 
 urges that every municipality should keep in readiness a 
 certain amount of public work which can be given to the 
 selected unemployed. The London County Council, in a 
 report in 1903, suggested that there were several thousand 
 public buildings, the cleaning and renovation of which would 
 afford' employment in the slack months. In the United 
 States it would often be a public economy, as well as offer 
 work to men thrown out in slack times or by seasonal 
 trades, if Boards of Public Works would plan to carry 
 on general municipal improvements when work is least 
 abundant. 
 
 In short, it may be concluded that relief in work should 
 be given by substantially the same methods as other kinds 
 of relief, and always with a view to the restoration of the 
 applicant to a normal condition as soon as possible. While, 
 in the future, efforts may be made by employers and by 
 municipal and governmental boards generally, to distribute
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED AND THE HOMELESS POOR. 261 
 
 and equalize employment throughout the year, care must 
 always be taken not to undermine initiative and self-reli- 
 ance of the individual. The East Side Relief Committee 
 recorded their conviction that emergency methods should 
 be adopted only under abnormal conditions, and finally 
 concluded : — 
 
 "When industry and trade are natural, the only safe course for 
 the working people is to accommodate themselves to their circum- 
 stances or to change them by their own action. The efforts of 
 philanthropists to compensate, by artificial means, for irregularity of 
 work or low wages, can only result in mischief." 
 
 In dealing with the unemployed in normal times, Pro- 
 fessor Devine lays down the principle, — 
 
 " that the obligation to find employment, like the obligation to con- 
 tinue suitable employment when one has it, rests primarily on the 
 applicant himself ; " 
 
 and he adds : — 
 
 " It is quite possible to undermine self-reliance by doing gratuitously 
 the things which a self-respecting man will do for himself." 
 
 The workingman of good habits, ordinarily earning fair 
 wages, may be expected to save something in the shape of 
 bank deposits, trade-union benefits, or unemployment in- 
 surance ; and he should not be discouraged by the sight of 
 the lazy and shiftless obtaining easy relief from charitable 
 societies. 
 
 From the charitable point of view, by far the larger part 
 of the relief necessitated by lack of work consists in the 
 rehabilitation of character and the finding of a niche in 
 industry for subnormal persons, — a task demanding not 
 only infinite patience and ingenuity, but a high degree of 
 spiritual insight and faith. The other part consists in 
 tiding over families temporarily destitute on account of 
 seasonal or intermittent employment. How frequent an 
 occurrence this is likely to be has already been pointed
 
 262 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 out in the chapter on the Conditions of Poverty. In her 
 study of 200 families in New York City, Mrs. More notes 
 that a considerable number of men have an alternative 
 trade. As an example of what may be accomplished by 
 charity in this direction, the work of the Philadelphia 
 Vacant Lots Cultivation Association may be cited. Organ- 
 ized in 1897 as an emergency relief measure for the un- 
 employed, it has gradually been converted into a permanent 
 " business school " for those out of work because of age, 
 disability, or slack trade. In 1903, 275 acres of la?nd within 
 the city, subdivided into 768 gardens and cultivated by 
 3609 persons, yielded $36,000 of produce at a total cost to 
 the contributors of less than $5000 for superintendence 
 and materials. 
 
 It would be impossible to present here any extensive 
 account of the great variety of experiments and institutions 
 for the solution of the problem of the unemployed in Eng- 
 land and on the Continent. A vast amount of information 
 upon them is now accessible in our own language, and has 
 recently been summarized and discussed from the English 
 point of view in Mr. Percy Alden's useful little book, " The 
 Unemployed." While most of the agencies described, there 
 could not be transplanted profitably to this country with 
 its very different problems, yet the results are most valuable 
 by way of warning and suggestion. In the last analysis, 
 we must agree, the problem of the unemployed is industrial, 
 not charitable ; and in as far as every philanthropic person 
 is himself a citizen and a worker, he will be engaged in the 
 effort after an economic solution.
 
 
 CHAPTER IX, ''i)^ ^^/^T 
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 
 
 Work for dependent children is the most hopeful branch 
 of charitable endeavor in that it affords more possibilities 
 of constructive work than any other line. In charities for 
 the aged, the sick, the defective, even for the unemployed, 
 one is conscious that for the individuals dealt with there 
 is no probability of any high measure of success. There is 
 little else possible than to make the best of unfortunate 
 circumstances, to deal with palliatives, to brighten individ- 
 ual lives, and to prevent misfortune from spreading. With 
 children, on the other hand, especially the quite young and 
 tolerably healthy, there is a possibility of more positive 
 results. The young life contains within itself the principle 
 of growth, and may be enabled to expand into something 
 actively useful. But if the work for children has thus its 
 specially hopeful side, it has also its corresponding dangers, 
 and imposes upon those who would undertake it a respon- 
 sibility such as has no exact counterpart in other depart- 
 ments. When the life of a dependent child is misdirected, 
 the misfortune entailed upon the individual and the com- 
 munity is far-reaching. Fifty years hence, many of the 
 children now dependent will still be suffering from or 
 profiting by the training that charity affords them. 
 
 According to the Census of 1903-1904, about one-fourth of 
 all the benevolent institutions in the United States are de- 
 voted to the care of orphans or other dependent children, 
 four-fifths of which are under private or ecclesiastical man- 
 agement. Table LVIII. on the following page shows the 
 
 263
 
 264 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 number of children in institutions (excluding reformatories) 
 in 1880, 1890, and 1904. A very slight consideration shows 
 that the number in institutions in any State has no definite 
 ratio to the population ; nor does the general increase since 
 1880 bear any apparent relation to the increase of general 
 population. It is evident that the differences between States 
 of similar economic conditions must be explained by the 
 prevailing policy regarding the care of children. If the 
 institutional policy is general, the number of institutional 
 inmates will be greater than where outdoor relief or the 
 placiug-out systems are in general use. Where the numbers 
 are small, it may mean one of three things : that dependent 
 children are few, that they are inadequately provided for, 
 or that some other method than the institutional prevails. 
 Wherever the difference between numbers admitted and 
 number remaining at the end of the year is considerable, 
 it indicates that the children have been placed out in homes. 
 
 TABLE LVIII. 
 Inmates of Orphanages and Children's Homes, 1903-1904. 
 
 
 Number 
 
 Number 
 
 Number 
 
 Number 
 
 State or Territory. 
 
 ADMITTED 
 
 REMAINING 
 
 IN 
 
 in 
 
 
 DURING 
 
 Dec. 31, 
 
 Institutions 
 
 Institutions 
 
 
 1904.* 
 
 1904.* 
 
 ISOO.t 
 
 ISSO.t 
 
 New York .... 
 
 18,171 
 
 24,907 
 
 22,6.53 
 
 18,624 
 
 Illinois . . 
 
 
 
 
 7,587 
 
 5,245 
 
 2,703 
 
 1,453 
 
 Ohio . . . 
 
 
 
 
 6,292 
 
 7,670 
 
 4,149 
 
 5,970 
 
 Massachusetts 
 
 
 
 
 5,443 
 
 3,953 
 
 3,263 
 
 3,463 
 
 Pennsylvania 
 
 
 
 
 4,786 
 
 10,418 
 
 8,278 
 
 7,3.39 
 
 California 
 
 
 
 
 3,404 
 
 4,680 
 
 3,2.37 
 
 2,509 
 
 Missouri . 
 
 
 
 
 
 2,544 
 
 2,697 
 
 1,613 
 
 1,643 
 
 New Jersey 
 
 
 
 
 
 1,794 
 
 2,598 
 
 1,674 
 
 1,049 
 
 Indiana . 
 
 
 
 
 
 1,660 
 
 2,934 
 
 1,762 
 
 915 
 
 Michigan 
 
 
 
 
 
 1,586 
 
 1,669 
 
 1,144 
 
 747 
 
 Maryland 
 
 
 
 
 
 1,299 
 
 2,165 
 
 1,4.59 
 
 1,6.53 
 
 Louisiana 
 
 
 
 
 
 1,188 
 
 1,899 
 
 1,682 
 
 1,991 
 
 Connecticut 
 
 
 
 
 
 1,028 
 
 1,854 
 
 728 
 
 466 
 
 Minnesota 
 
 
 
 
 
 1,018 
 
 1,220 
 
 897 
 
 126 
 
 Kentucky . 
 
 
 
 
 
 968 
 
 1,482 
 
 819 
 
 950 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 58,7.38 
 
 75,461 
 
 56,060 
 
 48,908
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDEEN. 
 
 265 
 
 TABLE LVIII. 
 
 Continued. 
 
 Amount forwarded 
 Colorado . . 
 Wisconsin 
 Kansas . . 
 Rhode Island 
 Texas . . . 
 Iowa . . 
 District of Columbia 
 Tennessee 
 North Carolina 
 New Hampshire 
 Nebraska . . 
 Georgia . . 
 Maine . . . 
 Washington . 
 Virginia . . 
 Oregon . . 
 South Carolina 
 Utah . . . 
 Arkansas . 
 Alabama . 
 Indian Territory 
 Montana . 
 South Dakota 
 Delaware . . 
 New Mexico . 
 Mississippi . 
 West Virginia 
 Vermont . 
 Florida . . 
 North Dakota 
 Oklahoma 
 Nevada 
 
 58,738 
 933 
 877 
 864 
 838 
 736 
 661 
 606 
 591 
 587 
 554 
 526 
 463 
 410 
 390 
 380 
 355 
 251 
 237 
 209 
 207 
 203 
 179 
 156 
 142 
 131 
 104 
 104 
 100 
 98 
 95 
 61 
 9 
 
 70,825 
 
 75,461 
 650 
 
 1,283 
 567 
 753 
 
 1,061 
 
 1,162 
 967 
 862 
 
 1,247 
 981 
 393 
 
 1,111 
 569 
 359 
 938 
 255 
 727 
 232 
 177 
 529 
 205 
 332 
 101 
 391 
 106 
 270 
 198 
 181 
 119 
 68 
 48 
 56 
 
 92,289 
 
 56,060 
 212 
 1,117 
 161 
 522 
 473 
 568 
 818 
 605 
 212 
 256 
 111 
 502 
 196 
 184 
 380 
 105 
 439 
 
 340 
 
 163 
 
 156 
 74 
 
 203 
 16 
 
 49 
 
 65,651 
 
 48,908 
 
 656 
 55 
 319 
 206 
 190 
 
 302 
 162 
 144 
 
 461 
 198 
 
 354 
 
 69 
 
 397 
 
 226 
 
 118 
 
 149 
 
 69 
 
 176 
 
 4 
 
 187 
 
 50,579 
 
 * Not including- children in almshouses and reformatories, 
 t Not including children in reformatories. 
 
 The care of destitute infants (cliildren under two years of 
 age) is sharply distinguished from the care of older depen- 
 dent children. Among the former the death-rate is the 
 principal index of success or failure, while among the latter 
 the death-rate is always low and the attention must be given 
 to evidences of right or wrong development afforded by the 
 character and subsequent careers of the children.
 
 266 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 In a great majority of cases, it can matter but little to 
 the individual infant whether it is murdered outright or is 
 placed in a foundling hospital — death comes only a little 
 sooner in one case than in the other. This fact, that found- 
 ling hospitals are, for the most part, places where infants 
 die, is not sufl&ciently appreciated by the public. A death 
 rate of 97 per cent per annum for children under three 
 years of age is not uncommon.^ The printed reports of in- 
 stitutions for infants usually do not give the number of 
 deaths. One foundling hospital, the president of which was 
 a prominent physician, stated in each annual report that the 
 death-rate was comparatively low. When the president 
 was asked what the exact death-rate was, he admitted that 
 he did not know, and would not know how to compute one. 
 It was found that the average number of inmates in this 
 institution was thirty, and the number of deaths in the 
 preceding year had been forty-five. In an institution where 
 no exact death-rate was computed, a study of the books 
 brought out the following facts : in five months twenty -three 
 children had been admitted; in the succeeding seven months, 
 four of these children had been given in adoption, one was 
 in the institution, and eighteen had died. Twenty-eight 
 infants were consigned one after another by a public official 
 to a private institution administered by a religious order, 
 and they all died. 
 
 Of course this high death-rate comes in part from the bad 
 condition of the children when received. They are often 
 marasmic, rachitic, syphilitic, half dead from drugging or 
 neglect, or from ante-natal or post-natal abuse. Yet this 
 does not explain entirely the high death-rate common to in- 
 stitutions, as is shown by the fact that strong, thriving 
 babies droop and die in them, and by the further fact that 
 improved methods of cariug for these same children bring 
 
 ^ N. C. C, 1889, p. 1, gives an instance. Previous to 18!)8 practically 
 all babies sent to the Infants' Hospital on Randall's Island died.
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 267 
 
 down the death-rate to almost that of the average population 
 for corresponding ages. The high death-rate where chil- 
 dren are cared for in institutions often results from positive 
 neglect. A baby, if not attended to, gets into a very bad 
 condition in a very short time. A woman who has from 
 four to eight babies to take care of is apt to become neglect- 
 ful. It is possible to clean them up for visiting day, or the 
 inspection of directors or supervisors, but to keep them all 
 clean and comfortable through twenty-four hours of the day, 
 seven days in the week, and fifty-two weeks in the year, is 
 another matter. Sometimes they are left to lie in their 
 cribs scalded by urine and in a miserable plight generally. 
 The attendants, being assigned more work than they can 
 do, settle into the conviction that it does not much matter 
 whether they do anything at all or not. If attendants are 
 hired, it is difficult to get the best class of help for such 
 work. If they are members of a religious order, the chances 
 of self-devotion are better ; but the Sisters are often ignorant 
 and tolerably selfish women, and are usually overworked. 
 
 Even when the infants are not neglected, and vrhen, ap- 
 parently, the attendants do everything possible for their 
 comfort, the death-rate is still high. It is not possible to 
 raise babies by wholesale. The institution baby lacks, and 
 must lack, that affectionate handling which gives exercise 
 to the baby muscles, and the zest to infant existence which 
 makes it worth while for the child to live. Though the 
 ward of an asylum be flooded with sunlight, as it frequently 
 is not, and though the bed be clean and dry, as it often is 
 not, yet there still is lacking the light and warmth of affec- 
 tion and the comforts of personal attention. 
 
 Feeding the children is another difficulty. The doctors 
 do their best in recommending sterilized foods of all kinds 
 and descriptions, but the infants still insist on dying. One 
 institution in a Southern State, under the care of Sisters of 
 Charity, undertook as a last resort to keep goats for the
 
 268 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 children to nurse, but with no good results. Many institu- 
 tions admit a woman with a baby on condition that she 
 shall nurse that and another. This is usually hard on the 
 other baby, and the presence of a large number of these 
 mothers under one roof makes administration very difficult. 
 Others board the infants out with wet-nurses. This is the 
 method of the State Charities Aid Association of New York 
 for all babies under six months old. This Association or- 
 ganized a Joint Committee in 1898 to assist the Commis- 
 sioner of Public Charities in boarding out foundlings who 
 had previously been sent to the Infants' Hospital on Ran- 
 dall's Island. The Joint Committee selected the families in 
 which the babies were placed, watched over them there, and 
 provided any funds necessary in addition to the amount al- 
 lowed by the city.^ The saving of life by the boarding-out 
 system, and particularly wet-nurses for those under six 
 months, is shown in Table LIX. 
 
 TABLE LIX. 
 
 Infants in Manhattan, Bronx, and Brooklyn. 
 
 Received from the Department of Charities.* 
 
 
 Foundlings. 
 
 Motherless 
 
 AND 
 
 Abandoned. 
 
 Total. 
 
 Mortality 
 PER Cent. 
 
 1898-1899 
 
 1899-1900 
 
 1900-1901 
 
 1901-1902 
 
 1902-1903 
 
 1903-1904 
 
 1904-1904 (8 mos.) 
 
 1904-1905 
 
 1905-1906 
 
 68 
 36 
 56 
 80 
 72 
 58 
 40 
 63 
 69 
 
 2 
 56 
 52 
 54 
 120 
 79 
 
 86 
 
 36 
 
 56 
 
 82 
 
 128 
 
 110 
 
 94 
 
 183 
 
 148 
 
 59.9 
 31.1 
 18.9 
 10.7 
 14.0 
 10.0 
 10.3 
 11.3 
 11.6 
 
 
 542 
 
 363 
 
 905 
 
 
 * Kc'port of State Charities Aid Association, 1900, p. oH. 
 1 At first $2 per week, later $2,50, and in 1906 $2.66 for board.
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 269 
 
 Where there is a large and healthy laboring class, this 
 plan works very well. It is the method pursued in Paris, 
 where the infants are sent out into the country, chiefly with 
 the wives of peasants. In the Southern States suitable wet- 
 nurses can often only be found among the colored people. 
 The Massachusetts State Board of Charity, following the 
 example of the Massachusetts Infant Asylum,^ boards out 
 infants in the country villages about Boston, placing them 
 with Avomen who bring them up by artificial feeding. About 
 $10 per month is paid for the board of each child, 
 and clothing is furnished by the officials. By carefully 
 selecting the families, by subsequent visitation and frequent 
 calls, at both stated and unexpected times, and by keeping 
 constantly subject to summons a physician working on a 
 salary paid by the State, it has been found possible to bring 
 the death-rate among these children to 12.5 per cent.^ 
 
 As a result of the success of these methods, there are 
 some who believe that a foundling asylum is a perfectly use- 
 less institution, since an efficient society or public official 
 could readily find homes in which infants could be received 
 temporarily, and from which they could be placed in fami- 
 lies that would care for them indefinitely, if properly paid. 
 While most authorities are not willing to do away with 
 
 1 They receive no child over nine months old, and dispose of the 
 children when they reach the age of two. The death-rate among this 
 class of dependents before they began operations had been about ninety 
 in a hundred. They have devoted themselves especially to the work of 
 devising ways to save the lives of these children. Their plan now is to 
 board out about three-fourths of the babies, and to keep the others, 
 usually in the care of wet-nurses, in an institution especially designed for 
 the purpose. In the early years, when occupying an ordinary house and 
 employing only a few wet-nurses, the death-rate, obtained by comparing 
 the total number of different children in charge of the asylum during the 
 year with the total number of deaths, ranged from twenty-six to forty- 
 five. Under the newer methods this rate has been reduced to five, and 
 even less. Even when the State Board was sending a large number of 
 foundlings, the death-rate was never higher than sixteen, and sometimes 
 went as low as eight. ^ Report, 1905-1906,
 
 270 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 institutions for babies altogether, there is a strong tendency 
 to keep infants for shorter periods in asylums and to place 
 them with wet-nurses and at board in families as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 In general, the conditions of institutional care of babies 
 have - rapidly improved in recent years. In Baltimore, for 
 instance, three leading specialists have prepared for the 
 supervisors of the city charities a set of requirements for 
 such institutions. Each baby must have 1000 cubic feet of 
 air space, and abundant porch space, and must spend at 
 least four hours a day in the open ; there must be a ward 
 in readiness for infectious diseases, which must be perfectly 
 fumigated ; and an experienced nurse for every 20 babies, 
 and a nursery maid for every 4. The milk supply must be 
 of standard purity, a proper sterilizing plant must be main- 
 tained, and at least 20 napkins a day provided for each 
 child. ^ 
 
 Next to the actual preservation of the life of the child, 
 the most important question connected with the care of 
 destitute infants is upon what conditions they shall be re- 
 ceived. The mediseval device long used in France consisted 
 of a double cradle. When the child had been placed in the 
 cradle on the outside of the building, the contrivance was 
 revolved, ringing a bell as it turned. By this process the 
 child was placed in the institution, and another cradle was 
 waiting at once for the next comer. The purpose of these 
 tours was to make it so easy to get rid of babies that 
 there might be no temptation to infanticide. The agitation 
 for the abolition of this system of admission was bitterly 
 resisted, Lamartine speaking of it as a case of " figures vs. 
 humanity." When the tours had been suppressed in some 
 of the departments, attention was called to the fact that 
 infanticide increased thereafter. But further examination 
 of the statistics showed that infanticide had also increased 
 1 Charities, etc., vol. xviii., p. 232, 1!)07.
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 271 
 
 in those departments where the tours were still in opera- 
 tion ; in fact, it had increased faster in the latter than in 
 the former. This last-mentioned fact seems to reflect the 
 actual results of such appliances, and of all instances of 
 laxness in receiving unwanted children from parents. Its 
 indirect influence is so to promote disregard of parental ties 
 and infant life that more children are murdered outright 
 than where it is less easy for parents to get rid of off- 
 spring. This conclusion, which seems to be tolerably well 
 established, is sufficient in itself, without resort to the com- 
 mon plea that easy disposal of offspring promotes illegiti- 
 macy, and without reference to the money cost of the laxer 
 methods. It is not, as Lamartine said, a case of " figures vs. 
 humanity," but rational and helpful sympathy vs. diseased 
 and mischievous sympathy. 
 
 The Foundling Asylum of the Sisters of Charity in the 
 city of New York (now the New York Foundling Hospital), 
 under Sister Irene, affords the best-known American ex- 
 ample of facilities offered for the abandonment of infants. 
 A cradle was formerly placed in the vestibule, in which in- 
 fants could be placed without observation from those inside. 
 At last, however, they began to come two or three in a single 
 night ;^ the cradle was then put inside the door, and an ap- 
 plicant must ring the bell. If a mother brought her child, 
 she was asked to stay and nurse her child and another. If 
 she refused, she was allowed to depart without further 
 question, leaving the infant. Perhaps a majority of found- 
 ling hospitals in the United States make no adequate inves- 
 tigation and keep no adequate record of the parentage of 
 children received. There are some cases where any inves- 
 tigation must be fruitless ; but the experience of the Penn- 
 sylvania Children's Aid Society and the Massachusetts 
 State Board of Lunacy and Charity proves that if trouble 
 
 1 The first year 1399 babies were placed in the crib. Mrs. Bouvier, 
 " New York Conference on Child-caring," pp. 71-72.
 
 272 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 enough is taken, thorough investigations usually bring 
 out some helpful facts, and that such a course is not only 
 wise but kindly. It has a bad effect upon all concerned — 
 for a woman or a man to be able to dispose of a baby " and 
 no questions asked." ^ 
 
 There is, naturally, a close relation between the infant 
 asylums and the maternity hospitals. What happens 
 to the young unmarried mother has been described in 
 the report of the State Charities Aid Association of New 
 York : — 
 
 " From the doors of the great maternity hospital there are four 
 diverging roads for the young traveller who is an unmarried mother. 
 One road leads to desertion of the child in a convenient hallway ; an- 
 other to the creche of a foundling hospital ; a third, to a boarding home, 
 good or indifferent, for the child. And in many ways all of these are 
 easier to travel than the fourth road. ... It takes moral courage 
 ... to face the world with an unwelcomed child in her arms and 
 work for its support." 2 
 
 In most cases it is quite certain that to enable a mother 
 to leave her infant is a gratuitous mistake. Even if the 
 child be illegitimate, her maternal instincts are the best 
 thing about her. She is salvable through these, or probably 
 not at all. To give her facilities for deadening these in- 
 stincts is to do her final harm. Experience has shown that 
 with a little kindly aid she can usually be enabled to keep 
 the child and support herself and it. At the worst, she can 
 enter an institution for a time, and nurse her child and an- 
 other. Experiments in the cities of Boston, Philadelphia, 
 and New York have shown that suitable service places in 
 the country can be found to which destitute mothers may 
 go, taking their children with them. The demand for this 
 
 1 Massachusetts, some years ago, passed very radical legislation de- 
 signed to suppress " baby-farming." Persons makhig a business of board- 
 ing infants for pay are required to i-eport to the State Board of Lunacy 
 and Cliarity, and to submit lo its supervision. 
 
 2 Report of State Charities Aid Association, 1906, p. 39.
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 273 
 
 class of help usually exceeds the supply. A single society 
 in New York has provided 5327 situations for deserted 
 wives, unmarried mothers, and widows with their children 
 during the last thirteen years.^ 
 
 If judiciously placed, a majority of these women give 
 satisfaction to their employers, and are satisfied themselves. 
 It is said that they do as well as those who take situations 
 without children, and in many instances they are more re- 
 liable for help in the country. Of course a destitute woman 
 with no one to help her support her child has not an easy 
 life before her ; but, on the whole, life will be happier and 
 healthier in every way if she is aided in keeping her child 
 than if she is aided in getting rid of it. 
 
 Children over two years of age live quite persistently. 
 Therefore, as regards these, we do not need to examine so 
 closely the death-rate, for they may be very improperly 
 cared for, and the death-rate still be low. The first question 
 of importance regarding them, is upon what terms they shall 
 be received and supported as dependents. 
 
 The rules of private institutions for receiving children 
 are very various and often very erratic. Sometimes ille- 
 gitimacy is a prerequisite. One endowed institution required 
 that a child should be the legitimate offspring of parents 
 both of whom had been members of the Presbyterian Church, 
 and one or both of whom were dead. In some institutions 
 children are received temporarily, and in others they are 
 not admitted unless the natural parents give up all title to 
 them. The rules of admission to private institutions are 
 usually lax in practice if not in form ; but they are nowhere 
 so lax as in those States where the managers admit the child, 
 and the State or city government is then constrained by law 
 to pay for its maintenance without question. The financial 
 aspects of this system will be considered later, but here 
 
 1 Ibid., p. 39. In 1907 the Pennsylvania Aid Society placed 587 mothers 
 with children in domestic service.
 
 274 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 must be noted its extreme perniciousness as regards the 
 children. 
 
 Two things are necessary in order that agencies for the 
 care of children may avoid the evil of encouraging the tem- 
 porary or permanent abandonment of children. The first is, 
 that the case of every child received must be thoroughly 
 investigated by some competent agent ; and the second is, 
 that when relatives give up a child to be a dependent, they 
 must give up all title to it. Guardianship should be vested 
 completely in the agency that takes care of the child. 
 
 As to the first point, most j^rivate institutions for children 
 are unduly negligent. It frequently happens that children 
 are received through the influence of some member of the 
 board of managers, or by a sympathetic matron, until the 
 institution is overcrowded, and cases far more deserving of 
 care then go unprovided for. Even where the matron or a 
 member of the board of managers tries to make an investiga- 
 tion, it is work in which such a person is not an expert, 
 and it is too often ill done. The business of deciding when 
 children ought to be taken from parents, or received from 
 parents, is becoming a specialty by itself ; and the societies 
 for the protection of children and children's aid societies 
 ought to be asked to investigate all doubtful cases. So grave 
 is the abuse of receiving children too readily, and so great is 
 the injury to the children themselves when so received, that 
 some of those identified with the most progressive work for 
 children, hold that no child should be placed in an institu- 
 tion except on judicial approval, and a finding that the given 
 child is delinquent or dependent. This rule they would 
 have applied to institutions wholly supported by private 
 funds, as well as to public institutions and private institu- 
 tions receiving public subsidies. Careful investigation in 
 not a few cases reveals a better way of providing for the 
 child than to place it in the institution. Whenever it is 
 found that the parents or the surviving parent are of good
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 275 
 
 character and suitable guardians, they should be helped to 
 keep the child at home.^ 
 
 The second rule, namely, that when parents or relatives 
 leave a child to be supported by charitable agency, they 
 should lose all title to it, seems a hard one, yet in the great 
 majority of cases it is thoroughly salutary. Perhaps the 
 rule which refuses to receive a child for more than two 
 weeks without having guardianship vested in the institution, 
 affords as much latitude as ought to be given. Against this 
 view it is urged that parents are after all the best guardians 
 of their children, and if the time ever comes when they can 
 take care of their own, it is better that the children be re- 
 turned. But experience shows that it has a bad effect on 
 parents as parents to get rid of the care of their children for 
 a time, and that they spoil the life of a child by selfishly 
 taking it home when they think it is old enough to be of 
 service. Parents who cannot support their children usually 
 have not the capacity required to bring up a child in a 
 healthful way and in a healthful environment. Besides this, 
 the privilege of temporarily disposing of a child is frequently 
 the means of bringing about its permanent abandonment. 
 As affection wanes in consequence of absence, parents that 
 would have found some way to support their children rather 
 than give them up in the first instance, gradually accustom 
 themselves to the idea of abandoning their offspring. 
 
 A stock instance of the effect of removing children from 
 institutions to families, with the result that the natural 
 parents will lose sight of and title to them, is that of the 
 Union Temporary Home in Philadelphia. After thirty-one 
 years of work, it was decided to close the Home and put 
 the children out to board. Out of 70 children, the parents 
 
 1 The Department of Charities iu New York City has employed the 
 trained service of the C. O. S. for this purpose, and with the cooperation 
 of charitable societies, relief for such families has been provided, thus 
 avoiding the necessity of taking the child away.
 
 276 AMERICAN CHABITIES. 
 
 of all but 9 were able to take good care of them themselves, 
 and of the rest 3 found a way before final arrangements 
 were made.^ The diminution in the number of dependent 
 children is especially large where the law provides that 
 guardianship shall be vested in the State, or a board of 
 children's guardians, in the cases of all children for whose 
 support public money is given. At AVashington, D.C., there 
 were about 600 children in institutions receiving public 
 money. A board of children's guardians was established 
 under a law providing that the dependency of each child 
 should be ascertained by a court, and the guardianship of a 
 child then vested in the board of guardians. While the law 
 as planned was not carried out, it became evident that, were 
 it so carried out, there would not be more than 150 depen- 
 dent children in the district. 
 
 The different results of the two methods of procedure in 
 the matter of the legal relation between parents and the 
 children who become dependent, is strikingly illustrated by 
 the experience of Michigan and New York. Both awoke 
 about the same time — 1874 — to the numbers of children in 
 poorhouses and undertook to make other provision for them. 
 Michigan established a State school for all dependent chil- 
 dren from which they were to be placed in families. New 
 York forbade the keeping of children in almshouses and 
 provided that a dependent child should be committed if 
 possible to an institution controlled by the same religious 
 faith as that of its parents, at the expense of the county. In 
 Michigan the parents were dej^rived of all responsibility and 
 all legal rights in the child ; in New York, the legal guar- 
 dianship remained with the parents, if it had any. While 
 guardianship has not been the only factor determining the 
 increase of dependent children in these two States, it is 
 highly significant that in 1904 Michigan had only 65.6 de- 
 
 iRiis, "Children of the Poor," pp. 282-285; Report New York State 
 Board of Charities, 1889, p. 202.
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 277 
 
 pendent children to each 100,000 of her population, while 
 New York had 317.3 per 100,000. 
 
 After the question of receiving children and their guar- 
 dianship, the next most important matter is their classifica- 
 tion. In the first place, those who are distinctly unsound 
 in body or mind should be set apart. The sick must be re- 
 manded to hospital care or homes for incurables ; cripples 
 preferably to special institutions ; and the feeble-minded and 
 epileptic to institutions designed for them. But it is easier 
 to say that classification is needed than to do the classifying. 
 Every children's hospital has inmates that are well enough 
 to be discharged, but within a month after discharge are 
 likely to be sick enough to be readmitted. In making a 
 personal investigation of Gil inmates in eleven institutions 
 for children, I found 32 that had some marked mental defect 
 or nervous disease, such as epilepsy or paralysis. Besides 
 this, 92 of the children were markedly defective or diseased. 
 Not many cripples were found, but many afflicted with 
 severe forms of scrofula and other varieties of practically 
 incurable blood-poisoning. That is, one out of six of these 
 children was distinctly unwell, mentally or physically.^ 
 
 To classify further those adjudged healthy, is equally im- 
 portant and difficult. First are criminals, misdemeanants, 
 and unmanageables, usually spoken of as " delinquents," for 
 whom special treatment must be prescribed. They cannot 
 be considered here, although their proper care is one of the 
 most important problems in applied sociology. 
 
 After the delinquents, come the dependent children proper, 
 made up of the neglected, abused, abandoned, and other- 
 wise parentless, and the children of utterly destitute par- 
 ents. It is not uncommon for simply destitute children 
 to be sent to correctional institutions. The laws of many 
 
 1 This, of course, does not include those children that were suffering 
 from the ailments common to institution life, such as mild skin disease, 
 sore eyes, etc.
 
 278 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 States provide a definition for vagrancy that is broad enough 
 to include almost any neglected child, and further provide 
 that vagrants or children that wander about and beg from 
 door to door may be sent to reform schools. Another elastic 
 provision is that regarding " incorrigibles." If the parent 
 sees fit to swear that the child is incorrigible, the court has 
 very little option in many States, but must commit such 
 child to the reform school. Mixed with the more depraved 
 who properly belong to the school, the chances for these 
 boys and girls to come to the best that they were capable of 
 is not good. The classification at exactly this point — the 
 separation of the depraved from the merely destitute — is an 
 essential element in the wise handling of the neglected and 
 destitute children of any State or locality. 
 
 In the classification of destitute children, it will be noticed 
 that orphans and half-orphans, a distinction which is more 
 commonly made, perhaps, than any other, have not been 
 mentioned ; and yet for purposes of care it has very 
 little significance. The child that must be taken from its 
 parents is parentless, and it is of very little significance so 
 far as the child itself is concerned whether its parents are 
 dead or not. The distinction between orphans and half- 
 orphans, which is recognized by the laws of California and 
 other States in providing money for private institutions, and 
 which is usually recognized in the administration of private 
 institutions, is simply a device by which the managers of an 
 institution save themselves the trouble of examining into 
 individual cases. The distinction is made because it is 
 easy to make, and they feel that they must draw the line 
 somewhere. It is, however, of comparatively little conse- 
 quence for our present purposes, and can only be of use in 
 studying causes of dependency among children. 
 
 What has been said regarding classification shows the 
 great importance of the work of the children's aid societies 
 and the societies for the protection of children from cruelty
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 279 
 
 and immorality. They are, or should be, specialists in 
 exactly this work of classitication. It is their business to 
 understand the character of the children and the possibilities 
 of the situation ; and wherever their work is done with con- 
 scientious intelligence, the courts cannot do better than to 
 take their advice in disposing of destitute or delinquent 
 children. In many cases it may be found that institution 
 life of any sort is unnecessary ; and where it is necessary, 
 the institution should be chosen with distinct reference to 
 the individual child. 
 
 After the matters of reception, guardianship, and classi- 
 fication are disposed of, the final matter of importance is 
 the method of providing for dependent children. Broadly 
 speaking, there are two systems : the first is the institution 
 plan, and the second is the plan of placing-out. On Dec. 
 31, 1904, there were remaining in institutions in the United 
 States, 92,289 children; during the preceding year, 70,825 
 were admitted ; the difference, 21,464, represents those re- 
 turned to parents, old enough to be discharged, etc., but chiefly 
 those placed out. In addition to these, there is a large num- 
 ber placed out in families, of which there is no record. Mr. 
 Homer Folks estimates their number at not less than 50,000,^ 
 from which it may be concluded, roughly, that nearly two- 
 thirds of all dependent children are at present in institutions 
 and the remainder in families. 
 
 To build institutions for children has been the common 
 and obvious thing to do in providing for them. The insti- 
 tution is preferred by parents, because they know where the 
 child is, and can usually visit it, and frequently can retain 
 the right to take it back again when they will. Institutions 
 are also in favor with the benevolent, because the work done 
 is so manifest. A hundred or more children, prepared for 
 the occasion, make an attractive sight to the board of directors 
 or to visitors. Buildings are obvious, and the money that 
 1 " Care of Dependent Children," etc., p. 197, 1902.
 
 280 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 goes into thera takes a concrete form gratifying to the con- 
 tributors. The churches prefer such life for the children 
 dependent upon them, because the children can be so easily 
 isolated from teachings other than their own. There is 
 opportunity for catechetical instruction. In New York State 
 all the institutions having more than five hundred children 
 are of a distinctly religious character.^ Closely connected 
 with the religious motive, is the opportunity which an in- 
 stitution for children affords for a peculiarly attractive form 
 of private endowment. All private benefactions, whether of 
 the living or in memory of the dead, tend to take material 
 rather than administrative form. 
 
 Between 1875 and 1903 children's institutions multiplied 
 rapidly all over the country. In 1880 there were 613, in 
 1890, 698, and in 1903, 1075. Added to the motives for in- 
 stitutional care of children is, therefore, the possession of 
 these plants and their equipment, and the inertia of the 
 public which tends to be content with a benevolent work 
 once established.^ 
 
 On the whole, institutions are preferred by the children 
 themselves, at least after they have been in them for some 
 time. They do not feel at home outside of the sheltering 
 walls, and shrink from the rough contact of ordinary life. 
 In some institutions former inmates keep returning again and 
 
 1 St. John's Home, Brooklyn 1261 
 
 St. Joseph's Female Orphan Asylum, Brooklyn 028 
 
 St. Malachy's Home, Brooklyn 741 
 
 St. Agatha Home for Children, Brooklyn 600 
 
 Hebrew Orphan Asylum, New York City 1009 
 
 Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society, New York City .... 775 
 
 Institution of Mercy, New York City 706 
 
 Mission of the Immaculate Virgin, New York City 1607 
 
 Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, New York City 783 
 
 St. Joseph's Asylum, New York City 814 
 
 St. Joseph's Home, Peekskill 10.')6 
 
 — Census, liX)3-1904, " Benevolent Institutions," pp. 94 ff. 
 
 2 Devine, " Principles of Relief," pp. 110-111.
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 281 
 
 again, either seeking work or begging to be taken back, be- 
 cause it is the life they are used to, and the only one for 
 which they are fitted. 
 
 The institution, commending itself to these various parties 
 in interest, has necessarily had an earlier and greater devel- 
 opment than the placing-out system. Besides, there are 
 many things to be said in its favor by those who have a 
 really disinterested wish to benefit the dependents. The 
 children receive many negative benefits. They are not cold, 
 nor dirty, nor neglected, nor hungry, nor abused, — that is, 
 if the management is good. The grosser forms of profanity 
 and vice can be restrained ; their attendance on school exer- 
 cises is entirely regular, as are also their hours of sleep and 
 eating. 
 
 But admitting these advantages, there is much to be said 
 against institution life for children. The congregating of 
 them together, which we found in the case of infants to re- 
 sult in high mortality, results in the case of older children 
 in a low vitality. Even a small institution is different from 
 a large family. In the latter, the children are of different 
 ages ; they have different opportunities for amusement — one 
 initiates the other. Even in a small institution with only 
 eight or ten children, they are apt to be of about the same 
 age, none of them especially ambitious, and with their op- 
 portunities for self-education very limited. In the large 
 caravansaries, where hundreds or even thousands of children 
 are congregated, their non-development is very apparent. 
 The fundamental fault is, perhaps, that life is made too 
 easy. A child ought to have more opportunity of hurting 
 himself, of getting dirty, of being insubordinate, than can 
 possibly be accorded to him here. It is a pitiful sight to 
 see a hundred children together, and none of them making 
 a fuss. The discipline that would make a good soldier ruins 
 a child — it is fatal to him to march in platoons, to play 
 only at the word of command.
 
 282 i AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Of the effect of this, Mr. K. R. Reeder, Superintendent of 
 the Xew York Orphan Asylum, says : — 
 
 "The first impression that institution children make upon a visitor 
 is that of solidarity and dead levelism ; monotony and lack of individual 
 initiation are shown in looks, manners, and evenness of behavior. . . . 
 Until recently, many, perhaps most, institutions dressed their children 
 in uniform. Now it is quite common to hear superintendents or man- 
 agers say with pride, ' We do not dress our children all alike,' while 
 entirely overlooking a deeper uniformity, a dead levelism of soul, of 
 understanding, of occupation, that is vastly more significant and 
 blighting in its effect than a mere shallow uniformity like that of dress. 
 The latter is easily changed . . . but the uniformity that goes deeper than 
 dress is liable to produce during the years of growth a soul structure so 
 permanent as to mark the child throughout life as institution trained. 
 He will never stand for much, nor alone, but always will be one of a 
 crowd — a colorless life, shrivelled from youth." i 
 
 How is a child to learn to use matches if he lives in a 
 building with steam heat and electric light ? How will the 
 child learn to cook in the ordinary home where nothing but 
 great ranges are used for cooking ? How learn to wash 
 under ordinary circumstances where the laundry does the 
 work for one or two hundred people ? What experience 
 can a boy have here that would qualify him to bring in 
 wood ? How learn to carry water where there is nothing to 
 do but to turn the stop-cock ? How will he learn to tell the 
 time of day where everything moves at the stroke of a bell 
 or the word of command ? How obtain any appreciation 
 whatever of the value of money when everything comes to 
 him as if the world had been arranged to provide him with 
 each thing that he needs and just as he needs ? There is, in 
 fact, no proper development of the child's inventiveness or 
 individuality, or even of his ambitions. A hundred institu- 
 tion children deluged with toys at Christmas enjoy them 
 less, and feelless gratitude, than the children of the individ- 
 
 1 Charities, vol. xi., 1903, pp. 149-150.
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 283 
 
 ual home who have learned to long for things, and learned 
 to know in some sort what it costs to provide them. 
 
 Again, institution children are apt to lose wholly the 
 practical economic training and the moral attitude toward 
 life which children at home absorb unconsciously. Of this 
 Mr. Eeeder says : — 
 
 "Unless special attention is given to it, children in an institution 
 ■will hear little or no helpful conversation about domestic economy and 
 management, social and religious customs and practice, the moral 
 principles involved inconcrete newspaper and neighborhood happenings. 
 Left thus to themselves they never hear such expressions as ' Potatoes 
 are high ; v^e can afford them only once a day,' ' Flour has gone down,' 
 * Butter is thirty-five cents a pound,' ' John's shoes must last till next 
 pay-day,' ' Mary's dress will bear turning,' etc. The most Important 
 part of the social and moral education of a child normally situated is 
 the conversation, especially the table talk with parents. It is here 
 that children get their views of life before starting out into the larger 
 world they must enter. ... I may add also just here that the most 
 valuable part of the child's industrial training is his cooperation with 
 parents either by laborer by an economic use of their means in main- 
 taining and promoting the interests of the home." ^ 
 
 The object of institution life for children should be pre- 
 cisely the same as that of the home and school — to pre- 
 pare them for citizenship. Yet very few such institutions 
 follow the subsequent careers of their wards to test their 
 methods by their ultimate success or failure. It has often 
 been observed that children who have been in an institution 
 for some time cannot hold their own with those of the same 
 age who come in from the slums ; and that children reared 
 in infant asylums are two or three years behind others in 
 development. 
 
 A great part of the evils of institution life come from the 
 
 mingling of individuals, none of whom have a very good 
 
 heredity behind them, and some of whom have inherited 
 
 weak constitutions and bad moral tendencies. It is a con- 
 
 1 Charities, vol. xi., 1903, p. 151.
 
 284 AMEBIC AN CHARITIES. 
 
 tinual fight on the part of matrons to repress skin diseases 
 and sore eyes; and these contagious diseases are but typical 
 of the contagious vices which are not so obvious, but more 
 to be dreaded. That institution life is partly faulty because 
 of the low grade of cliildren who are received, and who 
 bring about degeneration in each other, is proved by the 
 experience of institutions that have introduced an element 
 of artificial selection, which separates the low from the 
 more highly organized. 
 
 All that has been said so far refers to the institutionalism 
 of the nineteenth century, which has recently been altering 
 its form in notable instances. Several influences have been 
 at work to check the excessive growth and the lax adminis- 
 tration of institutions for children. The extravagant cost 
 of some has drawn public attention to the fact that easy ad- 
 mission and indifferent management invite people to shirk 
 a legitimate burden ; and this in turn has led to more careful 
 investigation and commitment. The natural feeling that a 
 child ought to be in a family has produced several alterna- 
 tive methods, such as the cottage system and placing-out. 
 Most important of all, institution methods have themselves 
 been greatly modified and improved by the introduction of 
 kindergarten work for the smaller children, and industrial 
 training for the older ones. In many smaller orphanages 
 and homes, the practice — first introduced by the Hebrew- 
 Americans — of sending the children to the public schools 
 has produced excellent results. 
 
 The earlier foundations for children, many of which have 
 grown to considerable size, were nearly all in cities and 
 towns. Perhaps the most promising development is at 
 present the moving of these institutions to the country, 
 where they have a large tract of land and where cottages 
 instead of large dormitories are the prevailing system. The 
 experiences of Mr. R. R. Reeder, in moving the New York 
 Orphan Asylum from Manhattan to the country, were fully
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 285 
 
 described by him in a series of magazine articles which, have 
 probably had considerable influence in inducing the removal 
 and the change to the household system in a number of other 
 institutions. ■■ 
 
 Another modification of the strict institution plan has 
 been the combination with it of some degree of placing-out 
 in families. A very large number, perhaps the majority, of 
 orphanages and children's homes are now, in theory at least, 
 temporary refuges from which children are returned to 
 family life. While many have not developed proper 
 methods of placing-out, and do not provide for sufficiently 
 careful or long-extended supervision, yet the tendency is 
 both marked and encouraging. As a result of all these 
 changes in the character and methods of institutions for 
 children, a number of the most serious disadvantages are 
 minimized if not entirely eliminated. To overcome the 
 physical inferiority of dependent children, a better and 
 more abundant diet is provided, and the cooperation of the 
 child himself is enlisted to make of himself a fine animal. 
 To develop and use the play instinct, playhouses, individual 
 toys and amusements, space, freedom, and raw materials of 
 play are provided. To inculcate honesty, thrift, and adapta- 
 bility, industrial training is given, not of the factory type, 
 but as Mr. Reeder denominates it, — "of the old-fashioned, 
 home-making, sustaining, bread-winning kind." In the 
 New York Orphan Asylum it includes housekeeping, cook- 
 ing, sewing, dining-room service, chamber ' service, laundry 
 work, manual training, gardening, poultry raising, and flori- 
 culture. Methods similar to those in the normal home have 
 been devised for teaching children how to earn money, to 
 save money, and how to spend money and give money wisely. 
 The system of education employs as its basis the materials 
 
 1 Articles in Charities, vols. xiii. to xvii. See indices under title, 
 " To Country and Cottage." Instances of other institutions will be found 
 in Charities, vol. xiv., p. 647; vol. xvii., pp. 291, 324.
 
 286 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 and experience of the child outside the class room. In short, 
 the aim is to supplant the mechanical, impersonal, and 
 suppressive system with one founded upon the ideal of a 
 normal home; one which offers "a rich, full, free, natural, 
 individual life" and so prepares for life.^ 
 
 Over against the institution plan of caring for dependent 
 children is the system of placing them in private families. 
 There are two tolerably distinct forms of this work. In 
 one, the children are sent to a great distance, and given but 
 little subsequent supervision — that is, they are" emigrated"; 
 in the other they are placed within easy reach of the agency 
 having them in charge, and are systematically and con- 
 stantly supervised. 
 
 From London a large number of children have been sent 
 to the colonies. The emigration bureau, operating in con- 
 nection with Dr. Barnardo's Homes in Canada, drops the 
 child amid new surroundings, as carefully as may be con- 
 venient, and then keeps only so much track of him as is 
 necessary to show contributors or others that a goodly pro- 
 portion of cases turn out well. The child is simply given 
 one more chance to sink or swim. It is found that foster 
 parents are more readily obtained for children coming from 
 a distance, probably because it is less likely that the natural 
 parents will reclaim them. 
 
 Aside from the obvious difficulties attending the protec- 
 tion of children at such distance from the supervising 
 society, there are more fundamental objections made to this 
 form of placing-out. Professor Devine points out that it 
 is an attempt to transfer the b^^rden of dependency from 
 the cities to agricultural communities. Several States have 
 passed laws regulating the placing-out of children by 
 foreign societies or non-residents. There is an increasing 
 sentiment toward making each community carry its own 
 economic and social burdens, and in this respect the board- 
 1 Reeder, N. C. C., 1907, pp. 265-274.
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 287 
 
 ing-out is far more just than the placing-out system. Pro- 
 fessor Devine further urges that all forms of placing-out 
 ignore the need of high professional skill. The care of 
 dependent children is manifestly more difficult than of chil- 
 dren in normal family relations ; and in the case of children 
 who are physically weak or defective or morally perverted, 
 the good institution may succeed better than any foster 
 parents are likely to do.^ 
 
 In the United States the greatest agency for emigrating 
 children to the West has been the Children's Aid Society of 
 Kew York, founded by Charles L. Brace in 1853. Up to 
 1892 they had emigrated 81,318 children, of whom 51,427 
 were boys and 32,891 were girls. Some of these were not 
 sent to a great distance, nearly 39,000 of them being placed 
 in the State of New York, 4149 in New Jersey, etc. The 
 Western States receiving the largest number were Illinois, 
 to which 7366 were sent ; Iowa, 4852 ; Missouri, 4835 ; 
 Indiana, 3782 ; Kansas, 3310; Michigan, 2900 ; Minnesota, 
 2448.^ The work of this society very well illustrates the 
 advantages and the limitation of the emigration plan. The 
 earliest groups were taken to these Western States at slight 
 expense, given over to families without investigation, and 
 scarcely supervised at all ; many of the boys were over 
 fourteen, and in consequence o# these careless and unwise 
 methods the results Avere unsatisfactory. As the cost of 
 following up these children in such numbers would have 
 been prohibitive, they were, for the most part, lost sight of, 
 and severe criticism of the society followed. 
 
 Since about 1890 the society has pursued a policy of 
 emigrating fewer children and supervising them more care- 
 fully. In 1906, 718 orphan or deserted children were 
 
 1 Devine, " Principles of Relief," pp. 113 ff. 
 
 2 " History of Child Saving," p. 30. See also pamphlet published by 
 the Society, 1893, "The Children's Aid Society of New York, its History, 
 Plan, and Results," and Hart, N. C. C, 1884, pp. 149-150.
 
 288 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 placed out and 1889 younger children, established in homes 
 in former years, were under the supervision of two officers 
 and eleven agents, at a total cost of f 37,000.^ 
 
 The placing-out system, properly so called, — that is, the 
 placing of children where they are easily accessible to the 
 agency responsible for them, — has been practised for a 
 long time by the officers of the Poor Law Unions of Eng- 
 land and of American towns and counties. Children were 
 simply kept in the almshouses until old enough so that 
 somebody would take them. Mr. Folks, in writing of this 
 system of disposing of pauper children, says that in the 
 third quarter of the nineteenth century the almshouses and 
 orphanages made more or less use of indenture, adoption, 
 or placing-out ; many children were bound out at twelve 
 or fourteen years of age. There was no adequate inquiry 
 into the circumstances of the persons receiving them, nor 
 any system of subseqiient oversight. This was, of course, 
 placing-out at its worst. ^ 
 
 Placing-out in its later and more carefully guarded form 
 has been carried to satisfactory results by such public insti- 
 tutions as the State Board of Charity in Massachusetts and 
 the State School for Dependent Children at Coldwater, 
 Michigan, and by such private associations as the Chil- 
 dren's Aid Society of Massachusetts and the Children's Aid 
 Society of Pennsylvania. With such agencies as these it is 
 carried on by trained persons and with every precaution to 
 guard the welfare of the child. There is ordinarily a cen- 
 tral society, sometimes assisted by a county committee, 
 which receives children from the overseers or directors of 
 the poor or from others. Some societies keep the child a 
 short time in a temporary home to study him and to 
 prepare him for the family to which he is to be sent. Fre- 
 quently they are placed in the county where they become 
 
 1 Ajinual Report, 190G. 
 
 2 " Care of Depeudeut Children," etc., pp. 64-65.
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 289 
 
 dependent ; but when the children are particularly trouble- 
 some, or relatives interfere, or the family name is un- 
 favorably known in the locality, the main office often 
 removes the child to a distant part of the State or to an 
 adjoining State. The work of the main office is conducted 
 under the supervision of the managers by a corps of salaried 
 officials. One assistant may give her whole time to the 
 problem of homeless mothers with young children, provid- 
 ing for them service places to which they can take their 
 children. Several expert workers are travelling almost 
 constantly, investigating families who have applied for 
 children, visiting children who have been placed out, or 
 taking children to and from their homes. 
 
 Much attention is given to the elaboration of the details 
 of administration, in order to throw about the work every 
 possible safeguard. The investigation of a family is sys- 
 tematic and exhaustive, and is carefully recorded. The 
 applicant fills out a blank containing many questions relat- 
 ing to the various phases of the family life, as church 
 relations, distance from school, size of farm, occupation, 
 number of members of family, with their ages, etc. A study 
 of this return usually reveals the real motive of the applica- 
 tioD, and gives the data for an opinion as to the material 
 fitness of the family. Their moral fitness is ascertained by 
 sending a list of questions to several of the neighbors, stat- 
 ing that their replies are confidential, and that the appeal 
 to them is not known to the applicant. A personal visit 
 completes the investigation. After the child is placed out, 
 his welfare is ascertained and protected by from one to five 
 personal and unannounced visits each year, by a monthly 
 report from the teacher of the public schools, and a 
 quarterly report from the pastor. The agreement is per- 
 fectly flexible, and subject to change from year to year to 
 suit the circumstances of each individual case. 
 
 Massachusetts and Michigan are the two States whose
 
 290 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 public officials have done especially notable work in plac- 
 ing-out. In Massachusetts the system combines boarding- 
 out and free placing-out, without any institutions except 
 temporaiy homes for reception of children for a very short 
 time, and two industrial institutions for older delinquents. 
 The system is elaborately guarded, has a large complement 
 of trained workers, and its results have been remarkable. 
 A comparison of the numbers cared for at successive peri- 
 ods will show the growth and tendencies of the present 
 system. 
 
 TABLE LX. 
 
 Distribution of State Minor Wards* 
 
 
 1S66. 
 
 1S90. 
 
 1900. 
 
 State Hospital 
 
 State Farm 
 
 178 
 66 
 466 
 332 
 137 
 259 
 
 14:J7 
 628 
 
 37 
 
 336 
 
 185 
 97 
 
 72 
 
 299 
 187 
 
 State Primary School 
 
 Lyman School 
 
 State Industrial School 
 
 School Ship 
 
 Total 
 
 655 
 1046 
 
 274 
 
 558 
 1691 
 1493 
 
 In Families without Board 
 
 In Families with Board 
 
 Aggregate 
 
 Percentage of Whole Number : 
 
 In Institutions 
 
 
 2065 
 
 70. 
 30. 
 
 1975 
 
 33. 
 63. 
 14. 
 
 3742 
 
 15. 
 46. 
 40. 
 
 In Families without Board 
 
 In Families with Board 
 
 ♦Report State Board of Charity, 1901, p. 41; Folks, "Care of Dependent Chil- 
 dren," etc., pp. 150 flf. 
 
 It will be seen from this digest that only 15 per cent of 
 3742 dependent children in Massachusetts are in institu- 
 tions, 45 per cent in families without board, and 40 per cent 
 in families with board. In general, where boarding-out is 
 combined with free placing, as in Pennsylvania by the Chil-
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 291 
 
 dren's Aid Society and in Massachusetts by public officials, 
 the children under twelve are first placed with payment of 
 board. In a majority of cases they are kept in these homes 
 free as they grow older, sometimes with payment of wages, 
 but still under the constant supervision and protection of 
 the authority which placed them. 
 
 Another successful form of placing-out by public officials 
 is practised in Michigan. Its central idea is a State Public 
 School, which is a part of the educational system of the 
 State, under State supervision and support. It is neither 
 penal nor reformatory, but simply provides a temporary 
 educational home, where the child is prepared for placing 
 in a family. The methods of placing and supervision are 
 similar to those already described, and the results are 
 shown statistically in a statement made by the superin- 
 tendent in 1904. 
 
 Received since school opened, 1874 5471 
 
 In families on indenture June 1, 1904 1210 
 
 In families on trial 75 
 
 Placed in families and residence unknown for over one 
 
 year 30 
 
 Total from whom reports are to be obtained .... 1315 
 
 Remaining in institution June 1, 1904 171 
 
 Total present wards of the school 1486 
 
 Returned to counties by order of the board 675 
 
 Died in families and in the school 197 
 
 Adopted 603 
 
 Have become of legal age 348 
 
 Girls married 178 
 
 Have been restored to parents 583 
 
 Have become self-supporting 1406 
 
 5471 5471* 
 
 * N. C. C, 1904, pp. 320 flf. 
 
 Mr. Folks has said that this system is the distinctively 
 American contribution to public systems of child-saving 
 work. It is extraordinarily economical, shows no signs of
 
 292 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 unduly increasing the numbers of dependent children, and 
 has the advantage of centralized State administration. The 
 only serious objections urged against it are its liability to 
 the influence of partisan politics and the fact that it checks 
 the development of private charity in this direction. It 
 does not appear from the history of Michigan and of the 
 several States which have copied the system — particularly 
 Minnesota and Wisconsin — that politics are more rife than 
 in private institutions. As for private charity, there will 
 remain enough channels for its development, and after all 
 the restoration of the child to self-support and self-respect 
 in the community is the test of the method. 
 
 An early form of child-care, which originated in the effort 
 to take children out of almshouses, is the County Children's 
 Home system, which arose in Ohio in 1866 and was copied 
 in Indiana and Connecticut. About half the counties in 
 Ohio maintain county homes, and more than 25,000 children 
 have stayed in them an average of three years each. Orig- 
 inally it was intended that they should be placed out as 
 soon as possible, but probably not more than one-third have 
 been so provided for. No careful statistics of placing or 
 supervision have been kept. On the whole, this method 
 appears to have secured very few if any of the advantages 
 of the cottage-institution or the placing-out features, and 
 totally lacks the advantage of centralized administration. 
 
 The system of public support in private institutions will 
 be discussed in the chapter on Subsidies. It is sufficient 
 here to say that as heretofore practised — especially in 
 California and New York — it is the most expensive, the 
 least guarded, and, judged by the return of the children to 
 self-support in the community, the least satisfactory of all. 
 In New York it has recently been reformed so as to check 
 its worst abuses, but it is distinctly " on trial " in the 
 States where it prevails, and must be greatly modified if it 
 is not to be superseded in the coming generation. The
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 
 
 293 
 
 Census of Benevolent Institutions in 1904 furnishes a crude 
 measure of the results of the systems which have been dis- 
 cussed. Less than half the States have a definite system of 
 public child-care, and eighteen have none at all. 
 
 TABLE LXI. 
 
 Public Systems of Child-cake.* 
 
 Children in Orphanages and Homes, per 100,000 of the Population, 
 Dec. 31, 1904. 
 
 
 No. PER 
 
 
 No. PER 
 
 System. 
 
 100,000 
 
 OP 
 
 System. 
 
 100,000 
 
 OF 
 
 
 POPITLATION. 
 
 
 Population. 
 
 Public Support in 
 
 
 State School and 
 
 
 Private Institutions : 
 
 
 Placing-out : 
 
 
 New York . . 
 
 317.3 
 
 Michigan . . . 
 
 65.6 
 
 California . . . 
 
 290.8 
 
 Minnesota . . 
 
 62.4 
 
 Maryland . . . 
 
 172.5 
 
 "Wisconsin . . 
 
 57.2 
 
 District of Colum- 
 
 
 Rhode Island . 
 
 161.4 
 
 bia .... 
 
 321.4 
 
 Kansas . . . 
 
 38.1 
 
 County Homes : 
 
 
 Colorado . , . 
 
 108.8 
 
 Ohio .... 
 
 175.1 
 
 Nebraska . . 
 
 36.8 
 
 Indiana , . . 
 
 110.1 
 
 Montana . . . 
 
 114.7 
 
 Connecticut . . 
 
 188.1 
 
 Texas .... 
 
 31.0 
 
 Boarding and 
 
 
 
 
 Placing-out : 
 
 
 
 
 Massachusetts . 
 
 129.0 
 
 
 
 Pennsylvania 
 
 153.6 
 
 
 
 New Jersey . . 
 
 124.6 
 
 
 
 ♦Systems from Folks, "Dependent Children," etc., 1902; figures from Census 
 (1904), "Benevolent Institutions," p. 29. Illinois, Missouri, and Washington have a 
 mixed system ; Delaware, North Carolina, Maine, Oregon, and New Hampshire ap- 
 propriate gross amounts, a method allied to public subsidy, and the remaining States 
 have no system. 
 
 Since other factors besides the mere system help to deter- 
 mine the number of children dependent on public care, too 
 much emphasis should not be laid on the contrasts in these
 
 294 AMERICAN CIIABITIES. 
 
 figures. But the general inference that the number of de- 
 pendent children in proportion to the population is a measure 
 of the success of the system is justified by the opinions of 
 the foremost workers in this field. By this standard the 
 system of placing in families, either from a State school or 
 of boarding and placing from temporary shelters, gives the 
 best results, and the public contract system the poorest. 
 
 In 1906 the Standing Committee on Children of the Na- 
 tional Conference of Charities and Corrections formulated a 
 " consensus of opinion " on this subject. The substantial 
 agreement reached among those who have studied the child 
 problem is stated briefly.^ 
 
 1. Every reasonable effort should be made to repair 
 breaches and defects in the home before breaking up the 
 family relation. 
 
 2. Institutional care of healthy, normal children for long 
 periods is objectionable ; it should be a temporary expedi- 
 ent, to afford training preparatory to family life or physical 
 renovation through surgery, medicine, or diet, or to assist 
 parents in temporary distress. 
 
 3. Institutional care for educational purposes is necessary 
 for a portion of the deaf and blind, and for a portion of the 
 delinquent children. 
 
 4. Permanent institutional care all through life is desir- 
 able for feeble-minded, epileptic, and cei'tain crippled, de- 
 formed, or otherwise incurable children. 
 
 5. The selected family home of foster parents is the best 
 substitute for the natural home; it may be used either as a 
 boarding home, or a free home under close supervision, or 
 as an adoptive home. It is universally agreed that the 
 placing-out system demands the utmost care in selecting 
 homes and constant oversight in order to prevent children 
 from being neglected or abused. 
 
 6. There is a growing sentiment in favor of public super- 
 
 ^ A digest rather thau a direct quotation.
 
 DEPENDENT CHILDREN. 295 
 
 vision of the placing-out work of private agencies, which has 
 taken the form of law in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, 
 Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and other States. 
 
 7. Small institutions are at a great disadvantage in plac- 
 ing children in families, owing to the expense and may do 
 their work through reliable placing-out agencies. 
 
 On the whole, the placing-out system deserves the commen- 
 dation it has received from the most advanced specialists. 
 If administered '' with an adequate supply of eternal vigi- 
 lance," it is economical, kindly, and efficient. If badly 
 administered, it leads to very obvious abuses ; but at its 
 best it is the best system. 
 
 It seems probable that the institutions which have been 
 occupied in rearing all kinds of children will gradually be 
 used for special classes of defectives and incapables, and as 
 technical and industrial schools for older children. On the 
 other hand, the " emigration " of children and the losing of 
 them without responsibility, control, or protection, which 
 characterized the earlier methods of placing out, will not be 
 tolerated, but will be replaced by a system of strict account- 
 ability and expert agencies. Already in five cities there are 
 bureaus of information where trained service can be had in 
 the diagnosis of the case of any needy child, and the best 
 information and advice for the asking.^ In the conclusion 
 of this chapter, attention should be called to the fact that it 
 is less in child-caring than in child-saving work that really 
 helpful results are to be found. Newsboys' lodging-houses, 
 industrial schools, reading rooms, home libraries, settlement 
 clubs, and the countless agencies for benefiting the street 
 child, carried on by a variety of organizations, are doing the 
 work of prevention.^ The same is true of the societies for 
 
 1 Report Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity, 1907, p. 22 ; Pear, 
 N. C. C, 1907. 
 
 2 See especially reports of New York Children's Aid Society and Massa- 
 chusetts Children's Aid Society.
 
 296 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 the protection of cliildren from cruelty and immorality ; and, 
 as we have already noted, specialist organizations should be 
 called in to classify and assign to the proper child-caring 
 agency the children that are to be dependent. It is to these 
 classes of organizations also that we must look for help in 
 the proper discharge of children from dependency ; and it 
 is especially to them that we look for a system of socio- 
 logical bookkeeping that will enable us to tell with definite- 
 ness what is being accomplished, — how the children "turn 
 out." There is no better fund of raw material for sociolog- 
 ical study than the records of the children's aid societies 
 and other advanced child-caring agencies of the United 
 States.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE DESTITUTE SICK. 
 
 Within the past thirty years the hospitals of the country 
 have had a very rapid development, coming in part from 
 the influx of foreign population accustomed to seek hospi- 
 tal service, in part from the increasing density of popula- 
 tion, but very largely, without doubt, from the increased 
 efficiency of the hospitals. Formerly a hospital was re- 
 garded as a place that every one should stay away from if 
 he could. It was a place where the shattered wrecks of 
 armies must be taken, where the homeless stranger must 
 seek refuge if overtaken by sickness, and where the ab- 
 jectly destitute must necessarily be cared for. But of late 
 the improvements in medical art, and especially in surgical 
 processes, have enabled hospitals to render better service 
 than can be given even in the homes of the well-to-do ; 
 and, as a consequence, there has been a greatly increased 
 demand for accommodations for pay patients, and with the 
 growth of every hospital has come also the growth of free 
 wards. The increase in the number of free beds and the 
 increase in efficiency have rendered the poorer classes less 
 disinclined to seek refuge in the hospital, and especially to 
 resort for free consultation and medicine to the dispensaries. 
 
 Table LXII. (p. 298), from the Federal Census of 1904, 
 gives a summary of the hospitals of a distinctly benevolent 
 character and of the proportion of persons admitted during 
 the year, per 100,000 of population. Since all institutions 
 conducted for private profit have been omitted, the table 
 does not by any means indicate the full extent of existing 
 hospital facilities. 
 
 297
 
 298 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 TABLE LXII. 
 Hospitals in the United States.* 
 
 S lATB OR Territory. 
 
 United States 
 
 Alabama .... 
 
 Arizona 
 
 Arkansas .... 
 California .... 
 Colorado .... 
 Connecticut . . . 
 Delaware .... 
 District of Columbia 
 Florida 
 
 Georgia. . . . 
 Idaho . . . . 
 Illinois . . . . 
 Indian Territory 
 Indiana . . . . 
 Iowa 
 
 Kansas . . . . 
 
 Kentucky . . . 
 
 Louisiana . . . 
 
 Maine . . . . 
 
 Maryland . . . 
 
 Massachusetts . 
 
 Michigan . . . 
 
 Minnesota . . . 
 
 Mississippi . . 
 
 Missouri . . . 
 
 Montana . . . 
 
 Nebraska . . . 
 
 Nevada . . . 
 New Hampshire 
 
 New Jersey . . 
 
 New Mexico . . 
 
 New York . . 
 
 North Carolina . 
 North Dakota 
 
 Ohio 
 
 Oklahoma . . . 
 
 Oregon . . . . 
 
 Pennsylvania . . 
 
 Khode Island . . 
 
 South Carolina . 
 South Dakota 
 
 Tennessee . . . 
 
 Texas . . . . 
 
 Utah . . . . 
 
 Vermont . . . 
 
 Virginia . . . 
 
 Wa.shington . . 
 
 West Virginia . 
 
 Wisconsin . . . 
 
 Wyoming . . . 
 
 
 9 
 10 
 13 
 50 
 32 
 21 
 
 3 
 13 
 IT 
 IT 
 
 6 
 105 
 
 2 
 31 
 41 
 23 
 29 
 10 
 12 
 32 
 93 
 59 
 41 
 
 6 
 55 
 16 
 IT 
 
 19 
 48 
 11 
 194 
 21 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 145 
 
 9 
 
 8 
 
 8 
 
 13 
 
 31 
 
 T 
 
 9 
 
 19 
 
 28 
 
 20 
 
 43 
 
 Number of 
 Patients 
 
 Admitted 
 
 during 
 
 1904. 
 
 1,064,512 
 
 4,591 
 
 2,22T 
 
 8,124 
 
 48,506 
 
 13,140 
 
 17,708 
 
 9S8 
 
 15,589 
 
 1,786 
 
 7,333 
 
 1,494 
 
 85,601 
 
 905 
 
 11,136 
 
 13,985 
 
 9,136 
 
 11,209 
 
 19,912 
 
 6,2T4 
 
 23,435 
 
 73,485 
 
 21,784 
 
 22,633 
 
 2,372 
 
 50,014 
 
 5,270 
 
 6,463 
 
 3,792 
 38,345 
 
 2,177 
 
 246,520 
 
 4,110 
 
 2,036 
 
 51,997 
 
 (a) 
 
 5,945 
 
 124,007 
 
 9,249 
 
 1,211 
 
 1,669 
 
 10,628 
 
 22,356 
 
 3,359 
 
 2,990 
 
 13,936 
 
 13,110 
 
 6,216 
 
 19,718 
 
 991 
 
 Remain- 
 ing Dec. 
 31, 1904. 
 
 71,530 
 
 211 
 
 1.58 
 
 257 
 
 2,897 
 
 1,176 
 
 759 
 
 52 
 
 717 
 
 176 
 
 338 
 
 111 
 
 5,344 
 
 87 
 
 813 
 
 876 
 
 665 
 
 878 
 
 1,042 
 
 405 
 
 1,621 
 
 4,450 
 
 1,269 
 
 1,492 
 
 1.52 
 
 2,946 
 
 460 
 
 426 
 
 '2*29 
 
 2,372 
 
 685 
 
 15,668 
 
 227 
 
 117 
 
 5,523 
 
 («) 
 
 365 
 
 11,261 
 
 402 
 
 120 
 
 98 
 448 
 823 
 172 
 140 
 536 
 993 
 369 
 1,223 
 
 66 
 
 Number of Patients peii 
 100,000 OF Population 
 
 Admitted dur- 
 ing 1904. 
 
 1,309.3 
 
 234.5 
 
 1,660.9 
 
 225.3 
 
 3,039.8 
 
 2,222.1 
 
 1,816.9 
 
 516.8 
 
 5,223.8 
 
 305.5 
 
 309.3 
 
 779.5 
 
 1,637.4 
 
 189. 1 
 
 420.4 
 
 592.0 
 
 614.1 
 
 494.9 
 
 1,337.2 
 
 886.0 
 
 1,878.5 
 
 2,420.0 
 
 860.2 
 
 1,171.8 
 
 143.1 
 
 1,524.3 
 
 1,853.5 
 
 605.3 
 
 '890'.3 
 1,858.9 
 1,038.6 
 3,166.8 
 
 204.8 
 
 548.1 
 
 1,193.8 
 
 (a) 
 
 1,313.3 
 
 1,843.0 
 
 1,999.9 
 
 85.4 
 
 894.4 
 
 500.4 
 
 601.8 
 
 1,106.1 
 
 85S.6 
 
 720.2 
 
 2,245.7 
 
 59S.4 
 
 887.2 
 
 945.9 
 
 * Census, " Benevolent Institutions," 1904, p. 32. (o) Not reported.
 
 THE DESTITUTE SICK. 299 
 
 It would be misleading to draw conclusions from the 
 mere numbers of hospitals and hospital inmates as here 
 presented, since one particular institution may do better 
 work than several smaller ones in a given community, or 
 vice versa. The variations as between States point to the 
 greater needs of urban districts on the one hand and, on the 
 other, to the different degrees of charitable development. 
 It is evident that in many instances hospital facilities are 
 not proportioned to the needs of the locality. In a very 
 general way, the fact that, of two States very similar as to 
 general conditions, one shows a ratio of admissions twice as 
 large as the other, may be taken in most cases to mean that 
 in the one, hospital facilities are proportionately more ample. 
 
 Table LXIII. (p. 300) shows the proportion of the cost of 
 maintenance borne by public taxation, by private charity, 
 and by pay patients. 
 
 It is apparent that the burden of support is distributed 
 very unequally. Six States, — New York, Pennsylvania, 
 Massachusetts, Illinois, California, and Ohio, — containing 
 about 35 per cent of the total population of the country, 
 contribute over eighteen million dollars, or about two-thirds 
 of the cost ; twenty-one other States, containing about the 
 same percentage of population, spend only six millions.^ 
 Five States, — Missouri, New Jersey, Maryland, Minnesota, 
 and Michigan, — comprising 13.6 per cent of population, 
 pay 13.5 per cent of the cost of hospitals ; while the re- 
 maining 17 States, containing 15.5 per cent of the popula- 
 tion, pay only 3.5 per cent of this public burden. 
 
 The total amount received by hospitals from public sub- 
 sidies constituted 18 per cent on the average of the cost of 
 maintenance. The commonwealths granting subsidies of 
 
 1 Conuecticut, Colorado, Wisconsin, Texas, Iowa, Montana, Washington, 
 District of Columbia, New Mexico, Louisiana, Indiana, Kentucky, Rhode 
 Island, Maine, Kansas, Nebraska, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, West 
 Virginia, New Hampshire.
 
 300 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 TABLE LXIII. 
 Hospitals: Cost and Solkces of Maintenance, 1903.* 
 
 State or Teeritobt. 
 
 Cost of 
 
 Maintenance, 
 
 1903. 
 
 Annual Sub- 
 sidies FROM 
 
 Public 
 
 Funds. 1903. 
 
 Per Cent 
 
 OF Cost op 
 
 Maintenance 
 
 United States 
 
 $2S,200,SC9 
 
 18.1 
 
 Alabama . 
 
 Arizona 
 
 Arkansas . 
 
 California . 
 
 Colorado . 
 
 Connecticut 
 
 Delaware . 
 
 District of Columbia 
 
 Florida 
 
 Georgia 
 
 Idaho .... 
 
 Illinois 
 
 Indian Territory . 
 
 Indiana 
 
 Iowa .... 
 
 Kansas 
 
 Kentucky . 
 
 Louisiana . 
 
 Maine .... 
 
 Maryland . 
 
 Massachusetts 
 
 Michigan . 
 
 Minnesota . 
 
 Mississippi 
 
 Missouri . 
 
 Montana . 
 
 Nebraska . 
 
 Nevada 
 
 New Hampshire . 
 
 New Jersey 
 
 New Mexico . 
 
 New York 
 
 North Carolina 
 
 North Dakota . 
 
 Ohio .... 
 
 Oklahoma . 
 
 Oregon 
 
 Pennsylvania . 
 
 Rhode Island . 
 
 South Carolina 
 
 South Dakota . 
 
 Tennessee . 
 
 Tex.as .... 
 
 Utah .... 
 
 Vermont . 
 
 Virginia 
 
 Washington 
 
 West Virginia . 
 
 Wisconsin . 
 
 Wyoming . 
 
 76,706 
 
 90,436 
 
 52,070 
 
 1,450,123 
 
 459,970 
 
 464,037 
 
 28,484 
 291,222 
 
 69,318 
 152,017 
 
 33,907 
 2,165,847 
 
 14,547 
 255,821 
 843,956 
 184,387 
 253,487 
 260,345 
 231,640 
 719,921 
 2,702,646 
 624,343 
 633,076 
 
 31,872 
 919,865 
 800,359 
 175,078 
 
 116;2b7 
 
 801,529 
 
 208,661 
 
 6,732,983 
 
 94,911 
 
 48,154 
 
 1,423,245 
 
 4,105 
 
 72,058 
 
 8,637,671 
 
 234,044 
 
 54,349 
 
 54,313 
 
 150,073 
 
 352,416 
 
 76,626 
 
 68,914 
 
 174,921 
 
 299,460 
 
 130,761 
 
 392,339 
 
 27,049 
 
 17.8 
 
 12.4 
 3.9 
 0.0 
 0.8 
 
 20.1 
 1.8 
 
 33.4 
 2.0 
 
 22.3 
 
 I'.i 
 
 '2.6 
 2.1 
 2.5 
 4.7 
 8.9 
 
 14.3 
 
 17.5 
 2.7 
 2.0 
 0.5 
 
 10.8 
 0.9 
 2.8 
 10 
 
 "7.4 
 12.4 
 3.8 
 10.6 
 24.5 
 
 "1.9 
 
 1.4 
 
 20.0 
 16.4 
 1.8 
 0.9 
 
 '2.6 
 
 '7.7 
 5.5 
 8.3 
 4.6 
 0.6 
 1.3 
 
 * Census, "Benevolent Institutions," 1904, pp. 36-36.
 
 THE DESTITUTE SICK. 301 
 
 more than 18 per cent were the District of Columbia (33.4), 
 North Carolina (24.5), Georgia (22.3), Connecticut and 
 Pennsylvania (each 20.0). The total amount received from 
 pay patients constituted 43.2 per cent of the cost of main- 
 tenance. In 24 States, including some doing the largest 
 hospital work, as New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, 
 Ohio, etc., such income was less than half the total cost of 
 maintenance ; in 19 others it constituted from 50 to 80 per 
 cent; in Indian Territory, Nebraska, North Dakota, and 
 Oklahoma it was from 82 to 94 per cent ; and in Utah and 
 Oregon the income actually exceeded the cost, the percent- 
 ages being 11G.2 and 109.7.^ 
 
 Mr. John Koren, the expert census agent, remarks that 
 there is an apparent contradiction in describing hospitals as 
 benevolent institutions when the amount of money they 
 receive from pay patients is equal to or in excess of the 
 cost of maintenance ; but he points out that to a very large 
 extent the moneys termed income do not represent the 
 personal contributions of the patients or their relatives and 
 friends, but the amounts collected from the public authori- 
 ties legally responsible for their support. Furthermore, 
 the cost of maintenance as given does not include improve- 
 ments or general equipment, nor the services of many phy- 
 sicians and attendants, nor the endowments which may 
 have been the means of the original foundation, which, 
 taken together, would constitute a large item properly 
 termed benevolent. 
 
 The Special Census Report does not state how many of 
 the inmates of hospitals were indigents, and it would be a 
 task of great difficulty to find out how many of the beds 
 were really free to those filling them. There are those who 
 believe that eventually hospital service will be free to all 
 
 1 Table LXII. and Table LXIII. are condensed from those in the Special 
 Census Report on " Benevolent Institutions," 1904, and the conclusions aiQ 
 a brief digest of Mr. Keren's comments.
 
 302 AMEBIC AN CHARITIES. 
 
 willing to accept of it at public expense, just as for the 
 insane, hospital service or asylum care is now free to all 
 willing to accept of it in some States ; or as education, in- 
 cluding support, is free in many States to all defectives. 
 
 American hospitals are so careless in making up their 
 reports that it is frequently impossible to glean the facts 
 important in estimating their efficiency. The expenditures 
 per patient in a hospital are usually large for the small 
 institutions, and relatively small for the large institutions ; 
 but normally depend chiefly upon the character of the cases 
 treated, and especially whether the cases are chronic or 
 acute. It is therefore desirable that the following items 
 should find a place in the reports of a given hospital : — 
 
 1. The average daily number of patients, or the total 
 number of days' service rendered during the year. Many 
 hospital reports give the number of patients treated, but no 
 data to determine the average daily number of patients. 
 
 2. The number of different patients treated during the 
 year. 
 
 3. The longest time any one patient has remained in the 
 institution, and how many, if any, have been there during 
 the whole year. Also, the average length of time patients 
 remain. This is to indicate whether the hospital is serving 
 chronic or acute cases, an item of great importance in esti- 
 mating the proper cost. 
 
 4. The ratio of deaths to the whole number disposed of. 
 The death-rate is a thing about which competing institutions 
 wrangle a great deal. The ratio is frequently given to the 
 whole number of patients, which is not as fair as the method 
 just indicated. It is sometimes given to the number of days' 
 service rendered, which is meaningless, because many of the 
 cases may be chronic. But even when the death-rate is 
 given as suggested above, it may or may not indicate good 
 management of the hospital. Its significance is still am- 
 biguous, for it may be kept down by refusing to receive all
 
 THE DESTITUTE SICK. 303 
 
 cases where the prognosis is death. ^ This policy, except 
 possibly iu certain special institutions, is condeninable, be- 
 cause hospitals for the poor should be among other things 
 comfortable places for people to die in. The refusal of doc- 
 tors to perform operations that are dangerous, but are yet 
 in the interests of the patients, may also keep down the 
 death-rate, but does not indicate efficiency. 
 
 In a broad way the per capita cost of hospital service 
 should indicate the degree of efficiency ; but political in- 
 terference, in city and county hospitals especially, and 
 wasteful methods on the part of the management and the 
 medical staff, often result in high cost without correspond- 
 ing improvement of the service. In the United States, in 
 1903, the highest cost per capita was $2.25 at Johns Hop- 
 kins ; other hospitals having 200 or more beds ranged from 
 $2.18 to $1.68, and those having less than 200 beds, from 
 $1.90 to $1.24. The cost has been rapidly increasing in 
 recent years, owing to a general increase in the cost of liv- 
 ing, to improved methods of treatment, higher standards of 
 care, and better Avages for nurses. According to Professor 
 Henderson, the cost of hospital service has nearly doubled 
 since 1871." 
 
 Tlie primary motive operating to produce a multitude of 
 medical charities is sympathy with the poor to whom sick- 
 ness brings the menace of pauperism. But this elementary 
 emotion is reenforced by a number of subsidiary and more 
 selfish motives. Medical institutions usually serve a pur- 
 pose in the education of medical students and young physi- 
 cians, and almost invariably a purpose in building up the 
 reputation of the physicians and surgeons in charge of them. 
 
 1 Lord Cathcart remarks that moribund cases stand a doubtful chance, 
 or no chance, of being taken to the great voluntary hospitals of London. 
 " Hospitals," p. 13. 
 
 2 Burdett, "Hospitals," etc., p. 101; Henderson, "Modern Methods of 
 Charity," pp. 454-455.
 
 304 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 There are cases, indeed, where the gratuitous treatment of 
 all applicants has in it no element of charity, the clinic be- 
 ing worth more to the school than it costs. Advertisements 
 are frequently kept in the dailies of a large city, announcing 
 free dentistry to all who care to receive it. The person re- 
 sponding to such an advertisement will be attended to by a 
 student with more or less skill, under the guidance of the 
 professor in a school of dentistry ; and the opportunity of 
 educating the student is fully equivalent to the services ren- 
 dered. A lecturer or manager of a clinic of a medical school 
 sometimes pays a patient for the privilege of showing some 
 operation or disease to the class. This is not only free 
 treatment, but jjay is given for the privilege of treating. 
 
 Eeligious sentiment has played a considerable part in all 
 ages in the establishment of medical charities. In the 
 United States, of all hospitals under private management, 
 about one-third are under church control. Sometimes only 
 applicants of a particular faith are admitted; again the 
 medical charity has been maintained in order to propagate 
 the faith. It has been said that Peter Parker, in opening 
 the first hospital in China, opened China to the influences 
 of modern civilization at the point of a lancet. In modern 
 times, what might be termed the economic motive has actu- 
 ated the establishment of such charities in order to restore 
 the poor to self-support and to protect the public health.^ 
 
 Not less than four strong motives, therefore, contribute 
 to the development of medical charities, — the desire to 
 aid the destitute, to proselyte for some religious faith, to 
 educate students and build up medical reputations, and to 
 protect the public health. The latter has often been the 
 leading cause of public appropriations for medical charities. 
 A few hospitals decline to admit students to their advan- 
 tages ; but the uniform testimony of medical experts seems 
 
 1 On motives, etc., see Dr. Stepheu Smith, Charities Review, vol. viii., 
 1898, pp. 9 fE.
 
 THE DESTITUTE SICK. 305 
 
 to be that the teaching hospitals render better service than 
 the non-teaching institutions. 
 
 As the result of these powerful incentives, medical 
 charities are inevitably popular and tend to be prodigal and 
 indiscriminate. Dr. Stephen Smith said in 1898 that there 
 were in New York 5000 vacant beds in the institutions for 
 children. He showed that for more than half a century the 
 medical charities of New York City had treated about 16 
 per cent of the population as sick poor, but that in 1898 
 gratuitous medical relief was given to 45 per cent of the 
 population, — an amount far beyond the requirements of the 
 needy class. Those institutions established for the purpose 
 of teaching medicine or of propagating a religious doctrine 
 naturally do not make any systematic inquiry into the 
 financial condition of the applicants, and as a consequence 
 medical charity is more lavishly and indiscriminately given 
 than other forms of relief, and with the result that free 
 medical aid is often the beginning of pauperism.^ 
 
 English experience in this matter is very instructive. 
 The Medical Times has said : — 
 
 " The amount of gratuitous work done by the pi'ofession in no way 
 raises it in public estimation. It is well known that it is not performed 
 from motives of charity, but for the position that is gained by being 
 attached to a hospital staff, and the hope of a good practice accruing 
 therefrom." 
 
 The British Medical Jo^irnal asserted that hospitals com- 
 peted with each other as to the number of patients, without 
 regard to the fitness of the cases or the position of the 
 applicants. In the Children's Hospital of London, when 
 the rule was adopted of referring all applicants to the Charity 
 Organization Society, and where no patients were excluded 
 provided that the parents were making less than 30 shillings 
 a week, there was found an abuse rate of 57 per cent.^ 
 
 1 N. C. C, 1898, pp. 320 ff. ; see also Dr. J. J. Nutt in Charities, 
 vol. xiv., 1900, pp. 752 ff. 2 Rentoul, " Voluntary Medical Charities."
 
 306 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 In the United States the qualification for admission to a 
 hospital as such is disease ; for admission to a free bed, 
 there should be the additional qualification of destitution; 
 but this latter point is usually not insisted upon. The com- 
 petition of medical schools, and of individual institutions, is 
 usually so great that no one willing to put up with the 
 inconvenience, and to take the risks of free hospital treat- 
 ment, is refused. People enter hospitals as pay patients 
 only if they wish some special advantages or privileges. 
 That people are admitted to free beds without investigation 
 is especially true in those places where the private insti- 
 tutions admit patients for whom the municipality or county 
 pays the bills. This is the system in vogue in large cities 
 where the subsidy system obtains. 
 
 In some cities it is required that any one admitted to a 
 free bed at the expense of the State must secure a permit 
 either from the Health Department or the poor-law officers. 
 An agent of the Health Department goes through the hospi- 
 tal wards weekly or semi-monthly, to see what patients paid 
 for by the public can be properly discharged, or if chronic 
 cases can properly be remanded to the almshouse. The 
 city or the county pays a certain rate per week for the care 
 of patients which it sends to the various hospitals. 
 
 Two general types of hospital have been evolved in 
 America: the municipal, developed from the wards of alms- 
 houses, and the corporate, governed by an unsalaried board 
 of prominent citizens.^ The municipal hospital has, as a 
 rule, retained the low standards set by its origin and is 
 especially liable to the evils of political management, such 
 as were formerly illustrated in the Bellevue Hospital, New 
 York, Cook County Hospital, Illinois, and very recently in 
 the City and County Hospital of San Francisco. The 
 Corporate Hospital, while reaping all the advantages of 
 disinterested management and an eminent medical staff, 
 1 " Efficient Democracy," pp. 90 ff.
 
 THE DESTITUTE SICK. 307 
 
 suffers from what Mr. William Allen calls " the goodness 
 fallacy," — the fallacy that estimable gentlemen of wealth 
 and affairs are necessarily competent to run a highly com- 
 plex and technical philanthropy.^ Miss Maud Banfield, 
 in discussing hospital administration, complains that both 
 physicians and trustees think they know all about the 
 business without learning, and that as a consequence, 
 money is wasted and the patients suffer, and, in short, 
 that no large undertaking is conducted with so little 
 inspection.^ 
 
 The discussion of this and other serious defects of hospital 
 management was precipitated in New York City by the in- 
 creasing deficits of all the more conspicuous institutions. 
 Mr. Frank Tucker, in a study of the city hospitals in 1902, 
 stated that the deficits of twenty hospitals aggregated 
 $750,000 annually ; that work was being curtailed, and the 
 poor were suffering. Charges of extravagance followed and 
 were not answered by the hospitals. At a public meeting 
 in 1905, a committee was appointed to consider the subject 
 of hospital needs and finances, and made its final report in 
 1906.'' They recommended a system of uniform accounting, 
 to follow an intelligent classification of the various hospitals, 
 so that only the institutions which were fairly comparable 
 should be classed together. Meanwhile, four of the largest 
 general hospitals of the city had perfected a uniform system 
 of accounting which the Committee recommended should 
 be the basis of a system for all hospitals of their class. The 
 Committee urged further that an annual digest of all hospital 
 reports be published. The Subcommittee on Economics 
 submitted specific recommendations as to waste and means 
 of avoiding it, and the whole report closed with the follow- 
 ing statement : — 
 
 1 Hurd, '•Hospitals," etc. ; Charities Bevieio, vol. x., 1900, pp. 325 S. 
 
 2 Charities, etc., 1906, vol. xvi., p. 287, pp. 351 ff. 
 
 3 Am. Jour, of Soc, vol. xx., 1902, pp. 328.
 
 308 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 "They must not only know themselves what every item of service 
 costs ; but they must show the public that they know, and they must 
 enable the public also to know. It is the judgment of this Committee 
 that the hospitals themselves have it in their power, by moving along 
 this line, to tap sources of popular support that will be adequate to 
 any need. The value of uniform accounting, between hospitals of 
 the same class, for such a purpose, is, that it enables the friends 
 of every hospital to know not only when it is doing poorly, which 
 ought to be only a temporary condition, but also when it is doing well, 
 which ought to be the normal condition of every institution that aims 
 to serve the public." 
 
 Aside from the question of support, the matters of most 
 importance in hospital administration are the character of 
 the control and superintendence, and the relation of the hos- 
 pitals to the subscribing public. Whether hospitals should 
 be governed solely by trained medical men or by laymen of 
 business training has been much discussed; at the present 
 time both opinion and practice lean toward lay control.^ As 
 to the qualifications of a hospital superintendent, it is of far 
 more importance that he should be a skilled administrator, 
 with ample training, than that he should be a physician. 
 Too frequently the position is filled by some one who "just 
 happens along " and who has been trained neither in medi- 
 cine nor affairs. The general tendency toward the inspec- 
 tion of private as well as public charities is plainly growing 
 in tlie case of medical charity. Unquestionably, institutions 
 receiving public subscriptions should be subject to visitation 
 and supervision by State or municipal authority. Even in 
 the case of private hospitals not soliciting subscriptions, 
 they should be either licensed or supervised. Finally, the 
 situation evidently demands some check on the multiplication 
 of new hospitals in lines not required, and the diversion of 
 charitable impulse into channels where there is greater need.^ 
 
 1 Burdett, "Hospitals," etc., 1901, p. 69; Phila. Med. Jour., 1902, 
 April 5; Baufield, Am. Jour, of Soc, vol. xx., 1902, p. 33. 
 
 2 As, for instance, sanatoria for incipient tuberculosis and for con- 
 valescents.
 
 THE DESTITUTE SICK. 309 
 
 The dispensary is the most efficient engine of hospital 
 extension; and therefore, where we Irave competing institu- 
 tions, it is a department that develops first and fastest. In 
 1900 Dr. Hurd estimated the number of independent dis- 
 pensaries at 225, and those connected with hospitals and 
 medical schools at 250.^ The Special Census, taken in 1904, 
 however, gives only 156 independent charitable dispensaries, 
 of which two-thirds were found in California, Illinois, Mary- 
 land, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. Only 
 11 were maintained at public cost, 17 by churches, and the 
 remainder were under private control. In the 123 dispen- 
 saries reporting the number of patients, 1,611,651 persons 
 were treated, — an average for the whole country of 1982.3 
 per 100,000 of the whole population. The system has reached 
 its extreme development in New York City, where the ratio 
 of treatment is 10,848.5 per 100,000.^ 
 
 "Wherever a considerable number of dispensary cases are 
 investigated to ascertain whether or not the patients are 
 destitute, a tolerably high abuse rate is found. Some of 
 these, as ascertained in England, have already been given. 
 Dr. Savage gives the following account of certain investiga- 
 tions in New York City : — 
 
 " la the most attractive dispensary of the city, possessing an elegant 
 building, a complete equipment, and high-grade physicians, the patients 
 are largely of a class one might judge able to compensate a physician. 
 The Charity Organization investigated 1600 cases selected out of 
 35,000 applicants. The answer was that about one-fourth were able 
 to pay, another fourth had given a wrong address (possibly from an 
 aversion to its being known that they had applied for dispensary aid, 
 or because they resided out of the city) , and the remaining half were 
 recommended as worthy of medical charity by reason of poverty." ^ 
 
 This is a matter on which physicians differ widely, but 
 charity experts usually consider that this free medical service 
 
 1 Charities Review, vol. x., 1900, p. 410. 
 
 2 " Benevolent Institutions," pp. 36-39. 
 
 8 Billings and Hurd, " Hospitals," etc., note, p. 6'14, 1893.
 
 310 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 has a very bad effect xipon the applicants. The Charity 
 Organization Society of London has waged a long fight 
 against it. The Charity Organization Societies of the United 
 States have investigated cases whenever referred to them ; 
 but many hospitals do not want the cases investigated, — 
 they are glad to take all that come. Sir Morell Mackenzie 
 gave it as his opinion that the out-patient department of a 
 great hospital was the greatest pauperizing agency existing 
 in England ; while Lord Cathcart, who served on the Lords' 
 Committee on Hospitals, thought the effect not nearly as 
 bad as supposed, and that the matter had better be left to 
 limit itself. "The out-patient department, however well 
 managed," he said, "is a social test in itself, — the crowds, 
 long waits, unpleasant neighbors, crying and irritable chil- 
 dren. There is also some little risk of looking in with one 
 complaint and coming out with another." 
 
 To check the abuse of dispensary aid, the New York Dis- 
 pensary Law was passed in 1898. It provides that all dis- 
 pensaries shall be licensed by the State Board of Charities, 
 which has power to inspect and revoke licenses; patients 
 are obliged to sign a statement that they cannot pay, and a 
 false statement is a misdemeanor. The law appears to have 
 had a wholesome effect in limiting the number of dispensaries 
 to those for which need existed, in creating a system of uni- 
 form records, and in raising the standard of service ; but it 
 does not appear that it has had the effect of limiting the 
 service to the class for which it is primarily intended, that 
 is, to the sick poor.^ By law the dispensaries are required to 
 investigate only those applicants whose dress or speech indi- 
 cate that they could pay. 
 
 At the Massachusetts General Hospital an officer is charged 
 with the duty of visiting suspected persons at their homes 
 to ascertain the exact need of the family. In other dis- 
 pensaries, such investigations are made by the Charity 
 1 Charities, vol. xv., 1905, p. 109.
 
 THE DESTITUTE SICK. 311 
 
 Organization Society.^ Besides the abuse by persons able 
 to pay, there is often careless treatment on the part of 
 young and incompetent physicians in the crowded dispen- 
 saries, as well as a loss of practice to regular practi- 
 tioners. 
 
 A majority of dispensaries now charge a small fee for 
 medicines and for surgical dressings to those who are able 
 to pay it ; and it is believed the patients value what they 
 receive and are therefore more likely to benefit from it, than 
 when it is wholly gratuitous. There is much to be said in 
 favor of confining free medical aid to teaching institutions 
 where the patient gives as well as receives something ; and 
 the tendency appears to be to put medical relief on the same 
 basis as other material aid. But the cure of these abuses 
 can only be carried out with the cooperation of the attending 
 physicians themselves. 
 
 In England, provident dispensaries have been organized 
 to a considerable extent, at which, in consideration of the 
 deposit of a weekly or monthly sum, medical attendance and 
 medicine are provided. There has not been very much done 
 in the line of provident dispensaries in this country ; but 
 the various mutual benevolent orders, and the relief asso- 
 ciations of the railroads and some other corporations, pro- 
 vide medical attendance upon the payment of stated 
 contributions per month. There is a considerable class 
 of those who are poor but not pauper, patients who can- 
 not afford either the expense or the time to go to a hos- 
 pital, and often do not need to do so, and who are not 
 able to pay a fairly good physician. Young physicians 
 cannot afford, on the other hand, to give the necessary 
 medicines, bandages, etc. For this most important class 
 dispensaries and home nursing afford practicable relief. 
 
 American municipalities vary widely in the public pro- 
 vision which they make for sending medical relief to the 
 1 Hurd, " Dispensaries," Charities Review, vol. x., 1900, p. 410.
 
 312 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 destitute sick in their own homes. In some cities there are 
 ward physicians, or district physicians, or, as they are usually 
 called by the beneficiaries, "poor-doctors," who are paid from 
 $10 to $50 per month to respond to all calls for gratuitous 
 treatment. These positions are eagerly sought after by certain 
 junior members of the medical profession, and apparently 
 would be if no salary were paid at all. In cities like New 
 York, where there are no public phj'sicians to the poor, the 
 gap is filled by private benevolence, the large dispensaries, 
 and the gratuitous services of the medical profession. 
 
 Nursing as a form of medical and charitable service existed 
 before many of the other branches of these arts. Within 
 the last two or three decades it has had a new access of 
 usefulness through the advances in medicine and surgery, 
 and from the knowledge that has been obtained of the 
 sources of disease and the methods of antiseptic and aseptic 
 treatment, as well as in consequence of the cultivation of 
 nursing as a specialty. More than one-half of the hospitals 
 reporting in the Federal Census of 1904 conduct training 
 schools for nurses, and employ a total of 21,844 nurses in 
 the care of patients. 
 
 There are substantially three types of hospitals as far as 
 regards nursing : first, those with paid or " professional " 
 nurses ; second, those where the nursing is done by pupils 
 under trained supervision ; and third, those where the 
 nursing is done by members of the religious orders. In 
 certain hospitals, usually those under public management, 
 the nursing is done by persons who are paid a small 
 amount and keep their positions from year to year, or as 
 long as politics allow. This, on the whole, is a cheap 
 form of getting the service ; but the class of persons that 
 will work at this occupation continuously for a small salary 
 is distinctly poor ; and a hospital relying upon this system 
 drifts into the policy of employing inmates to do the nursing. 
 The nursing in an almshouse hospital is usually of this
 
 THE DESTITUTE SICK. 313 
 
 kind, more or less capable inmates being paid small amounts 
 to assume the responsibility and work of nurses. 
 
 The second method of securing the necessar}^ service is 
 by pupil nurses, serving a novitiate of two or three years, 
 and receiving only enough to support them. The nurses 
 may come in from an outside training school, or the train- 
 ing school may be a branch of the hospital administration. 
 In either case, the special work of nursing must be under 
 one experienced person, who has full control of the per- 
 sonnel of the nursing force, and is distinctly responsible 
 for this branch of the work. The system of pupil nursing 
 secures a much higher grade of applicants for positions ; 
 and while the necessity of continual!}^ dealing with new 
 nurses causes the medical officials to grumble from time 
 to time, yet most efficient service can be got by this 
 method if there is a sufficient force of trained head nurses. 
 
 So far as some of our large public hospitals are concerned, 
 the greatest blessing that has come from the introduction of 
 training-school nurses has been in the reaction upon the 
 general administration of the institutions, Bellevue Hos- 
 pital in New York City is the most conspicuous example of 
 such a reaction. During the year 1870 there were in the 
 hospital 1071 deaths, or 12.2 per cent of all patients treated. 
 In this 1071 deaths, there were 69 cases of hospital poisons, 
 or 6.44 per cent. In 1871, out of 376 confinements, there 
 were 33 deaths from puerperal fever, or 8.7 per cent of all 
 women confined. During the spring of 1874, puerperal fever 
 at Bellevue Hospital became epidemic, and reached the 
 height of nearly two deaths out of every five women de- 
 livered.^ In addition to the number of patients dying from 
 hospital poisons, there was also a large number of cases of 
 gangrene, erysipelas, exhaustion, etc., to which hospital 
 poisons may have been tributary. The nursing was done 
 
 1 Third Annual Report of New York State Charities Aid Association, 
 p. 23.
 
 314 AMERICAN CHABITIES. 
 
 largely by persons sent from the poorhouse or the house of 
 correction. The establishment of a training school in 1873 
 and the introduction of trained and pupil nurses, although 
 not the only force operating for reform, was a powerful one. 
 From the reformed institution have gone out, and go out 
 annually, women trained to the work of nursing, many of 
 whom are called to be head nurses and superintendents in 
 other institutions. 
 
 In the third class of hospitals the nursing is done by 
 members of the religious orders. Such institutions are usu- 
 ally owned by the orders themselves, and the Sister Superior 
 is at the head of the administration. They are frequently 
 subsidized by the municipalities ; but it is rare with us, 
 though common in Europe, for a religious order to be given 
 charge of the nursing in a public institution. 
 
 Physicians and surgeons, according to individual expe- 
 rience, vary in their estimates of the relative efficiency of 
 Sisters or other women as nurses. Some of the orders take 
 great pains in the training of their novices. It will be in- 
 teresting to see, as time goes on, whether persons of sufficient 
 intelligence and education to make the best modern nurses 
 will continue to enter the religious orders ; and, on the other 
 hand, whether " cash payment " and simple devotion to duty 
 will give the entire reliability which is needed in the nurse 
 at all times and places.-^ 
 
 Standing between the religious orders of the Catholic 
 Church and the paid nurses of the training school are the 
 orders of deaconesses of the Protestant denominations. 
 Their work is particularly for the poor. In this country 
 these orders have not as yet taken up hospital work to any 
 notable extent. They differ from the Catholic orders in 
 that the vows are taken for only a limited period of years, 
 
 1 For an account of the training of male and female nurses in the 
 Catholic orders, see Billings, " Hospitals," pp. 473-477. Dr. KoUen thinks 
 the religious orders make unrivalled nurses.
 
 THE DESTITUTE SICK. 315 
 
 and they may retain the title to private property, and do not 
 cut themselves off from their relatives. 
 
 The latest development in nursing work for the poor is 
 " district nursing," which is simply the gratuitous nursing 
 of the sick poor in their homes. Such care of the poor has 
 long been given by the Sisters of Charity and the Soeurs de ? 
 Bon Secours of the Catholic Church, who have attended to it 3 
 with devotion and unparalleled personal sympathy. In the -.^ 
 United States, salaried trained nurses to the poor were first _.^ 
 employed by the Woman's Branch of the New York City '^ 
 Mission and Tract Society in 1877. The district nurse "^ 
 ordinarily receives a monthly salary. She passes from home ^ 
 to home, doing what is necessary for the sick ; and the in- :^ 
 fluence of her example of cleanliness, order, and wise doing ^5 
 is frequently contagious. *^ 
 
 The following summary shows the growth of visiting '■«( 
 nursing work from 1877 to 1906 : — '^ 
 
 Associations in the United States 220 
 
 Localities having nursing associations 143 
 
 Total number of nurses 637 
 
 District nursing is constantly finding new differentiations. 
 There are nurses' settlements, such as the Henry Street 
 Settlement in New York, from which 48,235 visits were 
 made in 1905; a staff of 50 nurses in 1905 examined 1,351,083 
 school children, visited 40,070 tenements, and 25,943 schools 
 in New York. The first municipal nurse was employed in 
 Los Angeles, California, in 1898, to visit among the sick 
 poor. The New York Health Department in its campaign 
 against tuberculosis, was employing in 1906 nineteen nurses 
 to visit consumptives. In Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins 
 Nurses Alumnae Association furnishes hourly nursing at a 
 reasonable price; the Crerar fund, in the hands of the Illi- 
 nois Training School for Nurses, affords nursing in fami- 
 lies able to pay a part but not all the charges of a nurse. 
 

 
 316 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Recently several large industrial establishments and many 
 department stores have employed one or more nurses to 
 look after their employees at work and in their homes. 
 One of the most recent and useful developments of this 
 kind of work is rural nursing, such as that afforded by the 
 Country Settlement near Concord, ISTew Hampshire.-^ 
 
 This latest phase of medical charity illustrates the sacrifice 
 of the capable to the incapable, not merely for the care of 
 the sick and needy, but for the purpose of educating the 
 ignorant in hygiene and sanitation. The preventive and ed- 
 ucational aspects of visiting nursing are so important that 
 these highly trained women should not be permitted to make 
 too great a personal sacrifice. Nurses, especially pupil and 
 paid nurses, are frequently overworked, and the members 
 of religious orders also break down at an early age. The 
 death-rate among all classes of nurses is very high. It should 
 be seen to by those in authority that strong, capable women 
 are not killed off gratuitously by overwork which could be 
 avoided. The conditions of their lives must be as health- 
 giving and as health-preserving as possible; and whether 
 they are members of a religious order or the salaried servants 
 of a society, they must have opportunities of recruiting their 
 strength, and so of preserving their usefulness. Aside from 
 the development of certain lines of technical medical care 
 required for special classes of the destitute sick, the enlarge- 
 ment of the field of visiting nursing is unquestionably the 
 most promising aspect of medical charities, combining as 
 it does a highly necessary form of relief with rare oppor- 
 tunities for social alleviation and uplifting. 
 
 1 For various recent aspects of district nursing, see special number of 
 Chanties, etc., vol. xvi., 1906, No. 1.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 THE INSANE. 
 
 The amount of pauperism apparent in a community bears 
 a direct relation to the poor laws and their administration ; 
 but insanity, because it requires immediate attention and 
 institutional restraint, is not greatly affected in amount by 
 the absence or provision of proper care. In the United 
 States there were, in 1903, 150,151 insane persons in public 
 and private asylums, 11,807 in almshouses, and an unknown 
 number in private families. In 1880 there were enumerated 
 51,017 outside of hospitals as compared with 40,942 in 
 them ; and in 1890 only 32,457 outside, as compared with 
 94,028 in theui.^ In the census of 1903-1904 no attempt was 
 made to enumerate those outside of institutions, but it is 
 believed to be not less than in 1890. The number of hospi- 
 tals increased from 162 in 1890 (of which 119 were public 
 and 43 private) to 328 in 1900 (of which 226 were public 
 and 102 private). This increase may signify an increasing 
 ratio of insane in the population or merely an enlightened 
 public demand for proper hospital care of the mentally 
 sick. 
 
 Table LXIV. (pp. 318-319) shows the number and ratio 
 of insane in hospitals in 1880, 1890, and 1903 for each of 
 the United States. 
 
 Of the 49 States and Territories, only 8 show decreased 
 ratios in 1903 as compared with 1890 ; and if the number 
 outside of hospitals had been enumerated in 1903, there 
 would probably have been increased ratios for every State. 
 
 1 The enumeration in 1890 is known to have been less complete than in 
 1880. 
 
 317
 
 318 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
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 320 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Mr. John Koren, the special expert agent of the census, con- 
 cludes that making every allowance for other considerations, 
 the census returns permit but one conclusion, namely, that 
 the rate of increase is greater for the insane in the United 
 States than it is for the general population.^ Whether the 
 increase is due to an actual increase in insanity, or to a 
 greater accuracy in the enumeration, or to improved institu- 
 tional facilities which tend to increased use, it coincides with 
 the experience of foreign countries, and the best authorities 
 agree that there is an actual increase of insanity. 
 
 As between different States, the variation in ratios indi- 
 cates not so much the difference in the relative number of 
 the insane as the extent to which they have been segregated 
 from the rest o^ the population. New York, for instance, 
 has 166.4 more insane persons per 100,000 of population 
 than Pennsylvania. It may be that New York actually has 
 more insane, but this figure probably means that New York 
 provides for them much more fully than Pennsylvania. 
 This conclusion is borne out by the fact that in 1904 there 
 were 1888 insane persons in almshouses in Pennsylvania 
 and only 304 in New York.^ 
 
 Granting an increase, which experts seem to agree has 
 actually taken place, not only in the number of persons 
 classed as insane, but in the number actually suffering from 
 a diseased mental condition of given severity, the explana- 
 tions that are offered for this increase are many. 
 
 Mr. Koren says : — 
 
 " As the management of the public hospitals and the care afforded 
 patients have reached a higher standard, popular prejudice against 
 these institutions has diminished. Yet until comparatively recent 
 times the deep-rooted and often too well founded aversion to hospitals 
 for the insane was a sufficient factor to keep out of them all patients 
 who could be cared for in some other manner. The popular conception 
 of a hospital for the insane as a place of confinement for the abnormal 
 
 1 Special Report, " Insane," etc., 1904, p. 10. 2 JUJ^^ p. n.
 
 THE INSANE. 321 
 
 is rapidly giving way to the modern idea of a curative establishment 
 for the sick. Wise legislation has accelerated the influx to hospitals in 
 many places by segregating the criminal, incurable, and epileptic in- 
 sane and the feeble-minded from the others, by providing better safe- 
 guards in the matter of commitments, and in a few instances by pro- 
 hibiting the admission of insane persons to almshouses." 
 
 The humane treatment of the insane has tended to lessen 
 the death-rate among them. Gathered together into institu- 
 tions where the sanitation is good, as a rule, the food nour- 
 ishing, and the care watchful and kindly, there is a larger 
 quantity of life falling to the lot of the insane population 
 than would formerly have come to them. Their numbers 
 increase because each remains longer upon the scene. 
 
 Medical skill is learning to control many of the contagious 
 diseases and acute fevers. The consequent prolongation of 
 life, in the population as a whole, has tended to allow 
 larger numbers of comparatively weak constitutions to come 
 to the period of life Vt^hen degeneration of the nervous or 
 vascular system takes place. This is held to account in 
 part, not only for the increase in the number of the insane, 
 but also for the increased number of persons who die from 
 cancer and from diseases of degeneration. 
 
 The climatic influence of the country, wath sharp extremes 
 of heat and cold, and the dry atmosphere permitting rapid 
 evaporation from the body, is held by many physicians to 
 tend to the unbalancing of the nervous system. Dr. Pliny 
 Earle maintains that as civilization has advanced, and the 
 habits of the race have been consequently modified, disease 
 has left its strongholds iu the fleshy and muscular tissues 
 and at length seated itself in the nervous system. 
 
 The over-tension of modern life, which is spoken of by 
 some as if it were wholly responsible for the increase in the 
 number of the insane, has undoubtedly had much to do with 
 the increase in insanity. Especially among the more highly 
 organized individuals the burden which modern life puts
 
 322 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 upon the reasoning powers is out of all proportion to that 
 which was placed upon them a few decades ago. We chal- 
 lenge custom, we question our instincts, we are sceptical 
 where we used to have faith. In matters, for instance, such 
 as the relation of man to the church, and of the sexes to 
 each other, we now believe that reason should be constantly 
 compelled to act. We have put upon the minds of the pres- 
 ent generation great burdens, which those minds are not 
 sufficiently well developed and well organized to bear. 
 
 Another explanation that is frequently given is the great 
 amount of foreign immigration, and the character of the immi- 
 grants. A certain, or rather an uncertain, number of pau- 
 pers, lunatics, and imbeciles have undoubtedly been foisted 
 upon us by Europe. Besides this, the complete change of con- 
 ditions, climate, and associations might be expected to un- 
 settle the minds of foreigners coming to this country. But 
 the comparisons ordinarily made between native-born and 
 foreign-born insane, without reference to sex or age distri- 
 bution in the population, are entirely misleading. 
 
 Much lurid poetry and fiction have been produced, having 
 for their basis the unjust commitment of sane persons as 
 insane ; and, on the other hand, many papers have been 
 written by physicians and others showing the danger of 
 allowing insane persons to be too long without asylum re- 
 straint, and of the injustice that comes from making it too 
 difficult to secure judgment of insanity and subsequent 
 commitment and detention. Undoubtedly the danger of 
 the commitment of sane persons has been greatly overesti- 
 mated. The Earl of Shaftesbury, who was chairman of the 
 English Commission in Lunacy for fifty years, stated that 
 though the number of certificates that had passed through 
 their office was more than 185,000, there was not one person 
 who was not shown by good prima facie evidence to be in 
 need of care and treatment. Drs. Ordroneaux and Smith, 
 who were State commissioners in New York from 1873 to
 
 THE INSANE. 323 
 
 1888, stated that, during the fifteen years of their term 
 of service, no case of illegal detention had occurred in the 
 State ; and the inspector of Massachusetts hospitals made 
 a similar statement in 1893. 
 
 In most instances there are two things to be decided : 
 first, whether a person is legally insane and in need of 
 asylum treatment or the control of a guardian, and second, 
 whether or not he or his relatives should be compelled to 
 support him. 
 
 In the United States there are four methods of commit- 
 ment : by arraignment and trial without medical authority ; 
 by trial with medical examination ; by physicians' declara- 
 tion, the court merely registering the findings ; by a regular 
 commission. The decision as to sanity is primarily a med- 
 ical question ; the old method was to treat it as a legal one. 
 The person " charged " with insanity was brought personally 
 into court and tried before a jury. In a few States jury 
 trial is still obligatory in all cases, and the presence of the 
 patient at the trial is demanded. Although this system 
 may be properly characterized as barbarous, there is at the 
 same time a judicial element in the matter which requires 
 that the cases should be passed upon by a court. The more 
 progressive States provide that all commitments shall be 
 recorded in the Court of Records, but that the testimony 
 upon which the action is based shall for the most part be 
 that of medical experts. It is necessary that adequate pub- 
 licity should be provided for, that an adequate amount of 
 expert testimony should determine the question of sanity, 
 and that a court should protect the rights of the patient. 
 
 If the law were based on the modern conception of insan- 
 ity as a disease, and not a crime, the procedure for commit- 
 ment would take quite another aspect. As suggested by 
 Professor Henderson, the Board of Inquiry composed of 
 physicians would hold an inquest ; the patient could not be 
 detained in a jail, and the local authorities would be com-
 
 324 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 pelled to provide a proper place of detention. The method 
 prevalent in most States of keeping the insane during the 
 inquiry in the same place with criminals is not only out- 
 rageous but injurious.'' 
 
 The detention of the insane is another matter when it is 
 necessary to protect the interests at once of the community 
 and of the inmates. It is a matter on which the inmates 
 will usually differ in opinion from the superintendent of 
 the institution, and it has not been found easy to work out 
 rules that guarantee against all abuses. In the main, the 
 right of correspondence should remain with the patients, 
 the letters that they write being read by the superintendent 
 or his representative, and any which are not forwarded 
 being filed for the inspection of directors or other super- 
 visors of the institution.^ 
 
 Where the insane who are committed and detained are 
 classified according as they or their relatives can or cannot 
 pay for their support, the adjudication of this matter must 
 usually rest with the overseers of the poor. There is likely 
 to be a good deal of care exercised where the expense of 
 maintenance is left to the towns and counties. Where the 
 State maintains both the acute and the chronic insane, the 
 drift is in the direction of giving free support to all insane 
 persons, whether of the well-to-do classes or not. 
 
 Under the head of commitment and detention must be 
 mentioned the matter of proper escort of the insane from 
 the place of family residence to the hospital or asylum to 
 which they are committed. In most States this matter is 
 left to the sheriff, a relic of the time when only the legal 
 aspects of the matter were considered by the courts. In 
 other States the asylums are expected to send proper at- 
 tendants to take the inmates to the institution, and a few 
 provide that the county shall send a female attendant with 
 
 1 Henderson, " Dependents," etc., pp. 187 ff. ; Richardson, N. C. C, 1901, 
 pp. 165 ff, 2 Burr, N. C. C, 1902, p. 180,
 
 THE INSANE. 325 
 
 every female patient, unless accompanied by h.er husband, 
 father, brother, or son. The State Care Act of New York 
 provides for female escort for females, and attaches a pen- 
 alty for its non-observance. 
 
 The history of the treatment of the insane may be divided 
 into four periods : the first, that of neglect, when the insane 
 were only dealt with in case they were dangerous, and when 
 they were treated as witches or wild animals ; the second, 
 the era of detention, when they were treated under such 
 laws as the English Vagrancy Act; the third, the period 
 of humanitarian and empirical treatment ; and fourth, the 
 period of scientific study, rational treatment, and preventive 
 medicine, when insanity is recognized as " a disease and not 
 a doom." ^ In this country, during the early part of the 
 present century, the English precedents were followed, and 
 the precedents rather of the earlier than of the passing 
 period. In New York, the law provided for the detention 
 of the insane by chains if necessary. Dorothea Lynde Dix, 
 who, in the middle of this century, visited a large number 
 of places for the care of the insane, was compelled to tell a 
 most grievous tale of abuse and barbarity. Even with the 
 establishment of the State Boards of Charity in the more pro- 
 gressive States in the middle of the sixties and early seven- 
 ties, the condition of things was hardly better. The reports 
 of the early seventies, describing the condition of the insane 
 in the town and county almshouses, give accounts of bar- 
 barities as hideous as any unearthed fifty years earlier in 
 
 1 Very different thoughts are brought to our miads by the two woi'ds 
 " Bethlehem " and " Bedlam." Yet the second is only a corruption of the 
 first; and the miserable associations that it recalls are connected with 
 it because in a " hospital " founded in 1247, by the order of " St. Mary of 
 Bethlem " (or Bethlehem), the insane were treated or mistreated during 
 three centuries. Hodder's " Life of the Earl of Shaftesbury," vol. i., 
 pp. 90 ff., gives a good summary of the history of the treatment of the 
 insane. For the influence of the church upon the treatment of insanity, 
 see Andrew D. White, "Warfare of Science with Theology," vol. ii., 
 Chaps. XV., XVI.
 
 326 AMERICAN CHARITIES 
 
 England, or described by Miss Dix in this country. Even 
 as late as 1907 the State Board of Charities of Illinois, in 
 making an inspection of the county almshouses of that 
 State, found similar conditions and repeated the essential 
 recommendations made by Miss Dix sixty years before.^ 
 
 The history of the amelioration of the condition of the 
 insane is marked chiefly by the decline of mechanical and 
 medicinal restraint. Just after the Erench Revolution, 
 Pinel inaugurated the movement in the great French 
 hospitals for the insane and by 1837 mechanical restraint 
 had been nominally abolished in England. English critics 
 of American institutions claimed that our superintendents 
 of institutions for the insane were far behind the times, 
 because they would not commit themselves to the dogma of 
 entire non-restraint ; but careful foreign investigators who 
 visited this country found that in the larger asylums there 
 was as little restraint as obtained at the same time in Eng- 
 land. Although the leading American alienists are agreed 
 that restraint is useless as a curative measure, this, like 
 other asylum abuses, was perpetuated in many asylums for 
 the convenience of attendants, and encouraged by the man- 
 ufacturer of " humane restraint apparatus." Except in the 
 case of insane still remaining in almshouses, the grosser 
 forms of restraint have disappeared ; but " seclusion," that 
 is, locking the insane person in a room by himself when he 
 is troublesome and noisy, is still a very common practice. 
 Dr. George A. Zeller, superintendent of the Illinois Asylum 
 for Incurable Insane, declares that mechanical restraint 
 will infuriate and finally kill an insane patient by the 
 interference with the normal functions of the body ; but 
 that seclusion brings on a condition of mind from which 
 death is a welcome relief. Seclusion is even less justifiable 
 than mechanical restraint, since it is done to relieve the 
 
 1 Special Bulletin, April, 1907; see also Ellwood's Bulletin on Missouri 
 Almshouses and discussion on pp. 197 ff., ante.
 
 THE INSANE. 327 
 
 attendants of trouble and responsibility. Medicinal re- 
 straint by narcotics is also fast disappearing from modern 
 asylum practice, to be replaced by hydrotherapy, massage, 
 and other non-medical agents.^ 
 
 The first State asylums in this country were comparatively 
 small, designed for not more than 300 persons. In the 
 third quarter of the nineteenth century, the agitation for 
 the removal of the insane from county to State care 
 resulted in the building of mammoth institutions, capa- 
 ble of accommodating as many as 2000 patients. In 
 some cases the expenditure for buildings and plant amounted 
 to $1000 to $3000 per capita, a cost exceeding that of the 
 most expensive hotels. 
 
 These great caravansaries filled up, and still the counties 
 had a large number of the insane. At the opening of 
 Willard Asylum, in 1869, there were 1500 insane persons 
 in New York State in county care. Six years later it 
 was reported by the State Board that Willard Asylum 
 was full, and that there were still 1300 remaining in 
 county institutions. Mr. F. B. Sanborn points out that in 
 most States which are attempting to provide for all the 
 insane, the large central hospitals continue to be full to 
 overflowing, and concludes : — 
 
 "The effort to provide for all the insane (of any but very small 
 States) in large asylums seems to me as futile as the schoolboy's hope 
 to make the hind wheels of his wagon overtake the front wheels. 
 Local asylums, good or bad, — too often bad, — always have existed 
 and always will, if we speak of the United States as a whole." 2 
 
 It was soon found that the very large institutions were 
 not answering their purposes, because their size made the 
 individualization of cases difficult or impossible, and there 
 was a sort of contagion of insanity resulting from the 
 
 1 Zeller, " Mechanical and Medicinal Restraint," Bulletin Illinois Board 
 of Charities, October, 1906. 2 n. C. C, 1900, pp. 98-99.
 
 328 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 presence of such large numbers of lunatics on a small area. 
 Later there came a tendency to build cottages grouped 
 about a central administrative and hospital building, where 
 families of the insane in the care of proper housekeepers 
 and attendants can live in relative seclusion. Kankakee, 
 Illinois, was an early illustration of this system of con- 
 struction. To save expense, however, the legislature in- 
 sisted on making the " cottages " much larger than was 
 desired by those having an interest in this new develop- 
 ment. 
 
 The tendency at the present time is to transform the 
 large institutions as they grow into something approaching 
 the colony by placing detached small buildings for special 
 classes upon the estate ; and some of the best new insti- 
 tutions are built wholly upon the colony plan. With this 
 modification in the methods of building, the tendency 
 toward State care has been greatly strengthened. 'New 
 York has finally transferred all the insane from county 
 to State care, and the same system has been adopted by 
 most of the Western States. 
 
 Wisconsin has had the distinction for many years of 
 being able to provide for all her insane either in State or 
 county institutions. Whenever cure or improvement is 
 considered possible, the patients are sent to a State hospital 
 under the charge of specialists. Chronic cases not needing 
 special restraint or care are sent back to the county after 
 hospital treatment can benefit them no further; but no 
 county is allowed to care for its own insane unless the 
 plans of its almshouse buildings and the management of 
 that institution are approved by the State Board of Control. 
 If so approved, there is a small weekly per capita allowance 
 from the State treasury to the county that cares for its own 
 insane. If not approved, at any time the State Board has 
 the power to transfer all the insane belonging to the county 
 to State institutions or the almshouse asylums of pther
 
 THE INSANE. 329 
 
 counties, and collect the bill for their maintenance from 
 the county to which they belong. Thus it is to the interest 
 of the county to care for its own insane and to care for 
 them properly.^ 
 
 About 70 per cent of the total insane are cared for in 
 county asylums for chronic patients, and the remaining 
 30 per cent in large State hospitals for acute cases. It is 
 claimed for the system that it is both economical and hu- 
 mane and that it makes it possible for the State to keep up 
 with the increasing number of the insane. Although highly 
 praised by some experts, it has been criticised for certain 
 practical defects. Dr. C. B. Burr summed up the objections 
 to the county asylum system as follows : absence of the 
 hospital idea, lack of medical oversight, lack of sufficient 
 attendants, lack of standards of care prescribed and en- 
 forced by central authority, and lack of both State and local 
 supervision.^ 
 
 The idea of segregation and of special provision for the 
 harmless chronic insane has been carried in Massachusetts 
 to the point of boarding selected cases of the insane in fami- 
 lies. The amount paid for the board, together with the cost 
 of the necessary visiting, makes it not much more economical 
 than asylum care, although it is much more satisfactory for 
 selected cases. There are those who hope that, as with chil- 
 dren, the placing-out system is supplanting the institution 
 system, so with the insane it may be possible to board larger 
 numbers of them, and incorporate them thus in the ordinary 
 population. In Scotland this system has been developed 
 much further than in this country, and not less than one- 
 fourth of the insane are living in families.^ In Massachu- 
 setts 350 patients were so placed in 1906, and although 
 indiscriminate boarding in families is not advocated, yet 
 
 1 Heg, N. C. C, 1896. 
 
 2 Jhi. Jour, of Insanity, October, 1898. 
 8 Lathrop, N. C. C, 1902, pp. 185 ff.
 
 330 AMERICAN CRABITIES. 
 
 this method certainly provides at minimum cost for a certain 
 class of patients who could not be discharged upon their own 
 resources, but who appear fit for greater liberty than an 
 insane hospital provides.^ 
 
 Patients are cared for to a decreasing extent in private 
 institutions. Some of the gravest abuses have grown up in 
 these private homes or retreats, and, as a rule, commitment 
 to a public institution is regarded as safer than to a private 
 institution, unless the character of the man in charge is very 
 well known. 
 
 After the classification by sex, and in the South by color, 
 the next great line of division among the insane which 
 specialists have attempted to make has been between acute, 
 or possibly curable, and the chronic, or probably incurable, 
 cases. In order to make cure as likely as possible, it is 
 desirable that institutions should be small, the number of 
 attendants large, of good character, and the best training, 
 and all the conditions of life as nearly like those of a normal 
 home as possible. To provide such facilities as these with 
 the purpose of curative treatment is expensive ; while, on 
 the other hand, to take adequate care of the chronic or prob- 
 ably incurable insane requires a comparatively small per 
 capita expenditure. Experts have constantly agitated for 
 the separation of the two classes; but the ordinary citizen 
 generally objects to the establishment of an asylum for 
 the chronic insane because it emphasizes tlie hopelessness 
 of their condition. 
 
 In the States where this classification between institu- 
 tions has been measurably maintained, it results in very 
 considerable saving, and in considerably better treatment 
 for the curable insane. At the same time insanity is not 
 usually a curable disease. Even in the best-managed insti- 
 tutions, and those receiving the likeliest class of patients, 
 less than 30 per cent permanently recover. The statement 
 
 1 Fish, N. C. C, liX)7, pp. 438 ff.; Sanborn, pp. 448 ff.
 
 THE INSANE. S31 
 
 of Dr. Thurnam, an English expert, made many years 
 ago, based on the experience of forty-four years at the York 
 Retreat, still comes nearer the truth than the more sanguine 
 predictions of later authorities. Dr. Thurnam says : — 
 
 "In round numbers, of ten persons attacked by insanity, five re- 
 cover, and five die sooner or later during tiie first attack. Of the five 
 who recover, not more than two remain well during the rest of their 
 lives ; the other three sustain subsequent attacks, during which at 
 least two of them die." 
 
 After the separation of the curable from the incurable, in 
 order to provide for the proper care of each, the next most 
 important classification is, perhaps, into the criminal and 
 the non-criminal insane. Some States have treated the 
 criminal insane as criminals, and provided for them in 
 branch penitentiaries. Others have treated them as insane, 
 and put them into the same institution with other persons 
 of that class, sometimes to the danger and often to the 
 disgust of such other patients and their friends and rela- 
 tives. The best policy, and the one adopted by the pro- 
 gressive States, is to have a separate asylum for the criminal 
 insane.^ 
 
 Another essential to the proper classification is the sep- 
 aration from the insane of those who are epileptics, and 
 also the distinctly feeble-minded. The class of epileptics, 
 especially, is a great annoyance both to the inmates and 
 managers of institutions for the insane, as they require 
 special treatment which they can properly have only in a 
 special institution. Beyond these distinctions which obtain 
 as between institutions, there must further be a classifica- 
 tion of the insane in any given institution to bring together 
 those that do not vex or excite one another, and to segregate 
 the filthy and the unmanageable. It is one of the defects 
 of very large institutions that have been erected in some 
 
 1 Barrows, " The Criminal Insane," pp. 5-14.
 
 832 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 States, that the wards are too large to make possible proper 
 classification and consequent individualization of cases. 
 
 The recent discussions upon the care of the insane have 
 turned upon the harmonizing and unifying of the most de- 
 sirable features of all the systems now in use. Dr. Frederick 
 Peterson names as the two essential provisions of an ade- 
 quate system, psychopathic hospitals for the acutely insane 
 in the cities, and colonies for the mixed classes of insane in 
 the adjacent country. In 1907, the Committee on the Insane, 
 of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, 
 formulated a comprehensive plan in which they laid down 
 the following principles : the claims of locality should have 
 primary consideration in the location of institutions and dis- 
 tribution of patients in order that they may be accessible 
 to friends and to promote local convenience and interest. 
 Classification is imperative, — the acute and curable from 
 the chronic and incurable, the harmless from the violent, — 
 but the Committee think these requirements are best met 
 under the same local management, by suitable separation in 
 space, variety of buildings and equipment, and judicious 
 grouping. They believe that large institutions, whether de- 
 sirable or not, are inevitable and must develop along the two 
 lines of efficient economical administration and excellence 
 of medical and scientific work under a single unif^dng 
 authority, — a medical executive, with a clear subdivision 
 and definition of departments. 
 
 The Committee proposes the classification of the 2000 
 insane of a single district into three groups : the acute and 
 curable ; the chronic infirm, dangerous, and custodial ; and 
 the chronic harmless and able-bodied. These should be in 
 separate buildings, the distance might vary from a few 
 hundred feet to many miles, and they would be designated, 
 respectively, the hospital, the asylum, and the colony. The 
 hospital should receive all patients for observation and ex- 
 amination and retain the curable ; it should be the centre of
 
 THE INSANE. 333 
 
 the higher medical and scientific work, under the direction 
 of an expert psj'chiatrist, with a staff of physicians and 
 laboratory workers and a training school for nurses. The 
 asylum would receive the infirm, dangerous, and untrust- 
 worthy, and its main purpose would be safe custody and 
 palliative treatment. The colony would take the harmless 
 patients and establish them in small, homelike groups, ac- 
 cording to their condition, and reeducate them in industrial 
 activities. But a considerable portion of the harmless 
 chronic class might be placed in the private care of families 
 and supervised from the central institution, as is done in 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 Besides this comprehensive scheme for combining the 
 large institution under centralized control with thorough 
 classification and the essential features of the colony, there 
 are two special aspects of the care of the insane which have 
 lately been strongly emphasized. American physicians 
 trained in Europe where clinics in psychiatry have long 
 been established, have felt the need of separate hospitals 
 for the observation of acute and incipient mental diseases. 
 Dr. J. Montgomery Mosher describes the complicated legal 
 procedure for commitment of an insane person in New 
 York and says : — 
 
 "In brief, a patient who is suffering from a disease of the mind, 
 the most threatening calamity of life, must be so far advanced in the 
 disease and so disordered in action or in speech as to satisfy a lay 
 tribunal of the necessity or the justification of the forcible deprivation 
 of his liberty, must be told that he is ' insane,' must be 'adjudged 
 insane,' and committed by a court to an institution for the insane 
 before he can receive the treatment best adapted to the restoration of 
 his health." i 
 
 The demand for a hospital for the mentally disturbed, 
 where they may be properly observed and cared for pending 
 
 1 Mosher, N. C. C, 1907, p. 423; in 1908 the law was modified so as to 
 permit voluntary commitment.
 
 334 AMEBIC AN CHARITIES. 
 
 a decision as to the necessity for commitment, has been met 
 by the establishment of different types of psychopathic 
 hospitals. In New York, the psychopathic hospital is 
 located at one of the State asylums and serves for all ; in 
 Michigan, it is located at the State University and is a cen- 
 tral institution for the State asylums ; and in Albany it is a 
 department of a general hospital for mental diseases, known 
 as Pavilion F. The report of five years' work at Pavilion F 
 illustrates the humanity and the economy of the system.^ 
 
 Under treatment without legal process 905 
 
 Improved or recovered 696 
 
 Stationary 316 
 
 Died 86 
 
 Committed after period of observation 118 
 
 Under detention during legal process 126 
 
 1031 
 
 If this special provision had not been made, 905 of these 
 patients would either have had to be treated at home or 
 would have been committed after a probably harmful 
 development of the disease. All alienists are agreed that 
 early recognition of the disease and treatment are most im- 
 portant in insanity, and Dr. Barnett of Michigan urges that 
 the character of psychopathic hospitals should be such that 
 patients, after recovery and return to civil life, should feel 
 no more embarrassment than if they had been ill in a general 
 hospital. Dr. Adams, superintendent of the Westboro, 
 Massachusetts, Insane Hospital, to which patients have long 
 been admitted by voluntary application, is heartily in favor 
 of the system as a measure for preventing the accumulation 
 of incurably insane in asylums by securing treatment early 
 enough to bring about recovery.^ 
 
 Not less important than the provisions for incipient in- 
 sanity is the care of insane persons upon their discharge as 
 
 1 N. C. C, 1907, p. 427. 2 /^j^^.^ 1907, pp. 434-437.
 
 THE INSANE. 335 
 
 recovered. Although societies for the after-care of the insane 
 have existed in Europe for three-quarters of a century, the 
 first society of this sort in this country was organized by the 
 New York State Charities Aid Association in 1906. It 
 is believed that from 10 to 25 per cent of patients 
 need friends, guidance, and assistance upon their discharge, 
 and that such help promptly given will prevent the relapse 
 and recommitment of a considerable number.^ 
 
 No mention can here be made of the improvement in the 
 treatment of the insane which comes only through an im- 
 provement in the personnel of the institution, through free- 
 dom from spoils politics, through the introduction of civil 
 service reform, through the activity of clubs of men con- 
 nected with each institution organized for their mutual im- 
 provement, and through the development of training schools 
 for attendants upon the insane. It is by these and other 
 agencies that the present great advancement is being made 
 along the lines of greater wisdom in treatment, greater kind- 
 ness in control, and greater freedom within the bounds of 
 safety for the insane. 
 
 1 Report of State Charities Aid Association, 1906 ; Nos. 92 and 93.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE FEEBLE-MINDED, EPILEPTIC, AND INEBRIATE. 
 
 The term " feeble-minded " is now used to cover all grades 
 of idiocy and imbecility, from the child that is merely dull 
 and incapable of profiting by the ordinary school, to the gela- 
 tinous mass that simply eats and lives. If it is difficult to 
 give an exact definition of insanity, it is manifestly even 
 more difficult to give an exact definition of feeble-minded- 
 ness. Dr. Ireland, in accordance with English usage, defines 
 idiocy separately as : — 
 
 " A mental deficiency or extreme stupidity, depending upon malnu- 
 trition or disease of the nervous centres, occurring either before birth 
 or before the evolution of the mental faculties in childhood." 
 
 Dr. Martin W. Barr, of Elwyn, Pennsylvania, gives a more 
 comprehensive definition : — 
 
 " Feeble-mindedness, including idiocy and imbecility, is defect, 
 either mental or moral, or both, usually associated with certain physi- 
 cal stigmata or degeneration. Although incurable, its lesser forms 
 may be susceptible of amelioration or modification, just in proportion 
 as they have been superinduced by causes congenital or accidental." 
 
 The class to which the technical term "feeble-mindedness" 
 is applied may be expected to increase as specialists improve 
 their acquaintance with the different symptoms. For this 
 reason, as in the case of the insane, the census figures bear- 
 ing upon the subject indicate a rate of increase out of all 
 proportion, probably, to any actual increase of the condition 
 of feeble-mindedness in the population. 
 
 In 1880 the enumeration, although not complete, was more 
 nearly so than in the two later ones ; at that time there were 
 
 336
 
 THE FEEBLE-MINDED, EPILEPTIC, INEBRIATE. 337 
 
 reported 76,895 feeble-minded persons — a proportion of 
 153.3 persons per 100,000 of the population. In 1890, the 
 number was 95,609, or 152.7 per 100,000 of population; but 
 as this census was not supplemented by reports from physi- 
 cians as the previous one had been, it undoubtedly falls 
 far short of the total number. In 1903 the census law called 
 for an enumeration of those in institutions only, which 
 makes the figures not comparable with those of 1880 and 
 1890. Of those enumerated in 1890, only 5254 were in spe- 
 cial institutions, and 2469 in asylums for the insane, the 
 number in almshouses being unknown. In 1903 the feeble- 
 minded in institutions numbered only 14,347, and there 
 were in almshouses 16,551 " supposedly " feeble-minded. 
 Competent authorities place the number of those needing 
 institutional treatment at the present time at 150,000.^ 
 
 It is apparent that provision for the institutional care of 
 the feeble-minded is much less adequate than for the other 
 defective classes. In 1890 there were twenty public and four 
 private institutions. Table LXV. shows the numbers and 
 distribution of institutions and inmates in 1904. 
 
 In New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania there are 
 two or more institutions ; in the North Central division 
 every State has a public institution ; in the South Atlantic 
 and South Central divisions there are altogether only six 
 institutions ; while in twenty-four States there are none at 
 all. In these latter States the feeble-minded are in alms- 
 houses, insane asylums, or chiefly in homes, receiving neither 
 custodial care nor industrial training. Only a few of the 
 forty-two institutions are custodial, the greater number 
 being for feeble-minded children, and none of the public 
 institutions can provide for all the applicants. 
 
 Of the 16,946 inmates of these institutions, 53.8 per cent 
 were males, 46.2 per cent females ; 75 per cent were be- 
 tween five and twenty years of age ; nearly one-third were 
 
 1 Special Report," Feeble-minded in Institutions," 1903-liX)4, p. 205.
 
 338 
 
 AMEBIC AN CHARITIES. 
 
 TABLE LXV. 
 Feeble-minded ix Institutions, 1904.* 
 
 State. 
 
 Continental United States 
 
 North Atlantic Division . 
 
 New Hampsliire . . . 
 Massachusetts . . . 
 Connecticut .... 
 
 New York 
 
 New Jersey .... 
 
 Pennsylvania .... 
 
 South Atlantic Division . 
 
 Maryland 
 
 Virginia 
 
 West Virginia . . . 
 North Central Division . 
 
 Ohio 
 
 Indiana 
 
 Illinois 
 
 Michigan .... 
 Wisconsin .... 
 Minnesota .... 
 
 Iowa 
 
 Missouri .... 
 North Dakota . . . 
 South Dakota . . . 
 Nebraska .... 
 
 Kansas 
 
 South Central Division 
 
 Kentucky . . 
 Western Division 
 
 Colorado 
 Washington 
 California . 
 
 Total 
 Number 
 
 of 
 lomates. 
 
 16,946 
 
 6,651 
 
 72 
 995 
 262 
 
 2,594 
 527 
 
 2,201 
 397 
 
 176 
 
 46 
 
 175 
 
 8,859 
 
 1,307 
 
 1,118 
 
 1,507 
 
 657 
 
 710 
 
 1,071 
 
 1,152 
 
 354 
 
 86 
 
 77 
 
 386 
 
 434 
 
 244 
 
 244 
 
 795 
 
 33 
 124 
 638 
 
 Number of Inmates. 
 
 Enu- 
 mer- 
 ated, 
 Dec. 31, 
 1903. 
 
 14,347 
 
 5,699 
 
 64 
 878 
 219 
 
 2,135 
 460 
 
 1,943 
 338 
 
 162 
 
 35 
 
 141 
 
 7,459 
 
 1,125 
 1,036 
 1,283 
 516 
 611 
 888 
 981 
 250 
 
 51 
 337 
 381 
 
 189 
 
 189 
 662 
 
 14 
 
 81 
 567 
 
 Admit- 
 ted 
 during 
 19U4. 
 
 2,599 
 
 952 
 
 117 
 
 43 
 459 
 
 67 
 258 
 
 59 
 
 14 
 
 11 
 
 34 
 
 1,400 
 
 182 
 
 82 
 
 224 
 
 141 
 
 99 
 
 183 
 
 171 
 
 104 
 
 86 
 
 26 
 
 49 
 
 53 
 
 55 
 
 55 
 133 
 
 Dis- 
 charged, 
 died, or 
 trans- 
 ferred 
 during 
 1904. 
 
 1,435 
 
 671 
 
 5 
 71 
 27 
 
 355 
 37 
 
 176 
 32 
 
 6 
 
 18 
 
 607 
 
 59 
 
 101 
 
 116 
 
 46 
 
 36 
 
 76 
 
 107 
 
 24 
 
 1 
 
 5 
 
 23 
 
 13 
 
 29 
 
 NtTMBER OF 
 I.NSTITUTIONS. 
 
 Public. 
 
 28 
 
 11 
 
 1 
 
 12 
 
 * Special Census lieport, p. 208.
 
 THE FEEBLE-MINDED, EPILEPTIC, INEBRIATE. 339 
 
 found to be epileptic, blind, deaf-mute, paralytic, crippled, 
 maimed, or deformed. For the feeble-minded and epileptic, 
 who are in need of institutional care quite as much as the 
 insane, provision has only just begun and is likely to be 
 inadequate for many years to come. 
 
 In the discussion of the symptomatic causes of poverty it 
 has been already shown that a neurotic heredity and bad 
 conditions of the mother during gestation and childbirth are 
 among the chief causes of imbecility.^ The social results 
 and the cost to the community of leaving feeble-minded 
 children without education and adults without protection 
 may be illustrated by the experience of Indiana, as described 
 by Mr. Amos W. Butler of the State Board of Charities. 
 From a study of 803 families selected because of feeble- 
 mindedness, and made from the office records, the following 
 facts were derived : — 
 
 "These families consist of 3048 members, of whom 1664, or 55 per 
 cent, are feeble-minded. . . . Counting only those of whose parents 
 we have some information, it was found that of 1748, or 57.3 per cent, 
 one or the other, and frequently both, of the parents were feeble- 
 minded or afflicted with some related physical defect. Included in the 
 803 families are 312 families in which feeble-mindedness was found in 
 two or more generations. In this group there are 1643 individuals, of 
 whom 57 per cent are feeble-minded, and 60.6 per cent are either men- 
 tally or physically defective. . . . The entire number of descendants, 
 extending into the fifth generation and including 96 men and women 
 who married into the families, is 1019, and among them are 624 defec- 
 tives. This indicates inherited defect in 61.2 per cent of the descend- 
 ants of these feeble-minded parents." ^ 
 
 The origin of the work of training the feeble-minded has 
 two sources : one the school, and one the hospital ; it lies 
 between the department of education and the department of 
 medicine. The schools for the deaf and blind found them- 
 
 1 Dr. Ireland and Dr. Barr both treat the causes of feeble-mindedness at 
 length. 
 
 2 N. C. C, 1907, p. 8; statistical tables in full, pp. 611-614; see also 
 N. C. C, 1896, similar study and statistics, pp. 219-226.
 
 340 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 selves asked to educate children that were also feeble- 
 minded, and hospitals for the insane were asked to treat a 
 large number of imbeciles. The educational element was at 
 first most strongly developed. Hopes were entertained of 
 making 50 or 75 per cent of the feeble-minded self-support- 
 ing ; but that optimistic view had to be modified, and it is 
 now seen that not more than 10 or 15 per cent can be made 
 self-supporting in the sense that they can return to an inde- 
 pendent life in the ordinary population.^ 
 
 The first step in the treatment of the feeble-minded is 
 thorough classification with reference to their educability and 
 their possible return to life in the world. Although medi- 
 cal men may differ upon the scientific gradation of different 
 classes, for educational purposes there is essential agree- 
 ment. Dr. Barr proposes the following classification for 
 determining the degree of restraint, and the capacity for 
 mental and moi-al development. 
 
 Educational Classification of the Feeble-minded.^ 
 
 I. Asylum Care: 
 
 A. Idiot: 
 
 profound | apathetic | unimprovable. 
 I excitable i 
 
 superficial i > improvable in self-help only. 
 
 I. excitable ) 
 
 B. Idio-imbecile : 
 
 improvable in self-help and helpfulness. 
 
 trainable in a very limited degree to assist others. 
 II. Custodial Life and Perpetual Guardianship : 
 
 A. Moral imbecile : mentally and morally deficient. 
 
 low-grade : trainable in industrial occupations ; tempera- 
 ment bestial. 
 
 middle grade : trainable in industrial and manual occu- 
 pations ; a plotter of mischief. 
 
 high-grade : trainable in manual and intellectual arts ; 
 v?ith a genius for evil. 
 
 IN. C. C, 18!)8, ToweU, p. 293; Seguiii and Johnson, N. C. C, 1896, 
 p. 215. 
 
 2 " Mental Defectives," p. 90; reprinted in Charities, vol. xii., 1904, p. 881.
 
 THE FEEBLE-MINDED, EPILEPTIC, INEBRIATE. 341 
 
 III. Long Apprenticeship and Coloyiy Life under Protection : 
 A. Imbecile : mentally deficient. 
 
 low-grade : trainable in industrial and simple manual 
 
 occupations, 
 middle-grade : trainable in manual arts and simplest 
 mental acquirements. ' 
 
 high-grade : trainable in manual and intellectual arts. 
 
 IV, Trained for a Place in the World : 
 A. Backward or mentally feeble : 
 
 mental processes normal, but slow and requiring special 
 training and environment to prevent deterioration ; 
 defect imminent under slightest provocation, such as 
 excitement, over-stimulation, or illness. 
 
 The general principles of the treatment of this class of 
 defectives as laid down by the Special Committee of the 
 London Charity Organization Society in 1877 are still 
 accepted. At that time Sir Charles Trevelyan reported for 
 the Committee: that idiots and imbeciles should be treated 
 separately from other classes ; they should not be associated 
 with lunatics or paupers, nor could they be placed with 
 advantage in the ordinary schools with other children, nor 
 boarded ovit as lunatics often were. The Committee recom- 
 mended that their education should begin at the earliest 
 moment at which they could dispense with a mother's care, 
 and should be of a physical and industrial character; they 
 should be especially encouraged to develop any talents in 
 order to promote their self-respect and happiness. The Com- 
 mittee were not over-sanguine : they thought that a few 
 might be returned to their homes, a larger number could be 
 fitted for employment under superintendence, but the greater 
 proportion would be unfit to be restored to society and 
 should have custodial care, under medical supervision, in an 
 economical manner and, as far as possible, with industrial 
 employment. They concluded with the statement, " What-
 
 342 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 ever be the cost of educating them, the cost of neglecting 
 them is greater still." ^ 
 
 Concerning the special methods of education required, 
 Dr. Barr says that as many of the lower grades are incapable 
 'Of observation, they must be persistently taught what normal 
 children acquire intuitively, — the proper mastication of food, 
 the use of spoon, fork, and knife, the dressing and care of the 
 body, the standing and walking unsupported, the very 
 simplest matters of self-help; the sense organs must be 
 tested in order that defects may be remedied by medical 
 treatment ; their senses must be awakened and stimulated, 
 attention attracted, imitation encouraged by simple occupa- 
 tions. For the higher grades there must be development 
 of the emotions, through exercise in ethical acts, achieving 
 habits ; of tlie body by physical exercises and manual train- 
 ing to promote mental activity; of the mind, achieving self- 
 hood. And all these methods should be assisted by environ- 
 ment, association, amusement, and discipline.^ 
 
 As has been already noted, the most hopeful aspect of 
 work for the feeble-minded was that first undertaken in the 
 United States, in institutions for the education of feeble- 
 minded children. It was inevitable, since many of them 
 could not be safely returned to the world, and as the insti- 
 tutions grew older, that numbers of adults should accumulate 
 in the training schools. In recent years, the segregation 
 and custodial care of adults — especially of feeble-minded 
 women — has assumed a social importance even greater than 
 the education of children. Many illustrations — such as that 
 given by Mr. Amos W.Butler of Indiana, of 5 feeble-minded 
 mothers of 19 children, 15 of whom had spent a total of 136 
 years in institutions, at an average expense of $100 per 
 
 1 Trevelyan, Special Report, " Education and Cure of Idiots," etc., 
 1877, London, Longmans ; reprinted in Ireland, " Mental Affections of 
 Children," pp. 405 ff. 
 
 2 Barr, " Mental Defectives," Chap. VIL
 
 THE FEEBLE-MINDED, EPILEPTIC, INEBRIATE. 343 
 
 year — have drawn attention to the necessity for preventing 
 the reproduction of this class. ^ 
 
 The custodial care of the feeble-minded having been 
 assumed by the managers of the schools for children, it was 
 found that, under wise administration, the adult imbeciles 
 could be useful in the work of the institution ; and that it 
 was better, therefore, to introduce the colony plan with ap- 
 propriate segregation of classes, than to establish other new 
 institutions for the custodial care of adults. For instance, at 
 Elwyn, it was found that many feeble-minded women had 
 a liking for children, and that they could be distinctly ser- 
 viceable in taking care of the young children in the school 
 department, a work which made them happier, and benefited 
 their own malady as far as anything could. " It is not," as 
 Dr. Knight said, "because the managers of these institutions 
 wish to build up a great institution, but because by the 
 colony plan a larger share of service can be rendered than 
 by splitting one institution into several new ones." Kew 
 York, however, established special custodial homes for adult 
 idiots and a home for feeble-minded women, and New Jersey 
 has followed the example. It remains to be seen whether 
 specialists will conclude that classification should be main- 
 tained as between institutions, or whether it should be carried 
 on in large institutions on the colony plan. With the plan 
 
 1 Another case is given by Dr. Fernald: " A feeble-minded girl of the 
 higher grade was accepted as a pupil in the Massachusetts School for the 
 Feeble-minded when she was fifteen years of age. At the last moment 
 the mother refused to send her to the school, as she 'could not bear the dis- 
 grace of publicly admitting that she had a feeble-minded child.' Ten years 
 later the girl was committed to the institution by the court, after she had 
 given birth to six illegitimate children, four of whom were still living and 
 all feeble-minded. The city where she lived had supported her at the 
 almshouse for a period of several months at each confinement, and had 
 been compelled to assume the burden of the lifelong support of her 
 progeny, and finally decided to place her in permanent custody. Her 
 mother had died broken-hearted several years previously." N. C. C, 
 1893, pp. 212-213.
 
 344 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 of detached buildings for different classes, the dependents 
 can be provided for at an expense of about $400 per patient 
 for construction, which is much less than the construction 
 cost heretofore thought necessary for the insane. 
 
 That custodial care for most grades of the feeble-minded 
 is increasingly demanded cannot be doubted. It has been 
 later in coming than the custodial care of the chronic insane, 
 because the latter are more actively and obviously mischiev- 
 ous to society ; but in proportion as the importance of 
 human selection becomes better understood, the custodial 
 care throughout life of the feeble-minded of both sexes will 
 be demanded. 
 
 At the present time the tendency seems to be strongly 
 toward a modified colony plan, partly from motives of 
 economy and partly because of the accumulation of the 
 trained feeble-minded in the schools who should still be 
 under protection. Massachusetts has solved the difficulty 
 by establishing a farm colony for a selected class of 
 the trained feeble-minded. The seven farms comprising 
 2000 acres of cheap lands with their buildings are 60 miles 
 from the training school. Groups of older boys are trans- 
 ferred from the school to the farmhouses and cottages and 
 lead there a normal country life, earning a part of their 
 livelihood and shielded from temptation and competition.^ 
 
 One of the latest developments of public education closely 
 related to the treatment of the feeble-minded is the special 
 classes for backward children in the public schools. Such 
 children are characterized by moral and mental weak- 
 nesses verging on defect such as faulty expression and lack 
 of normal growth, nervous disorders from lack of tone to 
 muscular tremors, and digestive disorders resulting from 
 
 1 N. C. C, 1902, pp. 487-405. The propositions to check the reproduc- 
 tion of the unfit by strict marriage laws and by sterilization have already 
 been discussed on pp. 28-31; see also N. C. C, 1897, p. 301; 1898, p. 302, 
 p. 304; 1902, p. 152,
 
 THE FEEBLE-MINDED^ EPILEPTIC, INEBRIATE. 345 
 
 malnutrition. Many of them have misshapen heads, highly 
 arched palates, faulty chests, and defects of the special 
 senses. " An examination of 100,000 children out of 600,000 
 registered in the New York City schools in 1906 showed 66 
 per cent needing medical or surgical attention or better 
 nourishment, 40 per cent in need of dental care, 38 per cent 
 having enlarged cervical glands, 31 per cent defective vision, 
 18 per cent enlarged tonsils, and 10 per cent post-nasal 
 growths.^ Dr. M. P. E. Groszmann says that these atypical 
 children are the product of unfavorable hereditary and 
 environmental influences, but differ from the really abnormal 
 children in that special training and normal life conditions 
 will allow them to reestablish within themselves a fair 
 normality.^ 
 
 Three kinds of classes are proposed for abnormal chil- 
 dren : training classes for the mentally deficient, coaching 
 classes for the slightly backward, delicate, or exceptional, 
 and disciplinary classes for the truant and disorderly. In 
 many cities a few such classes now exist, but in general the 
 teachers in charge of them have had no special training in 
 the recognition of mental deficiencies and are not ade- 
 quately equipped for their peculiar task. In Boston, 
 selected teachers are given an opportunity at city expense 
 to observe the methods in the best schools for the feeble- 
 minded, and a teachers' course is now offered at the New 
 Jersey Training School for Feeble-minded Boys and Girls. 
 The movement is recognized as highly important not 
 merely for the relief of the teachers of normal children in 
 the public schools, but as a preventive measure. Such 
 children become in many cases semi-criminal, or at least 
 incapable of self-support. Among the group of backward 
 children will be found those who with this special training 
 
 1 Quoted from Allen, " Efficient Democracy," p. 79. 
 
 2 See Dr. Groszmann's classification and discussion of atypical children, 
 Charities, vol. xii., 1904, p. 897.
 
 346 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 and medical care may become normal, and among them also 
 some who will prove to be really feeble-minded and in 
 need of institutional care. In either case the work of pre-- 
 vention is economical as well as humane.^ 
 
 A further and quite recent differentiation in the classes 
 mentally and nervously diseased is the provision of colony 
 care for epileptics. It has long been recognized that their 
 presence in institutions for the feeble-minded and the 
 insane is unfortunate from the standpoint of the other 
 patients, while at the same time the special attention they 
 need cannot be given them. At most of the large institu- 
 tions for other classes, special wards or buildings are pro- 
 vided where those subject to epileptic seizures may be 
 cared for. But even this arrangement is inadequate, since 
 the epileptic, in the earlier stages of the disease at least, is 
 a sane person, and conscious of his surroundings in the 
 intervals between attacks. By far the larger part of them 
 are without institutional care, and the unhappy condition of 
 the epileptic in the world is thus described by Dr. Barr : — 
 
 " Cut off more or less from school companionship and association 
 . . . however well prepared he may become, his infirmity must 
 always prove an impediment to securing positions of trust or respon- 
 sibility. An object thus of terror or of pity ... he gravitates 
 toward a life of self-indulgence or of monotony and loneliness, tending 
 greatly to produce mental deterioration. . . . Various phases of the 
 disease are characterized by wanderings, delusions, or even by the per- 
 petration of violent acts of which the patient may be oblivious. . . . 
 This leads to the crowding of these unfortunates into insane asylums 
 or into institutions for the feeble-minded. This is a double wrong . . . 
 because he is more lonely than at home with no motive for active 
 pursuits." 2 
 
 There were enumerated in 1904 in insane asylums 11,652 
 epileptics, in institutions for the feeble-minded 3015, and 
 
 1 Chase, N. C. C, 1904, p. .390 ff., liistory of such classes; Charities, 
 vol. xii., liX)4, p. 871 ff., several vahiable articles by experts. 
 
 2 Barr, " Mental Defectives," p. 225.
 
 THE FEEBLE-MINDED^ EPILEPTIC^ INEBRIATE. 347 
 
 in almshouses 2106. Mr. Letchworth estimated in 1900 
 that there were 113,000 epileptics in the United States ; 
 other authorities think that 150,000 is nearer the truth. 
 Epilepsy, like feeble-mindedness, is preeminently a disease 
 of neurotic heredity. In a study of 1200 cases in the 
 Massachusetts Hospital for Epileptics, Dr. A. V. Cooper 
 found that 15.4 per cent presented a well-marked history of 
 hereditary transmission ; Spratling and Barr give much 
 higher percentages, while none of the foreign observers give 
 any less.^ Dr. Peterson emphasizes its interrelations with 
 other neuroses ; he says : — 
 
 "Epilepsy is one of the equivalents in polymorphic heredity. By 
 this we imply that when the nervous mechanism governing the normal 
 evolution of both body and mind is disarranged, the result is a con- 
 dition of nervous instability which manifests itself in the descendants 
 in some one of many forms. The result may be epilepsy, chorea, 
 neurasthenia, hysteria, somnambulism, migraine, feeble-mindedness, 
 idiocy, insanity, inebriety, criminal tendencies, or simple eccentric- 
 ity. . . . These are all intercliangeable manifestations of an unstable 
 nervous system. . . . We may assume heredity as a cause of epi- 
 lepsy in at least 33 per cent of the cases. ' ' '^ 
 
 Dr. Peterson mentions, among other causes, inebriety 
 not only in the epileptic but in his parents ; injuries to 
 the head, infectious diseases, and emotional shocks to the 
 mother or the child. 
 
 Epilepsy is now regarded as much more hopeful of cure 
 than formerly, 50 per cent of those in institutions being 
 improvable, and from 5 to 10 per cent even of the confirmed 
 cases curable.^ At the Massachusetts Hospital nearly half 
 are physically and mentally capable of regular employment, 
 and about 20 per cent more able to do some regular work at 
 times. 
 
 1" Heredity in Epilepsy," Transactions, etc., p. 155; Barr, "Mental 
 Defectives," Chap. X. 
 
 2 " Epilepsy," Transactions, etc., 1901, pp. 14-15. 
 8 Flood, Transactions, etc., 1906, p. 273,
 
 348 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 In 1906 ten States had made provision for epileptics sep- 
 arate from insane, pauper, or feeble-minded persons in colo- 
 nies, villages, or hospitals. There seems to be an agree- 
 ment among all experts that colony or village grouping on 
 large estates is the ideal method of providing for this class. 
 Ohio established the first colony in 1893 and has now six 
 large cottages for women and seven for men, accommodating 
 about 900 patients with a building considerably removed, 
 which accommodates 200 more of the helpless and insane 
 class ; a hospital and other buildings providing for about 
 1400 patients altogether. The Craig Colony, at Sonyea, 
 western New York, has an estate of nearly 2000 acres and 
 about 1000 patients, most carefully classified, in small cot- 
 tages for the comparatively normal, and in larger buildings 
 for the infirmary class. In scientific methods it has served 
 as a model for the newer institutions.* The per capita cost 
 at this institution has been reduced to .$141.38. The pa- 
 tients who are able to work contribute on the average about 
 §35 per year to their own support. 
 
 The organization of the National Association for the study 
 of epilepsy and the care and treatment of epileptics in 1900 
 has had a marked influence in stimulating interest in the 
 subject of institutional care.^ The dissemination of infor- 
 mation regarding the best foreign colonies especially Biele- 
 feld, and the more advanced colonies in the United States, 
 is gradually educating the general public to demand for the 
 young epileptic opportunity for training and care, and for 
 the incurable class occupation, so long as they remain capar 
 
 1 Reports from all the State institutions are found in Transactions, 
 etc.. 1906. 
 
 2 The Association was founded for these purposes : to promote the 
 general welfare of sufferers from epilepsy; to stimulate the study of the 
 causes and the methods of cure ; to advocate the care of epileptics in 
 institutions where they may receive a common school education, acquire 
 trades, and be treated by the best medical skill ; to assist the various 
 States in making provision for epileptics.
 
 THE FEEBLE-MINDED, EPILEPTIC, INEBRIATE. 349 
 
 ble, and custodial care when all capacity is lost by mental 
 deterioration. The emphasis which scientists are placing 
 upon the hereditary character of epilepsy is creating also a 
 widespread belief that they should not marry and that soci- 
 ety must protect itself from the reproduction of these as of 
 others who are unfit. 
 
 To some it may seem improper to treat of the care of the 
 inebriate in the same chapter with the feeble-minded and 
 epileptic, but there is now substantial agreement among 
 medical experts that habitual drunkenness is a disease, re- 
 quiring custodial care, and that occasional drunkenness is 
 frequently a symptom of neurotic heredity demanding 
 prompt medical attention.^ Intemperance as a cause of pov- 
 erty has already been discussed in Chapter III. ; the predis- 
 posing causes of drunkenness in neurotic heredity, lack of 
 education in self-control, lack of wholesome recreation, and 
 the presence of constant allurements of the saloon have also 
 been briefly touched upon.^ It is with the treatment of the 
 drunkard that we are now particularly concerned. In the 
 early part of the nineteenth century slight attention was paid 
 to public drunkenness ; in the last fifty years it has become 
 a crime if accompanied by disorderly conduct. The better- 
 class inebriate generally manages to escape the law, pro- 
 tected by his friends and for the sake of his family. The 
 inebriate of the poorer class whose friends are unable to pro- 
 tect him is found drunk in the street, arrested, fined, and 
 imprisoned ; not being able to pay the fine, he is committed 
 again and again to jail.^ The system of short-term com- 
 mitments for drunkenness in the county jails or in the 
 houses of correction has no curative effect whatever. The 
 person who has been convicted ten times for drunkenness 
 
 1 Brantwaite, Am. Jour, of Inebriety, 1907, winter and spring numbers. 
 Wilson, " Drunkenness " ; Palmer, " Inebriety." ^ Chap. III. 
 
 s In all American cities where prohibition is not in force the arrests for 
 intoxication constitute from 40 to 50 per cent of all arrests.
 
 350 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 and is convicted again is sentenced by the judge with the 
 perfect knowledge that no good Avill result, except that the 
 person will be kept from bothering the community during 
 the time of the sentence, and that he will come out of jail as 
 likely to offend against the law as before he was committed. 
 In some cases as many as one hundred and twenty commit- 
 ments have been registered against a single person. By 
 alternating jails and almshouses in order to secure a change 
 of diet and associates, the habitual vagabond drunkard is 
 enabled to recuperate his shattered forces at the expense 
 of the community, and prolong his life and evil influences 
 indefinitely. 
 
 When he has at last developed delirium tremens, or some 
 phase of insanity, he may be committed to an insane asylum ; 
 or when he has finally committed a crime, he may be sentenced 
 to prison. He may originally have been a weak good man 
 of bad heredity, or a vicious criminal, but in either case the 
 treatment received is quite undiscriminating.' 
 
 In 1899 an advisory committee to the mayor of Boston 
 made a report of great value, illustrating the futility, in- 
 justice, and expense of the present method of police court 
 commitments. Table LXVI. shows the number and per 
 cent of first commitments and recommitments for drunken- 
 ness to all penal institutions in Massachusetts for the year 
 ending Sept. 30, 1898. 
 
 The calculable cost of the procedure pictured in the table 
 was reckoned as follows : — 
 
 26,157 arrests for drunkenness at .«!8.04 $210,494.74 
 
 10,431 committals to various penal institutions, served 
 all together 1698 years at a per capita cost from §84.70 
 to .^184.69 per year 129,008.12 
 
 Total $339,502.86 
 
 Income from fines 23,490.78 
 
 Net cost of arrests and imprisonment $316,012.08 
 
 1 Wilson, p. 149.
 
 THE FEEBLE-MINDED, EPILEPTIC, INEBRIATE. 351 
 
 TABLE LXVI. 
 Commitments for Drunkenness, Massachusetts, 1898.* 
 
 
 Number. 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 Whole Number of Commitments 
 
 Number of First Commitments 
 
 Total Recommitments 
 
 Number of Times previously committed : 
 
 1 time 
 
 20,222 
 
 8,994 
 
 11,439 
 
 2,113 
 
 2,415 
 
 1,524 
 
 1,021 
 
 816 
 
 2,701 
 
 689 
 
 160 
 
 50 
 
 43.46 
 56.54 
 
 18.47 
 
 21.11 
 
 13.32 
 
 8.92 
 
 7.13 
 
 23.61 
 
 5.58 
 
 1..38 
 
 .43 
 
 2 times 
 
 3 times 
 
 4 times 
 
 5 times 
 
 6 to 15 times , . 
 
 16 to 30 times 
 
 31 to 50 times 
 
 More than 50 times 
 
 * City Document No. 15S, 1S99, p. 52. 
 
 The Advisory Committee urged the extension of the pro- 
 bation system to all first offenders, and longer sentences 
 for the habitual offender. With these penal aspects of the 
 drink question we have nothing to do at present ; nor is it 
 a part of technical charities to discuss the various methods 
 of temperance legislation and of temperance reform, how- 
 ever useful they may be. It is useless to wait for total 
 abstinence to provide a remedy for habitual drunkenness, 
 although such agitation has resulted in making moderate 
 drinkers more moderate and many moderates into teeto- 
 talers. As Dr. Brantwaite says, we are neglecting the 
 main source of the supply of drunkards, the drunkard him- 
 self. The charitable problem is how to secure earlier con- 
 trol of the hopeful inebriate and the sequestration of the 
 hopeless drunkard. The habitual drunkard will very rarely 
 submit himself to prolonged confinement in a hospital or 
 reformatory ; and, on the other hand, unless placed under
 
 352 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 treatment early in the course of the disease, he has almost 
 no chance of permanent cure. 
 
 The experience of the Massachusetts State Hospital at 
 Foxboro clearly illustrates this point. Of 235 patients first 
 admitted in 1905-1906, the average duration of inebriety 
 had been seventeen years, and in one-third, over twenty 
 years. The superintendent classifies these patients into: 
 the recent or curable type, the chronic who is not of evil 
 repute apart from his habits of inebriety, and the incor- 
 rigible drunkard, who often has some criminal record. He 
 recommends hospital treatment for the first class, custodial 
 care on a farm where they may be partly self-supporting 
 for the second class, and penal commitment for the third. 
 He urges that the courts should have discretionary power 
 in the case of those not of the chronic or criminal type, 
 to commit to the hospital instead of a penal institution for 
 a period of not less than thirty days. A new State law 
 also permits voluntary commitment. 
 
 In view of the fact that the average age of patients was 
 forty-one years, and the average duration of inebriety 
 seventeen years, the results at the Foxboro State Hospi- 
 tal are encouraging : 230 persons were discharged between 
 July 1, 1905, and July 1, 1906. Their apparent condition 
 after Oct. 1, 1906, was as follows: temperate, 40 per cent; 
 improved or drinking less, 16 per cent; unimproved or 
 drinking as before, 23.9 per cent ; could not be found, 16 
 per cent ; died, 3.5 per cent. 
 
 The public institutional care of inebriates has only just 
 begun, but is destined to increase in proportion as the close 
 interrelation of inebriety with other neuroses is generally 
 recognized. The State of Iowa opened a hospital in 1905 
 similar to the JVIassachusetts Hospital, and Minnesota in 
 1907 established a hospital farm to which inebriates are to 
 be committed on an indeterminate sentence. 
 
 Analogous to the institution for inebriates would be one
 
 THE FEEBLE-MINDED, EPILEPTIC, INEBRIATE. 353 
 
 where persons convicted of habitual offences against chastity 
 might be committed for treatment and especially for deten- 
 tion. In case cure or reform, whichever we choose to call it, 
 should prove to be impossible, they could then be detained 
 during the remainder of their natural lives, working for' 
 their own support in a colony. New York has at present 
 a custodial home for feeble-minded women.^ Short commit- 
 ments for this class of offences are manifestly as futile as in 
 the case of habitual drunkards. Further than this, this class 
 of persons are especially subject to disorders analogous to 
 feeble-mindedness ; and in all institutions for wayward girls 
 the number verging upon feeble-mindedness is found to be 
 especially large. The managers of reformatories and ref- 
 uges for fallen women frequently complain that those who 
 come to them need hospital treatment and prolonged deten- 
 tion, which only the custodial home could give. 
 
 There is also need of custodial institutions for male 
 offenders against chastity, nothing at present being done, 
 perhaps because any treatment with the present punitive 
 and reformatory machinery would be so manifestly futile. 
 With proper custodial homes for persons of these classes 
 of both sexes, we could begin to segregate and thereby ster- 
 ilize a large number of those who have proved themselves by 
 their conduct to belong to the class of the unfit. 
 
 1 The late Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell was a strong advocate of such 
 measures during the whole of her life as a charity worker and official.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 FURTHER DIFFERENTIATION AND SUMMARY. 
 
 We have now examined the methods of caring for most 
 of the different classes of dependents, so far as they have 
 become distinct enough to require special institutions sup- 
 ported in whole or in part by public money. From the 
 almshouse, or from the poor relieved in their homes, there 
 has been a constant drafting off of the specialized classes, 
 which may have nearly reached its culmination in the older 
 States, but which must be continued for some time to come 
 wherever the almshouse is still the catch-all for the poor of 
 the community. The process of differentiation during the 
 last one hundred years is graphically represented by the 
 accompanying chart of the public charities of the State of 
 Indiana. Although the particular institutions evolved from 
 outdoor relief and the almshouse may vary in the different 
 States, a similar diagram might be made of most of them 
 with substantially the same features. 
 
 The almshouse is, as a rule, the best place that public 
 authorities have yet provided for the aged poor of good 
 character. In the larger cities some attempt is generally 
 made to classify the aged and infirm by character in wards 
 or corridors, and recently, in New York, the semi-able-bodied 
 have been drafted off to a separate institution. For those 
 of good character there have grown up in all centres of 
 population a considerable number of private homes, usually 
 managed by churches. Admission to these is generally 
 obtained by the payment of a sum down, which insures 
 care during life. It is really a life annuity for somewhat 
 less than its money value. One hundred to six hundred 
 
 354
 
 Development of Pcblip Ciiaiuties in Ind 
 
 I 
 
 Their Wlvea nnd Orplmng 

 
 FURTHER DIFFERENTIATION AND SUMMARY. 355 
 
 dollars is the sura charged, and persons are usually not 
 admitted under sixty years of age. Sometimes the age limit 
 is still higher. Frequently there is a provision that per- 
 sons must be members of a particular denomination ; some- 
 times the homes are established for a particular class, as 
 for the wives of deceased ministers, and so on. Friends 
 often contribute the admission fee for a deserving person, 
 and obtain a place for him. Very frequently such homes 
 are used as a means of providing a safe and comfortable 
 place for the aged having a little property, or possibly a 
 pension, who have no relatives with whom they can live, 
 and who have not property enough to support them outside 
 an institution ; when well managed, they furnish a very satis- 
 factory way of providing for the aged of good character. 
 
 The Catholic Order of the Little Sisters of the Poor 
 maintains, in various large cities, homes for the aged, to 
 which persons are admitted without regard to creed or 
 character, if only they are amenable to the rules of the 
 house after admission. These homes are supported en- 
 tirely by the Sisters, who beg from door to door, and from 
 office to office, and go at the close of business to the mar- 
 kets and stores to collect the refuse, or whatever may be 
 given by the owners; and who further collect from hotels, 
 restaurants, and private dwellings the broken victuals and 
 other material that can be used. These homes are models 
 of order, and the Sisters, most of whom come from France, 
 where is the mother house of the order, have good control 
 of the very querulous and often exacting inmates, whom 
 they speak of as "the children." 
 
 The provision for aged dependents is, however, quite 
 inadequate to the demand. The iSTew York Charity Organi- 
 zation Society reported in 1907 that there were 1200 such 
 persons on the waiting lists of existing institutions, and 
 suggested the enlargement of these, the foundation of new 
 ones, or a plan of boarding out in private families under
 
 356 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 supervision. In so far as public institutions are concerned, 
 the tendency to remove the defective and semi-criminal 
 classes seems likely to result in leaving the almshouse as 
 a home for the aged diseased, the decrepit, and unfortunate. 
 
 The very serious agitation in England for a system of 
 relief for the aged, more honorable than that afforded by 
 the poor-lavsr authorities, has crystallized about the idea of 
 old-age pensions. In the United States the subject has at- 
 tracted much less attention, except as applied to special 
 classes such as soldiers and nurses, firemen, policemen, 
 teachers, railway, and civil service employees.^ California 
 passed in 1883 a State law providing that any institution 
 maintaining persons over sixty years of age should receive 
 for each such person an annual allowance of $100 per year. 
 The law applied to county almshouses and other public in- 
 stitutions, as well as to private charities, and it was, there- 
 fore, possible for the county officials to give this pension, 
 the bill being paid by the State. The cost and the abuse of 
 the system became so serious that the law was repealed in 
 1895. 
 
 On the side of medical charities, we may expect the 
 further development of special homes for incurables, of 
 which there are now a considerable number maintained 
 by private benevolence. The abnshouse is still about the 
 only home for incurables which the public maintains, 
 though private institutions of the kind are sometimes sub- 
 sidized. Another subdivision in medical charities, follow- 
 ing European example, will doubtless be special hospitals 
 for the treatment of venereal diseases. 
 
 Hospitals for children and maternity hospitals, now 
 maintained chiefly by private benevolence and in connec- 
 tion with medical schools, will probably keep pace with the 
 growth of population, partly because of the appeal which 
 they make to natural sympathy, and partly because of their 
 1 Butler, N. C. C, 1906, p. 470 £f. ; statistics, etc., p. 612 ff.
 
 FURTHER DIFFERENTIATION AND SUMMARY. 357 
 
 special interest for medical students. The development of 
 convalescent homes and of the work of the visiting nurse 
 should be rapidly extended, and the provision of both pub- 
 lic and private sanatoria for tuberculous patients — as yet 
 only just begun — with a capacity sufficient to meet the 
 demand is of all recent charity movements the most im- 
 portant. 
 
 No consideration was given to institutions for the blind, 
 deaf, and dumb in the chapter on the Defective Classes, be- 
 cause they are usually classed with the educational institu- 
 tions of the State. But in so far as charitable assistance is 
 necessary to keep such children in special schools, they are 
 comparable with similar provisions for the epileptic and 
 feeble-minded. There were in the 115 schools and homes for 
 the deaf and blind in the United States on Dec. 31, 1904, 
 14,731 persons. Of the total cost of maintenance — 
 $3,523,683 — 65 per cent was expended by public insti- 
 tutions. Of these 115 institutions, eleven were for adults 
 solely, and all but two of the eleven were maintained by 
 private charity. A considerable number of the state schools 
 for children have some provision also for adults.^ As 
 begging on the street is less and less tolerated, the un- 
 trained indigent blind are deprived of almost their sole 
 means of livelihood. The task of training the indigent blind 
 and deaf to handicrafts in childhood seems to be relegated 
 to the State ; but to find homes or remunerative employment 
 for the adult seems likely to be left to private charity.^ 
 
 Most of the classes of which we have treated in Part II. 
 are fully dependent, and many of them are chronic cases. 
 Except among dependent children and the temporarily sick, 
 the cure of dependency is the exception rather than the 
 rule. There is, however, throughout the whole country, and 
 especially in the large cities, a vast amount of relief work 
 
 1 Census, " Benevolent Institutions," 190i. 
 
 2 Henderson, " Dependents," etc., p. 169 ff.
 
 358 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 done by individuals, churches, and benevolent organizations 
 which has for its particular purpose the saving of individuals 
 and families from crossing the pauper line. Most of the 
 work of the charity organization societies comes under this 
 head. It is dealing with incipient dependency, attempting 
 to treat the cases at an early stage of development so that 
 they may not become chronic. Different individuals dealt 
 with may belong to any of the classes for which special pro- 
 vision is now made, but at the critical time of their experi- 
 ence it is sought to give them aid that will save them from 
 dependency. The work of private charities and of charity 
 organization societies will be discussed in Part III. and 
 Part IV. 
 
 Within the last quarter of a century there has grown up 
 a large number of preventive, constructive, and reformatory 
 agencies which are as truly benevolent as those we have 
 already discussed, but which are not classified under the 
 head of technical charities because they do not give direct 
 material and institutional relief. The Charities Directory 
 of each cit}'" contains a section devoted to such societies : 
 societies for thrift, loans, and insurance ; trade and indus- 
 trial schools, schools for training immigrants in adaptation 
 and assimilation ; agencies for distributing immigrants ; for 
 the betterment of social conditions ; for legal aid and pro- 
 tection ; and, most important of all, settlements for every 
 kind of neighborly cooperation. While there must neces- 
 sarily be a limit to any discussion of technical charities, it 
 is impossible to say where the field of charity ends and the 
 field of social betterment begins; and in proportion as char- 
 itable agencies develop the preventive and constructive 
 aspects of their work, the line of demarcation will be ob- 
 literated. 
 
 The differentiation and classification which have been the 
 characteristic tendencies of all recent charity have brought 
 to light more and more the need of improvements in our
 
 FURTHER DIFFERENTIATION AND SUMMARY. 359 
 
 judicial and punitive machinery. An insufficient police de- 
 partment and vulgar, corrupt, and ignorant police courts are 
 the greatest hindrances that an active worker for the poor 
 in many cities has to meet. No constructive work for the 
 poor can be satisfactorily carried through until the system 
 of lower courts, jails, and police procedure is reformed. 
 
 On reviewing what has been said regarding the dependent 
 classes, we find that from the primitive institution, the alms- 
 house hospital, or the hospital almshouse, there have de- 
 veloped a dozen or more special institutions for the care of 
 the different classes of unfortunates. It is differentiation and 
 intergradation analogous to that which has gone on in modern 
 industry. If extended classification has resulted simply in a 
 herding together of a large number of similarly defective per- 
 sons who are treated as a class, fed as a class, drugged as a class, 
 buried as a class, we have a specialization which eliminates 
 human sympathy, and makes charity something mechanical 
 and uncharitable. If, on the other hand, fuller classification 
 has resulted in the fuller individualization of cases and the 
 adaptation to each of the best agencies of modern science 
 and modern sympathy for care and cure, then the develop- 
 ment has been one not only toward wiser sympathy, but 
 deeper sympathy, and has prepared the way for a fuller 
 development of the changes alread}' in progress. In other 
 words, our modern highly differentiated methods of treating 
 the dependent classes bring with them a possibility, but not 
 a guaranty, of better service. 
 
 In the discussion of each dependent class, the final empha- 
 sis has been laid upon prevention. Each specialist has in 
 turn reiterated it : the family on the verge of dependence 
 must be restored, not broken up ; the homeless child must 
 be grafted into new family relations ; the man out of work 
 must not be permitted to become unemployable ; the poor 
 must be protected from contagion and bad sanitation that 
 they may not be sick; the weak and defective must be
 
 360 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 shielded from the world that there may be fewer weak in 
 the time to come ; and the unfit must no longer be allowed 
 to reproduce their kind. If the first word of modern charity 
 is : help every man promptly, intelligently, adequately, ac- 
 cording to his individual need, the last is : prevent his 
 children from falling into need.
 
 PART III. 
 
 ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCIERING.
 
 PAET III. 
 ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCIERING- 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 PUBLIC CHARITIES. 
 
 By " charities," as the term is used in the title of this chap- 
 ter and in this voh;me, are meant all those institutions and 
 agencies which give direct material aid to the poor as such. 
 This leaves out of view all purely educational institutions, 
 because the aid given is not material. According to English 
 usage and according to legal usage in this country, an edu- 
 cational institution, unless supported by the fees of the pupils, 
 is a "charity." The prominent American svho asserted that 
 a free soup-house and a free school are based upon the same 
 principle, was wrong, because there are dangers inherent in 
 the gifts of free food which do not inhere in the gift of free 
 education. Benevolence may set aside the rule that if a 
 man will not work, neither shall he eat ; but not the rule that 
 if a man will not study, neither shall he learn. The bene- 
 ficiary can get no advantage without personal effort from free 
 tuition ; he is, therefore, not exposed in the same way as is 
 the recipient of material relief to the danger of degradation. 
 
 In educational institutions for the defective classes, 
 material relief, free boarding, and lodging is given to the 
 pupils not able to pay, along with free tuition. This, in 
 our opinion, makes such institutions charities to a certain 
 extent, although they protest against being so classed, and 
 wish to be considered purely educational. For adminis- 
 strative reasons, the supervision of them is usually given 
 
 363
 
 364 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 to the State Board of Charities ; but the educational element 
 in their work so far overshadows the relief-giving element 
 that they have only been incidentally referred to in this 
 book. 
 
 The definition of charities given, while a little broader 
 than some would wish it, is narrower than the general ap- 
 plication of the term. For instance, strictly taken, it would 
 exclude institutions for the care of the insane, where, as in 
 Minnesota, any citizen is entitled to gratuitous treatment and 
 care, irrespective of ability to pay. In such a case the poor 
 are given direct material relief in the form of board and 
 lodging and medicine, but they do not receive it as being 
 indigent. The State relieves the insane as insane, not as 
 poor. The same would apply to hospitals such as those 
 recommended by Havelock Ellis, maintained for. the treat- 
 ment of all disease at the expense of the State. It applies, 
 too, to those institutions for defectives in which tuition, in- 
 cluding board and lodging, is absolutely free to all comers 
 irrespective of ability to pay. But still it may be said that, 
 whether ostensibly or not, it is the desire to relieve the poor 
 that primarily influences legislation of this sort. Although 
 the poor are not nominally relieved as such, yet in fact they 
 are so, since they make up a very large proportion of those 
 receiving gratuitous treatment. In other words, the chari- 
 table element in the institution has not been eliminated by 
 being hidden, and the need of insisting upon this is that the 
 dangers of direct material relief are not eliminated either. 
 Those institutions that give board and lodging and all the 
 care that this implies to their beneficiaries must be classed, 
 for administrative purposes at least, as charities, and are 
 so considered in the present volume. 
 
 By "public charities" is meant those institutions or 
 agencies which are entirely controlled by the State in any 
 of its branches, federal, State, county, township, or munici- 
 pality. The distinction is a legal one, and is perfectly
 
 PUBLIC CHARITIES. 365 
 
 simple. A public corporation is one existing under the 
 authority of the State, and which the State can modify 
 or abolish at will. Frequently great private charities, as 
 Girard College or the Johns Hopkins Hospital, are spoken 
 of as quasi-public institutions. They serve the public in- 
 deed, and the wealth which they administer might be con- 
 sidered as affected by a public use in the same sense as /^' 
 wealth owned by a railroad company ; but their charters are 
 contracts with the State and cannot be arbitrarily modified 
 by it. By " public funds " are meant such funds as are de4 ' 
 rived from the revenues of the State in any of its branches.} 
 They are usually the proceeds of taxation.^ 
 
 There have been many searches for the principle upon 
 which the State has acted and should act in taking upon 
 itself work for the relief of the poor. In Europe, the 
 Teutonic countries have usually guaranteed relief to all 
 citizens, while the Latin countries have not done so ; and 
 yet this fundamental difference is not shown in any very 
 great differences in the character of their relief-work. Those 
 who have argued that to guarantee relief was fatal to the 
 independence of a people, and would induce all to become 
 paupers, have been shown that under proper administration 
 this is not true ; since the condition of the pauper, while he 
 may be saved from starvation, can be made very much less 
 agreeable than that of the independent workman. 
 
 Cunningham attributes the changing character of poor re- 
 lief in modern times to the tendency of duties as they become 
 common to become secularized ; in proportion as the necessity 
 and convenience of certain forms of relief are recognized, 
 they are provided as a matter of course out of public taxa- 
 tion, thus leaving the philanthropist free to find new paths 
 
 1 Alexander Johnson, in his article on " Some Incidentals of Quasi-public 
 Charities," uses the term "public" in a sense somewhat diiferent from 
 that outlined for use in the text. There is one clear distinction between 
 public and private institutions which can be made and ought continuously 
 to be made.
 
 366 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 by which he may benefit his fellow-men.^ In this country 
 the principle that underlies the assumption of relief-work 
 by the State seems to be this : whenever a community has 
 been educated up to such a point that it insists on a large 
 amount of relief-work being done, and when the methods of 
 doing it have been reduced to a routine, then the State is 
 asked to undertake the work, and relieve private benevolence 
 of the burden. This we have seen in the care of the insane, 
 the education of the deaf and dumb and the blind, and the 
 education of the feeble-minded. In the matter of caring 
 for the epileptic and inebriate, it is only now becoming 
 clear that the time has come for the State to take hold. Ee- 
 lief-work is adapted to administration by the State not only 
 in proportion as it can be reduced to a routine, but in pro- 
 portion as it requires very large expenditures for a consider- 
 able class to which all taxpayers can properly be asked to 
 contribute. The State is not inventive, its agencies are not 
 adaptable and inflexible ; but it is capable of doing a large, 
 expensive work when the methods for doing it are suffi- 
 ciently elaborated. The administration of outdoor relief is 
 dangerous for the State to undertake, for the simple reason 
 that it never can be reduced to a routine. 
 
 The advantages of public support for charitable institu- 
 tions are Brieffy as follows : — 
 
 1. The income can be absolutely depended upon, and 
 may be made adequate. During an industrial depression 
 there is no shrinking of revenue, as is sometimes the case 
 in private charities, and an amount adequate to the work 
 may always be reckoned upon. 
 
 2. There is greater publicity in a public institution. The 
 records will ordinarily be fuller and more open to inspection. 
 The press is freer to expose abuses. The checks of public 
 opinion are consequently more easily applied. The whole 
 aim and purpose of a public institution may be modified 
 
 1 " History of English Industry," etc., Modern Times, p. 665.
 
 PUBLIC CHARITIES. 367 
 
 whenever the people of a community see that modification 
 is desirable. While not flexible in little things, — the small 
 points of administration, — a system of public charities is 
 frequently more susceptible of large adaptation than a sys- 
 tem supported by endowments and private contributions. 
 
 3. Under a just system of taxation all persons are com- 
 pelled to contribute according to their ability. The stingy 
 man is not allowed to thrive at the expense of his benevolent 
 neighbor. The law is primarily an agency for bringing up 
 the laggards in the march of progress ; and when the com- 
 munity on the average wants benevolent work done, this is 
 the method of pushing forward those who hang back. 
 
 The chief disadvantages of public charity are the follow- 
 ing:— 
 
 1. It is necessarily more impersonal and mechanical than 
 private charity or individual action. There is less kindness 
 on the part of the giver, and less gratitude on the part of the 
 receiver; and yet many cases occur where those who have 
 received aid from the State have done so Avith thankfulness 
 and with a feeling of gratitude to the community as a whole 
 for providing the means of relief. 
 
 2. There is some tendency to claim public relief as a 
 right, and for the indolent and incapable to throw them- 
 selves flat upon it. This feeling will always assert itself 
 whenever it is given an opportunity to do so. But it can 
 be checked by making the pauper somewhat less comfort- 
 able than the man who is self-dependent. 
 
 3. In public charities, officialism is even more pronounced 
 than under private management. The degradation of 
 character of the man on a salary set to the work of reliev- 
 ing the poor is one of the most discouraging things in con- 
 nection with relief-work, and it may be that public officials 
 are especially likely to become hard and unsympathetic. 
 
 4. It is possible to do so much relief-work that, while 
 one set of persons is relieved, another will be taxed across
 
 368 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 the pauper line. Our own expenditures for charitable in- 
 stitutions have seldom reached the sums that make it 
 possible to demonstrate the connection between the diffi- 
 culties falling to the lot of the struggling, self-dependent 
 members of the community and the increase of taxation for 
 the benefit of the destitute. But under our chaotic system 
 of taxation it is usually true that the burden of supporting 
 the State tends to diffuse itself along the lines of the least 
 resistance ; consequently, money which is raised for the 
 relief of the poor may come out of pockets that can ill 
 spare it. 
 
 5. The final disadvantage of public institutions for 
 the relief of destitution is the weightiest, at least in the 
 United States. The disadvantage referred to is that the 
 blight of partisan politics and gratuitously awkward ad- 
 ministration often falls upon the work. City and county 
 politics seem to degrade public charities even more than 
 other branches of the local administration. Charitable institu- 
 tions are spoils of an insignificant character, thrown frequently 
 to the less deserving among the henchmen of the successful 
 political bosses. The managing boards of the hospital and 
 almshouse are not content with appointing the superinten- 
 dent, and leaving the responsibility of minor appointments to 
 him, but make a complete list of employees, and force the 
 superintendent to accept them. 
 
 To supply their political supporters with places in insti- 
 tutions, is not the only motive actuating politicians who 
 cling to the " spoils" of public charities. In the larger in- 
 stitutions the contracts for supplies involve large expendi- 
 tures on which the favored contractors expect to make a 
 high percentage. The placing of supply contracts affords 
 an opportunity for the boss to throw business in the way of 
 friends. There are many historic instances of political in- 
 terference with the management of State institutions : poli- 
 tics abolished the State Board of Charities and Reform in
 
 PUBLIC CHARITIES. 369 
 
 Wisconsin, and substituted the Board of Control with 
 salaries for all members ; in 1891 the Michigan School for 
 Dependent Children was deprived of its board of control 
 and placed with other institutions under a board of a dif- 
 ferent political complexion ; the Blockley (Philadelphia) 
 Almshouse exposure of 1881-1882 of a death-rate of 15 per 
 cent and the embezzlement of $150,000 of the appropria- 
 tions by the superintendent ; the scandal of the management 
 of the Indiana Hospital for the Insane in 1887, where brutal 
 treatment of patients and supplies far below the contract 
 standard were the principal features ; the removal on false 
 charges of mismanagement and the secret trial of the super- 
 intendent and matron of the City and County Almshouse of 
 San Francisco in 1897, and of the superintendent of the 
 School for the Feeble-minded in California, — all these and 
 many more might be cited as the fruits of the partisan 
 system. 
 
 In recent years, Illinois and New York have furnished 
 conspicuous illustrations. In 1901 Governor Yates of Illi- 
 nois forced upon the State Board of Charities his own ap- 
 pointee as secretary, although the law was explicit in its 
 provision that the Board should independently select its 
 employees, and although the appointee had no experience in 
 philanthropic administration. Two of the most competent 
 members of the Board resigned, as a protest against using 
 public charitable institutions for party ends.^ Governor 
 Odell, during his term of office, made revolutionary changes 
 in the administration of the hospitals for the insane in 
 New York and interfered with their internal affairs. The 
 supervision and control of each State hospital had been in 
 the hands of a local, unsalaried board of managers appointed 
 by the Governor and under the supervision of the State 
 Commission in Lunacy. The State was thus receiving the 
 unpaid services of nearly a hundred " honor " officers who 
 1 Charities, vol. vii., 1901, pp. 150, 152-155; vol. viii., pp. 532-537.
 
 370 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 kept in close touch with the needs of the patients, and 
 served as a check on supply contracts. By the Odell Lunacy 
 Bill, as it was called, these boards were done away with, 
 all the power concentrated in the Lunacy Commission at 
 the Capitol, who were political appointees of the Governor, 
 and who could do almost nothing of importance without 
 the approval of the Governor. The welfare of 23,000 
 insane persons and the expenditure of nearly $5,000,000 
 was thus transferred directly to the centralized political 
 Commission at Albany. The justification offered for this 
 procedure was " economy," but it subsequently appeared 
 that it had been inaugurated for campaign purposes and that 
 the saving was accomplished by reducing the clothes allow- 
 ance of patients, by overcrowding them in large buildings 
 instead of providing more cottages for proper classification, 
 by reducing the number of attendants, and finally by act- 
 ually reducing the food allowance of inmates below the 
 physiological requirements. The result of Governor Odell's 
 action was to rouse all classes of philanthropic workers; 
 and in the following political campaign, non-partisan man- 
 agement of State charitable institutions became a political 
 issue, and both candidates for governor were compelled to 
 put themselves squarely on record in favor of the merit 
 system. 
 
 The application of the civil service system to minor posi- 
 tions has progressed rapidly in recent years ; and although 
 there is still much difference of opinion among authorities 
 as to its applicability to higher positions, the public is being 
 educated to demand that all such appointments shall be 
 made on the ground of fitness. 
 
 The administration of charities both here and abroad has 
 been very greatly improved by the extension of the system 
 of honor offices, in which no salary is paid the incumbent. 
 The most efficient of the State Boards of Charity have 
 members holding by this tenure. Where there are special
 
 PUBLIC CHARITIES. 371 
 
 boards for local hospitals, almshouses, and other institutions, 
 the directors are frequently of this class. The danger that 
 these boards, whose principal function is to select the 
 salaried superintendent of the institutions over which they 
 have control, or, in the case of State boards, a salaried sec- 
 retary, will degenerate into mere engines of the political 
 boss, to be used by him in the distribution of spoils, is much 
 less with unsalaried than with salaried boards; and tlieir 
 further functions of supervision and advisory interference 
 with the management are usually more developed when 
 the members receive no salary. It is generally found possi- 
 ble to secure for such service some of the best citizens in 
 the community ; and, where it is possible, it is usually 
 better that men and women should serve jointly. Appoint- 
 ment seems, as a rule, to secure better members than elec- 
 tion. The term of office should be of considerable length, 
 the members going out in rotation. 
 
 Dr. Francis G. Peabody, as early as 1893, and Frederick 
 Almy again in 1904, urged the employment of unpaid boards 
 and volunteer visitors by public officials in behalf of public 
 institutions.^ The compulsory drafting of citizens into 
 public charity service, as is done in Germany and other parts 
 of Europe under the Elberfeld plan, may have many features 
 not adaptable to American conditions, but- the principle is 
 nevertheless most valuable. Massachusetts already makes 
 use of auxiliary unpaid visitors for the care of girls placed 
 in families ; ^ in New York the after-care of the insane has 
 been organized by volunteer service, and in New York City 
 the Department of Public Charities has made frequent use 
 of the unpaid service of workers trained in private charities. 
 But nowhere has any such extensive and systematic use 
 been made of unpaid almoners as in German cities, where 
 the districts are so small that not more than four paupers 
 are in the care of one almoner. The development of friendly 
 
 1 Almy, N. C. C, 1904, pp. 113 ff. 2 Codman, N. C. C, 1904, pp. 126 ff.
 
 372 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 visiting by the American Charity Organization Societies is 
 unquestionably leading in this direction ; and it is to be 
 anticipated that public charities will soon avail themselves 
 systematically of unsalaried agents for certain duties. 
 Such service is, indeed, difficult to secure and to train, and 
 often proves unreliable, but should be utilized because 
 of the almost prohibitive cost of maintaining the ideal 
 standard of administration, and perhaps, as a minor end, 
 for the education of the public itself in those ideals. 
 
 In each commonwealth the fabric of the public charitable 
 institutions rests upon the quicksands of the poor-law, which 
 few study and fewer understand. It was said of the Eng- 
 lish poor-law, by the commission appointed to investigate its 
 workings, that there was scarcely one statute connected with 
 the administration of poor-relief which had produced the 
 effect designed by the legislature, and that the majority of 
 them had created new evils and aggravated those which they 
 were intended to prevent. The same is substantially true 
 in many of our own States, and especially in the older com- 
 monwealths, such as New York and Pennsylvania, where 
 the legislatures have not been careful to repeal existing 
 legislation when enacting new laws. The result is a tangle 
 of statutes, which cannot be rationally interpreted because 
 they have no rational basis. The courts construe them from 
 time to time, because they must, and not because they know 
 how. The fact that, after years of giving outdoor relief in 
 Brooklyn, the whole system was decided to be illegal, shows 
 the unsubstantial nature of the foundation upon which our 
 system of poor-relief sometimes rests. 
 
 In the Eastern States, particularly in Massachusetts, the 
 laws of settlement were formerly very complicated, and 
 there grew up a class with no claim to public relief, com- 
 prising half the population of the State, and a great body 
 of legal decisions on questions of settlement. The State 
 Board of Charities succeeded in getting these laws modified
 
 PUBLIC CHARITIES. 373 
 
 SO that only one-fifth were non-settled residents. Outside 
 of New England there are no inheritable settlements; resi- 
 dence, usually of one year, but in the newer States of only 
 six months, determines the right to pviblic relief, and in 
 the Western States even this law is not observed. 
 
 A dependent passes from township to township, from 
 county to county, and from State to State, expecting to be 
 relieved wherever he happens to need relief. The loose- 
 ness of the San Francisco almshouse, which has received a 
 Canadian pauper direct from the vessel on which he came 
 to the State, appears to be carrying the matter too far ; but 
 the alternative is not a return to a system of settlement 
 laws like those formerly obtaining in Massachusetts. A 
 well-administered system of charities — that is, a system 
 which aims at cure as well as relief, and which succeeds in 
 making the condition of the willing pauper much less satis- 
 factory than that of the self-dependent man — will probably 
 not attract people from any great distance. The cure for 
 migration is in the proper administration of local charities, 
 even in the case of the foisting of dependents upon one 
 political unit by another. 
 
 As between States, the evil may be regulated by uniform 
 settlement laws and some form of arbitration in disputed 
 cases. The laws should be as nearly uniform as possible as 
 to the length of time necessary to establish residence, and 
 as to the return of non-residents to their place of legal set- 
 tlement ; and the power of arbitration may be lodged in any 
 suitable State board, preferably in a State board of chari- 
 ties.^ On the Pacific coast the migration of dependents is 
 being regulated with the assistance of the railway compa- 
 nies. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, California, and in 
 Phoenix, Arizona, — terminal points to which tramps and 
 indigents are most apt to migrate, — the railway companies 
 have placed the granting of all charity rates in the hands 
 1 N. C. C, 1899, pp. 153 ff., gives a proposed uniform law.
 
 374 AMERICAN CHABITIES. 
 
 of the Associated Charities. The international migration of 
 paupers from Europe to America is now controlled by fed- 
 eral law, with the result that the relief problems incidental 
 to immigration have been much diminished.^ 
 
 One of the most striking tendencies in public charities 
 at the present time is the centralization of administration. 
 It has grown partly out of the closer relation of commu- 
 nities to each other and partly from the fact that local 
 institutions are more " in politics " and less well adminis- 
 tered than State institutions.^ In proportion as trained 
 service and classification of dependents have been recog- 
 nized as important, and as the merit system of appointments 
 to office has gained acceptance, concentration of administra- 
 tion is seen to be essential. 
 
 Mr. Homer Folks, as the result of his experience as Com- 
 missioner of Public Charities in New York City, said: — 
 
 "We have, partly by tradition and partly by personal conviction, 
 come to regard public institutions as being in the main, and generally 
 speaking, inadequately supported, impersonal, and inelastic, unfit for 
 experimentation and impervious to criticism." 
 
 Mr. Folks then shows that officials in charge of public 
 charities must constantly compete with other powerful in- 
 terests in obtaining appropriations, but that with proper 
 backing from private citizens, adequate funds may be 
 secured because no jDolitical party dare go to the polls 
 with a record of insufficient care of the poor. In the 
 matter of employees for public institutions, wherever it is 
 in the hands of the Civil Service Commission, it is success- 
 ful in preventing partisan removals ; but in providing an 
 eligible list it is unsatisfactory chiefly because the exami- 
 nations are not prepared and carried out by men who have 
 
 1 On the relief problem as affected by immigration, see Charities, 
 vol. xii., 1904, special number 6. 
 
 2 Committee Report, N. C. C, 1902, pp. 127 if.; Fox, N. C. C, 1900, 
 pp. lOG ff.
 
 PUBLIC CHARITIES. 375 
 
 had experience in the work to be done. According to Mr. 
 Folks, one of the chief difficulties of administration is the 
 getting rid of incompetent employees, because the holding of 
 such a position has come to be regarded as a sort of vested right. 
 
 That public institutions are impersonal and inelastic is 
 frequently true ; but not because they are public, — rather 
 because they are big and have not been equipped with 
 skilled service in proportion to the number of the inmates. 
 Precisely the same complaint is justly made of great uni- 
 versities. Mr. Folks regards public institutions as well 
 adapted for social experimentation, and cites the introduction 
 of ti-ained dietitians into public hospitals and social sec- 
 retaries into hospitals for consumptives as successful ex- 
 periments. Finally he shows that a public official cannot 
 afford to resent criticism because the newspapers like the 
 sensation and the public is ready to believe any charge 
 of inefficiency. This is, in fact, one of the most hopeful 
 things about public institutions ; for public opinion, if 
 rightfully handled, can control their administration.^ 
 
 The essential principles by which public charities should 
 be administered may then be briefly summed up : they must 
 be free from partisan influence and at the same time strictly 
 accountable to State authority ; the best-trained ability 
 should be engaged in their management, supplemented by 
 the finest unsalaried service the community affords; and 
 they should, above all, be sustained by an intelligent public 
 interest. Miss Julia C. Lathrop attributes the sustained 
 excellence of the management of public charities in Massa- 
 chusetts to the long roster of persons of distinguished 
 ability devoting themselves to humanitarian effort; and 
 quotes, as an example of what may be done, the Cook 
 County (Illinois) Insane Asylum, which has been lifted 
 from inefficiency to the highest standard by the power of 
 public opinion.^ 
 
 1 Folks, N. C. C, 1904, pp. 134 ff, 2 N. C C, 1905, pp. 420 ff.
 
 376 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 The enormous expense of elaborate State institutions has 
 already driven officials to consider methods of economy in 
 their administration. With the elimination of wasteful 
 partisan influence and the employment of trained experts, 
 the supplies will be more carefully bought and more eco- 
 nomically used. The committee on hospital deficits in 
 New York City at once discovered an enormous leakage 
 in this direction ; and the employment of such a dietary 
 expert as Professor Atwater to set a proper food standard 
 for the insane hospitals in New York State has already 
 been of great advantage. The common methods of public 
 economy — a horizontal reduction of expenses and refusal 
 to carry out imperative reforms — are both brutal and 
 wasteful. It is to be hoped that the pressure of large 
 expenditures will more and more force attention to the 
 economy of the prevention of dependence.
 
 CHAPTER XV. - 
 PRIVATE CHARITIES. 
 
 1 1 Private charities are those that in their management are 
 independent of the authority of the State, although like 
 private individuals they may be subject to its general police 
 
 -Land supervisory powers. A private charity may receive 
 public money in the form of a subsidy, or from the proceeds 
 of legacies or endowments, or from voluntary contributions ; 
 but we concern ourselves here chiefly with the last-men- 
 Itioned method of obtaining money. 
 
 We have already referred in Chapter I. to the influence of 
 the ancient and mediaeval church in securing the bestowal 
 of alms. The art of inducing men to give has been prac- 
 tised ever since charity began, and at all times one of 
 its most constant features has been religious or ecclesiastical 
 influence.^ At the present time the church is still a most 
 powerful agent in inducing people to give. Whether chari- 
 ties are identified with any particular denomination or not, 
 it is usually, though of course not uniformly, the people of 
 the churches that support them ; and of all the churches the 
 one that probably induces the largest amount of giving in 
 proportion to the means of those who give is the Roman 
 Catholic. The religious orders of the Roman Catholic 
 Church are exceptional in the amount of personal service 
 contributed to the care of the poor.^ But in the gift of both 
 
 1 In 1903, one-third of the benevolent institutions listed in the special 
 census report, i.e. hospitals, day nurseries, permanent and temporary 
 homes for adults and children, were under ecclesiastical control. 
 
 2 See Baluffi, Uhlhorn, and Brace. 
 
 377
 
 378 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 personal service and money the Jews are perhaps more 
 systematic and more liberal than either Roman Catholics or 
 Protestants. 
 
 Of Protestant denominations, there are few in the large 
 cities, where destitution is a problem, that have not done 
 something for the care of the poor. Preventive and educa- 
 tional work, originally chiefly undertaken by the Unitarians, 
 is now carried on by most denominations. The great hospi- 
 tals are likely to be supported by whatever denomination 
 has the largest wealthy membership in any large city. An 
 unfortunate feature of the work of American churches is 
 interdenominational competition, which induces many of 
 them to develop their charities as engines of church exten- 
 sion. This can be, and sometimes has been, carried too far, 
 but the condition of things does not seem to be worse than 
 in countries having a single church, where ecclesiastical 
 orders within the church compete one with another. 
 
 The development by secular charities of more careful, 
 thorough, and sympathetic methods of relief has of late 
 placed the churches at great disadvantage in dispensing 
 relief to any except their own members. Many churches 
 have practically no poor members and few of them have 
 trained agents to give relief and comfort to the needy in 
 homes. Those congregations which are compelled to give 
 a large amount of relief have generally adopted modern 
 methods, but there is at present no organized system of relief 
 giving in any Protestant denomination. 
 
 It has been questioned by philanthropists of great experi- 
 ence whether relief by churches should not be discontinued 
 altogether. It has been pointed out that it is subject to the 
 same abuse and the same disadvantages as public outdoor 
 relief and as indiscriminate almsgiving. Some clergymen 
 even have taken the position that the churches are intended 
 only for worship and for religious fellowship, and not for 
 giving material aid.
 
 PRIVATE CHARITIES. 379 
 
 Professor Devine has said that while some churches have 
 adopted discriminating methods and have cooperated with 
 other benevolent agencies, the majority pursue an antiquated 
 and short-sighted policy, giving relief from sentimental mo- 
 tives without personal knowledge of its effects and often- 
 times in the hope of making converts.^ Professor Hender- 
 son, on the contrary, thinks religious charity has a great 
 advantage; for, if wisely conducted, it goes deepest into the 
 spirit ; but he acknowledges the same dangers described by 
 Professor Devine and proposes cooperation of the churches 
 with the Charity Organization Societies as a remedy.^ 
 
 The Church District Plan in Buffalo furnishes the best 
 illustration of a definite scheme of cooperation between a 
 charity organization society and the churches. 
 
 " The plan proposed to divide the city into districts, each district to 
 be assigned to a church. The churches accepting a district agreed to 
 care for every family not otherwise cared for by an individual, organi- 
 zation, or other church. When a family needing care had a definite 
 church connection, that church was to be asked to provide the neces- 
 sary visitor and such needed material relief as it could afford, calling 
 on the society for the rest. If the family had no responsible church 
 connection, it was to be referred to the church district which had 
 agreed to provide a friendly visitor to work with the society, and such 
 material relief as it could afford. Furthermore, each church accepting 
 a district pledged itself to feel a special responsibility for the moral 
 elevation of its district, through friendly visiting to referred families 
 and such other agencies as settlements, clubs, classes, etc., as it could 
 establish." ^ 
 
 The results of this plan, undertaken in 1895, have been 
 most satisfactory ; in 1906, 120 churches had assumed 
 charge of districts, and from them 438 families received 
 responsible care, and many of the churches have opened 
 settlements and social centres. The Charity Organi- 
 
 1 " Principles of Relief," pp. 74-75, 325. 
 
 2 Henderson, "Dependents," etc., p. 147. 
 
 8 Report of the Assistant Secretary, 1906, pp. 21-22.
 
 380 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 zation Society, which formerly had difficulty in obtaining 
 friendly visitors, now has 165 ; the overlapping of church 
 and charitable aid has been checked, and constructive social 
 work has been stimulated. The plan has afforded an oppor- 
 tunity to educate the churches doing less intelligent work; 
 and finally it has produced a high degree of understanding 
 and cooperation between the active churches and the 
 society. It should be added that the society receives and 
 supervises the reports of the visitors, and if it finds any of 
 them neglectful or unqualified, removes the family from 
 their care. Other cities, particularly Boston, report a large 
 amount of cooperation between the churches and the 
 Associated Charities. It seems probable that as individual 
 members of churches become familiar with modern charity 
 methods, and as clergymen receive in theological seminaries 
 proper training in charities and other lines of applied sociol- 
 ogy, some of the objections to ecclesiastical charity will be 
 removed, and it will become less and less sectarian. The 
 United Hebrew Charities throughout the country, whose 
 charitable methods might serve as models for the benevolent 
 work of other religious bodies, endeavor to take care of all 
 their own poor, but do not exclude other poor from the 
 benefits of many of their institutions. At the same time 
 their individual members are often most liberal contributors 
 to every sort of constructive work undertaken by persons of 
 other religious views.^ 
 
 Next after religious influence, pure and simple, the most 
 powerful of the secondary motives that induce men to give 
 money for charitable purposes is possibly social influence. 
 Many of the large charities of our cities are officered, so far 
 as boards of management are concerned, by fashionable or 
 otherwise influential people ; and to contribute to the chari- 
 ties of the locality is one of the means by which social ad- 
 vancement is secured. A long chapter might be written on 
 1 Frankel, Annals, etc., vol. xxi., 1903, pp. 389 ff.
 
 PRIVATE CHARITIES. 381 
 
 the methods of raising money for charities by means of balls, 
 entertainments, oyster suppers, and other devices for invei- 
 gling money from the pockets of those who would not other- 
 wise contribute the same amounts. Such enterprises must 
 be judged each on its own merits. The end does not justify 
 the means; the means must justify themselves. A lottery 
 is pernicious, though managed by a church for the benefit of 
 a charity. A voting contest is usually vulgar and mischiev- 
 ous in its results, no matter what institution may be the 
 beneficiary. Ostentation and extravagance at a charity ball 
 are just as condemnable as at any other place, possibly more 
 so. Wheedling and teasing are no more pleasant for a chari- 
 table purpose than for any other. On the other hand, any 
 occasion which has sufficient results in instruction or health- 
 ful social recreation to justify the expense is justified irre- 
 spective of its motive. 
 
 The matter of financiering methods in private charities 
 has recently been widely discussed, chiefly because as charities 
 have become more business-like and have engaged the inter- 
 est of larger numbers of intelligent and self-respecting peo- 
 ple, the old methods of teasing, wheedling, even holding up 
 those who were thought to be able to give, have become 
 wholly distasteful. However worthy a charity may be, none 
 of the people connected with it now wish to do the begging 
 for it. It is often said that a charity doing good work 
 should receive the spontaneous support of the community, 
 and it may do so if it is picturesque and touching, or widely 
 advertised ; but as a matter of fact some of the most useful 
 charities have none of these spectacular qualities, and appeal 
 to the intelligence more than to the emotions. If the work 
 for crippled children or abandoned babies is emotionally 
 presented, money can easily be obtained ; but a community 
 has to be slowly educated to support a charity organization 
 society or preventive measures against tuberculosis. 
 
 The difficulty in securing regular and sufficient support
 
 382 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 created a demand for skilled solicitors who could be paid a 
 commission for their work and relieve the charitable man- 
 agement of a disagreeable task. The people willing to do 
 this work were, however, generally unsatisfactory ; the pro- 
 fessional business solicitor, who would undertake the work, 
 was usually a type of person without knowledge or sympa- 
 thy with the charity which he expected to promote, often by 
 methods discreditable to the work. The unprofessional so- 
 licitor — some superannuated clergyman or charity worker — 
 lacked the vigor and experience in business enterprise neces- 
 sary to success. And in either case the solicitor was likely 
 to receive a disproportionate share of the proceeds. The 
 task of presenting the claims of a charity, even a perfectly 
 worthy one, to people beset with many solicitations of a 
 similar sort, does, in fact, require a high order of business 
 ability and great personal self-sacrifice ; and commonly those 
 fitted for it prefer to give themselves more directly to some 
 form of social service. 
 
 The payment of a salary instead of the commission and 
 the title of financial secretary, making the collector a mem- 
 ber of the active staff of the society, has, in some cases, 
 enlisted the service of persons who were competent to repre- 
 sent it and to educate the benevolent to give regularly and 
 intelligently. 
 
 It is not more certain that there are large sums seeking 
 investment in ordinary industry than it is that there are 
 large sums which the holders would gladly give for the pro- 
 motion of the public good, if they could find ways of bestow- 
 ing such sums that they were sure would result in helpful- 
 ness. In order to obtain possession of a portion of this 
 really large fund, which is intelligently given or intelligently 
 withheld, the managers of a charity must not only do thor- 
 oughly good work, but must contrive to let it be known that 
 they are doing such work. The methods of philanthi-opic 
 advertising, using the word "advertising "in a distinctly hon-
 
 PRIVATE CHARITIES. 383 
 
 orable sense, must be varied according to the psychology of 
 the givers. The best introduction that a charity can have to 
 the benevolent people of the community is the gradual dif- 
 fusion from one intelligent person to another of the opinion 
 that the charity is in fact doing something that is worth 
 while. Beyond this, most of the non-sectarian charities and 
 those operating under the guidance of Protestant denomina- 
 tions issue annual reports. As a rule, it does not pay a 
 society to economize by a failure to publish such a report. 
 In order to reach the most influential members of the com- 
 munity, it must be well prepared, well printed, and dis- 
 creetly distributed. Many societies publish their own con- 
 demnation in their annual reports, and many more fail to 
 publish anything that commends them to the intelligent part 
 of the community. The perpetual re-using of stereotyped 
 phrases, the filling up a report with the cant of philanthropy, 
 and having the reports year in and year out substantially in 
 the same form, from which the essential facts regarding 
 efficiency are omitted, brands the society as unprogressive 
 and unsatisfactory.^ 
 
 In addition to the annual reports, a great many societies 
 issue circulars, and even periodicals, explaining their work 
 as it develops. The daily and weekly press is freqiiently 
 not as wisely used as it might be. What the daily press 
 wants is news ; and there is usually, or at least there should 
 be, a considerable amount of news about the development 
 of any large charity. To offer this in a way that makes it 
 available for the daily press, is to offer exactly the material 
 which will do the most good when printed. It is of no advan- 
 tage to a newspaper, nor to an institution, to print a " lot of 
 gush" about some charity. The editor does not want it 
 for the simple reason that he knows it will not be read ; and 
 
 1 Catholic charities very rarely publish reports, unless required to do 
 so because they receive public money or for some similar reason. An 
 exception is the Society of St. Viucent de Paul.
 
 384 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 if he inserts it at all, it is under personal pressure and 
 although he is conscious that its insertion is a mistake. 
 There is, moreover, no more reason why a charitable society 
 should not pay for advertising space in which to present 
 its needs than a State university. If charity items were 
 offered strictly as news, and advertising paid for, the editors 
 of general newspapers would be more inclined to promote 
 really important charitable enterprises in their editorials, 
 and the general public would be better informed. 
 
 In scanning the contributors' list of a number of societies, 
 it becomes apparent that the burden of voluntary charity 
 falls on a very small number of givers and that there is a 
 large portion of the public able to give, whose names do 
 not appear. The rich man is besieged with the claims of 
 many charities, the moderately well off not infrequently gives 
 to only one or two and by no means to the extent of his 
 capacity or his duty. This again results in an unequal distri- 
 bution of the funds among worthy charities. To obviate these 
 injustices and inequalities, as well as to use the funds most 
 judiciously, many of the Federations of Jewish Charities act 
 as a financial committee to pass upon the budget, collect the 
 funds, and redistribute them to all the charities cooperating 
 in the plan. The contributor may designate where his 
 money shall go, or he may give it to the general fund which 
 is distributed according to the needs of the charity 
 budgets.-^ 
 
 A similar system has been in operation in Liverpool, with 
 satisfactory results for thirty years, and exists in a modified 
 form in a few American cities. ^ In the case of the Jewish 
 Charities the adoption of the plan has resulted in a very 
 large increase of revenue. The operation of any such plan 
 involves a decision as to what charities should receive con- 
 tributions. In San Francisco, a method has been devised 
 to induce the public, and especially business men, to give 
 1 N. C. C, 1907. 2 Denver, Colorado ; Lyuu, Massachusetts.
 
 PRIVATE CHARITIES. 385 
 
 only to such institutions and charities as are endorsed by an 
 expert committee. Tlie Charities Endorsement Committee 
 is made up of representatives from the Mercliants' Associ- 
 ation, the Associated Charities, and the Charities at Large, 
 and its secretary is tlie secretary of the Associated Charities. 
 The Committee investigates all charitable enterprises apply- 
 ing to it for endorsement, and issues an official card to those 
 doing honest and efficient work. The members of the Mer- 
 chants' Association, representing a majority of the moneyed 
 men of the city, refused to give unendorsed charities, and 
 the general public is being slowly educated to do likewise. 
 The plan, while rousing the resentment of all fraudulent 
 charities and of many that were far behind the demands of 
 modern philanthropy in their standards, has proved success- 
 ful in driving the former from the city, and in inducing 
 many of the latter to make an effort to meet the requirements. 
 The Merchants' Association approve it heartily as relieving 
 them of a horde of solicitors, and the endorsed charities as 
 giving them a recognition which is their due. But its chief 
 value lies probably in the intimate knowledge obtained of 
 the charities of the city. The disclosure that three child- 
 placing societies could not be endorsed, has resulted in the 
 establishment of a Children's Placing-out Agency of the 
 best type, which is supported jointly by fourteen orphanages 
 and supervised by the Associated Charities. So far as finance 
 is concerned, the Charities Endorsement Committee at pres- 
 ent has no machinery for collecting and disbursing funds, 
 although such a feature was a part of the original plan. 
 
 In the chapter on the Destitute Sick, it has already been 
 shown that the hospitals of New York were found to be 
 greatly in need of more business-like methods of bookkeep- 
 ing, and a more effective presentation of their work and their 
 needs than the ordinary annual report afforded. In summing 
 up the matter of support for charities, the first requirement 
 is that the society shall be sound, progressive, and positive ;
 
 386 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 and the second, that it shall present its budget in a simple 
 and perfectly intelligible manner ; thirdly, the public must 
 be educated by a steady campaign of legitimate advertising, 
 carried on by a committee of interested public men, perhaps 
 with a salaried financial secretary. The general public has 
 a right to know what is done with the money which it gives, 
 and in proportion as it does know it will be interested to 
 give more. For the support of small charities it is a mis- 
 take to depend chiefly upon a few rich people, who have 
 many other claims upon them. A large body of well-to- 
 do persons, if kept interested, are more reliable and more 
 useful because they diffuse a knowledge of the work among 
 their friends. Uninterested contributors are of much less 
 value than interested ones because they are less likely to 
 renew subscriptions and to advertise the work. 
 
 In order to commend the work of a charity to the favor 
 of the most intelligent part of a community, it is essential 
 that no attempt should be made to do the work too cheaply. 
 "Cheap and nasty" is a phrase that can be applied to 
 charities as well as to merchandise. Just as a physician 
 cannot afford to begin practice without a proper prepara- 
 tion for his work, and without the facilities in the way of 
 library, instruments, and ofl&ce that are necessary in order 
 to do his work well, so a charity will not, even from the 
 financial side, find it wise to undertake to do for seven 
 thousand dollars a work that can only properly be done for 
 ten thousand. It is usually easier to manage the finances 
 of a society that insists on having a revenue adequate to 
 the work that it is doing — that would, in fact, go out of ex- 
 istence rather than proceed otherwise — than it is to manage 
 the finances of a society that consents to half do its work 
 because of an inadequate income. 
 
 The advantages of private charities over public ones are 
 that they afford on the average a somewhat larger share of 
 personal sympatliy, that their benefits cannot logically be
 
 PRIVATE CHARITIES. 38T 
 
 claimed as a right (although they often are), that they do 
 not oppress the poor by increasing taxation, and that they 
 are supposed to bring a somewhat smaller degree of degra- 
 dation to the recipient of relief. Private charities are es- 
 pecially useful along lines of philanthropic experimentation. 
 People with ideas in advance of those of the general com- 
 munity can find through them an opportunity to experi- 
 ment, and, by results, to satisfy the community as a whole 
 of the need and of the possibility of doing a certain work ; 
 but they are not suited to the administration of large funds, 
 and the doing of a large volume of work, unless they are 
 made amenable to State regulation. 
 
 The managers of private charities, while not always re- 
 senting supervision, do not invite it ; but it seems obvious 
 that amounts given for such purposes are trust funds which 
 should be accounted for as other trust funds are required to 
 be by law. There is no question that private charities re- 
 ceiving public subsidies should be supervised by State 
 authority, but the reasons in the case of those receiving 
 subscriptions are not so patent. When it is remembered 
 that many of the beneficiaries are ignorant or helpless, it 
 seems clear that the State should exercise its police powers 
 to protect them at least as much as it does ordinary citi- 
 zens.^ 
 
 A second reason lies in the fraud and imposture which 
 often masquerades as charity. Among many illustrations 
 may be cited that of a charming and plausible woman who 
 collected large sums of money in Chicago and San Prancisco 
 for several years for a children's nursery and for an orphan 
 asylum. The orphan asylum, when investigated, was a 
 lonely country house containing four neglected children, and 
 the money collected for the nursery would have cared for 
 three times the number of children that were kept for show 
 purposes in the city. Even when no imposture is intended, 
 1 Hart, N. C. C, 1902, pp. 130 ff.
 
 388 AMERICAN CHARITIES, 
 
 the " goodness fallacy " — the fallacy that virtue is all the 
 qualification required to run a benevolent enterprise — leads 
 to ill-managed, dreary, and niggardly charities which are far 
 worse for the victims than even the indifferent public insti- 
 tution. The demand for State regulation of private charities 
 is rapidly strengthening, and at the present time about one- 
 half the States require supervision by some board, generally 
 the Board of Charities, with various degrees of power by 
 inspection, license, and control. 
 
 Finally, the line of demarcation between the field of 
 public and private charity seems to lie between those de- 
 pendents requiring some degree of control, and those that 
 may be allowed their freedom ; between measures for 
 chronic dependents and those looking to prevention ; be- 
 tween institutional care on a large scale and private aid 
 to the needy in their homes. Generally speaking, private 
 charity is best fitted to conditions where much personal, 
 individual sympathy is required ; public charity, to problems 
 requiring large funds, equipment, and control. Finally, 
 private charity, under the stimulus of some individual en- 
 thusiast, will mark out new paths, which when proven may 
 be adopted by the State. Nevertheless as the fields become 
 more defined, there appears a tendency toward cooperation 
 between the most enlightened public aiid the most progres- 
 sive private charity which should eventually produce better 
 results than have hitherto been possible.
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 ENDOWMENTS. 
 
 When those who support a charity find it difficult to 
 raise the funds they need, and are weary with unsuc- 
 cessful applications for contributions ; when they dislike 
 to turn to the public treasury because of the stigma at- 
 taching to public relief, their wish is apt to be that their 
 charity were adequately endowed. Then, they think, they 
 could give their whole time to the administration of the 
 funds, instead of giving so much of it to securing funds. 
 It seems as though their hands would be free for very large 
 usefulness, and the benefits of the institution might be 
 indefinitely extended. It consequently happens that the 
 annual reports of nearly every charitable association which 
 is supported by voluntary contributions contain, in a con- 
 spicuous place, a form of bequest by means of which any 
 one so inclined may, without inconvenience, insert a pro- 
 vision in his will, leaving property to this particular charity. 
 
 There is a feeling in the community that one who leaves 
 his wealth to charity has done a commendable thing, and, 
 therefore, nothing is done to discourage charitable endow- 
 ments in the older States of the Union, where they tend to 
 accumulate rapidly. Yet no other country has ever per- 
 mitted entire freedom in the granting of charitable bequests 
 without finding, in the course of years, that too much wealth 
 was coming to be too injudiciously administered by the 
 " dead hand." 
 
 As an example of what a country comes to with the lapse 
 of time, we may turn to England. The great endowments 
 
 389
 
 390 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 of the monasteries, with their dole-giving features, were 
 secularized by Henry VIII. at the time of the Reformation. 
 The opinion has already been cited that the property was 
 of more use in the hands of dissolute favorites of the king 
 than in that of the monks. Bequests of land were strictly 
 limited by subsequent legislation, and endowments for su- 
 perstitious uses were forbidden, and in many ways the 
 power of bequests was greatly restricted; but when Lord 
 Brougham, among his many other agitations during the first 
 quarter of the nineteenth century, got a commission to in- 
 vestigate endowed charities, it was found to be a gigantic 
 task even to enumerate them. The commission worked 
 from 1818 to 1837 ; and the results of this research were 
 published in 38 folio volumes, consisting of some 25,000 
 pages, describing 28,820 charities, with an aggregate income of 
 £1,200,000, compiled at a cost of more than a quarter of a mil- 
 lion, A general digest of this great report was published 
 in 1867-1876 by the Charity Commissioners. The gross 
 income from endowments as given in this register was : — 
 
 From land £1,5.58,251 
 
 From personalty 640,213 
 
 Total £2,198,464 
 
 The land held by them included 523,311 acres. The income 
 was devoted to the various forms of charity in the following 
 proportion : — 
 
 Education £666,86.3 
 
 Apprenticing and advancement 87,865 
 
 Clergy and lecturers 90,843 
 
 Church purposes 112,895 
 
 Nonconformist churches and ministers 38,832 
 
 Parochial and other public uses 66,876 
 
 Almshouses and pensions 652,119 
 
 Medical hospitals and dispensaries 199,140 
 
 Distribution amongst the poor 383,029 
 
 The income included no estimate of the prospective in-
 
 ENDOWMENTS. 391 
 
 crement in the lands held by the charities, nor upon the 
 buildings and other leases, nor of the values of the land and 
 buildings kept for occupation as charitable premises. The 
 universities, some large school foundations, and cathedral 
 fgundations were also omitted ; and a considerable number 
 of charities probably escaped enumeration/ 
 
 The proper administration of such a great block of wealth 
 as this is manifestly of the utmost importance to the com- 
 munity. The English Charity Commission, created in 1853, 
 has the power to require statements and accounts of endow- 
 ments and within limits to alter the use of ineffective 
 foundations.^ 
 
 In the United States there are special dangers in laxness 
 in this matter, by reason of the provision of our federal 
 Constitution which forbids States to pass laws impairing the 
 obligation of contracts. This makes it especially diffi- 
 cult for us to modify the system that is now developing. 
 In England, whenever Parliament sees fit to change the 
 administration of an endowment, or even to sequester 
 its revenue for other purposes than those of the testa- 
 tor, it has power to do so; but that is out of the ques- 
 tion with the State legislatures in this country. If a 
 charitable establishment has a charter in which the State 
 has not reserved the right to amend or repeal it, then, under 
 the Dartmouth College decision, that charter is a contract 
 with the State, which cannot be altered without the consent 
 of the corporation.^ 
 
 1 Kenny, " Endowed Charities," pp. 135 ff. 
 
 2 Lathrop, N. C. C, 1905, p. 433. 
 
 3 The Dartmouth College decision was reported in 4 Wheat. 516 et seq. ; 
 also in 1 N. H. 111. The legislature of New Hampshire had attempted to 
 modify the corporation of Dartmouth College by changing the number of 
 its trustees and in other ways. The Supreme Court of the State decided 
 that this was possible without the consent of the old Board of Trustees. 
 The Supreme Court of the United States reversed the decision, holding 
 that the charter was a contract between the State and the corporation, 
 and could not be altered without the consent of the latter, on account of
 
 392 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 It is better, as any one must see on reflection, to make 
 proper rules for the regulation of bequests at the beginning, 
 rather than to be compelled to remove a mountain of abuses 
 after they have accumulated. Owners of property fre- 
 quently feel as if they had a '^ natural right" to provide 
 for its bestowal in perpetuity. But why people should 
 expect to be allowed to manage their property after they 
 are dead and can no longer use it themselves, it is hard to 
 see ; and it is even harder to see why a community should 
 think itself bound to accord them the privilege that is to 
 make them legislators in perpetuity, regarding the dispo- 
 sition of a certain amount of wealth, which they happen 
 at the time of death to possess. It is felt perhaps that 
 the person who leaves money to charity acts only from com- 
 mendable motives, and that his will should therefore be 
 respected. But even if it were true that he acted from 
 good motives, it should be remembered that the good in- 
 tentions of the donor do not insure conscientiousness and 
 wisdom in the executors of a trust, nor the adaptation of 
 the trust to the needs of changing generations. 
 
 the provision of the federal Constitution which forbids any legislature to 
 pass laws impairing the obligation of contracts. Art. I., Sec. 10. The 
 decision has been extensively undermined in the case of railroads and 
 other corporations considered to be of a quasi-public nature, by the ruling 
 in Munn vs. Illinois, in which it was held that the legislature had the power 
 to regulate the administration of property affected by a public use. Later 
 decisions have modified this by giving to courts the right to say what 
 " regulation " is " reasonable." So far as eleemosynary corporations are 
 concerned, the Dartmouth College decision has not been modified to any 
 appreciable extent; but it has been rendered nugatory for corporations 
 created since the time it came to be appreciated, by the insertion in a 
 large number of State constitutions of the provision that all charters 
 granted under general or special acts shall be subject to amendment or 
 repeal by the State. This makes the power of ameudment or repeal a 
 reservation on the part of the State included in the contract. Whether 
 the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States was good law or 
 not, it was certainly a mistake from an economic standpoint. As Cooley 
 says in effect, it has been found that there is less danger in granting to 
 legislatures the power of amendment and repeal of charters, than there 
 is in giving to legislatures power to grant charters which are irrepealable.
 
 ENDOWMENTS. 393 
 
 But the motives of the donor are by no means always 
 commendable, and are of as varied and sometimes as doubt- 
 ful character as those leading to other human actions. 
 Love of power, ostentation and vanity, superstition, and 
 even spite, play a not unimportant part in determining the 
 disposition of property. 
 
 "An appreciable number of men," says Hobhouse, " and perhaps 
 more women, especially those who are childless and have been teased 
 by expectant legatees, are on bad terms with their relatives. Now, 
 the only way to disinherit your legal heirs is to give your property to 
 some one else ; what, then, so obvious as to give it to charity ? . . . 
 As in other departments of life, so in this, the vulgar are influenced by 
 vulgar motives. If a man makes his gift by will, i.e. out of other 
 people's pockets instead of his own ; if we find him stipulating for 
 benefits to his own soul ; making provisions to perpetuate his own 
 name or arms or tomb ; devising solemn oaths to deter men from 
 altering his arrangements ; in such cases, whatever fine words he may 
 have used, we may be sure he was really thinking more of himself 
 than of his fellow-creatures." ^ 
 
 But even when the motive is philanthropic or public- 
 spirited, when it is intended to provide for a class whose 
 interests are neglected or to return to a locality some of the 
 fruits of the resident donor's prosperity, its terms are fre- 
 quently so rigid and narrow that it shortly ceases to have 
 any vital relation to existing needs. An endowment pro- 
 viding for the ransom of the captives of the North African 
 pirates may have benefited some individuals for a time 
 after it was made, but to provide for a similar expen- 
 diture in perpetuity was an absurdity. An endowment 
 for superannuated wool-carders continued to support war- 
 den and bedesmen long after wool-carding had ceased to be 
 an occupation in England. An endowment made in 1683 for 
 seven poor old men of the Protestant religion in the Asylum 
 of the County of Cork, who had been soldiers and were 
 
 1 Hobhouse, pp. 15 ff. ; Fitch, "Endowments," pp. 20-21; Allen, "Effi- 
 cient Democracy," pp. 308-317.
 
 394 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 unable to work, is handed down to a time when sufficient 
 Protestant soldiers cannot be found in Cork to exhaust 
 the income of the charity, and there is at present an ac- 
 cumulated fund of £2300. There is a fund in Stirling 
 worth £5400 a year, which was given when certain trades 
 and crafts possessed a monopoly in the town, for the indi- 
 gent members of these guilds. The income of the charity 
 became so great that it was distributed among the mem- 
 bers of the guild irrespective of poverty and even of 
 residence. In 1869 it was found that of the 412 mem- 
 bers, 369 were recipients of the charity, and some of 
 them were soldiers in Australia. Endowments for teaching 
 children to card, spin, and knit, or for the supply of spin- 
 ning-wheels, are of small use at the present time.^ It has 
 been found that in many parishes in England rents are 
 increased by the fact that those who live in these par- 
 ticular parishes can obtain doles from the great endow- 
 ments. As a consequence, a pauper population is attracted 
 to the place, and the poor-law rates are higher than where 
 there are no endowments at all. 
 
 Many dole-giving endowments have also been established 
 in the United States which are having, in so far as their 
 extent makes it possible, exactly the same influence.^ A 
 glance at the condition of public trust funds amounting to 
 $800,000 in a single Eastern city will illustrate many of 
 the objections to which such bequests are open : — 
 
 Two funds to provide for Thanksgiving and holiday dinners for the 
 Protestant Poor, especially for unmarried women. 
 
 A pension fund for " poor, worthy, Protestant single women over 50 
 years old." 
 
 1 Kenny, "Endowed Charities," pp. 160 ff. 
 
 2 In San Francisco a swarm of widows with children is drawn to the 
 mayor's office every year to get a share in an annual allowance of about 
 S)2000 to be distributed among them from the proceeds of an endowment. 
 Those who are successful receive about $2 each, aud every one who applies 
 for the dole is inevitably degraded.
 
 ENDOWMENTS. 395 
 
 A fund for Protestant widows and single women " without distinc- 
 tion of color." 
 
 A fund for the " nurture and instruction of poor orphans and deserted 
 children." 
 
 A fund to provide tea, coffee, and chocolate for the inmates of the 
 almshouse. 
 
 A number of pension funds for persons (generally Protestants) over 
 50 years of age. 
 
 The ill-advised character of many foundations, which nev- 
 ertheless appeal superficially to the feelings of generous 
 people, is illustrated by the home for prisoners' children re- 
 cently projected in New York. It is not only undesirable 
 to bring prisoners' children together, where the brand of the 
 parents' disgrace would always be upon them, but there were 
 already available homes and institutions where this might 
 be forgotten. Or it might be illustrated by a recent bequest 
 •of several millions for " the worthy poor," with very strict 
 condition of residence, in a Western city where there is 
 practically no poverty except that resulting from sickness 
 (chiefly tuberculosis), and where a sanatorium is the desper- 
 ate need of the community. A paragraph from an article 
 contributed by Turgot to the French " Encyclopedic " in 
 1757 sets forth strikingly the difficulties that must be en- 
 countered by one who tries to be wise for all time to come : — 
 
 "The testator," he says, " is apt to be ignorant of the nature of 
 the problem he desires to solve and of the best way of solving it. He 
 is seldom gifted with a wise foresight of the futui'e and of its wants. 
 He puts into his deed of gift theories, projects, and restrictions which 
 are found by his successors to be utterly unworkable. He seeks to 
 propagate opinions which posterity disbelieves and does not want. He 
 takes elaborate precautions against dangers which never arise. He 
 omits to guard against others which a little experience shows to be 
 serious and inevitable. He assumes that his own convictions and his 
 own enthusiasm will be transmitted to subsequent generations of 
 trustees and governors, when, in fact, he is only placing in their way 
 a sore temptation, at best to negligence and insincerity, at worst to 
 positive malversation and corruption."
 
 396 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 But irrespective of the motives or the wisdom of testators, 
 endowments are not likely to accomplish as much good as 
 is expected of them, because the character of boards of 
 management is not all that could be desired, and because of 
 a tendency to officialism, which develops when any society 
 finds its economic existence assured. Boards of manage- 
 ment are usually cooptative, and tend to be made up of 
 old persons, often not particularly wise or progressive in 
 the administration of the funds given to them. As a con- 
 sequence, the character of efficient societies not infrequently 
 declines when they become considerably endowed. The 
 managers often regard the work as nobody else's business, 
 they ignore public opinion, private charity is checked, and 
 the society atrophies.^ In some instances the expenses of 
 administration eat up the greater part of the income. While 
 this is not the worst possible result, it still indicates a waste 
 of the income.^ 
 
 The foregoing discussion and illustrations lead to a few 
 clear principles which should guide legislation and educate 
 public opinion in the matter of bequests. 
 
 1. Endowments should be somewhat strictly regulated 
 
 1 Allen, " Efficient Democracy," pp. 301-302, 306-308. 
 
 2 Girard College is frequently quoted as an example of extravagance 
 in the administration of a charitable trust. At this college, which is 
 really an industrial school for boys, several millions have been spent on 
 the construction of buildings which are of white marble. " The central 
 or main building is the finest specimen of pure Greek architecture in 
 America." In 1907 there was expended $526,452 for an average of 1521 
 boys in attendance. By comparison of these figures with those of the 
 great universities, it will be seen that an enormous amount of money is 
 invested in the education of comparatively few boys. One of the absurd- 
 ities likely to cluster about endowments is found in connection with 
 Girard College. No minister of any sect is ever to be admitted within 
 the premises, as the founder wished to " keep the tender minds of the 
 orphans who are to derive advantage from this bequest free from the 
 excitement which clashing doctrines or sectarian controversy are apt to 
 produce." — Alden, "History of Child Saving," pp. 70-75; Johnson, 
 Charities Revieio, vol. i., pp. 156-157.
 
 ENDOWMENTS. 397 
 
 by law. The present law declares bequests invalid for super- 
 stitious or immoral purposes — a limitation established at 
 the time of the Reformation to prevent perpetual payments 
 for prayers for the dead. At the present time, indiscrimi- 
 nate doles might also be prohibited. As the problems of 
 poor relief are worked out, there should be some authority 
 to pass upon the wisdom of endowments before they may 
 be made. 
 
 2. There should be supervision — by the State Board of 
 Charities where one exists — of endowed societies and in- 
 stitutions in operation. This is necessary to prevent abuse 
 and neglect of inmates and misapplication and extravagance 
 in the use of funds. 
 
 3. Such provision as may be possible under the consti- 
 tution should be made for the revision of endowments. 
 Growth of knowledge and changes in politics, religion, and 
 social life leave old endowments that are useless, even 
 harmful, and there should be authority for revising them. 
 
 Limitations upon the powers of testators will not lessen 
 the amount that is given in charity eventually. They may 
 keep a man whose motive is vanity, who is set in his own 
 way and wishes to perpetuate his own will, from giving 
 money to charities, because he will see that public officials 
 may interfere with his plans or whims. But those whose 
 aim in leaving wealth is to benefit their fellows will look 
 upon it as an advantage that, if their ideas are found not 
 to be sound with the passage of years, there will be public 
 authorities having power to modify and make useful their 
 bequests. Dr. Fitch relates the following story of Sir Josiah 
 Mason, the founder of Science College, Birmingham : — 
 
 " I said to him then, ' Are you not afraid of leaving such large be- 
 quests to posterity when you see the modern tendency to overhaul and 
 revise the wills of founders ? ' He replied, ' That is the very reason 
 why I feel such confidence in leaving these sums of money; if it were 
 not that public authorities are likely to be vigilant, and to correct any
 
 398 AMERICAN CHABITIES. 
 
 mistake that I make, and to take care to keep these institutions in full 
 worlving efBciency, I should feel very much hesitation in leaving such 
 large sums to my successors.' It was in this spirit that in the follow- 
 ing year, 1870, he introduced into his deed of foundation for the 
 Science College this provision : ' Provided, always, that it shall be law- 
 ful for the said Josiah Mason at any time during his life, and after his 
 decease for the trustees, within two years after the expiration of every 
 successive period of fifteen years, to alter or vary the trusts or provi- 
 sions herein contained in all or any of the following particulars.' 
 Then he enumerates every one of the particulars, except the general 
 object of the foundation, namely, the improvement of scientific instruc- 
 tion." i 
 
 It is in such a spirit as this that some of the largest recent 
 bequests to education and charity have been made in this 
 country. As a single illustration may be mentioned the 
 Russell Sage Foundation of ten million dollars, established 
 in 1907 " for the improvement of social and living conditions 
 in the United States of America." The methods by which 
 this purpose is to be accomplished are left to the trustees, 
 who comprise some of the foremost philanthropists in the 
 country. Endowments conceived with such breadth and 
 benignity, if used wisely, with sympathy and proper safe- 
 guards, may escape the dangers of " the brutal power of 
 concentrated wealth " which are ever present in these vast 
 accumulations. 
 
 The very catholicity and intelligence of these exceptional 
 endowments suggest that what is further needed is a cam- 
 paign of education in the giving of charitable bequests such 
 as has been quietly carried on for some years in the sphere 
 of education by the Association of Collegiate Alumnae. 
 When every donor can be persuaded not to impose any con- 
 dition beyond a temporary period, — at most twenty-five 
 years, — and to take the advice of active charity workers 
 on the needs of the time and locality, endowments may cease 
 to be a burden and a menace. 
 
 1 Fitch, " Endowments," etc.
 
 CHAPTEE XVIL 
 
 PUBLIC SUBSIDIES TO PRIVATE CHARITIES. 
 
 When contributions are hard to get, when fairs and balls 
 no longer net large sums, and when endowments are slow to 
 come, the managers of private charities frequently turn to 
 the public authorities and ask for a contribution from the 
 public revenues. On the other hand, when State legislatures 
 see the annual appropriation bills increasing too rapidly, 
 and when they see existing public institutions made politi- 
 cal spoils, and the administration wasteful and inefficient, 
 they are apt to approve of giving a subsidy to some private 
 institution, instead of providing for more public buildings 
 and more public officials. 
 
 - This problem of granting or of not granting public sub- 
 sidies to private charitable corporations is analogous to the 
 problem of public versus sectarian schools on the one hand, 
 and of governmental control of private business corporations 
 on the other — allied to both but identical with neither. It 
 is related to the school question not only because the care of 
 dependent and delinquent children by sectarian institutions 
 involves their education in the faith of a particular sect, but 
 because there is reason to believe that the subsidizing of 
 sectarian charities has been resorted to with the conscious 
 purpose of evading the laws that forbid public aid to secta- 
 rian schools. It is related to the problem of governmental 
 control of private corporations, not only by the fact that the 
 legal questions involved are frequently the same, but by the 
 fact that the methods used by eleemosynary corporations to 
 secure public subsidies are often not unlike those used by 
 money-making corporations to secure legislative favors. 
 
 399
 
 400 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 The States most largely committed to the subsidy or con- 
 tract system are shown in the following table : — 
 
 TABLE LXVII. 
 Subsidies to Private Charities, 1901.* 
 
 States granting Largest 
 Amounts. 
 
 State 
 sudsidies 
 
 GRANTED. 
 
 Other 
 State 
 Aid. 
 
 Local 
 subsidies 
 
 GRANTED. 
 
 Other Local 
 Aid, Amoitnt 
 NOT reported. 
 
 Vermont 
 
 Connecticut .... 
 
 New York 
 
 Pennsylvania .... 
 
 Maryland 
 
 District of Columbia . . 
 North Carolina . . . 
 California 
 
 §54,000 
 
 101,750 
 
 235,000 
 
 5,700,000 
 
 96,000 
 
 35,000 
 410,000 
 
 Yes 
 
 $2,000 
 
 24,500 
 
 3,410,000 
 
 153,500 
 
 185,000 
 
 200,000 
 
 6,200 
 
 Yes 
 Probably 
 
 Large 
 Probably 
 
 ♦Condensed from Fetter's table, Am. Jour, of Soc, vol. vii., 1901, No. 3, p. 363. 
 New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Delaware, Kansas, and Oregon give State aid in small 
 amounts ; and 19 States give local aid in small amounts. Compare this table with 
 Table LXI. on page 293, of subsidies to children's institutions only. 
 
 It is seen from this table that Pennsylvania, Xew York, 
 California, and the District of Columbia give the largest 
 amounts in subsidies to private charitable institutions. A 
 review of the facts regarding State aid in these localities 
 will serve as a basis for the discussion of the advantages 
 and dangers of the system. 
 
 On Feb. 2, 1893, while the Senate of the United States 
 was sitting as town council for the city of AVashington, 
 a member moved to amend the appropriation bill by in- 
 serting a proviso that almshouse inmates or other paupers 
 and destitute persons who might be a charge upon the pub- 
 lic should be turned over to any private institution that 
 would contract to provide for them at 10 per cent less than 
 they were then costing the District. Senator Call, who in- 
 troduced the amendment, explained that it was in lieu of 
 one which had been rejected at the previous session of Con-
 
 PUBLIC SUBSIDIES TO PRIVATE CHARITIES. 401 
 
 gress, whereby he had sought to have $40,000 of public 
 money given to the Little Sisters of the Poor, to enable them 
 to build an addition to their Home for the Aged. He de- 
 fended the original proposal on the ground that this sister- 
 hood cared for the aged poor better and more cheaply than 
 the almshouse, and that the existence of their institution 
 had saved to the taxpayers of the District in the last twenty 
 years a sum believed to be not less than i^300,000. It was 
 not a novel plea; for Congress had already appropriated, 
 since 1874, $55,000 to aid the Home for the Aged of the 
 Little Sisters of the Poor ; and each year the District ap- 
 propriation bill had included subsidies for a large number 
 of private charitable institutions, some of them avowedly 
 under sectarian management.^ How far the tendency to 
 grant public subsidies to private charities had gone in the 
 District of Columbia is in some sort indicated by the follow- 
 ing table : — 
 
 TABLE LXVIIL, A. 
 
 District of Columbia Appropriatioxs for Public as compared 
 WITH Private Charities, 1880-1892. 
 
 
 Number of 
 Institutions. 
 
 Appropriation for Maintenance. 
 
 ISSO. 
 
 1892. 
 
 1880. 
 
 1892. 
 
 Increase. 
 
 Public . . . 
 Private . . . 
 
 Totals . . . 
 
 7 
 8 
 
 8 
 28 
 
 $78,048.82 
 46,500.00 
 
 8119,475.05 
 117,630.00 
 
 160% 
 253% 
 
 
 
 $124,548.82 
 
 8237,105.50 
 
 
 
 Appkopbiations 13 Teaes, 1880-1S92. 
 
 Construction. 
 
 Maintenance. 
 
 Constkuction and 
 Maintenance. 
 
 Public 
 
 Private 
 
 Totals 
 
 .$155,130.70 
 300,812.53 
 
 81,296,125.95 
 840,940.00 
 
 $1,-351,256.65 
 1,141,752.53 
 
 .$455,943.23 
 
 $2,137,065.95 
 
 $2,493,009.18 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 1 Other historical details in Folks, " Dependeut . . . Children," pp. 135 ff.
 
 402 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 From this table it will be seen that the amount given for 
 maintenance to private charitable institutions at the begin- 
 ning of the period was a little less than one-third of the 
 whole amount, while at the close of the period it is a little 
 less than one-half. The most surprising fact, however, is 
 that the District had given to private institutions nearly 
 twice as much money to be used in acquiring real estate and 
 erecting buildings as it had granted to its own public insti- 
 tutions. Were we to deduct a sum of $66,900 charged to the 
 workliouse, a purely correctional branch of the so-called 
 Washington Asylum, it would appear that more than three- 
 fourths of the money appropriated for permanent improve- 
 ments in charitable institutions was given to private corpo- 
 rations. 
 
 The appointment of a Board of Children's Guardians in 
 1892, the growth of a public sentiment against subsidies and 
 the creation of a Board of Charities in 1900, has resulted in 
 a gradual, if not very rapid, decrease of public subsidies, as 
 shown by the following statement : — 
 
 TABLE LXVIII., B. 
 
 District of Columbia : Appropriation for Public as compared 
 WITH Private Charities, 1900-1906.* 
 
 
 Number 
 
 OF 
 
 Institutions. 
 
 Appropriations 
 
 FOR 
 
 Maintenance. 
 
 Appropriations 
 FOR Buildings 
 and Grounds. 
 
 
 1900. 
 
 1906. 
 
 1900. 
 
 1906. 
 
 1893-1906. 
 
 Public 
 Private 
 
 8 
 23 
 
 11 
 20 
 
 $350,000 
 153,000 
 
 $623,000 
 149,00 
 
 •11,156,000 
 392,000 
 
 * MacFarland, N. C. C, 1900, pp. 231-232. 
 
 Comparing this with Table LXVIII., A, it appears that in 
 proportion as subsidies have been withdrawn, public institu- 
 tions have increased in number and have received far more
 
 PUBLIC SUBSIDIES TO PRIVATE CHABITIES. 403 
 
 adequate appropriations for maintenance and improvements. 
 The greater part of the subsidies to private charities is now 
 given in the form of a specific payment for a specific service 
 mider contract with the public authorities. Under this 
 modified system, it is claimed that control and accountabil- 
 ity are secured, thus removing some of the most objectionable 
 characteristics of the lump-sum system of subsidies. 
 
 The tendency of public subsidies to increase rapidly — 
 although usually granted in the first place on the ground of 
 economy — and of subsidized charities to multipl}' at the 
 expense of public institutions, is illustrated by the experi- 
 ence of Pennsylvania. Table LXIX. shows the appropriar 
 tions to both classes of institutions for a period of fifty-five 
 years. 
 
 TABLE LXIX.* 
 
 Appropriations to Public and Private Charities in Pennsyl- 
 vania, 1850-1905. 
 
 Yeak. 
 
 Public Charities. 
 
 Private Charities. 
 
 All Charities. 
 
 
 Appropria- 
 tions. 
 
 No. of 
 Institu- 
 tions. 
 
 Subsidies. 
 
 No. of 
 In.stitu- 
 
 tions. 
 
 Total Appro- 
 priations. 
 
 Total 
 Institu- 
 tions. 
 
 1850 
 
 $69,000 
 
 3 
 
 $66,000 
 
 4 
 
 $135,000 
 
 7 
 
 1855 
 
 59,000 
 
 4 
 
 56,000 
 
 5 
 
 115,000 
 
 9 
 
 1860 
 
 139,000 
 
 4 
 
 116,000 
 
 6 
 
 255,000 
 
 10 
 
 1865 
 
 123,000 
 
 4 
 
 227,000 
 
 26 
 
 350,000 
 
 30 
 
 1870 
 
 222,000 
 
 5 
 
 173,000 
 
 10 
 
 395,000 
 
 15 
 
 1875* 
 
 413,000 
 
 8 
 
 275,000 
 
 13 
 
 688,000 
 
 21 
 
 ]880 
 
 468,000 
 
 8 
 
 171,000 
 
 8 
 
 629,000 
 
 16 
 
 1885 
 
 650,000 
 
 11 
 
 378,000 
 
 22 
 
 1,028,000 
 
 33 
 
 1890 
 
 755,000 
 
 9 
 
 822,000 
 
 52 
 
 1,577,000 
 
 61 
 
 1895 
 
 1,097,000 
 
 15 
 
 1,248,000 
 
 95 
 
 2,345,000 
 
 110 
 
 1900 
 
 1,430,000 
 
 15 
 
 1,149,000 
 
 129 
 
 2,579,000 
 
 196 
 
 1905 
 
 2,336,000 
 
 20 
 
 2,328,000 
 
 176 
 
 4,664,000 
 
 196 
 
 * Boyle, "Fifty Tears," etc. (pamphlet), 1905; table reprinted in Charities, etc., 
 vol. xii., 1905, p. 561.
 
 404 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Under the Pennsylvania system, subsidies are voted in 
 lump sums for " maintenance " and " buildings," but the 
 buildings when erected do not belong to the State but to 
 private boards on which the State is not represented. 
 Moreover, the amounts given have no relation to the num- 
 ber of persons cared for, nor to the amount of private sub- 
 scriptions received. Private giving is thus discouraged, 
 and the development of private charities is determined by 
 the subsidies obtainable rather than by the needs of the 
 community. With charitable budgets approaching five mil- 
 lion dollars in 1905, Pennsylvania, an old and rich State, was 
 enlarging her accommodations for the insane with cheap, 
 temporary one-story buildings, had no separate provision 
 for epileptics, and no adequate provision for the feeble- 
 minded. This neglect of State dependents is a far greater 
 evil than the political log-rolling and favoritism which 
 inevitably accompany the appropriation of such large sums 
 to private interests.^ 
 
 The best-known and most frequently quoted example of 
 the policy of subsidies to private charities is that of New 
 York City. In 1894, and again in 1899, the State Charities 
 Aid Association made a thorough analysis of the finances of 
 children's institutions especially, and in 1899 made a num- 
 ber of recommendations regarding the subsidy policy to the 
 Comptroller of the city.^ In 1894, 23 institutions were re- 
 ceiving $1,625,994 from the city for the care of 15,331 chil- 
 dren ; that is, they received 69 per cent of the total cost of 
 maintenance in subsidies. In the decade 1885-1894, from 
 6 to 13 institutions received a total sum of $631,040 in 
 excess of the cost of maintenance. Of these, two received in 
 1894 alone a total grant of more than $250,000 each. In 
 some cases, the care of dependent children might be thus 
 said to have become a profitable business. 
 
 1 Richnioud, Charities, vol. xiv., 11)05, pp. 843 ff. 
 
 2 Publication No. 03, 1894; No. 74, 18'J9, State Charities Aid Association.
 
 PUBLIC SUBSIDIES TO PRIVATE CHARITIES. 405 
 
 The report made to the Comptroller in 1899 gives the 
 following statement : — 
 
 TABLE LXX. 
 
 Subsidies to Institutions in New York City, 1899.* 
 
 Institutions by Classes. 
 
 Amount received 
 
 Children's Institutions . . . . 
 Infants' and Foundling Asylums . 
 
 Maternity Hospitals 
 
 Hospitals 
 
 Dispensaries 
 
 Reformatories for Women . . . 
 General Relief Societies . . . . 
 
 Homes for the Aged 
 
 Corporate Schools, Mandatory . . 
 Institutions for Defective Children 
 Miscellaneous 
 
 All Institutions 
 
 51 
 7 
 12 
 60 
 33 
 6 
 22 
 15 
 28 
 15 
 33 
 
 11,665,723 
 
 651,050 
 
 54,823 
 
 271,550 
 
 37,904 
 
 40,604 
 
 19,251 
 
 20,796 
 
 205,000 
 
 206,197 
 
 176,724 
 
 282 
 
 $3,249,624 
 
 * Publication No. 73, 1899, p. 5. 
 
 The State Charities Aid Association made a number of 
 significant recommendations to the Comptroller for the regu- 
 lation of public appropriations to private charities, of which 
 only the briefest digest can be given here : (1) the city 
 should make no appropriations for the care of any persons 
 except such as are accepted as proper public charges by the 
 Department of Pablic Charities ; (2) the city should make all 
 payments to children's institutions and hospitals at a per 
 capita rate, instead of in gross amounts, and the rate should 
 diminish as the number of inmates increases ; (3) appropria- 
 tions to dispensaries and for relief of the poor in their homes 
 should be discontinued. 
 
 The conclusions of the Association's Committee as to the 
 effects of the svibsidy policy are of historic importance : —
 
 406 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 " It is our belief that, more than any other one cause, excessive 
 appropriations to private charities in tliis city have prevented adequate 
 provision being made for the public hospitals and almshouses main- 
 tained and controlled directly by the city. These institutions are 
 obliged to care for their inmates at a much less per capita cost than 
 obtains in many — and probably in most — of the private hospitals and 
 homes for the aged receiving public aid. While the city has in many 
 cases, by its generous appropriations, relieved the managers of private 
 institutions from the necessity of securing any private contributions 
 whatever, the appropriations to its own institutions have frequently in 
 the past been reduced to so small an amount that the buildings have 
 fallen into dilapidation ; the heating systems have been wholly inade- 
 quate ; the food and clothing supplies have been insufficient, and the 
 salaries have been so low that only the most incompetent and irrespon- 
 sible class of caretakers could be secured. The consequences were 
 untold suffering, and the sacrifice of many lives, particularly in the 
 Infants' Hospital. . . . 
 
 "In conclusion we desire to state that a careful study of this question 
 has convinced us that the plan of granting public subsidies to private in- 
 stitutions has inherent and grave dangers which it is impossible to 
 obviate, and that no plan can be devised which will insure wholly satis- 
 factory results. We find that appropriations of public funds to private 
 institutions inevitably tend to diminish and discourage private charity; 
 that the system confuses the duties of the public authorities and of 
 private citizens and private organizations, and prevents any clear 
 division of the field as between public and private effort; that it en- 
 courages the growth of privately managed but publicly supported 
 charities to an unlimited and harmful extent ; that although often 
 apparently economical in the beginning, it is always in the long run 
 enormously expensive ; that it indirectly prevents a proper equipment 
 and maintenance of the public charitable institutions ; and that its 
 permanent disadvantages far outweigh any immediate and temporary 
 benefits that may be derived when the system is first established. 
 
 " So far as children's institutions are concerned, no radical change 
 can be made until some other system has been established, nor should 
 any be attempted until the present efforts to regulate subsidies has had 
 a full and fair trial. If the present efforts to exercise a rational and 
 proper control over these subsidies should fail, then some other system 
 should be adopted. The remarkable success of public systems of caring 
 for destitute children in many States of the Union afford every reason 
 for believing that a satisfactory system of public care for children
 
 PUBLIC SUBSIDIES TO PRIVATE CHARITIES. 407 
 
 could be established in this State, if such a step should become 
 necessary." 
 
 The adoption of a system of investigation by the Depart- 
 ment of Public Charities and of per capita payment had an 
 immediate effect upon the amounts appropriated. In 1903 
 the amount voted for children's institutions constituted only 
 52 per cent of the total cost of maintenance. A rule that 
 acceptance by the Department is for one year only has 
 further decreased the number of dependent children ; and in 
 spite of rapid increase of population, New York City has 
 now fewer dependent children than it had ten years ago. 
 
 California has a system of subsidies for dependent children 
 similar to that of New York, except that the per capita 
 payments are exclusively from the State treasury, and there 
 is no oflBcial investigation or control of admissions. The 
 law provides that every institution in the State conducted 
 for the care of orphan, half-orphan, or abandoned children, 
 shall receive from the State treasury the sum of $100 for 
 each orphan, and $75 per year for each half-orphan or 
 abandoned child under 14. The institution, in order to 
 qualify for this subsidy, need only have been in operation 
 one year with 20 inmates. In 1883 foundlings were added 
 to the list at the rate of $12 per month until 18 months old. 
 As a result of this system, the number of dependent children 
 has been increasing since 1890 more than twice as fast as 
 the population of the State. Table LXXI. (p. 408) gives the 
 figures for a period of years. 
 
 The growth and persistence of the subsidy system, particu- 
 larly in caring for dependent children, is closely connected 
 with the desire of different churches to control their educa- 
 tion in morals and religion. Of all orphanages and children's 
 homes in the United States, 45 per cent are under ecclesias- 
 tical control, and a considerable percentage of those nomi- 
 nally non-sectarian are, in fact, strongly under sectarian 
 influence. That there is no generally recognized definition
 
 408 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 TABLE LXXI. 
 
 The Subsidy Contract System in California. 
 
 1900-1907. 
 
 
 Number of 
 
 
 
 Total 
 
 Six Months 
 Ending 
 
 Dependent 
 Childken. 
 
 Amount paie 
 
 BY State. 
 
 Amount paid 
 
 BY State 
 
 Each 
 
 Half Teak. 
 
 As_vlums. 
 
 Counties. 
 
 Asylums. 
 
 Counties. 
 
 June 30, 1900 
 
 5494 
 
 2185 
 
 $178,542.27 
 
 $46,276.16 
 
 $224,818.43 
 
 Dec. 31, 1900 
 
 5684 
 
 2287 
 
 180,713.38 
 
 48,492.34 
 
 229,205.72 
 
 June 30, 1901 
 
 5525 
 
 2428 
 
 181,676.73 
 
 53,186.54 
 
 234,863.27 
 
 Dec. 31, 1901 
 
 5397 
 
 2435 
 
 177,972.10 
 
 54,013.06 
 
 231,985.16 
 
 June 30, 1902 
 
 5519 
 
 2327 
 
 183,224.67 
 
 51,097.52 
 
 234,322.19 
 
 Dec. 31, 1902 
 
 5837 
 
 2565 
 
 185,967.29 
 
 60,376.01 
 
 246,343.30 
 
 June ;30, 1903 
 
 5883 
 
 2410 
 
 187,268.78 
 
 56,043.04 
 
 243,311.82 
 
 Dec. 31, 1903 
 
 5691 
 
 2336 
 
 177,491.43 
 
 55,050.91 
 
 232,542.34 
 
 June 30, 1904 
 
 5.336 
 
 2051 
 
 175,157.07 
 
 44,861.04 
 
 220,018.11 
 
 Dec. 31, 1904 
 
 5370 
 
 2182 
 
 166,450.84 
 
 50,466.84 
 
 216,917.68 
 
 June 30, 1905 
 
 5215 
 
 2238 
 
 169,903.69 
 
 53,464.82 
 
 223,368.51 
 
 Dec. 31, 1905 
 
 5206 
 
 2206 
 
 171,311.75 
 
 55,127.73 
 
 226,439.48 
 
 June 30, 1906 
 
 5314 
 
 2164 
 
 168,636.85 
 
 54,810.64 
 
 223,447.49 
 
 Dec. 31, 1906 
 
 5189 
 
 2127 
 
 164,438.49 
 
 53,777.25 
 
 218,215.74 
 
 June 30, 1907 
 
 5017 
 
 2057 
 
 161,718.46 
 
 52,428.07 
 
 214,146.53 
 
 of the word " sectarian " is noteworthy. There are few 
 institutions that will admit its applicability to themselves, 
 and there are few to which it is not applied by some one. 
 Many institutions having no trace of sectarianism in charter, 
 constitution, or by-laws are yet administered in the in- 
 terests of a sect. A willingness to admit beneficiaries 
 of all denominations is frequently less an evidence of 
 non-sectarianism than of a tendency to make proselytes. 
 jNfuch might be said in favor of the idea that all private 
 institutions are sectarian, when not in a religious then 
 in a medical or social sense. Public aid to a hospital 
 may help to build up a medical school or a school of 
 medicine just as surely as aid to an infant asylum may
 
 PUBLIC SUBSIDIES TO PBIVATE CHABlTlES. 409 
 
 be used to build up a church, and social rivalries may 
 stimulate people in pushing charities just as much as 
 interdenominational competition. 
 
 In States where a constitutional limitation forbids the 
 voting of public money to " sectarian " institutions, mem- 
 bers of the Protestant denominations often seek to have 
 this clause so interpreted as to exclude the institutions 
 officered by the Eoman Catholic orders, while charitable 
 enterprises in which they are themselves interested are 
 nominally unsectarian. The Catholics not infrequently 
 try to evade the constitutional limitation by disingenuous 
 subterfuges ; and the Protestants, with characteristic short- 
 sightedness, encourage such a course by their own eagerness 
 to secure public money for the private institutions in which 
 they are themselves interested. 
 
 The fact that there is a clear-cut distinction between 
 public and private charities, but none between sectarian and 
 non-sectarian charities, is one that those who oppose public 
 aid to sectarian schools would do well to recognize. Protes- 
 tants are willing to tease legislators for public money on be- 
 half of a hospital or an orphan asylum in which they are 
 interested, urging that it is " doing good," and that it is 
 preventing crime and pauperism, and so saving money to the 
 taxpayers. They do not see or will not acknowledge that 
 the same could be said of a parochial school, and that the 
 claim which they set up that their own institution is 
 " non-sectarian " is equivocal and unfair, and one which 
 in practice the courts have never been able to make defi- 
 nite. 
 
 A tendency could hardly have gone as far as that of 
 granting public subsidies to private charities, unless there 
 were many considerations either apparent or real of great 
 force in its favor. As favoring this policy, the consideration 
 which is first and foremost in the minds of " practical " peo- 
 ple is the matter of economy. Especially where the number
 
 410 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 of dependents in a given class is small, it is cheaper to hire 
 them cared for than to establish an institution for them. 
 This is the reason that in most small towns a private hospital 
 is subsidized instead of one being erected at public expense ; 
 but, when we find a great city like Brooklyn depending en- 
 tirely on subsidized hospitals for the care of its sick poor, 
 this argument is inapplicable. Economy, however, may 
 result from other causes, as when the private institutions are 
 administered by religious orders, the members of which re- 
 ceive no pay except their support. In almost every branch 
 of philanthropic work Roman Catholic institutions can un- 
 derbid competitors, so to speak, because of the great organi- 
 zations of teachers and nurses and administrators whose 
 gratuitous services they can command; and if the State is 
 to sublet its relief on the contract system, it is hard to see 
 why those who can bid low should not get the con- 
 tracts. 
 
 In reformatory institutions, those under private manage- 
 ment have an economic advantage over those managed by 
 public officials in that the former are able to keep the in- 
 mates busy at remunerative employment with less opposi- 
 tion from trade organizations. A public reformatory for 
 girls that should keep its inmates busy with work from a 
 great shirt factory would be sure to be attacked on the 
 ground of its competing with poor sewing women ; but such 
 employment in private institutions, even those receiving 
 public subsidies, is quite common. Even in institutions 
 not officered by members of a religious order, the salaries 
 are apt to be lower and all the items of expense to be more 
 closely scrutinized than in a public institution. Add to all 
 this the fact that frequently private contributors aid in the 
 support of a private institution, and we see how great may 
 be its advantage on the side of economy. To the real econ- 
 omies of this method of operation should be added the 
 apparent economies when a private institution is willing to
 
 PUBLIC SUBSIDIES TO PEIVATE CHARITIES. 411 
 
 make a very low bid, to make great temporary sacrifices, 
 in order to get the subsidy system introduced — in order to 
 establish connections between itself and the public treasury. 
 " At first," said a United States senator, speaking of the 
 charities of the District of Columbia, " at first they thrust 
 in only the nose of the camel." 
 
 Secondly, it is urged that private institutions, especially 
 those for dependent and delinquent children, have a better 
 effect upon the inmates than can public institutions.' For 
 one thing, dogmatic religious instruction can be given. For 
 another, the spirit of self-sacrifice that pervades a private 
 institution has a good effect upon the inmates, and is con- 
 trasted with the cold and officialized administration of 
 the public institutions. Connected with this, as also with 
 the matter of economy, is the fact that boards of trustees 
 and of lady managers and visitors give freely of their time 
 and energy and sympathy in aid of private undertakings. 
 
 Thirdly, it is urged that, by subsidizing private institu- 
 tions, we free them from the blight of partisan politics and 
 the spoils system. The miserable political jobbery con- 
 nected with so many almshouses and insane asylums and 
 other public charitable institutions is pointed out, and it 
 seems necessary to shield as many as possible of the State's 
 dependents from similar evils. 
 
 A fourth consideration is, that by means of subsidies we 
 aid the poor without attaching to them the stigma of pau- 
 perism. A home for the aged is more respectable than an 
 almshouse, and a private protectory or industrial school is 
 supposed not to discredit the inmates as much as a public 
 reform school. 
 
 But this consideration brings us to a turning-point, for it 
 is urged against such subsidies as well as in favor of them. 
 It is said that private institutions receiving public money 
 promote pauperism by disguising it. Children who would 
 support aged parents rather than allow them to go to the
 
 412 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 almshouse desert them promptly when some provision is 
 made for them that is ostensibly more honorable. An illus- 
 tration is afforded by the case of an abandoned woman who 
 supported her mother for years rather than permit her to 
 go to the poorhouse, but who was trying all the while to get 
 her admitted to a "private" home for the aged. Parents 
 unload their children upon the community more recklessly 
 when they know that such children will be provided for in 
 private orphan asylums or protectories, where the religious 
 training that they prefer will be given them. 
 
 And thus we reach the first great objection to granting 
 public subsidies to private charities. While it may be cheaper 
 to provide thus for each dependent during a year, yet the 
 number of dependents increases so rapidly that eventually 
 the charge upon the public is greater than if the alternative 
 policy were pursued. The results are most astounding, 
 where, as in the case of dependent children in California, 
 the managers of each institution are free to admit children 
 and have them charged to the community. When the 
 present law was being debated in the California Senate, it 
 was estimated that the cost could never exceed $30,000 a 
 year, yet since then, according to Professor Frank A. Fetter, 
 
 " It has reached nearly a half a million annually, has almost killed 
 any efforts to place the children in family homes, has in a large 
 measure demoralized many families whose children are thus supported, 
 and has acted unfavorably upon the spirit and motive of many of the 
 charitable societies themselves." i 
 
 In New York City in 1894 there was 1 dependent 
 child to each 117 of the population as compared with 1 to 
 206 in London, and 1 to 856 in Boston. In 1904, with 
 the modified and greatly improved contract subsidy system, 
 the burden of New York remains far in excess of that of 
 States having other systems.^ 
 
 Where public officials alone have the right to commit 
 1 Am. Jour, of Soc, I'JOl, vol. iii., p. 378. 2 p. 400, ante.
 
 PUBLIC SUBSIDIES TO PRIVATE CHARITIES. 413 
 
 dependents to the subsidized institutions, a check is put 
 upon reckless admissions. But even under this system 
 there is danger that many will be charged to the public who 
 would never have sought admission to a public institution. 
 
 In Illinois the constitution forbids public grants to sec- 
 tarian institutions ; but a law was framed providing that a 
 county court might adjudge a girl to be a dependent, commit 
 her to an industrial school, and that school should then be 
 entitled to receive $10 a month for her "tuition, care, 
 and maintenance," besides an allowance for clothing. After 
 the passage of this act the Chicago Industrial School for 
 Girls was incorporated. Of the nine incorporators and 
 directors, seven were officers and managers of the House of 
 the Good Shepherd ; and all the girls committed under the 
 act to the Chicago Industrial School for Girls were placed 
 either in the House of the Good Shepherd or in St. Joseph's 
 Orphan Asylum. Questions as to the legality of such an 
 arrangement brought the matter into court ; and during the 
 trial it transpired that about seventy-three girls who were 
 committed to the Chicago Industrial School for Girls by 
 the county court were already in the House of the Good 
 Shepherd and St. Joseph's Orphan Asylum at the time 
 of such commitments. " In other words, being already in- 
 mates of the institutions, they were taken to the county 
 court and adjudged to be dependent girls, and at once re- 
 turned to those institutions, and thereafter the county was 
 charged with f 10 per month for tuition for each of them, 
 and $15 or $20 or $25 for clothing for each of them." The 
 courts at first decided that the Chicago Industrial School 
 was a " sectarian " institution, and the payment of the money 
 therefore illegal ; but the institution later found a way to 
 evade the constitutional limitation. This is a very good 
 example of the unsubstantial nature of the barrier which 
 such a constitutional limitation forms. 
 
 In the second place, the argument from economy, in sup-
 
 414 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 port of the subsidy system, is negatived by the fact that 
 under this system there must be so many duplicate institu- 
 tions. In Maryland, for instance, there are two reforma- 
 tories for boys within a mile of each other, and two for girls, 
 both in Baltimore. Catholics manage one pair of institu- 
 tions, and private Protestant corporations the other. In 
 Baltimore alone there are thirty orphanages and homes for 
 children under private, generally sectarian, management, 
 two-thirds of which received subsidies in 1903.^ 
 
 Many charitable institutions have been established less 
 from brotherly love than from a quarrel in the board of 
 managers in an older institution. This, together with the 
 influence of individual ambitions, has led especially to the 
 establishment of a great number of medical charities. When 
 the public begins to grant such favors, it is hard to draw a 
 line. As a United States senator once said, in speaking of 
 the situation in the District : — 
 
 " The very fact that Congress makes these appropriations has caused, 
 to a great degree, the multiplication of the organizations. A few 
 people getting together who are desirous of doing charitable work, or 
 who have discovered some special need, or who are dissatisfied with 
 some feature of some existing institution, instead of adding to or modi- 
 fying such an institution, will start a new one, because they can appeal 
 directly to Congress for the money necessary to begin it, and can base 
 their claim on the ground that they are just as good as some other as- 
 sociation already on the list." 
 
 Again, the subsidy system proves extravagant in that it 
 tends to dry up the sources of private benevolence. Indi- 
 vidual contributors dislike to have their mites lost in the 
 abundance of a public appropriation. Almost without ex- 
 ception those institutions that have received public aid the 
 longest and the most constantly receive least from private 
 contributors. In looking up the history of a considerable 
 number of institutions, it was found that, after the public 
 
 1 Census, " Benevolent Institutious," 1904, p. 79.
 
 PUBLIC SUBSIDIES TO PRIVATE CHARITIES. 415 
 
 became a contributor, private contributions fell off from 
 year to year, not only relatively but absolutely, and in some 
 cases ceased altogether. 
 
 Even wbere the contract subsidy system exists, it oper- 
 ates to keep the dependent in the institution unnecessarily 
 long, and is therefore uneconomical. In 1894 of 8000 de- 
 pendent children about whom the facts were ascertained, 
 23 per cent had been held as public charges from five to 
 fourteen years. ^ When the placing-out of a child or the 
 discharge of an inmate actually involves the loss of $75 to 
 $110 per year, the managers will naturally hesitate. 
 
 It has been pointed out by Professor Fetter that under 
 this system it is impossible to unify and systematize the 
 public charities ; hospital appliances will be duplicated, 
 beds will be empty in the public hospitals while private in- 
 stitutions are receiving pay for public patients; and matern- 
 ity hospitals will be multiplied for the sake of clinical and 
 teaching purposes without reference to the public need.^ 
 
 A third reason for objecting to the subsidies we are con- 
 sidering is, that when voting upon them the legislator must 
 resist special pressure. He has not a clear-cut issue of a 
 given service to be rendered, balanced by a given expenditure, 
 but it becomes partly a question of offending or favor- 
 ing some sect or nationality. The contention that the sub- 
 sidy system takes the charitable institutions out of politics 
 is not supported by experience. On the contrary, it drags 
 them into politics in a new and unfortunate way, — in a 
 way that is found in practice to give great scope to log- 
 rolling and kindred expedients. Some who will not do any- 
 thing else for a charitable institution are willing to bully a 
 legislator on its behalf. Most of the lobbyists are sincere 
 even to fanaticism, but their view of the situation is terribly 
 one-sided. It had come to pass that when the District of 
 
 1 No. 63, State Charities Aid Association, pp. 4-5. 
 
 2 Eeport of the Controller of the City of New York, 1899, pp. 14, 15.
 
 416 AMERICAN CHAEITtES. 
 
 Columbia appropriation bill was under consideration, and 
 in the haste of the last days of the session, the Congres- 
 sional committee rooms would be full of the representatives 
 of the various charities, both men and women, intent upon 
 getting the largest share possible. There was neither time, 
 nor ability, nor opportunity on the part of the committee to 
 come to any intelligent conclusion. Often those applicants 
 most skilled or most personally attractive were most success- 
 ful, and sometimes the committees were obliged to average 
 their gif ts.^ After such a policy has been entered upon, it can- 
 not be altered without injury to great vested interests, and 
 without giving offence to large and powerful constituencies. 
 
 One of the most unfortunate results of subsidizing private 
 charities is that the patrons and friends of those charities 
 are set in opposition to general measures of social reform. 
 Professor Fetter quotes the well-known fact that the estab- 
 lishment of State Boards of Charities has been almost in- 
 variably opposed by subsidized charities. In California, 
 during more than a decade of agitation which was required 
 to establish a State Board of Charities, it was opposed by 
 the subsidized orphan asylums for fear their subsidies might 
 be curtailed. Moreover, under the subsidy system the 
 trustees and friends of these institutions must beg favors 
 from political leaders. In Pennsylvania this fund has be- 
 come a great corruption fund and the philanthropy which 
 shares in the spoils must necessarily be silent.- 
 
 This brings us to a fifth reason for objecting to the grant- 
 ing of public subsidies to private charities. It frequently 
 does positive harm to a charitable institution, and some- 
 times wholly destroys its usefulness. A private institu- 
 tion that receives no public money is not only freer in all 
 its operations, and more highly valued by those who sustain 
 
 1 The conditions of charity lobbying iu Pennsylvania have been pre- 
 cisely similar in recent years. 
 
 2 Professor Fetter presents this argument finely in Am. Jour, of Soc, 
 vol. vii., No. 3, 1901, pp. 372 ff.
 
 PUBLIC SUBSIDIES TO PRIVATE CHABITIES. 417 
 
 and manage it, but its beneficiaries feel differently toward 
 their benefactors. When visiting one subsidized institution 
 the request was made that nothing should be said before 
 the inmates that would inform them that the institution re- 
 ceived any public money. One could understand the wish, 
 and presume that the inmates would work more faithfully, 
 be more grateful for favors received, and finally " turn out 
 better," because they were kept in ignorance of the fact. 
 Yet we may doubt the possibility or propriety of thus using 
 public money, and at the same time trying to conceal the 
 fact of doing so. By no hocus-pocus of subsidy-granting can 
 we make taxation do the work of self-sacrifice. 
 
 In most instances States and municipalities have entered 
 upon this policy of subsidizing private charities without de- 
 ciding to do so, and even without perceiving that a decision 
 was called for. Each request for a subsidy has been treated 
 as a inatter of administrative detail, involving no principle, 
 and not significant as a precedent. The resultant system 
 is about as business-like as though a city should try to get 
 its streets paved by announcing that any regularly incorpo- 
 rated association that should pave a given number of square 
 yards of street — location, time, and method to be decided 
 by itself — should receive a given amount from the public 
 treasury. It is as though private associations were allowed 
 to do paving at their own discretion, and then, on coming to 
 the legislature and teasing with sufficient skill and pertinacity, 
 they should be given subsidies on the general theory that 
 they were " doing good " and rendering '^ public service." 
 
 In its old form of payments in gross amounts, the subsidy 
 system must and will be abolished ; and even the contract 
 subsidy system at its best must be carefully regulated. 
 First, on behalf of the poor as well as the taxpayers, the 
 government must provide for the thorough inspection of 
 subsidized institutions, and the systematic auditing of their 
 accounts. This work cannot be done by grand juries, or
 
 418 AMERICAN CHAEITIES. 
 
 legislative committees, or ex-officio inspectors, who may 
 from time to time thrust their inexperienced noses into 
 matters which they know nothing about. The work of 
 inspection must be done by some thoroughly experienced 
 and otherwise suitable administrative officer, who is defi- 
 nitely responsible for the thoroughness of his work. Sec- 
 ond, the State must keep in the hands of its own officials 
 the right of deciding what persons shall be admitted to the 
 benefits for which it pays, and how long each person may 
 continue to receive those benefits. If it pays for beds in a 
 hospital, one of its own officials should have entire control 
 of admitting and discharging the patients cared for. This 
 is necessary in order that "there may be some gauge of 
 indigency, and some assurance that the gauge will be used." 
 Third, subsidies should only be granted on the principle of 
 specific payment for specific work. When any one of these 
 three conditions is lacking, the policy of subsidy-granting is 
 necessarily pernicious. 
 
 The opinion of nearly all charity experts is unanimously 
 against it ; Professor Fetter, after a thorough discussion of 
 the results in the States which have employed it for a 
 period of years, concluded : — 
 
 "The logic of the situation demands the abolition of the policy of 
 charity subsidies. It is a mediaeval device. Formerly the line be- 
 tween the action of the state and that of private and ecclesiastical 
 corporations was dim. Public functions were exercised by many 
 guilds, societies, and church corporations, but the modern State has 
 gradually overtaken these functions. As a matter of expediency there 
 is abundant reason to carry this change to its logical end in the com- 
 plete separation of public taxation from private charity. . . . The 
 subsidy method is not a policy, it is an accident. The strongest argu- 
 ments in its favor are merely negative — that it should be kept because 
 we have it. . . . Nowhere is there any effective sentiment favorable 
 to the extension of subsidies ... in fact, the advocates of subsidies 
 are entirely on the defensive. Within the last few years they have 
 distinctly lost ground in the older States." ^ 
 
 1 Am. Jour, of Soc, vol. vii., No. 3, ]!K)], pp. 384-385.
 
 PUBLIC SUBSIDIES TO PRIVATE CHARITIES. 419 
 
 All that can be said against subsidies in general can be 
 said against this form of subsidies, and more ; because here 
 we have to deal with religious, medical, and social sectarian- 
 ism, and because we are giving over the defenceless to the 
 care of the irresponsible. As a transition policy for grow- 
 ing communities, or for new and developing varieties of 
 benevolent work, it may possibl}' have had its place ; but 
 it should not now be entered upon inadvertently, for while 
 all its advantages and economies are greatest at the begin- 
 ning, its disadvantages and dangers constantly increase as 
 time goes on. Those who would entirely avoid establishing 
 any precedent whatever for the voting of public money to 
 private schools can take properly but one course, a consist- 
 ent opposition to any and all public subsidies to private 
 charities.
 
 PART IV. 
 
 THE SUPERVISION, ORGANIZATION, AND 
 BETTERMENT OF CHARITIES.
 
 PART lY. 
 
 THE SUPERVISION. ORGANIZATION, AND BET- 
 TERMENT OF CHARITIES. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 AGENCIES FOR SUPERVISION AND CONTROL. 
 
 One who has read the chapters of Part III. may have 
 thought that they were largely occupied with telling how 
 things should not be done, — with locating pitfalls rather 
 than with mapping safe highways. It is not intended, how- 
 ever, to give any dark view of the possibilities of work for 
 the relief of the poor by public, private, or endowed chari- 
 ties. If the map of the field shows difficulties, it is only 
 because the difficulties are there, and an accurate map must 
 show them. It is not a pleasant task to indicate where the 
 pitfall is, but it is much better than to allow the traveller 
 to find it through accident. It is next in order, however, 
 to indicate the methods by which improvements are and 
 may be introduced, and by which it may be brought about 
 that benevolence shall be more constantly beneficent. 
 
 The charities of a given locality at a certain stage of 
 development are a chaos, a patchwork of survivals, or prod- 
 ucts of contending political, religious, and medical fac- 
 tions ; a curious compound, in which there is a strong 
 ingredient of ignorance perpetuated by heedlessness. In- 
 dividually they have originated as needs arose, or were 
 supposed to have arisen, in small communities, and often 
 in ignorance of what was being done elsewhere. This has 
 given them a sufficient degree of local coordination, but has 
 
 423
 
 424 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 left them without the stimulus of cooperation in larger 
 charity movements. 
 
 The history of particular lines of charity shows that local 
 public charities are often organized without auy thought of 
 how they should develop. Like Topsy, they simply " grow." 
 Public outdoor relief is frequently the casual work of 
 county supervisors to whom the position of supervisor comes 
 as an incident in the performance of more important po- 
 litical or business functions. The almshouse is an institution 
 to be favored or neglected, according as its superintendent 
 has or has not a political " pull." The insane are in alms- 
 houses or jails, according as provision has or has not been 
 made for them by the State, and are taken care of as the 
 personal characteristics of the different sheriffs or su- 
 perintendents of the almshouse may determine. Dependent 
 children are neglected by public officials or striven for by 
 denominational organizations, and the other needy classes 
 are treated or not, according as the contending influence of 
 self-sacrifice and of selfishness in many forms, work out 
 their good or bad results. 
 
 Even far-reaching systems of State care are established 
 with superficial knowledge of the needs of the class to be 
 provided for, and with no consideration of their ultimate 
 results. Busy legislators pass laws regarding charities heed- 
 lessly, or heedlessly refuse to pass them. Systems of care 
 for the insane or for other defective classes are entered upon 
 and partially inaugurated, and then, with or without reason, 
 abandoned. In the institutions themselves there is a pos- 
 sibility of mismanagement through individual bad character 
 or lack of sense on the part of the officers. Moreover, each 
 manager of an individual institution is so interested in se- 
 curing additions that are needed, or a new water supply, or 
 something else that costs money, that he is very likely to 
 neglect to examine the conditions upon which dependents 
 are admitted, or to take any wide view of the purpose of
 
 AGENCIES FOB SUPERVISION AND CONTROL. 425 
 
 his institution and the extent to which it is fulfilling that 
 purpose. 
 
 It is evident that in order to overcome the confusion, 
 overlapping, wastefulness, and perhaps the inhumanity 
 even, of this lack of system, some method must be devised 
 of coordinating the efforts of all the charities of a given 
 State. There must be some power outside of them which 
 is interested not only in the details of their administration, 
 but in their general plan and purpose. As a man cannot 
 supervise himself with satisfactory results to the public, so 
 an institution frequently does not understand its proper 
 relation to others at work in the same field. 
 
 Soon after the conclusion of the Civil War, there was a 
 movement in some of the older and wealthier States to estab- 
 lish public supervisory agencies known as State Boards of 
 Charities. This was part of the general tendency to amplify 
 and improve the administrative machinery of our State gov- 
 ernments by the creation of boards or commissions for the 
 care of the public health, and for the collection of statistics 
 regarding labor.^ The first board for the supervision of 
 charities was established in Massachusetts in 1863, and Ohio 
 and New York followed with similar boards in 1867. Illi- 
 nois, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island established boards in 
 1869. In 1907 there were 21 supervisory boards of chari- 
 ties and correction, and 12 boards of administrative control, 
 in the United States. 
 
 In the main, these State Boards ^ are of two general types, 
 one having powers of supervision and report only, and the 
 
 1 Willoughby, " State Activities aud Politics," Papers American His- 
 torical Association, vol. v., 1891. 
 
 2 The name Board of Charities formerly meant a board with super- 
 visory powers only; but some boards have acquired powers of control 
 without changing their names. The name as generally used, however, 
 still means a board of supervision. An attempt to avoid confusion has 
 been made by using Board of Supervision instead of Charities, wherever 
 possible.
 
 426 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 other having powers of control over the charitable institu- 
 tions of the State. Typical boards of control are now found 
 in Rhode Island, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, and other States. 
 They are usually made up of salaried members, limited in 
 number, — usually not more than six, — who are the trus- 
 tees of the public charitable institutions and who have 
 extensive executive power. They are charged with the 
 maintenance, government, and direct supervision of State in- 
 stitutions, appoint their superintendents or wardens, and 
 generally purchase all staple supplies. 
 
 Boards of Supervision are usually composed of honor 
 officers. The number is sometimes considerable, as in the 
 case of New York, where one member is appointed from 
 each judicial district in the State. These unsalaried boards, 
 with powers of supervision and report only, are necessarily 
 made up of persons willing to give to the work a consider- 
 able amount of time for no other return than the possible 
 payment of their expenses. Each board, as a rule, appoints 
 a salaried secretary who is a permanent officer, or should 
 be permanent, and who attends to the routine work of the 
 office. These secretaries of State Boards of Charities were 
 the moving force in organizing the National Conference of 
 Charities, and many of them are as eminent specialists as 
 this country has produced. 
 
 These unsalaried boards, having no patronage to bestow, 
 are usually not under political control. This condition has 
 occasionally led politicians to substitute a Board of Control, 
 or to attempt to alter the character of the supervisory board 
 so as to obtain the power of appointment of employees. 
 Such an attempt made by the Governor of New York in 
 1901 was defeated on the ground that it was a dangerous 
 and insidious effort to centralize all the State charitable and 
 refornuxtory institutions under political control.^ As a rule, 
 however, there is " not enough in it " to induce politicians to 
 1 Stewart, N. C. C, 1907, p. 27.
 
 AGENCIES FOR SUPERVISION AND CONTROL. 427 
 
 make much of a fight to secure control of one of these ad- 
 visory boards. They consequently have a greater degree of 
 stability, and from this fact they have a much greater in- 
 fluence. Where officials are changing very frequently, as is 
 the case with our State legislators, and for the most part 
 with our State executive officers, a group of men whose 
 position is relatively permanent, and who from year to year 
 accumulate experience and clarify their ideas as to what is 
 necessary, can carry out plans of reform that would be im- 
 possible to a rapidly rotating board, even assuming that its 
 members were of equal ability and devotion. 
 
 There is a tendency, however, to ingraft certain executive 
 duties, such as the removal of foreign paupers from the 
 State, as in New York and Massachusetts, and the care of 
 certain classes of dependents, as in the case of dependent 
 children in Massachusetts, and the removal of the insane 
 from hospital to hospital within the State, as in Illinois, 
 upon advisory boards without changing their general charac- 
 ter. In some States, notably New York and Massachusetts, 
 the executive control has been divided among several com- 
 missions ; in Massachusetts there is a State Board of Insan- 
 ity and a Board of Prison Commissioners, and in New York 
 a State Commission of Lunacy and a State Commission of 
 Prisons, in addition to an Advisory Board of Charities. 
 
 But over all such executive, boards there should still 
 obtain the power of an advisory board to investigate and 
 report upon every charitable institution within the State. 
 Such a board is much freer in giving its opinion as to 
 needed changes than one having executive powers. For 
 instance, in the matter of applying to the legislature for 
 appropriations, an executive board must subordinate every- 
 thing to securing enough money to carry the institution 
 through the fiscal period in prospect. They will usually 
 have occasion also to make applications for extensions, and 
 increased appropriations for other purposes. They cannot
 
 428 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 risk these important matters by recommending reforms 
 which might antagonize certain interests, and raise up for 
 them opponents in the legislature. A board with powers 
 of supervision and report only is not, on the other hand, 
 limited in any of these matters. If it sees a reform or coordi- 
 nation possible in the charities of the State, it can recom- 
 mend an improvement, even at the risk of offending 
 influential persons, and stand out for specific reforms with- 
 out endangering current appropriations. Furthermore, an 
 unsalaried board is more likely to stand well with succes- 
 sive legislatures than a body of men who get their living 
 out of the business ; and their recommendations for increased 
 appropriations in which they have no personal interest will 
 have more weight with many legislators than the persistent 
 application of those whose support comes from the appropri- 
 ations that they ask for. 
 
 An advisory board is a benefit to institutions as well as 
 a check upon them ; for it can further their growth, and 
 stand as a guaranty of honest administration, which helps 
 them in the opinion of the community. There are two 
 reasons why all charitable institutions, especially public in- 
 stitutions, should be carefully supervised and reported 
 upon : in the first place, it is for the protection of the 
 beneficiaries and the public ivoni abuses that may exist ; 
 and in the second place, it is for the protection of the insti- 
 tutions and the managers from unfounded suspicions. It 
 enables the institutions to be above suspicion, which is out 
 of the question unless there is some disinterested supervis- 
 ory power over them, Avhich has the confidence of both 
 citizens and legislators. 
 
 One valuable service which has been rendered by the State 
 Boards of Charities has been to raise the standard of service 
 of the county and township charities. The managers of 
 small local institutions, especially in the rural counties, are 
 usually persons of honest intention, but with very little in-
 
 AGENCIES FOB SUPERVISION AND CONTROL. 429 
 
 formation concerning their duties. The State board is able 
 through visiting, correspondence, and suggestion to place at 
 their disposal the hard-earned experience of other com- 
 munities, and to make it possible for them, without addi- 
 tional expense, to do an increasingly satisfactory work. In 
 the matter of approving plans for county jails and alms- 
 houses, which is frequently given into the hands of the 
 State board, the very fact that the plans must be submitted 
 will frequently lead to greater care in drawing them than 
 would otherwise be used. Many of the State boards have 
 published, for the guidance of county officials, designs of 
 the best and most economical forms of construction to be 
 used in caring for the various classes of dependents. Some- 
 times a county, before building, sends a committee of its 
 own officials travelling over the country at public expense 
 to see the best jails and to get ideas on the construction of 
 such edifices. 
 
 But besides the expense involved the wandering investi- 
 gators may miss the most essential points in what they 
 should see and learn. The State Board of Charities, hav- 
 ing representatives from year to year in the National Con- 
 ference of Charities, having available in its libraries the 
 reports of other boards, and the reports of the various con- 
 ferences ; having also the experience of all the counties of 
 the State for its own information, and a knowledge of what 
 is done in distant cities, can frequently, by pointing to 
 certain publications, or offering certain plans, give county 
 officials better assistance in the construction and adminis- 
 tration of charities than they could get for themselves. 
 
 In the discussion of the comparative merits of Boards of 
 Supervision and Boards of Control, their relation to the 
 local boards of trustees — often called " local boards of con- 
 trol " — has not been clearly distinguished. In the first 
 case, the local boards of trustees retain their managerial 
 powers ; while in the second, they are superseded by the
 
 430 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 State Board of Control, which appoints the head officers and 
 regulates the finances of the institutions. The unintelligent 
 and unbusiness-like methods often pursued by local trustees 
 have already been referred to. In Wisconsin, the wasteful 
 competition between the trustees of the various State insti- 
 tutions in trying to secure appropriations was one of the 
 chief excuses for the change in 1901 from an advisory to 
 an executive board.^ In Pennsylvania, in 1905, the institu- 
 tional lobbyists were strong enough to keep the recommenda- 
 tions of an Advisory Board of Charities from being accepted.^ 
 Local boards are liable to be influenced by local opinion, to 
 patronize local dealers in the purchase of supplies, and in 
 general to practise a narrow and wasteful policy. 
 
 A supervisory board can only remedy these defects by a 
 slow system of public education, through their visitation of 
 institutions and recommendations to the Governor ; while 
 the Board of Control — in Wisconsin and Iowa at least — ■ 
 has promptly introduced system and economy into the 
 business management, and although they have hundreds of 
 employees in the institutions which they control, has kept 
 them entirely out of politics. 
 
 The arguments in favor of a Board of Control may be 
 briefly summarized: it is economical and business-like; it 
 is more efficient than the supervisory board because a few 
 salaried officers give their whole time to administration ; it 
 prevents too great localization of management ; it relieves 
 superintendents of a large part of the financial responsibility, 
 and thus sets them free to devote themselves to more im- 
 portant duties ; it insures an equitable division of appropri- 
 ations among institutions ; it has power to enforce its recom- 
 mendations; and, finally, it is in harmony with the general 
 tendency toward centralization of social control.^ 
 
 1 Sparling, AnnaJ.t, 1001, No. 62, p. 77. 
 
 2 Richmond, Charities, vol. xiv., pp. 843 ff. 
 
 8 These points are elaborated in N. C. C, 1902, p. 148; 1904, pp. 180 ff.
 
 AGENCIES FOR SUPERVISION AND CONTROL. 431 
 
 The advocates of both forms of charity boards have not 
 always clearly apprehended the ends to be accomplished 
 by them. It is conceded that all charities must be con- 
 trolled by trustees or by the State in some fashion to protect 
 dependents and insure proper use of funds ; it is also con- 
 ceded that visitation, inspection, and report, either by a 
 private or a public body of citizens, is a necessary check on 
 executive boards, and one of the best methods of educating 
 the public in humanitarian efforts. The real question is not 
 therefore between supervision and control, — both of which 
 are necessary, — but whether local trustees, plus a super- 
 visory board, produce a better administration than a central 
 Board of Control which may also exercise advisory powers. 
 An obvious reply would be that one might be better adapted 
 to a particular State than the other : as between Iowa with a 
 Board of Control and Indiana with a Board of Supervision, 
 Mr. Amos W. Butler thinks there is little to choose ; but as 
 between New York with 200,000 persons under State care 
 under a supervisory board, and Minnesota with only 6000 
 under an executive board, Mr. Kobert W. Hebberd thinks 
 the conditions are too widely different to justify any con- 
 clusions as to the relative value of methods. 
 
 The controversy over these two forms of regulation seems 
 likely gradually to settle itself by a modification of both of 
 them ; in the older States, where the number of institutions 
 to be supervised is very large and their purposes widely 
 different, a central advisory board with local governing 
 boards was formerly the rule. But the local boards dealing 
 with the same general classes of dependents — as for instance 
 the insane, prisoners, or children — are now being replaced 
 by Commissions in Lunacy, Commissions of Prisons, and 
 Boards of Children's Guardians, which are in fact executive 
 boards for a particular class, and all of which should be 
 subject to the inspection of the siipervisory board. In the 
 Middle-West States, where Boards of Control are the ac-
 
 432 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 cepted form, it is significant that they are strengthening the 
 supervisory side of their work by volunteer boards of visitors, 
 empowered to report to the Governor as well as to the 
 Board of Control. The Committee on Supervision and 
 Control of the National Conference of Charities and Cor- 
 rections recommended in 1903 Boards of Control for groups 
 of institutions, and an advisory unsalaried board likewise for 
 each group.^ Moreover, it appears that there is a tendency 
 to enlarge the executive powers of supervisory boards in 
 so far as they are needed to protect dependents ; and to 
 strengthen the system by substituting group boards of 
 control for a number of local boards, as in New York and 
 Massachusetts. At the same time there is a growing ten- 
 dency for Boards of Control to call in volunteer service to 
 fulfil their advisory functions. The weakest point of the 
 supervisory board is its inability to enforce necessary re- 
 forms ; the weakest point of Boards of Control is that they 
 are left to supervise their own work. The recognition of 
 these defects is leading to devices for supplementing the 
 work of both in the directions most needed. 
 
 It must never be forgotten that the efficiency of both 
 kinds of boards will depend on the quality of people com- 
 posing them, and the demands made by the public upon them 
 for disinterested and progressive administration. With a 
 membership drafted from the best citizens and supported by 
 an enlightened public opinion, both have been successful — 
 in short, the method is far less important than the men. 
 
 Eadiating from the State Boards of Charities are certain 
 delegated visitorial powers bestowed upon appointees in the 
 various counties and localities of the State. A local rep- 
 resentative of a State board is expected to visit county 
 institutions, and call to the attention of the board anything 
 that seems to be amiss. In Ohio the Board of County 
 Visitors is appointed by the Court of Common Pleas. This 
 1 Blackmar, N, C. C, 1903, pp. 358 ff.
 
 AGENCIES FOR SUPERVISION AND CONTROL. 433 
 
 county board consists of six persons, three men and three 
 women, and not more than three of each party ; and they 
 are required to visit all places of charity and correction 
 in the county where they live. They have power to visit 
 such institutions at least four times during the year ; in fact, 
 they make many more visits. They report to the Court of 
 Common Pleas once a year, and they send a report also to 
 the State Board of Charities. 
 
 In States where there is an active State board, but where 
 the law does not provide for unsalaried visitors in this 
 formal way, a considerable number of persons are in fact 
 interested in local charities ; and their visiting is made 
 effective in the introduction of reforms through their cor- 
 respondence and intercourse with the State board. Con- 
 ferences of the superintendents of the poor are also frequently 
 held under the auspices of the State board, as in Michigan, 
 Wisconsin, and Indiana. The value of official boards has 
 been greatly enhanced by the large number of people they 
 have been able to interest in the administration of the public 
 charities. 
 
 In several States there have grown up associations for the 
 voluntary unofficial supervision of public charitable institu- 
 tions in cooperation with the official boards. Of these the 
 most important is the State Charities Aid Association of 
 New York, organized in 1872, with the object of bringing 
 about reforms in the poorhouses, the almshouses, and the 
 State charitable institutions of Xew York, through the active 
 interest of an organized body of voluntary visitors, acting in 
 cooperation with and as an aid to the local administration 
 of these institutions and the official State boards of super- 
 vision. Upon the nomination of the State Charities Aid 
 Association, through its board of managers, district supreme 
 courts are authorized to grant to the visitors of the Associa- 
 tion orders enabling them to visit, inspect, and examine on 
 behalf of the Association any of the public charitable insti-
 
 434 AMEBIC AN CHARITIES. 
 
 tutions owned by the State, county, township, or city, the 
 poorhouses and almshouses within the State of New York, 
 such visitors to be responsible to the counties from which 
 these institutions receive their inmates. The Association 
 reports annually to the State Board of Charities and the 
 State Commission of Lunacy upon matters relative to the 
 institutions subject respectively to the inspection and con- 
 trol of these two official bodies. 
 
 The New York Association has a central board of man- 
 agers, largely of New York City, and visiting committees in 
 43 counties, with a total of more than 1000 volunteer visitors 
 to county, city, and town almshouses, State Hospitals for 
 the Insane, County Homes for Children, City Hospitals, and 
 other public charities. 
 
 The Association is supported entirely through volun- 
 tary contributions, refusing to receive money from public 
 sources in order to remain free from outside influences. It 
 maintains a salaried secretary and assistant secretary, prints 
 a valuable annual report, and occasionally pamphlets on sub- 
 jects of special interest connected with relief, at a total cost 
 of about $30,000 per year. Such an agency as this would 
 manifestly be a nuisance unless wisely managed, and would 
 result in legalized meddling. But actually the Association 
 has secured very large results through its voluntary inspec- 
 tion of public institutions. Chiefly through its exertions a 
 higher standard of care has been introduced into every alms- 
 house in the State ; a training school for nurses was estab- 
 lished at Bellevue Hospital in 1873, and in 1874 a hospital 
 book and newspaper society to provide reading matter for 
 the inmates ; the farming out of the poor has been abolished ; 
 a society for instruction in First Aid to the Injured, train- 
 ing schools for nurses for the insane and municipal lodging 
 houses were established, and the removal of the insane from 
 almshouses has been secured. 
 
 A summary of the work of this society in 1906 will serve
 
 AGENCIES FOR SUPERVISION AND CONTROL. 435 
 
 to show what may be done by volunteer service tactfully 
 and wisely offered until it has gained the confidence of citi- 
 zens and public officials. The Association's Committees 
 visited the almshouses and hospitals of 43 counties, inspected 
 the institutions under the Department of Public Charities in 
 New York, and Bellevue and the allied hospitals ; visited 
 22 State institutions for the insane and other classes ; estab- 
 lished four committees for the after-care of the insane ; and 
 studied and reported upon the methods employed to detect 
 insanity and other defects in immigrants, and of caring for 
 and deporting them. The Association has carefully exam- 
 ined all proposed legislation relating to charities and co- 
 operated with other associations in influencing legislation 
 for the welfare of the poor. Besides these supervisory 
 duties, the Association does a large work in placing children 
 and mothers with infants in families.^ 
 
 This record shows the possibilities of this type of volun- 
 tary organization under wise management. An organization 
 similar to this might be established in States having no 
 board of supervision or control as a means of educating 
 people up to the point where a State board could be safely 
 created ; but it would only be feasible in case there were a 
 group of persons with considerable wealth and leisure, and 
 a vast amount of intelligence and tact, who were willing to 
 give their time to it. 
 
 The class of public institutions that need the most super- 
 vision, and ordinarily get the least of it, are those of our 
 large cities. Ordinarily, if there is a city department, it is 
 an executive department, subject to the influences of politics, 
 and not gifted with the power of supervising itself satisfac- 
 torily. In Boston, in 1892, Mayor Matthews appointed a 
 committee of private citizens to visit and report upon char- 
 itable institutions of that city for his information and that 
 of the public. A most valuable report was prepared, from 
 1 Annual Report, 1906; "Charities Directory," New York, 1907.
 
 436 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 which quotations have already been made in the course of 
 this volume. In the following year an ordinance provided 
 for a permanent committee of the same character, which 
 amounted, in fact, to a municipal board of charities with 
 power of supervision and report only. 
 
 In the chapter on Private Charities the question of the 
 regulation of charities which do not receive public money 
 was discussed. It is the unanimous opinion of charity ex- 
 perts that dependents should be protected in private as well 
 as public institutions by systematic supervision, and that 
 posterity should be protected as well by the regulation of 
 endowments and bequests. 
 
 In the consideration of the various methods of supervision 
 and control, two tendencies are seen to be strongly marked : 
 one toward centralization of business-management either for 
 all the institutions of a State or for certain classes ; the other 
 toward an increasing employment of volunteer supervisory 
 service as both a check and an aid to public officials. Ow- 
 ing to these tendencies, it seems probable that the line of 
 demarcation between supervisory Boards of Charities and 
 Boards of Control will gradually be obliterated, and that the 
 efficiency of both will be determined by the degree to which 
 they can be kept out of politics, and to which they can en- 
 list the interest and service of philanthropic citizens.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT. 
 
 In its widest sense the organization of charities includes 
 work already described. It is the purpose of a State Board 
 of Charities to supervise and coordinate the public institu- 
 tions. It is the aim of a volunteer body like the State 
 Charities Aid Association to assist public charities in work- 
 ing together for good. But in its technical meaning the 
 term "charity organization" has come to be applied to 
 a particular kind of society whose aims are broader than 
 mere almsgiving, and whose principles are applicable to 
 every form of charity.^ 
 
 In the preceding chapter it has been shown how the un- 
 even and unrelated development of State charitable insti- 
 tutions created a demand for agencies with powers of 
 supervision, coordination, and regulation. If the charities 
 of a State are chaotic, those of a large city are still more so. 
 The systematic arrangement of the benevolent agencies 
 of a city, as shown in a charities directory, might convey 
 tlie idea that they had been evolved as systematically 
 to meet the requirements of persons needing relief. Take, 
 for instance, the classification of charities in Boston, 
 where the first Charity Organization Society of this country 
 originated. 
 
 1 Many charity organization societies call themselves by other names : 
 the Philadelphia Society by the cumbrous but accurate title, " Society for 
 Organizing Charity" ; others by the more convenient titles, " Associated 
 Charities," "United Charities," " Bureau of Charities," etc. 
 
 437
 
 438 
 
 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Directory of Charitable and Beneficent Organizations. 
 Boston, 1907. Contents. 
 
 Class I. Agencies for the Homeless : 
 
 Shelters, transportation, miscellaneous. 
 Class II. Agencies working with Needy Families in their Homes : 
 
 1. Employment. 
 
 2. Special relief for special classes. 
 
 3. General relief for special classes. 
 
 4. General relief for all classes. 
 
 5. Day nurseries and kindergartens. 
 
 6. Nursing and care of the sick in their own homes. 
 
 7. Diet kitchens, milk funds. 
 
 8. Burials. 
 
 Class III. Agencies working with Needy Children : 
 
 1. Placing-out Agencies. 
 
 2. Prevention of Cruelty. 
 
 3. Homes for children. 
 
 4. Reformatory agencies for children, truant ofiScers, 
 
 children's courts, probation work, reformatories. 
 
 5. Miscellaneous. 
 
 Class IV. Homes for Adults : 
 
 1. Boarding homes for wage-earners and students. 
 
 2. Homes for the aged. 
 
 3. Homes for soldiers and sailors. 
 
 4. Almshouses. 
 
 Class V. Agencies for the Sick (including Insane and Dipso- 
 maniac) : 
 
 1. Ambulance service. 
 
 2. General and special dispensaries. 
 
 3. Special hospitals and sanatoria. 
 
 4. General hospitals. 
 
 6. Hospitals and homes for incurables. 
 
 6. Convalescent homes, fresh air, change of climate. 
 
 7. Miscellaneous.
 
 THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT. 439 
 
 Class VI. Belief and Education of Defectives : 
 
 1. Blind. 
 
 2. Crippled. 
 
 3. Deaf and deaf-mutes. 
 
 4. Epileptic. 
 
 5. Feeble-minded. 
 
 Class VII. ^ Preventive and Reform Agencies. 
 Class VIII. Constructive Social Work. 
 Class IX. Educational Agencies. 
 Class X. Supervisory Agencies. 
 Class XI. Churches and Congregations. 
 
 There are included in this list 1424 agencies which are 
 concisely described in a volume of 500 pages. It might 
 appear from this that every need was provided for, and that 
 the field was adequately covered. But if the 1424 agencies 
 were arranged in the order of the date of their foundation, 
 it would appear that many of them have been organized 
 where slight need existed, while at the same time there were 
 great gaps in the charitable field still needing to be filled. 
 
 The chaotic nature of relief-work in a city where charity 
 organization principles have not been adopted, may be better 
 appreciated if viewed from the standpoint of the applicant 
 for relief. A poor person in need of relief does not usually 
 have a directory of charities in his library, and may be 
 referred from agency to agency without being able to find 
 the relief he needs, which all the while is waiting for him. 
 In Baltimore, for instance, it will be found that there are 
 societies to relieve any need whatever of particular classes 
 of persons. The Hebrew Benevolent will do this for Israel- 
 ites, the German Society for Germans, the St. Andrew's 
 Society for the Scotch, the denominational societies for those 
 of their faith and for an undetermined number of outsiders. 
 On the other hand, there are societies that will relieve 
 1 Classes VII. to XI. enumeration of societies omitted.
 
 440 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 any person whatever in some particular way. The Poor 
 Association will give coal and groceries to any applicant it 
 considers Avorthy, without regard to religion, race, or color. 
 The dispensaries will give medicine, the sewing societies, 
 clothing, and so on. It will be noticed that the lines of 
 activity intersect. The classification by race overlaps that 
 by religion, while the classification by needs overlies them 
 both; and several agencies for the same sort of work are 
 superimposed upon the others, while unlimited claims upon 
 individual benevolence supplement or duplicate the whole. 
 Suppose the case of a German Lutheran who is in need of 
 one thing, say fuel. There are four organizations to which 
 he may properly apply : (1) the German Society; (2) his 
 church ; (3) the Poor Association ; (4) the police station. If 
 he is sick, the Indigent Sick Society may also aid ; if a 
 soldier, he may apply to the Confederate Relief Society or 
 the Grand Army of the Republic ; if his children go to a 
 Methodist Sunday-school, lielp may be had from that source ; 
 if a Roman Catholic, he may also apply to the Society of 
 St. Vincent de Paul ; and finally, if he is just out of jail, 
 the Prisoners' Aid Association may help. All this, of 
 course, does not include what he may obtain from private 
 individuals.^ 
 
 The necessity for cooperation among charitable agencies 
 and for thoroughness of treatment may be illustrated by the 
 work of the Philadelphia Society for Organizing Charity in 
 a single case.^ 
 
 "A poor colored woman, a widow, had two children, aged six and 
 three, who had never walked. Before we could get this woman's diffi- 
 culties straightened out and the legs of the children straightened too, our 
 district superintendent and our volunteer visitor had sought either the 
 advice or the active help of the following agencies : the district doctor, 
 
 1 This description applied to Baltimore as Professor Warner knew it 
 about 18f)0-1893, and still applies to many cities. 
 
 2 Twenty-eighth Annual Report Philadelphia Society O. C, 1906, p. 16; 
 see also in this report, " Fifty Selected Cases."
 
 THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT. 441 
 
 the woman's former physician, the Orthopsedic Hospital, the Philadel- 
 phia Research and Protective Association, the Children's Aid Society, 
 the Sunday Ledger, St. Christopher's Hospital, the Hahnemann Hos- 
 pital, the Woman's Hospital, a medical inspector of the Bureau of 
 Health, an employment agency, a public school principal, the Octavia 
 Hill Association, the Department of Charities, and the House of St. 
 Michael and All Angels. ... In this particular record, which is by no 
 means the longest, ... it appears that our district superintendent and 
 her assistant paid 76 visits, wrote 21 letters, and held 41 interviews in 
 the office." 
 
 It was not only desirable, but necessary, that all these 
 agencies should work together heartily, in order to do what 
 was needed in the case. Proper aid to many destitute 
 families involves an even wider circle of cooperation ; and if 
 we consider, not special cases, but charitable work in general, 
 we find that not one of the agencies can properly isolate 
 itself. A brief review of the history of the Charity Organ- 
 ization idea is necessary to explain how the incoherent 
 charity of a generation ago has gradually been replaced 
 by an intelligent system in which no charity lives to itself 
 alone. 
 
 In the fifties there were organized in nearly all the large 
 cities in the United States general relief-giving societies, 
 usually under the title of " Societies for the Improvement 
 of the Condition of the Poor." As indicated by the name, 
 these societies held before themselves the highest purposes 
 that benevolent people could seek to accomplish. In fact, 
 most of their announced objects agree quite closely with 
 those of the modern Charity Organization Societies. It was 
 their purpose to find work for all willing to do it, to investi- 
 gate all cases thoroughly, to raise the needy above the need 
 of relief, and incidentally to relieve directly such want as 
 seemed to require it. But all these Societies for the Im- 
 provement of the Condition of the Poor were dispensers of 
 material aid, this function submerged all others, and, as Mr. 
 Kellogg puts it, " they sank into the sea of almsgiving."
 
 442 AMERICAN CHAEITIES. 
 
 Their work was done more or less well ; but there is a 
 general agreement that twenty years after their organization, 
 private almsgiving in American cities, for the most part 
 through formal and even incorporated societies, was profuse 
 and chaotic, v/iiile still not meeting the demands made upon 
 it. It was dispensed in tantalizing doles miserably inade- 
 quate for effectual succor where the need was genuine, and 
 often dealt out broadcast among criminals and impudent 
 beggars.^ Public relief, at the same time, was in an unsatis- 
 factory condition, outdoor relief being administered with 
 especial recklessness, and frequently tainted by political 
 corruption. The old movement for the betterment of chari- 
 ties had substantially come to a standstill. While profes- 
 sion was still made of doing all that was needed, the energies 
 of the societies were absorbed in giving direct relief. The 
 tendency, that has frequently been observed, of the charitj'- 
 worker to be dominated by details, — to be so busy with im- 
 mediate needs that he has not time to prevent their recur- 
 rence, — had largely neutralized the original aims of the 
 Societies for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor. ^ 
 The movement for charity organization which originated 
 in London in 1868 was introduced into this country about 
 ten years later, being copied directly at a number of inde- 
 pendent points.^ After the trial of a society with similar 
 
 1 Kellogg, "Charity Organization in the United States," N. C. C, 1893, 
 pp. 53, 54; Devine, " Principles of Relief," pp. 343-345. 
 
 2 The author once followed through with considerahle care the annual 
 reports of one of these Societies for the Improvement of the Condition of 
 the Poor. One thing that seemed to serve as an index to the changing 
 etlicieney of the society was the statement regarding the number of 
 persons for whom work was found. This item gradually dropped out of 
 their reports altogetlier, and instead appeared sensational appeals for 
 funds and descriptions of need in special cases. The large number re- 
 lieved annually was especially dwelt upon ; but the inadequacy of the 
 relief given was manifest frona the figures. 
 
 * Probably pre(;ipitated l)y the experience of charity workers in reliev- 
 ing the destitution resulting from the depression of 1873-1878.
 
 THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT. 443 
 
 purposes at Germantown, Pennsylvania, and certain tenta- 
 tive and unsatisfactory experiments in clearing-house 
 registration of relief work in New York and Boston, the 
 first real Charity Organization Society was established in 
 Buffalo, in December, 1877. The Rev. S. H. Gurteen, an 
 English clergyman, who had been active in the London 
 society, was the moving force in the inauguration of this 
 enterprise. Boston, Philadelphia, and New Haven estab- 
 lished similar societies in 1878, and Cincinnati, Brooklyn, 
 and Indianapolis followed in 1879. The society in New 
 York was not organized until 1882, when the initiative in the 
 matter was taken by the State Board of Charities, which 
 adopted the following resolutions : — 
 
 " fVhereds, There are in the City of New York a large number of 
 independent societies engaged in teaching and relieving the poor of 
 the city in their own homes, and 
 
 " Whereas, There is at present no system of cooperation by which 
 these societies can receive definite mntual information in regard to the 
 work of each other, and 
 
 ^'■Whereas, Without some such system it is impossible that much of 
 their effort should not be wasted, and even do harm by encouraging 
 pauperism and imposture, therefore, 
 
 " Resolved, That the Commissioners of New York City are hereby 
 appointed a committee to take such steps as they may deem wise, to 
 inaugurate a system of mutual help and cooperation between 
 such societies." ^ 
 
 In nearly every instance the motive leading to these 
 organizations is declared to be " discontent with the prodi- 
 gality and inefficiency of public relief, and the chaotic state 
 of private charity." Twenty-two of the associations organ- 
 ized at these or later dates report that — 
 
 " voluntary charity was lavish, uninformed, and aimless, with no concert 
 of action ; two that it was variable, and therefore unreliable; one that 
 it was impeded by discouragement ; and one that it did not exist in 
 the community." 
 
 1 New York Directory of Charities, 1892, pp. 1, 2.
 
 444 AMERICAN CHABtTlES. 
 
 The same impulse that established the new societies abol- 
 ished outdoor relief in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, and 
 greatly reduced it in Buffalo and Indianapolis. The growth 
 of the movement may be measured to some extent by the 
 fact that fifty-five societies reported to the Committee of the 
 National Conference in 1893 a summary of their income and 
 personal service accounts, while in 1907 more than three 
 times as many were listed in the directories of charities in 
 the United States alone. 
 
 In order to afford as concise a view as possible of charity 
 organization, there is given in tabular form, on the following 
 page, a statement of the objects, methods, and machinery of 
 the societies undertaking such work. 
 
 Taking up seriatim the objects and methods of the Char- 
 ity Organization Societies of the United States, it may be 
 seen that the fundamental thought is the cooperation of all 
 charitable agencies of a given locality, and the best coordina- 
 tion of their efforts. In order to secure this, the cooperat- 
 ing societies, as far as practicable, furnish records of the 
 relief-work done by each to the central office, so that 
 accounts may be compared and the overlapping of relief 
 prevented. The Charity Organization Society maintains at 
 this central office an alphabetical list of all cases that have 
 received relief from any reporting agency whatever, or that 
 have been investigated by itself ; and this confidential cat- 
 alogue of cases treated is a treasure-house of facts for the 
 guidance of those engaged in benevolent work. The New 
 York society had in 1907 nearly 100,000 records (not includ- 
 ing those withdrawn or destroyed), some of them covering 25 
 years and containing 40,000 to 50,000 words. While this 
 is the largest consolidated list in the country, yet the central 
 office catalogues of Boston, Philadelphia, and many other 
 cities contain a very large number of cases. These are so 
 arranged that any case can be referred to at once, and the 
 person charitably interested in that case can get a reply
 
 THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT. 445 
 
 TABLE LXXII. 
 Charity Organizatiox Prixcipi.es and Methods. 
 
 Principles. 
 
 Mrthods. 
 
 Machinerv. 
 
 1. Cooperation between all 
 
 1. Comparison of relief 
 
 1. A card catalogue of 
 
 social forces and char- 
 
 records of the several 
 
 cases at a central ofBce 
 
 itable agencies of a 
 
 agencies and intimate 
 
 and frequent confer- 
 
 given locality, and the 
 
 acquaintance of work- 
 
 ences of workers. 
 
 best coordination of 
 
 ers with dependent 
 
 
 their efforts. 
 
 families and their con- 
 ditions. 
 
 
 2. Accurate knowledge of 
 
 2. Thorough investigation. 
 
 2. Paid agents assisted by 
 
 all cases treated. 
 
 followed by careful 
 
 volunteer visitors, and 
 
 
 registration. 
 
 elaborate case records 
 either at central or 
 branch offices. 
 
 3. Prompt and adequate 
 
 3. Bringing each case to 
 
 3. Correspondence, p e r - 
 
 relief for all that 
 
 the attention of appro- 
 
 sonal interviews, spe- 
 
 should have it. 
 
 priate relief agencies 
 
 cial or emergency re- 
 
 
 willing to aid. 
 
 lief-fund, cooperation 
 with relief-giving so- 
 cieties and persons. 
 
 4. Establishment of rela- 
 
 4. Friendly visiting. 
 
 4. Organization of corps of 
 
 tions of personal in- 
 
 
 volunteer visitors, who 
 
 terest and sympathy 
 
 
 are not almsgivers. 
 
 between the poor and 
 
 
 working under the 
 
 the well-to-do. 
 
 
 guidance of paid 
 agents. 
 
 5. Exposure of impostors 
 
 5. After investigation, no- 
 
 5. Paid agents, mendi- 
 
 and prevention of wil- 
 
 tification in all cases of 
 
 cancy police, publica- 
 
 ful idleness. 
 
 those likely to be de- 
 
 tion of a " cautionary 
 
 
 ceived, and, where 
 
 hst," information to 
 
 
 feasible, arrest of 
 
 all asking for it in spe- 
 
 
 impostors and profes- 
 
 cific cases, wood yard. 
 
 
 sional beggars. Work 
 
 laundry, etc. 
 
 
 test. 
 
 
 6. Work for all able and 
 
 6. To provide regular work 
 
 6. Employment agency. 
 
 willing to do anything. 
 
 where possible and 
 
 wood yard, stone- 
 
 
 relief- work when 
 
 breaking, laundries. 
 
 
 necessary. 
 
 rag-sorting, work for 
 the handicapped, etc. 
 
 7. Prevention of pauper- 
 
 1. By special educational. 
 
 7. Kindergartens, night 
 
 ism. 
 
 provident, sanitai-y. 
 
 schools, industrial 
 
 
 and industrial 
 
 schools, penny provi- 
 
 
 schemes for those on 
 
 dent funds, general 
 
 
 the verge of depen- 
 
 constructive social 
 
 
 dence. 
 
 measures. 
 
 8. Collection and diffusion 
 
 8. Discussion, public meet- 
 
 8. Board meetings, annual 
 
 of knowledge, on all 
 
 ings, social research 
 
 meetings, conferences, 
 
 subjects connected 
 
 and publication, edu- 
 
 lecture courses, pe- 
 
 with the administra- 
 
 cation of charity 
 
 riodicals, training 
 
 tion of charities and 
 
 workers. 
 
 classes in philan- 
 
 with the conditions of 
 
 
 thropy. 
 
 poverty. 
 

 
 446 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 regarding it from the society by return mail. This clearing- 
 house function of the Charity Organization Society is the 
 first and perhaps most fundamental one, and the one most 
 clearly stated in the name which the societies adopted. 
 Yet efficient cooperation in this matter on the part of all 
 relieving agencies has been one of the most dilficult results 
 to secure; in some cities it has dwindled to almost nothing, 
 while in others even public officials cooperate fully, and, as 
 in Buffalo, submit all cases to which they give outdoor 
 relief, to the investigation of the society. 
 
 This conception of cooperation on the official side among 
 charitable bodies which was the initial idea of charity 
 organization, has been immeasurably broadened in the 
 practice of every successful society. Miss Mary E. Rich- 
 mond, especially, has emphasized this fact and illustrated it 
 in the accompanying diagram.^ It shows cooperation as a 
 working principle applicable to every act of the charitable 
 worker, and it assumes that the worker knows intimately the 
 family he is trying to help, that a thorough investigation 
 has brought to light all the resources available, and that if 
 there has been urgent need it has already been relieved. 
 
 DIAGRAM VII. 
 Forces with which the Charitt Workers may Cooperate. 
 
 A. Family Forces : 
 
 Capacity of each member for affection, training, endeavor, social 
 development. 
 
 B. Personal Forces; 
 
 Kindred, friends. 
 
 C. Neighborhood Forces : 
 
 Neighbors, landlords, tradesmen. 
 
 Former and present employers. 
 
 Clergymen, Sunday-school teachers, fellow-church-members. 
 
 Doctors. 
 
 • 1 Richmond, N. C. C, 1901, p. 300.
 
 THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT. 447 
 
 Trade-unions, fraternal and benefit societies, social clubs, fellow- 
 workmen. 
 
 Libraries, educational clubs, classes, settlements, etc. 
 
 Thrift agencies, savings-banks, stamp-savings, building and loan 
 associations. 
 D. Civic Forces : 
 
 School-teachers, truant officers. 
 
 Police magistrates, probation officers, reformatories. 
 
 Health department, sanitary and factory inspectors. 
 
 Postmen. , 
 
 Parks, baths, etc. 
 
 
 A /-_./._./-_/.. Lt- .family 
 
 B. - . ^ -__/._./.././_. . Personal 
 
 C ^- .y.././. Meighbood 
 
 D _,.-^_.^^ £ivic 
 
 L.^^ ,.,.^ ^. Private Charitable 
 
 X_-*..<^ Public Relief 
 
 E. Private Charitable Forces : 
 
 Charity Organization Society. 
 Church of denomination to which family belongs. 
 Benevolent individuals. 
 National, special, and general relief societies. 
 Charity Employment agencies and workrooms. 
 Fresh-air Society, Children's Aid Society for Protection of Chil- 
 dren, Children's Homes, etc. 
 District nurses, sick-diet kitchens, dispensaries, hospitals, etc. 
 Society for the suppression of vice, prisoners' aid society, etc.
 
 448 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 F. Public Relief Forces : 
 Almshouses. 
 
 Outdoor Poor department. 
 Public hospitals and dispensaries. 
 
 Miss Richmond farther explains : — 
 
 " All city families, rich and poor alike, are surrounded by the forces 
 indicated within these circles ; . . . inevery family asking charitable aid, 
 therefore, the natural resources have so far failed as to send its mem- 
 bers crashing down through circles B, C, D, to E, the circle of private 
 charity. The problem of charity is to get them back into A again by 
 rallying the forces that lie between. . . . Other things being equal, the 
 best force to use is the force that lies nearest the family. Charitable 
 cooperation begins and ends in an intimate knowledge of the needs 
 of individual poor people and in the patient endeavor to make them 
 permanently better off." ^ 
 
 A second fundamental object of the Charity Organization 
 Society, which is partly attained by the methods taken to 
 secure cooperation and prevent the overlapping of relief, 
 is an accurate knowledge of all cases treated. Besides 
 consulting the records of cooperating societies, this is to 
 be gotten by thorough investigation, followed by careful 
 registration. The old relief societies frequently depended 
 upon the memory of the paid agent for the facts regarding 
 different families aided ; but the Charity Organization 
 Society keeps its records with thoroughness in writing, 
 and thus extends their usefulness beyond the service of any 
 one individual. Investigation is not merely for the pre- 
 vention of fraud, but is an essential prerequisite of proper 
 relief. The giving of money or supplies is merely one 
 form of prescribing for a case of destitution, and an in- 
 vestigation is as essential in dealing with the case as a 
 diagnosis in a case of sickness with which a physician deals. 
 Nor is it solely to ascertain whether technical relief is 
 needed, — for material relief may be the least of the needs 
 
 1 N. C. C, 1901, pp. 298 ff.
 
 THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT. 449 
 
 of the family, — but rather to supply data for ascertaining 
 what the treatment should be and who should administer it. 
 The third function of a Charity Organization Society 
 is to find prompt and adequate relief for all that should 
 have it. The society is an animated directory of charities 
 of the locality in which it works. No one is turned away 
 from the office of the society with the statement, "Your 
 need is none of our business ; " for the society makes it its 
 business to see that each need is brought to the attention 
 of the proper agency. If no agency exists, a benevolent 
 individual can usually be found to give the relief required. 
 In discharging this function of finding prompt and fitting 
 relief for each case of need, some societies have been led 
 to start relief-funds of their own. When the first of these 
 organizations were formed, the antagonism of the old relief- 
 giving societies was frequently aroused; for the latter thought 
 they saw in the new movement a likelihood of the duplication 
 of their own efforts, which would be mischievous in its in- 
 fluence on the poor, and embarrassing when appeals were 
 made to contributors. It was partly because of this posi- 
 tion on the part of the established societies that many of 
 the new organizations started out as non-relief-giving agen- 
 cies, in this matter breaking with English tradition and 
 making a new departure in charity work. Experience 
 seems to have shown that this abstention from relief-giv- 
 ing in the earlier years was the very best thing to allay the 
 jealousy of older societies ; and that it preserved the Charity 
 Organization Societies for the higher purposes which they 
 had in view. A Charity Organization Society with a relief- 
 fund must necessarily compete in its appeals to contributors 
 with other organizations giving direct relief to the poor. 
 These organizations are consequently apt to be jealous of 
 it, and may not cooperate so willingly, either in aiding cases 
 it brings to their attention, or in giving to it and obtaining 
 from it information of common advantage. In such circiim-
 
 450 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 stances it often drifts into a condition where it is simply 
 one of several relieving agencies. 
 
 Further than this, the public is used to organizations of 
 the relief-giving type ; and when it hears of a Charity 
 Organization Society, that its work is to benefit the poor, 
 but that it does not give alms in any form, such an idea 
 has an educational influence of great value in the commu- 
 nity. People ask at once, "What does it do?" and may 
 then be induced to look over the long list of things, other 
 than relief-giving, that need doing. The older relief so- 
 cieties were continually criticised on account of the amount 
 spent in administration. If it appeared that 20, 30, or 
 50 per cent of the contributions went for the payment 
 of administrative expenses, the contributor might object 
 on the ground that he could give his money away more 
 cheaply than that himself. When Charity Organization 
 Societies have no relief-fund, this comparison of expenses 
 for administration with relief is obviated. If asked how 
 much is spent for purposes of administration, the answer 
 is, "All," and this has a good tonic effect both upon the 
 questioner, who begins to see that helpfulness means more 
 than almsgiving, and upon the representative of the society, 
 who realizes that the work must be really and demonstrably 
 useful if it is to win the support of the public.^ 
 
 In proportion as the Charity Organization Societies gain 
 the confidence of the community and of the relief societies, 
 friendly cooperation brings about new adjustments of rela- 
 tions. An investigation made in 1901 of the practice of 
 Charity Organization Societies in the matter of relief-giv- 
 ing showed that of seventy-five societies, all but six 
 
 1 The author's personal experience in the administrative work of a 
 Charity Organization Society convinced him, somewhat to his own sur- 
 prise, that such a society ought never to have a relief-fund. Such a fund 
 at once saps the energy and ingenuity of agents and visitors in treating 
 cases and securing cooperation. It also makes it more difficult for them 
 to obtain cooperation, even if they try equally hard.
 
 THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT. 451 
 
 provided immediate relief in urgent cases from funds, 
 either emergency or general, in the hands of their agents.^ 
 More than half of all the Charity Organization Societies 
 were in cities which had no relief societies; others could 
 not secure cooperation with the existing relief societies or 
 found too much delay and difficulty in doing so. In some 
 cities, as in Baltimore, the adjustment between the relief- 
 giving and the Charity Organization Society takes the form 
 of federation ; ^ sometimes the field is divided between them, 
 neither relinquishing its powers, as in New York.^ Where 
 the relief-giving society was formed after the charity organ- 
 ization and to supplement it, it commonly remains passive 
 and serves as a repository of relief, because of its confidence 
 in the parent society. Often the difference between a Charity 
 Organization Society that gives relief, and one that does 
 not, is cliiefly in name — the fund in one case being " in- 
 termediary" or "special," in the other appearing in the 
 general expenditures — a difference of bookkeeping rather 
 than of principle. 
 
 It may be concluded that for one reason or another the 
 societies which now represent most fully and vitally the 
 broadest charity organization principles are giving emergent 
 and special relief. It is limited in amount and strictly 
 guarded, but in the hands of trained agents and with the 
 constantly expanding ideal of what adequate relief and 
 treatment require, it has been robbed of some of its perils. 
 Professor Devine declares that if these societies have kept 
 free to a considerable extent from the dangers inherent in 
 relief -giving, it is because they have not, as a rule, directly 
 disbursed relief from a fund previously accumulated, but 
 have instead obtained their relief, case by case, as it is 
 
 1 Hubbard, Am. Jour, of Soc, vol. vi., No. 6, 1901, pp. 783 ff. 
 
 2 Brackett, Charities, vol. ix., 1902, pp. 37 ff. 
 
 3 Twenty-fifth Annual Report New York Charity Organization Society, 
 1907, p. 85.
 
 452 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 needed for individual families. They have thus been com- 
 pelled constantly to justify their decisions and their methods 
 to others in order to secure approval and cooperation.^ 
 
 The fourth function of the Charity Organization Society 
 is to establish relations of personal interest and sympathy 
 between the poor and the well-to-do. This is accomplished 
 through what is technically known as " friendly visiting," 
 volunteer visitors being secured who are willing to go to the 
 poor as friends, and not as almsgivers. Preferably each 
 friendly visitor has only one, or at most two, cases, and the 
 relation is made as permanent as possible. There are many 
 instances where for years the same visitor has gone to the 
 same family, and genuine personal attachments have been 
 formed. Visitors should never be almsgivers ; for in that 
 case the j^oor look upon them as persons from whom some- 
 thing is to be gotten, and, on the other hand, if empowered 
 to give relief, the visitor fails to invent methods of render- 
 ing the better service that is needed in order to cure poverty. 
 The work of friendly visiting is declared by the most ad- 
 vanced societies to be the heart of the work. The motto 
 "Not alms, but a friend," first adopted in Boston, has come 
 to be the motto of many of the societies. The Buffalo society 
 declares its primary aim to be — 
 
 " to increase, to organize, and to educate the amount of unpaid, vol- 
 untary personal service given to the poor of Buffalo." 
 
 This work is developed under great discouragements in most 
 of our large cities, especially in New York, where the long 
 distances to be covered by the volunteer visitor, and the 
 shifting nature of the indigent population, make it very hard 
 to establish permanent relations of friendship, or even of 
 acquaintance. A measure of success, however, has been 
 reached in many cities, even in districts where there is not 
 one resident that could be called upon as a friendly visitor, 
 
 1 " Principles of Relief," p. 'drd. 
 
 i
 
 THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT. 453 
 
 and where many of those who do the visiting travel from 
 the suburban towns to reach the field of work. The city of 
 Boston leads with 877 visitors, Chicago has over 400, and 
 Buffalo, 150. 
 
 If the influence of friendly visiting upon the poor is of 
 great value, its humanizing effect upon the visitors them- 
 selves is scarcely less. In all large cities there are places 
 which, though not far from the well-to-do geographically, 
 are likely to be completely forgotten. Balzac said of Paris 
 that there were streets and alleys of which the upper classes 
 knew no more than a man knows what is going on in his 
 pancreas. If this is less true than when it was spoken, it is 
 because many volunteer workers have been looking into 
 these different parts of the city, and taking an interest in 
 the people that live and die there. There is no education in 
 charitable work so good as that which comes to the friendly 
 visitor. Becoming interested in one family, he is likely to 
 be led out into an interest in all branches of city govern- 
 ment, and of the county and State government as well ; he 
 will inevitably be drawn into the current of broader measures 
 for social and industrial betterment. He who takes an in- 
 terest in trying to cure poverty in a single case will soon 
 come to find that nothing in politics or industry is foreign to 
 him. 
 
 The fifth function mentioned in the tabular view, the ex- 
 posure of impostors, and the prevention of wilful idleness, is 
 frequently over-emphasized in describing the purposes of a 
 Charity Organization Society, so that people look upon the 
 society as merely an anti-mendicity league, a detective so- 
 ciety for preventing imposition and bringing swindlers to 
 justice. The society is consequently regarded as blood- 
 less, cold, and uncharitable, doing a work which may be 
 necessary, but which is certainly ungracious, and does not 
 appeal to the actively benevolent. A society in a large city 
 like New York or Chicago has much of this work to do,
 
 454 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 especially the detection of fraudulent chanties. In smaller 
 places there are not many fraudulent charitable enterprises, 
 but there are always dishonest begging-letter writers, and 
 dishonest beggars from door to door. The New York Society 
 has carried farthest the special work of dealing with street 
 beggars, employing agents for that purpose, who aid, warn, 
 expose, or arrest, as circumstances may seem to require in 
 each case. This work of freeing the streets of mendicants is 
 very much limited by the practice in most cities of giving 
 licenses for petty peddling on the streets, or for operating 
 musical instruments of the hand-organ type. In order to 
 prevent wilful idleness, most of the societies provide a work 
 test for both men and women, or avail themselves of one 
 operated by a cooperating association. 
 
 To give their contributors and cooperating agencies 
 knowledge of impostors, several of the societies publish a 
 cautionary list of dishonest applicants for relief, with their 
 various aliases so far as known. The Chicago Bureau of 
 Charities maintains an Inquiry Department which has in- 
 formation on file covering 1200 charities and " alleged " char- 
 ities, and which is prepared to investigate any others at the 
 request of a subscriber. 
 
 The Endorsement Committee of San Francisco (estab- 
 lished by the cooperation of the Merchants Association and 
 the Associated Charities) investigates charities at their own 
 request and furnishes acceptable ones with a card of indorse- 
 ment which may be used in soliciting contributions. 
 
 Closely connected with the work of preventing wilful 
 idleness is that of finding work for all who are willing but 
 who cannot find work for themselves through the ordinary 
 channels. The wood yard and laundry may serve as work 
 tests, but they cannot give steady and profitable employment 
 to all those desiring work. Each Charity Organization So- 
 ciety is, consequently, to some extent an employment agency, 
 dealing in ordinary times with the semi-capable, with those
 
 THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT. 455 
 
 who from some perversion of character or defect of mind or 
 body cannot fit themselves into the industries of the time, 
 but may be able to do certain things if those things are 
 sought out for them. Many of those with whom the society 
 deals are able-bodied, but not able-minded ; or they may be 
 both strong and intelligent, but not reliable. There are com- 
 paratively few cases where there is not some limitation of 
 capaeity more than that belonging to the average person. 
 In this, as in every other form of relief, care must be taken 
 not to undermine self-reliance by finding employment for 
 those who have no special limitation of physique or char- 
 acter. Temporary employment is often properly used as a 
 substitute for relief ; but in general, Charity Organization 
 Societies should only act as employment agencies when 
 applicants cannot find work through the regular agencies.^ 
 
 The seventh function of the Charity Organization Society 
 has been enumerated as the prevention of pauperism. This 
 is sought to be accomplished by all the means employed for 
 the furtherance of the other specific purposes of the society. 
 From the beginning of the charity organization movement, 
 many societies have established undertakings to assail pau- 
 perism in its causes : the creche, or day nursery at which 
 working mothers may leave their children during the day ; 
 kindergartens in connection with the public schools, cooking 
 schools, sewing schools, trade schools ; the encouragement 
 of thrift by different varieties of savings-funds, such as the 
 Penny Provident, which receives deposits of one cent and 
 upward ; fuel funds, by means of which summer savings can 
 secure winter delivery of coal at summer prices ; these and 
 hundreds of other educative and preventive measures have 
 been inspired and initiated by them. In recent years the 
 Charity Organization Societies have been leaders in municipal 
 and legislative reform, sharing and organizing independent 
 
 iBrackett, Charities Revieio,\o\. vi., 1897, pp.397 ff.; Devine, "Prin- 
 ciples of Relief," pp. 152 ff.
 
 456 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 movements for the prevention of tuberculosis and unsani- 
 tary housing, for the establishment of municipal lodging 
 houses and the control of charity transportation. 
 
 The eighth and last function of the Charity Organization 
 Society is the diffusion of knowledge on all subjects con- 
 nected with the administration of charities and the preven- 
 tion of dependence. No progressive society neglects these 
 functions. By public meetings, conferences of visitors, 
 lecture courses, training classes for workers, and the publi- 
 cation of periodicals they undertake to educate the com- 
 munity into wiser methods of charitable effort. The 
 bibliography of charity organization now comprises hun- 
 dreds of titles of the pamphlets and other publications 
 issued by the societies of the country. Their annual reports 
 are educational literature of high value, giving detailed 
 accounts of cases, and explaining the countless things, not 
 to be summarized, which are necessary in wisely aiding the 
 poor. 
 
 In the earlier history of charity organization, what have 
 been called the negative functions, i.e. investigation, regis- 
 tration, and repression of fraud, were emphasized as being 
 of the highest importance. With the broadening and spir- 
 itualizing of the aims of these societies, cooperation, pre- 
 vention, and education have taken the first place. While 
 the principles of Charity Organization Societies remain the 
 same, the emphasis upon them has changed ; and, as prin- 
 ciples, no longer belonging to a particular form of society, 
 but becoming the inspiration of philanthropy, they have 
 become the regulative force of all relief-giving.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 THE TREND OF MODERN CHARITY. 
 
 Those who juggle with the word "charity " find it easy to 
 assert that there has been no progress in charity since the 
 early days. They point to manifestations of the purest 
 and most unselfish sentiment on the part of the early 
 Christians and of the pre-Christian pagans ; and then to 
 our modern charities with their material aid, and all their 
 defects of narrowness and inadequacy, and ask us to note 
 how charity has degenerated. They call attention to the 
 fact that the King James translators of the New Testament 
 could use the word " charity " in the thirteenth chapter of 
 1 Corinthians, while those who made the new translation 
 substituted the word "love." But this controversy is in fact 
 a matter of mere definitions, and it is only by playing fast 
 and loose with words that the case is made out against 
 modern charity. 
 
 With a calculus of the benevolent impulses we have 
 nothing at present to do. Presumably thirst is the same to- 
 day as in the time of Gideon, when his soldiers drank from 
 the hand or bowed themselves to the stream ; but the modern 
 city must have waterworks. So though charity-in-fj'^e- 
 sense-of-love be the same yesterday, to-day, and forev-7q,. 
 yet the social machinery for making benevolence beneficent, 
 changes with the changing times. 
 
 Nevertheless it must be acknowledged that even when 
 attention is strictly confined to charities in the sense of the 
 word used in this volume, and though one may be confident 
 of progress, it is difficult to meet scepticism with tangible 
 proofs. While one can point to great institutional develop- 
 
 457
 
 458 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 ments along many lines, yet there still remain some institu- 
 tions that illustrate the worst evils of philanthropy. Good 
 systems continue to break down because weakly adminis- 
 tered, and bad systems defy reform by working well in the 
 hands of the exceptionally capable. From this point of 
 view it is almost discouraging to find that the uneducated 
 charitable impulse may still be of as much value as when 
 Lecky wrote the following observation : — 
 
 " It will continue to be found that the Protestant lady working in 
 her parish, by the simple force of common sense and by a scrupulous 
 and minute attention to the condition and character of those whom 
 she relieves, is unconsciously illustrating with perfect accuracy the 
 enlightened charity of Mai thus." i 
 
 It may have seemed to the reader of these pages that the 
 chief result of scientific charity has been to disclose ever 
 greater need, creating demands for more institutions, at 
 constantly increasing expense, and with an ever rising 
 standard of care. It is necessary to gather up, from the 
 mass of details concerning specific charitable efforts, mis- 
 takes, plans, and theories, those larger guiding tendencies 
 which interpenetrate them all, and which lead onward into 
 a broadening field of social betterment. 
 
 It may seem at first a grim reason for hopefulness to say 
 that an element of progress lies in the very weight of the 
 burden that charity imposes upon modern communities. 
 It has not been enough for modern medicine to sound the 
 alarm of race degeneration through scrofulous and neurotic 
 i^ut dity ; not until the burden of the insane, epileptic, 
 ^leeble-minded, and inebriate mounted to hundreds of thou- 
 sands of wretched human beings for whom there is no place 
 in homes or institutions, did States begin to plan for perma- 
 nent custodial care or to regulate marriage. The burden 
 is rapidly driving us on to curative and preventive methods, 
 for we must become wiser or be crushed. 
 
 1 Lecky, " European Morals," vol. ii., pp. 93-93.
 
 THE TREND OF MODERN CHARITY. 450 
 
 Moreover, that mankind begins to be conscious of the 
 weight of the incapable and the helpless means the deepen- 
 ing of altruistic instincts and a growing sense of the soli- 
 darity of society. The ages gone by accepted misery, 
 incapacity, and industrial slavery as inevitable in the con- 
 stitution of the world ; but at last we begin to see that 
 chronic poverty and preventable disease can and must 
 finally be done away. 
 
 The interest in individual poor persons and in charitable 
 institutions not only develops a sense of the enormous social 
 burden which must be carried, but leads out into a wider 
 interest in social conditions. The need of getting past the 
 charitable organization to the individual poor person and 
 of treating him as his special needs require, is often empha- 
 sized. There is a reverse process of equal importance to 
 the right development of philanthropy ; it is that by which 
 charitable workers engaged in helping the poor come to 
 see the necessity of improving all the conditions — politi- 
 cal, industrial, social — affecting the life of the poor. One 
 who is a good neighbor by force of kindly instincts and 
 common-sense, may succeed in the simple conditions of coun- 
 try life ; but in the complex and unneighborly modern city 
 he can hardly become interested in the cure of poverty in 
 a given case, without being driven farther back to a lively 
 interest in the reform of city politics, the improvement of 
 sanitation ; and finally, even to those fundamental economic 
 and social questions which underlie them all and which, at 
 the beginning, would have appeared to have no relation to 
 the work of relieving the poor. Active Charity Organiza- 
 tion Societies are constantly educating workers who, through 
 their interest in cases, come to have a vital interest in con- 
 ditions and pass from the work of caring for the one to re- 
 forming the other. Nor is this a loss, for it is a necessary 
 step in the broadening of charitable aims till they shall in- 
 clude whatever is required for the cure and prevention of 
 dependence.
 
 460 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Wherever a system of honor offices obtains through which 
 a large number of the influential class become interested in 
 the administration of public charities, there results a better- 
 ment of political institutions and often a modification of in- 
 dustrial conditions. Institutions have grown largely through 
 the operation of unconscious forces, but their further growth 
 must now be consciously guided to meet the highest social 
 ideals. To a great extent charitable institutions are still 
 in the condition of half-capable business men who cannot be 
 said to manage their business, but who rather let their busi- 
 ness manage them, being driven so hard by attention to de- 
 tails that they have not time properly to organize and direct 
 their work. While all agree in the truth of the statement 
 that " a fence at the top of a precipice is better than an am- 
 bulance at the bottom," yet they are so busy picking up the 
 fallen that they do not get time to prevent others from fall- 
 ing. It is one of the peculiar merits of those imbued with 
 charity organization principles that they will not allow them- 
 selves to be buried under details. They try to survey the 
 w^hole field, and it is for this reason that so many of their 
 workers combine an interest in individuals with an even 
 more hopeful interest in the reform of social conditions. 
 Some are impatient because workers in charities do not 
 move faster, because they have such small concern for the 
 causes of distress, and for its prevention. But while our 
 charities may not be moving as fast in this desirable direc- 
 tion as could be wished, they are certainly moving faster, 
 more perceptibly, than ever before. Many of the problems 
 of dependence are gradually passing over into the realms 
 of justice and economics; and many organizations and move- 
 ments which are as truly charitable as an orphanage or an 
 almshouse, pass under the name of constructive social work, 
 or prevention and welfare. This cannot be doubted by one 
 who scans, for instance, the contents of the proceedings 
 of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections.
 
 . THE TREND OF MODERN CHARITY. 461 
 
 There is a wide difference between the reports of the earlier 
 years which deal largely with papers and discussions on 
 State charitable institutions for the pauper and the insane, 
 and those of recent years covering a variety of topics not 
 only in technical charities, but in preventive work for 
 children, immigration, neighborhood work, recreation, in- 
 dustrial insurance, standards of living, and social research. 
 
 The general interest in philanthropy is being stimulated 
 by associations for the study of the social sciences and for 
 the promotion of scientific methods. So long as the work 
 of aiding the poor remained an art only, having its origin 
 in instinct and its encouragement in super-rational or non- 
 rational sanctions, a lack of verifiable progress was to be 
 expected. Such was the case in the art of healing and the 
 art of nursing before they were reenforced by the discoveries 
 of the exact sciences. The art of nursing, and its improve- 
 ment through the help of the science of bacteriology, affords 
 an excellent example of the manner in which an art, pre- 
 supposing sympathy in the one practising it, can yet be 
 improved by the help of science. No one appreciates more 
 fully than the ideal physician and the capable nurse the 
 non-material aids to health. Drugs cannot take the place 
 of hope, nor sterilized dressings the place of sympathy. 
 Many of the component parts of gentleness are non-material, 
 and acquired skill is no substitute for conscientiousness. 
 But it remains true that it is science upon which medicine 
 and nursing have drawn for help in the art of healing, and 
 thereby made it more certain and more satisfactory in its 
 results. 
 
 Until recently all the social sciences have been at the stage 
 where their premises were disputed and their deductions 
 to be used with caution. Political economy has only lately 
 emerged from the disrepute of a dismal science, and so- 
 ciology has barely gained recognition. As yet the social 
 sciences are even less certain than the medical sciences, but
 
 462 AMERICAN CHARITIES 
 
 the use of them as a foundation for charitable work contains 
 the best possible guaranty of substantial progress. 
 
 The necessary relation between technical social science 
 and practical philanthropy has been recognized by the 
 establishment of courses in causes of poverty, charities, 
 penology, and industrial betterment in most of the uni- 
 versities and colleges of the country. Men who have had 
 their training in practical charities are called to professor- 
 ships, and professors become the leaders of charitable 
 societies and movements. College graduates, trained in 
 economics and social science, serve their apprenticeship 
 in the offices of charitable societies under the guidance of 
 trained agents, and become, in turn, the representatives of a 
 new profession. As charities grow complex and wider in 
 scope, and as the social sciences are better understood, it is 
 seen that workers with definite preparation have, in this 
 field as in every other, an advantage over those who have 
 merely dropped into the field from some other. The need 
 of technical training for this new profession has been still 
 further recognized by the establishment of special schools 
 of philanthropy and of training classes for volunteer 
 visitors. 
 
 Among salaried employees of charitable societies, Mr. 
 Homer T'olks found in 1893 three tolerably distinct types : 
 the first was the man considerably past middle age, who 
 had outlived his usefulness in any other line, and who, by 
 reason of his unusual goodness, was supposed to be an ac- 
 ceptable alms distributer. In the second type, the great 
 excellency lay in clerical ability ; work for a charitable 
 agency was the same as work for a dry-goods firm, a grain 
 warehouse, or a street-cleaning department, except that the 
 wages were somewhat less. The third type differed from the 
 other two in that the man considered the work a profession, 
 as other men regarded journalism, law, theology, or medi- 
 cine. He entered the work because it was to him the most
 
 TltE TREND OF AlODERN CHARITY. 463 
 
 inviting field of service. At that time those who belonged 
 to the third class commonly had no preparation especially- 
 designed to fit them for their work. Many had been min- 
 isters or teachers, some journalists, and a few lawyers. 
 Among the older men a majority had perhaps been fitted 
 for the ministry, and among the younger men a consider- 
 able number were those who would have been ministers 
 at an earlier time.^ Among the young men and women 
 studying social science in American colleges at the present 
 time, there are many who would never have thought of 
 becoming ministers or foreign missionaries, who yet turn 
 to the new profession of charity worker or neighborhood 
 worker as a field of congenial and unselfish social service. 
 Salaries for this profession are still too often graded ac- 
 cording to the deserts of the first two classes of workers 
 mentioned by Mr. Folks, and meagre salaries are even de- 
 fended by people who seem to think that in philanthropy 
 as in teaching, the worker should put away the normal 
 human desire for reasonable comfort and pleasure. Those 
 who willingly contribute to the support of a six-thousand- 
 dollar clergyman will frequently insist that fifteen hundred 
 per year is ample for the paid secretary of a charitable 
 society. One who enters this new profession must be will- 
 ing, of course, to make sacrifices for the work ; clergymen 
 expect to bring to their work some measure of self-sacrifice, 
 but that does not preclude the possibility of their being well 
 paid. A clergyman on an adequate salary can render bet- 
 ter service than one on the verge of dependence. Mr. Folks 
 well urged that the salaried agent of a charitable society 
 ought not to allow others to assess his personal contribution 
 to the work and collect it in advance by requiring him to 
 
 ^ See " College Men in Benevolent Work," Proceedings of Section VII., 
 International Congress of Charities, Correction, and Philanthropy, held 
 at Chicago, 1893. (Baltimore, Hopkins Press, 1894.) To the same volume 
 Miss Anna L. Dawes contributed a valuable paper on " The Need of a 
 Training School for a New Profession."
 
 464 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 work for excessiv-ely low wages. There was a time when 
 it was said that no man ought to take a salary from a char- 
 itable society unless he would himself otherwise be an ob- 
 ject of charity. That time has passed, though there is still a 
 current theory that by paying a charity worker a little less 
 than he could earn elsewhere, a self-sacrificing temper is as- 
 sured. As a matter of fact, this niggardly policy simply 
 insures the drafting off of the best ability to other lines of 
 work which afford equal opportunity for unselfishness and 
 more just compensation ; and the retention in charity work 
 of some who could scarcely find a place elsewhere. 
 
 Many young men and women are ready to consecrate 
 themselves to the work ; but they are not ready, and ought 
 not to be ready, to consecrate themselves on terms that 
 make good work impossible. In addition to consecration 
 and native intelligence, the successful paid charity worker 
 must have a tolerably expensive education continuing through 
 life, and the sound health that enables a man to preserve 
 enthusiasm, clear vision, and undulled sympathies through 
 years of harassing work. While in the service of the poor 
 we may hope to secure consecration and possibly intelli- 
 gence for nothing, education and health are things that cost 
 money, and must be paid for. 
 
 The considerations here urged are already accepted as 
 sound by the more progressive leaders in charitable enter- 
 prises, especially in the large cities where expert service is 
 most essential. With a body of intelligent and specially 
 trained experts, giving their time and energies to the right de- 
 velopment of the various branches of charitable effort, definite 
 and constant advances may be expected. Indeed, even with 
 the comparatively small number of trained persons already 
 engaged in benevolent undertakings, there is a new spirit 
 and impetus apparent in the work. The period is one pre- 
 eminently of investigation. No sooner is some phase of 
 social evil described by those engaged in practical charity,
 
 THE TREND OF MODERN CHARITY. 465 
 
 than an inquiry is proposed, and the enthusiasm of research 
 workers, tlie implements of modern science, and the re- 
 sources of wealth are brought to bear upon it. To know 
 thoroughly and then to remedy in the light of knowledge 
 acquired, is the attitude of philanthropic leadership. 
 
 Whether this vigorous policy of finding out result in re- 
 afiirming that the causes of dependence lie in the inherent 
 weakness of character ; or whether there is a party of the 
 second part in the organized forces of corruption, injustice, 
 and predatory greed, which must be dealt with by radical 
 methods; or whether the facts will sustain the socialists in 
 their contention that the ills are too deep-seated to be remedied 
 by anything short of an overthrow of the industrial order, 
 is beside the purpose of this discussion.^ The modern 
 charity worker has been so far educated by his task that he 
 now demands that ultimately justice shall precede charity, 
 and prevention take the place of cure. It was once the 
 accepted doctrine that prosperity and happiness were the 
 natural results and reward of goodness, but the social worker 
 in daily contact with the poor sees that their poverty comes 
 from a deeper source than the vices or virtues of the in- 
 dividual — from sources which can be reached only by 
 industrial and social changes which it is beyond the power 
 of a single generation to make. In the knowledge of this 
 fact, the charitable are filled with a true humility in the 
 presence of the poor and without revelling in sentimentalities, 
 still helping those who need help, they take part at the 
 same time in the greater movement for the abolition of the 
 conditions which make dependence inevitable. 
 
 1 Kellogg, " Charities and the Commons," vol. xvi., 1906, pp. 292-293.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The amount of American material on charities and 
 philanthropy is now so great that it would be impossible to 
 print here anything more than a selected bibliography. 
 The titles of books and articles which are included in this 
 list comprise those used by Professor Warner in the first 
 edition; and others published since 1894, of special value 
 to the teacher and student. No attempt has been made to 
 cover fully the history of philanthropy in this country nor 
 to meet the needs of research workers, but rather to select 
 what would constitute a good working guide to material 
 generally accessible. 
 
 In the field of charities, particularly, the use of periodical 
 literature is essential. The articles listed have been care- 
 fully selected and relate to many subjects in the wider 
 field of general philanthropy as well as to technical 
 charities, and are intended to suggest collateral lines of 
 reading as well. Attention is called to many special bibli- 
 ographies accessible in the books and magazines named 
 below 
 
 To the inexperienced student some suggestions are 
 offered concerning current publications which are of spe- 
 cial value, although they are not always found in complete 
 files even in large libraries. The most important of these 
 are : Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities 
 and Corrections, (N.C.C.), with its Cumulative Index and 
 Guide; reports of the State Boards of Charities and the 
 State Boards of Control, a list of which, with addresses of 
 secretaries, is published each year in N.C.C.; reports of 
 
 467
 
 468 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Charity Organization societies, Associated Charities, etc., of 
 cities ; directories of charities of the larger cities ; reports 
 of State Conferences of Charities, of which a list is pub- 
 lished in the current volumes of N.C.C. 
 
 Occasional articles on philanthropy appear in nearly all 
 the economic periodicals, but the American Journal of Soci- 
 ology and the Annals of the American Academy of Politi- 
 cal and Social Science contain the most useful material. 
 Charities Magazine (1897 if.), which became Charities and 
 the Commons in 1905, — the technical magazine of phi- 
 lanthropy, — is indispensable in the study of current phil- 
 anthropic movements. 
 
 List of Abbreviations. 
 
 Am. Jo. of Inebriety — American Journal of Inebriety. 
 Am. Jo. of Soc. — American Journal of Sociology. 
 Am. Statist. Assoc. — American Statistical Association. 
 Annals — American Academy of Political and Social Science. 
 Allan. Mo. — Atlantic Monthly. 
 Char. Bev. — Charities Review. 
 C.O.S. — Charity Organization Society. 
 
 I.e. C.C.P. — International Congress of Charities and Correction. 
 N.C.C. — Proceedings of National Conference of Charities and 
 Corrections. 
 
 N.A.R. — North American Review. 
 
 Pop. Sci. Mo. — Popular Science Monthly. 
 
 Quart. Jo. of Econ. — Quarterly Journal of Economics. 
 
 A 
 
 Acton, W. Prostitution Considered. London, Churchill, 1870. 
 Addams, Jane. Democracy and Social Ethics. New York, Macmil- 
 lan, 1902. Newer Ideals of Peace. New York, Macmillan, 1907. 
 
 Administration : 
 
 Almy, F., N.C.C, 1904 (use of volunteers by public officials). 
 Atwater, W. O., N.C.C, 1901 (dietaries of insane hospitals). 
 Brown, J. W., N.C.C, 1900 (employers).
 
 Bibliography. 469 
 
 Chapin, T. F., N.C.C, 1902 (dietaries). 
 Folks, H., N.C.C., 1904; Annals, v. 23 (problems). 
 Fox, Hugh, N.C.C., 1900 (centralizing tendencies). 
 See also Supervision and Control. 
 
 Alden, Percy. The Unemployed. London, P. S. King and Son, 2d 
 ed., 1905. Bibliography, English and Continental material. 
 
 Allen, E. E. Education of Defectives. Albany, N.Y., J. B. Lyons 
 Company, Printers, 1904. Bibliography, deaf mutes and blind. 
 
 Allen, W. H. Efficient Democracy. New York, Dodd, 1907. 
 
 Almshouses: 
 
 Bicknell, E. P., Charities, 1904-1905, v. 13:72 (state control); 
 
 N.C.C., 1896 (discipline). 
 Clark, Mary V., N.C.C., 1900 (classification and management). 
 EUwood, C. A., Bulletin on Almshouses in 3Iissouri ; N.C.C., 
 
 1903. 
 Hebberd, R. W., Char. Bev., 1900, v. 10, nos. 11 and 12 (histori- 
 cal). 
 Giles, H. H., N.C.C., 1884 (location and management). 
 Johnson, W. L. A., JSr.C.C, 1900 (in Kansas). 
 Lincoln, Alice N., N.C.C, 1898 (classification, etc.); N.C.C., 
 
 1902 (almshouse hospital) ; X.C.C., 1905 (English system). 
 New York State Board of Charities, 10th Kept., 1877 (descriptive 
 
 and historical). 
 Coolidge [Smith], M. R., Am. Statist. Assoc, 1895, v. 4, n.s. 31, 
 
 Almshouse Women (descriptive and statistical). 
 Story of Ward L (almshouse employment). Charities, etc., v. 
 
 13-17, index. 
 Tower, E., Charities, etc., 1907, v. 18 : 329. 
 Wright, A. 0., N.C.C., 1889 (employment). 
 Amos, Sheldon. Prohibition, Regulation, and Licensing of Vice. 
 London, Stevens and Sons, 1877. 
 
 Ansell, Charles, Jr. Rate of Mortality, etc., in TTppcr and Profes- 
 sional Classes. London, Layton. 
 
 Arlidge, J. T. The Hygiene, Diseases, and Mortality of Occupations. 
 
 London, Percival, 1892. 
 Ashley, W. J. An Introduction to English Economic History and 
 
 Theory. Pt. II — The End of the Middle Ages. New York, 
 
 Putnam's, 1905.
 
 470 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 B 
 
 Babies, see Children. 
 
 Baluffi \_Cardinal'\. The Charity of the Church a Proof of her 
 
 Divinity. Translated from the Italian. Dublin, Gill, 1886. 
 Barr, Martin W. Mental Defectives. Philadelphia, Blakiston's 
 
 Sons, 1904. 
 Barrows, S. J. The Criminal Insane. Washington, Govt. Printing 
 
 Office, 1898. 
 Bell, Alexander G. Memoir upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety 
 
 of the Human Race. National Academy of Sciences, 1884. 
 
 Bell, Alexander G. Marriage : An Address to the Deaf. Volta 
 
 Bureau, AVashington, D.C., 1891. 
 Betts, Lilian W. The Leaven of a Great City. Nev? York, Dodd, 
 
 Mead & Co., 1903. 
 Billings, John S., Ed. Physiological Effects of Alcohol. 2 vols. 
 
 (Committee of Fifty). New York and Boston, Houghton, Mifflin 
 
 & Co., 1903. 
 
 Billings, J. S., and Hurd, H. M. Hospitals, Dispensaries and Nurs- 
 ing. Section III, /. C. C. C. P. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 
 1894. 
 
 Bohmert, Victor. Armenwesen in 77 Deutschen Stadten. Dresden, 
 1887. 
 
 Booth, Charles. Pauperism and the Endowment of Old Age. London 
 and New York, Macmillan, 1892. 
 
 Booth, Charles. Life and Labor of the People of London. 17 vols. 
 London, Macmillan, 1892-l!)0:l 
 
 Booth, Charles. Old-Age Pensions and the Aged Poor. London, 
 Macmillan, 1899. 
 
 Booth, William [General}. In Darkest England and the Way Out. 
 New York, Funk and Wagnalls, 1890. 
 
 Bosanquet, 3frs. Bernard [Helen Dendy]. Rich and Poor. London, 
 Macmillan, 1898. 
 
 Bosanquet, 3/r.s. Bernard [Helen Dendy]. The Standard of Life. 
 London, Macmillan, 1899. 
 
 Bosanquet, Mrs. Bernard [Helen Dendy]. The Strength of the 
 People. London and New York, Macmillan, 1902.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 471 
 
 Brace, Charles Loring. Gesta Christi. New York, Armstrong, 1882. 
 Brackett, J. R. Supervision and Education in Charity. New York, 
 Macmillan, 1903. 
 
 Brandenburg, Broughton. Imported Americans. New York, Stokes, 
 1905. 
 
 Brandt, Lilian. Five Hundred and Seventy-four Deserters and their 
 Families. Pub. by Committee on Social Research, New York 
 C.O.S., 1905. 
 
 Brantwaite, R. Welsh, M.D. Inebriety: Its Causation and Control. 
 Am. Jo. of Inebriety, winter and spring nos. 1907 (vol. 29, nos. 
 4 and 5). Boston. 
 
 Brooks, John Graham. The Social Unrest. New York, Macmillan, 
 1903. 
 
 Brown, Mary Wilcox. Thrift. New York, Macmillan, 1899. 
 
 Burdett, Sir H. C. Hospitals and Charities. Yearbook of Philan- 
 thropy and the Hospital Annual. London, Scientific Press. 
 
 Calkins, Raymond. Substitutes for the Saloon. Boston, Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co., 1901. (Committee of Fifty.) 
 
 Capen, E. W. The Historical Development of the Poor Law of Con- 
 necticut. Vol. 22 of Columbia Studies. University Press, 1907. 
 
 Census of the United States : Special Reports. The Blind and the 
 Deaf, 1900. Paupers in Almshouses, 1904. Insane and Feeble- 
 minded in Hospitals and Institutions, 1904. Benevolent Institu- 
 tions, 1904. Contains : orphanages and children's homes, day 
 nurseries, hospitals, dispensaries, permanent homes, temporary 
 homes, schools and homes for the deaf and blind. Bulletin 69 : 
 Child Labor in the United States, 1907 ; Bulletin 68 : Child Labor 
 in the District of Columbia, 1906. 
 
 Chalmers, Thomas. Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns. 
 
 Abridged and edited by Professor C. R. Henderson. New York, 
 
 Scribner's, 1900. 
 Chance, W. Children under the Poor Law. London, Sonnen- 
 
 schein, 1897. 
 
 Charities : 
 
 Coler, B. S., Pop. Sci. Mo., v. 55:155 (abuses of public). 
 Frankel, Lee, Annals, v. 21 : 383 (Jewish).
 
 472 AMEBICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Giddings, F. H., Pop. Sci. Mo., v. 55:433 (and private vigil- 
 ance). 
 
 Charities : Financiering. 
 
 Ginger, Mina, N.C.C., 1906. 
 Ogden, I. C, Charities, etc., v. 18 : 227. 
 Patterson, W. R., N.C.C., 1906. 
 Tucker, F., N.C.C., 1899, 1906. 
 Ufford, W. S., N.C.C., 1906. 
 Wilcox, A., N.C.C., 1897. 
 Annals, v. 21 : 58 (pooling system). 
 Char. Bev., 1898, V. 8:119. 
 
 : Medical, see Medical Charities. 
 
 : State Supervision : 
 
 Curtis, F. G., N.C.C., 1905. 
 
 Hart, H. H., N.C.C., 1902. 
 
 White, W. J., N.C.C., 1907. 
 Charities Magazine. 14 vols., 1897-Nov. 1, 1905; then became 
 
 Charities and the Commons; in March, 19QiJ, Jewish Charity was 
 
 consolidated with it. Published at 105 E. 22d St., New York City. 
 
 (Indispensable for current events and tendencies in philanthropy.) 
 Charities Beview. 1891-1900, 10 vols., consolidated with Charities 
 
 Magazine in 1901. Published at 105 E. 22d St., New York. (Of 
 
 historical value chiefly.) 
 
 Charity : 
 
 Addams, Jane, Atlan. Mo., Feb., 1899, p. 163 (subtle problems of). 
 
 Allen, W. H., N.A.B., 1905, v. 181 : 24 (importance of publicity). 
 
 Brackett, J. R., N.C.C., 1901, 1904, 1906 (training of workers). 
 
 Cummings, E., Quart. Jo. of Ecnn., 1898, v. 12 : 27 (and progress). 
 
 Devine, E. T., N.C.C., 1900 (dominant note of philanthropy). 
 
 Hadley, A. T., N.C.C., 1895 (science and sentiment in economics). 
 
 Henderson, C. R., N.C.C., 1899 (progress); Atlan. Mo., 1900, v. 
 85:249 (science in); Annals, 1903, v. 21:233 (world cur- 
 rents in). 
 
 Hutchinson, Woods, Char. Bev., 1898, v. 8 : 897 (Darwinism and 
 Phil.). 
 
 Kellogg, Paul, Charities, etc., 1906, v. 16:291 (new attitude). 
 
 Lee, Joseph, Charities, etc., 1906, v. 17 : 387 (and democracy).
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 473 
 
 Peabody, F. G., Char. Bev., 1897, v. 6:17 (qualifications of 
 
 worker) . 
 Richmond, M. E., Char. Bev., 1897, v, 6 : 308 (training of worker)- 
 Wines, F. H., Annals, 1898, v. 11 (and sociology). 
 Charities, 1905, v. 14 and 15, index (^Pioneer Work in) ; v. 
 
 14 : 892 (growth of N. C.C.). 
 Charities, etc., 1908, v. 19:397 (responsibility of Economists). 
 Outlook, 1902, V. 71 : 444 (trend of modern). 
 
 Charity 0KGANizATi02sr : 
 
 Almy, F., Char. Bev., 1898, v. 8 : 127 (church districts). 
 
 Bicknell, E. P., N.C.C., 1904 (preparedness of). 
 
 Brackett, J. R., Char. Bev., 1897, v. 6: 397 (employment agen- 
 cies) ; Char. Bev., 1897, v. 7 : 595 (district plan) ; N.C.C., 
 1897 ; Charities, 1902, v. 9 : 37 (relation between C.O.S. and 
 relief). 
 
 DeForest, R. W., Charities, 1904-1905, v. 13:316 (broadening 
 sphere). 
 
 Devine, E. T., JSf.C.C, 1899 (broadening of). 
 
 Felton, Katharine, X.C.C., 1902 (status in the West) ; N.C.C., 
 1906 (Endorsement Committee). 
 
 George, I., N.C.C., 1894 (Denver plan). 
 
 Hodges, Bev. George, Rept. Buffalo C.O.S. , 1902, p. 113 (aims). 
 
 Hubbard, C. M., Am. Jo. of Soc, 1901, v. 6, no. 6 (relation to 
 relief). 
 
 Johnson, Alex., Am. Jo. of Soc, 1899, v. 5, p. 322 (wise limits 
 of). 
 
 Loch, C. S., N.C.C., 1896 (principles). 
 
 Lowell, Mrs. J. S.', Forum, 1896, v. 21 (aims) ; Char. Rev., 1896, 
 V. 5 : 390. 
 
 McLean, F. H., N.C.C., 1904 (cooperation). 
 
 Montgomery, J. B., N.C.C., 1903. 
 
 Prevey, C. E., Annals, 1899, v. 14, no. 1 (principles and eco- 
 nomic justification). 
 
 Richmond, M. E., N.C.C., 1901 (cooperation); Charities, 1902, 
 V. 9: 496 (principles). 
 
 Smith, Zilpha, Charities, 1903, v. 10 : 124 (aims) ; Charities, 
 etc., 1906-1907, v. 17 : 572 (definition) ; Charities, 1905, v. 14, 
 no. 6. 
 
 The Charity Organization Society of New York. Twenty-fifth
 
 474 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Annual Report, 1907. History and Present Activities. 105 E. 
 22d St., New York. 
 
 Child-caee : 
 
 Butler, A. W., X.C.C, 1901, 1904. 
 
 Byers, J. P., X.C.C., 1901 (county homes). 
 
 Chapin, H. D., N.C.C., 1898 (antliropological study of). 
 
 Gushing, G. D., N.C.C. (prevention of cruelty). 
 
 Ellison, T. E., N.C.C, 1901 (Indiana system). 
 
 Folks, H., N.C.C, 1895 (state supervision). 
 
 Fox, Hugh, N.C.C, 1904 (New Jersey). 
 
 Galen, M., N.C.C, 1900 (tendencies). 
 
 Hart, H. H., N.C.C, 1892 (economic aspect); N.C.C, 1903 
 
 (cooperation in); N.C.C, 1906 (principles of). 
 Henderson, C. R., N.C.C, 1901 (neglected). 
 Montgomery, J. B., N.C.C, 1904 (Michigan system). 
 Pear, W. H., N.C.C, 1906 (child's need). 
 Randall, C. D., N.C.C, 1901 (Michigan system). 
 Reeder, R. R., N.C.C, 1907 ; Charities, 1903, v. 11 : 14 (effect of 
 
 institution life on) ; Charities, 1904-1906, vols. 13-17 ; see 
 
 index for articles To Country and Cottage. 
 Woolen, E., N.C.C, 1901 (Indiana system). 
 Report of Committee on Child-saving, N.C.C, 1893 (history). 
 State Charities Aid Association, 1899, pamphlet no. 72 (care of 
 
 destitute children in New York). 
 
 Children — in Almshouses : 
 
 Folks, H., N.C-C, 1894; Charities, 1904, v. 13 : 19. 
 
 : Babies : 
 
 Charities, 1905, v. 14, nos. 14 and 19 (symposium on) ; Charities, 
 etc., 1907, V. 18 : 232 (in institutions). 
 
 : Boarding-out : 
 
 Report of State Board of Charities, Massachusetts, 1901. 
 Jacobs, B., N.C.C, 1904 (Mass.). 
 
 — : Crippled and Deformed: 
 
 N.C.C, 1898, 1904. 
 
 — : Day Nurseries : 
 
 Charities, 1904, v. 12 : 765 (history) ; N.C.C, 1897, 1906. 
 Report of Associated Charities, Boston, 1904.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 475 
 
 Placing-out : 
 
 Evans, Mrs. G., N.C.C., 1907 (after-supervision). 
 Fairbanks, M. E., N.C.C, 1904 (visitation in homes). 
 Folks, H., Char. Rev., 1896, v. 5 : 140. 
 Charities, etc., 1906, v. 16 : 263 (Jewisii). 
 See also Defectives. 
 
 Children's Institutions — Subsidies to, see Subsidies. 
 Child Labor and Philanthropy: 
 
 Folks, H., Charities, 1903, v. 10 : 254. 
 
 Kelley, F., X.C.C, 1906. 
 
 Lovejoy, 0. R., N.C.C., 1907. 
 
 Lindsay, S. M., N.C.C., 1906. 
 
 Annals, vols. 25 and 29 ; see index for valuable articles. 
 
 Child Labor — Bibliography : 
 
 Library of Congress, 1906. Superintendent of Public Documents, 
 Washington, D.C. 
 
 The Children's Aid Society of New York. Its history, plan, and re- 
 sults. Published by the society, 1893. 
 
 City Life — Bibliographies of: 
 
 Balch, Emily G. Published by The College Settlements Associa- 
 tion, 1904. (Secretary, Miss S. G. Tompkins, 1904 Walnut 
 St., Philadelphia. 
 
 Brooks, R. C, in Municipal Affairs, 1901, vrhole no. 17, v. 5: no. 
 1 (2d ed.). 
 
 Civil Service, see Politics in Institutions. 
 
 Coler, B. S. Municipal Government. Appleton, New York, 1900. 
 
 Committee of Fifty — Publications, see 
 Billings, Physiological Effects of Alcohol. 
 Calkins, Substitutes for the Saloon. 
 Koren, Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem. 
 Peabody, The Liquor Problem. 
 Wines and Koren, Legislative Aspects of the Liquor Problem. 
 
 Consumption, see Tuberculosis. 
 
 Control, see Supervision and Control. 
 
 Conyngton, Mary. How to Help. New York, Ronald Press, 1906.
 
 476 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Coolidge, Mary Roberts [Smith]. Monograph: Almshouse Women. 
 Am. Statist. Assoc, 1895, v. 4. 
 
 CooPERA^'ioisr, see Charity Organization. 
 
 Crocker, J. H. Problems in American Society. Boston, Ellis, 1889. 
 Cunningham, "W. Growth of English Industry and Commerce in 
 
 Modern Times. 4th ed., Pt. 1, Mercantile System; Pt. 2, Laissez- 
 
 Faire. Cambridge University Press, 1907. 
 
 D 
 
 Davenport-Hill and Fowke. Children of the State. London, Mac- 
 
 millan, 1889. 
 
 i 
 
 Day Nurseries, see Children, 
 
 Deaf, Mutes and Blind, see Bibliography in Allen, Edu- 
 cation of Defectives, Publications of the Volta Bureau, 
 Washington, D.C. 
 
 Defectives : 
 
 Bancroft, M., N.C.C., 1901 (classification). 
 
 Ban, M. W., Pop. Sci. Mo., 1898, v. 51 (training). 
 
 Bicknell, E. P., Char. Rev., 1895, v. 6:76 (custodial care); 
 
 N.C.C., 189G (heredity). 
 Butler, A. W., N.C.C., 1907 (burden of). 
 Carson, J. C, N.C.C., 1898 (prevention). 
 Dunlap, M. J., N.C.C., 1899 (progress in care). 
 Fernald, W. E., N.C.C., 1902 (Mass. Farm Colony for). 
 Fitzsimmons, T. C, N.C.G., 190(5 (institutions for, in Penn.). 
 Johnson, Alex., N.C.C., 1896 (custodial care); 1903 (segregation), 
 
 Am. Jo. of Soc, 1898, v. 4, November. 
 Polglace, W. A., N.C.C., 1901 (progress in care of). 
 Powell, F. M., N.C. C, 1897 ; Char. Rev., v. 7 : 674. 
 Rogers, A. C, N.C.C., 1903 (colonizing). 
 Wines, F. H., Char. Rev., 1895, v. 5 (unbalanced people). 
 Charities, 1905, v. 14 :764 (emasculation of). 
 
 : Backward Children: 
 
 Chace, L. G., X.C.C, 1904 ; Charities, 1904, v. 12 : 900. 
 Fernald, W. E., Public Education Assoc, Philadelphia, 1906.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 477 
 
 : Bibliography in Shuttleworth, Mentally Deficient 
 
 Children (1895). 
 
 See also Epileptics and Inebriates. 
 DeForest, R. "W., and Veiller, L. The Tenement House Problem. 
 
 2 vols. New York, Macmillan, 1903. 
 
 The Development of Public Charities in Indiana. Indianapolis, 1904. 
 
 Pub. by the State Board of Charities (pamphlet). 
 Devine, E. T. The Practice of Charity. New York, Dodd, Mead & 
 
 Co., 2ded., 1904. 
 Devine, E. T. Principles of Relief. New York, Macmillan, 1904. 
 
 DiSPEXSARIES : 
 
 Kirkbride, Annals, 1904, v. 23 : 424. 
 
 Shrady, G. F., Fonim, 1897, June (and pauperism). 
 
 Report N. Y. State Board of Charities, 1899. 
 
 District, see Charity Organization. 
 
 Drage, Geoffrey. The Unemployed. London, Macmillan, 1894. 
 
 Drunkenness : 
 
 Melendy, R., Am. Jo. of Soc, 1900, v. 6, nos. 3 and 4 (prevention). 
 Moore, E. C, Am. Jo. of Soc, 1900, v. 6, no. 1 (psychology of). 
 Wines, F. H., Char. Bev., 1897, v. 7 : 721 and 838 (law and drink). 
 
 : Bibliography in Keren, Economic Aspects of the 
 
 Liquor Problem. 
 Dugdale, R. L. The Jukes. New York, Putnam's, 1888. 
 
 E 
 
 EUwood, C. A. A Bulletin on the Condition of the County Alms- 
 houses of Missouri. Columbia, Mo., 1904. 
 
 Ely, Richard T. Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society. New 
 York, Macmillan, 1903. 
 
 Emminghaus, A. Poor Relief in Different Parts of Europe. London, 
 Stanford, 1873. 
 
 Endowments : 
 
 Allen, W. A., Atlan. Mo., 1907, v. 99 : 328. 
 
 Devine, E. T., Charities, etc., 1907, v. 18 : 355. 
 
 Baron de Hirsch Fund. Charities, etc., 1905, v. 16 : 270. 
 
 Russell Sage Foundation, Charities, etc., 1906-1907, Y. 17, no. 25,
 
 478 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Employers' Liability Bibliography, published by the 
 
 Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 1907. 
 Employment, Special : 
 
 Charities, etc., 1905-1906, v. 15:582; Charities, etc., v. 16:470 
 (for the handicapped). 
 
 Environment, see Heredity. 
 
 Epileptics : 
 
 Peterson, Dr. F., Assoc. /or Study of Epilepsy, 1902, v. 1 (causes). 
 Rutter, H. C, Char. Rev. 1897, v. 6 : 409 (Ohio colony). 
 Spratling, W. P., N.C.C., 1898 (labor for) ; N.C.C., 1903 (ideal 
 
 colony); Charities, etc., 1906, v. 17:566 (conditions in New 
 
 York). 
 
 Fairlie, J. A. The Centralization of Administration in New York 
 State. Studies in History, etc., v. 9, no. 3, Columbia University, 
 1897. 
 
 Families, Needy, see Eelief. 
 
 Family Desertion: 
 
 Brooks, J. G., N.C.C., 1901 (problems of). 
 
 Charities, 1904, v. 14, nos. 3, 4, 15, 17 ; Charities, 1905, v. 15, nos. 
 5, 10, 23 ; V. 16, no. 8 (discussions and articles). 
 
 Farr, William. Vital Statistics. London, Stanford, 1885. 
 
 Feeble-minded, see Defectives. 
 
 Financiering, see Charities. 
 
 Fitch, Dr. J. G. Endowments. Address : Proceedings of the Second 
 
 Annual Convention of the College Association of Pennsylvania. 
 
 1888. 
 Folks, Homer. Care of Destitute, Neglected, and Delinquent Children. 
 
 New York, Macraillan, 1902. 
 
 Fowle, T. W. The English Poor Law. London, Macmillan, 1890. 
 
 Friendly Visiting : 
 
 Codman, 3Irs. H. G., N.C.G., 1904. 
 
 Charities, etc., 1906, v. 16, no. 23 (comparison of Boston and, 
 Buffalo).
 
 BIBLIOGEAPHT. 479 
 
 Freund, Ernst. Police Power. Public Policy and Constitutional 
 Rights. Chicago, Callaghan & Co., 1904. 
 
 G 
 
 Galton, Francis. Hereditary Genius. New York, Appleton, 1871. 
 Galton, Francis. Inquiries into Human Faculty. London, Macmillan, 
 
 1883; Dent, 1907. 
 Gibbins, H. de B. The Industrial History of England. London, 
 
 Methuen, 1900. 7th ed., revised. 
 Gladden, Washington. Christian Pastor and the Working Church, 
 
 New York, Scribner's, 1898. 
 Gladden, Washington. Social Salvation. New York, Houghton, 
 
 Mifflin, 1902. 
 
 Hadley, A. T. Standards of Public Morality. New York, Macmil- 
 lan, 1907. 
 
 Hall, Prescott F. Immigration and its Effect upon the United States. 
 New York, Holt, 1906. 
 
 Handbook of Child Labor Legislation. Published annually by the 
 National Consumers League ; in 1907, as supplement to volume 29 
 of Annals of American Academy of Political and Social Science. 
 
 Handbook on the Prevention of Tuberculosis. Published by the 
 Committee on the Prevention of Tuberculosis, 105 E. 22d St., 
 New York City, 1903. 1st ed. 
 
 Henderson, Charles R. Social Settlements. New York, Lentilhon, 
 1899. 
 
 Henderson, Charles R. Introduction to the Study of Dependent, 
 Defective, and Delinquent Classes. Boston, Heath, 2d ed., 1901. 
 
 Henderson, Charles R. (assisted by others). Modern Methods of 
 Charity. An account of the Systems of Relief, public and private, 
 in the principal countries having modern methods. New York, 
 Macmillan, 1904. Bibliographies for the several countries. 
 
 Heredity : 
 
 Associated Charities of Boston, leaflet no. 32 (and pauperism). 
 
 Cooley, C. H., N.G.C., 1896 (and environment). 
 
 Dugdale, R. L., KC.C, 1877 (and pauperism). 
 
 Galton, Francis, Am. Jo. of Soc, 1904, v. 10 (Eugenics).
 
 480 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Hutchinson, Woods, Char. Bev., 1898, v. 7 : 897 (survival of the 
 
 tittest). 
 Jordan, D. S., Arena, June (principles applied to humankind). 
 McCulloch, O. C, N.C.C., 1888 (the Tribe of Ishmael). 
 Powell, F. M., N.C.C., 1899 (environment). 
 Wines, F. H., Char. Bev., 1898 v. 7 : 552. 
 Charities, 1902, v. 9, nos. 3 and 4 (discussion). 
 
 Heredity: Bibliography of Race Improvement in Ely, 
 Evolution of Industrial Society (1903), pp. 182-184. 
 
 Herzfeld, Elsa G. Family Monographs. History of 24 families living 
 
 on the middle-west side of New York City. New York, Putnam's, 
 
 1906. 
 Hill, Octavia. Homes of the London Poor. London, Macmillan, 1883. 
 Hobhouse, Sir Arthur. The Dead Hand. London, Chatto, 1880. 
 Hobson, John A. The Problem of the Unemployed. London, Meth- 
 
 uen, 1896. 
 Hodder, Edwin. Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury. 
 
 3 vols. London, Cassell, 1886. 
 
 Hospitals : 
 
 Allen, W. A., Am. Jo. of Soc, 1906 (efficiency). 
 
 Banfield, Maude, Annals, 1902, v. 20, no. 2 (administration), 
 
 Cleveland, F. A., Charities, 1905, v. 15:250 (statistics). 
 
 Hurd, H. M., Char. Bev., 1900, index (hospitals, dispensaries, and 
 
 nursing). Bibliography, 417-418. 
 NicoU, M., N.C.C., 1906 (contagious diseases). 
 Char. Bev., 1898, v. 8 : 437 (construction). 
 Charities, 1903, v. 10 : 67 (a plea for small), 212 (needs and 
 
 finances). 
 Charities, etc., 1906, v. 16 : 287, 351 (needs and finances). 
 
 Housing : 
 
 DeForest, R. W., Annals, 1904, v. 23 (recent progress). 
 
 Veiller, L., Ajinals, 1905, v. 25 (principles). 
 
 Wolfe, A. B., Harvard Economic Studies, v. 2, 1906 (Boston). 
 
 Annals, 1902, v. 20 (symposium on). 
 
 Charities, 1904, v. 12, no. 20 (amended New York law) ; v. 12, 
 no. 29 (Washington, D.C.) ; v. 13, no. 1 (Buffalo) ; Charities, 
 1905, v. 14, no. 1 (Philadelphia) ; no. 16 (model tenements) ;
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 481 
 
 V. 15, no. 14 (summary of improvements in New York) ; 
 V. 18, no. 9 (in Wisconsin). 
 
 : Bibliography in : 
 
 DeForest and Veiller, Tenement House Problem, v. 1, 1903. 
 Devine, Principles of Eelief (1904), p. 72. 
 
 Howe, Samuel G. Report on Idiocy in Massachusetts. Boston, Cool- 
 idge, 1848. 
 
 Huber, John B. Consumption and Civilization. Philadelphia, Lippin- 
 cott, 1906. 
 
 Hull House Maps and Papers. New York, Crowell, 1895. 
 
 Hunter, Robert. Poverty. New York, Macmillan, 1905. 
 
 Hurd, H. M., and Chapin, J. B. Report on the Hospitals of the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia, 1898. Washington, Govt. Printing Office. 
 
 I 
 
 Idiocy, see Defectives. 
 
 Immigratiox : 
 
 Claghorn, K. H., Annals, 1904, v. 24: 185 (in relation to pau- 
 perism). 
 
 U. S. Bureau of Labor, 9th Special Rept. (Italians in Chicago). 
 
 Special Consular Reports, v. 30, 1906 (emigration to United States). 
 
 Charities, 1904, v. 12, no. 6 (as affecting relief) ; no. 16 (what 
 the United States owes to) ; see index of later volumes for 
 articles on different nationalities. 
 
 : Bibliography (elaborate), published by the Library 
 
 of Congress, 1907, Washington, D.C. 
 
 : DisTRiBUTiox, see Industrial Removal Office. 
 
 Industrial Removal Office : 
 
 Charities, 1904, v. 12, no. 6 ; 1906, v. 16 : 259 ; 1906-1907, v. 18 : 
 278. 
 
 Loeb, M., N.C.C., 1906. 
 
 Insane : 
 
 Burr, C. B., N.C.C., 1902 (state supervision of). 
 
 Byers, J. P., N.C.C, 1899 (county care). 
 
 Copp, 0., N.C.C, 1907 (adequate system of care).
 
 482 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Dewey, R., Char. Rev., 1897, v. 7; iV^^CC, 1897; N.C.C.,1Q05 
 
 (after-care). 
 Drewry, W. F., Char. Rev., 1896, v. 5 (laws of commitment 
 
 in Southern States). 
 Fish, J. E., N.C.C., 1007 (family care in Mass.). 
 Folks, Homer, N.C.C., 1907 (after-care). 
 Heg, J., N.C.C., 1896 (county care). 
 
 Lathrop, J. C, N.C.C., 1902 (foreign methods of village care). 
 Richardson, A. B., N.C.C., 1901. 
 
 Sanborn, F. B., N. C. C, 1907 (history of care in private families). 
 Charities, etc., 1907, v. 17, no. 21 (symposium on care in Illinois). 
 Report State Charities Aid Association to New York State Com. 
 
 in Lunacy, 1906 (after-care of alien). 
 State Charities Aid Association, pamphlet no. 92 on After-care, 
 
 1906. 
 Char. Rev., 1898, v. 8 (Wisconsin county care). 
 
 Insane : Psychopathic Hospitals. 
 
 Barrett, N.C.C., 1907. 
 
 Lathrop, J. C, N.C.C., 1905. 
 
 Mosher, Dr. J. M., N.C.C., 1907. 
 
 Charities, 1905, v. 14 : 828 ; 1906-1907, v. 17 : 568. 
 
 Institutions, see Administration; Politics. 
 
 Insurance, see Pensions ; Employers' LiABiLiTr. 
 
 Intemperance, see Drunkenness. 
 
 International Congress of Charities, Corrections, and Philanthropy. 
 
 Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1894. (Especially volumes on 
 Organization of Charities, and on Hospitals, Dispensaries, and 
 Nursing — historical. ) 
 
 Ireland, Dr. W. W. Mental Affections of Children. London, 
 Churchill, 1900. 2d ed. 
 
 J 
 
 Jordan, D. S. Footnotes to Evolution. New York, Appleton, 1898. 
 
 K 
 
 Keller, F. A. Out of Work: A Study of Employment Agencies, 
 New York and London, Putnam's, 1905.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 483 
 
 Kelley, Florence. Some Ethical Gains through Legislation. New 
 York, Macmillan, 1906. 
 
 Kelly, Edmond. Evolution and Effort. New York, 1895. 
 
 Kelly, Edmond. The Unemployables. London, P. S. King & Sons, 
 1908. 
 
 Kelly, Edmond. The Elimination of the Tramp. 
 
 Kenny, Courtney. Endowed Charities. London, Keeves, 1880. 
 
 Knopf, Dr. S. A. Tuberculosis. Prize Essay to which was awarded 
 
 first prize by the Berlin International Congress, 1900. 1st ed. , 
 
 New York. 
 
 Keren, John. Economic Aspects of the Liquor Problem. (Com- 
 mittee of Fifty.) Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
 1902. 
 
 L 
 Lecky, W. E. H. History of European Morals. New York, Appleton, 
 Lee, Joseph. Constructive and Preventive Philanthropy. New York, 
 Macmillan, 1902. 
 
 LefEngwell, Albert. Illegitimacy. New York, Scribner's, 1892. 
 Legislation : 
 
 Comparative Summary and Index of Legislation, 1890-date. 
 Published annually by New York State Library, Albany. 
 Letchworth, W. P. Care and Treatment of Epileptics. New York 
 
 and London, Putnam's, 1900. 
 Loch, C. S. Charity Organization. London, Swan Sonnenschein, 
 3d ed., 1905. 
 
 M 
 
 Macdonald, Arthur. Abnormal Man. United States Bureau of Edu- 
 cation, Circular no. 4, 1893. (Contains elaborate but unselected 
 bibliography on criminality, pauperism, heredity, etc.) 
 
 Mackay, Thomas. The State and Charity. London and New York, 
 Macmillan, 1898. 
 
 Mackay, Thomas. Public Relief of the Poor. London, Murray, 1901. 
 
 Marshall, Alfred. Principles of Economics. London and New York, 
 4th ed., 1907. 
 
 Medical Charities : 
 
 Bijur, Nathan, N.C.C., 1905 (ambulance service in U.S.).
 
 48-4 AMERICAN CHAhlTIES. 
 
 Emerson, C. P., N.C.C., 1906 (free). 
 
 Frankel, L., N.C.C, 1905 (convalescents). 
 
 Hurd, H. M., Char. Bev., 1900, nos. 7, 8, 9 ; bibliography in no. 9. 
 
 Kleene, G. A., Annals, 1904, v. 23 : 409. 
 
 Nutt, Charities, 1905, v. 14 : 752. 
 
 Smith, Stephen, N.C.C., 1898 ; Char. Bev., v. 8 (pauperization by). 
 
 Wiggin, F. H., N.C.C., 1898. 
 
 See also Dispensaries, Hospitals, Norsing. 
 
 Mendicancy, see Vagrancy. 
 
 Millis, H. D. Relief and Care of Dependents. (Legislation.) Am. 
 
 Jo. of Soc, V. 3, 1898, see index. 
 More, Mrs. Louise B. Wage-earners' Budgets. New York, Holt, 1907. 
 Morrow, Dr. Prince A. Social Diseases and Marriage. New York 
 
 and Philadelphia, 1904. 
 
 Municipal Conditions, see City Life. 
 
 Miinsterberg, Emil. Poor Relief in the United States. Am. Jo. of 
 
 Soc, V. 7, see index. 
 Miinsterberg, Emil. Impressions of American Charity. Char. Bev., 
 
 see index, vols. 17 and 18. 
 Miinsterberg, Emil. Bibliographie des Armenwesens. Berlin, C. 
 
 Heymanns Verlag, 1900-1902. 
 
 N 
 
 Newsholme, Arthur. Elements of Vital Statistics. London, Sonnen- 
 schein, 3d ed., 1899. 
 
 Nursing — Visiting : 
 
 Aikens, C. A., N.C.C., 1906 (educational opportunity). 
 Fisher, L. B., N.C.C., 1905 (as an economic factor). 
 Fulmer, H., N.G.C., 1902 (work of). 
 
 Charities, 1905, v. 14 : 732 (in Concord, N.H.) ; 1905-1906, v. 15 : 
 73 (among negroes) ; 1906, v. 16, no. 1 (symposium on). 
 
 Oliver, Thomas, Ed. Dangerous Trades. Historical, social, and 
 legal aspects of industrial occupations as affecting health. London, 
 Murray, 1902.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 485 
 
 Oppenheim, Nathan. The Development of the Child. New York, 
 Macmillan, 1902. 
 
 P 
 
 Palmer, Charles F. Inebriety : Its Source, Prevention, and Cure. 
 New York, Revell, 1897. 
 
 Parks and Playgrounds : 
 
 American Park Systems. Report of the Philadelphia Allied Or- 
 ganizations, 1905. Headquarters: Girard Building. 
 
 Charities, The Park Number, 1904, v. 12, no. 31 ; Play Number, 
 1907, v. 18, no. 18. 
 
 : Bibliography, prepared for the Committee on Vaca- 
 
 tion Schools and Playgrounds of the Council for Civic 
 Cooperation, Charities, 1904, v. 12, no. 13 : 358-360. 
 
 Patten, Simon N. Heredity and Social Progress. New York, Mac- 
 millan, 1903. 
 
 Patten, Simon N. The New Basis of Civilization. New York, Mac- 
 millan, 1907. 
 
 Peabody, Francis G., Ed. The Liquor Problem. A Summary 
 of Investigations conducted by the Committee of Fifty, 1893-1903. 
 New York and Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1905. 
 
 Pensions : Bibliography of Old Age and Civil Ser- 
 vice Pensions, published by the Library of Congress, 
 1903. 
 
 Butler, A. W. X.C.C, 1906 (Govt, and municipal), with short 
 bibliography of U.S. Pensions. 
 
 Philanthropy, see Charity. 
 
 Placing-out, see Children. 
 
 Politics in Institutions : 
 
 Blackmar, F. W., JSr.C.C, 1900. 
 
 Blair, J. L., N.C.C., 1902. 
 
 Charities, 1904-1905, v. 13, index (Illinois and New York) ; 
 
 1905-1906, V. 15, no. 14 (Pennsylvania) ; 1906, v. 16, no. 
 
 14 : 405 ; 1906-1907, v. 17, no. 8 : 328. 
 Fetter, F. A., N.C.C., 1899 (on the Pacific coast). 
 Folks, H., N.C.C., 1904.
 
 486 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Garrett, P. C, N.C.G., 1896. 
 
 Hancock, W. S., N.C.C, 1900 (civil service). 
 
 Lowell, Mrs. J. R., N.C.C., 1898 (civil service). 
 
 Poor Laws of the United States : 
 Gates, W. A., K.C.C., 1899 (migration). 
 Hart, H. H., N.C.C., 1896 (migration). 
 
 Henderson, C. R., Char. Rev., 1897, v. 6 : 476 ; N. C.C, 1897, 1898. 
 Millis, H. A., A7n. Jo. of Soc, 1898, v. 3, index. 
 Char. Rev., 1898, v. 8 : 405 (Settlement laws in Mass.). 
 
 Poverty : 
 
 Hoffmann, F. L., Am. Jo. of Soc, v. 27 : 485 (value of life) ; 
 N.C.C., 1907 (statistics). 
 
 : Causes : 
 
 Ayres, P. W., Char. Bev., 1898, v. 8 : 469 (case-counting). 
 
 Brandt, Lilian, Rept. N. Y. C. O. S., 1906 ; Charities, etc., 1906, 
 v. 15:62; Quart. Jo. of Econ., 1908 (new methods of 
 study). 
 
 Folks, H., N.C.C., 190.3 (disease and dependence) ; Charities, 
 1903, V. 10 : 255. 
 
 Lindsay, S. M., N.C.C., 1899 (case-counting). 
 
 McLean, F., Charities, etc., 1907, v. 19 : 1203 (dangerous trades). 
 
 Simons, A. F., and Weller, Am. Jo. of Soc, 1898, v. 3 (unit 
 method of study). 
 
 Smith, R. Mayo-, Rept. N. Y. C. O. S., 1897 (unit method). 
 
 Wines, F. H., Char. Rev., 1897, v. 7: 545 (classification). 
 
 New York State Board of Charities, 10th Report, 1877 (historical). 
 Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction. 
 
 34 vols., 1874 ff. Published by the Conference. Alexander John- 
 son, Secretary, 2139 No. Pennsylvania Ave., Indianapolis, Ind. 
 
 (indispensable to the student). 
 : Cumulative Index to the Proceedings of N. C. C. Published by 
 
 the Conference. 
 : Guide to the Proceedings of N.C.C., 1908. Published by the 
 
 Conference (very useful). 
 
 Psychopathic Hospitals, see Insane. 
 
 Publications of the State Charities Aid Association. New York, nos. 
 
 1-90 ; also Annual Reports, 1873 ff. Published at 105 E. 22d St., 
 
 New York, by the Association.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 487 
 
 R 
 
 Race Improvement: Bibliography in Ely, Evolution of 
 Industrial Society, 1903, pp. 182 ff. 
 
 Reeder, R. R. To Country and Cottage. Series of articles in Chari- 
 ties, vols. 13-17, see index. 
 
 Relief : 
 
 Ayres, P. W., N.C.C., 1899 (associations). 
 
 Devine, E. T., Charities, 1903, v. 11 : 540 ; 1905, v. 15 : 145. 
 
 Frankel, L,, N.C.C., 1903 (uses of material). 
 
 Hebberd, R. W., Char. Bev., 1901 (public indoor). 
 
 Simkhovitch, M. K., Charities, 1904, v. 13 : 578 (the Settlement 
 
 and). 
 Associated Charities, Boston, pamphlet no. 83 (adequate). 
 Charities, 1903, v. 11 : 350 (charity transportation). 
 
 : Out-door: 
 
 Almy, F., Char. Bev., 1899, v. 11 : 31; N.C.C., 1900 (statistics). 
 Bicknell, E. P., Char. Bev., 1897, v. 6 : 449 (in Indiana) ; N.C.C., 
 
 1897. 
 Bosanquet and Marshall, Econ. Jo., v. 2 : 186 (English arguments 
 
 for and against). 
 Butler, A. W., Am. Jo. of Soc, 1906, v. 11 : 763 (in Indiana). 
 Devine, E. T., Char. Bev., 1898, v. 8: 129 (in coal) ; v. 8 : 186 
 
 (public 0. d. in Boston) ; JV.C.C, 1898 (statistics for United 
 
 States) . 
 EUwood, C. A., Am. Jo. of Sac, 1900, v. 5 (comparison of views). 
 Gunckel, L. B., Char. Bev., 1897, v. 7 : 755 (in Ohio). 
 Johnson, A., Am. Jo. of Soc, 1901, v. 6 (in Indiana). 
 Indiana Bulletin of Charities, March, 1905; March, 1906. 
 Report of the Special Committee on Out-door Alms of the Town 
 
 of Hartford. Hartford, Conn., 1891 (historical pamphlet). 
 
 : see Charity Organization. 
 
 Report of the Massachusetts Board to investigate the subject of the 
 Unemployed. Boston, House Document no. 50, 1895. 
 
 Report of the Special Committee on Standard of Living, Eighth New 
 York State Conference of Charities. Lee Frankel, Chairman. 
 
 Report of the Advisory Committee on the Penal Aspects of Drunken- 
 ness, to the Mayor of Boston. City Document no. 158, 1899,
 
 488 AMEBICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Report of the Massachusetts State Board of Health on the Sanitary 
 Conditions of Factories, Workshops, and Other Establishments. 
 1906. 
 
 Ribton-Turner, C. J. History of Vagrants and Vagrancy. London, 
 Chapman and Hall, 1887. 
 
 Richmond, Mary E. Friendly Visiting among the Poor. New York, 
 Macmillan, 1899. 
 
 Richmond, Mary E. The Good Neighbor. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 
 1907. 
 
 Riis, Jacob A. Children of the Poor. New York, Scribner's, 1892. 
 How the Other Half Lives. New York, 1892. The Battle With 
 the Slum. New York, Macmillan, 1902. 
 
 Roberts, Peter. Anthracite Coal Communities. New York and Lon- 
 don, Macmillan, 1904. 
 
 Rowntree, B. Seebohm. Poverty. A Study of Town Life. London, 
 Macmillan, 2d ed., 1902. 
 
 Rowntree and Sherwell. The Temperance Problem and Social Re- 
 form. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1899. 
 
 S 
 
 Scott, Benjamin. A State Iniquity. London, Kegan Paul, 1890. 
 Seligman, Edwin R. Principles of Economics. New York, Long- 
 mans, 1905. 
 
 Settlement Laws, see Poor Laws of the United States. 
 
 Settlements : Bibliography edited and periodically re- 
 vised by Mrs. F. H. Montgomery, 5548 Woodlawn Ave., 
 Chicago. 
 
 Shuttleworth, J. E. Mentally Deficient Children. London, Lewis, 
 1895. (Bibliography.) 
 
 Smart, William. The Distribution of Income. London, Macmillan, 
 1899. 
 
 Smith, R. Mayo-. Emigration and Immigration. New York, Scrib- 
 ner's, 1898. Statistics and Economics. New York, Macmillan, 
 1895. Statistics and Sociology. New York, Macmillan, 1899. 
 
 The Social Evil. Report of the Committee of Fifteen. New York, 
 Putnam's, 1902.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 489 
 
 Social Evil : 
 
 Moore, E.G., Am. Jo. of Sac, v. 6, 1901, no. 1 (psychology of vice). 
 
 Charities, 1905, v. 14 : 857 (the Black Plague) ; 1905-1906, v. 
 
 15:710; 859 (Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis); 
 
 1906, V. 17, no. 11 (social diseases); see indices to later 
 
 volumes under social hygiene. Eugenics. 
 
 Spahr, Charles B. America's Working People. New York, 1900. 
 
 Spargo, John. The Bitter Cry of the Children. New York, Mac- 
 
 millan, 1906. 
 Spratling, Dr. W. P. Epilepsy. Philadelphia, Saunders, 1908. 
 
 Standard of Living : 
 
 Forman, S. E., .V.C.a, 1906. 
 
 Frankel, L., N.C.C., 1906; Charities, etc., 1906, v. 17, no. 7. 
 
 Goodyear, C, Charities, etc., 1906, v. 16 (budgets); 1906-1907, v. 
 
 17 : 315 (adequate). 
 Tucker, F., Charities, etc., 1906, v. 17, no. 7. 
 
 State Boards of Charities : List of, with names of offi- 
 cers in current volumes of N.C.C. 
 See Supervision and Control. 
 
 Statutes of Every State in the United States concerning Dependent, 
 Neglected, and Delinquent Children. Philadelphia, 1900, New 
 Century Club. G. F. Lasher, Printer, 147 No. Tenth St., Phila. 
 
 Stead, W. T. Josephine Butler. London, Morgan and Scott, 1887. 
 
 Steiner, E. A. On the Trail of the Immigrant. New York, Kevell, 
 1906. 
 
 Strahan, S. A. K. Marriage and Disease. New York, Appleton, 1892. 
 
 Strong, Josiah, Ed. Social Progress. Yearbook and Encyclopedia 
 of economic, industrial, social, and religious statistics. New York, 
 Baker and Taylor. (Bibliography.) 
 
 Subsidies : 
 
 Boyle, P. C. Fifty Years of Charities and Correction in Penn- 
 sylvania (pamphlet). Oil City, Pennsylvania, 1905. 
 Coler, B. S. , Controller's Kept., New York City, 1890; .V. C. C, 1901. 
 Fetter, F. A., N.C.C, 1901 ; Am. Jo. of Soc, 1901, v. 7 : 359. 
 MacFarland, H. B., N.C.C, 1906 (in D.C.). 
 Richmond, M. E., Charities, 1905, v. 14 : 843 ; v. 14:934.
 
 490 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 United States Senate Doc. 185, 55th Cong. 1st Sess. (1907); Sen. 
 
 Kept. 700, 65th Cong. 2d Sess. (1898). 
 New York Charities Aid Association, pamphlet no. 73 (1899); 
 
 Kept., 1906, p. 156. 
 
 Supervision and Control : 
 Blackmar, F. W., N.C.C., 1903. 
 Butler, A. W., N.C.C., 1904 (Indiana). 
 Clark, A. W., N.C.C., 1904 (limits to). 
 Cleveland, F. A., N.C.C., 1906 (duties of trustees). 
 Hebberd, R. W., Annals, 1904, v. 23 ; N.C.C., 1907. 
 Kinne, L. G., N.C.C., 1900 (Iowa). 
 Lathrop, J. C, A^.C.C, 1905. 
 Rosing, L. A., N.C.C., 1907 (Minnesota). 
 Sanborn, F. B., Charities, 1904, v. 13 : 116 (historical). 
 Smith, S. G., Am. Jo. of Soc, 1901, v. 6 (Minnesota). 
 Sparling, S. E., Annals, 1901, v. 17, whole no. 62 (Wisconsin). 
 Stewart, W. R., N.C.C., 1907 (New York). 
 Tucker, F., Charities, 1905-1906, v. 15, no. 9 (duties of Boards). 
 Wines, F. H., N.C.C., 1902. 
 
 8ee also Administbation ; Charities. 
 
 Temperance Problem, Bibliography of 142 titles in 
 
 Koren, Economic Aspects, etc. 
 Tenements, see Housing. 
 Tramps and Hoboes, see Vagrancy. 
 
 Transactions of the National Association for the Study of Epilepsy 
 and the Care and Treatment of Epileptics. 4 vols., 1901-1906. 
 Dr. W. P. Spratling, Editor. Secretary, Dr. J. W. Wherry, Dans- 
 ville, New York. 
 
 Transactions of the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophy- 
 laxis. V. 1, 1906. Secretary, Dr. E. L. Keyes, Jr., 109 E. 34th 
 St., New York. The society publishes educational pamphlets: 
 (1) The Young Man's Problem ; (2) For Teachers ; (3) The 
 Relations of Social Diseases with Marriage and their Prophylaxis. 
 
 Tuberculosis : 
 
 Bogen, B., Charities, etc., 1907, v. 18:417 (Cincinnati method).
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 491 
 
 Devine, E. T., N.C.C., 1905 (warfare against). 
 
 Farrand, L., N.C.C., 1905 (in public institutions). 
 
 Fulmer, H., N.C.G., 1905 (open-air treatment). 
 
 Hutchinson, Woods, N.C.C., 1905 (open-air treatment). 
 
 Hall, B. Charities^ etc., 1907, v. 18 : 230 (convalescents and the 
 land). 
 
 Lowman, J. H., Charities, etc., 1907, v. 18, no. 23. 
 
 Charities, 1903, v. 10:65 (Phipps Institute); v. 10:225 (duty of 
 State) ; V. 11 : 189 (seven needs in checlving); v. 11 : 570 (con- 
 trol in New York, statistics); v. 15:303 (public sanatorium. 
 New York); v. 15:499 (duty of State); v. 16:281 (papers 
 on, at Jewish Conference); v. 17:330 (compulsory registra- 
 tion). See also index, current vols. 
 
 : Bibliography (short) by Devine, Charities, 1905, v. 
 
 14:817. 
 
 Tuberculosis Directory of Institutions and Societies deal- 
 ing with Tuberculosis. New York, 1904. C.O.S. 
 
 U 
 
 Ufford, W. S. Fresh-Air Charity in the United States. New York, 
 
 Bonnell, Silver & Co., 1897. 
 Uhlhorn, J. G. W. Die Christliche Liebesthatigkeit. 
 
 Vol. 1, in the Ancient Church ; translated by Sophia Taylor Clark, 
 Edinburgh, 1883. 
 
 Vol. 2, im Mittelalter. Stuttgart, Gundert, 1881. 
 
 Vol. 3, seit der Reformation. Stuttgart, Gundert, 1890. 
 
 Unemployed, see Vagrancy. 
 
 Vagrancy : 
 
 Allen, W. H., N.C.C., 1903 (social parasite or product). 
 Bailey, E. L., Forum, October, 1898. 
 Brackett, J. R., N.C.C., 1896 (in small cities). 
 Bradshaw, J. W., Char. Rev., 1896, v. 5. 
 
 Closson, C. C, Quart. Jo. of Econ., 1894 (unemployed in Amer- 
 ican cities). 
 Devine, E. T., Annals, 1897, v. 10 : 149 (shiftless city population). 
 Forbes, J., N.C.C., 1903.
 
 492 AMERICAN CHARITIES. 
 
 Gladden, W., N.C.C., 1899 (what to do). 
 
 Jackson, J. F., N.C.C., 1903 (rural tramp). 
 
 Lewis, 0. F.. N.C.C., 1907 ; Charities, etc., 1906-1907, v. 18 : 342 
 
 (National Committee on). 
 Lowell, Mrs. J. R., Char. Rev., 1896, v. 5 : 341. 
 McCook, J. J., Forum, 1893, 1895 (problem). 
 Marsh, B. C, N.C.C., 1903 (methods to eradicate); Charities, 
 
 1903, V. 10 : 221 ; Annals, 1904, v. 23 : 446. 
 Millis, H. A., Char. Rev., 1897, v. 7 : 687 ; Am. Jo. of Soc, 
 
 March, 1898. 
 Powell, R. F., Charities, 1904-1905, v. 13 : 25 (vacant lots cultiva^ 
 
 tion a remedy). 
 Taylor, G., Charities, 1906, v. 16: 350 (English unemployables) . 
 Warner, A. G., Quart. Jo. of Econ., v. 5 (experiments — unem- 
 ployed). 
 Whitney, J. S., Charities, 1904-1905, v. 13 : 320. 
 Charities, 1903, v. 11 : 498 (methods of dealing with) ; 1906, v. 16 : 
 
 618 (as a pastime). 
 Report Chicago Bureau of Charities, 1898-1899, Appendix A, p. 
 
 36 (non-resident unemployed) . 
 Reports — Special Consular, on Vagrancy and Public Charities in 
 
 Foreign Countries. Washington, D.C., 1892. 
 
 Vagrancy : see also Employment. 
 
 AND Mendicancy: 
 
 Charities, 1903, v. 11 : 159 (confidential bulletin of beggars) ; v. 
 11 : 576 (mendicancy police) ; v. 16 : 113 (mendicancy police). 
 
 Vice, see Social Evil. 
 
 VanVorst, Mrs. John, and Marie. The Woman Who Toils. New 
 York, Doubleday, Page, 1903. 
 
 W 
 
 Warner, Amos G. Philanthropy in Educational Institutions. Section 
 VII, LC.C.C.P., 1893. Some Experiments on Behalf of the Un- 
 employed. Quart. Jo. of Econ., y. 5. Public Subsidies to Private 
 Charities. Section III, I.C.C.C.P., 1893. Evolution of Public 
 Charities. Pub. Brooklyn Ethical Association. 
 
 Warner, Francis G. The Study of Children. New York, Macmillan, 
 1899.
 
 BlBLIOGttAPHT. 493 
 
 Webb, Sidney, and Mrs. Beatrice [Potter]. Problems of Modern 
 Industry. London and New York, Longmans, 1902. 
 
 Webb, Sidney, and 3frs. Beatrice. Industrial Democracy. London 
 and New York, Longmans, 1897, new ed., 1902, with bibliog- 
 raphy. 
 
 Weber, A. F. Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century. New 
 York, Macmillan, 1899. 
 
 Whelpley, J. D. The Problem of the Immigrant. New York, But- 
 ton, 1906. 
 
 Willard, Josiah Flynt. Tramping with Tramps. New York, Century 
 
 Co., 1901. 
 Willoughby, W. F. Workingmen's Insurance. New York, Crowell, 
 
 1898. (Professor C. R. Henderson brings this bibliography down 
 
 to 1907 in Charities, etc., v. 19 : 1191 ff.). 
 Wilson, G. R. Drunkenness. London, Sonnenschein, 1893. 
 Wines, F. H., and Koren, J. Legislative Aspects of the Liquor Prob- 
 lem. (Committee of Fifty.) New York and Boston, Houghton. 
 Woods, F. A. Mental and Moral Heredity in Royalty. New York, 
 
 Holt, 1906. 
 Woods, Robert A. The City Wilderness. New York and Boston, 
 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1898. The Poor in Great Cities. New 
 
 York, 1895. Americans in Process. 1902. 
 Wright, Carroll D. Outline of Practical Sociology. New York, 
 
 Longmans, 6th ed., 1903. 
 Wyckoff, Walter A. The Workers. I — The East; II — The West. 
 
 New York, Scribner's, 1898.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Abnormal children, 344-346. 
 
 Accident as cause of poverty, 43, 46. 
 
 Accidents, 118 ff . ; railway, 119- 
 120; nature of industrial, illus- 
 trated by examples, 121; min- 
 ing, 122. 
 
 Adams, Dr., cited, 334. 
 
 Addams, Jane, quoted, 142. 
 
 Adler, Felix, 25 n., 139. 
 
 Advertising, methods of philan- 
 thropic, 382-385. 
 
 Aged, homes for the, 354-356; 
 pensions for, 356. 
 
 Agriculturists. See Farmers. 
 
 Alabama, hospital statistics of, 
 298, 300; statistics of insane in, 
 319. 
 
 Alden, Percy, cited, 117, 255, 260; 
 quoted, 145-146; classification 
 by, of the unemployed, 246; 
 work on "The Unemployed'! by, 
 262. 
 
 Allen, W. H., cited, 306, 307, 345, 
 393, 396. 
 
 Almshouse, the word, 196 n. 
 
 Almshouses, ill-managed, 27 ; statis- 
 tics of inmates of, 196, 202, 203, 
 
 204, 206, 207-209, 210; evolu- 
 tion of buildings, 197-198 ; classi- 
 fication of inmates of, 198 ff., 214— 
 216; insane persons in, 198-200, 
 320 ; feeble-minded and epileptics 
 in, 200-201, 337, 347; tramps, 
 drunkards, pro.stitutes, etc., in, 
 
 205, 220-221, 251; children in, 
 201-205; provisions for inmates 
 of, 209, 211-214; in Missouri, 
 209; the sick in, 215-216; land 
 
 attached to, 'and farming ques- I 344-346. 
 
 495 
 
 tion, 217-218; officials in charge 
 of, 218-219, 225; admission to 
 and discharge from, 219-222; 
 work test and discipline in, 222- 
 224; methods of improving, 225; 
 as homes for incurables, 356. 
 
 Almy, Frederick, data by, on 
 outdoor relief, 236-238, 239- 
 240; on unpaid boards and 
 volunteer %asitors, 371. 
 
 America, intemperance in, 57, 58, 
 74-75; railway accidents in, 119. 
 
 Americans, causes of poverty 
 among, 57, 58, 59. 
 
 Ansell, Charles, Jr., cited, 128. 
 
 Arizona, hospital statistics of, 
 298, 300; insane in, 319. 
 
 Arkansas, hospital statistics of, 
 298, 300; statistics of insane in, 
 319. 
 
 Arhdge, Dr. J. T., work by, 122. 
 
 Arrests for drunkenness, 349. 
 
 Asexualization of criminals and 
 feeble-minded, 29-30. 
 
 Ashley, Lord, connection with 
 factor}- legislation in England, 
 15-16. 
 
 Association of Collegiate Alumnae, 
 398. 
 
 Asjdums for insane, 327-335, 337, 
 346. 
 
 Atwater, W. O., cited, 185, 376. _ 
 
 Austria-Hungary, railway acci- 
 dents in, 119. 
 
 Aveling, Dr., explanation of pov- 
 erty by, 34. 
 
 B 
 
 Baby-farming, 272. 
 Backward children, 
 
 classes for.
 
 496 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Bagehot, Walter, cited, 20. 
 
 Bakers, vital statistics of, 126, 127, 
 129. 
 
 Baltimore, causes of poverty in, 
 50, 53 ; orphanages and homes 
 for children in, 414. 
 
 Baluffi, Cardinal, cited, 377. 
 
 Banfield, Maud, on hospital ad- 
 ministration, 307, 308. 
 
 Barnardo's Homes in Canada, 286. 
 
 Barnett, Dr., cited, 334. 
 
 Barr, Dr. M. W., cited, 29, 339; 
 quoted, 99, 100; definition of 
 feeble-mindedness by, 33G ; on 
 the feeble-minded, 339, 340-341, 
 342; on epileptics, 346. 
 
 Barrows, S. J., cited, 331. 
 
 Beard, cited, 75. 
 
 Beggars. See Tramps and Ya,- 
 grants. 
 
 Belgium, railway accidents in, 119. 
 
 Bell, Alexander Graham, 95. 
 
 Bequests, 389 ff. 
 
 "Bethlehem" and "Bedlam," 325 n. 
 
 Bielefeld Colony for epileptics, 348. 
 
 Birth-rate, influence of charity on, 
 26. 
 
 Blacksmiths, vital statistics of, 
 
 126, 127, 129. 
 
 Blind, institutions for, 357. 
 
 Blockley (Philadelphia) Almshouse 
 exposure, 369. 
 
 Boarding-out, of paupers, 197; 
 of foundlings, 268-269; of in- 
 sane, 329-330. 
 
 Boards of Charities, of Supervision, 
 and of Control, 425-432, 436. 
 
 Bohmert, Victor, 54, 55, 67. 
 
 Boies, cited, 66. 
 
 ]3ookbinders, vital statistics of, 
 
 127, 130. 
 
 Booth, Charles, studies of the poor 
 by, 40, 42, 64, 71, 75, 86; cited, 
 191, 221; on intemperance as a 
 cause of poverty, 67 ; quoted on 
 effect of drink, 76; quoted con- 
 cerning Rooney family, 106-107; 
 influence in America of work of, 
 157; on housing conditions and 
 their effects in East London, 
 186-187. 
 
 Booth, General, cited, 31, 246. 
 
 Bosanquet, Mrs., 38, 147, 191. 
 
 Boston, pauperism in, 160; classes 
 in almshouses at, 208; relation 
 between public and private out- 
 door relief in, 236, 238-239; 
 treatment of tramps in, 250. 
 
 Bouvier, Mrs., cited, 271. 
 
 Boyle, table from, 403. 
 
 Brace, Charles Loring, 66, 287, 377. 
 
 Brandt, Lilian, 62; quoted, 150- 
 151, 152. 
 
 Brantwaite, Dr. R. W., quoted, 78- 
 79; cited, 101, 349, 351. 
 
 Brewers, vital statistics of, 127. 
 
 Bricklayers, vital statistics of, 127, 
 129. " 
 
 BrookUne, outdoor relief experience 
 in, 234-235. 
 
 Brooklyn, outdoor relief in, 230- 
 232, 372; institutions for cliil- 
 dren in, 280 n. 
 
 Brougham, Lord, case of, 103. 
 
 Brown, Mary W., cited, 91. 
 
 Buffalo, statistics of causes of 
 poverty in, 46, 50, 53 ; history of 
 outdoor aid in, 239-241 ; Church 
 District Plan in, 379. 
 
 Builders, vital statistics of, 127. 
 
 Burdett, Sir H. C, cited, 303, 308. 
 
 Burr, Dr. C. B., cited, 324, 329. 
 
 Butchers, vital statistics of, 126, 
 127. 
 
 Butler, Amos W., quoted, 339; 
 cited, 342, 356, 431. 
 
 C 
 
 California, insane in almshouses in, 
 200; hospital statistics of, 298, 
 300; stati.stics of insane in, 319; 
 provisions for feeble-minded in, 
 338; attempted pension system 
 for aged in, 356 ; politics in public 
 charities of, 369; subsidies to 
 private charities in, 400; sub- 
 sidies for dependent children in, 
 407. 
 
 Canada, railway accidents in, 119; 
 Barnardo's Homes in, 286. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 12-13.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 497 
 
 Carpenters, vital statistics, 126, 127. 
 
 Case-counting metliod of studying 
 causes of poverty, 36-39; criti- 
 cisms of and improvements on, 
 149 ff. 
 
 Castration of criminals, 29. 
 
 Cathcart, Lord, cited, 310. 
 
 Catholic orders, nurses of, 314-315. 
 
 Catholics, charities of, 377-378; re- 
 ports rarely published by, 383 n. ; 
 rivalries of Protestants and, 409- 
 410. 
 
 Causes of poverty, college courses in, 
 19; reasons leading to search for, 
 25; three methods of studying, 
 32; philosophical or deductive 
 method, 33-36; inductive or 
 case-counting method, 36-39 ; 
 analysis of, under case-counting 
 method, 37; third method, 
 statistical study of classes not 
 yet paujDerized (pictorial method), 
 39-41 ; consideration of in- 
 ve.stigations conducted on case- 
 counting principle, 41-65; sources 
 of error in statistics of, 41-45; 
 statistical tables of, 43, 44, 45, 
 46, 47, 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, 58, 61, 
 62, 63; misconduct vs. misfor- 
 tune as, 48-51 ; incapacity re- 
 sulting from degenerating condi- 
 tions the chief, 64-65 (see De- 
 generation) ; study of, by third 
 method, taking the family and 
 not the individual, 149-192. 
 
 Chalmers, works by, on poor-re- 
 lief, 11-12. 
 
 Character, deterioration of, as a 
 cause of poverty, 38-39. 
 
 Charities, antiquity of, 3-4; influ- 
 ence of political considerations 
 on, 4, 292, 368-371, 426; reh- 
 gion as an incentive to benevo- 
 lence, 4-10, 377 ; of the Church, 
 in the Middle Ages, (y-9; political 
 economists' theories concerning, 
 10-17; college courses in, 19; 
 question of ultimate influence of, 
 20 ; scope of the term, 363-364. 
 iSee Private charities and Public 
 charities. 
 
 Charities Directories, 358. 
 
 Charities Endorsement Committee, 
 385. 
 
 Charitj' organization movement, 
 437 ff. 
 
 Charity organization societies, 205, 
 358, 442-456. 
 
 Chase, cited, 346. 
 
 Chastity, treatment of offenders 
 against, 353. 
 
 Chattel mortgage sharks, 91. 
 
 Chicago, tramps in, 252. 
 
 Chicago Bureau of Charities, 454. 
 
 Child labor, in England, before 
 factory legislation, 15-16; in 
 United States, 135-138; as a 
 cause of degeneration, 135-144. 
 
 Children, dependent, in German 
 cities, 54; proportion of, among 
 dependents, 64, 155 ; neglect of, 
 due to intemperance, 72; causes 
 of defective, 98-101, 339, 344- 
 345, 347; effect on, of life below 
 the poverty line, 189; in alms- 
 houses, 201-205 ; illegitimate, 
 born in almshouses, 209, 221 ; 
 responsibility of treatment of 
 dependent, 263; numbers of 
 dependent, in United States, 
 263-265; death-rate in found- 
 ling hospitals, 266-267; board- 
 ing-out of infants, 268-269; 
 institutional care of infants, 270 ; 
 reception of foundhngs, in 
 France, 270-271; in New York 
 Foundling Hospital, 271-272; 
 methods of dealing with destitute 
 mothers with, 272-273 ; rules for 
 receiving, into institutions, 273- 
 276; classification of dependent, 
 — defectives, cripples, criminals, 
 etc., 277-279; institution plan of 
 providing for dependent, 279- 
 286; piacing-out method, 286- 
 292; emigration method, 286- 
 287 ; county homes for, 292 ; care 
 for, in private institutions, 292- 
 293; conclusions arrived at, 
 relative to dependent, 293-296; 
 of feeble-minded mothers, 342, 
 343 ; special classes in school for
 
 498 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 backward and abnormal, 344- 
 346; hospitals for, 356; public 
 subsidies to institutions for, 404— 
 407. 
 Children's Aid Societies, 287, 288, 
 
 290. 
 China, charities in ancient, 3-4. 
 Chinese, food standards of, in 
 
 California, 164. 
 
 Church , mediaeval, and charities, 
 
 6-9; influence of, on charities, 
 
 377 ff. ; proposed discontinuance 
 
 of charity work by churches, 
 
 378-379. 
 
 Church District Plan, Buffalo, 379. 
 
 Cigar-makers, vital statistics of, 
 
 135; child labor among, 136. 
 Cincinnati, causes of poverty in, 51. 
 Circumstances, adverse, as cause of 
 
 poverty, 38-39. 
 Civil service .system in public 
 
 charity work, 370. 
 Clark, M. V., quoted, 197-198. 
 Closson, Carlos C, cited, 244. 
 Codman, Mrs. quoted, 235; cited, 
 
 371. 
 Coldwater State School, Michigan, 
 
 288. 
 College graduates as charity work- 
 ers, 462. 
 Colleges, courses in causes of pov- 
 erty in, 19. 
 Colony plan, for insane asvlums, 
 328, 332; for feeble-minded, 343, 
 344 ; for epileptics, 346, 348. 
 Colorado, hospital .statistics of, 298, 
 300; statistics of insane in, 319; 
 provisions for feeble-minded in, 
 338. 
 Colored race, intemperance among, 
 58, 59, 67, 69, 72 ; sickness among, 
 59. 
 Commitments for drunkenness, 350- 
 
 351. 
 Committee of Fifteen, the, 84; 
 
 recommendations of, 88-89. 
 Committee of Fift}', the, 67 n. 
 Connecticut, limitations on mar- 
 riage in, 29; hospital statistics 
 of, 298, 300; statistics of insane 
 in, 318; pro\'isions for feeble- 
 
 minded in, 338; subsidies to pri- 
 vate charities in, 400. 
 Consumption, mortality from, 
 
 among British laborers, 133- 
 
 134; victims of, in almshouses, 
 
 213-214. 
 Cook County Insane Asylum, 375. 
 Cooley, Charles H., quoted, 113. 
 Coolidge, M. R., tables compiled 
 
 by, 44; study of almshouse 
 
 women by, 211-212, 220. 
 Cooper, Dr. A. V., cited, 347. 
 Corporate hospitals, 306-307. 
 Cost of living, figures of, in United 
 
 States, 161-185. 
 Cottage plan, of almshouse, 198, 209; 
 
 in in.stitutions for children, 284; 
 
 for insane asylums, 328. 
 Country Settlement, Concord, N.H., 
 
 316. 
 County care of insane, 327-329. 
 County Children's Home system, 
 
 292. 
 County Visitors, Board of, 432-433. 
 Craig Colony, New York, 348. 
 Creches, 455. 
 Crerar fund, 315. 
 Criminal insane, 331. 
 Criminals, sterilization of, 29-30; 
 
 segregation and isolation of, 30- 
 31. 
 Crooker, J. H., cited, 4. 
 Cunningham, VV., quoted, 13 ; cited, 
 365. 
 
 D 
 
 D'Alcmbert, case of, used as an 
 
 example, 102-103. 
 " Dangerous Trades," Oliver's, 122- 
 
 123; tables taken from, 129, 130; 
 
 quoted, 190. 
 Daniel, Dr., quoted, 140-141. 
 Dartmouth College decision, 391. 
 Dawes, Anna L., cited, 463 n. 
 Deaconesses as nurses, 314. 
 Deaf, intermarriage of, 28, 96, 97; 
 
 institutions for, 357. 
 Defectives, marriage of, 28; in 
 
 almshouses, 197, 199, 201, 207, 
 
 209, 213, 214. 
 Defoe, cited, 9.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 499 
 
 De Forest and Veiller, cited, 84. 
 
 Degeneration, the chief cause of 
 poverty, 64—65; study of symp- 
 tomatic causes of, 66 ff. ; in- 
 temperance a source of, 78-81 ; 
 immorality (sexual licentious- 
 ness) a leading source of, 81-90; 
 sources of, found in opium and 
 other habits, 90; in mental in- 
 capacity, 90-91 ; in gambling 
 and speculation, 91 ; in shift- 
 lessness and inefficiency, 91-92; 
 influence of heredity in produc- 
 tion of, 93-114; characteristic 
 social causes of, 115 ff. ; accidents 
 leading to, 118-122; caused by 
 conditions surrounding certain 
 kinds of work, 122-135; child 
 labor as a cause of, 135-144; 
 labor of women, irregular em- 
 l^loyment, industrial displace- 
 ment, 144-147. 
 
 De Gerando, cited, 66. 
 
 Delaware, hospital statistics of, 298, 
 300; statistics of insane in, 318. 
 
 Denmark, railway fatalities in, 118, 
 119. 
 
 Dennis, cited, 140. 
 
 Department stores, nurses em- 
 ploj^ed by, 316. 
 
 Desertion as cause of poverty, 43. 
 
 Devine, E. T., quoted, 14, 77, 230, 
 261; cited, 47, 66, 92, 145, 186, 
 196, 257, 280, 286, 287, 379, 
 442, 451, 452. 
 
 Dipsomaniacs, hospitals for, 352. 
 
 Disease a bar to marriage, 28-29. 
 
 Diseases caused by certain occu- 
 pations, 122-135. 
 
 Dispensaries, charitable, 309-311. 
 
 District nursing, 315. 
 
 District of Columbia, hospital statis- 
 tics of, 298-301; statistics of 
 insane in, 318; sub-sidies to pri- 
 vate charities in, 400-402. 
 
 Dix, Dorothea Lynde, 325, 326. 
 
 Drage, Geoffrey, classification of 
 the unemployed by, 245. 
 
 Drink as cause of poverty, 43, 44, 
 45. See Intemperance. 
 
 Drunkards, in almshouses, 205 ; ex- 
 
 perience of Massachusetts State 
 
 Hospital with, 352. 
 Drunkenness, treatment of, 349— 
 
 353; arrests aqd commitments 
 
 for, 349-351. »See Intemperance. 
 Dugdale, R. L., 26; study of Juke 
 
 family by, 64, 108-110. 
 Dusty occupations, and disease, 
 
 123-124; comparative mortality 
 
 of workers in, 129. 
 
 East Side Relief Committee, New 
 York, 257; conclusions formed 
 by, 261. 
 
 Education, defective, inefficiency 
 resulting from, 92. 
 
 Efficiency, rising standard of, and 
 effect on wage-earners, 117. 
 
 Elberfeld system of public relief, 
 241, 243, 371. 
 
 Ellis, Havelock, 364. 
 
 EUwood, Charles A., data concern- 
 ing almshouses by, 197, 199, 200, 
 209-211, 219; quoted, 199-200; 
 suggestions toward improve- 
 ment by, 225; cited, 326. 
 
 Ely, Richard T., cited, 20, 29. 
 
 Emigration method of treating 
 dependent children, 286-287. 
 
 Emminghaus, A., 7, 8. 
 
 Employees, of public institutions, 
 374—375; of charitable societies, 
 462-464. 
 
 Employment agencies, 454—455. 
 
 Endorsement Committee of San 
 Francisco, 384-385, 454. 
 
 Endorsement Committees, Charity, 
 384-385. 
 
 Endowments, 389 fT. ; disadvan- 
 tages arising from, 389-391, 396; 
 examples of unsuitable, 393-395; 
 principles which should guide in 
 making, 396-397; limitations on 
 powers of testators, 397-398. 
 
 Engel, Dr., 163. 
 
 England, .state relief work in, 8; 
 poor-law reform in, 12-15; fac- 
 tory legislation in, 15-17; en- 
 dowed charities in, 389-391.
 
 500 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 En\'ironment, as a cause of poverty, 
 38-39; liability to confusion be- 
 tween heredity and, 111-112. 
 
 Epilepsj', causes of, 97-101, 347; 
 curability of, 347; National 
 Association for study of, 348. 
 
 Epileptics, marriage of, 29 ; in 
 almshouses, 200-201, 209, 213, 
 214-215; in insane asjdums, 331 ; 
 provision for in institutions, 346- 
 348; numbers of, 346-347. 
 
 Experimentation, philanthropic, 
 and private charities, 387. 
 
 Extravagance, as cause of poverty, 
 43; resulting from mental in- 
 capacity, 90. 
 
 Factory children, 15, 135-144. 
 
 Factory inspectors, 124. 
 
 Factory legislation, English, 15- 
 17. 
 
 Families, large, not a cause of de- 
 pendence, 62; of paupers, 106- 
 114; standard and cost of living 
 of, 161-185. 
 
 Farm colonies for feeble-minded, 
 344. 
 
 Farmers, vital statistics of, 126- 
 136; child labor among, 136, 137; 
 almshouse officials as, 217-218. 
 
 Farmhouses as almshouses, 197, 
 209. 
 
 Farr, Dr. William, statistics by, 125, 
 126. 
 
 Fawcett, Professor, 16. 
 
 Fay, Edward Allen, 95, 96, 97. 
 
 Feeble-minded, increase in propor- 
 tion of, due to influence of char- 
 ity, 25; asexualization of, 30; 
 in almshouses, 200-201, 209, 213, 
 214—215; in insane asylums, 331 ; 
 what is included in term, 336; 
 disproportionate increase of, 336- 
 337; institutional provision for, 
 337-339; training of, 339-340, 
 342, 344-346 ; educational classi- 
 fication of, 340-341 ; segregation 
 of adult, 342-343 ; cu.stodial care 
 of, 343-344. 
 
 Feeble-mindedness, causes of, 99, 
 
 100, 339. 
 Fernald, Dr., quoted, 343 n. 
 Fetter, Frank A., table from, 400; 
 
 quoted, 412; cited, 415, 416, 418. 
 Fish, cited, 330. 
 
 Fishermen, vital statistics of, 127. 
 Fitch, Dr. J. G., cited, 393; quoted, 
 
 397-398. 
 Flood, cited, 347. 
 Florida, hospital statistics of, 298, 
 
 300; statistics of insane in, 318. 
 Folks, Homer, on influence of 
 
 heredity, 101-102; on children 
 
 in almshouses, 201 ; cited, 279, 
 
 288, 290, 291, 293, 401, 462; on 
 
 difficulties of administration of 
 
 public charities, 374—375. 
 Foundling Hospital, New York, 
 
 271. 
 Foundling hospitals, 26, 27-28, 
 
 263 ff. ; death-rate in, 266-267. 
 Foundlings, boarding-out of, 268- 
 
 269; institutional care of, 270. 
 Foxboro hospital for dipsomaniacs, 
 
 352. 
 France, state relief work in, 8 
 
 state care of children in, 10 
 
 foundling hospitals in, 27, 270 
 
 railway accidents in, 119. 
 Frankel, Dr. Lee K., classification 
 
 of causes of dependence b}^ 151; 
 
 on Hebrew charities, 380. 
 Fraudulent charities, detection of, 
 
 454. 
 Friendly visiting, 6, 371-372, 452- 
 
 453. 
 
 G 
 
 Galton, Francis, quoted, 102; study 
 of English judges by, 103-104. 
 
 Gambling, 91. 
 
 Gardeners, vital statistics of, 127. 
 
 George, Henry, on causes of pov- 
 erty, 33-34. 
 
 Georgia, hospital statistics of, 298, 
 300; statistics of insane in, 318. 
 
 Germans, place of intemperance in 
 causes of poverty among, 58, 59; 
 income and expenditures of, 
 compared with Irisli, 170, 171,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 501 
 
 Germany, relief work in, 8; statis- 
 tics of causes of poverty in, 51 ; 
 statistics of dei^endent children 
 in, 54; railway accidents in, 
 119; sj'stem of unpaid visitors 
 in, 371. 
 
 Giddings, Franklin H., cited, 167. 
 
 Girard College, 365, 396 n. 
 
 Gladden, Washington, 245. 
 
 Glass-blowing, disease from, 123. 
 
 Glass-making and child labor, 136, 
 143. 
 
 Goodyear, Caroline, cited, 184, 185. 
 
 Great Britain, railway accidents in, 
 119. 
 
 Grimshaw, Dr., statistics by, 130. 
 
 Grocers, vital statistics of, 126, 
 127. 
 
 Groszmann, Dr. M. P. E., on atypi- 
 cal children, 345. 
 
 Guardianship of destitute children, 
 274-276. 
 
 Gurteen, Rev. S. H., 443. 
 
 H 
 
 Hairdressers, mortality figures of, 
 130. 
 
 Hart, H. H., cited, 287, 387. 
 
 Hartford, almshouse conditions at, 
 209, 221. 
 
 Hat-making, disease from, 123. 
 
 Hatters, vital statistics of, 127, 
 130. 
 
 Hayes, cited, 118 n. 
 
 Hebberd, R. W., cited, 198, 431. 
 
 Hebrew orphanages. New York 
 City, 280 n. 
 
 Hebrews, charity work of, 6, 378, 
 380, 384. 
 
 Hedger, Dr., cited, 135. 
 
 Heg, J., cited, 329. 
 
 Henderson, Charles R., cited, 6, 41, 
 303, 323, 324, 357, 379. 
 
 Henry Street Settlement, New 
 York, 315. 
 
 Heredity, improvement of human 
 race by, 20 ff . ; as cause of pov- 
 erty, 43 ; influence of, in produc- 
 tion of degeneration, 93-114; 
 influence of, as shown by English 
 
 judges, 104 ; as shown by royalty, 
 104-105; force of, illustrated by 
 Rooney, Juke, and Ishmael 
 families, 106-111; what is meant 
 by the word, 111-112. 
 
 Hennann, cited, 117. 
 
 Hobhouse, quoted, 393. 
 
 Hodder, cited, 325 n. 
 
 Hoffmann, F. L., studies by, 115- 
 116; figures from, 134, 160; on 
 child labor, 139. 
 
 Homes, children's, 264-265, 279- 
 284; for aged dependents, 354- 
 356; for incurables, 356; for 
 the deaf and the blind, 357. 
 
 Honor offices, system of, 370-371, 
 426, 460. 
 
 Ho.spitals, death-rate in improperly 
 conducted, 26; recent develop- 
 ment of, 297; statistics of, in 
 United States, 298-301; im- 
 portance of reports from, and 
 facts to be included, 302-303; 
 per capita cost of service in, 303 ; 
 as scliools for medical students, 
 303-304; religious motive in 
 establishing, 304 ; qualifications 
 for admission to, 306; municipal 
 and corporate, 306-307 ; defects 
 in management of, 307 ; sj'stems 
 of accounting in, 307-308 ; con- 
 trol and superintendence of, 308; 
 dispensaries, 309-311; nurses 
 connected with, 312-316; statis- 
 tics of insane in, 317-319. 
 
 Housing conditions, in New York 
 Citv, 186; in East London, 186- 
 187. 
 
 Howe, Dr. Samuel G., 28, 98. 
 
 Hubbard, cited, 451. 
 
 Hubert-Valleroux, 7. 
 
 Hull, Dr., cited, 135. 
 
 Hunter, Robert, quoted, 39; cited, 
 120, 146; figures from, on pov- 
 erty in United States, 159-160, 
 184. 
 
 Hurd, H. M., cited, 307, 311. 
 
 Husband, death of, as cause of 
 poverty, 43. 
 
 Hutcheson and Harrison, cited, 
 140.
 
 502 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Idaho, hospital statistics of, 298, 
 300; insane in, 319. 
 
 Idiocy, statistics of, in Massachu- 
 setts, 98; propagation of, by 
 descent, 100-101; definition of, 
 336. See Feeble-mindedness. 
 
 Idiots, asexualization of, 30. 
 
 Idleness in institutions, 223-224. 
 
 Illegitimate children, 209, 221. 
 See Foundlings. 
 
 Illinois, insane in almshouses in, 
 199; hospital statistics of, 298- 
 300; statistics of insane in, 319; 
 provisions for feeble-minded in, 
 338; politics in public charities 
 of, 369; experience with prohibi- 
 tion of public grants to sectarian 
 institutions, 413. 
 
 Illinois Training School for Nurses, 
 315. 
 
 Imbeciles, marriage of, 27, 28-29; 
 asexualization of, 30. 
 
 Imbecility, 97, 98, 99, 100. 
 
 Immigration, bearing of, on amount 
 of insanity in United States, 322 ; 
 and pauperism, 374. 
 
 Immorality, as cause of poverty, 
 43, 44, 50; what is understood 
 by, 81 ; as a source of degenera- 
 tion, 81-90. 
 
 Impostors, exposure of, 453-454. 
 
 Imprisonment of breadwinner as 
 cause of poverty, 46, 50. 
 
 Incapacity as cause of poverty, 
 43. 
 
 Incorrigible children, 278. 
 
 Incurables, prolongation of life of, 
 23-24; homes for, 356. 
 
 Indiana, limitations on marriage in, 
 29; sterilization of criminals in, 
 29-30; outdoor relief in, 232- 
 234; hospital statistics of, 298, 
 300; statistics of insane in, 319; 
 provisions for feeble-minded in, 
 338; feeble-mindedness in, 339, 
 342; development of public 
 charities of, 354 ff. 
 
 Indiana Hospital for Insane scandal, 
 369. 
 
 Indianapolis, relief of unemployed 
 in, 2.58. 
 
 Indian Territory, hospital statistics 
 of, 298, 300, 301 ; insane in, 319. 
 
 Inebriates, statistics relating to, 79 ; 
 hospitals for, 251. See Drunk- 
 ards. 
 
 Insane, increase in proportion of, 
 due to influence of charity, 25; 
 in almshouses, 198-200, 207, 209 ; 
 statistics of, in United States, 
 317-320; increase in proportion 
 of, 320 ; reasons for increase, 
 320-322; effect of immigration 
 on numbers of, 322 ; commitment 
 of the sane as, 322-323 ; methods 
 of commitment, 323; detention 
 of, 324; matter of proper escort 
 of, to asylums, 324-325; history 
 of treatment of, 325 ff. ; effects 
 of restraint and seclusion on, 
 326-327 ; first State asylums 
 for, 327-328; county asylum 
 system of caring for, 327-329; 
 State care for, 328, 329; board- 
 ing-out of, in families, 329-330; 
 care for, in private institutions, 
 330; classification of, by sex, 
 color, curable and incurable, 
 330-331 ; criminal and non- 
 criminal, 331 ; further classifica- 
 tion, — feeble-minded, epileptics, 
 filthy, and unmanageable, etc., 
 331-332; discussion of systems 
 for dealing with, 332-335; pro- 
 visions for the incipient, 333- 
 334; after-care of, 334-335. 
 
 Insane asylums, 327-335; feeble- 
 minded in, 337; epileptics in, 
 346. 
 
 Insanity, and marriage, 28; as 
 cause of poverty, 44, 46, 50, 58. 
 
 Inspectors, of factories, 124; of 
 almshouses, 213. 
 
 Instalment plan houses, 91. 
 
 Institution of Mercy, New York 
 City, 280 n. 
 
 Institutional system, in almshouses, 
 217; in care of infants, 270; of 
 providing for dependent chil- 
 dren, 279-286.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 603 
 
 Intemperance, as cause of poverty, 
 43, 44,- 45, 46, 50, 53, 58, 66 ff. ; 
 statistics of, among different 
 nations, 57, 58, 59, 69 ; results of 
 inquiries concerning, 66-67; a 
 source as well as a syinptom of 
 degeneration, 78-81 ; effects of, 
 79; dangerous trades and, 123. 
 
 Iowa, hospital statistics of, 298- 
 300; insane in, 319; provisions 
 for feeble-minded in, 338; hos- 
 pital for inebriates in, 352. 
 
 Ireland, Dr. W. W., cited, 100-101, 
 339; definition of idiocy by, 
 336. 
 
 Irish, place of intemperance in 
 causes of poverty among, 57, 58, 
 69; shiftlessness and inefficiency 
 as causes of poverty, 59 ; income 
 and expenditures of, compared 
 with Germans, 170, 171. 
 
 Ishmael family, 81, 103, 110-111. 
 
 Isolation of defectives and de- 
 pendents, 30-31, 326, 342. 
 
 Italy, state relief work in, 8; men- 
 dicancy in, set down to excessive 
 charity, 9-10. 
 
 Jaffa, Professor, on food standards 
 of Chinese, 164. 
 
 Jails, character of county, 256. 
 
 James, William, quotation from, 38. 
 
 Jeans, essay b}', quoted, 16. 
 
 Jewish charities, 6, 378, 380. 
 
 Jewish Charities, Federations of, 
 384. 
 
 Job, quotation from, 1 n. 
 
 Johns Hopkins Hospital, 365. 
 
 Johns Hopkins Nurses Alumnae 
 Association, 315. 
 
 Johnson, Alexander, 30, 365 n. 
 
 Johnson, Alvin S., study of vice by, 
 84-85. 
 
 Jordan, David Starr, on heredity, 
 93-95. 
 
 Joyce, cited, 234. 
 
 Judges, effect of heredity illus- 
 trated by, 104. 
 
 Juke family, 64, 81, 83, 103; his- 
 tory and statistics of, 108-110. 
 
 Jury trial of persons charged with 
 insanity, 323. 
 
 K 
 
 Kankakee, 111., insane asylum at, 
 328. 
 
 Kansas, hospital statistics of, 298- 
 300; insane in, 319; provisions 
 for feeble-miided in, 338. 
 
 Kelley, Florence, cited, 142. 
 
 Kellogg, Charles D., cited, 48, 441, 
 442, 465. 
 
 Kenny, Courtney, cited, 391, 394. 
 
 Kentucky', hospital statistics of, 
 298-300; insane in, 319; feeble- 
 minded in, 338. 
 
 Kerlin, Dr., quoted, 29. 
 
 Kidd, Benjamin, cited, 25 n. 
 
 Knight, Dr., quoted, 343. 
 
 Kollen, Dr., 314 n. 
 
 Koren, John, studies and investi- 
 gations b3% 59, 67, 68, 69, 70, 76; 
 quoted on paupers in almshouses, 
 204-205; on hospitals, 301; on 
 rate of increase for insane, 320. 
 
 Korosi, Josef, statistics bj^ 132. 
 
 Kuborn, Dr., on English miners, 
 190. 
 
 Laborers, vital statistics of, 126, 
 
 127; liability of, to tuberculosis, 
 
 133-134; statistics of children 
 
 as, 136. 
 Labor reports, results of study of 
 
 causes of poverty in, 40. 
 Lack of work as cause of povert}^, 
 
 43, 45, 46, 50. 
 Lathrop, Julia C, cited, 329, 375, 
 
 391. 
 Lauderburn, Miss, quoted, 189. 
 Lawj'ers, vital statistics of, 127. 
 Laziness as cause of poverty, 43. 
 Leckv, W. E. H., quoted, 7-8, 9, 458. 
 Letchworth, W. P., cited, 347. 
 Lewis, Orlando F., on the vagrancy 
 
 problem, 251. 
 Life, sanctitv of, 23-24. 
 Lincoln, Alice N., cited, 216, 222. 
 Lindsav, S. M., tables compiled by, 
 
 45, 53, 54, 66; cited, 142.
 
 504 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Liquor dealers, vital statistics of, 
 
 126, 127. 
 Little Sisters of the Poor, homes for 
 
 the aged maintained by, 355, 401. 
 London, Charles Booth's work in, 
 
 40, 42, 51, 157-158; emigration 
 
 of dependent children from, to 
 
 colonies, 286. 
 Louisiana, hospital statistics of, 
 
 298-300; insane in, 319. 
 Lovejoy, Owen R., quoted, 141, 143. 
 Low, Seth, on outdoor relief in 
 
 Brooklyn, 231. 
 Lowell, Mrs. Josephine Shaw, 353 n. ; 
 
 quoted, 221. 
 Lunatics. See Insane. 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay, speech by, on ten-hour 
 bill, 16. 
 
 Machinery, effect of, on standard of 
 efficiency, 117-118. 
 
 McCook, Professor, cited, 247. 
 
 McCulloch, Oscar C, study of 
 Ishmael family by, 26, 110-111. 
 
 MacFarland, H. B., cited, 402. 
 
 Mackay, Thomas W., 38. 
 
 McKelway, cited, 140. 
 
 McLean, Francis H., report by, 
 120-121. 
 
 Mackenzie, Sir Morell, cited, 310. 
 
 Maine, hospital statistics of, 298- 
 300; insane in, 318. 
 
 Malthus, "Principle of Population" 
 by, 11, 33. 
 
 Manchester Unity I.O.O.F., figures 
 from, 132-133. 
 
 Marcella Street Home, Boston, 221. 
 
 Marriage, insanity and, 28; of de- 
 fectives, 28, 96, 97. 
 
 Marshall, Alfred, quoted, 13-14, 
 190. 
 
 Martineau, Miss, 15, 19. 
 
 Marx, Karl, on causes of poverty, 
 33, 34. 
 
 Mar3-land, hospital statistics of, 
 298-300; insane in, 318; provi- 
 sions for feeble-minded in, 338; 
 subsidies to private charities in, 
 400. 
 
 Mason, Sir Josiah, 397-398. 
 
 Masons, vital statistics of, 127, 129. 
 Massachusetts, statistics of idiocy 
 in, 98; provisions as to insane 
 in, 199, 318, 329-330; alms- 
 house conditions in, 208, 212- 
 214, 215; outdoor rehef in, 228; 
 tramps in, 248-249, 250, 251-252; 
 boarding-out method applied to 
 foundhngs in, 269, 271-272; 
 system of supervision of infant- 
 boarding in, 272 n. ; placing-out 
 of dependent children in, 288- 
 291 ; distribution of State 
 minor wards in, 290; hospi- 
 tal statistics of, 298-301; hos- 
 pital work in, 301 ; statistics of 
 insane in, 318; provisions fcvr 
 feeble-minded in, 338, 344 ; treat- 
 ment of drunkards in, 352. 
 
 Massachusetts Hospital for Epi- 
 leptics, 347. 
 
 Maternity hospitals, 26, 356. 
 
 Matthews, Nathan, Jr., 435. 
 
 Medical charities, 356. 
 
 Medical men, vital statistics of, 127. 
 
 Mendicancv committee. New York 
 City, 252-253. 
 
 Mental deficiency as cause of pov- 
 erty, 43, 44. 
 
 Michigan, limitations on marriage 
 in, 28; experience of, with de- 
 pendent children, 276-277; plac- 
 ing-out of dependent children in, 
 288-291 ; hospital statistics of, 
 298-300; statistics of insane in, 
 319 ; provisions for feeble-minded 
 in, 338; politics in charities of, 
 369. 
 
 Migration of dependents, 373. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 33. 
 
 Miners, vital statistics of, 126, 127; 
 child labor among, 136, 141 ; mal- 
 adies of English, 190. 
 
 Mining accidents, 122. 
 
 Minnesota, hospital statistics of, 
 298, 300; insane in, 319; provi- 
 sions for feeble-minded in, 338; 
 hospital for inebriates in, 352. 
 
 Mission of the Immaculate Virgin, 
 New York City, 280 n.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 505 
 
 Mississippi, hospital statistics of, 
 298, 300; insane in, 319. 
 
 Missouri, insane in almshouses in, 
 199; almshouse conditions in, 
 209-211; hospital statistics of, 
 298-300; insane in, 319; feeble- 
 minded in, 338. 
 
 Mitchell, John, cited, 184. 
 
 Montana, hospital statistics of, 298, 
 300; insane in, 319. 
 
 Morals pohce, 87, 89. 
 
 More, Louise Boland, 40; studies 
 by, on standards and cost of 
 living, 161, 166 ff.; quoted, 187; 
 cited, 262. 
 
 Morrow, Dr. Prince A., on prostitu- 
 tion problem, 87, 89-90. 
 
 Mosher, Dr. J. M., quoted, 333. 
 
 Mothers, condition of, as affecting 
 mental condition of children, 99, 
 100; destitute unmarried, 272- 
 273. 
 
 Municipal hospitals, 306. 
 
 Municipal lodging-houses, 254-255. 
 
 Municipal nurses, 315-316. 
 
 Musicians, mortality figures of, 130. 
 
 N 
 
 National Vagrancy Committee, 253. 
 
 Nebraska, hospital statistics of, 
 298-300; insane in, 319; provi- 
 sions for feeble-minded in, 338. 
 
 Neglect by relatives as cause of 
 poverty, 44. 
 
 Negroes, place of intemperance in 
 causes of poverty among, 58, 59, 
 67, 69, 72 ; sickness as a cause of 
 poverty among, 59. 
 
 Nevada, hospital statistics of, 298, 
 300; insane in, 319. 
 
 New Hampshire, hospital statistics 
 of, 298-300; insane in, 318; 
 provisions for feeble-minded in, 
 338. 
 
 New Haven, causes of poverty in, 
 53. 
 
 New Jersey, hospital statistics of, 
 298-300; insane in, 318; provi- 
 sions for feeble-minded in, 337, 
 338. 
 
 New Jersey Training School for 
 Feeble-minded Boys and Girls, 
 345. 
 
 New Mexico, hospital statistics of, 
 298, 300; insane in, 319. 
 
 New South Wales, railway acci- 
 dents in, 119. 
 
 New York City, causes of poverty 
 in, 51, 53; foundlings in, 268; 
 dispensary system in, 309; sub- 
 sidies to private charities in, 
 404-405. 
 
 New York City Farm Colony, 198. 
 
 New York Orphan Asylum, re- 
 moval to the country, 284-285. 
 
 New York State, statistics of 
 paupers in almshouses in, 56; 
 experience of, with dependent 
 children, 276-277 ; institutions 
 for children in, 280; hospital 
 statistics of, 298-301 ; statistics 
 of insane in, 318, 320; psycho- 
 pathic hospitals for insane in, 
 334 ; provisions for feeble-minded 
 in, 337, 338 ; poUtics in charitable 
 institutions of, 369-370; sub- 
 sidies to private charities in, 400. 
 
 North Carolina, hospital statistics 
 of, 298, 300; insane in, 318; 
 subsidies to private charities in, 
 400. 
 
 North Dakota, hospital statistics of, 
 298-301; insane in, 319; pro- 
 visions for feeble-minded in, 338. 
 
 Norway, railway accidents in, 119. 
 
 Nurses, training schools for, 312, 
 313-314; members of religious 
 orders as, 314. 
 
 Nurses' settlements, 315. 
 
 Nursing, 312 ff. ; district, 315; 
 rural, 316. 
 
 Nutt, Dr. J. J., cited, 305. 
 
 O 
 
 Occupations, diseases of, 122-135. 
 
 O'Connell, cited, 118 n. 
 
 Odell, Governor, 369-370. 
 
 Officials, of almshouses, 218-219, 
 225; of hospitals, 308; system 
 of unpaid (honor officers), 370-
 
 506 
 
 INDEX.- 
 
 371, 426, 460; of Boards of 
 Supervision, 426. 
 
 Ogle, Dr., statistics by, 126, 127. 
 
 Ohio, county homes for children 
 in, 292, 293; hospital statistics 
 of, 298-301; insane in, 319; 
 provisions for defectives in, 338, 
 348; Board of County Visitors 
 in, 432. 
 
 Oklahoma, hospital stati-stics of, 
 298-301 ; insane in, 319. 
 
 Old age, as cause of poverty, 43, 44, 
 50; homes for dependents of, 
 354-356. 
 
 Old-age pensions, 356. 
 
 Oliver, Thomas, work by, 122-123 ; 
 cited, 129, 190. 
 
 Opium habit, 90. 
 
 Ordroneaux, Dr., cited, 322. 
 
 Oregon, hospital statistics of, 298- 
 301; insane in, 319. 
 
 Orphanages, statistics of, 264-265; 
 children in, 279-284. 
 
 Orphans and half-orphans, dis- 
 tinguishing between, 278. 
 
 Outdoor relief, defined, 226; ad- 
 ministration of, in United States, 
 226-227, 235, 243; arguments 
 for and against, 227-230; ex- 
 perience of Brooklyn in, 230- 
 232; of Indiana, 232-234; of 
 Brookline, Mass., 234-235; rela- 
 tion of private to public, 236-241 ; 
 history of, in Buffalo, 239-241; 
 conclusions concerning, 242-243. 
 
 Overpopulation as a cause of pov- 
 erty, 33. 
 
 Painters, vital statistics of, 127. 
 
 Palmer, Charles F., cited, SO, 349. 
 
 Pangborn, Major, cited, 247. 
 
 Parsons, railway statistics by, 119- 
 120. 
 
 Patten, Simon N., cited, 75; quoted, 
 192. 
 
 Pauperism, relation of intemper- 
 ance to, 67 ff. ; influence of 
 heredity in perpetuating, 106- 
 114; and immigration, 374; pre- 
 
 vention of, an object of Charity 
 Organization Society, 455. 
 
 Paupers, in almshouses, 27, 56-57, 
 196; marriage of, 27, 29; fami- 
 lies of, 60-62, 64, 108-110; 
 boarding-out of, 197. 
 
 Pawnbrokers, 91. 
 
 Peabodv, Dr. Francis G., 371. 
 
 Pear, W. H., cited, 295. 
 
 Pennsylvania, hospital statistics of, 
 298-301; insane in, 318, 320; 
 provisions for feeble-minded in, 
 337, 338; subsidies to private 
 charities in, 400; appropriations 
 to public and private charities 
 in, 403. 
 
 Pennsyh^ania Aid Society, 271, 
 273 n. 
 
 Penology, college courses in, 19. 
 
 Pensions, to Civil War soldiers, 
 4 n. ; old-age, 356. 
 
 Perkins, G. W., cited, 135. 
 
 Peterson, Dr. Frederick, on systems 
 of treating insane, 332, 347. 
 
 Philadelphia, treatment of tramps 
 in, 250. 
 
 Physical defects as cause of pov- 
 erty, 46, 50. 
 
 Placing-out method of dealing with 
 dependent children, 286-292. 
 
 Plumbers, vital stati-stics of, 127. 
 
 Police, morals, 87, 89; mendi- 
 cancy, 252-253. 
 
 Police departments and courts, 
 359. 
 
 Political economists, theories of 
 English, concerning poor-relief, 
 10-15; views on factory legisla- 
 tion, 15-17; errors of, 18-19. 
 
 Politics in charitable work, 4, 292, 
 368-371, 426. 
 
 "Poor-doctors," 312. 
 
 Poorhouses. See Almshouses. 
 
 Poor-laws, English, reform of, 12- 
 15. 
 
 Pottery-makers, vital statistics of, 
 127, 129. 
 
 Pottery-making, disease from, 123 
 
 Poverty. -See Causes of poverty. 
 
 Powell," cited, 340. 
 
 Prevention, system of, 359-360.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 507 
 
 Printers, vital statistics of, 127, 
 130; child labor among, 136. 
 
 Prisoners' children, projected home 
 for, 395. 
 
 Private charities, defined, 377 ; 
 motives leading to, 377-378; 
 Roman Catholic, Hebrew, and 
 Protestant, 377-378; suggested 
 discontinuance of, by churches, 
 378-379 ; cooperation of churches 
 and Charity Organization So- 
 cieties, 379—380; social prestige a 
 motive for, 380-381 ; financier- 
 ing methods in, 381 ff . ; solicitors 
 for, 382; annual reports, circu- 
 lars, and periodicals, 383-384; 
 question of equal and just dis- 
 tribution of, 384; the Charities 
 Endorsement Committee, 385 ; 
 need of business-like methods in 
 bookkeeping, management, and 
 legitimate advertising, 385-386; 
 advantages of, over public chari- 
 ties, 386 ff. ; trust funds to be 
 accounted for, 387; fraud and 
 imposture to be detected, 387- 
 388; conditions for which best 
 fitted, as opposed to public 
 charities, 388; public subsidies 
 to, 399-419. 
 
 Probation system for drunkards, 
 351. 
 
 Professional men, vital statistics of, 
 127, 131. 
 
 Prostitutes in almshouses, 205, 220, 
 221. 
 
 Prostitution, 83, 84, 85-86; reme- 
 dial measures regarding, 86-90. 
 
 Protestants, charities of, 377-378; 
 rivalries of Catholics and, 409- 
 410. 
 
 Psvchopathic hospitals for insane, 
 332, 334. 
 
 Public charities, scope of the term, 
 364—365 ; principle governing, 
 365-366; advantages of public 
 support of institutions, 366-367 ; 
 disadvantages of public charity, 
 367-370; civil service system 
 and honor offices in, 370-372; 
 determination of claimants' 
 
 rights to, 372-374; centraliza- 
 tion of administration of, 374; 
 officials in charge of and em- 
 ploj'ees, 374-375 ; sununing up of 
 principles for administration of, 
 375-376; private charities vs., 
 386-388. 
 
 Q 
 
 Quarrymen, mortality figures of, 
 129; child labor among, 136. 
 
 R 
 
 Railway accidents, 118-120. 
 Ramazzini, work by, 122. 
 Reeder, R. R., on effect of institu- 
 tion life on children, 282, 283, 
 
 285, 286. 
 Reglementation of prostitutes, 86— 
 
 88. 
 Religion, and charities, 4-10, 377 ff. ; 
 
 influence of, regarding sanctity 
 
 of human life, 24. 
 Rent as a factor in causes of pov- 
 erty, 33-34. 
 Rentoul, cited, 305. 
 Rhode Island, hospital statistics 
 
 of, 298-300; insane in, 318. 
 Ricci, work by, cited, 9-10. 
 Richmond, Mary E., cited, 404, 
 
 430; diagram by, 446-448. 
 Riis Jacob, cited, 276. 
 Ritchie, cited, 23, 28, 103. 
 Roberts, Peter, 40. 
 Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, 
 
 New York City, 280 n. 
 Rome, charities in ancient, 4. 
 Rooney family, 81, 106-107. 
 Rousseau, on state care of children, 
 
 10. 
 Rowntree, B. S., work and studies 
 
 of, 40, 67, 117; cited, 67, 78; 
 
 influence in America of work of, 
 
 157. 
 Royaltv, influence of heredity on, 
 
 104-i05. 
 Rural nursing, 316. 
 Ruskin, John, 31. 
 Russell, Sir John, 16. 
 Russell Sage Foundation, 398.
 
 508 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Russia, railway accidents in, 119. 
 Ryan, John A., cited, 184. 
 
 S 
 
 St. Agatha Home, Brooklyn, 280 n. 
 
 St. John's Home, Brooklyn, 280 n. 
 
 St. Joseph's Asylum, New York 
 City, 280 n. 
 
 St. Joseph's Female Orphan Asy- 
 lum, Brooklyn, 280 n. 
 
 St. Joseph's Home, Peekskill, 280 n. 
 
 St. Malachy's Home, Brooklyn, 
 280 n. 
 
 Salaries of charity workers, 463- 
 464. 
 
 Saloonkeepers, vital statistics of, 
 126. 
 
 Sanborn, F. B., cited, 228, 330; 
 quoted, 327. 
 
 San Francisco, study of almshouse 
 women in, 60 n., 91, 211-212; 
 almshouse conditions in, 216; 
 partisan politics interferes with 
 management of almshouse at, 
 369. 
 
 Savage, Dr., quoted, 309. 
 
 Scandinavia, state relief work in, 
 8. 
 
 Schools, backward and abnormal 
 children in public, 344-346. 
 
 Scotland, boarding-out of insane 
 in, 329. 
 
 Seclusion of insane, 326. 
 
 Sectarian and non-sectarian insti- 
 tutions, 409-410. 
 
 Segregation, of defectives and 
 dependents, 30-31 ; of feeble- 
 minded adults, 342-343. 
 
 Seguin and Johnson, cited, 340. 
 
 Selection, improvement of human 
 race by, 20 ff. 
 
 Seligman, E. R., quoted, 14, 34, 117. 
 
 Senior, Professor, 12, 15, 19. 
 
 Settlement laws, 372-374. 
 
 Sexual instinct, use and abuse of, 
 22. 
 
 Sexual licentiousness, 81. See Im- 
 morality. 
 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of, cited, 322. 
 
 Sharp, Dr. H. C, 29. 
 
 Sherwell, cited, 78. 
 
 Shiftlessness as cause of poverty, 
 
 44, 45, 46, 91-92. 
 Shoemakers, vital statistics of, 
 
 126, 127, 129, 130. 
 Shopkeepers, vital statistics of, 
 
 127, 131. 
 
 Sickness, as cause of poverty, 43, 
 44, 45, 46 ; among negroes, 59. 
 
 Sign language, proposed abandon- 
 ment of, to certain extent, 28. 
 
 Simons, A. F., 45 n. 
 
 Single-taxers' theory of cause of 
 poverty, 33-34. 
 
 Sisters, Catholic, as nurses, 314. 
 
 Smith, Adam, 11. 
 
 Smith, R. Mayo-, cited, 42, 127. 
 
 Smith, Dr. Stephen, cited, 304, 305, 
 322. 
 
 Socialists, explanation of poverty 
 by, 34. 
 
 Societies for the Improvement of 
 the Condition of the Poor, 441- 
 442. 
 
 Sociology, departments of, in Amer- 
 ican colleges, 19. 
 
 Soldiers' Homes, evil results of 
 idleness in, 223. 
 
 Solicitors for charities, 382. 
 
 South Australia, railway accidents 
 in, 119. 
 
 South Carolina, hospital statistics 
 of, 298, 300; insane in, 318. 
 
 South Dakota, hospital statistics of, 
 298; insane in, 319; provisions 
 for feeble-minded in, 338. 
 
 Spain, railway accidents in, 119. 
 
 Sparling, S. E., cited, 430. 
 
 Speculation, 91. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 11, 20. 
 
 Spratling, Dr. W. P., cited, 347. 
 
 Standard of living in United States, 
 161 ff. 
 
 State Boards of Charities, 425 ff . 
 
 State Charities Aid Association, 
 New York, 404, 405, 433-435. 
 
 Sterilization of criminals, 29-30. 
 
 Stcuart, Sir James, 11. 
 
 Stewart, W. R., cited, 426. 
 
 Strahan, Dr., cited, 97. 
 
 Students in hospitals, 303-305.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 509 
 
 Subsidies, to hospitals, 299-301; 
 to private charities, 399 ff. ; argu- 
 ments for and against, 410 ff. 
 
 Supervision of cliarities, 387, 423- 
 436. 
 
 Sweatshops, children in, 140-141. 
 
 Sweden, railwa}' accidents in, 119. 
 
 Switzerland, railway accidents in, 
 119. 
 
 Syphilis, a legal bar to marriage, 29 ; 
 ravages of, 83. 
 
 Tailors, vital statistics of, 126, 127, 
 130. 
 
 Talmud, quotation from, 5. 
 
 Tasmania, railway accidents in, 
 118, 119. 
 
 Tatham, Dr. John, cited, 128, 145. 
 
 Temper as cause of poverty, 43, 44. 
 
 Tenement-house Department, New 
 York, 186. 
 
 Tennessee, hospital statistics of, 
 298-300; insane in, 319. 
 
 Texas, hospital statistics of, 298- 
 300; insane in, 319. 
 
 Textile industries, disease among 
 employees in, 124. 
 
 Textile workers, vital statistics of, 
 127, 129; child labor among, 
 136. 
 
 Thurnam, Dr., on curability of the 
 insane, 331. 
 
 Tower, E., cited, 198. 
 
 Trades unions, 118. 
 
 Tramps, effect of premature labor 
 (child labor) on, 142; in alms- 
 houses, 205, 214, 220-221 ; world- 
 wide problem of, 246-247; num- 
 ber of, in United States, 247; 
 four ways of dealing with, 247- 
 250; programme presented for 
 dealing with, 251-252; municipal 
 lodging-houses for, 254^255; 
 reasons for, 256-257. See Un- 
 employed. 
 
 Trevelyan, Sir Charles, report by, 
 341. 
 
 Tuberculosis, as cause of defective 
 children, 98, 99, 100; prevalence 
 
 of, among laboring classes, 133- 
 134; caused by dusty occupa- 
 tions, 134-135; other causes of, 
 135; sanatoria for treating, 357. 
 
 Tucker, Frank, cited, 307. 
 
 Turgot, quotation from, 395. 
 
 U 
 
 Uhlhorn, J. G. W., cited, 377. 
 
 Unemploj^ed, classifications of, 245- 
 246; reasons for existence of, 
 256-257; methods of relief for, 
 257-262. 
 
 "Unemployed, The," Alden's, 262. 
 
 Unemployment, deterioration from, 
 92, 145-147. 
 
 Union Temporary Home, Phila- 
 delphia, 275. 
 
 United Hebrew Charities, 380. 
 
 United States, railway accidents in, 
 119. 
 
 Unpaid boards of officers, 370-371, 
 426, 460. 
 
 Unpaid visitors, 371. 
 
 Utah, hospital statistics of, 298, 
 300, 301; statistics of insane in, 
 319. 
 
 Vacant Lots Cultivation Associa- 
 tion, Philadelphia, 262. 
 
 Vagrancy, 246. 
 
 Vagrants in almshouses, 205, 214, 
 220-221. See Tramps. 
 
 Vendidad, quotation from, 5. 
 
 Venereal diseases, 29, 83-90; hos- 
 pitals for treatment of, 356. 
 
 Vermont, hospital statistics of, 298, 
 300; insane in, 318; subsidies to 
 private charities in, 400. 
 
 Victoria, railway accidents in, 118, 
 119. 
 
 Village plan for epileptics, 348. 
 
 Virginia, hospital statistics of, 
 298-300; insane in, 318; provi- 
 .sions for feeble-minded in, 338. 
 
 Visiting, friendly, 6, 371-372, 452- 
 453. 
 
 Visiting nurses, 314-316, 357.
 
 510 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Visitors, women, of almshouses, 
 213; boards of volunteer, 371. 
 
 Vital statistics of certain occupa- 
 tions, 126-137. 
 
 W 
 
 Wage, a fair-living, 184. 
 
 Wage-earners, economic value of, 
 115-117. 
 
 Walker, Francis A., quoted, 12. 
 
 Ward, cited, 91. 
 
 Warne, Frank J., quoted,- 145. 
 
 Warner, Amos, references to, 22- 
 23, 42, 75, 76. 
 
 Washington, State of, hospital 
 statistics of, 298, 300; insane 
 in, 319; provisions for feeble- 
 minded in, 338. 
 
 Watson, figures by, 132-133. 
 
 Wayfarers' Lodges, Boston and 
 Philadelphia, 250. 
 
 Weaver, Mr. and Mrs. P. L., work 
 of, in San Francisco almshouse, 
 216 n., 223; false charges against 
 and removal of, 369. 
 
 Weavers, vital statistics of, 126. 
 
 Webb, Sidney, quoted, 143. 
 
 Weismann, Professor, 21. 
 
 Weller, C. F., 45 n. 
 
 West Virginia, hospital statistics of, 
 298-300; insane in, 318; provi- 
 sions for feeble-minded in, 338. 
 
 White, Andrew D., cited, 325 n. 
 
 Willard Asylum, 327. 
 
 Willoughby, W. F., cited, 425. 
 
 Wilson, G. R., quoted, 74; cited, 
 80, 349, 350. 
 
 Wines, F. H., 101. 
 
 Wisconsin, hospital statistics of, 
 298-300; statistics of insane in, 
 319; care of insane in, 328-329; 
 provisions for feeble-minded in, 
 338; politics in public charities 
 
 ' of, 368-369. 
 
 Women, in San Francisco alms- 
 houses, 60 n., 91, 211-212, 216 n., 
 223; intemperance among, 69; 
 small number who are sexual per- 
 verts, 85; labor by, a cause of 
 degeneration, 144; homes for 
 feeble-minded and fallen, 353. 
 
 Woods, F. A., study in heredity of 
 royalty by, 103, 104-105. 
 
 Wood yards for unemployed, 254- 
 255. 
 
 Work test, in almshouses, 222-224 ; 
 applied to tramps, 250. 
 
 Wyoming, hospital statistics of, 
 298, 300; insane in, 319. 
 
 Yates, Governor, 369. 
 Yeggmen, 252. 
 
 York, Rowntree's studies in, 40, 
 157, 158-159, 188-189. 
 
 Zeller, Dr. George A., on restraint 
 and seclusion of the insane, 326- 
 327. 
 
 Zinc-workers, comparative mor- 
 tality of, 129. 
 
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