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The Official Organ of the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York.

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A few days ago I attended a state conference of charities in the city of Albany, and I could not help draw ing a comparison between to-day and twenty-five years ago. Here were gathered people of every shade of opinion both in religion and in charity, many with strong prejudices, others with most radical ideas on all subjects discussed there, and yet it might be called a veritable lovefeast, so free from any friction or unpleasantness were these three days' sessions.

During the entire time no remark was made to offend the most sensitive. Systems and methods were discussed with the utmost freedom but there was that respect for each other's opinions underlying the remarks of all, which gave evidence

No. 27.

that the workers in the field of char

ity were practising towards each other the virtue of which they were the exponents.

These most beneficial results have been accomplished in the past twenty years largely through meetings of this kind, national, state, or city, and in the state of New York I may say that the greatest credit for this work is due to the Charity Organization Society. New York city, like every other large community, had innumerable associations of charity, largely connected with churches. These organizations were a boon to the professional and unprincipled beggars, who were up for sale and who swelled the list of accessions in many of the church reports, at so much per head.

I think it was Miss Richmond who said, at one of the national conferences, that if "you buy a Christian, you get a bad bargain," and there is no doubt that many bad bargains were obtained in those days of financial prosperity for the unworthy poor. The Charity Organization Society, by giving a common ground upon which all could meet, opened the way to co-operation in the work, and, though it required some time. to bring people closely together, the result has amply repaid the time and labor expended.

Co-operation to be effective must. be cordial, sincere, and candid. If one is so strongly wedded to his religious prejudices that he can not meet those, who differ with him, on a friendly footing and work earnestly

with them, then it is better not to begin at all.. It requires no compromise of principle, no surrender of religious conviction. The platform The platform of charity is broad enough for Hebrew, Protestant, and Catholic to meet upon and work together for the amelioration of God's poor. We are no less earnest in adherence to our particular belief because we work with those of other creeds for the common good. The man or woman who is earnesly religious can not be a bigot. We must not mistake bigotry for sincerity. A serious blow to co-operation has been given, at times, by people of this stamp, and progress in truly intelligent charitable work has received a setback in some localities, from which it has with difficulty recovered.

In New York city, I feel, we have come nearer to the solution of this problem than in any other place in the United States. Of course, we occasionally have indiscreet or overzealous people, who make trouble, but the willingness shown by every worker in the Charity Organization Society to rectify such mistakes, makes one feel that the American spirit of fair play will ever assert itself when occasion demands.

A subject of this kind is so fascinating that one is tempted to dwell longer than charity towards his hearers would allow, so I must run on to another point on which I am expected to say something; namely, the need of religious influence in charitable work.

The other day, at Albany, Mr. Glenn, the president of the national conference of charities, remarked. that the same problems which were being discussed to-day were being discussed forty or fifty years ago. In looking over the recently-printed

life of St. Vincent de Paul, by Bishop Bougaud, which gives a most fascinating and clear account of the times in which he lived, I find that though born in the latter part of the sixteenth century and organizing his great charitable work in the early part of the seventeenth, he worked on precisely the same lines as do all charitable societies to-day. He did not believe in indiscriminate almsgiving, was opposed to relief without investigation, and against begging on the streets. He organized

works similar to the settlements and clubs of to-day and instituted the system of friendly visitors, just as we have them.

His influence has been most potent in the field of charity, and it was on the lines drawn by him that Frederic Ozanam organized the Society of St. Vincent de Paul which to-day has branches all over the world, with an active membership of 95,000, and 100,000 honorary members. The corner-stone of the work of St. Vincent de Paul was religious influence. Ozanam's followers in the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, after years of practical experience, are stronger believers than ever in his principles.

I do not believe that any permanent cure can be effected without religion. religion. I believe that each religious denomination should be left to care for its own poor in its own way, and in this opinion I am upheld not only by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, but by the principles of the charity organization societies. Every person, no matter what his religion, will be the better for the practice of that religion.

I do not think my experience is unique when I say that it shows that the greater part of the poor are not practical in their religion. Expe

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Do not think I would have you infer that these people were not worthy because they were irreligious or careless. Constant struggle with poverty made them despair, and the bitter thought that no one cared for them made them indifferent. This is why our society makes it a duty of its members personally to visit the poor in their houses, at least once each week, to give them not only the alms of bread but also the alms of good advice.

The great Frederic Ozanam would always enter the houses of the poor with hat in hand so deep was his respect for these afflicted ones. In one of his eloquent discourses he says: "Help is humiliating when it appeals to men from below, taking heed to their material wants only, paying attention to those of the flesh, to the cry of hunger and cold, to what excites pity, to what one succors even in the beast. It humiliates when there is no reciprocity, when you give the poor man nothing but bread and clothes or a bundle of straw; what, in fact, there is no likelihood of his ever giving you in return. But it honors when it appeals to him from above, when it occupies itself with his soul, with

his religious, moral, and political education, with all that emancipates him from his passions and from a portion of his wants, with those things that make him free and make him great.

"Help honors when to the bread that nourishes it adds the visit that consoles, the advice that enlightens, the friendly shake of the hand that lifts up the sinking courage; when it treats the poor man with respect not only as an equal but as a superior, since he is the messenger of God to us, sent to prove our justice and our charity, and to save us by our works.

"Help, then, becomes honorable because it may become mutual, because every man that gives a good advice, a kind work, a consolation to-day, may to-morrow stand himself in need of a kind word, advice, and consolation; because the hand that you clasp, clasps yours in return, because that indigent family you love, loves you in return, and will have largely acquitted themselves towards you when the old man, the mothers, and the little children shall have prayed for you.

"Do you suppose you pay the priest to whom the state gives a hundred crowns a year to be the father, the schoolmaster, the comforter of the poor village lost in the mountains, or the soldier who gets five sous a year to die under the flag? Why, the soldier gives the alms of his blood to the country, and the priest of his words, his thoughts, his heart! Don't tell me, then, that I humiliate the poor man when I treat him as I treat the priest who blesses, and the soldier who dies for me!

"Alms are the retribution of services that have no salary. And let no one say that in treating poverty

as a priesthood, we aim at perpetuating it. The same authority that tells us we shall always have the poor with us is also the authority that tells us to do all we can that there may cease to be any. When you dread so much to lay an obligation on him who accepts your alms, I fear it is because you have never experienced the obligation it confers on him who gives."

Your experience, I am sure, is the same; that the poor respond most cordially to your advances and give you their confidence when you enter into your work with a truly religious spirit. The spiritual work, the uplifting work, the making of the poor self-dependent, and of preserving their self-respect is the most important work. If the dispensing of charity were to consist merely of the doling out of bread and clothing, just to keep life in their bodies, then I would say, better for the children of the poor to starve and die in their miserable hovels than to grow up full of bitterness, a menace to society and of no benefit to themselves.

The great thing to be avoided in modern philanthropic work, to my mind, is the tendency to secularize charity. If we create wants among the poor which can not be satisfied and neglect the restraining influence of religion to make them reconciled. to what they must endure, we are creating a spirit of unrest among them, which, if allowed to grow, will endanger the future of society.

We have just emerged from a heated political canvass-probably in no other campaign were the lines between rich and poor more closely drawn and certainly in no other country could such a spectacle be witnessed, a peaceful conflict and the ready acquiescence of all in the re

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The forty-fifth annual meeting of the board of governors of the New York State State Women's Hospital,

Fiftieth street and Fourth avenue, was held at the home of Mrs. Robert W. de Forest, 7 Washington Square, North, on November 22. Mr. John E. Parsons opened the meeting with the annual report of the board of governors, in which he said that 881 indoor patients have been treated during the year, 301 of which were free. There were 4,187 out-door patients and 9.763 consultations. Mr. Parsons reported many gifts during the year, among them that of Mrs. Frederick F. Thompson, the former treasurer, who has already given $50,000, and who, when the requisite $400,000 is secured for the new building, will contribute a home. for nurses to cost $150,000.

THE CARE OF DEPENDENT CHILDREN.

Rev. Thomas L. Kinkead, D. D., chairman of the committee on the care of defective, dependent, delinquent, and neglected children, presented the report of his committee to the First New York Conference of Charities and Correction, in session at Albany, N. Y., on Wednesday evening, November 21.

between the beginning of the agitation for a change and its actual accomplishment, showing how slowly necessary reforms are effected, but how inevitably they come when persistent truth and evidence are kept in the forefront of public thought.

The transfer of children supported by the public from the almshouse to private families or private institutions under a system of contract for their support was a great step

An extract from the report is forward, and the system was found given below:

"We should confine ourselves in the study of this question chiefly to our own state, because it concerns us most and offers better opportunity to make our conclusions practical and effective. From the earliest date for which we have reliable data, dependent children in the state were cared for, at public expense, in the following ways: In the almshouse, where they were common tenants with the unfortunate of every type; or in a separate department of the almshouse in quarters provided under almshouse management; or in county houses, in buildings separated from the almshouse in locality and management. With these were coupled a loose placing-out system, with or without indenture, and some were boarded out. These methods were so crude and disastrous to the welfare of the children that we may say, that the management of children by municipal and local authorities proved a failure.

Thanks to the earnest efforts of the State Board of Charities, seconded by the State Charities Aid Association, a determined legislature, and an aroused public sentiment, a great change was effected about the beginning of the past quarter of a century. Some ten years elapsed

so convenient and advantageous that it has endured to the present. It has many strong advocates and not a few equally ardent opponents.

We will not enter into the merits of the various systems of providing for dependent children. Yet a question of policy, though it is merely a question, presents itself here. Should we raise the standard of our charitable institutions so high that they become desirable in the eyes of parents, and that children in them have advantages over other children, or should we keep them at a grade so low that they will be sought only in extreme necessity?

In

To the mind of your committee, the paramount issue in child-saving work at present is the preservation. and purification of the home. these days, when family ties are weakening and powerful influences are drawing people away from home life, every effort should be made to strengthen home ties. Parents should not be released from the duty of supporting their children unless it be really necessary. Charity should not encourage inordinate greed or improvidence.

We recommend more stringent laws, or the better enforcement of those already existing, in reference to the abandonment of children by

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