partly because modern charity requires so much effort and labor that it finds followers slowly.

we

In considering relief, the sharp distinction between the two classes of poverty, voluntary and involuntary, should never for a moment be lost sight of. I often wish had two different words for the poor, for to use the same word for the voluntary and involuntary poverty leads to false thinking. There is the poverty of indolence and intemperance. Such poor are poor by choice and can end their poverty unaided if they will. The poverty of ignorance and inefficiency is also to a large extent voluntary. On the other hand, the poverty caused by strikes, accident, sickness and old age, even though thrift might have made provision for it, is to a large extent involuntary. We must investigate always if we wish to give to the greatest need instead of to the loudest cry, cry, but, as Miss Richmond says, "The object of investigation is not to find the poor out but to find out how to help them."

A man who has had large experience defines pauperism as "poverty plus charity." He should have said "poverty plus alms," for the word charity means nothing more nor less than love, and wise love never pauperizes. A wise mother knows when not to give to her crying child as well as when to give. There is no positive virtue however in the not giving. The virtue lies in giving, but as has been said, in giving yourself. In an English book Miss Dendy, now Mrs. Bosanquet, has well said that there are many so-called charitable societies which spend vast sums of money in gathering about them great crowds of indolent, worthless loafers whose one hope of regeneration lies in the very spur of hunger which the devoted men and women

in these societies are laboring night and day to remove.

If a man sets his own barn on fire his neighbors will not do much to relieve his poverty and help him to rebuild. They may even arrest him instead, for fire is dangerous to the community and often spreads like a pestilence. Fire is not more dangerous, however, or more contagious, than pauperism, for a willingness to ask for alms runs from room to room in a tenement and from house to house in a street; and kills character wherever it goes. Wilful, deliberate poverty must be pun

ished rather than assisted.

Suppose, however, that a man's house burns without his fault. His neighbors will toil with him to build a new one, or will give generously for the same end, but the man himself must work and supplement their effort with the best of his own ability.

It is not to be assumed, however, that all houses which take fire must burn down. Wise towns have fire departments to quench the flame, and the wisest of all enact and also enforce building regulations, which do much to prevent fires. This fire department may represent the trained skill of a charity organization society which seeks to check pauperism before character is destroyed, and it is not a fair criticism either of the fire engine or of the society, that to bring it to the fire costs more than all the water poured upon the flames. It does not cost more than the building which is saved, or than the manhood which is restored. Water costs little, but it keeps the fire from finding more fuel. Modern charity gives little, but it keeps willing poverty from finding more alms.

If we follow this metaphor to the end, we shall find that the wisest charity of all is represented by the building regulations which prevent fire from spreading. Do not let

poor buildings or poor people be crowded too closely together. Remember that it is easier and cheaper to build a house or to train a child right than to put out a fire or to check vice after it has made headway. An ounce of prevention is worth tons of cure. The patient, far-seeing preventive charity which uses the school and church to lift character, and which studies causes in order to abolish pauperism by removing the conditions which produce it, is wiser and more effective than any charity of relief; and the charity of alms, especially of indiscriminate alms, is now generally admitted to be dangerous, debasing, and lazy. Wise charity is not lazy; it requires so much effort that it finds followers slowly; it requires you to give more, not less. You must give yourself.

We must, of course, have all three alms, charity, and the substitutes for charity which are now engaging so much attention. We must have alms for the hungry and naked, though with the ordinary giver it is

be proud of her fever hospitals as of having purified the Chicago river which caused the fever.

Questions of strikes, lock-outs, and the hours of labor, of tenementhouses, sweat-shops, and the conditions of factory life, touch poverty at the very root. Even the issues of the tariff, of currency, and of civil service reform bear upon the problem of poverty. A good municipal government is apt to mean good schools and clean streets, and to increase education and decrease disease is to hit two body blows at poverty.

The St. Vincent de Paul Society. has issued a short statement of its work for the year past. There are now sixty-five conferences in as many parishes, with a total membership of 1,125 members; 7,087 families, consisting of 45,508 persons, have been relieved, at an expenditure of $49,829, and 41,278 visits have been made. The special departments of the society's work are the boys' clubs, the employment bureau, the Catholic Home Bureau, and the fresh-air work.

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It is not so desirable to have good military hospitals as to abolish war. Chicago has not so much reason to

SOCIETY

HE CHARITY ORGANIZATION renews its appeals for a monthly pension of $8 to pay rent for a widow with four children, all too young to contribute to the family support. She is industrious and does all she can, but is crippled by personal sickness and sickness in her family. She has no help from relatives for all are as poor as she.

For $150 wherewith to provide for the pressing needs of an aged couple. They are respectable and well educated. The man is too old to work at his profession and his wite is paralyzed.

For $60 to provide shelter for an old woman whom age and illness have incapacitated from work, but who until recently supported herself. She has no relatives able to help her.

Any money for these cases sent to the Charity Organization Society, 105 East 22d Street, will be duly and publicly acknowledged.

The society acknowledges the following contributions for the widow with four children, and the aged couple mentioned above: "Cash," $15; N. Witherell and Mrs. William C. Schermerhorn, $10 each; "Highland Falls" and "Omega," $2 each; J. Gould's Son & Co., $1.

CHARITIES

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NEW YORK, JULY 14, 1900.

The Quarterly Record for June, 1900, published by the State Board of Charities, devotes about one hundred pages to an exhaustive review by Mr. W. R. Stewart, President of the Board, on the subject of state inspection of private charitable institutions, societies, and associations. The paper traces the history of the legislation of the state of New York since the establishment of the State Board in 1867. President Stewart points out that the immediate effect of the decision of the Court of Ap peals is to destroy the system of state inspection of all private charitable institutions not in receipt of public money, a system which "has been the growth of a generation, built stone by stone, in a series of clearly expressed statutes, and capped by the Charities Article of the Constitution and the State Charities Law."

In obedience to the judgment of

the Court, the State Board has discontinued inspection of 663 private charitable institutions having 57,571 inmates and over a half-million beneficiaries of various kinds. The publication of the Directory of charitable institutions is to be suspended, the Board possessing no further power to require reports from the 663 private charities receiving no public money. This is more than half of all of the charitable agencies hitherto visited and inspected by the Board. Referring to these farreaching effects of the decision, Mr. Stewart says:

"All of the inmates or beneficiaries of these several hundred institutions are now are now without the protection which State inspection has afforded them in the past. There is now no regularly constituted department of the State government having authority to visit and inspect any of them, investigate their management where necessary, or, through the order of the Supreme Court, to correct abuses and enforce remedies. Must not this condition be regarded as a public calamity? .

No important question can be regarded as definitely settled in our age and land until it has been settled for the best interests of the people. The hands of the clock may be set back, but this does not stay the flight of time.

The great question of the proper relation of the State to all charitable institutions, societies or associations, and their inmates or beneficiaries, has yet to be tried in the enlight

In the Arena Quarterly, June, 1900, appears an. article by Hon. J. W. Keller on "Pauperism and Municipal Charities." He advocates the centralization in Blackwell's and Randall's Islands of all of the charitable work in the city and the doing away of the borough system. Only emergency hospitals are necessary, he thinks, outside Blackwell's and Randall's Islands. The history of the reform of the Charities Department is traced and all of these forward steps are declared to be "the result of successive years of study by persons interested in the general subject of charities, and particularly by those interested in the distribution of public moneys for the relief of the destitute."

In considering the evil of the lack of discrimination of classes in the almshouse, Mr. Keller suggests a modification of the old-age pension scheme. The German insurance plan does not seem to him satisfactory, in that it entails the giving up of wages when money may be most needed; and the New Zealand oldage pension plan involves the danger of paralyzing the efforts of men

when they ought to be making provision for the future. Mr. Keller's plan is that a person of stipulated age, who can prove that his distress is due to conditions which interfered with his sharing in the legitimate results of his own labor for the general prosperity, should be entitled to a dividend from the public treasury.

Mr. Keller recommends classification of inmates in the almshouse, deploring that "there is no dividing line between cleanliness. and uncleanliness." We believe that public sentiment would sustain the Commissioner in changing this state of affairs at once.

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The report for the third quarter of its fiscal year of the Cooper Union Labor Bureau, under the management of the New York Association for the Improving the Condition of the Poor, contains some suggestive features. It has registered in the three months from April 1 to June 30, 623 men, 200 less than in the previous quarter. Two hundred and seventy-seven of this number had satisfactory references, and 224 unsatisfactory. Eighty-two applications from employers were received, and of these many were inquiries regarding farm laborers and useful men on gentlemen's country places. Bureau was unable to do anything with reference to these inquiries, as only seven farmers applied, and for various reasons no one of them seemed eligible. Fifty of the eightytwo applications from employers

The

were filled, an increase of seventeen over the last quarter.

a

One of the examples of unreasonable demand on the part of employers is both pathetic and amusing. It was for a stableman to care for twenty horses, keep the stalls clean, learn from an old employé the care of sick horses (to save the expense of a veterinary), the hours being from four in the morning until eight at night, with two hours for meals. For this work, sixteen hours day, seven days in the week, he would receive $7 a week. We moralize somewhat nowadays to the disadvantage of the work-seekers, because of the disproportion of men. seeking work in fields of work that are already over supplied to those who seek work in a field-for example farming-in which the supply is not equal to the demand; but such a demand as that instanced constitutes some excuse for the indisposition on the part of workless men in the city to seek work in the country.

It is interesting to note in the schedule given the trades and occupations of applicants, as compared with the kinds of labor wanted by employers, the occupations of men. placed, and the ages of applicants as compared with the ages of those placed. Among the applicants were 29 bookkeepers, 41 office boys, 79 office clerks, 19 shipping clerks, 56 drivers, 24 laborers, and 60 porters. There were 22 applications from employers for porters, 5 for bookkeepers, 5 for office clerks, 6 for elevator men, 7 for useful men.

From the table given of trades and occupations of men placed it appears that every application for bookapplications for office boys, all of keepers was supplied, 4 of the 7 the applications for carpenters, 4 of the 5 applications for office clerks, 13 of the 22 applications for porters, and 5 of the 7 applications for useful men-a good showing for the efficiency of the Bureau in its relation to the employers who sought its help.

As bearing upon the question of the age of applicants in relation to the possibility of securing work, one man of 65 years of age applied, and was placed; 4 each at 59, 54, and 52; 14 at 45; 15 at 40; 8 at 39; 10 at 38; 12 at 35; 17 each at 31 and 30. Of those placed, 5 were 28 years old, and only I man each of any age greater than 28 was placed.

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Dr. G. Hudson Makuen, in his presidential address. address before the Academy of Medicine, called attention to the increase of crime, pauperism, and mental deficiency, and said that the causes of this increase are the non-uniform progress of civilization and the attraction by the natural resources of the country for foreigners of all conditions of physical and mental depravity. He noted also to the evils of promiscuous almsgiving and dispensary service, as well as of institu tionalism in the care and treatment of the defective, dependent, and delinquent classes, and advocated restricted immigration, more stringent marriage laws, and,-in carefully selected cases, the entire removal of the power of procreation, also careful education, the object of which should be not so much the acquirement of knowledgment as the de velopment of character and brain

power.