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16

THIRTEENTH STATE CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES.

push ahead. The reason we are getting along more economically is because w have done a lot of weeding out, have persuaded some fellows to go to work have talked with them and encouraged them to try and better the condition, try to be somebody. There has been quite a change. It is jus possible too that some of those who found they could not procure all moved farther west. We have about thirteen or fourteen persons or families in this city that we give aid to in their homes all the year round.

We have a splendid county poorhouse and farm of one hundred and sixty acres, within one mile of the limits of the city. Our poorhouse is modern in every respect, built two years ago at an expense of about $20,000. The farm has been owned by the county over thirty-five years. The house is heated by steam, has sewerage and electric lights and telephone service. I had an agreeable experience in this connection a few evenings ago. I took an old lady of about seventy years of age out there. She was delighted and overcome with joy, to find such a nice clean and comfortable home. The tears streamed down her wrinkled cheeks with the delight of having a comfortable home during the long cold winter. The county pays the superintendent of the farm $60.00 per month, and the cities and different townships pay the county $2.00 per week for board and care for each person kept there by them. There are thirteen inmates now on the farm, mostly old ladies. Faribault has five there. There are three inmates that the county has to support, as they have no home or place they could claim as a home. To two old ladies in this city we pay $8.00 per month; they stay in their own home or with their people, as the home at the farm is repulsive to them. They have lived here for over forty-five years.

We had one experience here that may be of alue to you. About three years ago, at our annual school meeting, I asked the members of the Board of Education how many children there were in Faribault of school age who were not attending school. They could not answer the question, but it led them to appoint a truant officer. With the information which I was able to give, the officer and our efficient superintendent of schools found nearly one hundred children not going to school. Now they are all attending school regularly, getting an education which will make them more capable and orderly, and drawing their share of the public money from the State School Fund. I really believe there is not a child in Faribault of school age who is not enrolled and attending some of our schools, of which we have many. I think that relief agents, both public and private, come into possession of information on this question which should be made use of.

There is one thing I would like to have the state legislature do this coming winter. That is to pass some law giving the municipality relieving a poor person who has some property, a claim against the property at his death. People having property, have to be aided sometimes; they usually have unnatural children of other relatives. At the death of the person such relatives are quick to demand in court their legal share, paying nothing to the city or county for help supplied. We have had four cases of this kind in Faribault in the last five years. The present plan is unjust and there should be a law that would protect those who have furnished aid and not allow

all the property to go to parties who never gave a dollar of relief to their relatives in want.

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DISCUSSION.

DR. T. C. CLARK: Do I understand the allowance the poor receive at home is $2.00 a week?

MR. CONLIN: We pay less or more than $2.00, as needed. In the instance given permanent care was arranged for at that rate.

DR. CLARK: Have you any maximum amount that you do not go beyond?
MR. CONLIN: No sir, we give whatever we think is needed.

MR. C. E. FAULKNER, Supt. Washburn Home, Minneapolis: Can you get them taken care of at $8.00 a month?

MR. CONLIN: Yes sir, that is the regular rate at the poor farm.

MR. L. P. CASE, County Commissioner, Olmsted County: Have you had paupers who were paralyzed, perfectly helpless?

MR. CONLIN: Yes sir, we have one now who has to be turned in bed, and is likely to live many years. We pay the county at the rate of $100.00 a year, or $2.00 a week, $8.00 a month, for each person sent, whether easy or difficult to care for.

MR. FAULKNER: How are the sick poor cared for?

MR. CONLIN: We never had any sick except this man I have just spoken about. What sickness we have here in the city is attended to by our city physician; we pay him $300.00 a year. At the poor farm they have a County Physician, paid by the

visit.

DR. CLARK: What provision have you for contagious diseases?

MR. CONLIN: We have a pesthouse to take care of those who have diseases such as smallpox.

MR. JAGER, Agent State Public School Owatonna: Is this not a combination of the county and township systems? It seems to me it is. Do I understand that the townships sending poor to the almshouse have to support them?

MR. CONLIN: Yes sir, the cost of care is assessed against the township. DR. TOMLINSON: It seems to me this system we have heard described is a system of county care and township responsibility rather than township care.

MR. CONLIN: The County Auditor every year sends in a bill and it is paid. DR. CLARK: Is the $2.00 a week which you pay the per capita cost of keeping them?

MR. CONLIN:

That is what the county charges.

MR. H. C. WITHROW, Probation Officer, Duluth: I think there is a State law orbidding the giving of over $50.00 a year to a pauper.

DR. CLARK: No, that is not exactly the law. The poor are taken care of if it costs $10.00 a day. The law provides that no Commissioner shall extend outside relief to exceed $20.00 without reporting the case to the County Board; and then the Board can extend it to the amount of $50.00 a year, and if necessary they can go beyond that.

MR. CONLIN: You are talking from the County Commissioners' standpoint. In the city there is no limit at all.

MR. L. PFUND, County Commissioner, Norman County: In our county we have no poor farm. We pay all the way from $2.00 to $4.00 a week for the care of our poor; they are taken care of at the homes of farmers. The way it is in our county I think the county system much better than the township system.

DR. H. A. TOMLINSON, Superintendent of St. Peter State Hospital, St. Peter: I would like to say a word on the general subject. In the first place, it seems to me that in this, as with all other enterprises of like nature, the best results will be obtained from a combination of methods, selecting that which apparently meets all the conditions best. While the gentleman was speaking it seemed to me

that the plan which has been unconsciously followed in this county is really a good one. They started out with township care, but it really resulted in h county care with township responsibility; in other words, the responsibilty is and the care general, and it seems to me that such a system as that has a f many advantages, because it brings the responsibility home where it belo That is, it makes each locality responsible for the care of those among them t may need assistance, and in that way makes them more conscious of their relat to those people and their responsibility for their welfare, while at the same tim gives them the opportunity to take advantage of the facilities provided by county, for such care as cannot be provided locally. And that itself is a g advantage, because, the ordinary township has comparatively few people: require general care, and has not the facilities for giving it. When such an occas does arise the town would be very fortunate if, by applying to the county, the could get this care by paying for it. I think another advantage of the townsh care system is that it gives the people of the township a greater interest applying preventative measures so the necessity for relief may not arise.

Now, I would like to ask two questions in regard to the subject, because the have not been brought up at all. First, I would ask these gentlemen if they ere! thought there was any other standard from which to argue on this subject th that of its cost, any other standard than the money standard; that is the only of: I have heard discussed this morning. I have heard no description of how the people were cared for, the nature of the provision, how it was applied, whether met their needs, whether they were suitably cared for, whether their physical condition was properly provided for, whether or not they suffered unnecessarily or whether their physical welfare was properly looked after. Second, what de they mean by economy? Now, it has been my experience in work of this kind, the term economy is used when parsimony is meant, and while it is often said it is very easy to spend other people's money, I think it is equally true that it is very easy to be economical at the expense of somebody's else welfare. So far as my personal observation goes, even where the men in charge of these county institutions are kind-hearted men, and mean to do right, and think they are doing what is right, that if they had an appreciation of the actual conditions of the people in those buildings, their want of even ordinary consideration, I don't mean as to the food they are getting, but from the side of their life, from its mental aspect, the barrenness of their surroundings, the conditions could be very much improved.

Then another thing, this method of care has a further disadvantage in that it tends to perpetuate pauperism. Nothing is done to stimulate the man to do better, nothing is done to prepare him to be better; no appreciation of the fact that here is an individual who, if he were intelligently and properly cared for might again be made self-supporting. This, to my mind is the greatest criticism of the general system of care, that it simply looks at things purely from the standpoint of dollars and cents, simply considers those individuals as so many items of expense to the county, does not look after them from the humane aspect at all. By that I do not mean their vegetative existence; I mean that which considers the life of each individual, the needs of that life from the standpoint of what we call our necessities and what we may do for him in the proper spirit to stimulate him towards something better for himself.

MR. GUTRIDGE: In spite of the fact that in the township system there may be, without inquiry, better knowledge of the poor and of the cause of the distress, yet as a rule, I think the township system is open to serious objection. It is too small a unit for such work. If there is any considerable demand for aid the township cannot meet it at all. There have been striking examples of this fact in this state. Then in country townships, cases of want, even though requiring only a small amount of aid, do not come up often, and this leads to never being ready. Again the township system does not make room for the county physician. To say that there are no sick poor in a county the size of Rice, means simply that the sick poor are not receiving attention. As a rule the township system does not make use of the poorhouse. Of the twenty counties in this state having the township system of caring for the poor, only three, besides Rice, have poorhouses.

the re

THE WORKHOUSE.

the

MR. FRANK R. MCDONALD, SUPT. OF THE CITY WORKHOUSE, MINNEAPOLIS.

In presenting this paper I feel it impossible to give more than a glance at the subject. No other institution gives such opportunity to the student h of human nature as the workhouse. Its constantly passing panorama of lives, the daily entrance and egrees of what is known as the lower strata of society affords the student of sociology and criminology a boundless The field of study.

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Reform which in countless religious and civic movements is ever pressing its claims in American cities, appears to have stopped short of the penal institutions known as workhouses-the institutions in which the wrecks and refuse of humanity find haven.

Again, the workhouse is in a large measure an eleemosynary institution whose charities are boundless. The unfortunate old man. who stands alone in the world, the cripple without adequate means of support, the broken down old "crook" lost to all sense of manhood, all find their way to the workhouse, as certainly as sewerage finds the river. If these outcasts were the only types with which municipalities had to deal, the problem of their care would not be a difficult one, but the truth, as shown by carefully kept statistics, is that the great majority of the men who find themselves in workhouses, are neither senile old men, cripples, nor criminals, they are poor workingmen, who have taken the one glass too many. Of course there are the itinerant hoboes of whom little can be known, and the habitual drunkards, who have no other home than the silent cell of the workhouse.

With the honest men who still love life and the good things of earth, the possibilities for reformation are limitless, they do not belong to the irreclaimables whom Macaulay characterized as "men who could no more be tamed than the wild boar to feed out of the hand." No, these men still love wife and children, they meant no wrong and in very truth it may be said, their vices are nothing more than good qualities run wild.

The following statistics taken from the last annual report of the Minneapolis City Workhouse, indicate how enormously the ranks of workhouse prisoners are recruited from the drinking classes:

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They do not show, however, the great number of prisoners whose offences other than drunkenness, are indirectly traceable to liquor drinking, but from what information I can gather, those convicted for vagrancy and larceny might nearly all be added to the great army of 1556 committed for drunkenness.

Thus from the workhouse point of view, it is clear that intemperance in the use of intoxicants, is among the chief promoters of poverty and crime, and constitutes one of the greatest evils of civilization. Now, society not

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only has the right, it is its duty, to protect itself collectively and individually against this evil of evils. Such protection is of course not possible withou: just and efficient police regulation, hence, we have the workhouse, which is all that its name implies.

In determining what system of methods should be employed in a work house, seldom indeed is a single thought bestowed on morals or sentiment, only the harsh business of discipline and police regulation is considered. The dominant idea in most institutions of the kind under consideration is that to prevent disorder, or the encroachment of one man on the rights of another, it is only necessary to lock men up for ten, twenty or thirty days, and treat them like brutes, that they may "learn" a lesson. But the days of the Spanish inquisition are over. The heart of humanity in the twentieth century is awakened to the song of the brotherhood of man. It knows that men can be coerced through fear into compliance with rules, but it also knows that the deadened senses may be brought to life, and the love of life, and home, and better things, stimulated into action. Men cannot be reformed by harsh treatment, to mistreat them is the surest way in the world to engender hatred and resentment, and when they leave an institution where brutality and not kindness, is the watchword, they turn instinctively to drink again, with curses on their lips. Their hands are thus in a measure raised against law, for a man is never in a more dangerous frame of mind than when he feels that a great injustice has been done to him by the law. The habits of men can be regulated only in a very limited degree by statute. Legislative enactments cannot make men moral, or enable them to see clearly the folly of their ways. The enforcements of stringent laws against intemperance, produces results the opposite of those intended. Men would still drink if the punishment were far more severe, because they never intend to get drunk and helpless. There is always the foolish hope and blind confidence, that they will not get wholly beyond control, hence any attempt to reform men by law is farcical, for it is not possible to compel obedience to law as long as there are the disposition and ability to resist or evade it.

There must be stern repressive measures for dealing with the purely police side of intemperance, but it is the purpose of the present paper to consider the reformatory methods possible in the workhouse of a great city It is a glorious field for the man with strong humanitarian views, as he sees the daily group of offenders brought to his prison doors and learns their names and avocations and why they were sent to him. There is no depth of tenderness in the human heart that pity does not touch, and his hope must be that some day philanthropists, reformers, sociologists, and all others interested in lifting up the fallen, will glance toward the workhouse and there find a limitless field for their benevolence.

THE SUPERINTENDENT.

Unfortunately for all concerned, both society and the inmates, superintendents of workhouses are not always chosen because of their fitness for the position, and too often the best "ward heeler;” irrespective of his capacity to deal with the peculiar and diversified conditions, is

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