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That scarlet fever and measles are conveyed in the particles of skin, and for this reason vaseline and oil rubs, and plentiful airing and exposure to sun are required.

That in typhoid the stools are infectious, and form the danger point, and that that is the reason why typhoid patients should always be sent to the hospitals.

Such simple facts as these, with teaching in practical ways of boiling and burning, the disinfection of the hands, the clothing, the hair, and the discharges, are about all that one can do, in the homes of the poor, against infectious disease. Preventive measures, could they be al ways carried out, would be the soundest sense-to give rest; to place in the fresh air; to supply amply with good food; to remove from dangerous surroundings the individuals. who are seen to be running down, growing thin, losing vitality, and so preparing themselves for some infection which, could they have been kept in health, they would surely have resisted, but to which, enfeebled by under feeding, or excessive work, or bad air, they easily succumb.

In conclusion, I would say that the sick deem it of great importance that the visitor should not be in a hurry. The time of the visit may be short, but the visitor's manner should be free from every vestige of business-like haste. She need not talk much, but listen to the long account of symptoms without signs of abstraction. Patients love sympathy, and this they should have in full measure. However, to help them it should be a tonic and cheering sympathy, not the sentimental and enfeebling kind. Some beauty should be brought in to the sick room also as well as medical appliances and food. Flowers should be given, and pictures if this is possible.

In the case of chronic invalids

and old-incurable people-as many comforts and brightening gifts may be brought as one chooses. Soft pillows, head-rests, air cushions, rolling chairs, soft slippers, and gowns may be freely lavished. Too much. science is out of place with these patients. Let the old grandmother have her feather bed, and keep her head tied up in a flannel petticoat: and if a chronic patient prefers sauerkraut and bologna to the nicely made beef tea, let her have it.

One more word, I am thoroughly convinced that all persons intending to take up the care of the sick poor in their own homes should first take the complete training of a nurse.

HOUSING PROBLEM IN LONDON.

In London there is great opposition to the "block" dwelling in any form, and a description of New York's tenements always brings forth exclamations of horror from those who have the housing question at heart. This aversion to congre gate living is shared by those who work among the poor, and by the great mass of working people. Many philanthropic workers think that the block dwellings have a bad effect on the people socially and morally, but the chief objection is the crowding on space. It is frequently contended that the crowding on given areas has been and will be the cause of epidemics of such diseases where the germ of which can be transmitted by contaminated act. The absence of play space for young children, and their consequent confinement to living rooms,is greatly deprecated. The height of the buildings, and their tendency to shut off light and sunshine, is still another objection. This one has been recog nized by the Building Act, which prohibits the erection of a building, except within the isolated area of

the city, which exceeds in height the width of the street plus the sidewalk. Therefore, if an owner wanted to put up a tall building, he must leave an additional space in front, thus sacrificing the depth of the building.

The British workingman, in the main, detests blocks. To be sure, the block dwelling erected by the different companies and by the London County Council house a population of 200,000; but that is only a small part of London's millions, and it is frequently asserted that these buildings are tenanted only because the people can not find accommodation elsewhere. Probably there is no man on earth who is more conservative than the English laborer or artisan. He wants to live as his fathers did. He wants a house of his own, and his own front door. Just as the lord shuts himself up in his high-walled park, the workman wants his own "castle," away from the intrusion of other people.

As a result of that strong feeling, London is a mass of chimney-potted small cottages. In the more crowded sections, these cottages are sub-let and sub-let until often each room has its family. It is that sort of life that is demoralizing to a high degree, and which produces the frightful overcrowding and unsanitary conditions, which now perplex every one who has to deal either officially or sympathetically with the housing problem. To an extent that Americans can not understand, families are willing to live in a single room, often in the most wretched neighborhood, for which they pay a rent equal to that paid for land rented for business purposes. These people apparently won't leave, and hence there is in each of these congested quarters a keen local competition for rooms which would keep rents at fancy prices even if the land had not an extremely high value from its

proximity to the center of business life. Sanitary inspectors are practically powerless in the worst districts; because they know if people are turned out of one house for overcrowding they will, after, perhaps, a long and painful search, find a room in another house already filled to the limit. Hence many of the sanitary requirements can not be enforced. Clearances of slum areas as a whole in the minds of many people only aggravate the evil, for the people forced out of one slum overflow into nearby crowded streets and immediately create new slums. London, with its crowded crooked streets, back streets, alleys, and courts, many of which are completely concealed from the highways, offers a problem which is extremely perplexing; for while there is great unanimity in describing the conditions—indeed workers in the different parishes vie with each other in painting the evils in the darkest colors-there is an astonishing lack of settled opinion as to the best method of meeting the difficulties and of reaching some satisfactory solution of the problem which is daily growing more acute.

R. H.

The economic utility of a state board having supervision of all the state penal and charitable institutions appears strongly in the recently published biennial report of the Iowa Board of Control. Before the creation of the board the state was paying full retail prices for many articles purchased. As each institution was purchasing its own supplies independent of the others, and only for a month at a time, the amount of business was so small that manufacturers, jobbers, and wholesalers took little interest in the matter, and the large amount of business was divided. among many retailers, who reaped disproportionate profits. The board found out about what was required

for all the institutions; and then every item required for the thirteen under its direction for three months

was scheduled under appropriate heads, as groceries, hardware, drugs, dry-goods, etc., and copies sent to manufacturers and wholesalers, with invitations to bid for their supply.

As a result over four thousand bids were secured, and under keen competition the most favorable prices have been had. The board says that the saving to the state by purchasing in this manner has been so great that it has been able to increase the

quantity and secure a better quality of material, and furnish many articles to the institutions that with the former methods of purchasing goods could not have been procured. The large surplus to the credit of the Iowa state institutions, which was in excess of $100,000 at the close of the last fiscal year, is mainly due to these methods of purchasing supplies, and holding every person to a strict accountability who handles or uses the property of the state.Evening Post.

[Hon. L. G. Kinne, who is a member of the Iowa State Board of Control, in a paper at the Topeka Conference presented the argument in favor of a body with powers of this kind, while the Rev. S. G. Smith of St. Paul presented the reasons for preferring the Minnesota type, in which the State Board is an inspecting and advisory agency, but has no power of direction or control-ED.]

PRIVATE CHARITY IN INDIA.

The following is from a letter of Lord George Hamilton, Secretary

for India, addressed to Ambassador Choate, and by him forwarded to Mr. William E. Dodge, Chairman of the

Committee of One Hundred on
India Famine Relief. The letter
London, June 16, and says:
bears the date of the India office,
London, June 16, and says:

The Government of India has undertaken for years past the gen eral obligation of keeping the people alive when attacked by famine or scarcity of food. This task can only be performed wholesale. At the present moment there are nearly six million persons so maintained, who are located in camps and put upon works of utility when capable of work; otherwise they are supported in poorhouses and hospitals. So far as the expenditure upon this system of wholesale relief is concerned there is no lack of funds at present, and is no lack of funds at present, and should (which is improbable)

the

financial resources of the Government of India prove hereafter insufficient for these purposes, the Imperial treasury would come to their assistance.

But outside the defined sphere of government operations there is a vast field open to charity and private benevolence. From the very magnitude of the operations of the government, discrimination as to the special wants of individuals is almost impossible. During the last few weeks the famine camps have in certain districts been attacked by a virulent form of cholera and smallpox, and this combination of disease and famine so aggravates the situation as to baffle the supreme efforts of the government in its endeavors to mitigate suffering and save life.

It may be said without exag geration that the conditions now existing, and the scale on which government relief is found to be necessary, are in themselves the strongest proof of the need for charitable effort to supplement, both in money and by personal service, the work of the government. There is

the very large class of those-both men and women-who for reasons

of caste, or from self-respect, will submit to any privation rather than expose themselves to the inevitable publicity attending the receipt of government relief. There are also

the cases of the old and infirm, of patients in hospitals, of children and orphans with which it is specially difficult to deal officially. In this connection it should be remembered that the funds subscribed by private charity are administered by district committees, working in each locality, in which the non-official element largely predominates, and it is. I think, obvious that this nonofficial element makes the committees a more effective agency than any purely official one could be for dealing with the multifarious wants of individual sufferers.

I therefore trust that the Committee of One Hundred will in no way relax its efforts. Every subscriber in the United States may be certain that the money he gives will not be wasted or tend to reduce government expenditure, but that it will relieve cases of individual distress lying outside the field of the operations of the government, which would thus, but for his generosity, remain uncared for. for. In conclusion I would beg to be allowed to take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation of and gratitude for the sympathy and generosity shown by the people of the United States with India in the present crisis.

Harriet Stanton Blatch, in an article in the Evening Post, on some unperceived fallacies in popular beliefs, takes issue with the modern idea that the lines of work which women are taking up in these days. are really men's work, and that women are robbing men of their

proper industries. Fifty or a hundred years ago nearly every industry dealing with food or clothes was a domestic occupation, carried on by women at home. Most of these industries have now been monopolized by men. Hence, it is rather men. who have been encroaching on the sphere of women, than the reverse.

Equally unfounded, according to the writer, is the popular belief that women are rushing into gainful pursuits in such large number as to endanger the work of men. Although from 1870 to 1890 the gain of women workers was over forty per cent each decade, in proportion to the growth of population the gain was really only a little over three per cent in twenty years; that is to say, in 1890 about twelve per cent of the female population was employed in a wage-earning capacity, as against nine per cent in 1870.

Classified Advertisements. Advertisements under this head, two lines or more without display, 5 cents a line.

HE CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY

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 wife 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 support of the aged woman for whom appeal was recently made, and for whom provision has now been made: "Bar Harbor," $10; "A. M. C.," $2.

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CHARITIES

THE OFFICIAL ORGAN OF

THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK.

ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE NEW YORK, N. Y., POST-office.

Issued every Saturday. Five cents a copy. Subscription price, one dollar a year, in advance. Three dollars a hundred.

ADVERTISING RATES.

Classified advertisements, 5 cents a line, eight words to the line, agate measure. Display, 5 cents a line, 14 lines to the inch. Full page, 200 agate lines, $10. Half page, 100 agate lines, $5. Quarter page, 50 agate lines, $2.50. Special position, twenty-five per cent additional.

EDWARD T. DEVINE, Editor.

PUBLICATION OFFICE:
105 East 22d Street.

NEW YORK, JULY 7, 1900.

The University of Pennsylvania continues to give everincreasing attention to its special courses in social work, and the announcement of this department for the coming year will be of interest to all practical workers as well as to university specialists on these subjects. Besides the courses offered by the university instructors there will be a series of single lectures and a course of several lectures on selected topics to be given by, (1) prominent theologians who will treat of religious denominational history in the United States, and of practical reform work, institutional church work, etc. (2) Practical workers in charities and municipal organizations who will explain

details of their administration and discuss the problems arising in practical experience in social reform

movements.

**

The Boston Transcript has undertaken to publish each Saturday

evening a special department entitled The Common Weal. It is to be conducted by a settlement worker, and will present from week to week significant new developments, particularly in Boston, but also throughout the country and abroad, in effort for the improvement of social conditions. From the introductory article by Mr. Robert A. Woods we quote the following paragraphs:

The man in need of food and shelter has a claim as old as human history upon the man who has a home and abundance. But when those in need become numerous, and especially when their numbers are greatly swelled by "sturdy beggars," the individual householder finds himself seriously responsible to the public, if not to himself, to refuse to maintain the idle along with the distressed. The organization of charity is simply a combination of householders wishing to fulfil the ancient obligation of hospitality in spite of the horde of those who would abuse it.

With the passing of the simple home life and the simple form of industry of the old days disappeared, also, the old-time neighborhood circle in which persons of different sorts and conditions,living near together, joined with one another in common social, political, and religious interests. These different sorts and conditions of people are now so widely separated economically, educationally, racially, religiously, and even geographically, that the old neighborhood tie as a means for holding different sections. of society together has been effectually shattered. Therefore, just as it became necessary to organize relief giving, so it also became necessary, in districts whose social vitality was low, to organize the more refined way of assistance, encouragement,

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