Many persons are relieved at the city expense who have no legal claims upon it; but, on the other hand, many States and towns elsewhere are burdened with the support of persons properly belonging to New York.

In order to apportion more equitably the onus of supporting such persons, and to facilitate their return to their proper places of settlement in the State of New York, an act was passed in 1873, and subsequently amended, which enables the State Board of Charities to contract for the reception and support of state paupers. County judges, justices of the peace, police justices, and county superintendents of the poor, are ordered to commit such persons to the State Almshouse, where they will be under the charge of the State Board of Charities; and the costs of removal certified by the State Board are paid by the State. Such paupers may be forwarded to any state or county where a legal settlement or friends may be found for them, if it is thought desirable to do so. Under this law arrangements were made for the transfer of such cases to the State Almshouse at Flatbush, L.I.; and from May 12, 1877, when the first commitment from New York County was made, to April 30 of the current year, 67 State paupers have been sent there. The system thus initiated can be made to produce very excellent results.

The part taken by the Commissioners of Emigration in outdoor relief varies considerably from year to year; not only is the number under their control constantly fluctuating, but their actual power to levy charges on the steamship companies for their expenses has been denied. The number of steerage passengers landed in New York in 1877 was 63,850, of whom 24,892 reported the State of New York as their destination, and 10,314 of this number obtained employment mainly in the city of New York. During the winter months about 125 persons per diem are temporarily lodged and provided with meals at Castle Garden while seeking employment; and rather more than $2,000 was expended in food in this way last year.

II. (a) With respect to the city: Able-bodied persons are not by law entitled to relief, unless they come under the category of tramps, vagrants, and so forth, in which case they are subject to correctional and punitive treatment; an exceptional form of relief, which, by a judicious organization of labor, might be made. beneficial to the recipients, and less expensive to the tax-payers, and which ought to be sufficiently disagreeable and disciplinary

to prevent persons from voluntarily applying for it. Nevertheless many of the persons in the workhouse and other correctional institutions are self-committed; they apply to the commissioners for relief, and are willing and desirous to be so committed, the period of such committal being from three to twelve months. Magistrates have the same powers of committing as vagrants any persons applying for relief.

The definition of these "vagrants" (who figure largely under the head of out-door relief in New York) is as follows: "All idle persons, who, not having visible means to maintain themselves, live without employment; all persons wandering abroad, and lodging in taverns, groceries, beer-houses, out-houses, marketplaces, sheds, or barns, or in the open air, and not giving a good account of themselves; all persons wandering abroad and begging, or who go about from door to door, or place themselves in the streets, highways, passages, or other public places, to beg or receive alms."

The commissioners are empowered by statute to give useful employment to these persons on their premises, or in such mechanical or other labor as may be found to suit their capacity, or to provide employment by contract, provided no competition or conflict be caused with any mechanical or other employment pursued by the people of the State. Here may be noticed the embryo of one of the difficulties in dealing with relief measures by municipal authority, the supposed antagonism between free and enforced labor. A full discussion on this question by persons who have had the opportunity of studying it would probably remove much of the prejudice and misunderstanding which now exists about it. It is obviously wrong to maintain persons in reformatory or correctional establishments without employment; and it is impossible to look for improvement in the present or future condition of those under such control, unless healthy and useful labor be provided for them. To keep such persons idle is an injury to them, and a crime against the State. Even in giving out-door relief the principle of obtaining some return, some quid pro quo, is of importance, and should be insisted upon. There is no reason why persons assisted at others' expense should be the only ones exempted from the common lot of humanity, -the obligation of labor; and it is only in this way that self-respect can be maintained in the individual.

It will be observed that the city and county of New York have constantly been exempted from the operation of general laws on

the subject of the support of the poor, the distribution of the excise fund, and many other matters. As an illustration of this, Gov. Robinson stated in his last annual message that within twenty years over twenty-four hundred bills, dealing with the municipal government, had been introduced into the legislative assembly.

It may also be remarked as a feature of the present city organization, that the lines dividing the different departments are drawn with a distinctness and rigidity which increase the difficulty of remedying such defects as may be found in the practical working of the system. Thus the Police Board, the Commissioners of Charities and Correction, and the Board of Health, each with separate functions and privileges, work in entire independence of, and sometimes in antagonism to, one another. The recent laudable efforts of the mayor to bring together the heads of different departments in monthly consultative conferences failed, mainly for want of one central governing power to overrule or harmonize differences in the mode of executing and improving necessary details of city economy.

The manner in which relief may be given by the city, either indirectly through the different institutions, or directly to the poor personally, is accordingly regulated by special laws. The Commissioners of Charities and Correction have entire control and charge of the public hospitals, prisons, and asylums—an enormous charge; the actual number of inmates on Dec. 31, 1877, having been 10,770, of whom nearly one-half were permanent or chronic cases. In the same year the total number received and taken charge of by the Commissioners was 60,163: viz., in prisons and work-houses, 37,587; hospitals, 19,247; asylums, 3,329. Of the out-door poor, 5,416 families received coal; $20,000 were distributed among 400 adult blind persons; and 97,752 patients were treated by the Bureau of Medical and Surgical Relief.

Another department of the city government, the Police Board, deals with the migratory class of generally worthless poor, who from various causes congregate every winter in New York in extraordinarily large numbers. Those absolutely homeless gravitate to the police-stations, and find a nightly shelter on the crowded. floors of the different precincts.

In 1876-7 a successful effort was made to do something for the hundreds of persons who from accidental destitution, or no known fault of their own, were forced to associate with the dregs of humanity in these station-houses. By providing a decent lodging for

the more worthy, it was thought that the police would have less difficulty in dealing with the profligate and idle, the regular vagrants and mendicants. The experiment proved satisfactory, the number of station-house lodgers having fallen from 78,888 in the first quarter of 1876, to 28,021 in 1877; the number of lodgings otherwise provided under private supervision, but at the expense of the city, being 27,028. These figures show how great an effect the existence of the refuge had exerted in diminishing the abuse of the station-houses. On the other hand, the arrests for vagrancy during the same period were more than doubled, there being 1,123 in 1877, as against 548 in 1876, this class having as a rule been excluded from the station-house lodgings on pain of arrest.

No such provision for sifting the applicants for nightly shelter was made this year; and, as might have been expected, the figures have returned towards their original proportions. In the first quarter of 1878, 39,864 lodgings were given, and 637 arrests for vagrancy made, as against 28,021 and 1,123 in the corresponding period of 1877.

. The total number of lodgings given in the station-houses during the year ending March 31, 1878, amounted to 105,136; of which 47,501 were for males, and 57,635 for females, a nightly average of 288 persons.

While it is probable that a large percentage of this number may be considered more or less deserving, the majority consists of strangers who have come into the city to seek for employment, or for some easier mode of living, and of that class known as "revolvers," who find habitual lodgings in the twenty-seven different station-houses, not being allowed to remain longer than two nights in any one of them. It should be remembered that the stationhouses were not originally intended or adapted for lodging either men or women, excepting those under arrest; and that no labor test whatever is required at them.

There would seem to be ample encouragement for the re-establishment of a large night refuge during the three winter months in connection with the police-stations, at which a labor test should be introduced; but it should present no attractions to persons outside the city, and it should not be permitted to interfere in any way with the cheap lodging-house interest.

One mode of providing decent and not uncomfortable free lodgings under strict discipline, which has been successfully tried in New York for three winters, is to make the receipts from a certain

number of paying lodgers cover the expense of free quarters for the absolutely destitute. A refuge of this mixed kind has been made self-supporting, by requiring in place of payment a certain amount of labor, such as wood sawing and splitting, breakfast being provided on the same terms. Here again the need of co-operation is only too apparent. Granted that the object in view is to rid the streets of tramps, thieves, and sturdy beggars, and to provide a rough but not inhospitable shelter for the homeless flotsam of a great city, it is surely clear that those engaged in providing such refuges should work in common, should refuse to take in those turned out from similar shelters, should have an understanding with the police-officials, and should adopt such uniform principles of action as would confine their benefits to those in some degree deserving of them; not to give additional aid to those who have no intention of seeking an honest livelihood.

With regard to the visitation of the poor in their own homes, and the city relief distributed to them, the work done during the last three winters deserves, from its peculiarity, something more than a passing reference.

Prior to 1875 great laxity prevailed in the distribution of relief by the city officials; not only were there frauds in the quantity and quality of the articles furnished, but the unworthy obtained what was intended for the worthy only. Visitation on the part of the paid visitors was the exception rather than the rule; and persons occupying expensive rooms, and able themselves to employ labor, did not scruple to apply for and receive relief, to the exclusion of the really poverty-stricken but less sturdy applicants. Many persons had come to regard the winter supplies.given by the commissioners as a permanent means of support; and it became evident that something must be done to prevent the general spread of pauperism among those who had hitherto escaped the infection. At the beginning of the winter of 1875-6, an offer was made by several citizens (one of whom, the late Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, took the warmest interest in the work), to provide an organized system of voluntary visitation, which should undertake to check and report upon the worthiness of applicants for city relief. The intention at first was that the work should be done in connection with paid official visitors in the service of the commissioners; but, to avoid expense, these were not employed, and the whole burden therefore devolved upon the volunteers.

Through the co-operation of a number of the charitable societies,