whose members willingly took up the work, district committees, following as far as practicable the lines of the city wards, were organized throughout New York. Their main principles of action [ were, first, that every case submitted to them should be visited, investigated, and reported upon without delay; and, secondly, that no religious, political, or personal feelings should in any way interfere with thorough investigation and impartial reports.

The names and addresses of applicants for relief, received by the commissioners in the usual way, were immediately forwarded to the chairmen of the different committees, whose duty it was to distribute them among the visitors, collect their reports within fortyeight hours, and return them to the commissioners. The visitors furnished those approved with cards entitling them to relief, which they surrendered only to the official employé bringing it; and no city relief was given except to those provided with these cards. More than fourteen thousand applicants were thus visited during the past winter, of which number nine per cent were rejected as totally unworthy, and seven per cent could not be found. It was ascertained that many worthless persons were deterred from applying by the knowledge that their cases would be investigated.

With such a system success must depend in a great measure upon hearty co-operation between the city authorities and the private workers. The greater the confidence on both sides, the more satisfactory will be the result. Much depends upon the district chairmen, and the judgment exercised by them in selecting their visitors, and arranging the details of their work; and a central head to supervise, organize, and supply help in case of emergencies, is essential to insure the continuous and harmonious action of the whole system.

The three-years' trial of this plan in New York has been attended with an encouraging measure of success; although it should be regarded only as the first step in a right direction, the precursor of a more perfect system. One of its main advantages arises from the contact and sympathy developed between the visitors and the extreme poor. It is a great thing to obtain, from intelligent and unofficial sources, accurate ideas as to the condition, habits, morals, and sufferings of the most obscure portion of our population; while the mere fact of worthless characters being prevented from receiving city relief is no small gain. Such visitors ought to be men of experience and good judgment, prepared to undergo much personal inconvenience, and well acquainted, not only with

the various institutions intended to benefit the suffering poor, but also with the legal remedies and safeguards. The district committees to which the visitors belong, and the areas of their work, should be arranged with a view to compactness and efficiency; and any expenses arising in connection with the work should be provided for by private contributions, rather than from the city funds.

The principles upon which this still undeveloped system is based will be recognized as thoroughly in conformity with those which have been proved and adopted as the best elsewhere. Among them are the principles of systematic personal visitation of the poor in their own homes; of the combination of the volunteer as the supplement of the official, the report of the former being the basis. upon which relief is actually distributed by the latter; and of the restriction of such temporary relief to the really necessitous and deserving.7

(It will still, however, remain an open question, whether, in New York, it might not be better for all official relief to be confined to the maintenance of the "pauper" class, as by law defined, leaving all other forms of want and suffering to be cared for by systematized private benevolence.

The failure of a somewhat similar plan of visitation, undertaken in the neighboring city of Brooklyn in 1876, was due mainly to the want of that good understanding and co-operation between the volunteers and officials, which appear to be essential to success. The Brooklyn visitors threw up the work on finding that their reports were not attended to, and that they were powerless to check the lavish and indiscriminate distribution of coal and groceries by the city officials, amounting during that winter alone to nearly $150,000.

As the question is sometimes brought up, whether paid visitors would not do their work as efficiently as volunteers, it may be mentioned here, that while but little difficulty has been experienced in obtaining, winter after winter, a large staff of suitable visitors, willing to undertake their laborious duties for love of the poor, it would have been impossible to secure any thing like the same number of reliable paid visitors.

The third annual report of this work has just appeared, and it will not be amiss to close this branch of our subject with a brief extract from it, together with the resolutions adopted at the annual meeting.

"It is a fact well deserving of record, that no inconsiderable number of our benevolent citizens, without regard to social standing or differing creeds, can be found willing and eager to devote time and labor, and to run the risk of disease and offence, in supplementing the work of the city authorities, and in carrying to many a wretched home the comfort of personal sympathy and good offices.

"The success of any such plan will depend mainly upon the visitors themselves. If they are of the right sort, experienced and capable, not shrinking from the fulfilment of their self-imposed duties, their action and report will be of great value. Their sympathies and active benevolence will be excited at the right moment; their intelligence and acquaintance with existing available modes of relief in cases of sickness, or old age, or helpless poverty, will enable them to apply practical remedies; and the fact of their being volunteers will win for them more respect and consideration, while it enables them to act with complete independence.

"To sum up: the obvious good results of what has been attempted will be found in the habit of orderly and systematic work among the poor, which may lead to still further co-operation among those interested in their relief; in the benefits of becoming acquainted with the needs of the poor, and of learning how to discriminate the worthy from the worthless, and from impostors; and, not least, in rendering impossible, by thorough visitation, actual suffering from destitution.

"The ward committees at their meeting passed the following resolutions: "Whereas, In the opinion of those who have been engaged in the work of personal visitation among the destitute poor this winter, it is of the greatest importance that the deserving poor of our city should be sifted from the mass of drunken and otherwise worthless paupers, and receive the full measure of relief appropriated for them by the city authorities;

"And whereas, This object can only be attained by an organized system of intelligent, disinterested, and personal visitation, and the experience of this and the preceding winter has conclusively shown that such a system is possible, and capable of effecting great good: therefore,

66

'Resolved, That this meeting pledges itself to do all in its power to promote the continuance and improvement of the plan already in operation of systematic, voluntary, and unsectarian visitation of the out-door poor of our city; with the direct object of obtaining for the worthy their proper share of city relief, and of detecting the unworthy; and with the indirect object of further aiding the deserving by intelligent sympathy, and by putting them in communication with the proper agencies of relief suitable to special cases. "Resolved, That the chairmen of committees engaged in the work during the past winter hereby pledge themselves, unless unforeseen circumstances should prevent, to continue the same, if called upon, next winter, and to use their best endeavors to form their committees of suitable visitors, taking steps for so doing during the summer months."

II (b). In close connection with the official relief given by the State and city, but at the same time completely independent in their management, comes a group of institutions supported by public funds under special laws, supplemented more or less by private beneficence.

With respect to this class, the following extract from a circular addressed by the comptroller, in March, 1877, to the different charities, will be found pertinent. He says,

"There has been an alarming increase of taxation within a few years past for the support of asylums, reformatories, and charitable institutions in this city, in pursuance of special laws of the legislature providing for the payment of fixed amounts or a per capita allowance to be raised by tax annually. The appropriations to these institutions for the year 1877 are nearly a million dollars, a sum almost as great as the total appropriation made to the Department of Public Charities and Correction for all its expenditures in 1877. The amount raised by tax and expended in the same way in 1867 was less than two hundred thousand dollars, showing an increase of taxation for these purposes within ten years nearly five times in amount, while the population and assessed valuations of property subject to taxation in the city have not increased more than twenty-five per cent.

"These annual appropriations are exclusive of those made to charitable institutions out of the excise fund, and impose a heavy additional annual taxation which, if not arrested, will soon become an oppressive burden upon the tax-payers of this city. The purposes to which these public moneys are applied are humane and beneficent charities, that are to a certain extent necessary; but it is a question well worthy of consideration by the benevolent and philanthropic citizens who manage these institutions, whether the system of supporting them, based so largely upon a per capita allowance from the public treasury, does not tend to attract their beneficiaries from neighboring States and counties, as well as to foster a spirit of dependence on charity which may aggravate rather than ameliorate the evils of pauperism and vicious habits."1

Among the principal institutions receiving per capita or other allowances from the State or city are, the Institution for the Blind, Institution for Improved Instruction of Deaf and Dumb, NewYork Juvenile Asylum, New-York Institution for the Instruction of Deaf-Mutes, Society for Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, Colored Home, Roman Catholic Protectory for Children, the House of Mercy, the House of the Good Shepherd, Magdalen Benevolent Asylum, New-York Orphan Asylum, Children's Aid Society, NewYork Nursery and Child's Hospital, Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum, American Female Guardian Society, Infant

1 The following figures will perhaps help to explain this point: The cost for support of the Reformatory for Juvenile Delinquents during fifty years amounted to $2,106,009, defrayed by appropriations of the State and city, by the licenses of theatres, the excise and marine funds, sale of sundries, and the earnings of the inmates-the latter being in all $767,109. The Deaf and Dumb Institution, out of total receipts of $197,640 for one year, was paid by the State $95,761, and by the city $13,304. The Children's Aid Society, with a total income of $214,489 in 1876, received from the Board of Education $36,995, and from the city and county of New York $70,000, the balance being derived from interest, legacies, lodginghouses, churches, Sunday schools, and hundreds of individuals.

Asylum, Home for Fallen and Friendless Girls, Asylum of Sisters of St. Dominic, St. Joseph's Improved Institute for Deaf-Mutes, and others of a kindred nature. The provisions for inspecting and reporting upon these institutions have done much to increase their efficiency, and the supervision of the State Board of Charities keeps the managers and trustees alive to the importance of maintaining an uniformly high standard of work. In addition to the sum (nearly a million dollars) expended upon them by the city in 1877, large appropriations have been made from time to time for their buildings, while the expense of their schools is borne by the common-school fund, and all property belonging to them is exempted from taxation.

III. Next to the public bodies concerned in the administration of out-door relief come the chartered and other charitable organizations, which are supported entirely by subscriptions, investments, legacies, and contributions of the public, supplemented in some instances by appropriations from the excise fund.1 These may be classified as dispensaries, asylums and refuges for children and homeless persons, national benevolent societies, special institutions for various objects, and general relief agencies.")

With respect to the dispensaries, a good deal of discussion has arisen lately as to the abuses of their privileges; and recent investigation has revealed some rather startling facts about them. Leaving on one side the special and homoeopathic, the statistics of the seven general dispensaries working within prescribed limits, and of the German Hospital (which takes in German patients from all parts of the city), give the total number of their patients as nearly 191,000; an increase of 16,000 over the previous year. If

1 It was stated in the mayor's last annual message that the private funds given through the various charitable and religious societies, supplemented by the appropriations from the excise fund, might be fairly estimated at four million dollars per annum. It is, however, always difficult to obtain reliable facts as to the entire resources of these societies. The more interesting point would be to know how much of the amount subscribed remains for the actual purposes of relief after defraying office and other expenses.

46

The excise fund, referred to above, consists of the money received from the sales of licenses for liquor within the city limits. The Board of Apportionment is empowered by statute to distribute this sum at its discretion, on a per capita basis, among such "benevolent or charitable institutions as shall gratuitously aid, support, and assist the poor." The word poor" is used in a technical sense, and made to embrace persons who would otherwise become a charge upon the city, as well as those supported gratuitously by charitable institutions. This fund varies greatly in amount; as much as six hundred thousand dollars having been distributed from it in one year, while this year, owing to special causes, barely sixty thousand dollars have been available for the charities. It is evidently a most uncertain and unsatisfactory source of income for institutions to rely upon; and its distribution has become too much a matter of personal influence and solicitation, without definite system or careful discrimination.