of information. No little part of the difficulty to be overcome in the wise treatment and restriction of pauperism in our cities springs from the great number of the channels through which the streams of relief are always flowing to those who need or seek help. The dishonest poor thrive by deceiving as many as possible of the individuals and churches and societies who are engaged in the work of relief. But, if those who give relief will work together, there is this one advantage in the same state of facts. Light from a single point leaves one-half of an object in shadow; but lights shining from different and opposite points expose all sides of an object to the view. So it is with investigation. A single visitor, however experienced, will often be deceived: he may not strike on the right clew. But, if the information gathered by all the agencies that investigate were to be interchanged among one and another, few cases of imposture could long escape detection.

A multiplication of aid-giving societies, however, working over the same field, is very much to be deplored. The disadvantages far exceed this possible advantage. Some years ago a Bureau of United Charities was established in New York, having in view, among other things, the effecting of an interchange of information between the various charitable societies. While it has not received universal support, it has worked well enough to prove how valuable an aid it might easily be to those in co-operation with it, if generally and vigorously sustained.

This last winter, in Brooklyn, a similar Bureau of Charities, as it is there called, has been started for the purpose of effecting a similar interchange of information. The time was propitious, because the county had ceased to furnish "out-door relief;" and all private societies were alive to the necessity of proving themselves equal to any emergency. The Bureau has received the hearty cooperation of most of the large Protestant relief societies of the city, of six of the conferences of the Roman-Catholic St. Vincent de Paul Society, of several of the Protestant churches and missions, and of many individuals. It has proved that Roman Catholics and Protestants, and men of all creeds, can and will work together in good faith in the endeavor to restrict pauperism. It is believed that, in Brooklyn, the Bureau of Charities will grow in efficiency as it grows in age. It gives no relief in any form. It simply effects an interchange among those who give relief of information in regard to the class who are seeking aid. The information received

from every source is kept in the most confidential way, and is given only to those having a right to inquire. The machinery is simple; and the expenses are not heavy, not more than $1,000 to $1,500 per annum. The Bureau has saved to those who have used it far more than it has cost. It is to be borne in mind that the cost of such a system is only an apparent expense. More than the equivalent of the cost is saved in money to the charitable institutions of the city. But of far greater consequence is the harm that is prevented by withholding from the unworthy much of the premium that ignorant giving places upon imposture. The Bureau has developed also a pleasanter side: it has directed aid to some worthy people, who, perhaps, except for it, would have suffered without relief.

Now, when all has been learned in regard to a case that can be learned, what is to be done? No general canon can be stated by which to decide when help should be given or withheld. It is competent, however, to suggest, that, in deciding whether or not to extend help in a given case, the effect of the aid to be given in that case on the character as well as on the physical need of the person should be considered. And one should also consider that which is often forgotten, the bearing of each particular case on the problem of pauperism at large. While the idle, for example, are to be supported by others, simply because they are needy, when can the number of the lazy be expected to diminish?

But, when help is to be given, what is to be done? There are practically two modes of action. The general habit certainly of individuals, perhaps, also, of societies is to give but a little help, which is soon gone, and which leaves the old need as pressing as before. And so, if help be needed at all, this insufficient help makes continued begging necessary for actual subsistence. It is not possible to elevate a family while begging wins for it the bread of life. Is it not wiser, therefore, to help fewer people, and to help them sufficiently while the need lasts? A weekly allowance proportioned to the need throws the interest of the person helped on the side of the helper, and the helper may then exercise an influence for good in many ways. The possible objection that help will be sought and received from many sources can be overcome to a great extent through the operation of an efficient Bureau of Charities. Interchange of information necessarily means, in many of its effects, co-operation in action.

The idea of a work-test, before help is given to able-bodied men

or women, seems worth engrafting, so far as possible, upon the operations of all relief societies. In Providence, R.I., and elsewhere, the authorities have made tramps and vagrants do a certain amount of work in return for food and shelter. Under this regimen the number of tramps and vagrants diminished almost as rapidly as the snow-banks of winter before the suns of spring. In a small way the same thing has been done by many private societies. Without doubt it would go far towards sifting out a class of people from the relief rolls, to whom, in a spirit of enlightened wisdom, nothing can be said so truly kind as the words of St. Paul: "If any will not work, neither let him eat.""

It has been the aim of this paper to make the inquiry into the problem of pauperism in Brooklyn and New York from the practical side rather than the philosophical. The two points it is desired to emphasize especially are these:

1. The experience of Brooklyn and New York seems to prove, that, after cities in this country have become large, "out-door relief" cannot be given by the county, so as to be worth the giving, even for the sake of the receivers. The general poor-law of the State of New York forbids "out-door relief" on the part of the county. The system, consequently, is legal in that State only when authorized in a locality by special laws. As the general poor-law of the State of New York is derived from the Elizabethan laws of England, it is probably substantially the same case in many other States of the Union. Those elsewhere who have found out-door relief" by the authorities to be a burdensome expense, and morally a curse, will do well, therefore, to look into the law.

2. The problem of pauperism in a large city must be considered as a whole. Each case helped is a part of the whole; and the effect of the help given, in any case, acts and reacts in many directions. All who help, therefore, individuals and churches and societies, must bear in mind that others are engaged in the same work, and all should work together so far as it is possible. Whatever the impelling motive, whether religious or philanthropic, the obligation to co-operative action remains the same. Practical co-operation may be reached through a central society or bureau, which itself gives no relief, but which serves to interchange information among those in co-operation with it. If co-operation is to be had at all, under the conditions which exist in Brooklyn and New York, it seems probable that it must be wrought out along

that line. The obstacles existing there, to a more radical effort at co-operative work, such as has been made in Buffalo and Philadelphia, would appear to be insurmountable. It is believed, however, that, from the point of co-operation in information, co-operation in action in many useful forms will certainly be developed. It cannot be doubted, that in co-operation among those who give relief is to be found the answer to a wiser and more successful treatment of the problem of pauperism as it presents itself in the great cities of the Union.

Dr. A. Reynolds, of the Insane Hospital, at Independence, Iowa, read the third paper as follows:

III. THE PREVENTION OF PAUPERISM.

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BY DR. A. REYNOLDS OF IOWA.

Let A and B emigrate to a new country with their families, goods, and chattels, all in good health, and self-supporting; no one in the colony disposed to defraud his neighbor of his goods, no one sick, no one insane, in short, no one a pauper, or in any way a pecuniary dependent. They have need of only simple laws tending to the regulation of their social and financial matters. By and by C comes along. He is of a different stock, lazy may be, poor perhaps, vicious, and driven from his former home more likely; or perchance that worst of all evils has come upon him, he is insane. Or it may be in a little time some of the old stock get off their original bearings, and they become dependents, paupers. What shall we do with them? is the first question. How shall we stop their increase? is one not less important. The colony has now to enact a new code of laws, to provide for this foreign element in the body politic, this drain upon the sympathy and treasury of the community. What shall we do with the pauper, be he good or bad, sane or insane? is the question that has come to every community in the land, with such force that men have had little thought till lately how to strike at the root of the matter,- - the prevention of pauperism. A pauper is one who is supported wholly or in part, at the public expense. By his position he acknowledges himself beaten in the game of life, willing to accept the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table. How did he become so? To know the cause of a disease in a particular individual, may not help us to cure him; but it may help us to ward off the disease from his neighbor, or to

stamp it out. To know the cause of pauperism should enable the State to check or to some extent control it. Of the long list of causes, intemperance and hereditary influence are the most potent, and to these I shall confine this paper. The two are so inextricably mixed, so interdependent, I might confine myself to the former altogether; for following intemperance we have vice, crime, insanity, idiocy, pauperism, not confined to the one intemperate generation, but handed down to children and children's children, perhaps in an inverse order, - pauperism, idiocy, insanity, crime, intemperance. Certainly one departure, either departure from the normal, may beget the other.

I am not able to give any statistical data as to the proportion of pauperism induced by intemperance; but in the "Report of the Board of Charities" of New York, for 1877, I find some statements like these, which need no explanation. I quote the words of the narrator as he describes certain inmates of the almshouse, in different counties. A man seventy-four years of age, a widower, is intemperate. A widowed woman thirty-five years old, with three children, aged respectively six and four and two years, the latter illegitimate, is ignorant, depraved, and intemperate. married woman abandoned by her husband, and recently admitted, is intemperate and uneducated. A woman, thirty-five, divorced and two years an inmate, has two children in the house, one illegitimate, is intemperate, uneducated and a vagrant. Two sisters. aged respectively fifty-two and fifty-six, both uneducated and given to inebriety. An unmarried man, sixty-five years old, uneducated and inebriate. A man aged seventy-three, a widower, nine years in the house, is ignorant, intemperate, and childish. A single man forty-seven years of age, uneducated, intemperate, and nearly blind. An unmarried woman forty-nine years of age, educated, but intemperate. A man sixty-five years old, educated and industrious, but intemperate, five years an inmate. A man sixtynine years of age, six years an inmate, well educated but intemperate and debased. An unmarried man eighty years of age, thirteen years an inmate, is educated but debased by intemperate habits, and wholly dependent. In one almshouse all the men, and three of the women, were known to have been intemperate; and six of the former and two of the latter were classed as confirmed drunkards. Here is a characteristic group in the same poorhouse; a man seventy-six years old, and his daughter fifteen years of age, inmates one year, the man well educated but very intemperate,