mitted. There is another hospital and the daughter tries that. Ihere is a committee of ladies who attend to the admission here, but they closed up in June and will not admit any more until September. I am not drawing you a fancy picture. I am telling you facts. There were two other hospitals in that city but the woman did not know any one to tell her where they were or how to get in. The woman falls sick and the little girl goes to the dispensary to get medicine. She says: " My mother is sick and cannot come out." "We will come around and see your mother." Well, she tries to get into the Alms House and has a great deal of trouble, but finally gets permission to go there if she can get there. She finally gets into the hospital. In the meantime the boys have gone into the street. There was no one to put them in the Orphan Asylum. The little boy, sleeping one night on a pair of steps, was found next morning by a lady who took him in, and he became a man of usefulness.

The gentlemen who follow me .will tell you what is doing elsewhere for these people and we ask you to seek them with hearts of love. Be as charitable as possible in your motives but be as wise.

THE PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING CHARITY ORGANIZATIONS.

BY MR. L. L. BARBOUR.

I do not know exactly how we would have dealt with that case It is one of those kinds that can only be dealt with by some organized system. In regard to the principles of an associated system of organized charities they are so well set forth in the Monthly Register, that I can do no better than to readwhat is given on the first page, with which perhaps most of you are familiar: "The objects of the Society are, First, To reduce vagrancy and pauperism, and ascertain their true causes." One of the causes of pauperism is that of indiscriminate giving, of which I have spoken. A person, where there is no organized charity, can go out into the community and out of ten persons will get from nine. Of course he does not want to work.

The second principle is "to prevent indiscriminate and duplicate giving." This has already been dwelt upon. In the city of Louisville, composed as it is of generous inhabitants, a man can, especially if he is shrewd, live better by begging than any workman in the city. He will hatch up a story that he has just come here from a foreign city; that he has a wife and children; that he has a place promised him in the morning, but to-night his family have no place to sleep and they are without supper. He will tell that story at some good house and get a quarter, and then at another house and get a quarter, and go on that way until he has three or four, or five dollars. He tells some good neighbor how he is making money. That neighbor starts in the same line of business. They tell it all over the country how they can make money and get along without work, and the business grows in that way. Churches are imposed upon in the same way. Persons apply for help to a great many churches and get money.

The next principle is to reduce vagrancy and pauperism. We claim that this can be done better by an association of charities than in any other way.

The next question is how to organize an association of charities. I think you heard this afternoon how this was done in New York. A charity organization consists of a Central .Council of fifteen or other number of working members, all of them trustees, with terms running from one to three years, so that you will always have some members of the committee in office all the while. This is better than to have them all go out at once. These should be such effective and reliable men as would insure financial aid to the undertaking. To this Central Council should be added such members of the City Government as are needed. A representative from each church and charitable society in the city should be added. Then these composed the central council. The council elects an executive and a secretary who keeps a registry in books furnished for that purpose. Then have the- council divide the city into districts. The council can be divided into committees. One committee will form the labor bureau, which will see that all persons asking for labor are supplied. Another will see what legislation, municipal or state, would be beneficial. Hardly any circumstance can arise which cannot be handled immediately by the society.

THE VALUE OF REGISTRATION AND INVESTIGATION.

% BY MR. C* S. FAIRCHILD.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: The last speaker has given you in detail the system of a Central Organization. We have such in New York. The Central Council is elected by the members of the society and persons chosen by a committee of the council upon payment of ten dollars a year become members of the society. At the annual meeting the council is elected. There are certain ex-officio members, the Mayor of the city, Chief of Police Department, and Health Department, and several others, among whom are three members of the State Board of Charities. This body was divided into committees and the city divided into districts, each committee being assigned to a district. To secure unity each, district committee appoints a member to represent it on the council, and there is thus a unity between the Central Council and the District Committees. We have agents nominated by the District Committees, but approved by the Central Council. If the Central Council requires it, the District Committees must remove any agent. This has never been exercised, but the Central Council thought best to retain that power.

The Central Council meets as often as necessary for the business of the Society. The District Committees meet as often as they find it necessary for the disposal of the business arising in each of their districts. The Central Council has charge of the work of the District Committees. The registration is carried on at the central office. All these Societies, District Committees and Benevolent Societies are asked to send the names of all persons whom they assist, with the particulars concerning each case. These names are entered upon a card, also the number of their tenement and the story, and also what has been done for them. These cards are all put together, and if a person has been relieved twice his name will be on two cards. If the number of the house and room correspond, then there is a certainty about it. The district officers keep the run of these and report all they know about them. From the cards records are made up and are kept at the central office. They are gone over by the clerks in the office, who take off from the cards the street numbers and names of the family to which relief has been given. On East street and Twenty-eighth will be 100, and so on down the street, and those cards for East Twenty-eighth street will all be put .together in the order of- the houses. From that you can see what houses on the street have received charity. Another thing which some of the District Committees have done, and which is of very great value: They have taken a book and have entered on it what kind of a structure is upon each lot of the city, in their district, so that it will show whether it is a four-story house, a stable, a coal yard, or whatever it is. Whenever an applicant comes to their office and says that he lives at 100 East street, they turn to their book and may-be see that it is a coal yard or vacant lot. That is significant information. This is a great thing and is worthy of adoption in all cities, and it does not take much labor. A few members of the committee working for a week will take a large portion of the city, and when complete it is very valuable. In ic stances, we have found relief sought by persons whose numbers would be in the middle of the river, or on a vacant lot. We are obliged to adopt all sorts of devices to keep up with sharp beggars. In the country everything is right under your eye, but in a great city you are miles away. We must have some system in cities which will in some measure put us in the same position we would be in in a country town. ^We must know our poor; knowing is all that is necessary. When you know them all the work is nearly done. If the city people knew their poor as those in the country know them there would be no trouble about relief. Where a person is entirely unknown they are liable to allow themselves to run loose. We know the great moral restraint there is upon every one of us when we know we will be with those who know us. Now a person, no matter however poor, in a large city, if he knows some one will be looking after him, will be more careful than otherwise. ^

• A Delegate: Does your Society dispense charity itself?

Mr. Fairchild: Under no circumstances. We simply report to benevolent societies. We have a book of all the relief associations of every kind. As to the case put by Dr. Walk, one of the boys would have been put in the wood yard and in half a day the girl would have been found a place, and before night that family would have been provided for in the best way that four or five men could % find. That is what charity organization would have done with that case.

Mr. Byers: We understand what you would have done with the hypothetical case put, but suppose the father is dead and the mother is a dissolute and drunken person, not fit to take care of the children, and who still claims the right of parental authority over her children, how do you bring relief to that family?

Mr. Fairchild: The law gives us the authority to break up that family, or any family that would be brought up to a vicious future.

Dr. Coombs, of Louisville: There has recently been published by the Courier Journal Company of this city a directory of this city, which is arranged so as to show who lives at any given house. You can look at any number of any street and find the name of the person occupying the house. This would save the work to the district committees mentioned by Mr. Fairchild.

Mr. Sanborn: To answer Mr. Byers, we have had a law allowing us to take children from vicious parents, and there have been several cases in courts, and the law has been invariably in favor of the good of the child.

Mr. Byers: What becomes of children taken by the court and placed in a home or orphan asylum?

Mr. Sanborn: They are treated the same as any other children.

Mr. Byers: Who are paid in these organizations?

Mr. Fairchild: The only paid persons are the secretary and the clerks in the general office, and a paid visitor or agent at the general office, and then at each district office there is an agent who is paid. That is all. The motives for the rest are the general ones of a desire to do something for a fellow being. You have to keep the people up to it, just as we have kept ours up.

Mr. Follett: I wish to ask if this system can be successfully applied to smaller places, say, ten or five or even two thousand persons.

A Delegate: I think there is a charity organization in a small town in Ohio which is worked something that way; of course it would not need all this mechanism. A great deal of work could be done by the members without paying for it.