CHARITY ORGANIZATION—WORK OF DISTRICT COMMITTE&

BY MR. C. M'CULLOCH.

The case presented by Dr. Walk will serve to show how, under the Organization of Charities, it could have been handled. The Society would have known the condition of the mother, have given temporary relief, and then found permanent relief for her from the agency whose special function it was to provide for her. On her death, the children would be temporarily taken charge of at the Friendly Inn or District Home, until homes could have been found for them, or friends hunted up. The young girl would have been given a home, a place found for her, and some special Friendly Visitor appointed to look after her. It is the special feature of such organized charities, that they close up the interstitial spaces, making it a definite business to search out the cause of those whom no one regards.

The District Committee is the society in miniature. It takes the principles of the society, and applies them to individual cases which make application.

The District or Ward, is studied by those who compose the committee, until both its needs and its resources are known. Its needs are the poor and distressed within its boundaries. These must be visited, known in all the detail and circumstances of their lives. The resource* are the benevolent people, the churches, and tl^eir relief societies, the factories and industries giving work, the public institutions, etc.

Each District Committee must have one or more paid visitors or superintendents. This must be an intelligent and sympathetic person, paid enough to take all his time, and to insure a continuance.

Such a superintendent becomes more valuable as the years go on.

Representatives of the different churches, relief agencies, together with individuals interested in this line of work, compose the committee. This committee meets each week, or a sub-committee oftener, to decide upon cases needing immediate attention. The superintendent has discretionary power to relieve immediate want. The object of the committee is to aid the applicant in the wisest way, looking to the permanent improvement of the condition. It is not the momentary alleviation of the suffering—there must be suffering if the condition is brought upon them by themselves — but the ultimate recovery or helping. The easiest thing to do, is to give relief; as a physician might find it easier to give an anodyne, than to patiently work toward the cure of the evil causing the suffering. Work, personal effort to help one's self, these are the means nature takes, and we must follow nature. Such a committee, who see the great eternal thing they are working for; who will deny themselves the easy way of relief; who realize that this is no dilettante work, but serious business; who will not throw upon the superintendent everything, but will take cases under personal care, will soon solve some of the problems of the poor.

As the co-operating agencies are present, or are accessible, they can follow out any suggestion made by the committee. The city overseer, the private relief agencies, the sewing clubs, the asylums, the dispensaries, all these are channels through which relief may flow. The work of a committee, is but the work of intelligent men and women, who will soon make ways for helping those who need. In districts in large cities, there grow up a number of auxiliary agencies, under the inspiration of the idea. Free Kindergartens, Friendly Inns, Wood Yards, Industrial Sewing Clubs, Industrial Laundries, Industrial Schools, Maternity Societies, Flower Missions, Savings Societies, etc., all aid in carrying out the idea, to help the poor to help themselves by giving them better opportunities.

THE GENERAL RESULTS OF CHARITY ORGANIZATION.

BY MR. PHIIJP C. GARRETT.

Mr. Garrett referred to the history of the charity organization movement, showing how its earliest American development was in the Germantown Relief Society, which originated in 1873. This was the nucleus from which the new ideas had spread over the whole county of Philadelphia. Although not under the name, the Germanto wn Society was imbued with the spirit of organized charity, and was its pioneer in this country.

Mr. Garrett then referred to the advantages of a voluntary system for the relief of the poor, over the compulsory poor law relief paid for by taxation. In Philadelphia as in Brooklyn, the abolition of municipal out-door relief had been followed by the best results. A direct saving of $50,000 annually had been effected in the former city by the discontinuance of the tax rate doles, and, much beyond this, the moral effect upon the people of receiving charity as a gift, rather than demanding it as a right, had been markedly beneficial. The speaker then briefly referred to the political corruption so often found attendant upon the municipal administration of relief, and urged this as another reason why the poor-law plan should be superseded by the organization of voluntary charities. Various forms of organization adapted to the varying wants of .communities are wholly consistent with the plan, provided always the cardinal principles, organization, cooperation, thorough investigation, friendly visitation, and adequate relief, are kept steadily in view.

A town will not need the elaborate system made necessary by the want of a great city, nor will the west, where pauperism is but the growth of a day, call for the sternly repressive treatment of this evil, which must be employed in the east. Each community must create such an organization as will best minister to its own wants; but the great, broad, enlightened idea of charity, which it is the mission of this new movement to preach, can be at the basis of all.

Mr. Garrett tjien spoke of the future of Organized Charity, and the direction in which its advanced work must proceed.

The work of the future will be less for palliation than for cure, less for cure than for prevention. The Societies for Organizing Charity will give increased attention to the promotion of provident habits; to the finding of employment, by efforts toward an equalization of supply and demand in the labor market; to the securing of better sanitary conditions in the homes of the poor, and to the thorough industrial training of the class of children from which the paupers and criminals are recruited. This century has witnessed real social progress among civilized nations, and its remaining decades should be marked by even greater advances. The problem of pauperism is hard, but it is not insoluble. The organization of charity is the most promising scheme yet devised for its solution, and the principles upon which this system is founded, if not the system itself, will before long find general acceptance in all localities where the accumulation of population has made pauperism a leading and vital question.

FIFTH SESSION.

Wednesday Morning, September 26,1883.

The conference was opened with prayer.
The report from the state of Iowa was read by Jennie
McCowan, M. D., a state delegate.

REPORT FROM IOWA.
BY JENNIE M'COWAN, M. D.

Last year the report from Iowa gave detailed accounts of each of the charitable and correctional institutions of our state, viz.: two Hospitals for the Insane, two Penitentiaries, two Reform Schools — for boys and for girls — the College for the Blind, the Orphans' Home, the Institution for Deaf Mutes and the Institution for Feeble Minded Children.

There has been no new legislation upon any points connected with our eleemosynary or penal system, and as this conference desires to hear merely what progress has been made since its last meeting, but little can be said of Iowa. No material change has occurred since that time^Ln either the character or the management of any of the state institutions. The additional Penitentiary at Anamosa and the Hospital for the Insane at Independence, are still unfinished, but are being pushed toward completion as rapidly as possible. The Reform School for Girls has erected an additional building, and the Orphans' Home, which is on the family system, increases its capacity as occasion requires by the erection of additional cottages. The law in regard to transferring children from the alms-houses to the Home is not mandatory, but an increasing number of county officials are beginning to realize the advantages to the state, as well as to the children, of a home where they may have industrial training and educational privileges and a chance to grow up into self-respecting and self-supporting members of society instead of remaining a burden to the tax-payers as life-long paupers and criminals.

The other state institutions are also in good condition, and are well managed. It is believed they will compare favorably with similar institutions in other states. They are subject to inspection by Legislative committees, and the State Hospitals for the Insane to the further inspection of a Visiting Committee appointed by the Governor. The hospitals are crowded beyond their capacity, and installments of the incurable are from time to time remanded to the care of the counties. Our College for the Blind has the reputation of being one of the best in the United States, the National Commissioner of Education naming it as imparting a higher class of education than any similar institution in the country. Our Schools for Feeble-Minded Children and Deaf Mutes are regarded as efficiently fulfilling the purpose of their creation. The latter has reached the limits of its capacity, and another institution is beginning to be talked of, as there are in the state about five hundred deaf mute children of school age unprovided for.

In our Penitentiaries the contract system of labor prevails, the men being engaged in the manufacture of boots and shoes, horse collars and saddlery goods, farming tools, chairs and clothing. There is a growing feeling, however, adverse to either the contractors or the state receiving material benefit from convict labor, and in favor of the surplus earnings of the convict over and above the cost of his own support, being reserved either for his own use at the end of his term of imprisonment, or for the immediate use of his family. The indeterminate sentence has not yet taken root in Iowa, neither the graded system, by which the youthful prisoners may be protected from the contaminating influence of vicious and hardened convicts. A separate apartment for insane criminals, of which there are over one hundred in the state, is provided for in the plans of the additional penitentiary at Anamosa, but is not yet built. A department for female prisoners is also to be provided, and those at Fort Madison have already been transferred to Anamosa, making now eleven in number in the latter prison. This department is in charge of a matron who is doing excellent service, as is also the chaplain of the penitentiary, who, though a woman, seems to have given entire satisfaction.

A much needed addition to our penal system is a Prison Aid Society whereby discharged prisoners may be provided with employment previously arranged for, may be protected, guided and admonished by one known to be a friend, and so prevented, wherever possible, from fatal relapse into criminal habits.

Having as yet no State Board of Charities authorized to make such inquiries, it has been impossible to collect