838 THE DEPENDENT GROUP 



not produce a real cure. The farther the measures taken to coun- 

 teract poverty are removed from this most external measure of poor- 

 relief, the more effective are they. In the first rank stand all those 

 measures which are fitted to elevate the general condition of pros- 

 perity. Here belong all those measures which concern public and 

 economic life, commerce, the labor market, the administration of 

 justice, etc., and also the question of protection and free trade, the 

 conclusion of commercial treaties, the extension of the means of 

 communication by land and water. In a similar position stand those 

 measures for the elevation of the public weal through regulations 

 promoting health and education, such as the fundamental demand of 

 universal free elementary schools and of night schools, the equip- 

 ment of technical, business, and higher educational institutions, the 

 procuring of a good water-supply, the removal of garbage, the super- 

 vision of slaughter-houses, a good milk-supply, the promotion of 

 physical training in the schools and homes, the furtherance of the 

 building of sanitary dwellings; in short, those measures which are 

 fitted to improve the mental and physical conditions of all the 

 various classes of population. 



The second division is formed by those regulations which have to 

 do with single occupations and classes/ especially the agricultural, 

 artisan, and industrial wage-earning classes. Of first importance 

 here is the regulation of the labor conditions, the legal protection of 

 labor, labor coalition, and labor employment bureaus. Side by side 

 with legal regulations, the claim to the highest importance lies with 

 the activity of the independent organizations, of the artisan asso- 

 ciations and trade-unions, of producers' and consumers' leagues, of 

 building-societies; in short, of all those associations of laborers in a 

 common field which are built upon self-help as their basal principle, 

 and whose object is the regulation of the conditions of labor and 

 mutual encouragement and support. 



The third division has so far to do with the causes of individual 

 poverty as certain circumstances can be foreseen which render the 

 individual, either for a time or permanently, incapable of earning 

 his bread. Such especially are disease, accident, disabilit} r , age, 

 widowhood, and orphanage. The most important measures in this 

 division are those comprised under the different forms of labor 

 insurance, divided into sick, disability, old-age, accident, out-of- 

 work, and survivors' insurance. Such insurance may rest chiefly on 

 the basis of legal compulsion, as in Germany and Austria, or on the 

 basis of friendly societies, as in England and America; which, how- 

 ever, are to be found in the first-mentioned countries also. Labor 

 insurance stands in its effects next to poor-relief, in that in single 

 cases it removes or mitigates the consequences of penury. It has 

 this difference, however, from poor-relief , that here the claim is based 



