840 THE DEPENDENT GROUP 



acts as an incentive to begging and crime; and the evil of a reckless 

 poor-relief, with the resulting appearance of far-reaching abuses, the 

 lessening of the spirit of independence, and the patronage of begging 

 and vagrancy. The history of poverty is for the most part a history 

 of these constantly observed evils and of the efforts to remove them, 

 or at least to reduce their dimensions. No age has succeeded in 

 solving this problem. In the early Christian Church the duty of 

 poor-relief was based upon the love of one's neighbor, and the 

 members of this community looked upon each other as brothers and 

 sisters whose duty it was to render help to one another. Thus it was 

 possible for a limited circle and for a limited time in some measure 

 to avoid both these evils. But in the Middle Ages the church, now 

 become a public power, encouraged and increased poverty to an 

 appalling extent, without being able in a corresponding degree to 

 meet the problem of helping the indigent. The state authorities 

 during the latter part of the Middle Ages, and especially in the six- 

 teenth and seventeenth centuries, in spite of their stringent laws 

 against begging, remained powerless to contend with beggary and 

 vagrancy. The other course which, with overflowing love and 

 compassion, sought to mitigate the lot of the poor, which finds 

 expression in the Gilbert's Act of England with its system of allow- 

 ances, or the French law of 1811 concerning the anonymous reception 

 of children, plainly showed, in the appalling increase of the number 

 of able-bodied persons demanding support and of deserted children, 

 where a too charitable conception of the administration of poor-relief 

 must lead. To-day we stand face to face with the same problem. 

 Public poor-relief and private charity wage the thousand-year-old 

 battle over the successful administration of poor-relief and the 

 prevention of its abuses, and reap to-day precisely the same experi- 

 ence as was reaped in times past, that human nature, in spite of all 

 economic and technical advance, in this respect has undergone no 

 change. Hence also arises the very noteworthy fact that the most 

 modern poor-relief directs its attention more than ever to the simple 

 administration of poor-relief in the early Christian Church, and that 

 the much-talked-about " Elberfeld system " is nothing else at bottom 

 than an attempt to revive that old form of administration on sys- 

 tematic lines. Thus there stands in the foreground of all discussion 

 concerning the proper form of poor-relief the question of organiza- 

 tion. If poor-relief is to help the needy according to his need, and 

 have a reason for rejecting the undeserving, it must have for this 

 purpose a thorough knowledge of the circumstances of those who 

 apply for help. This knowledge can be obtained only through direct 

 examination in the home of the indigent, through observing his 

 mode of life, his household management, the conduct of his family, 

 etc.; and must be supplemented by inquiry in other directions, of the 



