SCIENTIFIC PHILANTHROPY. 491 



the theory of punishment for persons of mature years, there can bo but one 

 opinion with reference to the duty of the State to these, its wards and weaker 

 members.* 



The Department of Charities and Corrections in New York city is 

 controlled by three commissioners, who have under their charge some 

 six hundred employes and about twelve thousand dependents. As is 

 justly complained of in the above official report (see pp. 2S9-291), 

 the appointment of the commissioners is part and parcel of muni- 

 cipal patronage, and it is declared that the whole tendency of the sys- 

 tem is to encourage the increase of pauperism and crime. It is esti- 

 mated that over seven millions of money are spent annually by public 

 and private organized charity in New York city alone ; yet improvi- 

 dence and dependence remain exactly as the year before. The re- 

 port of the public charities of that city is a startling document ; it 

 shows how much misery is due to a lavish, unsystematic, and misap- 

 plied benevolence. In speaking of the money expended by out-door 

 relief societies, to the number of sixty-six, the report says : 



Thus we have an aggregate of $546,832 spent in this kind of charity in New 

 York city during the year 1880 ; $157,610 of this sum being pubUc money, while 

 about 525,155 cases are reported as having received oneform or another of chari- 

 table relief. . . . The foregoing figures, whether we regard them from a financial 

 or humanitarian view, are sulficient to convince us that so important a business as 

 the administration of charity in New York city requires to be carried on on busi- 

 ness principles, if the great evils of wasted funds and corrupted and pauperized 

 citizens are to be avoided. Some system is required to enable these various so- 

 cieties to work in harmony. . . . That there is not some such system in New 

 York is a matter of regret ... to most thoughtful persons who have practical 

 experience, especially as almost all other large cities in this country and in Eng- 

 land have proved the value of associated work in diminishing pauperism and 

 poverty in their midst.t 



In the interesting report for 1884, the Committee on Out-door 

 Kelief say of Kings County, New York, as follows ; 



Until 1879 public out-door relief was given by the county to the amount of 

 $100,000, or more yearly; it was then cutoff in the middle of winter, with- 

 out warning, without any substitute being provided, and the result was — nothing. 

 In fact, except for the saving of money, and the stopping of political corruption 



* 'ThQ proletaires, though short-lived, intemperate, improvident, and decimated by fever 

 and disease, nevertheless remain the same, continually receiving scores of their own chil- 

 dren as recruits to their ranks. It is among the children of this class that the Children's 

 Aid Society has accomphshed its work in New York ; and according to the report of Mr. 

 Brace, the secretary, for 1883, among the many thousand children sent to the West, 

 with few exceptions, they have |grown up to have an honorable standing in the com- 

 munity. It goes to show that hereditary taints may be in part ameliorated by the soften- 

 ing influences of a congenial environment. 



f The Fifteenth Report of the State Board of Charities, 1882-'83, p. 322: " Compen- 

 dium Tenth Census," p. 1665, stated only thirteen out-door poor returns for Boston — a 

 very comfortable income for each for amount of money spent. 



