156 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



really encourage professional beggars without in any case relieving 

 deserving poor. A few cases w^ere so flagrant in their abuse of public 

 charity that the further payment of city money to the societies was 

 refused. In one case he found that a society which claimed a board 

 of directors and numerous officers was really managed by one person, 

 who in one year had received $1,500 from the city and $70 from 

 all other sources, and had expended $1,300 of the amount for salaries 

 and $40 for the relief of the destitute. 



The Department of Public Charities, for the maintenance of 

 which the sum of $1,941,215 is appropriated for the year 1899, is 

 controlled entirely by the city. The balance of the $5,000,000 ap- 

 propriated annually for the same general purpose is divided among 

 more than two hundred societies and institutions managed by cor- 

 porations or private individuals. In theory none of these private 

 institutions is supported by the city, the municipality merely paying 

 to them a fij^ed sum, which is supposed to be supplemented by private 

 donations. In reality nine tenths of them could not exist six months 

 without the money they receive from the public treasury. Very few 

 of these semipublic charities have an income from all other sources 

 equal to the appropriation from the city. 



The city pays for the support of a child in a private institution 

 the sum of $110 a year, and the average allowance for the main- 

 tenance of an adult is $150. The percentage of children among the 

 dependent persons is almost three to one, so the $5,000,000 public 

 charity fund would feed and clothe more than forty thousand persons 

 each year if applied directly to that purpose. In the distribution of 

 this great sum of public money, however, fully $2,000,000 of the 

 amount is absorbed in the payment of salaries and expenses, and 

 therein exists an abuse of public charity so great that the present 

 comptroller of the city some months ago appealed to the Legislature 

 for relief in the form of legislation which would enable the local 

 authorities to stop payments to many societies. There are numerous 

 small institutions, some of them having the indorsement and moral 

 support of leading citizens, that spend from sixty to eighty per cent 

 of all the money they receive in the payment of salaries, and in one 

 case discovered by the comptroller the expenses absorbed ninety-four 

 per cent of the total income of the society! 



There is no evidence that any of these societies are deliberately 

 dishonest in their dealings with the city and the public. They are 

 as a rule conducted by men and women whose motives are good, but 

 who have no experience or practical knowledge to fit them for the 

 management of a charitable institution. They are easily imposed 

 upon by professional beggars, and in most cases fail in their well- 

 meant efforts to reach and relieve the deserving who are in actual 



