750 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



heat to the piki stone and the boiling pot, and enough to keep a 

 fire on the hearth in the kiva. But now and then he must make 

 a distant journey to that part of the mesa where the supply of 

 stunted and scrubby pines and piiions has not already been ex- 

 hausted; for by custom four kinds of fuel are prescribed for the 

 kivas, and to keep the hearth replenished with these often necessi- 

 tates long journeys. As the woman bends under her water jar, 

 so the man staggers along under his load of fagots, often carried 

 from a distance of several miles. 



REFORM OF PUBLIC CHARITY. 



By BIED S. COLER, 

 comptroller of the city of new york. 



A BUSE of municipal charity in Kew York city has reached a 

 -^-^ stage where immediate and radical reform is necessary in 

 order to prevent the application of public funds to the payment of 

 subsidies to societies and institutions where professional pauperism 

 is indirectly encouraged and sustained. More than fifty years ago 

 the city began to pay money to private institutions for the sup- 

 port of public charges. The system has grown without check until 

 to-day New York contributes more than three times as much pub- 

 lic money to private or semiprivate charities as all the other large 

 cities in the United States combined. The amounts so appropri- 

 ated in 1898 by some of the chief cities were: Chicago, $2,796; 

 Philadelphia, $151,020; St. Louis, $22,579; Boston, nothing; Bal- 

 timore, $227,350; Cincinnati, nothing; New Orleans, $30,110; 

 Pittsburg, nothing; Washington, $194,500; Detroit, $8,081; Mil- 

 waukee, nothing; New York city, $3,131,580.51. 



No serious attempt has heretofore been made to reform this 

 system of using public funds for the subsidizing of private chari- 

 ties. One reason for this has doubtless been the fact that until 

 recently the local authorities were powerless to avoid or modify 

 the effects of mandatory legislation which has disposed of city 

 moneys without regard to the opinions entertained by the repre- 

 sentatives of the local taxpayers. It has always been easier to 

 pass a bill at Albany than to persuade the Board of Estimate and 

 Apportionment of the propriety of bestowing public funds on pri- 

 vate charities, and the managers of private charities seeking public 

 assistance have therefore generally proceeded along tlie line of 

 least resistance. The effect of this system was to make beneficiaries 

 the judges of their own deserts, for the bills presented by them 



