652 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to devote it to the ostensible relief of want and suffering. It is 

 the infliction of an aggression that has no more warrant in a court 

 of sound morals than the seizure of his property in disregard of 

 the forms of law. Yet this evil has reached such vast proportions 

 that Mr. lloberts was moved to protest against it. After speaking 

 of " the tendency of the State in building up a gigantic system " 

 that " will call for an enormous and ever-increasing annual ex- 

 penditure for maintenance," he expressed the belief in 1896 that 

 " the time has come to call a halt before this burden of taxation 

 becomes too heavy." He then mentioned the significant fact that 

 while the State spent $6,000,000 for charity, $4,800,000 for public 

 schools, $800,000 for the militia, it spent only $500,000 for judges' 

 salaries! He pointed out also that the expenditures under the 

 head of charity had increased from $1,468,471.58 in 1887 to 

 $5,888,193.74 in 1897, or over four hundred per cent in ten years. 

 He added the prophecy that it would be " a matter of a short time 

 only when the annual expenditures for charity alone in this State 

 will reach $10,000,000." At that time five large State charitable 

 institutions were in process of construction, and were soon to be 

 thrown open to the public. In the following year he reverted to 

 the subject in still stronger terms. " God forbid," he says, " that 

 I should put a straw in the way of charity rationally directed; 

 but my four years' experience as comptroller . . . compels me 

 to say that charity is dispensed in this State with an almost lavish 

 hand, and in my judgment it is in many cases unwisely dispensed." 

 In his last report to the Legislature the aggregate cost of the 

 fourteen great institutions in operation, with a population of 6,621, 

 is put at $6,898,304.52. 



That this enormous largess, wrested from the taxpayers with- 

 out the slightest consideration for their own wants and sufferings, 

 is unwisely dispensed in many eases Mr. Roberts furnishes the 

 amplest proof. The charges that he brings against this form of 

 State activity are most serious. They reveal the same odious 

 traits that characterize the management of public affairs in no 

 wise connected with the love of humanity. " I^early every local- 

 ity," says Mr. Roberts, "having a State charitable institution 

 deals with it as though it were established to afford that locality 

 an avenue through which to reach the State treasury, and in most 

 cases, where a majority of the managers live under or are domi- 

 nated by local influence, the avenue has been profitably traveled. 

 The result of such predominance is combination among local deal- 

 ers, a division of the furnishing of the supplies among them at 

 greatly advanced prices, the pahning off upon the institution of 

 inferior articles which would find no sale in the m.arket, a row with 



