102 - PROCEEDINGS.OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 
vice that, may not be such, are maintained in the hospitals and 
infirmaries and magdalen asylums, and whose children are to be 
found in the various institutions from the infants’ and children’s 
homes till they are ite for a repetition of the vices and career of 
their parents. 
The social and economic problems in regard to the poor are neither 
few nor simple of solution. What is to be done for the honest poor 
who desire to better their condition? and what. remedies can be 
offered to repress the degrading process by which a poor man becomes 
a pauper? How, in fact, can the worthy poor be enabled to help 
themselves, and how can the pauper and the tramp be exterminated ? 
The task of maintaining the helpless is a very small one compared 
with the tax to maintain, the idle and the undeserving. The rate- 
payer and the charitable have to support not only themselves but 
the poor and destitute of every kind, and it is important to them to 
aid in any: effort towards the co-operation and efficiency of our 
charities. (i): 
Charity comes to: be administered within a score or so of institu- 
tions in cities like Toronto, and so tar as indoor relief or assistance 
is concerned there is not so great, a necessity for any organized co- 
operation: The waste and abuse and imposture is chiefly in regard 
to outdoor relief, and.it is all the more in those cities where no well 
organized association of. charities exist. It is of this organization 
of alms-giving that I propose to treat principally in this paper. 
Within the last seven years 36 charity organizations have sprung 
up in the United States, and it is on the experience of the workings 
of these institutions that I propose to direct your attention. I have 
preferred relying upon the reports of charities in those cities having 
so many features in common with our own, and so have not; gone 
into the’ workings of any other foreign charities. The Monthly 
Register, of Philadelphia, collects information from all quarters, and 
is the official journal for a large number of charity organizations. 
It is obvious that wherever a Poor Law system prevails there would 
be fewer materials for our guidance in organizations than where no 
legislation is required for their efficient working. 
The principles: upon which American charity organizations are 
founded are: very simple and very well understood. 
A charity organization does not mean one mere charitable society. 
“Tt means,” in the language of Mr. Kellogg, the organizing Secre- 
