ELEVENTH ORDINARY MEETING. 107 
Tickets for this purpose are with the charitable societies and the 
police. When the managers of a Boston charity attached thereto a 
wood yard, and announced that relief would be given to no able- 
bodied man unless willing to do a certain amount of work, the daily 
number of applicants fell off at once from 160 to 49, and Mr. Gur- 
teen adds that in every city in which the test has been applied it has 
been eminently successful. In Philadelphia, when an able-bodied 
mendicant after an offer of such a ticket refuses to send to the office 
for relief, the police are called upoy to arrest him. 
As evidences of the assistance given to the public and to the ex- 
isting charities, it is reported that in Buffalo, for example, street- 
begging is effectually done away with. In another American city 
the assistance given towards repressing imposture is officially stated 
at a decrease of 58 per cent. in the number of vagrants and 73 per 
cent. in the number of undeserving poor. 
Even on the low ground—but one not to be for eottenc—of a 
pecuniary saving, very complimentary figures could be given. In 
London in ten years the cost of maintaining the poor has been 
reduced 30 per cent., and in some of the American cities to more 
than double that proportion. — 
These associated charities advise the public to give no money to 
any applicant, but to send the applicant to their central office, where 
his case will be considered and attended to. If he can work and if 
he refuse to work, he gets nothing ; 
shew that private charity is almost always unable to detect this un- 
willingness. The money given to such a person is worse than thrown 
and it requires no comment to 
away. It is an encouragement to pauperism. It is not an agreeable 
task for the charitably disposed to encounter these applicants and to 
be never absolutely certain that their offering is. not squandered on 
the most worthless of characters. The organized charities say, We 
can manage these things better, and what is a trespass on your time 
is our employment and duty. 
These charitable organizations say, in the second place: visit the 
poor, give your information, your assistance, to find out and detect 
fraud, and to ascertain. who are really deserving of relief, but give 
your money to the existing charities. The lame and the cripple, not 
to speak of the man with the seven helpless children, and no fire in 
the house for days, are frequently found to have amassed great sums 
of money by begging. And this art is so profitable that it seems to 
