6 CHARLES RICHMOND HENDERSON 



rately evolved agencies of state, church and private associa- 

 tions. 



Another illustration of the tendency to federation of 

 philanthropy, to form trusts of charity, may be taken from 

 a recent organization of child saving societies of the middle 

 west. The belief that the best place for a normal dependent 

 child is not in a large cold storage establishment, but in a warm 

 and real family home, has everywhere taken deep root. As 

 the number of homeless children increases with population, 

 and as neighborhood ties are broken up by the incidents of a 

 shifting urban Hfe, the necessity of organized effort to find 

 new homes, select them carefully and supervise them thor- 

 oughly, has become generally apparent. Even where the state, 

 as in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, has provided a 

 temporary school and placing-out agency, with admirable ad- 

 ministration, popular sentiment favors the support of vol- 

 untary associations, and in most states this form of help is 

 alone in the field. Independent in origin, associations of the 

 same type have sprung up in the vast plain drained by the 

 Mississippi river. Some of these societies were admirably 

 managed from their experimental beginnings, while others 

 were conducted by persons who had inadequate conceptions 

 of the responsibihties they were assuming. Occasionally 

 downright dishonesty has been discovered. There are still 

 very large areas, especially in the south, in which many little 

 waifs are thrust into poorhouses and even jails, and are with- 

 out organized means of placing out the helpless and homeless. 

 The necessity for federation, in order to correct abuses, guide 

 action and enlarge the field of labor, became manifest to many 

 persons, and these formed the National Children's Home society 

 on the basis of a former society. The ideals of this organiza- 

 tion have by no means been reached, but already the semi- 

 annual meetings of executive officers for discussion, criticism, 

 personal acquaintance and propagandism have clarified 

 thought, brought essential regulative principles into light and 

 clear expression, corrected abuses, prevented unwise enter- 

 prises, adjusted differences, trained new workers, and extended 

 agencies into destitute fields. A table of statistics published 

 by this society May 31, 1902, showed the results of work done 



