POOR RELIEF IN THE UNITED STATES 147 



relating to the state board contains in section IV the lan- 

 guage: "To visit and inspect any charitable, eleemosynary, 

 or correctional institution in this state, excepting prisons, 

 whether receiving state aid or maintained by municipalities or 

 otherwise. '^ 



In these words the state board had regarded itself as 

 authorized to inspect the working of all charitable arrange- 

 ments. When the board desired, in 1899, to inspect the build- 

 ing of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 

 they were refused access, on the ground that this society did 

 not belong in the class of charitable institutions. The state 

 board, proceeding from the belief that the society belonged in 

 the highest sense of the word to benevolent institutions — and, 

 by the way, it is really a very beneficent work — applied to the 

 attorney general in order to enforce its rights. Both parties 

 appealed from the first decision, which suited neither of them, 

 to the court, which unanimously supported the claim of the 

 state board. Upon this the society appealed (on some ground) , 

 and then followed a decision of Judge O'Brien to which three 

 judges agreed and from which a ixdnority of them dissented, to 

 the effect that the society was not a charitable institution, was 

 not under the supervision of the state board, and that their 

 power extended only to such institutions as were partly or 

 entirely supported by the state. This decision excited both 

 anxiety and indignation in the state board and in the minds of 

 many persons who are convinced of the necessity of rigorous 

 state supervision. The state board gives detailed information 

 in regard to the affair. In various places, as in the Quarterly 

 Record (June, 1900) and in the National Bulletin of Charities 

 and Correction (August, 1900) Homer Folks and W. R. Stewart 

 discuss the matter thoroughly and explain the effect of the 

 judicial decision. Stewart especially deals with the question 

 of supervision in its historical development and theoretical and 

 practical importance, with the help of the entire materials of 

 the judicial decisions. The practical significance lies in the 

 result that this declaration of the highest court must have as a 

 consequence a complete change in the practice of the state 

 board, and that many of the institutions which have hitherto 

 submitted \vithout objection to supervision must now be with- 



