POOR RELIEF IN THE UNITED STATES 149 



peculiar American conditions. As a matter of fact, the in- 

 fluence of the society is considerable. 



The poor law of the state of New York in sec. 30 grants the 

 society particular authority to commission members to in- 

 spect all public institutions for the poor and the sick; such 

 members must be residents of the locality of the institution. 

 On the ground of this authorization the society, as appears in 

 its last report, inspected the poorhouses and hospitals in forty 

 three of the sixty one counties of the state. In addition it 

 manifested a varied and far reaching activity. It represented 

 many public charitable societies before state and municipal 

 authorities, and obtained for them repeatedly help from puljlic 

 means. It subjected legal proposals relating to benevolent 

 societies to careful criticism, and by energetic oral and printed 

 discussion contributed to the acceptance of desirable measures. 



Since the American relief system does not rest on a uni- 

 form law, as in England, it is left even more than in Switzer- 

 land to the legislative choice of the several states, in which, 

 owing to the lack of a common historical development like that 

 of Switzerland, and to the uncommonly dissimilar economic 

 and social conditions, a very great unlikeness in the organ- 

 ization of poor relief is developed. The care of the poor is 

 administered through the counties or towns or, in certain 

 cases, inomediately by the state. The organization of public 

 poor relief on the neighborhood principle corresponds to the 

 development in the older communities, where, as an outgrowth 

 of the customs of the mother country, self government was an 

 affair of local settlements, while in the territories settled by 

 larger groups a wider community, the coimty, undertook the 

 administration. There are also intermediate forms where 

 obligation and authority are suitably divided between the 

 local and the state corporations. This appears especially in 

 the obligation of the county to support those poor who belong 

 to no town. In general there is a decisive tendency to recog- 

 nize the peculiar needs of the cities, and to intrust to them the 

 care of their own poor. Yet the city administrations suffer 

 from the same influences as those of the state, although of late, 

 in the greater cities, a change has been introduced. New York 

 and Boston have completely reorganized their poor-relief sys- 



