POOR RELIEF IN THE UNITED STATES 155 



nected willi the coiulitions in the adniinistnitioii of relief, and 

 which on the whole justify the opinion. Public agencies, as 

 we know them, can not individualize. 



The subject was thoroughly discussed in the National 

 Conference, May, 1901, in connection with the report of F. H. 

 McLean, which treated the conditions in Montreal, where 

 public relief is entirely wanting. It was argued that private 

 charity alone is unable to fulfill the duties of poor relief, that it 

 would even be demoralized and its principal task be neglected, 

 if it were compelled to do that for which by its nature it is not 

 suited. There was a decided tendency to favor public poor 

 relief in all those cases in which a careful control of personal 

 conduct is necessary, while private charity is better adapted 

 to the cases in which free activity is possible. Fundamentally 

 this is the principle of division which is actually made in Ger- 

 many, although here the laws go much farther in the promotion 

 of the general poor relief. It is well worth noting, and is ap- 

 plicable to conditions outside America also, that private 

 charity itself, where it conducts the entire business of poor 

 relief, as in Montreal, may, quite as much as public relief, 

 degenerate into unreflecting routine. 



Still, we must acknowledge that the efforts to individual- 

 ize in all forms of administrations of public relief has made 

 important advances in recent times. The condition here is 

 similar to that in England. Removal of children, the sick 

 and defectives from the poorhouses, better classification of 

 those who remain in the poorhouses, according to character, 

 are demands which have been strongly urged for American 

 poorhouses, and partly carried out. 



In a report which Alice N. Lircoln made to the National 

 Conference in 1898 on the classification of paupers she made 

 the claim that in poorhouses rewards for good conduct, and 

 deprivations (not punishments) for bad, are admissable, and 

 that earnest endeavors must be made to treat the poor as in- 

 dividuals, not as members of a class; that separate rooms for 

 the inmates of different grades must be provided ; and that the 

 officers of poorhouses must be taken from a higher social grade. 

 Similarly, Byers, in his report on public poor relief, makes 

 prominent the deplorable mingling of different classes of the 



