A SOCIAL POLICY TOWARD DEPENDENTS 827 



both must aim at the real good of the recipients and of the community. 

 It is also true that the division of labor need not be the same in every 

 state and every county or municipality. 



But the necessity of agreement and cooperation is easily illus- 

 trated and demonstrated from examples taken from practice. Thus 

 private charity sometimes supports a feeble alien who has been 

 rejected by the agent of public outdoor relief until he has gained the 

 rights of settlement and becomes henceforth a public charge; and this 

 happens even in states where it is a punishable offense to import a 

 pauper from one county into another. This understanding should go 

 far enough, in cities where there is legal outdoor relief, to secure for 

 the salaried agents the assistance of voluntary, unpaid, friendly 

 visitors. Our public relief in American cities sins against the 

 fundamental principle of individual treatment, because it refuses 

 thus far to learn from the German cities, which employ unpaid 

 visitors and give to them, within certain regulated limits, the respon- 

 sibility for the distribution of public funds. 



The essential principles of division of labor seem to be: (1) the 

 relief which is required by law is only that which is necessary to life 

 and industrial efficiency, while private relief can deal with exceptional 

 cases and provide a measure of comfort; (2) public relief is more 

 suitable where there can be common, general regulationt; private 

 relief is more adaptable and can act in exceptional ways; (3) public 

 relief may properly provide for permanent and universal demands; 

 private relief, being optional and voluntary, may rise to meet chang- 

 ing situations, and hence can more readily try experiments for which 

 the voting public is not ready to expend money or erect adminis- 

 trative machinery. 



But division of labor is only one aspect of social cooperation, and 

 it really implies and demands a conscious and concerted effort to 

 work for the common welfare. This division of labor and this 

 cooperation require organs and agents to make them effective. 

 In German cities the initiative is naturally taken by the municipal- 

 ity; in American cities it must at first be taken by the Charity 

 Organization Society or some kindred association. 



(4) A social policy relating to the dependent group must include 

 an extension of experiments with positive social selection. Each 

 year competent thinkers come nearer to agreement on this principle, 

 although it is not so clear that we have yet hit upon the most effective 

 devices in its application. It is more than formerly assumed that 

 persons who cannot improve, or at least will not degrade, the physical 

 and psychical average of the race, should be prevented, so far as 

 possible, from propagating their kind. Accidental and sporadic 

 deflections downward from the average would still occur; but one of 

 the principal causes of race-deterioration would cease at the source. 



