842 THE DEPENDENT GROUP 



others to begging and vagrancy, which they find more comfortable 

 and profitable. More than this, neither England nor America would 

 be in a position consistently to carry out its system of indoor relief, 

 were it not richly supplemented by private charity which mitigates 

 the severities of the system. Moreover, an increasing insight into the 

 connection between poverty on the one hand, and disease and im- 

 morality on the other, in all civilized countries, and not least in 

 America and England, has had the result of so narrowing the sphere 

 of indoor relief that all those classes of indigents are refused admit- 

 tance which need special medical attendance, and for whose moral 

 welfare dangers are to be feared from a stay in the workhouse. 

 Above all is this true of the sick and the young. In its relation to the 

 children especially is the development of the system of family relief, 

 and the separation of children from adults, noteworthy. In sick- 

 relief it is a matter of the first importance to render the relief at the 

 right moment to insure the cure of the patient and, where possible, to 

 seize the disease at a stage in which restoration of the power of earning 

 his own living may be successfully accomplished. In this respect the 

 movement for combating the evil of tuberculosis is especially of far- 

 reaching importance. 



The question of good organization, as well as the question of 

 adequate relief, is handled by general efforts of the most various 

 kinds, in which public poor-relief and private charity take part in 

 different ways. This very diversity, however, conceals two serious 

 dangers lack of unity on the one side, and overlapping on the 

 other. To counteract these dangers it is necessary that the directors 

 of public poor-relief and the different representatives of private 

 charity should associate with one another for the purpose of devising 

 a systematic and mutually complementary relief. Information 

 about the indigent, as it is sought in the " charity organization 

 societies," in the offices centraux des ceuvres de bienfaisance, in the 

 Vereinen gegen Verarmung, and in the information bureaus, directs 

 the indigent to the place where he can best find help, and leads to the 

 discovery of those persons who misuse poor-relief and charity. 

 Information about charitable institutions, as given in the digests and 

 directories of great cities, show what measures are available, and how 

 they can properly be made use of. 



Beyond this activity, exercised almost exclusively by private 

 parties, the need, at any rate, makes itself felt for a definite deter- 

 mination of the proper management and application of the means 

 of pooi -relief and charity. And here very different possibilities are 

 open. The whole public poor-relief may be placed under one central 

 board of control which is authorized permanently to supervise all the 

 institutions and establishments that stand under it, to vote the esti- 

 mates, to censure abuses, and to compel their redress by the authority 



