844 THE DEPENDENT GROUP 



when purely private charity comes to be considered. The question 

 has been answered in the United States, both theoretically and 

 practically, in very different ways. First of all, a " State Board of 

 Charities " was founded in Massachusetts in 1863. New York and 

 Ohio followed in 1867. They bear very different names. Thus the 

 above-mentioned State Board of Charities is in Washington and 

 Wisconsin designated as the " State Board of Control;" in Iowa, 

 " Board of Control of State Institutions; " in Maryland, " Board of 

 State Aid and Charities; " and so on. Already in the names which 

 they bear the essential difference makes itself felt, for which the Ohio 

 and Iowa systems form the respective types. In the one case it 

 assumes the form of a control, accompanied by the power of com- 

 pelling, by government authority, the adoption of measures of im- 

 provement. In the other case there is simply a supervision, with the 

 authority of exercising advisory powers solely. In some states the 

 authority is intrusted to several boards. Thus there exists in Massa- 

 chusetts a State Board of Charities; in Maryland and New York, 

 besides this, a special Commission in Lunacy. In regard to the 

 question of the supervision of private charities, the fact must be 

 taken into consideration that here voluntary contributions are in 

 question, and that as a rule every one must be allowed to spend his 

 means in his own way. Yet it is only right to remember that, just 

 as the state interferes in the management of insurance, banking, 

 and manufacturing, from the standpoint of the welfare of society, 

 so also the welfare of society is concerned with certain spheres of 

 private charity. This is especially the case in the care of children 

 and the housing of sick, old, and helpless people in institutions. 

 The movement toward such a conception of the matter, however, 

 has received a severe check through the decision of the supreme 

 court of New York, which denied that the State Board of Charities 

 in New York had the right of supervising the measures of the Society 

 for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. As an actual fact, in 

 consequence of this decision, more than half of the charitable societies 

 have been withdrawn from the supervision of the board. 



In the countries of the Old World this question receives very 

 different answers. While in Germany again the supervision of 

 private charity is only a part of state supervision in general, in 

 England charitable endowments in particular are assigned to charity 

 commissioners, whose influence, however, is rather limited. In 

 France the very vigorous fight over this question keeps pace with the 

 fight over the bounds between church and state. In Italy, on 

 the contrary, the powers of supervision of the state authorities have 

 been greatly widened by the law of 1890, and by the institution of the 

 new central boards of control already mentioned. All these meas- 

 ures point to where the highest importance lies. This is not simply 



