ABUSE OF PUBLIC CHARITY. 155 



ABUSE OF PUBLIC CHAKITY. 



BY BIRD S. COLEB, 



COMPTROLLER OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK. 



f I ^EN per cent of all the human beings who die in New York city 

 -*- are buried in Potter's Field at public expense; but the records 

 of organized charity, official and semiofficial, show that less than one 

 per cent of the living are paupers or dependent persons. There are 

 two explanations of the difference between the number of living poor 

 and penniless dead. The chief one is that abuse of public charity has 

 grown to such proportions that the city has become the Mecca of the 

 chronic idlers and tramps of the entire country. It is easier for an 

 industrious and shrewd professional beggar to live in luxury in New 

 York than to exist in any other city in the world. No magic wand 

 of ancient fable was ever more potent to unlock the gates of castle or 

 prison than the name of charity is to open a way to the public treasury. 

 The liberal and well-nigh indiscriminate giving of the money of 

 the taxpayers for the relief of sickness and poverty has been com- 

 manded by law, sanctioned by custom, and approved by public 

 opinion until the possibility of checking or reforming the abuse 

 grows more and more remote as the burden increases and the evil 

 results multiply. 



The city of New York gives annually to public charity more 

 than $5,000,000, and contributes indirectly $2,000,000 more. Of 

 the money raised by taxation for city purposes proper (State taxes, 

 interest, and county expenses eliminated), almost twelve per cent is 

 properly chargeable to relief of poverty and sickness. Of this ex- 

 penditure more than $3,000,000 is paid to private institutions and 

 societies over which the city authorities have no control or supervision. 

 The payments are made in compliance with the provisions of acts of 

 the State Legislature. The only provision in these laws that enables 

 the city officers to protect the treasury from fraud is a clause under 

 which the comptroller is permitted to verify the bills of the institu- 

 tions for the care of committed persons. There is a constitutional 

 safeguard against outright swindling of the city, in the requirement 

 that charitable institutions shall be inspected and their bills approved 

 by the State Board of Charities, but the system is open to many 

 abuses where the public officers are powerless. 



The present comptroller of the city has found that a number of 

 alleged charitable institutions and societies receiving money from 

 the city apply nearly all their funds to the payment of salaries of 

 officers and employees, while their relief work is very limited and 

 of doubtful character. Other societies, he found upon investigation, 



