434 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It is an incomplete view of the enormously difficult problem of 

 charity which fails to set forth some of the reasons that have led 

 to the growth of an excessive faith in the excellence of private in- 

 stitutions and in the wisdom of a co-operation between them and the 

 public, which is taken for granted when they receive appropriations 

 of public money. 



Great as have been the abuses associated with private charity, 

 they are small when compared with the abuses that have existed in 

 the public administration of poor relief. As all familiar with the his- 

 tory of this subject know, the old English poor law was so adminis- 

 tered in the rural parishes that paupers were in a more eligible posi- 

 tion than industrious farm laborers; that women with bastard chil- 

 dren were publicly rewarded for unchastity; and that, now and 

 again, rent-paying farmers were willing to surrender their lands to 

 the paupers to work them for what could be made, rather than to go 

 on paying rates. The exposure of the evils of the system, which was 

 made in the report of the famous Poor Law Commission appointed 

 in 1832, and the attempt to abolish them by the provisions of the 

 Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, ought to be studied by every 

 citizen who desires to perform his full duty as a guardian of public 

 interests, and especially by every individual whose sympathies 

 lead him to undertake any practical effort for the amelioration 

 of pauperism. In the United States, on account of the .ex- 

 tremely decentralized character of our poor-relief system gen- 

 erally, we have no such impressive body of critical literature as 

 that which was brought out in England during the first half of the 

 present century. None the less, whenever special investigations 

 of the management of town and city relief administration and of 

 the management of almshouses have been made, deplorable abuses 

 have almost invariably been exposed, and individuals acquainted 

 with the facts have argued that any possible misdirection of either 

 private or public funds through private agencies could not equal 

 the corruption and the inhumanity for which officialism has been 

 responsible. 



Let us look at one noteworthy example. In 1891 a special 

 committee appointed to report on outdoor alms in the town of Hart- 

 ford, Connecticut, discovered a state of affairs with which nothing 

 revealed in Mr. Coler's statements can for a moment be compared. 

 The general situation, the committee said, was found to be as 

 follows : 



"In 1885 Hartford was paying $2.07 for each man, woman, 

 and child of its population in poor relief. New Haven was paying 

 $1.30; Bridgeport, $1.03; Waterbury, 81 cents; Norwich, $1.54; 

 New Britain, $1.39, etc.; for twelve Connecticut cities an average 



