SEVEN PRINCIPAL LAWS .OF HEREDITY. 225 



careful ascertainment of the history of individual 

 cases, and a registration of the persons relieved or 

 applying for aid. A tramp soon becomes known if 

 there is a union between the churches. His record 

 is understood in all parts of the city by being under- 

 stood at the central agency. If there is no union of 

 the churches, a cheat in one parish, found out, may 

 usually become a successful cheat in another parish 

 which has no intelligence of what its neighbors have 

 ascertained. 



In this Germantown relief enterprise, evidence 

 accumulates, that, outside of poorhouse relief, not 

 more than two dollars an individual has been re- 

 quired among those assisted annually by that work. 

 Not more than eleven dollars expense a year for a 

 family has been incurred since that Germantown 

 experiment began. None of this expense is given 

 out in cash. It is all supplied in tea and clothing, 

 and occasionally coal and other necessary articles. 

 Visitation among the poor, to be' effective, must be- 

 come skilled labor. Such it has become in Elber- 

 feld and Germantown. The vote of one visitor, with 

 that of the superintendent, is necessary to the giving 

 of any supply in the Philadelphia experiment. The 

 judicial principle in charity has been applied in 

 Germantown as in Elberfeld. The visitors have 

 learned to give not so much money as themselves, 

 and to make a business of this. The results in the 

 American have been as encouraging as those in the 

 German field. Very often the moral influence of 

 the visitor has drawn into lives of endeavor and thrift 



