ELEVENTH ORDINARY MEETING. 107 



Tickets for this purpose are with the charitable societies and the 

 police. When the managers of a Boston charity attached thereto a 

 wood yard, and announced that relief would be given to no able- 

 bodied man unless willing to do a certain amount of work, the daily 

 number of applicants fell off at once from 160 to 49, and Mr. Gur- 

 teen adds that in every city in which the test has been applied it has 

 been eminently successful. In Philadelphia, when an able-bodied 

 mendicant after an offer of such a ticket refuses to send to the office 

 for relief, the police are called upon to arrest him. 



As evidences of the assistance given to the public and to the ex- 

 isting charities, it is reported that in Buffalo, for example, street 

 begging is effectually done away with. In another American city 

 the assistance given towards repressing impostiire is officially stated 

 at a decrease of 58 per cent, in the number of vagrants and 73 per 

 cent, in the number of undeserving poor. 



Even on the low gi'ound — -but one not to be forgotten — of a 

 pecuniary saving, very complimentary figures could be given. In 

 London in ten years the cost of maintaining the poor has been 

 reduced 30 per cent., and in some of the American cities to more 

 than double that proportion. 



These associated charities advise the public to give no money to 

 any applicant, but to send the applicant to their central office, where 

 his case will be considered and attended to. If he can work and if 

 he refuse to work, he gets nothing ; and it requires no comment to 

 shew that private charity is almost always unable to detect this un- 

 willingness. The money given to such a person is worse than thrown 

 away. It is an encouragement to pauperism. It is not an agreeable 

 task for the charitably disposed to encounter these applicants and to 

 be never absolutely certain that their offering is not squandered on 

 the most worthless of characters. The organized charities say. We 

 can manage these things better, and what is a trespass on your time 

 is our employment and duty. 



These charitable organizations say, in the second place : visit the 

 poor, give your information, your assistance, to find out and detect 

 fraud, and to ascertain who are really deserving of relief, but give 

 your money to the existing charities. The lame and the cripple, not 

 to speak of the man with the seven helpless children, and no fire in 

 the house for days, are frequently found to have amassed great sums 

 of money by begging. And this art is so profitable that it seems to 



