Guild: State Supervision of Charities 45 



The Board of Joint Estimate has worked well in Illinois dur- 

 ing the short time it has existed, and there are now several 

 States with similar conferences. New York has a similar 

 board and Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota hold quarterly 

 conferences of a fiscal nature. 



Central Purchasing Agents. There is one development in 

 the control of supplies which needs special comment. It is 

 the dual administrative system, already referred to, which 

 exists in California, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, 

 Rhode Island, and Vermont. The fiscal board or official 

 in each of these States is primarily interested in the purchase 

 of supplies or the supervision of contracts, and is not inter- 

 ested in the general management of the institutions, as is the 

 case with other boards of control. Nfew York and Vermont 

 place this power in the hands of a single individual. Cali- 

 fornia, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island have a State board 

 solely for the central control of contracts and supplies. The 

 New York Fiscal Supervisor was created in 1901; the Okla- 

 homa Board in 1909, the California Board in 1911, the Ver- 

 mont State Purchasing Agent and the Rhode Island Board 

 of Control and Supply in 1912, and the first New Hampshire 

 Board in 1913. Texas has had, since 1899, a State Purchasing 

 Agent, who makes all purchases for the State eleemosynary 

 institutions. Most of these offices have not been established 

 long enough to show whether they are temporary makeshifts or 

 boards of permanent value. Certainly such boards can do 

 much to eliminate graft in institutions and wasteful and 

 ill-considered methods of purchasing supplies. Whether such 

 a central purchasing agency, not only for charitable institu- 

 tions but also for all State offices, as in California, will ulti- 

 mately prove to be an asset is a question that cannot now be 

 determined. Certainly there is a very definite tendency to- 

 wards creating such offices. The Connecticut governor in his 

 message, January, 1915, urged the creation of such an agency 

 in Connecticut. The governor of Alabama recommended sim- 

 ilar action, and other governors have also recommended some 

 such action at various times. So far as can be determined 

 from available information such proposals seemed to be based 

 on general theory as to the advantage of big business methods 



S2 See pp. 42, 43, and Appendix A. 



