Guild: State Supervision of Charities 53 



Of the administrative boards mentioned above (note 89) as 

 created since 1900 not one was established at the expense of 

 a supervisory board. The boards were created either in 

 States where there had hitherto been no State board, or in 

 States where the new board created a dual system. There 

 would seem to be one exception, but that only bears out the 

 case the more fully. When the Board of Control was estab- 

 lished in Minnesota in 1901, the supervisory board was abol- 

 ished, only to be re-established in 1907. Wisconsin is the 

 only State which has ever abolished a supervisory board (in 

 1891) without later re-establishing one of the same kind; that 

 is, it is the only State which has replaced the supervisory 

 board with an administrative board without later creating a 

 dual system.^- What better argument can there be in favor 

 of the retention of the supervisory board than this fact taken 

 from the history of States that have once felt the influence 

 of the supervisory board? 



If then the present tendency towards centralization and 

 consolidation means the creation of central administrative 

 boards, and does not necessarily or probably mean the aboli- 

 tion of supervisory boards, the inevitable result seems to be 

 the dual system. 



If we look at the situation from a different angle, it will 

 even appear that as matters stand at present, the principle 

 of the dual system is even now the one most generally accepted 

 in practice. The supervisory system, itself, involves the prin- 

 ciples of the dual system. There is separate administration 

 and supervision. The only difference between the two sys- 

 tems is that in the supervisory system the administrative side 

 is entrusted to many local boards, while in the dual system 

 administrative control is centralized under a single State 

 board, and the dual system proper exists only where there 

 are two central boards. Since the essential principle under- 

 lying both systems is the same, the fundamental question is 

 simply whether it is better to have many boards, one for each 

 institution, or to centralize all administrative control in a 

 single board. In the administrative system there is no ques- 



^2 Oregon is the only State which has had a supervisory board and has abandoned it 

 and returned to the decentralized, unsupervised, trustee system. The supervisory board 

 was created there in 1891 and was abolished in 1893 for political reasons. Oregon is 

 now, however, of the administrative type. 



