lishing closer relations between the different charitable agencies, legal and voluntary, and that the first step to this was the bringing them into local proximity. A pretty large building was accordingly erected by the municipality in a central position, to which the office of the Overseers of the Poor was transferred, and in other rooms of which, free accommodation was offered to various charitable societies. In the basement was placed the dispensary, and the room of the city physician; on the ground floor (which the Americans call the first floor) the apartments on the left hand as one enters belong to the Overseers of the Poor, those on the right hand to the Industrial Aid Society, of which more anon. Up-stairs, on the first floor, accommodation is given to the Boston Provident Association, the great charitable society of the city, to the Boston Ladies' City Relief Agency, and to the Boston Ladies' Sewing Circle. Rooms have also been allotted to the Boston Soldiers' Fund, the Massachusetts Soldiers' Fund and the Young Men's Benevolent Society. Several others remain still unoccupied, and in these it is proposed to receive any other societies which may desire to have a place, and are important enough to deserve it. Each society sits rent free, but defrays the expenses of cleaning, lighting, and firing the room or rooms allotted to it. A few yards off is the Temporary Home, an institution under the management of the Overseers of the Poor, of which I shall speak presently.

The distinguishing feature and merit of this Boston system is the intimate communication maintained between these different centres of charitable action, and the co-operation which is thereby secured. How the whole organization works will be best understood by showing the function of each member.

The Overseers of the Poor, established on the ground floor of the Charity Building, are charged by law with the relief of the poor who have a settlement in Boston, and of the unsettled sick poor. The mode of relief, and the quantity, is practically left to their discretion.* Their officers distribute out-door relief in the form of food and fuel sparingly, and never to the able-bodied; a strict record being kept of all persons aided, and of the circumstances

* 1,750 families were aided in Boston by the Overseers in the year 1870-71, besides 122 aided in other parts of the State, for whom Boston paid. Total expenditure for the year, $66,874 (£13,932).

under which aid is given. As respects in-door relief, the city maintains an almshouse, into which the aged and permanently infirm are admitted; and also a house called the Temporary Home, where women and children only may be received for a few days, until work can be found for them, or some arrangement made for sending them to the locality where they may happen to have a settlement. In the year 1870-71, there were admitted to it 1,333 persons, 211 of whom were natives, 645 foreigners, and 477 children; total expenditure, 8,113 dollars. As the Home is intended for occasional applicants only, the permanently infirm are sent to the almshouse, and professional beggars rejected altogether. It is, therefore, anything but a "casual ward."

Able-bodied paupers, vagrants, and the whole class whom our old laws describe as "sturdy beggars," are refused all out-door relief, and if they insist on being supported are sent, under sentence for a fixed term, to the workhouse on Deer Island (an island at the mouth of Boston Harbor), where they are kept at work, and subject to an almost penal discipline. By thus pointedly separating the four classes of poor, the aged and infirm, the sick, women and children left temporarily helpless, and the able-bodied, and dealing with each on different principles, pauperism, say the Bostonians, is kept down, and the legal claims on the public purse reduced to the lowest point. Next in importance to the Overseers of the Poor stands the Boston Provident Association. As the Overseers deal with the settled poor, so this association, which depends entirely on voluntary contributions, makes the unsettled its special care, although it will sometimes also aid those who have a settlement, if the case seems a suitable one, and has not been already undertaken by the Overseers. Its organization is simple and effective, and consists of a central office, established in the Charity Building, and a staff of district visitors, unpaid volunteers. The city is mapped out into twelve districts, each placed under the charge of a committee of three persons, and each subdivided into sections, one hundred and sixty-seven in all. Every section has its visitor, who acts under the general directions of the District Committee, and makes a monthly report to the central office of the visits he has paid and the relief he has distributed. His duty is to visit at his dwelling every poor person

in his section who is either sent to him by a member of the association (or, indeed, by any other person) or whose case is reported to him from the central office, to inquire into the history and present condition of the applicant for relief, record what he hears and sees in his book, and, if he thinks the case a proper one, give the applicant an order on one of the tradesmen employed by the Association for articles of food and fuel, and an order on the central office for articles of clothing. Money is in no case to be given, except under the special authorization of the district committee; no person is ever to be relieved, except in the section where he lives, and by its visitor or his deputy; assistance is to be withheld, except in cases of the extremest need, not only from the drunken, but even from their families, rules whose wisdom both English and American experience are sufficient to approve. This staff of committees and visitors are all directed by and in close communication with the central office, presided over by a paid secretary, called the General Agent. His duties are to advise the visitors, and supply them with any information which the office may possess respecting the applicants, to receive and preserve their monthly reports, to superintend the distribution of the clothes and food which may be applied for under the order of a visitor. He also sees those indigent persons who come directly for relief to the Charity Building, referring those who appear deserving to the visitor in whose section they reside, repelling the professional vagrants, and turning over able-bodied men who are willing to work to the officers of the Industrial Aid Society. Thus he holds in his hands the threads of the whole organization, and is able to discover and correct irregularities in its working.* The Industrial Aid Society, as has been said, has rooms in the Charity Building on the ground floor, opposite those of the overIts function is to find work for those who are willing to work, thus relieving the Overseers and the Provident Association of a serious task, and enabling them at once to test the good faith of those who apply to them for relief. Its aim, an aim as yet of course only partially realized, is the establishment of a compre

seers.

*In 1869-70 the expenditure of the Association was $17,600 (£3,667), its visitors paid 7,500 visits to 2,627 families, containing 8,098 persons. 1,654 applications at the central office were recorded.

hensive labor agency; and in this view it relies not only on employers in Boston and the neighboring towns, but keeps up communication with the North and West, ascertaining by its agents there in what localities there is a demand for labor, and for what kinds of labor, and directing the unemployed in Boston to the most promising field. Its expenses are defrayed partly by subscriptions, partly by a small fee charged on those employers, not being subscribers, who seek through it to obtain workmen. Its officials listen to all applicants, by whomsoever sent. But they are in a special manner serviceable to their neighbors the Overseers and the Provident Association, who can at once get rid of able-bodied paupers by sending them across the passage or downstairs to the Industrial Aid rooms, and can ascertain from its records whether or no such an applicant was offered work before and refused to take it. In the eighteen months preceding May, 1871, 9,683 persons applied at the office of the society; places were found for 3,288 of these, and assistance was given in other ways to others. The society has lately started a scheme for the importation of Swedish domestics and laborers. Good female domestic servants are greatly wanted in America.

Of the minor charitable societies accommodated in the Charity Building, and of the other benevolent institutions of the city, little need be said; they seem to be relatively less important than the two above mentioned, and I am not able to give many facts about them. Of the so-called Sewing Circles, which are numerous in the city, many of them being connected with particular congregations, one has a place of meeting on the first floor, opposite the rooms of the Provident Association; and is found useful in the way of providing clothes for distribution to the poor. A sewing circle is a society of ladies who not only do something themselves in the way of making articles of clothing, but give out sewing to poor women, paying them for what they do, and then giving away the made-up things, or, which is found to answer better, handing them over to the Provident Association to be distributed to deserving persons. As usually happens when there are several independent organizations at work, one hears of some waste and some mischief caused by the minor societies, the poor receiving aid from more than one society at the same time. It is agreed, however, that

these evils are lessening under the system of joint action just described. Charitable people are beginning to feel the duty of strict investigation; and the habit which the citizens are forming of coming to the Charity Building for information respecting any case of distress makes imposture more easily detected than heretofore.

Pauperism is a much more serious matter in New York than in Boston, not only because the former city is so much the larger, and grows so much more swiftly, but also because the proportion of indigent immigrants is incomparably greater. Nearly all the European emigration enters the United States at New York, and a considerable part of it, to wit, the more helpless and ignorant of the Irish, get no further, but sink into a condition not unlike that of their compatriots in Liverpool or Glasgow a condition of squalor, misery and vice. New York is moreover a great seaport, with a large fluctuating population, among whom crime is more readily committed and more easily escapes detection than in the settled society of an inland town, or of a comparatively quiet place like Boston. Nowhere is a wise, vigorous, and upright municipal administration more needed than in New York, and nowhere is the want of it so conspicuous an evil. According to the evidence of nearly every moderate and sensible American one meets, New York is beyond all comparison the worst governed city in the States, probably one of the worst, that is to say, most corruptly, governed in the civilized world. Fortunately, it is quite exceptional in America, as the conditions which have made it what it is are quite exceptional. It is, so to speak, a foul, stagnant pond, into which all the drains and polluted streams of Europe and America have been discharging themselves, the rascaldom of all the eastern half of the States as well as the ignorance and wretchedness of Ireland and our own cities. New York, moreover, wants civic character, wants the permanent element which exists in Boston and Philadelphia: it is a huge, fluctuating mass of human beings, gathered on one spot for the sake of gain, but with no local patriotic feeling, no municipal sympathies. It is, in fact, exposed to all the evils of London added

*This was written before the recent disclosures, which confirm only too completely what had long been suspected.