T Ꮕ ed ve the method full discussion. If outdoor public relief is to continue in American cities, the Associated Charities will be compelled to work for the introduction of the fundamental principles of the German system. To do this, they will simply carry out their present policy. The German Inner Mission practically takes the communal outdoor relief for granted. Its work sometimes crosses municipal and parish methods; but, in general, it does a distinct kind of work. Its friends believe that the influence of its trained workers is felt in a helpful way in public institutions. Certainly, history teaches that competition of methods is necessary to secure the best service of each form. Ulhorn quotes with approval the resolution of the Frankfort Congress of 1857: "Poor relief by civil authorities, by church officers, and by free associations, are in their place and measure justified; and they should work organically together." Some of the chief lessons for American church charity suggested by the Inner Mission may be summed up in a few condensed paragraphs : 1. The churches and ministry of America should be more largely represented in our National Conference. The churches should make this possible by appointing delegates, and, when necessary, providing for their expenses. The Conference itself has always opened a hospitable door to the ministry. 2. The ministry and the leading laymen need to be educated in the history and methods of charity, in order to meet the new demands of the next generation. 3. While the church would produce nothing but hypocrisy by becoming a direct administrator of public material relief, it may supply the moral forces which, only in a very subordinate degree, go with the agencies of public relief. Chalmers and Roscher have strongly insisted that material and spiritual help cannot go through the same channels at the same time without injury. But both these great souls insisted on the need of both forms of humane help. 4. The Associations of Charities may, without danger from sectarian strife, employ the church organizations to secure visitors and to provide a helpful and natural community life for discouraged families. The district work in Chicago, in the severe winter of 1893-94, was chiefly an organization of churches. 5. The church movements in the United States called the "Institutional" or "Open Church," the "Christian Workers," and the Salvation Army, are examples of a large social work which needs to be unified, consolidated, and brought into intelligent and harmonious relations with the public relief system. This can never be accomplished by force or by law, but only by the diffusion of sound teaching and by the influence of the Associated Charities. 6. The influence of this Conference is needed to secure a thorough and technical training for church servants who require such discipline, especially nurses of the sick. Professor Warner has expressed a doubt whether the churches will provide capable nurses for their hospitals and for visiting among the poor. His doubt is justified by past experience, and should act as a goad to the conscience of the churches. A few fatal cases arising from the ignorance of some church workers would do immense damage to the cause of religion and of charity. The German Inner Mission is seeking to set an example to the world in this direction. It may become necessary to require government certificates of ability in labor which demands skill. That would not be altogether unreasonable. 7. It may be suggested that the freedom of American life permits the church, far more than in Germany, to act upon the life of publi institutions. Here also is a crying social need. In many places th community provides liberally for the merely animal wants of th poor; but its poorhouses often become magazines of "co storage," its prisons and lock-ups are frequently out of touch wì the higher influences of society, its officers are left to perform th duties without the cheer and inspiration of those who represent highest interests of human life. 8. As the ideal toward which we should strive, we may set bef us a complete and real parish system for each community. It seem almost insane to suggest that every town should be one pa or an organized community of spiritual parishes. The discord wilfulness of denominational life are very strong. But the w leaders of Germany are keeping this ideal in mind and wo toward it; and the various federations of churches for humani and spiritual work already actually in prosperous life in Au prove that this ideal is even now a practical force in the bene religious agencies of our country. May the discussions National Conference help to develop this hopeful tendency, ar it wise direction! The Association of Charities offers a social organ for the beginning of this parish system. There all is free. No attempt is made to compel a union of really unlike elements, but a means of common representation in a work recognized by all as a religious duty is given to those who are ready to use it. Its mere existence is an incentive to that union of humane spirits which is the growing ideal of our age. Charity Organization. THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION MOVEMENT: ITS BY JEFFREY R. BRACKETT, PH.D., BALTIMORE, MD. Since the Society for Organizing Charitable Relief and Repressing Mendicity, the first Charity Organization Society, was formed in London, twenty-seven years ago, over a hundred and fifty societies under that name, or a kindred name, have been formed, nearly all in Great Britain and the United States. To dwell to-night in a congratulatory vein on figures which show merely much good accomplished would seem to me to be unworthy this occasion. Threefifths of all these societies belong to the United States. The oldest one is but eighteen years old, more than half are under ten years several have died in infancy. The Charity Organization movemen is in its youth, its formative period. Let us who represent it guides in America - gathered here from all parts of the land, in sure knowledge of great good accomplished and in hope of great good to come examine carefully its tendencies. Then, if we s faults, let us try to do away with them; if we find higher duties, us try to do them. ca The object of the Charity Organization movement, as given at start in London, was the diminution of poverty and pauperism co-operation of benevolent forces and diffusion of knowledge to ing charity and benevolence. The details of method then ado have largely become as familiar to us as our A, B, C,— the investigation, the adequacy of relief, etc. But permit me to re you that they included these that working centres should be use being made of local interest and knowledge; that the wo individuals, volunteers, personal service, is one of the chief f : of Charity Organization, and is to be stimulated by it; that material relief, when needed, is to come from the organization direct only when it cannot be had from other sources, and is to be as far as possible in the form of loans; and, lastly, the thought that underlies all, that any temporary aid should tend to the permanent advantage of the receiver, and so to the lessening of poverty and pauperism. We are more indirectly interested in the question, what has been the tendency in these twenty-seven years of the societies in Great Britain, than directly concerned with it. Conditions vary, and they no doubt have their own problems to solve. But human nature is much the same the world over. Reports of over sixty British societies for organizing charity show that nearly all of them deal largely in direct gifts of material relief. A few have provided worktests or work-relief; but more have given food to vagrants or have promoted the use of free-food tickets, etc. Co-operation and volunteer work seem, as a rule, to be as yet not highly developed. We turn from these reports with a sense of filial veneration for the London society and its great work, with the conviction that real charity is growing in Great Britain, but with another warning, that there is little in a mere name, that societies, like men, tend to fall away from high principles. And how is it with us in America? The object of the Charity Organization movement is the same the world over. Are the methods which we are following, to reach it, the best methods? First, as to relief, for the stand which a society takes on relief affects every aspect of its work. A majority of us-a bare majority, indeed, counting societies, but a strong majority if greater weight be given to the leading societies and workers proclaim and maintain the principle of having no general fund for material relief, of procuring such relief, when needed, from others who give it. A very few have established auxiliary relief funds, kept separate from their own treasuries. All of us believe, of course, that assistance to the needy to get regular work is better than any material relief. Some of us, as New York, Boston, Buffalo, Baltimore, proclaim it as one of our aims. Yet the society in Brooklyn alone, last year, secured permanent work for almost as many, if not as many, persons as all the other societies in the country put together. At least seventeen societies a noticeable increase now maintain wood-yards, work-rooms, or other agen |