an average per year of $65,901.18; for five years, $377,558.60, or an average per year of $75,511.72; for seven years, $552,080.12, or an average per year of $78,868.57.

The history of investigations of institutions in other States such, for instance, as the late inquiry into the affairs of a great hospital for the insane in the Empire State abounds in serious faults that could hardly have existed had an efficient paid board, giving all its time to the work and conversant with all the details of management, been in control.

A consolidated board going from one institution to another constantly, comparing methods and conditions, must, if it be composed of fairly intelligent men, hit upon a plan and regulations for all which will result in a marked saving of money and an increase in efficiency. In no other way can uniformity in business methods for State institutions be secured. Such a board, familiar with pressing necessities where they exist, is able to intelligently recommend to the legislature such appropriations as will be fair and just; and its recommendations will be looked upon with less suspicion than the demands of institution lobbyists who crowd the committee-rooms in advocacy of bills for separate institutions. Under such a system the institution which is represented by the best talkers gets the most money, without reference to the expressed views of a supervisory agency having no executive power. Some sophisticated lobbyist who is dissatisfied with the report of the Board of Charities will argue that the gentlemen who compose it, not being in actual charge of the institution, do not really know its needs, and, if he be clever enough, will get the committee and the legislature to agree with him in this contention.

Economical administration, the use of money so that every dollar expended produces the most possible for the definite object in view, the expenditure of money in such manner as to command the approval of the solid tax-paying element, are among the highest objects to be pursued by all managers of institutions. No injury to the cause of public charity officially administered can be deeper than that which accrues through departures from a common-sense business policy. When the public is able to justly criticise such management as being wasteful, punishment follows swiftly, but unfortunately falls hardest upon the dependent, insane, and criminal classes, for which the institutions exist.

Since the adoption of the centralized system in Wisconsin, there have been no complaints against institution management which have made formal investigations necessary.

Close legislative scrutiny and inspections voluntarily made by able men of college faculties and other students of social science have resulted in nearly uniform approval of the methods pursued. The record is one of which every intelligent citizen of the State is proud. I have no time to go into the matter of comparative statistics of cost and efficiency of institutions in different States, but will say that, so far as I have been able to study reports, I have found no other institutions operating at lower cost or wherein the inmates were better fed and cared for than in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin and Kansas are the only populous States having consolidated executive boards. It has been said that in States having much greater population the idea is impracticable. I do not share this opinion. In my judgment all that is necessary in such States is a board having a greater number of members. If in Wisconsin over 1,000 inspections could have been made in 1894 by the members of a board of six, whose travel aggregated over 150,000 miles, as were the facts, a larger board proportioned to greater labors would have done equally well.

As I understand the matter, the ordinary board of charities is more distinguished for investigations of bad conditions as they have developed than in the work of guarding against the occurrence of evils. Its preventive work is the strength of the Wisconsin Board. It does not simply lock the stable door after the horse is stolen, but makes every effort to keep the steed out of reach of the horse thief.

I am not making a set argument for the executive board idea. What I have said is intended to be merely suggestive. If it lead those having an interest in the subject to investigate for themselves what is being done in the Badger State, not by theorists and doctrinaires and retired capitalists with a dilettante taste for philanthropy, but by men of average endowments, starting early in life as students of social questions and workers in official charities, I shall be satisfied. I am sure that, when they become familiar with our achievements, they will not see changes in legislation in their several States without striving to have incorporated in new legislation some of the points of a centralized system.

I must not take leave of the subject without frankly admitting what my friend Wines has long maintained,— that systems are less important, after all, than men. I would disparage no great result reached in the older States due to the high character and great ability of the workers there. Their contributions to the science of institution management have placed us all under a debt of gratitude. They would make an abundant success of any, the poorest possible, system; but I cannot help thinking they would have been less handicapped in grappling with the many difficulties they have surmounted, had they been officially related to a system like that which has been so satisfactorily worked out in Wisconsin.

Wherever any body of Americans interested in the question of poverty and its relief meet together this spring, the first thing they should do is to rejoice. During the winter of 1893-94 we were forced by the emergency to do many things which seemed to us dangerous, and we dreaded to meet in the winter of 1894-95 the evil consequences of our actions; but from all the cities comes the same report, the evil consequences have not ensued. This means that we did the good we meant to do and did not do the harm we feared we were doing. It means that our earnest desire not to hurt the souls of those in need, while we helped their bodies, was so strong and so genuine that our influence upon them was good; and may well give us renewed faith both in human nature and in the spirit in which we have tried to do our work. I believe the secret was that we did care more for the souls and characters of the people we tried to help than for their bodies, and that we did therefore treat each one as an individual person; and, even though we had to deal with hundreds, we never lumped them and treated them wholesale as a class.

it

It has been most remarkable that the people, hard pressed as they have been again this winter, have not succumbed to the temptation to turn for help where they got it so freely last year. The secretary

of the University Settlement in New York, who himself gave out hundreds of relief-work tickets in 1893 and 1894, and who watched carefully the special relief-work given from the Settlement to the striking cloak-makers this winter, said he found only six of last

At

year's applicants among the five hundred who came this year. the Charity Organization Society District Offices, where relief-work tickets were also distributed in 1893 and 1894, there has been this year the same remarkable absence of applications from those who were helped then.

And, as I have said, the account is the same from other sources. To take only three of the largest societies in New York:

The number of "cases treated" by the United Hebrew Charities during the first three months of the years 1894 and 1895 were as follows:

The number of applicants to the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor during the same period were:

and the number of applicants to the Charity Organization Society :

Thus, as I have said, we do well to rejoice; for a great danger has been escaped and a great lesson has been learned.

But let me make now a practical application of the lesson learned, and try to sketch the rough outlines of a plan by which, in ordinary times, people in distress may be helped physically without being hurt morally.

To turn to the special field assigned me, New York City, the problem of relief in New York is the same as in other large cities,how to provide such help as is needed for the people who belong in