continue with his work much as before, with the exception that he would report and be responsible to the Director of Public Welfare, who in turn would be responsible to the Mayor. Where necessary the work of the various bureaus should of course be modernized and up-to-date business methods should prevail throughout, but no material structural changes need be made until a working policy had been formulated for the entire department. As already indicated, the working out of this policy in conjunction with the advisory board would take time, and in its formulation the various bureau heads should have a voice. year or more would elapse before the policy became effective, so that the question of developing or changing the work of any bureau of the department would not arise until later. What direction this development might take has already been indicated elsewhere.

A

At the beginning, therefore, in addition to the appointment and organization of the advisory board, the other important organization detail applies to the office of the director. The director's office, in collaboration with the advisory board, should constitute the seat of clearing-house activity and the center of coördinating effort as between the departmental bureaus themselves, between the Department of Public Welfare and other departments of the city government, and between the Department and private welfare

agencies. All questions of relief and coöperation would be directed to this office through which they would be referred to the proper bureau, department, or agency.

The actual clearing-house routine would be somewhat as follows: Applications for relief would come either directly from needy families or individuals or would be referred by some city department, such as the Department of Health, or by a private welfare agency. A record would be made, not to duplicate or supersede the complete detailed records kept by the bureaus or agencies working on the case, but of a nature suitable to clearing-house purposes, indicating particularly the agencies interested, character of aid received, what investigations or actions are under way with respect thereto, what further aid is contemplated, and the agency taking responsible charge. The card containing this record would be kept in the active file until disposition of the case, when the nature of the final disposition would be recorded.

The importance of a trustworthy confidential exchange is seen right here. The Director of Public Welfare would naturally wish to turn to such an exchange for information, provided he had confidence in its reliability. If the exchange is not functioning properly, this would be one of the first questions the advisory board and the Director of Public Welfare would wish to take up.

Returning to the clearing-house activities of the director's office, for the first year at least the director will be working out the problems involved as he goes along and will doubtless wish to keep this work under his immediate supervision. The personnel he will need, besides his secretary, who will have additional duties to those involved in the clearing-house activities, should not exceed a file clerk and one or two investigators. However, as these clearing-house activities develop, the logical outgrowth is a departmental Bureau of Research, if this is not already in existence. The development in one large city in this respect was as follows: first, registration of clearing-house cases; then, survey of the city's public welfare needs; later, more extended investigations into particular welfare problems; and, finally, the establishment of a Bureau of Research.

The attached organization chart covers in general outline the organization suggestions made in this section. A glance at the chart will show how this plan of municipal public welfare activities could be employed in other cities without changing the plan of organization here set forth. In short, the plan can be made to apply to the public welfare needs of almost any large American city.

ADVANTAGES AND ECONOMIES

The advantages and economies to be expected from the organization of a municipal Department

of Public Welfare built along modern lines have been indicated in a number of places in the preceding sections of this article. Here it will suffice to bring them together in a brief summary statement.

Every American city of any considerable size aims to help its unfortunate and needy residents in some way. Year by year large sums of money are spent on temporary relief, jails, reformatories and other public charitable and correctional activities. The question is whether these expenditures and services are to be carried on under conditions that are necessarily wasteful, that force a competition with the splendid system of private relief built up in recent years, and that usually make for temporary rather than permanent assistance, or whether through the application of modern business methods a constructive and permanently beneficial service will be rendered.

The advantages and economies to be expected are seen in the elimination of the overlapping and wasteful duplication of effort otherwise existing between public and private welfare administration, in systematically and to the fullest extent utilizing the specialized resources of private philanthropy in the city in question, in protecting the public against the solicitation of unworthy and fraudulent charities, in assisting more of the needy in a constructive way while at the same time spending less for material relief, in conserving human life and keeping people from becoming