USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > Municipal government history and politics, Vol. V > Part 24
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Die Stätten des Elends in London, is the subject of an
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article in the Deutsche Rundschau for January, 1885, by Albert Duncker. Professor Huber is the author of a mono- graph upon Wohnungsnoth der kleinen Leute in grossen Städten. A very practical and detailed work on buildings for work- ingmen has been published in Prussia with the title Die Einrichtungen für die Wohlfahrt der Arbeiter der grösseren gewerblichen Anlagen im Preussischen Staate, with a book of plates, showing plans of construction, pictures of houses, etc. The work was published under the direction of the ministry of commerce, industry, and public works, Berlin, 1876. More accessible to American readers and of immense practical value is Carroll D. Wright's report on the Factory System of the United States, with pictures of model houses for workingmen in England, France, Belgium, Prussia, Connecticut, and Massa- chusetts (United States Census, 1880, Statistics of Manufactures). The Social Statistics of Cities, also published in the Tenth Census, compiled by George E. Waring, Jr., is an invalu- able work and a great honor to statistical and sociological science in America. In this connection these statistics are valuable for the study of questions of house-drainage and sanitation. The work contains also the history of American towns and cities, with an account of their institutions, and with instructive municipal maps.
SAVINGS BANKS.
The promotion of economy and savings among the working classes is one of the highest kinds of organized charity. It promotes thrift and self-respect. "A History of the Banks of Saving in Great Britain," by William Lewins, London, 1866, is by far the best work in English. It is a masterly account not only of the actual operations of English Savings Banks with their beneficent effect upon the poorer classes, but it traces the course of all philanthropic efforts that have made progress in this field. Lewins' description of the origin and establishment of the Postal Savings Banks is especially good.
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Professor Laurent of Ghent, is the father of School Savings Banks and has published valuable pamphlets on the subject. England, France and Germany, got their cue for their School Savings Banks from the system established by him in Belgium.
Le Journal des Économistes and L' Économiste Français contains many good articles on the French System.
The German Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik: und für Gesetzgebung, and the Vierteljahrschrift für Volkswirth- schaft all contain discussions of the German Municipal Savings Banks and the proposed Postal system.
The best international statistics of savings are those pub- lished by the Bureau of Royal Statistics of Italy.
The "History of Savings Banks in the United States," 2 vols., 1878, by Emerson W. Keyes, includes in a well-arranged and compact form all the important facts bearing upon the growth and reverses of these institutions in America from their inception in 1816 down to 1877. Mr. Keyes singles out in an admirable way the test provisions in the laws per- taining to savings banks, such as those regulating the invest- ment of their funds and their supervision. But the banks are treated too much as an end in themselves.
The Bankers Magazine contains summaries of reports as they appeared, and now and then it has articles discussing the different systems of savings.
The state reports of the savings banks in the New England and Middle States are valuable to the student.
POOR LAWS AND PAUPERISM IN ENGLAND.
The condition of English and American almshouses and workhouses, and other agencies for the relief of pauperism cannot be understood without some historical reading. The poor laws of this country are based upon those of England, and the latter proceed from a remarkable statute of the forty- third year of Queen Elizabeth (cap. ii.), 1601, an Act for the Relief of the Poor. Three principles are embodied in this
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law : (1) the provision " for setting to work all such persons married or unmarried having no means to maintain them and use no ordinary and daily trade of life to get their living by ;" (2) Relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind, and such other among them being poor or unable to work ; and (3) Putting out of neglected children to be apprentices. Of this statute, Sir George Nicholls, in his History of the English Poor Law, says : "the great turning-point of our Poor Law Legislation is still the foundation and text-book of English Poor Law." The circumstances which led to this enactment, and the subsequent legislation, especially that which proceeds from the inquiries of the poor-law commissions (1830-37) may be fully understood by a perusal of Nicholl's work. He is also author of a History of the Scotch and Irish Poor Laws. In the English Citizen Series a volume by the Rev. T. W. Fowle is devoted to the Poor Law (London, 1881).
The report of the Poor-Law Commission, published in 1834, has great historical value and was reprinted not long ago by government-order. The Poor Law of Foreign Coun- tries is the subject of a special report by the Local Govern- ment Board, 1875. F. C. Montague, in a Cobden-Club tract, on the Old Poor Law and New Socialism, reviews the operation of English Poor Laws and strongly opposes state- charity. In reading this tract, one is impressed with the fact that England has repeated, in a modified form, the old Roman experiment of largesses to the common people, which inevitably result in pauperism. The principles of legislation with regard to property given for charitable and other public uses is the subject of a valuable work by Courtney Stanhope Kenny, published in London in 1880. Francis Peek is the author of Social Wreckage, a review of the laws of England as they affect the Poor. A. W. Sieveking has treated the principles of charitable work. Pauperism and Self Help is the subject of an article in the Westminster Review, 103: 107. Octavia Hill has written on the Importance of aiding the Poor without Almsgiving. Florence Hill has called attention to the Chil-
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dren of the State and the training of Juvenile Paupers. Das Englische Armenwesen is treated in the German Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, 1886, p. 199. London Alms and London Pauperism is the subject of an article in the London Quarterly, for October, 1876. Pauperization, its Cause and Cure, and Depauperization are two tracts by Sir Baldwin Leighton. Thrift as a test of Out-door Relief is a pamphlet by George Bartlett.
PAUPERISM AND CHARITIES ON THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE.
While the experience of England in the improvement of the condition of society is most available for Americans, it is important to add that France, Germany, and indeed all Europe have a vast fund of practical lessons which may be drawn upon by the use of special literature. For example the charities of Paris are described by Jules Lecomte in his work entitled La Charité à Paris, 1861. A great variety of educational, charitable, and other experiments are described by John De Liefde in his "Six Months among the Charities of Europe " (Alexander Strahan, London and New York, 1866). In two octavo volumes the author has recorded not only his personal observations but a digest of a vast quantity of official reports and administrative facts. The work is not so valuable from the standpoint of organized charities as it is for its detailed description of individual charities, particularly in the educa- tion of poor or neglected children. The writer gives the history and results of many interesting sociological experiments in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland. The Poor-law System of Elberfeld has been described in a report by Andrew Doyle, London, 1871, and by the Rev. W. W. Edwards in the Contemporary Review, for July, 1878, and in Good Words, i, 5. Mr. Sanford of the Johns Hopkins University has pre- pared a paper upon the same subject. Poor Relief in different Parts of Europe is the subject of a selection of essays from the
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German, by A. Emminghaus, London, 1873. Roper's trans- lation of Grellman's work on Beggars, a work written in 1787, affords a remarkable glimpse into beggar-life. Tramps are not a modern institution. They are a sturdy stock, of mediæ- val ancestry, as prolific as fleas and even harder to kill. Upon the sturdy beggar class two excellent works have been pub- lished in London since 1880 : (1) London and Mendicant Wan- derers in the Streets of London, and (2) Beggar Biographies.
The subject of Pauperism in Europe has been well treated by our countryman, Mr. Charles L. Brace, in the North American Review, 120: 315. Pauperism in France is the subject of papers in the Foreign Quarterly Review, 15: 159, and in the Westminster Review, 57: 239. Charities in France have been characterized in The Nation, 4: 270. A general and standard treatise on Charity is that by J. M. Gerando, · De la Bienfaisance Publique, four volumes, Paris, 1839. Die Erhebung der niederen Volksclassen is a valuable German monograph of 168 pages. Die Verhandlungen des Deutschen Vereins für Armenflege are standard sources of information upon German charities. A valuable chapter upon the Poor of Germany, Das Armenwesen, may be found in Schönberg's encyclopædic work on Political Economy.
A French writer, De Villeneuve-Bargemont, has treated the subject of Economie Politique Chrétienne, ou Recherches sur la Nature et les Causes du Paupérisme en Europe et sur les Moyens de le soulager et de le prévenir, 3 vols., Paris, 1834. Uhlhorn has treated the subject of Christian Charity in the early church.
SOCIAL STUDIES IN EUROPE.
Among the most valuable studies of social phenomena upon the continent of Europe are W. H. Riehl's Land und Leute and Frederick Le Play's Les Ouvriers Européens. Both of these writers travelled on foot through the countries and social scenes which they describe. Le Play's studies of the actual
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condition of the laboring classes in factories and in the mines are especially valuable. He gathered illustrative facts upon a large scale and made social science concrete instead of doc- trinaire, as it had been in Paris before his time. Through the force of his example, there was founded, at the suggestion of the French Academy, an international society for practical studies in social economy, which has already published five or six volumes of monographs with the general title Les Ouvriers des Deux Mondes. Le Play's ideas have penetrated all France and have led to the establishment of local unions for the study of social and economic questions. The International society and the local Unions de la Paix Sociale are represented in periodical literature by La Réforme Sociale and by La Science Sociale. A good account of this interesting movement, which is surely settling the labor question in France, may be found in the Popular Science Monthly, for October, 1886, Le Play's Studies in Social Phenomena, by Mr. A. G. Warner, of the Charity Organization Society of Baltimore.
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT.
The Literature of Charities may be approached from various points of view, but best of all, in the writer's judgment is the historical. If one would really understand the movements of social science and organized charities in the nineteenth century, he should at the outset grasp the fundamental fact that, for eighteen centuries, the charitable and legislative efforts of society have been pauperizing instead of elevating men. The process of degradation began in Italy, under the Roman empire, in the free distribution of bread and wine to the Roman populace or proletariat. Free corn and free drink served the same purpose as our modern soup-houses and barbecues. They made paupers and secured votes. If you wish to study the full significance of this bottom fact which endures in the pauperism of Rome and Naples, study the his- tory of the Roman empire, in any of the standard authorities.
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The Christian Church took up the charitable work of the Roman Empire, in a different spirit indeed and with many noble results; but some of the methods of Christian deacons and pious monks were as radically wrong as those of the Cæsars. Miscellaneous almsgiving, bequests to the poor, and the prodigal distribution of food from wealthy monasteries, which had no other use for the surplus produce of their lands except to give it away, completed that wretched process of pauperizing the fairest, richest country in Europe. The horrid sights which greet every traveller in Italy, along the roadsides and bridges, in the public squares and at the very doors of Christian churches, are only too familiar. Men and women deliberately make themselves hideous beggars. They cripple their own children in order to work on public sympathy. I was told by one of my students, who has lived many years in Rome, that he once caught a degenerate Roman citizen trans- forming himself into an artificial leper by the skilful application of candle-grease and tobacco-juice to his neck and arms.
For eighteen centuries Christian charity, often given at the entrance of church-doors, has been producing professional beggars and systematic frauds. If you do not believe it, use your own eyes when you go to Italy, and then study the history of the Church and its Monasteries from an economic point of view, in Gibbon, Milman, and Villeneuve-Bargemont. Do not understand me as underrating the good works of either the church or monastery. I am speaking only of their mis- taken methods of exercising charity. All that is best in our modern civilization, our schools and universities, our science and our religion, our literature and our art, have developed from the medieval church and the old Græco-Roman empire; but in the great work of organizing charity into self-help, the nineteenth century has surely made some progress beyond the wasteful and pauperizing methods of previous ages.
APPENDIX.
ENGLISH CHARITY ORGANIZATIONS.
BY D. R. RANDALL, PII. D.
(Reprinted from the Baltimore Sun, March 30, 1887.)
Though Baltimore began the work of organizing her charities after cer- tain other American cities, yet she had the wisdom and the opportunity to go to original sources for her information regarding the work. When Judge Fisher, of this city, was in London, he made an examination of the practical operations of the society there, and was able to help in the work already under way in Baltimore by the employment of the information so acquired. Thus, as we turn from the work in America to that in Europe, it is natural to begin with England.
The task of bringing order out of the chaotic mass of English charities has been going on during most of the present century, and the final efforts at systematizing benevolence have been helped to their present very suc- . cessful issue by such men as Gladstone, Ruskin, and Cardinal Newman. Americans have been slow to recognize the fact that in this country poverty can really exist as an institution. But when we can no longer shun the conclusion that not only the poor but the paupers are with us to stay, there is manifest wisdom in seeking what may be found to have value for us in the experience of the older countries. England's experience in dealing with the poor has ranged all the way from the enactment of laws that paid men to be idle and put a premium on illegitimate children to a system of charity organization that so unifies and directs the forces of public and private charity as to afford a working model for most of the countries of the world.
An integral part of the great mass of English charities has always been the poor-law system of relief, a compulsory alms levied by the State upon landowners. The system was begun during the last years of Elizabeth's reign, with the prominent idea of supplying in-door work-house aid to the destitute poor. The administrative abuse of this system and its prostitution to political ends had produced at the beginning of this century a most de- plorable condition of affairs among the poor. Out-door relief, without
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inquiry or examination concerning its necessity or final disposition, had become universal, and nearly eight millions sterling were annually spent in this grand scheme of pauperizing. Two thousand justices, fifteen thousand vestries, and fifteen thousand sets of overseers, acting independently, doled out this national fund, yearly rendering its recipients more dependent and degraded. In 1834 the poor law was amended, and the resultant law still remains in force. Even with this amended law, as usually administered, the idea of the new charity movement has been in constant conflict, but wherever the poor authorities have consented to co-operate with the charity organizations of the various cities, much has been accomplished to increase the effectiveness of each and to better the condition of the poor.
Encouraged by the Society of Friends, William Allen and Elizabeth Fry, in the early part of this century, took up the struggle for better methods of dealing with the pauper and criminal classes. Their work among the convicts of Newgate, their attempts to relieve by national legis- lation the distress bequeathed the English people by wars with Napoleon, and their organization of societies for the systematic visiting of the poor, were the first effectual efforts towards the development of the later and more ideal charity.
In 1832 Dr. Chalmers, of Glasgow, arraigned the poor-law system with its compulsory provision for the poor, and declared the effect of it to be that "by a sort of festering and spreading operation the sphere of destitution is constantly widening in every parish where the benevolence of love has been superseded by the benevolence of law."
Chalmers was willing to practice that he preached, and thought the government system of relief so bad that for his own parish of St. John's he refused the assistance that the poor-law authorities offered, and dividing his parish of ten thousand inhabitants into districts, he organized the peo- ple for individual work. They visited among the poor, trying to encourage the inclination to self-help, and when immediate aid was necessary, draw- ing upon the small voluntary alms-fund of the parish. The good effects of these methods, as compared with the unsystematic wholesale distribution of alms by the public authorities, were so apparent that it was adopted throughout the city of Glasgow. The Chalmers system stands for the introduction of a sympathetic personal element into charity, in contradis- tinction to the soulless help of the State, given out by means of administra- tive machinery.
Octavia Hill began in 1864 the work of reforming the London tenement- houses, her work resembling Chalmers's, in that it included personal acquaintance with the poor. John Ruskin helped her to begin with a loan of £1,000, and to Baltimoreans it is of interest to remember that George Peabody left a large sum for the advancement of her work. She is at present the centre of a planetary system of workers who have the care of three thousand tenants in the city of London. The Peabody Fund alone had, in 1883, been the means of constructing upon ground cleared of loath-
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some shanties 3,553 suitable dwellings, occupied by 14,604 persons. The best feature of this work is that once begun it pays its own way. The rents are collected by ladies, who are personal friends of the tenants; but they are collected none the less promptly, and instead of subsidizing laziness and impotence, the interest on the original bequest can be used to extend the work.
With such examples to learn from, and with the experience of that universal society, St. Vincent de Paul, to guide them, men like Cardinal Newman and William E. Gladstone took hold of the work of building up the London Charity Organization Society. That society stands to-day as the greatest co-operative work of the character undertaken, and has fur- nished an incentive and a model for cities in England, France, Germany, and our own country. The promoters of the plan aimed at nothing less than bringing all the charities of London, whether State, corporate or indi- vidual, into correspondence and concert of administration. Their own organization was to be the means through which this concerted action was to be achieved without violation of chartered rights or interference with individual methods.
In London everything is on a gigantic scale and the needs of the poor are no exception to the rule. The number of paupers relieved in London on one day of the third week in last February was over 105,000. From the country districts, the idle, the dissolute, the despairing, all flock to the metropolis and further aggravate the evils of overpopulation. Acres upon acres of huts, court-yards and alleys, the resorts of none but the criminal classes, the haunts of evil and most loathsome squalor, the outcome of ignorance, idleness and vice, where all purity is stifled in infancy-these are the fields of the society's work. Whole classes in London eat their bread on the condition not merely of good conduct but of favorable seasons. A three-days' rain will reduce thirty thousand "costermongers" or venders of provisions to the very verge of starvation.
To alleviate in one way or another the suffering entailed by this great mass of misfortune and vice, over nine hundred charitable foundations existed in London alone, and in that single city five millions sterling were annually distributed by private munificence, and all this in addition to the " poor rates," the proceeds of which were distributed by public officials. The Charity Organization addressed itself to the great task of systematizing this vast number of incongruous charities, and did not shrink from setting forth an ideal as high as that contained in this extract from the enumeration of the general objects of the society : "By its system, when perfected, it is expected that no loop-hole will be left for imposture; no dark holes and corners of misery, disease and corruption remain unvisited ; no social sores fester untouched by wise and gentle hands; no barriers of ignorance or selfish apathy stand unassailed between the rich and the poor; no differ- ences of creed prevent unity of action in the common cause of humanity."
The influence of intelligence and care in the disposition of private almis
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as well as of State-help has worked the greatest moral as well as economic good. Members of the boards of guardians of the poor are now among the leaders in the new charity movement. The clergy of all denominations and the State and city officials co-operate with heart and mind. Trustees of charitable bequests and institutions are gradually realizing that true charity does not consist in sitting in one's office beside a heap of shillings and filling each unfortunate hand that is thrust in sight. Co-operation is certainly the law of the new and coming charity, even though many fail to believe in its applicability in the industrial world. Co-operation prevents " overlapping" of relief, which independent action renders almost inevitable, while the careful investigation stops imposition by making it possible to discriminate between real and merely alleged destitution.
The results of this movement have been most marked in London, because there the experience acquired has been greatest, the centralization of the work is more complete, and the relations with the poor authorities are more intimate. Since the beginning of the work, in 1869, the poor rate has fallen 30 per cent. The decreasing expenditures of the various charitable organ- izations, the decreasing number of mendicants, and the arrest of many in their downward course towards pauperism attest the value of the results attained. In six of the Poor Unions of London in ten years the number of paupers decreased 12,108, or from 26,289 at the beginning of the decade to 14,181 at the end; while in the same district the attendence upon the public schools nearly trebled. In the Farmain Union, comprising some of the southern counties, the number of paupers was reduced from 49,332 in 1876 to 39,117 in 1886, while during the same period the expenses for help of the poor decreased from £261,000 to £194,841.
Such results are the outcome of the substitution of in-door relief after investigation of each case for the old, wholesale, indiscriminate plan. A system of organized charity which has been administered with such success in London, with its great population, its conflicting interests, and institu- tional conservatism, ought to be and can be maintained in Baltimore, for this city has not only the warm hearts and long purses that place great sums at the disposal of the needy, but it has the will and the intelligence to turn the power of this wise benevolence in the direction of constructive, helpful charity.
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