Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/358

 346 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

whether it is not much more true that the rendering of money assistance to the indigent restores him more quickly to a condition of independence, and that the poorhouse tends to make him a permanent subject of poor-relief. Moreover, it has often been observed that a strict application of the principle of indoor relief leads to an increase of those two evils already mentioned the want of those who are in real need, but whose pride is too great to allow them to enter the poorhouse ; and the resort of the others to begging and vagrancy, which they find more comfortable and profitable. More than this, neither England nor America would be in a position consistently to carry out its system of indoor relief, were it not richly supplemented by private charity which mitigates the severities of the system. Moreover, an increasing insight into the connection between poverty on the one hand, and disease and immorality on the other, in all civilized countries, and not least in America and England, has had the result of so nar- rowing the sphere of indoor relief that all those classes of indi- gents are refused admittance which need special medical attend- ance, and for whose moral welfare dangers are to be feared from a stay in the workhouse. Above all is this true of the sick and the young. In its relation to the children especially is the develop- ment of the system of family relief, and the separation of children from adults, noteworthy. In sick-relief it is a matter of the first importance to render the relief at the right moment to insure the cure of the patient and, where possible, to seize the disease at a stage in which restoration of the power of earning his own living may be successfully accomplished. In this respect the movement for combating the evil of tuberculosis is especially of far-reaching importance.

The question of good organization, as well as the question of adequate relief, is handled by general efforts of the most various kinds, in which public poor-relief and private charity take part in different ways. This very diversity, however, conceals two serious dangers lack of unity on the one side, and overlapping on the other. To counteract these dangers it is necessary that the directors of public poor-relief and the different representatives of private charity should associate with one another for the purpose