Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/606

 59 2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

and the available administrative machinery, than upon any radi- cal differences of opinion in regard to poor relief and philan- thropy. The Elberfeld system will prove, on closer examina- tion, to be not an arbitrary one, the sudden invention of a shrewd brain ; in the main it is a renewal of principles which were actu- ally practiced by the primitive church, which are clearly expressed in the poor regulations of the time of the Reformation, and which, toward the close of the eighteenth century, were again unearthed and given universal recognition. It is merely because Elberfeld revived these sound fundamental principles, after a period of mismanagement, and applied them with such remarkable success that we speak of the Elberfeld system as a new acquisition and as being, per se, the correct and proper system of present-day poor relief. The first of these fundamental principles is that poor relief must be individualized, i. e., the aid given to each person must correspond in its character, its amount, etc., to the peculiar needs of the individual. This of itself implies the fur- ther principle, that, in order to be practical, poor relief must be a personal transaction from man to man. Any system which attempts to treat all exactly alike must be rejected. This again forbids receiving all applicants, without distinction, into alms- houses, or taking children into nurseries without a careful exam- ination of all circumstances connected with the case, or giving aid to unknown persons, or treating the able-bodied and those incapable of work exactly alike. The first and greatest result of the adoption of this principle of individualization was that those practicing charity in any form learned to adapt their gift to the circumstance of a particular case ; to give work instead of money, or refuge and care in an institution in preference to work ; or, where the circumstances of the case required it, even to mete out punishment instead of aid. This again made it necessary for the system to demand that before the nature and the amount of the aid were decided upon, the condition and cir- cumstances of the applicant should be carefully examined by impartial and disinterested persons. If Elberfeld and other Ger- man communities were able to find among their citizens men to