Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/701

 PUBLIC CHARITY AND PRIVATE PHILANTHROPY 685

office. If, in urgent cases, this was not possible before the vot- ing of the aid, the whole matter is afterwards brought to the notice of the business management through the minutes of the district and circuit assemblies and such other papers from which it is copied, and filed with the rest of the papers referring to the particular pauper in question. This plan makes it very easy to detect duplication of relief. Moreover, whenever it appears from the papers that any circumstance of importance has escaped the notice of the helper who has the case in charge, he is noti- fied of their full contents. When the decision and resolutions of one body are at variance with the laws or the business regu- lations, they are submitted to the next higher authority, the cir- cuit or the central board. One of the most important principles of work is the demand for absolute reliability and the prompt- ness and dispatch of the business world. The work of the busi- ness management includes a great many separate branches, such as the treasury department, the collecting of subscriptions from well-to-do relatives of dependents, the making good of claims a dependent may have upon other poor funds. All this is care- fully regulated in detail by instructions and rules.

The entire corps active in poor-relief includes about twenty members of the central board, somewhat more than 100 dis- trict chairmen, nearly 1600 helpers and nearly 100 clerks. The distinction between the function of the honor offices and those held by professional or salaried officials may briefly be stated thus : the former foster the spirit of the work ; the latter have the care of the forms ; each is supplemented and modified by the other, so that neither arbitrariness, disorder, and loose- ness, on the one hand, nor, on the other, stiff formality and excessive writing may hamper the work. This aim has thu> t.u been realized in a very satisfactory manner.

IV.

It was said above that the general principles of poor-relief are so fixed as to be applicable everywhere, if properly adapted to local environments. This will be borne out by a comparison of