Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/108

 94 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

should be indoor relief, inside the doors of an institution, where cure and education should be the primary objects aimed at cure of disease, moral, mental, and physical, and education in self- control and self-dependence.

My argument, in brief, is that the work of the mass of every community is an absolute necessity, in order to provide for it the means of living; that no human being will work to provide the means of living for himself if he can get a living in any other manner agreeable to himself ; and that the community cannot afford to tempt its members who are able to work for a living to give up working for a living by offering to provide a living otherwise ; and that public relief must be confined to those who cannot work for a living ; and the only way to test whether they can or not is to make the living provided by the public always less agreeable than the living provided by the individual for himself, and the way to do this is to provide it under strict rules inside an institution. 1

PROFESSOR C. R. HENDERSON.

This kind of relief is unnecessary. Private charity would supply all the necessities of such cases, if the state simply and instantly withdrew from this field and ceased to levy taxes for this purpose. Official charity is costly beyond properly admin- istered private charity. It is easy to be liberal with funds raised from the public. It costs no appreciable sacrifice to be generous at the common expense.

The existence of a fund for outdoor relief is a constant menace of political corruption. This is especially true where the fund is administered by a single township trustee, without criticism from persons of opposite partisan motives. It is not so true where the fund is managed by a board made up of both parties. But the fund itself presents this temptation.

Public outdoor relief tends to separate society into classes. It aggravates a peril which is already great. It accentuates the difference between rich and poor. It makes the only bond between the prosperous and the broken that of the officials who

'"The Economic and Moral Effects of Public Outdoor Relief," Proceedings of the National Conference of Ckarities and Corrections, 1891, pp. 81-5.