Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/761

 CONCERNING A MINOR REFORM IN INDIANA 747

administration of public charity. This subcommittee consisted of four men : the one above mentioned, the secretary of the Board of State Charities, the secretary of the leading charity-organiza- tion society of the state, and an ex-township trustee who had dis- charged his duties as overseer of the poor with singular intel- ligence, zeal, and fidelity.

This subcommittee drafted three bills. One became the act mentioned in the first paragraph of this article, the second regu- lated the management of the county asylums for the poor, the third established county boards of charities and correction. All were successful and are now among the laws of the state.

The new laws went into effect in the summer of 1899, and not until the close of the county fiscal year, on May 31, 1900, was it possible to form any accurate idea of their results. The law regulating outdoor relief prescribed the methods with which every student of economic science is familiar, when applied to city charities, under the name of "charity organization." That all the facts concerning poor people should be known to those who would really help them ; that full and accurate records of such facts, of the help afforded, and of the results thereof, must be kept if we would have our work anything else but spasmodic ; that different relief agencies, discharging the same or a similar function in one locality, will do more harm than good unless they act in harmony and with a full understanding of each other's work ; that natural ties of kindred are of immense value, and must be conserved and not broken down ; that every man's duty is to help himself if he can, and that the best thing his fellow- man can do for him, when he needs help, is to help him to help himself; that the acts of every public official should be reported to somebody, so that there shall always be some system of check ; that people needing help should get it where they belong ; that assisting professional mendicants to travel over the land at the public expense is a bad business these truisms, so familiar to every member of the Associated Charities, so often ignored by both public and private almoners, are organized into the law which governs the outdoor relief of the state of Indiana.

The new laws seemed to many people, especially public