Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/441

 NOTES AND ABSTRA CTS 427

9. Tuberculosis. The jails, through lack of sunlight and ventilation, and through the promiscuous association of their inmates, have been prolific in conta- gion. Sing Sing prison is notorious as a breeding-place for tuberculosis. But tubercular cases are now receiving much better care since the establishment of a central isolation ward in connection with the Clinton state prison. During the period from 1891 to 1895, inclusive, when little systematic effort was made to battle with tuberculosis among the prison population, the number of deaths from the disease in Sing Sing, Auburn, and Clinton was 253. During the next suc- ceeding five years a more or less systematic effort was made to transfer all the tubercular cases to the Clinton prison, and to give them special treatment and isolation as far as possible, during which period the number of deaths was only 72, thus showing an improvement of 71 per cent, in the second period over the first in the death-rate. The records of the institution compare remarkably favorably with those of the federal Marine Sanitarium for tubercular cases at Fort Stanton, N. M., and also with those of the federal Army Sanitarium at Fort Bayard, N. M.

10. The report contains also (a) a review of the battle with insanity in prisons of the state ; (b) the report of the committee of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections on " The Treatment of the Criminal ; " (c) an ad- dress by Hon. John Franklin Fort, justice of the supreme court of New Jersey, on " The Indeterminate Sentence ; " (d) an article by Samuel J. Barrows on " New Crimes and Punishments ; " and (e) numerous pictures from the isolation wards of the Clinton prison and from the Matteawan State Hospital for the Insane.

T. J. R.

The Administration of Charity in England. It is customary to regard the English poor-law as entirely the product of Elizabethan statesmanship. As a matter of fact, the Elizabethan poor-law was only a differentiation and develop- ment ot the custom and law which were introduced into England with the feudal system. There are four characteristic points which we may note at this epoch when the poor-law began to be consciously developed and differentiated: (i) the responsibility of each parish for its own poor; (2) the attempt to confine all relief within the parish to a common center; (3) the tendency for voluntary contributions to be superseded by a compulsory rate ; (4) the tendency to sub- stitute civil for ecclesiastical administration.

If we look now at the present administration of the poor-law, we find, in the first place, that the responsibility of each parish for its poor has been on the whole maintained, although there is a disposition to transfer the rsponsibility for controlling parish relief from local to central authorities. If we look at the second point, nothing could be more complete than its failure. It was originally thought that, by prohibiting almsgiving except through the common box, the benevolent would be sure to give to the common box rather than restrain their benevolence. But benevolence resents constraint, and the result was a complete divorce between official and spontaneous charity. The substitution of civil for ecclesiastical administration lent the sanction of the church to the divorce. Thus two distinct forms of relief resulted : that which is regulated and a part of the civil administration of the parish, and that which is spontaneous, often wildly unregulated, and largely, though not wholly, controlled by the church.

The minimum work deemed essential under the poor-law is that maintenance shall be provided for the destitute either in or out of the workhouse, medical treatment and a hospital for the sick, entire provision and education for destitute children, and, to a small but increasing extent, special treatment for the specially afflicted.

How far is this legal relief supplemented or superseded by voluntary charity? If the development of charity had been conscious and reflective, one would expect to find it devoted to those branches of work which are not covered by the poor- law, and many of which could not be wisely undertaken by the poor-law. To some extent this is the case, but many private almsgivers are merely engaged in doing less methodically and effectively the work they are already paying to have done through the rates. This is especially the case with the work which gathers