GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION FOR POOR RELIEF

Charity organization societies are wholly voluntary organizations; and there is need for such voluntary cooperation to care for the community’s unfortunate and to root out the causes of dependency.  Such organizations should, however, work in cooperation with governmental agencies.  There are state boards of charities which usually have supervision over the various state institutions for dependents and defectives.  Every large city government has its department of charities, sometimes combined with the department of health.  The “overseer of the poor” is one of the oldest of town officers.  The care of dependents and defectives in small, or rural, communities has, however, been very poorly organized.

RELATION BETWEEN STATE AND LOCAL ORGANIZATION

An effective attack upon the public welfare problems of a state is twofold:  (1) by a state welfare board and state welfare institutions, and (2) by town and county welfare boards and institutions... .

Public welfare work calls for a state board of public welfare, statewide in authority ... and for state institutions that are large enough to care for the delinquents, the dependents, the defectives, and the neglected who cannot be better cared for by local authority and institutions. ...

But, on the other hand, it calls for county boards of public welfare with county-wide authority and trained executive secretaries. ...  Many of our ills bulk up so big that they can be successfully attacked only in detail by local interest, local effort, and local institutions.  Tuberculosis and poverty are capital instances of social problems that are beyond the possibilities of state institutions, and that necessarily wait upon organized county efforts of effective sort. ...  We do not know the deaf, the blind, the feeble-minded, the epileptic, the crippled, and the neglected or wayward boys and girls—­their number, their names, and their residences in any county of the state ... because there is at present no local organization charged with the responsibility of accounting for such unfortunates. ...

[Footnote:  E. C. Branson, “County responsibility for public welfare,” in the North Carolina Club year book, 1917-1918, pp. 161, 162 (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N. C.).]

CAUSES OF DEPENDENCY MUST BE REMOVED

There will doubtless always be some dependent and defective members of the community for whom the community must care.  Their number, however, may be greatly reduced by creating conditions that will remove their causes.  It has been reported from many localities, for example, that the prohibition of the sale of intoxicating liquors has resulted in the emptying of the “work houses” which communities have sustained for