could have at once gone to work and the workers taken on as fast as investigation had done its work, far greater good would have been done. Yet I hear of no city that has done better than Boston, either with its street work or its sewing and patching.

The Associated Charities that could have done far better were not allowed to act. Why? Because at the points where the question of the unemployed touched politics the labor leaders and the politicians made themselves too strongly felt. Properly organized charity was disliked too much by those who represented, or wished to represent the unemployed, and on the other hand the officialism of the city was unprepared and untrained for the emergency. Anything like real success was thus impossible. Miscellaneous begging has thriven upon the situation, and one certain consequence in my opinion is a considerable degree of demoralization which will be felt in the future. In that future the distrust and ill-will toward ordinary charities is sure to deepen. Even if these charities can do better than the city, political affiliations touched by socialistic sentiment will not permit them to monopolize the control of such experiments as the unemployed. I believe distinctly that the day has passed when the well-to-do classes can alone manage these questions. The simple fact that the management is in such hands has at last come to excite such a force of sullen ill-will that the friction is too great. Representatives both of the leisure and working classes must get that education and sympathy which alone can come by bearing together common responsibilities.

It will not help us to find fault with this growing distrust, or to blame the demos for its enmity toward charity. If this enmity is a fact and if it is increasing, it can have but one cure. The scientific or systematized charity is grossly misunderstood by these enemies and will continue to be misunderstood until they are brought long and intimately into actual contact with the practical problems of organized charity. Its

principles are rational co-operation, systematized investigation and friendly visiting. It is not pedantry to-day that this is science applied to the problem. It is merely ordered knowledge infused by the proper spirit. Trade-unionist and socialist alike must accept what is essential in these principles just so far as they deal at all wisely with the question. How can this insight be learned? Only in one way, and that, by systematic experience in the application of these principles.

In work upon charity and the unemployed the next great step in charity work I believe to be this democratizing of its administration. It must come not only to teach the socialists and trade-unionists a very difficult lesson, it must come also if only to fill the gulf now widening between these groups, and official and voluntary charities. Socialists and tradeunionists will learn their lesson only so far as definite responsibilities are given them. This will imply what has already begun even in the Elberfeld system, paid service among a part of the visitors.

It is evident that with increased responsibility the most intelligent leaders of the London socialists are already learning this lesson. John Burns has said that when the socialists got power they would make short work with the dead-beat constituency. He has shown more and more interest in the work of the charity organization idea in his own district. They cannot deal with the confirmed beggar without such principles, nor is it possible for them to learn these principles except by taking upon themselves the actual burden of the administration work, i. e., their part of it. Those of them who thus do the work will come to be the natural instructors of their fellows.

This democratizing of charity work must come slowly and above all not be unnaturally forced. If we understand that it is an ideal toward which we must work, opportunities will come, as they have already come to put women ou boards of overseers. The Boston board is at this moment

doubled in strength and efficiency by the women upon it, yet it is but a few years since I heard this ridiculed by persons in authority as "absurd doctrinaire sentiment." The Boston committee for the unemployed had a fair chance to put one or two representatives of the trade-unions among its members. The refusal to do this resulted in much bitterness among the labor organizations. Here was the perfect opportunity to avoid such irritation and also to educate the labor representatives by giving them their share of the responsibility in dealing with the unemployed question. They were living in the midst of it and daily struggling with the problem and yet were allowed to have no part in directing the experiment. I am glad to have heard the distinguished president of the Boston Associated Charities admit that it was a mistake to keep these men from the committee.

Beside this cautious working toward a democratizing of charity administration, what may be said of more specific remedies for the future?*

In answering the question, I shall keep as far aloof from any theorizing as possible; I shall have in mind merely the actual experience which the situation offers. And first, what was the chief blinding fact of that situation last winter? It was the fact that the whole mass with which the problem had to do was mixed hopelessly through and through with the professional beggar, the tramp and the dead-beat element; so confused by this element that no human ingenuity could

*The remedies suggested may seem related to the unemployed rather than to the charity question. To the extent however that the agencies indicated prove efficient they will relieve the charity burden, as they will tend to classify groups so that the "genuine" unemployed-so far as possessed of any skill-will present relatively few difficulties. Alike for the workless and charity subjects the present despair is the kind of competition brought to the situation by the untaught, by those who live from hand to mouth, and especially by that large variety of tramp and beggar who accepts odd jobs when driven to it by chronic necessity. The slow democratizing of administration is perhaps even more necessary for any right handling of the unemployed than for objects of charity. Organized opinion among the working-people themselves will act upon their idlers far more powerfully than the opinion of the well-to-do. An English Socialist has said, "Your comfortable classes can get no leverage upon these fellows. Let the laborers themselves deal with them, and they can quickly weed out the parasite."

in the least tell what we were dealing with. The whole discussion, the public meetings, the advertising, made it the occasion for this dead-beat element to come to the front. It is not a matter of question that Boston, like every large city, has thousands of such in its midst.

I believe that the beginning of right thinking on this question is to understand once for all that no important step is possible until we take measures to separate the "beat"in all his forms from the honest and well meaning among those in need. Why, like the green bay tree, does the beat flourish among us? chiefly because the public chooses to support him, and why support him? because the public is wholly uncertain, when appeal for alms is made, whether the case is genuine or not. And the public will continue to give at the back door and upon the streets until it is convinced that the beggar has had a perfectly fair chance of work offered him. "I had rather give to five beats than turn off one worthy case," is what one hears from four-fifths of the well-to-doclasses, and so the tramp goes his way rejoicing and the professional beggar continues without let his calling. One sees clearly in all this that the first difficulty is in this unconvinced public opinion. No step will count that does not first reckon with this public opinion. It is for this reason that we are driven for remedies (1) to adequate organized work tests, not primarily to furnish work, but simply as tests. We may begin with the actual tests existing whether wood yards, laundries, street work, and so far add to them as fairly to meet the varying degrees of strength and weakness among those out of work. Tailoring and sewing work, thorough cleaning of the courts and alleys, etc., can certainly be so far organized as to constitute such tests. The evidence is very strong that voluntary associations alone cannot cope with the problem. The city must take part in such way as to allow competition between it and voluntary schemes. A certain requisite steadiness and uniformity can alone be secured by municipal control.

On the other hand much of the best

work finally taken by the municipality is first tried and approved by the free initiative of individuals or voluntary associations. Nor need the city fear to admit the "right to work" if it retain the control of all conditions of place, wage, etc., under which work is given. It seems clear that for such work the "living wage" cannot be paid but something below even the market wage for kindred tasks. This may bring some conflict at first with the trade-unions, but as in the coming issue of the trade schools it is a conflict that has to be met and fought out. The chief part of these applicants will not, however, be members of labor organizations, and the trade-unions do not waste sympathy on "scabs." Another condition of these tests is that the unemployed be ultimately distributed in such relation to the demand and supply of work as to include not merely towns but country districts.

It goes without saying that if the "right to work" be granted, the conditions of that right cannot be set by those who demand the work. It reduces to an absurdity if we say, "You shall have work where you want it, you shall have just the kind of work you wish, you shall have the wage you wish." The demand now is to work in cities because the excitements are there, and the country is tedious. It appears thus evident that in this first step of organizing tests, centres of information about employment should (as in Berlin) be organized in country and city in relation to each other. new institution need be started for this.

The police station

in the city could in the beginning do service.

I am aware that bureaus of information have not accomplished what was expected of them, but no conceivable reason exists why they should reach important results until they become organized with tests and with such educational and disciplinary agencies as will make the bureau a necessity instead of being, as it now is, an unrelated thing. If understood that those out of work could register name, condition and address as early as they would, time enough would be