Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 143, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1910 — ORGANIZED CHARITY. [ARTICLE]

ORGANIZED CHARITY.

Kven In 1843 Poor of Cities Admonished to Seek the Farms. When In 1843 Robert M. Hartley, the father of systematic charity In America, organized the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, It was in great measure true that the destitute beggars, who congregated In ouf great cities, suffered either through dense Ignorance of their opportunities or through the lack of the moral and physical stamina that led so many of their sturdier fellows to avail themselves of the boundless natural resources that America offered gratuitously to any who were ready to take a hand in building the nation. Writing In 1845, Hartley, Harper’s says, deplores the fact that In spite of enlarged public and private provisions for the relief of the Indigent, “the streets were still filled with mendicants, the benevolent were harassed with applications, and Importunate impostors were constantly obtaining the aid which was designed only for the needy and deserving.” The attitude of mind created by thebe conditions Hartley expressed In several of the admonitory tracts which, as general agent of the association, he addressed to the city’s poor. “Every able-bodied man In this country," he declared, “may support himself and family comfortably; If you do not, it is probably owing to idleness. Improvidence, or intemperance. You will gossip and smoke, neglect your children and beg, live in filth and discomfort, drink and carouse, do almost anything rather than work, and expect, forsooth, to be supported by charity. Some of you In all honesiy ask not alms but work, but how will you get what does not exist? There are so many more hands than work that by remaining here you are doomed to starve in Idleness or subsist by charity. To- the sober and industrious we say, ‘Stay not here to ping in Idleness and want, when the wide and fertile country offers you employment and all that is needful for comfort and elevation.’ ” ' Those who willfully and stubbornly remained in spite of these admonitions, Hartley and his associated Good Samaritans determined to make the best of "by elevating their moral character and teaching them to depend

upon themselves.” They divided the city into 278 sections, each one in charge of a resident male volunteer—a member always of one of the best families—who pledged himself to withhold all relief from unknown persons, to visit in their homes those who appeared to require benevolent services, and, by discriminating and judicious relief combined with admonitions to prudence, thrift, diligence and temperance, to help them discover those hidden springs of virtue within themselves from which alone their prosperity might flow. But Hartley and his associates did not limit their activities to personal visitation. Almost all the devices for Improving the condition of the poor that are current in our day were devised by them.