In emergency relief made necessary by industrial depres sion, the prime necessity of providing suitable employment for which wages are paid, rather than charitable relief, is ap parent. Wages should not be placed so high as to discour age efforts to seek ordinary work, and it is essential that there should be the least possible interference with ordi nary business and industry. Various kinds of employ ment should be discovered, fitted to the physical capacity of the various classes of laborers, and nothing should be undertaken which is not in itself useful — which does not meet a distinct public need. As the best example of suc cess in meeting these conditions, the reader should study the experience of the East Side Relief Committee, which, in 1893-1894, provided employment for some five thou sand persons in New York City. It is reported by the charitable societies of the city that those who were aided by that committee have very rarely been found since that winter among applicants for charitable relief.
On several occasions the usefulness in great emergencies of detachments of the standing army which have happened to be near at hand has been demonstrated. The perfect discipline and the organization constantly maintained in the army may save days at a time when even hours are of the greatest importance. The National Guard of the vari ous states may render, and in some instances — notably, at East St. Louis, Missouri, in 1903 — has rendered, similar service. The suggestion made by Dr. F. H. Wines, in the Charities Review for June, 1898, that soldiers are of great utility as an aid in emergency relief work, was based upon an experience in the relief of sufferers from an overflow of the Ohio River at Shawneetown, Illinois. The detail which came to his assistance on that occasion consisted of a sergeant and nine men, and their special duty was that of patrol and other similar service. Dr. Wines found that even then twenty men would have been better. He recommends that where any portion of the population of a given community requires the shelter of tents, a tempo rary canvas city provided by the state or nation should be organized and remain under the control of the military authorities. By maintaining strict military discipline the inhabitants of the emergency camp at Shawneetown, slightly exceeding- at one time two hundred in number, of whom two-thirds were Negroes, were at all times under thorough control. By the aid of the military force it became possible to provide for these refugees " a care so sympathetic and paternal that it produced no pauperizing impression." For the temporary camp in Kansas City, Kansas, tents were supplied from the federal post at Fort Leavenworth, and for the similar but smaller camp on the Missouri side, for residents of Kansas City who had been driven from their homes by the flood, tents were supplied by the state militia ; and in both cities detachments of the National Guard were called upon for patrol duty. One of the
principal reasons for such a military patrol is the tempo rary disorganization of the community. The local con stabulary is likely to be demoralized and excited, and the presence of state militia gives confidence and security to people who need temporary moral support.
While soldiers may profitably be employed in the man ner that has been indicated, it will not ordinarily be found advantageous to place upon them responsibility for relief or for remedial measures. Military discipline has its limitations as well as its advantages, and it would unfit the average soldier or petty to exercise that discriminating judgment and personal influence which are so essential in dealing with people who have suddenly lost their possessions and require aid and counsel in read justing their affairs and regaining a foothold in the indus trial system. This observation applies almost equally to the use of policemen in the distribution of relief. At the earliest practicable moment the ordinary municipal au thority should be established and the necessity for military patrol overcome.
At Johnstown one of the most instructive chapters in the history of the few months succeeding the flood is that which deals with the restoration of municipal borough authorities to the full exercise of their functions. In some of the boroughs affected by the flood there was left no building in which a meeting of the borough council could be held. Self-constituted committees had tempo rarily managed police, health, and fire departments, and later such duties had been in part assumed by state authorities. Gradually, however, the adjutant-general, representing the state government, sought out those who had been duly chosen to perform such duties, arranged suitable meeting places for councils and public boards, and transferred to them the duties which it had again become possible for them to perform. No legal or other contro versies arose in connection with these ultra-constitutional arrangements, and no act of the legislature was thought necessary to legalize what had been done in the interval during which ordinary municipal activities were sus pended, or the acts performed by the reorganized and restored municipal authorities.