RELIEF, in sociology, the word relief which has come to pos sess a technical significance is very old, even in the derivative usage of giving to those who otherwise would suffer. It is con trasted with work and with social insurance as a method of taking care of the unemployed and other dependents, and there are wide differences of opinion on the relative merits of these three ways of supporting the destitute. There was the practice of relief, de pending on a real need, before unemployment in our sense was known. When income stops, and savings are exhausted, relief must be furnished to prevent suffering if not actual death. In ages and places of simpler social organization, relief was given by members of a community to each other. The customs, even in America, of reciprocal aid in our rural communities; the way minority groups so widely diverse as Chinese, Negro and Jewish take care of their own; the widespread methods of taking care of dependency among the Polynesians, as well as the evidence of the practice of mutual aid preserved in ancient religious writings, all bear conclusive witness to the fact that before the days of the commercial and industrial organization of society folks helped each other in their day of need.
When the practice of mutual aid was exercised in our increas ingly complex urban centres—both in Europe and in North Amer ica—it did not produce the customary results ; that is, giving food, or clothing or money to an otherwise unknown applicant did not seem to be of any permanent benefit to him. Assistance as a means of setting a person on his feet seemed to have lost its effectiveness.
The new element in city life which disturbed the successful practice of mutual aid seems to have been its anonymity in con trast with the intimate personal acquaintance of the small and stable community. The residents of the latter were able to indi vidualize the practice of mutual aid on the basis of intimate per sonal acquaintance. Although this analysis was not made until very recently, it is not surprising that one of the first tests of eligibility for relief was residence. In fact residence was in an
informal manner almost always a condition of aid. Strangers in need were rarely treated with anything but neglect or even brutality ; about the only exceptions to this rule being among folks who rarely saw a stranger, like the Polynesians before Cook's voyage. Another striking exception was furnished by re ligious charities such as the hospices of St. Bernard on the passes over the Alps. However, it is to be noted in the latter case, it is not an example of the extension of mutual aid to strangers, but the church stepping in to make good the failure of mutual aid to meet a great need.
Residence as a condition of eligibility for relief was recognized by English law before relief was provided from tax funds. In the i6th century a person begging in an English town not his place of residence might be placed in the stocks, branded, his ears or nose cut off and even enslaved. When the state, by the Eliza bethan statute of 16o1 assumed some responsibility for relief, residence was established as a condition, and has never been re moved. The Colonies that have grown to the present United States laid down the same condition governing relief, although unlike England, as there is no central authority over police pow ers, there are as many laws defining residence as there are states. The matter is even more complicated than such a statement indi cates. In addition to the enabling act which gives localities the legal right to raise and to spend money for general relief pur poses, practically all states grant relief to special groups, by special legislative acts or even by constitutional provisions, such as pensions to army veterans, pensions to the blind, allowances to widowed mothers for their children, and assistance to the aged. Each of these carries an independent condition of resi dential eligibility.