In the United States pauperism has from a very early period attracted the notice of the state legislatures and philanthropists, and originated a large number of charitable institutions, supported either at the public charge, or by private benevolence. In most of the states me state, county, or district almshouses or poor-houses, asylums for the in=ane and other forms of distress, orphanages and hospitals. The states generally assume the charge of insane, the counties and cities that of the strictly poor, ana private charity that of the sick poor. The state legislatures make also very liberal grants to the different charitable institutions. The systems are by no means uniform, and differ in the various states, and the want of system is painfully apparent in Um great paucity of statistics. Pauperism has grown with the growth of the country,. and its hie se after the rebellion was very marked; it prevails to a greater extent in winter tha:i i summer, and thrives more in cities than in the country. It speaks well for the ameliorating conditions of our republic that the vast immigration, which indludes of co•se large numbers of paupers, adds a hardly perceptible percentage to our pauper population. The majority of those who leave Europe as paupers swell the ranks of the industrious and productive. The manifest tendency of pauperism to assume formidable dimensions in large cities suggests the expedient of devising a system for transferring the redundant unproductive labor collected in our large cities, to localities where it may at once become productive. There are not less than 100.000 unemployed persons in New York and Brooklyn, who might find profitable work in the interior of New York, Pennsylvania, and notably in certain portions of the south and west. Savings' banks for the benefit of those who have employment in summer and none in winter are also a step in the right direction. According to the U. S. census of 1870, the pauper element is set down as 116,102 in a population of 38,558,371; this is a palpable understatement of that number. New York and Pennsylvania are credited with 50.000; the same census names $10,030.420 as the cost of our pauper population, and allots $5,009,018 of that amount to New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. This is a fair sample of the
hewildering confusion in all statistics bearing on this important subject, and impairs their value for comparison. According to Hausner, the smallest pauper population in Europe is in Prussia and Austria, then comes France, then Great Britain, Switzerland; and the small states of Holland and Belgium have the largest. Holland has 1 pauper to. every 7 inhabitants; France 1 in 29+ (a Swiss authority says 1 in 9); Great Britain 1 in 22; Germany and Austria together, 1 in 30. It is mere guess-work to give the propor. tion in the United States, but it is safe to say that it exceeds 1 in 100. The practice of administering relief varies in the different countries. In-door relief in France is restricted to the insane, the sick and decrepit, and to abandoned children. Illegitimate children are given to their mothers, who receive out-door relief; the greater number of other children are boarded out at the public charge. Out-door relief is practiced on a large scale with very satisfactory economical results, In Prussia, likewise, out-door relief is the favorite mode. The system adopted at Elberfeld (and imitated elsewhere) com bines features worthy of all acceptation. Judicious persons, representing both public and private charity, seek for the deserving poor by systematic house-to-house visitation and dispense to them the relief flowing from both sources. Similar work is done in some of our large cities, and the urgency of measures blending public charity and private benevolence is very widely felt. A petition signed by eminent philanthropists is about to be presented to the state legislature of New York,,which prays for the pas sage of an act conferring upon the state charities aid association the power to visit, inspect, and examine any of the state charitable institutions, county poor-houses, and town poor-houses, and city almshouses within the state of New York—in which they refer to the anticipated economical and moral results of its passage, and express their belief that the field for charitable work is broad enough for the joint and harmonious co-operation of official and volunteer workers. See MENDICANCY.