USE OF APPROPRIATION.
The people of our cities may expect, and should forcibly demand from its public officials, that the money expended in municipal “charities” should be well adapted, elastic in its application, based upon wise, scientific conclusions, and on a thorough exhaustive experimentation.
It is safe to say that New York stands in the front rank as the worst governed city in America. But when such a city creates an appropriation from its public treasury for the maintenance and management of a Municipal Emergency Home, there can be no reason to doubt the wisdom or the success of the experimentation of municipal charities. In fact, we ought not to speak of municipal charity, but rather to say that the city appropriates such money from tax-payers as has been earned by those who are temporarily destitute,—that those housed in such municipal institutions are but receiving assistance as an interest on their past earnings. A Municipal Emergency Home should not be considered as a charitable institution, but as an institution offering the right to every toiler to receive the hospitality of his fellowmen in time of need.