AN IDEALIZED POORMASTER
For another piece of successful experimentation we must again revert to Westchester County, N. Y., this time to the work of V. Everit Macy, the superintendent of the poor elected in November, 1914. Mr. Macy entered upon his public duties, a man of wealth and long experience in social welfare work. He found the poor administration of the county at its political worst: petty graft in commitments and the purchase of supplies, an archaic almshouse, a notable absence of informing records, neglect of proper medical examinations. He began at the source of the trouble by eliminating “politics,” in the making of appointments, by the simple expedient of requiring applicants for positions to state their qualifications. In time he had surrounded himself with a group of trained social workers, men and women who, according to one observer,[28] “are as unlike the staff commonly found with a poor-law officer as the faculty of a university is unlike that of a one-room country school.” The simple recital of a few of his achievements in his first two-year term presages, perhaps, the county of the future as somewhere in sight of its highest efficiency as a humanitarian agency. Mr. Macy systematized records, required physical and medical examination of all inmates, weeded out mental defectives and sent them to custodial institutions, started competitive bidding in the purchase of supplies (saving $18,000 in the first year), improved the diet of inmates and their general level of health, tripled the amount of produce raised upon the county farm, made the hospital a preventive agency instead of a place for treating cases suffering obviously from disease.
The superintendent’s basic interest, by the way, is the ultimate causes and prevention of poverty, and to this end he has instituted investigations and records of the habits, occupations and every other matter concerning the inmates that might throw light upon their present condition.
In the handling of children’s cases, his work has been particularly effective. To begin with, unnecessary commitments, which had been encouraged by the fee system prevailing in New York, have been prevented. And during the first year of the term 311 children ceased to be public charges, some of those previously committed having been transferred to state homes, some having been placed in foster homes, but the far greater number, 239, having been returned to their relatives. Inasmuch as the annual cost to the county for each committed child was $237, the public saving accomplished through this systematic, intelligent handling of the child problem was over $17,000.
Before Mr. Macy’s first term had expired he had so far won the confidence of the board of supervisors and the public in general that they accepted plans for centralizing the public welfare work of the county in a great plant for which nearly $2,000,000 has already been appropriated. Within the confines of this new establishment will be accommodated the almshouse, the county hospital and the county jail. The office of superintendent of the poor, in the meantime has been abolished (January 1, 1917) and a new officer to be known as the commissioner of charities and correction, and having greatly extended jurisdiction, will take his place.
It is a new conception which Mr. Macy has given us of the once melancholy job of the poormaster and he has new revelations of the possibilities of his position in store.