AMERICA.
It may be stated that, with respect to America, a legal provision is made for paupers in every part of the United States from which we have returns, excepting Georgia and Louisiana; and that no such provision exists in Brazil or in Hayti, or, as far as is shown by these returns, in any of the countries originally colonized by Spain.
The system in the United States was of course derived from England, and modified in consequence, not only of the local circumstances of the country, but also of the prevalence of slavery in many of the States, and of federal institutions which by recognising to a certain extent each State as an independent sovereignty, prevent the removal from one State of paupers who are natives of another. Such paupers are supported in some of the northern districts not by local assessments, but out of the general income of the State, under the name of state paupers.
The best mode of treating this description of paupers is a matter now in discussion in the United States.
The following passage in the report of the Commissioners appointed to revise the civil code of Pennsylvania, shows the inconveniences arising from the absence of a national provision for them: (pp. 139, 143.)
We may be permitted to suggest one alteration of the present law, of considerable importance. In Massachusetts and New York, and perhaps in some other States, paupers who have no settlement in the State are relieved at the expense of the State. In this commonwealth the burthen falls upon the particular district in which the pauper may happen to be. This often occasions considerable expense to certain counties or places from which others are exempt. The construction of a bridge or canal, for instance, will draw to a particular neighbourhood a large number of labourers, many of whom may have no settlement in the State. If disabled by sickness or accident, they must be relieved by the township in which they became disabled, although their labour was employed for the benefit of the State or county, as the case may be, and not for the benefit of the township alone. If provision were made for the payment of the expenses incurred by the township in such case out of the county, or perhaps the State treasury, we think that it would be more just, and that the unhappy labourer would be more likely to obtain adequate relief, than if left to the scanty resources of a single township. A case which is stated in the second volume of the Pennsylvania Reports (Overseers v. M’Coy, p. 432), in which it appeared, that a person employed as a labourer on the State Canal, and who was severely wounded in the course of his employment, was passed from one township to another, in consequence of the disinclination to incur the expense of supporting him, until he died of the injury received, shows in a strong light the inconvenience and perils of the present system respecting casual paupers, and may serve to excuse our calling the attention of the legislature to the subject.
On the other hand, the Commissioners appointed to revise the poor laws of Massachusetts, after stating that the national provision in their State for the unsettled poor has existed ever since the year 1675, recommend its abolition, by arguments, a portion of which we shall extract, as affording an instructive picture of the worst forms of North American pauperism: (pp. 59, 60, 61.)
It will appear (say the Commissioners), that of the whole number more or less assisted during the last year, that is, of 12,331 poor, 5927 were State’s poor, and 6063 were town’s poor; making the excess of town’s over State’s poor to have been only 497. The proportion which, it will be perceived, that the State’s poor bear to the town’s poor, is itself a fact of startling interest. We have not the means of ascertaining the actual growth of this class of the poor. But if it may be estimated by a comparison of the State’s allowance for them in 1792-3, the amount of which, in round numbers, was $14,000, with the amount of the allowance twenty-seven years afterwards, that is, in 1820, when it was $72,000, it suggests matter for very serious consideration. So sensitive, indeed, to the increasing weight of the burthen had the legislature become even in 1798, when the allowance was but $27,000 that “an Act” was passed, “specifying the kind of evidence required to accompany accounts exhibited for the support of the poor of the Commonwealth.” In 1821, with a view to still further relief from the evil, the law limited its allowance to 90 cents a week for adults, and to 50 cents for children; and again, for the same end, it was enacted, in 1823, that “no one over twelve, and under sixty years of age, and in good health, should be considered a State pauper.” The allowance is now reduced to 70 cents per week for adults, and proportionally for children; and in the cases in which the poor of this class have become an integral part of the population of towns, and in which, from week to week, through protracted sickness, or from any cause, they are for the year supported by public bounty, the expense for them is sometimes greater than this allowance. But this is comparatively a small proportion of the State’s poor: far the largest part, as has been made to appear, consists of those who are but occasionally assisted, and, in some instances, of those of whom there seems to be good reason to infer, from the expense accounts, that they make a return in the product of their labour to those who have the charge of them, which might well exonerate the Commonwealth from any disbursements for their support. Even 70 cents a week, therefore, or any definable allowance, we believe, has a direct tendency to increase this class of the poor; for a charity will not generally be very resolutely withheld, where it is known that, if dispensed, it will soon be refunded. And we leave it to every one to judge whether almsgiving, under the influence of this motive, and to a single and defined class, has not a direct tendency at once to the increase of its numbers, and to a proportionate earnestness of importunity for it.
It is also not to be doubted, that a large proportion of this excess of State’s poor, more or less assisted during the year, consist of those who are called in the statements herewith presented, “wandering or travelling poor.” The single fact of the existence among us of this class of fellow-beings, especially considered in connexion with the facts, that nearly all of them are State’s poor, and that, to a great extent, they have been made what they are by the State’s provision for them, brings the subject before us in a bearing, in which we scarcely know whether the call is loudest to the pity we should feel for them, or the self-reproach with which we should recur to the measures we have sanctioned, and which have alike enlarged their numbers and their misery. Nor is it a matter of mere inference from our tables, that the number is very large of these wandering poor. To a considerable extent, and it is now regretted that it was not to a greater extent, the inquiry was proposed to overseers of the poor, “How many of the wandering, or travelling poor, annually pass under your notice?” And the answers, as will appear in the statements, were from 10 to 50, and 100 to 200. Nor is there a more abject class of our fellow-beings to be found in our country than is this class of the poor. Almshouses, where they are to be found, are their inns, at which they stop for refreshment. Here they find rest, when too much worn with fatigue to travel, and medical aid when they are sick. And, as they choose not to labour, they leave these stopping places, when they have regained strength to enable them to travel, and pass from town to town, demanding their portion of the State’s allowance for them as their right. And from place to place they receive a portion of this allowance, as the easiest mode of getting rid of them, and they talk of the allowance as their “rations;” and, when lodged for a time, from the necessity of the case, with town’s poor, it is their boast that they, by the State’s allowance for them, support the town’s inmates of the house. These unhappy fellow-beings often travel with females, sometimes, but not always their wives; while yet, in the towns in which they take up their temporary abode, they are almost always recognized and treated as sustaining this relation. There are exceptions, but they are few, of almshouses in which they are not permitted to live together. In winter they seek the towns in which they hope for the best accommodations and the best living, and where the smallest return will be required for what they receive. It is painful thus to speak of these human beings, lest, in bringing their degradation distinctly before the mind, we should even for a moment check the commiseration which is so strongly claimed for them. We feel bound therefore to say, that bad as they are, they are scarcely less sinned against in the treatment they receive, than they commit sin in the lawlessness of their lives. Everywhere viewed, and feeling themselves to be outcasts; possessed of nothing, except the miserable clothing which barely covers them; accustomed to beggary, and wholly dependent upon it; with no local attachments, except those which grow out of the facilities which in some places they may find for a more unrestrained indulgence than in others; with no friendships, and neither feeling nor awakening sympathy; is it surprising that they are debased and shameless, alternately insolent and servile, importunate for the means of subsistence and self-gratification, and averse from every means but that of begging to obtain them? The peculiar attraction of these unhappy fellow beings to our Commonwealth, and their preference for it over the States to the south of us, we believe is to be found in the legal provision which the State has made for them. Your Commissioners have indeed but a small amount of direct evidence of this; but the testimony of the chairman of the overseers in Egrement to this fact, derived from personal knowledge, was most unequivocal, and no doubt upon the subject existed in the minds of the overseers in many other towns. But shall we therefore condemn, or even severely blame, them? Considered and treated, in almost every place, as interlopers, strollers, vagrants; as objects of suspicion and dread, and, too often, scarcely as human beings; the cheapest methods are adopted of sending them from town to town, and often with the assurance given to them that there, and not here, are accommodations for them, and that there they may enjoy the bounty which the State has provided for them. Would such a state of things, your Commissioners ask, have existed in our Commonwealth, if a specific legal provision had not been made for this class of the poor? Or, we do not hesitate to ask, if the Government had never recognized such a class of the poor as that of State’s poor,—and, above all, if compulsory charity, in any form, had never been established by our laws, would there have been a twentieth part of the wandering poor which now exists in it, or by any means an equal proportion of poor of any kind with that which is now dependent upon the taxes which are raised for them? Your Commissioners think not.
Either an increase of the evils of pauperism, or a clearer perception of them, has induced most of the States during the last 10 years to make, both in their laws for the relief of the poor and in the administration of those laws, changes of great importance. They consist principally in endeavouring to avoid giving relief out of the workhouse, and in making the workhouse an abode in which none but the really destitute will continue. Compared with our own, the system is, in general, rigid.
In the detailed account of the workhouses in Massachusetts, (pages 68 to 93,) the separation of the sexes appears to be the general rule wherever local circumstances do not interfere: a rule from which exceptions are in some places made in favour of married couples. And in the returns from many of the towns it is stated that no relief is given out of the house.
The following passages from the returns from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York, are also evidences of a general strictness of law and of administration.
By the laws of New Jersey,
The goods and chattels of any pauper applying for relief are to be inventoried by the overseer before granting any relief, and afterwards sold to reimburse the township, out of the proceeds, all expenses they have been at; all sales of which by the pauper, after he becomes chargeable, are void.[2]
The same rule prevails in Pennsylvania. When any person becomes chargeable, the overseers or directors of the poor are required to sue for and recover all his property, to be employed in defraying the expense of his subsistence.[3]
By the laws of the same State,
No person shall be entered on the poor-book of any district, or receive relief from any overseers, before such person, or some one in his behalf, shall have procured an order from two magistrates of the county for the same; and in case any overseer shall enter in the poor-book or relieve any such poor person without such order, he shall forfeit a sum equal to the amount or value given, unless such entry or relief shall be approved of by two magistrates as aforesaid. (p. 142.)
Nor is the relief always given gratuitously, or the pauper always at liberty to accept and give it up as he may think fit; for by a recent enactment[4] the guardians are authorized—
To open an account with the pauper, and to charge him for his maintenance, and credit him the value of his services; and all idle persons who may be sent to the almshouse by any of the said guardians, may be detained in the said house by the board of guardians, and compelled to perform such work and services as the said board may order and direct, until they have compensated by their labour for the expenses incurred on their account, unless discharged by special permission of the board of guardians; and it shall be the duty of the said board of guardians to furnish such person or persons as aforesaid with sufficient work and employment, according to their physical abilities, so that the opportunity of reimbursement may be fully afforded: and for the more complete carrying into effect the provisions of this law, the said board of guardians are hereby authorized and empowered to exercise such authority as may be necessary to compel all persons within the said almshouse and house of employment to do and perform all such work, labour, and services as may be assigned to them by the said board of guardians, provided the same be not inconsistent with the condition or ability of such person.
And whereas it frequently happens that children who have been receiving public support for indefinite periods are claimed by their parents when they arrive at a proper age for being bound out, the guardians are authorized to bind out all children that have or may receive public support, either in the almshouse or children’s asylum, although their parents may demand their discharge from the said institutions, unless the expenses incurred in their support be refunded.
In New York the administration of the law is even more severe than this enactment:—
With respect to poor children, (says Mr. Buchanan,) a system prevails in New York, which, though seemingly harsh and unfeeling, has a very powerful influence to deter families from resorting to the commissioners of the poor for support, or an asylum in the establishment for the poor; namely, that the commissioners or overseers apprentice out the children, and disperse them to distant parts of the State; and on no account will inform the parents where they place their children. (p. 110.)
[2] New Jersey Revised Laws, p. 679.
[3] Act of 1819, p. 155.
[4] Act of 5th March, 1828, p. 149.