THE LOCAL ALMSHOUSE AND ITS DEFECTS
In New England and in a few other states the town, or township, is the unit for administering "poor relief," but elsewhere it is the county. The "almshouse," or "poor farm," or "county infirmary" is the usual local institution for this purpose. Unfortunately it has been, as a rule, badly managed. Men and women, old people and children, healthy and diseased, blind and crippled, moral and immoral, even the insane, have been housed together, often mingling with one another with little restriction. The evils of such a system are apparent.
SHORT-SIGHTED POLICY
Moreover, the policy of the typical almshouse has been merely to give shelter and food and clothing to those who appeal for it, rather than to remedy the causes of dependency or to restore the unfortunate to a basis of self-support and usefulness. Medical treatment is of course given, but the means do not exist to give special expert treatment to particular classes of defectives. Little educational opportunity worthy of the name is afforded. While able-bodied inmates usually have some work to do, it is seldom of a character to train for self-support or to create habits of industry.
REMEDIES PROPOSED
To provide this special treatment requires elaborate equipment and expert service, which cost a great deal of money, more than most counties or towns feel that they can afford. Communities must come to realize that they cannot afford to neglect their unfortunate members, no matter what it costs to care for them. But the cost need not be so great as it seems. A great deal of money is now WASTED on almshouses without adequate results. This can largely be remedied by insisting upon more expert supervision in such institutions, and by a system of regular inspection by expert state officers. Greater care should be exercised with respect to those who are admitted to the institutions. Only the deserving should be allowed to live on the public funds. It is not uncommon for some classes of shiftless people to make a practice of seeking shelter in the almshouse during the winter, where they live in comparative comfort and idleness at the public expense, only to leave in the spring for a life of aimless indolence, imposing as beggars upon kind-hearted people.
PURPOSE OF STATE INSTITUTIONS
Moreover, the county almshouse should be only a temporary place of detention for many of the people who now are kept there permanently. Those who need special treatment or training should be passed on as quickly as possible to special institutions that are equipped to care for them. Since most local communities could not well afford to maintain such special institutions for the comparatively few who would need them, the state should maintain enough of them at central points to provide for the needs of all local communities.
The states do maintain such institutions—hospitals and sanitariums for various types of mental disease, homes for orphans and for the aged, and for persons with incurable diseases, asylums and schools for the blind and the deaf-and-dumb, industrial schools for boys and girls. The problem of the state is, first, to develop such institutions to the highest possible degree of efficiency for the REHABILITATION of their patients or inmates, and, second, to secure effective cooperation on the part of local authorities and institutions in transferring those, and only those, who are entitled to state assistance.