Throughout Oklahoma and in Los Angeles county a humanitarian public opinion has manifested itself in the erection of a new county office, that of public defender. The purpose of this new institution is to put the impecunious litigant actually as well as legally on an equal footing with his opponent, whether he be a defendant in a criminal action or a party to a civil suit. Hitherto the law had prescribed that every defendant should have counsel, even if it be at the state’s expense. But the lawyers assigned to this somewhat thankless task (in a pecuniary sense) were either young and inexperienced or too busy with more lucrative practice to give the “charity” cases the attention they deserved. Under the new system the salaried defender is a man comparable in his ability to the district attorney; he gives his entire time to the county and has a number of assistants. The defender serves also as an investigator for the court and often in this capacity discovers circumstances which justify the judge in mitigating sentence. Incidentally, two years experimentation with this office in Los Angeles has shown that a considerable saving can be made as against the old method of employing various lawyers in private practice.
While the public defender will doubtless acquire greatest importance in city counties, rural communities will not fail to provide opportunities for his services.
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.
CITIZEN ORGANIZATION
But movements for better rural health, better library facilities, better physical development and for a better conception of public humane obligations do not spring out of the air. Always they are the product either of some personal initiative or some organized effort. Does any county clearly lack that element of citizen leadership? Then the obvious need of the county is to bridge that gap. The rural population of America suffers (the word is all too weak) for the lack of a public community sense. Every “average” rural citizen is a unit, he does not travel in droves—so much for his independence. On the other hand, he has not fully learned the art of coöperation and legitimate compromise. The end of this condition, however, will doubtless come by way of his growing realization of a community of private interest developed through such special organizations as county chambers of commerce, boards of trade and county agricultural associations.