Woman's work in municipalities

by Mary Ritter Beard

Municipal Charities

That which some cities attempt to secure through coördinated private activities, the City of Los Angeles, California, now undertakes as a municipal experiment in its newly created Municipal Charities Commission. This Commission, established by city ordinance, “aims not only to protect the public in its expenditure of money, but to prevent the overlapping and misdirection of philanthropic endeavor. That this is made possible is due to the broad power conferred on the Commission and to the appointment of members who are familiar with all phases of social work.” Two women are members of this Commission. It will be watched with interest: hopefully by those who believe in a thorough public correlation of overlapping agencies; somewhat despairingly by those who fear political influence and the reëstablishment of the old system of relief.

The skillful organization of private charity and its success in gathering financial support has led to a comparison of state, county and municipal charitable institutions with those under private management. This comparison has generally revealed an astonishing disproportion in values; in Pennsylvania, for instance, it was shown, “that a single hospital under private management had received a larger subsidy from the legislature than the Eastern Penitentiary, with an average of 1,400 convicts; that of $16,000,000 which had been appropriated at the last session to charitable and correctional institutions nearly half had gone to 273 agencies under private management, and that 263 of these were local in sphere and yet received over $6,000,000; and that there was almost no coördination or articulation among the state, county, municipal and private agencies that have been multiplying of late, some of which were declared to be utterly superfluous; the need was felt for some strong standardizing influence that should bring order out of the chaos, put the state’s care of its wards on a non-political and scientific basis and act as the originator of new and modern ways of fighting poverty, degeneracy and crime.”[^[35]]

To meet this situation men and women came together and formed the Public Charities Association of Pennsylvania. Private support will still be necessary but its aim will be to secure united support for a state-wide plan of charitable distribution. Pennsylvania needs, it is claimed, a woman’s reformatory, an institution for feeble-minded women, one for inebriates, and more extensive provision for the insane. This Association hopes to keep the public informed of these and similar needs. The organizing committee which becomes the first board of managers includes Martha P. Falconer, Mrs. Louise C. Madeira, Mrs. Edward Biddle and Mrs. Sarah Rauh. The board will organize county committees in the cities of Pennsylvania.

In other states there are state boards of charities for the establishment of which women have worked and on which they usually serve officially. The powers of these boards vary greatly, from a pure advisory function which is of little avail, unrecommended institutions winning subsidies over its advice, to a department of control carrying on preventive work against insanity, tuberculosis, inebriety, feeble-mindedness and similar evils.

Efficiency of Women

The service of women on charity commissions and as public relief officers has so long been an accepted fact that it scarcely needs notice here, but the argument for it advanced by the Massachusetts Committee on Women as Overseers of the Poor, a committee composed of both men and women, is so emphatic that it deserves special notice:

The experience of the town of Brookline since 1877 and Winchester since 1891 and the city of Boston since 1891 has made it apparent that it is desirable to elect women upon the Boards of Overseers of the Poor—desirable for the following reasons:

Because the time necessary for this important work is more often at their disposal.

Because the classes to be aided are largely composed of women and children.