4. Families insufficiently supported (breadwinners unable to earn enough to provide a surplus for rehabilitation or enough even to pay running expenses).
After the four classes of cases had been investigated and reported to the Rehabilitation Committee for final action, the sections were to investigate the remaining applications. This latter group of applications[117] was to be divided into three classes:
1. Household rehabilitation.
2. Special building propositions not covered by the Department of Lands and Buildings.
3. Miscellaneous cases.
[117] All applications made by refugees living outside of San Francisco were considered by the whole committee.
The immediate attention of the Rehabilitation Committee, now that the general drawing of checks was suspended, was confined to those applications already on file in which emergent action was absolutely necessary or in which grants had been promised provided certain conditions were complied with by the applicants. All applications for business rehabilitation were to be laid aside for a time with the understanding that if the Committee later secured sufficient means they should be investigated and reported on. The Committee indicated that unless disablement or sickness were involved it would be most reluctant to consider any family to be in urgent need if in it there were a male breadwinner earning reasonable wages.
The plan of the Rehabilitation Committee was to go over the whole mass of applications and then draw checks in favor of the first four classes. This marked a distinct limitation upon its work. By vote of the Committee on August 30, 1906, it was decided to settle at once all unpaid grants that had been approved on August 20. By September 20 accumulated applications had been investigated and the Committee was ready to pass upon them. It is not clear from the records just when the bars were lifted and when checks were issued as heretofore upon all classes of cases approved by the Committee. There appears to have been no formal action in this matter. It is interesting to note that on August 18 the total disbursements recorded were $356,773.75 and the total applications acted upon 5,241. By September 20, 1906, the total disbursements amounted to $573,337.91 and the total cases acted upon were 10,374.
2. THE CENTRALIZED SYSTEM
In October, 1906, there was a radical change of method. On September 27, the Rehabilitation Committee was notified by the Corporation that all the sections except Section II would close by the end of September. As the section offices closed, members of the paid and voluntary staffs were drawn into the work of the central office, the paid workers to continue as investigators or clerks, the members of the district committees to serve as an auxiliary committee to the Rehabilitation Committee for the review of cases. These were steps preliminary to a centralizing of the work. On October 11, when the chairman presented his plan for a division of the Rehabilitation Committee into sub-committees, 18,196 applications altogether had been passed upon. At close of business, October 11, 1906, the bookkeeper of the Committee had handled these 18,196 cases and had paid out on them $842,076.21.