5. Payments in ordinary cases should be temporarily suspended. No further checks should be issued except in emergency cases until all the sub-committees had passed on all the pending cases. Applications should be tabulated and final decision reached as to what action should be recommended.
The fact that the Rehabilitation Committee had entered upon the fifth and last period of its work is sharply marked by the discharge on April 4, 1907, of all sub-committees, except Committee V, the important housing committee. The fifth period is also marked by the fact that it coincides with the ending of the first year after the disaster, and that it properly inaugurates the definite establishment of the work on a purely relief basis.[126]
[126] See [Part V], Relief Work of the Associated Charities, [p. 279] ff.
From the beginning of April, 1907, to the end of July, action was taken in a fairly large number of cases. The Rehabilitation Committee returned to the practice in vogue before November, 1906, of considering such current applications as did not naturally go to either the housing or the confidential committee. By May, 1907, the number of cases to be daily disposed of had fallen from 200 to 25, and the average number of daily applications had decreased to a marked extent. The steady drop in the number of applications meant to the Committee that its work had reached the stage when it could be undertaken wholly by the Associated Charities.
The Associated Charities, as well as other San Francisco charitable agencies, was financially crippled because the fire had affected more seriously the class that ordinarily contributes to charitable societies than any other class in the community. The general subject of grants to institutions or societies not dealing with families in their homes is considered in a separate section, but the subject of grants to the Associated Charities fitly belongs in this chapter because to it fell the work that so far had been done directly by the Rehabilitation Committee with the steady co-operation of the Associated Charities’ force of paid and volunteer workers. The mass of the population was on a fairly satisfactory economic basis, but it was wellknown that for some time to come the charity work of the city would be very heavy.
On May 18, 1907, a decision was reached by the Rehabilitation Committee which was the fruition of much anxious discussion. Its conclusions were that as $186,850 remained of the sum of $500,000 which as originally planned was to be used to re-establish the charitable organizations in the city, $145,000 of this amount, in accordance with the recommendation made by the charity advisory committee, should be entrusted to the Rehabilitation Committee to be allotted by it to certain of the charitable and benevolent organizations.[127] The Associated Charities was asked to invite a conference of representatives of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the German Benevolent Society, and the Hebrew Board of Relief, formally to present to the Rehabilitation Committee a practical plan for the administration of the general relief work of the city. On May 30, 1907, the Rehabilitation Committee was notified by the president of the Associated Charities that the office staff of the society was to be withdrawn from the service of the Rehabilitation Committee. The proposal to withdraw was approved but the society was asked to leave the date of withdrawal open until definite plans for future relief work could be perfected.
[127] See The Rehabilitation of Institutions, [Part II], [p. 141] ff.
3. WITHDRAWAL
June 30, 1907, marks the close of the fifth period, when the withdrawal actually took effect. On July 18, 1907, the Corporation made an appropriation of $5,000 to the Associated Charities for the month of July, 1907, to be expended under the direction of the Rehabilitation Committee, subject to the following conditions:
1. The cost of administration should not exceed $1,000 a month.