action by a community. It is known and has its reasons in relation to the rational order of society. It can be taught and learned, for it is taught and learned. Hence it is a subject of science and has won proper recognition as a topic in this Scientific Congress. This technique is learned originally as other scientific conclusions are reached by systematic observation of social phenomena, by induction from facts, by performing experiments with methods under varied conditions, by inventing working hypotheses and putting them to the test of reality.

We are students of causes in a rational system of life; only we are trying to discover forces and conditions which will bring about a desired result, and we are not merely trying to explain a fact completed. We set before us not merely an effect to be accounted for, but a state of society and of persons which we desire and will to produce, on the ground that we represent it to ourselves as desirable. We are mentally adjusting a system of means to good ends, and not merely looking for the process by which what actually exists once came to be. One of these processes is just as truly scientific as the other, although the difficulty of prevision and provision is greater than that of explaining the past.

III.

ELEMENTS IN A SOCIAL POLICY RELATING TO THE DEPENDENT

GROUP.

1. We need to distinguish as sharply as possible, both in social thought and action, the members of this group from those who belong to the Industrial Group. Perhaps one of the most disastrous forms of mental confusion is that of confounding these two groups and so treating them alike. The dependents have long been played off against the wage-earners, and are even now frequently used to lower the standard of living of the competent so as to reduce many of the self-supporting to beggary, shame, and demoralization, with a long train of vicious consequences through heredity for the future race. The typical historical example here is the national degradation which threatened the English people before the reform of the poor law about 1834, when poor relief

was given as a supplement to wages, with the consequence that all common, unskilled laborers were fast becoming paupers as a condition of mere existence; and pauper labor proved to be incapable of producing wealth enough to support the nation.

But we do not have to go so far to discover flagrant illustrations of the same tendency, even in the fortunate economic conditions of the United States. There has not been an important strike in the past decennium, involving large numbers of lowskilled laborers, when charity-supported or charity-assisted persons or semi-criminals did not offer themselves in crowds to compete with the strikers.10 The "parasitic industries" are found in all cities, that is, industries in which the income which supports the family comes partly from wages, partly from charity, partly from vice, and partly from the physical and moral capital of the next generation.

Under a previous head the minimum standard of human existence has been defined as closely as the nature of the subject and our present knowledge permit. The critical test lies here: those who can earn the minimum in competitive society belong to the Industrial Group; those who cannot earn this minimum belong to the Dependent Group. This is a rough measure, but it is far better than no standard, and it is practically correct. In fact, it is already more or less consciously applied in every instance when public poor relief is given. Of course, no thoughtful person will take us to mean that there is an impassable barrier between the two classes, so that dependents cannot be helped to ascend into and remain in the Industrial Group; and there will always be some difficulty to decide the status of those on the border line.

The members of the Dependent Group, who cannot earn even the minimum wage necessary to a human existence, are now actually supported by society; but frequently, and on a large scale, in such a way and by such methods as to keep them down. and drag others to their level. For example, the products of charitable and correctional institutions are sometimes put upon the market in such quantities and massed at such points as to 10 It is notorious that many of the professional "strike-breakers " are of the vagrant class, on the borderland between vice, pauperism, and crime.

reduce the wages of self-supporting work-people below the level of the minimum. In the sewing industries very serious evil is thus introduced.

2. A social policy relating to the Dependent Group must isolate the Criminal Group. One of the plagues of public and private charity is the anti-social criminal, the sturdy rogue and vagrant, the debased drunkard, the cunning thief, who mix in the throng of the merely dependent and appropriate by impudence or craft the fund intended for the helpless and incapable. At the door and desk of the municipal lodging-house may be seen daily the sifting and judging process-one of the most delicate and difficult tasks which ever test the judicial faculties of man. The same problem often confronts the friendly visitor in the homes of the poor; as when one is called to help the wife and infant children of a lazy or absconding husband and father.

Recent experiments and discussions at this dividing line have shown that the rough and ready, but overworked, "work test," even as a "workhouse test," is but one factor in the best method. One difficulty is that the motley multitude called the unemployed" is composed of unlike elements—the vagrant, the inebriate, the petty unsuccessful thief, the burglar "down in his luck, the physical degenerate, the enfeebled convalescent just staggering back from a hospital, the stranded country youth, the unskilled laborer seeking a job without trade-union card, and others; some with hard palms and thick muscles, some with deft but delicate fingers, some accustomed to cold and heat, some with prophetic cough ready to perish with slight exposure to sun or storm.

In order to treat with fairness, discrimination, wisdom, and humanity all these "Unemployed," and to transfer to the machinery of the criminal law those with whom charity cannot deal, several tests are necessary, and a merely automatic, mechanical method is totally irrational. (a) First of all a judicious, firm, courageous, and humane agent is necessary. The evil of depending entirely on a single coarse test, as the stone pile, the bath, the workhouse, is that it seems to make the man unnecessary. It has long been observed that in an asylum for the insane where all the patients are kept within steel cages, one or two brutal attendants

can carry out the policy; but where freedom, fresh air, play, industry, and rational treatment are given, the hospital must have many gentle, strong, and trained nurses. So exclusive reliance on a stone-breaking test tends to place surly and cruel keepers in charge of all applicants for shelter and aid; and thus the institution designed for charity and justice becomes an insult to honest workmen and a discouragement to the sensitive, without furnishing the quick insight which most unerringly discovers real criminals. (b) The work test, in many forms, is only one useful method which works well under good direction, since crime is as parasitic as pauperism, and the mark of the parasite is that he wishes to live at the expense of others. (c) The employment bureau, with a reliable record and a sharp watchcare, is another means of marking the industrious man and discovering the cheat. (d) In cities, and often in towns, a certain amount of personal guardianship, a kind of probation work, is necessary to hold a moral weakling back from sliding down the easy incline toward criminality. All this information which is necessary for a wise treatment must be collected instantly, by means of messengers and telephone and telegraph, and from every available source. For the moment when a man can be helped and turned away from beggary or crime is the moment when he is under treatment and within the grasp of the official. The German Verpflegungsstationen, with their simple inns and their system of certificates and records, have much to teach us.

But whatever the tests employed, in some way the members of the Criminal Group must be distinguished, known, and isolated from the Dependent Group. Charity, public or private, has no machinery of compulsion, and ought not to have. The steamboat is not made to sail on land; the schoolhouse is not constructed to hold burglars in confinement; and a charity bureau is not fitted for the task of managing deserting husbands, petty thieves, and confirmed inebriates. Society must erect specially adapted machinery for dealing with this class of men, and it must have agents trained for each particular branch of its service.

3. Part of our social policy must be a better understanding between the public and private agencies of relief. So far as

principles of administrative methods are concerned, there are no radical differences; both must aim at the real good of the recipients and of the community. It is also true that the division of labor need not be the same in every state and every county or municipality.

But the necessity of agreement and co-operation is easily illustrated and demonstrated from examples taken from practice. Thus private charity sometimes supports a feeble alien who has been rejected by the agent of public outdoor relief until he has gained the rights of settlement and becomes henceforth a public charge; and this happens even in states where it is a punishable offense to import a pauper from one county into another. This understanding should go far enough, in cities where there is legal outdoor relief, to secure for the salaried agents the assistance of voluntary, unpaid, friendly visitors. Our public relief in American cities sins against the fundamental principle of individual treatment, because it refuses thus far to learn from the German cities which employ unpaid visitors and give to them, within certain regulated limits, the responsibility for the distribution of public funds.

The essential principles of division of labor seem to be: (1) the relief which is required by law is only that which is necessary to life and industrial efficiency, while private relief can deal with exceptional cases and provide a measure of comfort; (2) public relief is more suitable where there can be common, general regulations; private relief is more adaptable and can act in exceptional ways; (3) public relief may properly provide for permanent and universal demands; private relief, being optional and voluntary, may rise to meet changing situations, and hence can more readily try experiments for which the voting public is not ready to expend money or erect administrative machinery.

But division of labor is only one aspect of social co-operation, and it really implies and demands a conscious and concerted effort to work for the common welfare. This division of labor and this co-operation require organs and agents to make them effective. In German cities the initiative is naturally taken by the munici