PUBLIC CHARITY AND PRIVATE PHILANTHROPY 591
distributed, not carefully and in accordance with the needs of the individual, but lavishly and without regard to anything save the liberal collection of supplies.
The excellent observations of Warner 1 concerning the causes of poverty, the best means of its prevention, the treatment of tramps, concerning the best methods of uniting public and pri- vate charities, are in perfect agreement with the views which the great German organization, "Verein fur Armenpflege und Wohl- thatigkeit," has been attempting to diffuse for years. In all those publications of the latter part of the eighteenth century, which are of particular importance in our field, especially in the standard work of Gerando and in the publications of the London charity organization society, we find everywhere the same prin- ciples of benevolence, the same opinions in regard to the influ- ence of philanthropy upon the benefactor and the recipient.
Modern methods of trade and commerce, the growth of the press, the large number of students constantly in attendance at foreign universities have wonderfully facilitated the interchange of ideas and experiences. Yet even in the reports from smaller communities and distant localities, where the leaders in poor relief and philanthropic work are certainly not men of thorough theoretical training, one is constantly struck by the fact that there are very exact general laws underlying every form of char- ity and that these laws have found more or less correct expres- sion in the legislation and literature of all civilized countries.
To speak of the American and English "workhouse system" and of the German " Elberfeid system " as of different methods of poor relief seems, at first thought, in contradiction to our last statement. But the discrepancy is only a seeming one ; in real- ity both systems are based upon the same fundamental concep- tion ; the principle of the workhouse, on the one hand, is sacri- ficed to a considerable degree in favor of outdoor relief, the latter in its turn yields the former a place in its system. Whether the one or the other system shall be given preference in a given community depends very much more on historical development
1 WARNER, American Charities.
