Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-02-16
PUBLIC CHARITIES THE TOWN AND STATE
SYSTEMS


ed to the Legislature, we were enabled to lay
before our readers detailed account of the
condition of the several institutions, and gen
eral abstract of the changes and reforms re-
commended by the Committee. The printed
document contains many important statistics,
and an interesting discussion of the merits of
the State and Town Systems of pauper sup
port, which have not been fully laid before the
public The report signed by the whole Com
mittee, comes to the conclusion, after much
consideration, that the State System ought not
permanently to be maintained; but, at the
same time, it deprecates an abrupt return to
the Town System, and makes various sugges-
tons of reform, with the view of increasing its
present efficiency, and reducing its expense.
d. f. Parker, Esq, member of the Commit
tee, submits an elaborate and carefully prepar-
ed paper, which he submits rather as an adden-
dun than as minority report. He discusses
the two systems more in detail, and arrives at
more decided convictions of the inutility of the
State System, for economical, sanitary, and
moral reasons, which are stated with much
clearness and force.
The care of that class of men, women and
children, who are thrown upon the public for
support by vices or misfortune, is one of the
most serious and the most important of public
duties. Under the best circumstances, the
care and the cost will often seem like profit
less burden, and charity itself is liable to be-
come weary of the ceaseless and sleepless vigi-
lence which is required of it. But the duty is
constantly incumbent on all prosperous and
thriving communities blessed with sound
health, sufficient property, and good morals, to
see that the helpless and the suffering, from
whatever cause the halt, the lame, and the
blind, are provided with the means of living
happily, as long as they are permitted to live
at all. For this reason, every effort to direct
attention and awaken interest in the organized
charities of the Commonwealth, is laudable. 1t
is honorable to the gentlemen by whom these
reports have been prepared, that the important
considerations CT health and morality have been
kept constantly in sight, even under the temp
tation of arguments for economy. Mr.. Parker
contends that, though the State Almshouses
were established in 1854, and subsequently,
for the purpose of relieving the towns from
their losses in the support of State paupers,
the actual cost to the towns has increased.
The balance against the towns for the last four
years, as compared with the four years next
preceding the initiation of the State system, is
$166,091 So, though there were twenty thou
sand less FlTsons relieved CO supported. At
the same time the State was paying for its own
poor from fund contributed by the towns in
the form ola State tax. But this is not an un-
answerable argument. For if the system is
itself better, in its tendencies to diminish and
discourage pauperism, or to promote the well
fare of those who subsist on the public bounty,
the question of economy would be one of Sec
ondary concern.
But an examination of the institutions
does not establish the fact of superiority in
either of these respects. Epidemical disease
makes its most fearful ravages in the crowds
of paupers who are apportioned among three
or four institutions, instead of being divided
among the towns where they were overtaken
by misfortune. Forty children at the aims
house in Bridgewater, died Of scarlet fever in
the brief period of two months; and as many
founding infants at the institution in Tewks-
bury sought the sweet charities of death in as
brief a period. And for the year ending Oct.
l, 1858, there died in the three almshouses at
Bridgewater, Tewksbury, and Monson, BAL
children, the larger part of epidemical diseases,
and the rest for the want of that kind and con-
slant care which in institutions of this charac-
ter is impossible. The direct and personal
care of the keepers of three hundred aims
houses, the skill of physicians in so many diff
ferent places, and all the attending blessings of
the town system would diminish the liabilities
to sickness, and thus diminish pauperism and
it would decrease the number of deaths, and
thus add to the enjoyments of life; while boy
hood and girlhood, ripening into maturity
amidst the pure influences of country life,
might become in their ripper years, honest, tenn
perate, industrious and selfsupporting.
The moral influences of congregated pau
perism overlook all others. 1t is represented,
that in some of these institutions, the old and
the young, the virtuous and the depraved the
unfortunate and the criminal, the intelligent
and the diotic, are left together, to exert their
sad influences upon each other, almost without
instruction and without restraint Young girls
mingle with the old, the insane, the foolish,
and the lewd, while under the same roof, and
almost by their bedSides, lie the diseased found
lings, whose base parents have left them to die
in the almshouses. Among the males, the
same sad scenes are presented. build
ing called "Loafer's Hall is attached to
each of these melancholy caravanseries of
want, where the paupers spend their hours of
leisure and idleness. In one of them, there
was seen, at the same time, man who former
iy stood high at the bar in aneighboring State,
but now hopelessly insane while, by his side
and all around him, were idiots, colored pau
pers, one of them demented, half dozen de-
mented Irish, and keen, bright, and inteli-
gent Englishman, who had fought at Salaman-
ca, Cuidad Rodrigo, and Waterloo; who had
been printer for twenty years at Harvard
University, and was now in the full enjoyment
of every faculty. There were, also, young
men made paupers by vices not to be named
Others from pure misfortune-and each and all
thus herded together, the virtuous with the
vicious, the sane with the maniac, the intelli-
gent with the demented, and the scholar with
the idiot and fool for his daily companion
Against these unnatural and deplorable asso
Citations, which seem to be inseparable from
the present system, the report justly protests.
1t contemplates two better systems one of
which is the old and tried system of the State,
pricr to 1854, and the other an entirely new
system, repeating at once our laws regarding