The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-04-12

THE PHILADELPHIA ALMSHOUSE.
IT appears from the annual statement of the
Guardians for the Relief and Employment of
the Poor of Philadelphia for the fiscal year
ending December 81, 1870, that the appro-
priations made to the Guardians last year
amounted to 1922, 1893 '25, all o. which except
afew thousand dollars was expended, and the
net cost of operations, after deducting re-
ceipts paid into the treasury, was 1878, ,353'91.
In this statement no allowance is made for
the interest on Cost of ground valued at
81, 700,0 900, and buildings valued at
$500, 900. If this item was
added it would swell the total
annual expenditure to about half a million of
dollars. This sum is devoted mainly to the
support of an average pauper population of
3273, although outdoor relief was extended
to SO, 522 persons at an aggregate cost of
SCI, ,805 1880 that the city of Philadelphia
has been assisting more than 10000 persons
by contribution of nearly 50 each per au-
mum, and supporting entirely more than 5000
paupers at a cost of nearly So per week.
The returns for last year, as compared
with those of former years, present fagora-
BILE contrast in several particulars, the
average weekly cost of each Almshouse in-
mate and the net expenditures being smaller
than at any time since 1868. 1t is evideut,
however, that, under the present system, even
the most careful attention cannot prevent
the city from being subjected to unnecessa-
rily heavy burdens; snd that it does not afford
sufficient facilities for attempts to utilize
the labor of comparatively able-bodied
paupers. While it Is right that the
sick, the insane, and the hopelessly
Incompetent and incapable poor should be
maintained in idleness, the large class who
are able to labor at some kinds of employment
should be compelled to toll, even if no mate
rial profit was derived from their labors.
Their ears should be familiarized with the
old-fashioned word the work house, and their
bodies trained to the discipline that word
implies. Idleness is becoming entirely too
much of a chronic disease, and ne more
effective preventive can be found than a
clear and well-defined understanding
among all classes of the community that
the penalty of failure to earn
an honest livelihood in some one of the ac-
customed channels of industry will be en-
forced labor inside the walls of prison,
house of correction, or work-house. The
staple Philadelphia policy has encouraged
idleness until this city is regarded throughout
the land as the Paradise of loafers and bum
mers-a sure maintenance being always
afforded here, either in the County Prison or
the Almshouse, without any danger that
bodily exertion will be exacted in return. The
proposed House of Correction, if speedily
constructed and properly managed, will de-
Htroy this fatal policy and at once check the
tide of pauper emigration that sets in upon
rs from other quarters, and arrest the growth
Of pauperism in our midst.
If We count up the number of persons COM
mitted to the County Prison, the number of
paupers sent to and maintained in the Aims
house, the total number to whom outdoor
relief was granted by the Guardians of the
Poor, and the large army of ragged and gen.
feel loafers and beggars in the community
who subsist upon the public it will appear
that very large proportion of the population
of Philadelphia has ceased to be self
sustaining; and to check the growing
tendency towards an increase of this army of
incapables, the lesson cannot be too forci-
bly,, frequently, and practically impressed
that hereafter all members of society who are
not stricken by disease, insanity, or hopeless
imbecility, and who do not possess the means
OF self-support, have only left plain choice,
being labor combined with liberty, and labor
inside the walls of prison or House of Em-
ployment and Correction.