New-York tribune., 1871-01-18
PdUPERS.

Tho pauper in the body polite threatens to
be the one unsolyable problem just now in
England and here. Our trends in Philadel-
pha and the guardians of the poor in London
especially appear to find the burden more than
they can bear. What business a man~whO
can't work and is not ashamed to beg has to
live at all, is question apparently too hard
for these gentlemen. Even the bugs Of crea
ton find their uses in museums, or, cased in
amber, may give rise to poetic inquiry as to
chow the devil they came there ?" But the
pauper, they complain, dead or alive, is so
much waste matter Society spews him out.
Science will have none of him. This class and
order are, alas but too well known. There is
no doubt as to how he got here. He has not
only come already, but he keeps coming every
year, a gaunt, unweaned army, IN sWaddDng
bands; and he claims it to be q religious duty
80 to keep on coming IN perpetuum. Under
these circumstances it is no wonder that the
patience of these guardians of alms-houses
should wax threadbare, and that they should
strive to lessen the weight by every laudable
means open to them.
In one of the English work-hOuses these
means embraced the incosing of contumacious
to death smoking out women who were trying
to escape by the infirmary chimney with
chlorine gas the infrmary being filed at the
time with sick and dying patients. AT
st. Georges in -the-East the guardians divide
the trade of the alms-house among them
selves, one supplying the paupers with boots
and shoes, another with liquor, third being
tinker in general for the boilers. The chap
lain complaining that the bacchanalan brother
kept the paupers not only drunk, but busy
stealing to pay for their grOg, he was incon-
tinenty taken by the nape of the neck and
kicked out of the Board. One nurse was ex-
ported for an unpleasant habit she had OF
shaking the dying paupers to hurry tner exit
the witness apOlogizing for her, in the last
case of the kind, by alleging that =" Mrs. Sui
"lvan did take an unreasonable long time
"dying."
Our neighbors in Philadelphia have massed
all their dead weight of pauperism in Block
lev aims houses and the meetings Of its
guardians are anticipated in that city Of
brotherly love by reporters and people as the
best of raree-shows. A certain Mr.. Parker, it
appears steadily complains that the bread
served to the paupers Is not to be distin-
gulS1eQ IN taste OF dppedIdHCO IOu "CO
sand that the wards are fuller and fouler
than the Black Hole of Calcutta, and that
their inmates are dying like sheep, and GER
tainly with no unreasonable waste Of time.
The reverend old Quakers who constitute the
rest of the Board as statedly reply to him
not by investigation of the difficulties, but by
threats of kicking him Out' and oaths against
"iabbering bean-poles," calculated to create
astonshment in the minds of all who are ac-
customed to revere Penn and the boasted
charities Of his grave followers. What truth
there may be in Mr. Parker's allegations we
know not, but the very language of the
guardians increases the doubt we have often
expressed of the expediency Of placing large
bodies of the helpless wards of the State,
whether paupers, idiots, or insane, in the care
of few men who naturally soon come to re-
gard misery as a mechanical weight to be
overcome by general hard system and rule.
In England the bOarding-out system is
rapidly coming into general use with regard
to their paupers, and, we doubt not, plan
approximating to it will before long be found
the most in accordance not only with benevo-
lence but economy in this country.