The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-01-18

| (By Robert W. Hebbard, Ex-Com.
 missioner of Charities, New York City, Secretary State Board of Char ities, New York.)
 Exclusive Service The Survey Press Bureau.)
 The care of ten thousand poor per- lie Charities in the City of New York is a task of stupendous magnitude calling for the annual expenditure o1 nearly three millions of dollars fol running expenses, and million and a half dollars for permanent improve ments, the employment of over twen- ty-two hundred officers and employees
 and the administration of upwards o1 twenty important institutions and of fees scattered throughout the city. In order to care for this large num- Der of patients and inmates in hospi-
 dren, as we'll as in the municipal lodging house, it is necessary to have we'll equipped bureaus for purchasing supplies, making contracts in accord ance with which the supplies must be purchased. auditing accounts .as well cal bureaus to see that the plant is kept running and in good order. For the transportation of patients and supplies not less than five steamboats.
 large and small. are in daily service while a sixth is used exclusively for |the transportation of bodies of the dead from the morgue and other
 points to the burial place at Hart's
 Island.
 The institutions under the charge
 of the Department are five large hos
 pitals. with capacities ranging from five hundred to fifteen hundred, in-
 cluding tuberculosis inf1rmary with
 census exceeding eight hundred,
 two emergency hospitals. three homes
 for the aged one of which has ca
 a municipal lodging house equipped
 to care for nearly thousand home
 less men and women daily. Each
 hospital has it's own staff of visiting
 and house physicians, and the four
 larger ones have well equipped and
 connected with them. There are. in
 addition, six departmental offices. in-
 cluding the Bureau of Dependent
 Adults and the Children's Bureau in
 Manhattan, the Bureau of Dependent Adults and the Children's Bureau in
 Brooklyn, and the Bureau of Depen-
 dent Adults in the Borough of Rich
 mond, as we'll as three public mor- gues, two in Manhattan and one in
 Brooklyn. To investigate the cases of applicants for assistance large force of clerks and examiners is re- quired at the various offices of the Department and are kept contiru- ously at work throughout the year.
 The appropriations for the support of the institutions are obtained through action by the Board of Esti- mate and Apportionment and the Board of Aldermen, the estimates for which must be submitted nearly six months in advance of the first of the year during which the moneys are to be used, and nearly eighteen months .< At% r<F ktHA AAr year for which they are appropriat- ed. which makes 1t impossible to- sub- init an absolutely correct estimate. The Budget appropriations, particu- larly in the important meters of supplies, salaries and wages, are al- ways very much less than the esti- mate, and, in recent years, have been segregated in such a way as to pro- duce a, seeming maximum of en- tangling red tape requirements so often destructive of real progress in administration. For this reason the head of the Department may find himself with a large increase in the census of the institutions but hamp- cred in such a way by the budgetary rules that he is unable to use ac- crued balances to provide nurses and attendants to care for such increased census of patients and inmates. To obtain means for this purpose, it is necessary to secure the issue of Special Revenue bonds through the Board of Aldermen and the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, which ordinarily takes at least six weeks to accomplish. and in the meantime. the employees, if hired at all, must be paid on vouchers from the supply account, with all the consequent de- lay. During the course of the past year a woman dying from leprosy in it's last terrible stages, was brought to the Department of Public Chari- ties. It was necessary to employ two attendants for her care, one by night and one by day. The Department was without means in it's salaries and