comptroller show that, under the system of an elective Director of the Poor controlled by the common council, there was expended for two years: : Disbursed during the last two years of the administra tion of the director of the poor, less salaries:- During the year ending April 20, 1895 During the year ending April 20, 1896 Total Disbursed during the administration of the board of poor commissioners, less salaries : During the year ending April 20, 1897 During the year ending April 20, 1898 Total . . Saving in disbursements for two years Saving in disbursement for two years Saving in salaries for two years Total savings $3.526.07 4,079.35 7,605.42 $1,716.50 $38,920.62 22,404.87 $61,325-49 $12,909.81 22,469.51 $38,855.98 $38,855.98 1,716.50 $40,572.48 The foregoing statement of salaries includes $1,200 per year paid to the city physician. There has been more employment during the past year, both in factories and public improvements. The demand for dry goods and clothing has been reduced through the efforts of the Charity Organization Society, which kindly furnished such supplies as were given to them for that purpose; and the poor people can frequently have the opportunity of paying for them in work. The demand for shoes has been materially reduced through the efforts of Truant Officer Fee, who gave entertainments from time to time in order to provide a fund for the purchase of shoes for schoolchildren. Many of the citizens have contributed to this fund. I am also very glad to bear tribute to the active zeal and intelligence of our various religious, benevolent, and fraternal organizaThese by their hearty co-operation with this commission have brought great credit to our city, and contributed in a large degree to the success of our work. My policy is to manage to keep people out of the poorhouse. As a good attorney will try to keep his client out of the courts, so will a good poor officer try to keep his constituency out of the poorhouse, so far as possible. I have no advanced theory regarding the care of the poor. I have only the law of God as it is written in His word and in the human heart. He establishes the family as the unit of the State. All that is noblest and holiest gathers about the family hearthstone. There the work of reformation must begin, and substantially there it must end. In the family we must find the solution of all social problems. I realize fully the necessity for various institutions. They occupy an important place in our system of benevolence. But it is my observation that all institutions, private or public, are continually seeking to promote their own growth and expansion, and are steadily endeavoring to perform a work which never can be so well done by them as it should be done in the family home. I believe more and more in the efficiency of the individual effort. We have in Grand Rapids a district nurse association, which has never been able to employ more than two nurses; but the amount of good which they have accomplished is beyond all computation. They not only relieve a great deal of suffering in the poor families to which they are called, but they do a great deal more. The very presence of one of these nurses in a family brings renewed life, hope, cheer, and inspiration for a better life. I feel confident that, if the corps of nurses could be increased fourfold in our city, the necessity for hospital treatment would be largely lessened, because, if the family could have the assistance and guidance of a good nurse, many cases of sickness would soon recover, whereas, owing to the poverty or ignorance of the family, the illness develops into a serious character, and often becomes chronic, and must be cared for at a hospital, involving much expense and suffering. THE PUBLIC CHARITIES OF NEW YORK. AN ADDRESS BY HON. JOHN W. KELLER, NEW YORK. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,- Before referring to the report that we have heard to-night, I want to say that the care of the sick, the foundling, the pauper, and the idiot, is more of a duty than a charity. It is as much the duty of the city to care for its unfortunate as it is to educate its children. Why is it, then, that the public school should be a matter of pride, while the Department of Public Charities is almost a shame to the greatest city in America? Either there has not been money enough given in the past for the proper administration of the charities or the men intrusted with the administration have not made proper use of the money given to the department. I think that the former is the case. By some unconscious cerebration, some curious transposition of cause and effect, the municipal authorities of previous years seem to have thought that because the Department of Public Charities has to care for paupers, the department itself ought to be pauperized. When I go through the institutions under my charge, and find floors that have lain for years without repair, broken and splintered, hiding in their crevices the germs of all manner of disease; when I find plumbing that is a shame to the city, and that ought to be condemned by the Board of Health, I feel that surely the Department of Public Charities has been neglected in the appropriation of public money. If it has not been so neglected, then it has been in absolutely incompetent hands. I have been a commissioner of charities only four months, and I do not pretend to speak as one who knows it all. I only know that there are certain things before me which should not be there and which I am bound to get rid of. I have heard a good deal of discussion here as to the relative merits of a single-headed commission and a board of commissioners, of paid officials and unpaid officials. I have no theory about this sort of thing. The only system of government that appeals to me is the system that does things. I do not care whether the commission is single-headed or many-headed, paid or unpaid, or whether the administrative body is made up of boards innumerable. The sick must always be cared for, the foundlings must be saved, and the department must be run on business principles to the end that it shall be a credit to the city. Success lies in the hand that holds the helm. Reference has been made to the Infants' Asylum on Randall's Island. The day I went into office I visited that institution, because I had read in the newspaper that the death-rate there was 96 per cent. I do not think that that representation was quite fair to the administration that preceded me, because there is a distinction in the hospital between the foundling — that unfortunate creature which is more than half the time brought to the hospital moribund — and the child that comes there with its mother. The total death-rate never amounted to 96 per cent., but the death-rate of the foundlings did reach that appalling height. I found every flooring saturated with long use. In trying to clean the place, the suds would sink down between the planks of the floors, and remain there rotting; and this in itself was cause enough to breed disease and produce mortality. The plumbing was in such a wretched condition that I was surprised that some epidemic had not broken out. I found the children fed in the wards, with the food dropping all about the floor, attracting cockroaches and every other insect into the hospital. I found the babies lying unattended to. The well children were in the same wards with the sick. When feeding-time arrived, the nurses were satisfied to put the nursing-bottle to a child's mouth, and leave it lying until it cried. By simply ordering a change in the method of treating the babies. and by furnishing the institution with more nurses and better nurses, I have had the gratifying result of reducing the death-rate in the Randall's Island Infant Asylum to less than one-third of what it was in the corresponding time of last year. I ordered that the sick children should be kept separated from the well children, that food should not be served in the wards to children that could go into the dining-room, that absolute cleanliness should prevail everywhere, and that the nurses should give the strictest attention to their charges. Without doing anything else, the death-rate has decreased, as you have heard Mr. Folks say, in spite of broken and rotten floors and the wretched condition of the plumbing. I have set out to make the Randall's Island Infant Asylum successful in the care of the babies that come to this department. I shall do it. I have al ready furnished the institution with all the nurses necessary; and I would have done this, no matter how meagre my appropriation might have been. I might have had to go without a steamboat, without ambulances, without many other necessities of the department; but that death-rate on Randall's Island had to be reduced, and it has been reduced. Within three months I shall have new floors and new plumbing; and, before the year is out, the Infants' Asylum on Randall's Island shall lack nothing in equipment or service. And, as I am treating the Infants' Asylum on Randall's Island, so I shall treat every other institution in the Department of Public Charities until a condition is attained that is satisfactory to me as a commissioner and as a man. I believe that, when the present condition of the Charities Department becomes known to the mayor of this city and to our board of estimate and apportionment, we shall have money enough to mend every broken floor and every rotten wall in the department, and to run the department in such a way that it will become a pride to the city of New York. My reason for thinking so is this: When I went before the board of estimate and apportionment the first week of my administration, and stated to the mayor and other members of that board the condition of the Randall's Island Infants' Hospital, they did not hesitate a moment to give me all the money that I asked for for repairing the hospital that is now in progress. All that I have to do is to convince the board of estimate and apportionment of the necessity for the money, and I am sure that I shall get it. In attaining that end, I feel that I have the best aid in the world in the Charities Aid Association. That association furnishes me in the administration of my department with that public influence of which the Mayor of Boston has spoken as coming through his boards. The Charities Aid Association comes every day through the buildings in the Department of Public Charities. There was a time, it seems, that there was some antagonism between the Charities Aid Association and the Department of Public Charities. The department on its side seemed to regard the association as an enemy seeking to find out something to its detriment. The association seemed to think that the department was trying to conceal something from it. Only to-day I had a visit from a representative of the Charities Aid Association, complaining that certain people in the Department of Public Charities had refused to answer certain questions asked by visitors from the Charities Aid Society. I immedi |