The Civil War and After: 1860-1900 117 detailed statement of the amount of relief furnished during the preceding year, with the names of all persons to whom such relief shall have been furnished, together with a brief statement in each case, from the relief committee upon whose recommenda- tion the orders were drawn. $ 4. The said auditing board of any city or town may require of the said com- Bond of relief mander and quartermaster of any post of the Grand Army of the Republic, undertak- committee. ing such relief in said city or town, a bond with sufficient and satisfactory sureties for the faithful and honest discharge of their duties under this act. $ 5. Superintendents and overseers of the poor are hereby prohibited from Duties of sending indigent soldiers, sailors, and marines, (or their families, or the families of overseers and those deceased), to any alms-house (or orphan asylum) without the full concurrence superintendents of poor, as to and consent of the commander and relief committee of the post of the Grand Army of committals to the Republic, having jurisdiction as provided in sections one and two. Indigent veter- almshouse, etc. ans with families, and the families of deceased veterans, shall, whenever practicable, be provided for and relieved at their homes in such city or town in which they shall have Outdoor or a residence, in the manner provided in sections one and two of this act. Indigent or home relief, to disabled veterans of the classes specified in section one, who are not insane, and who be given when possible. have no families or friends with whom they may be domiciled, may be sent to any sol- diers' home. Any indigent veteran of either of the classes specified in section one, or Soldiers' any member of the family of any living or deceased veteran of said classes, who may be Home, relief at. insane, shall, upon recommendation of the commander and relief committee of such post of the Grand Army of the Republic, within the jurisdiction of which the case may Care of occur, be sent to any hisane asylum, and cared for as provided for indigent insane in indigent insane section twenty-six of chapter one hundred and thirty-five of the laws of eighteen hun- veterans. dred and forty-two.. $ 6. This act shall take effect immediately. PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CHARITIES AND CORRECTIONS 1890 THE ECONOMIC AND MORAL EFFECTS OF PUBLIC OUTDOOR RELIEF. BY MRS. CHARLES RUSSELL LOWELL, OF NEW YORK.persons need certain things is no . case.. Before this can be rightly done, it is necessary to prove that it is good should be done. . . . The practice of any community in this particular is a matter of great importance, for there can be no question that there is an inverse ratio between the welfare of the mass of the people and the distribution of relief. What some one has called "the fatal ease of living without work and the terrible difficulty of living by work" are closely interrelated as cause and effect; and, if you will permit me, I will try to show by a short allegory what this relation is. Once upon a time there lived in a valley, called the Valley of Industry, a people who were happy and industrious. All the goods of this life were supplied to them by exhaustless subterranean springs of water, which they pumped up into a great reservoir on the top of a neighboring hill, the Hill of Prosperity, from which it flowed down, each man receiving what he himself pumped up, by a small pipe which led into his own house, a moderate amount of pumping on the part of every one keeping the reservoir well filled. Finally, a few of the inhabitants of the Valley, more keen than the rest, reflected that it was unnecessary to weary themselves with pumping, so long as every one else kept at work. The Hill of Prosperity. looked very attractive; and they therefore mounted to a convenient point, and put a large pipe into the reservoir, through which they drew off copious supplies of water without further trouble. The number of those who gave up pumping and withdrew to the Hill was at first so small that the loss did not add very much to the work of the mass of the people, who still kept to their pumping, and it did not occur to them to complain; but those who could followed the others up the Hill until it was all occupied, and by this time, although those who remained in the Valley did find their pumping a good deal harder than it was when all who used the water joined in the work, yet every one had become so accustomed to some people using the reservoir water without doing any pumping that it had come to be considered all right, and still there were no complaints. Meanwhile, the people on the Hill of Prosperity having nothing to do but enjoy the prospect, some of them began to explore the neighboring country, and soon discovered another valley at the foot of the Hill, running parallel with the Val- ley of Industry, and called the Valley of Idleness, and in it were a few people who had wandered from the for- mer Valley (for the two were connected at the farther end), and who were living in abject misery, with no water, and apparently no means of getting any, so long as they stayed where they were. The people from the Hill of Prosperity were very much shocked at the suffering they found. "What a shame!" they cried. "The poor things have no water! We have plenty and to spare, so let us lead a pipe from the reservoir down into their Val- ley." No sooner said than done: the pipe was carried into the Valley of Idleness, and the people were made- more comfortable. But as soon as the news was brought into the Valley of Industry, some of the pumpers who were tired or weak, and some who were only lazy, left their pumping, and hastened into the neighboring Val ley, to enjoy the "free" water; but the pipe was not very large, and soon there was want and suffering again, and. the people from Prosperity Hill were much disturbed, and decided to lay down another small pipe, which they did. But the result was the same, for the new supply of water attracted more people from the Valley of Indus- try. And so it went on, new pipe, more people, new pipe, more people, until the inhabitants of Prosperity Hill were full of distress about it, and exclaimed, "It seems a hopeless task to try to make these people happy and comfortable!" And they would have given up in despair, but a new idea occurred to them; and they said, "They do not seem to know how to take very good care of their children, and we will therefore take their children from them, and teach them to be comfortable and happy." So they built large, fine houses for the children, and they carried water in large pipes into the houses. And some of them said, "Let us put faucets, so as to teach them to turn on the water when they need it." But others said: "Oh, no! How troublesome it is to have to turk a faucet when you need water! Let them have it as we do, free." And sometimes one or other would suggestoud Ask Bing Al The Civil War and After: 1860-1900 119 that, perhaps, after all, it was not quite right to waste so much of the water from the reservoir, and that the large pipe itself, which supplied the Hill of Prosperity, ought to have some means of checking the flow; but the answer was, "It is necessary and right that the water should be wasted; for otherwise the people in the Valley of Industry would have nothing to do, and they would starve." Usually, however, the Prosperity Hill people were too much engaged in taking care of the inhabitants of the Valley of Idleness to give much thought to those ofp the Valley of Industry; and their anxiety was quite justified, for they had to keep up a perpetual watchfulness, the people increasing so fast that it was necessary constantly to lay more pipe to keep them from the most ab ject suffering, and even this device never succeeded for very long, as I have said. In fact, no one thought much about the Valley of Industry or its people. Those in the Valley of Idle- ness only thought of them long enough to reflect how silly they were to keep on pumping all the time and making their beeks and arms ache, when they might have water without any exertion, by simply moving into their Valley. The children born in the Valley of Idleness. did not even know there was a Valley of In- dustry, or any pumps, or any pumpers, or any reservoir: they thought the water grew in pipes, and ran out because it was its nature to. As for the people on the Hill of Prosperity, they were, as we have seen, rather confused in their views in this particular; and, besides thinking that their waste of the water from the reser- voir was what kept the people in the Valley of Industry from starving, they used also to say sometimes: "How good it is for those people to have such nice, steady work to do! how strong it makes their backs and arms! how it hardens their muscles! What a nice, independent set of people they are! and what a splendid quantity of pure, life-giving water they get out of our reservoir!" "Meanwhile, you can imagine, though they could not, that it was rather hard on the men in the Valley of Industry, not only to have the water they pumped up drawn off at the top to supply two other communi- ties, but also to have their own ranks thinned and their work increased by the loss of those who were tempted into the Valley of Idleness, to live on what the Prosperity Hill people and the Valley of Idleness people like to call euphemistically "free water," because they got it free, though actually it was not free at all; for the Valley of Industry people paid for it with their blood and muscle. I might go on to tell you how the situation was still further complicated and made harder for them, and indeed for almost everyone, when a few of them obtained control of the inexhaustible subterranean springs; but here, I think, the allegory may end for the purposes of this Conference, and it seems to me to teach a lesson which we may well heed. An Act to Prohibit the Coming of Chinese Laborers to the United States September 13, 1888 Fiftieth Congress, Session 1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of Chinese America in Congress assembled. That from and after the date of the exchange of ratifi- laborers