auses of this?

They have been stated often and urgently enough by those whose great
experience gave weight to their arguments. Clothed in legal phrase, they
may be found summed up in the law of 1875, which ordains that a dependent
child shall be committed to an institution controlled by persons of the
same religious faith as its parents, when that can be done, and that the
county shall pay the child's board. It was a tremendous bid for child
pauperism, and poverty, ignorance, and greed were not slow to respond.
Under this so-called "religious clause," the number of children thrown
upon the county, in New York City alone, was swelled, between 1875 and
1890, from 9.363 to 16.358, this statement including only the twenty-nine
institutions that can demand or do receive public money toward their
support. Some of them, that have come into existence since it was passed,
were directly created by the law. It was natural that this should be so,
"because it provided exactly the care which parents desired for their
children, that of persons of their own religious faith, and supplied ample
means for the children's support; while, although the funds were to be
derived from public sources, yet since the institutions were to be managed
by private persons, the stigma which fortunately attaches to _public_
relief was removed. Thus every incentive to parents to place their
children upon the public for support was created by the provisions of the
law, and every deterrent was removed; for the law demanded nothing from
the parent in return for the support of the child, and did not deprive him
of any of his rights over the child, although relieving him of every duty
toward it."[28] But New York City went a step further, by having special
laws passed securing a stated income from the money raised by local
taxation to nine of its largest institutions. This is where the trail of
the politician might perhaps be traced with an effort. The amount drawn by
the nine in 1890 was nearly a million dollars, while the total so expended
footed up in that year over sixteen hundred thousand dollars. New York
City to-day supports one dependent child to each one hundred of its
population, and the tax levied, directly and indirectly, for the purpose
is about a dollar a head for every man, woman, and child in the city. The
State in 1888 supported one child to every 251 of its population. The
State of California, which had also gone into the wholesale charity
bus