areas coincident with parishes or poor-law
divisions, or other districts. Subject to an acceptance of general
principles, those engaged in charity should be members of a local
conference or committee, or allied to it. The committee would thus be
the rallying-point of a large and somewhat loosely knit association
of friends and workers. (2) _Inquiry, Aid and Registration_.--The
object of inquiry is to ascertain the actual causes of distress or
dependence, and to carry on the work there must usually be a staff of
several honorary and one or two paid workers. Two methods may be
adopted: to inquire in regard to applications for help with a view to
forming some plan of material help or friendly aid, or both, which
will lead to the ultimate self-support of the family and its members,
and, under certain conditions, in the case of the aged or sick, to
their continuous or their sufficient help; or to ascertain the facts
partly at once, partly by degrees, and then to form and carry out some
plan of help, or continue to befriend the family in need of help, in
the hope of bringing them to conditions of self-support, leaving the
work of relief entirely to other agencies. The committee in neither
case should be a relief committee--itself a direct source of relief.
On the former method it has usually no relief fund, but it raises from
relations, employers, charities and charitable persons the relief
required, according to the plan of help agreed upon, unless, indeed,
it is better not to relieve the case, or to leave it to the poor-law.
The committee thus makes itself responsible for endeavouring to the
best of its ability to raise the necessary relief, and acts as trustee
for those who co-operate without it, in such a way as to keep intact
and to give play to all the natural obligations that lie within the
inner circles of a self-supporting community. On the latter method the
work of relief is left to general charity, or to private persons, or
to the poor-law; and the effort is made to help the family to
self-support by a friendly visitor. This procedure is that adopted by
the associated charities in Boston, Mass., and other similar societies
in America and elsewhere. It is akin also to that adopted in the
municipal system of relief in Elberfeld--which has become with many
variations in detail the standard method of poor relief in Germany.
The method of associated hel