ld
system is practicable; where public opinion, as in the United States,
is not favorable to remanding as much as possible to the government,
it is thought best that private agencies should supplement State aid,
and in most cases make it unnecessary.

290. =Arguments for and Against Private Agencies of Relief.=--Some
argue that private agencies should do it all. In spite of the large
resources at the command of the state and the frequent necessity of
legislation to handle the problem, they claim that public aid
humiliates and degrades the recipient, while private assistance may
put him on his feet without destroying his self-respect; and that
public charity is too often unfeeling and tends to become a routine
affair, while private aid can deal better with specific cases, show
real interest and try experiments in the improvement of methods. There
are those who would have all charity given back to the church. They
believe the responsibility would stimulate the church's own life,
extend its influence among the unchurched, show that it had an
interest in the bodies as well as the souls of the people, and bring
about co-operation between churches in the districts of town or city.
It is of the genius of true religion to be helpful, and the church
could soon learn wise methods. In answer to this argument the reply is
that at present the indiscriminate charity of the church is doing
real harm; that the church does not like to co-operate with other
agencies; that it does not have adequate resources to deal with the
problem or legal authority to restrain mendicants or segregate the
various classes of dependents; and that all persons in the community
ought to share in the responsibility of poor relief, and not all are
in the church. They recognize the valuable aid of such organizations
as the Hebrew Charities and the work of the St. Vincent de Paul
Society of the Catholics, but they believe that such as these at best
can be only auxiliary to the state.

An illustration of the usefulness of private associations appears in a
group of seven boys of foreign parentage in New York City, who
organized themselves in 1903 into a quick-aid-to-the-hungry committee.
They were only thirteen years old and poor. They lived on the East
Side, and pennies and nickels did not make a full treasury. But they
knew the need and had an instinct for helping the right people. In
seven years these boys helped in more than two hundred and fifty
emergency