to the following table showing the nativity of persons admitted

Out of a total of 2,936 only 554 were born in the United States; 2,382 were foreign-born, and of this number 1,617 were born in Ireland alone. There is a law forbidding the immigration of paupers to the United States. It would appear from this table that this law is evaded.

The Incurable Hospital and the Blind Asylum, which are parts of the almshouse but are not included in the preceding table, show that in 1900 there were more foreign-born persons than native-born admitted to both.

TABLE B.- Showing nativity of those admitted to the Incurable Hospital during the year 1900:

TABLE C.- Showing nativity of those admitted to the Blind Asylum during the year 1900:

If so many immigrants actually in pauperism or verging upon pauperism were not admitted to the United States we should have a smaller census in the almshouse.

Another interesting table shows the causes of pauperism of those admitted in 1900:

Out of 2,936, 2,729 were admitted for destitution, 97 were blind, 4 were deaf and dumb and 106 were afflicted with sickness. The 2,729 admitted for destitution were not sick bodily or mentally. They were just helpless and without any other place to go. And they were helpless in the main because they had yielded to an appetite for drink until long-suffering friends could not longer bear the burden of their existence and had, in self-protection, to turn them over to the city. It is not within the province of this paper to say how many of those persons could have been made self-respect

ing and self-supporting if the environments that first led them into the downward path had been minimized or swept away altogether. Here is a great opportunity for the philanthropist who looks to cause rather than to effect in his plan for the betterment of the human race. The problem, however, that presents itself to commissioners of charities and to superintendents of the poor is not how to prevent people from going into the almshouse, but how to take care of them properly after they are in the almshouse. I should like to see better tenements, for I know that with more light and more air there would be less sickness and less crime and less poverty; and I should like to see some reclaiming and inspir ing influence exerted constantly to prevent persons from taking the first downward step. But that problem is not one with which the officials in charge of the poor have to do or are called upon to solve. They may aid in its solution, but their primary duty is to promote the best interests of the people placed in their charge.

The following table shows that out of 2,936 persons admitted to the almshouse in the year 1900, 2,413 were over 50 years old; 1,674, or more than half, were over 60 years of age.

Classification of ages of those admitted during the year 1900:

This table is exclusive of both the Incurable Hospital and the Blind Asylum. It shows that the failures of life when they become friendless are dumped into the almshouse. When a man or woman gets beyond 50 years of age and so far loses his or her grip on self-support that an appeal has to be made for aid from others, such aid is not forthcoming because there is small prospect of any satisfactory return for it. The result is the almshouse. The person at 50 or older appealing for help can get it permanently only from the public charities.

The problem of eliminating the almshouse altogether or approximately is one which has engaged the best thought of sociologists the world over, and has been taken out of the field of purely academic discussion by practical experiments in certain countries, notably in Germany and New Zealand. In the former country an insurance plan has been operated and in the latter an old-age pension has been adopted. The insurance plan did not eliminate the almshouse, and the old-age pension scheme, while it eliminated the almshouse, entailed upon the taxpayers an unwelcome burden. I believe that a way will yet be found whereby the almshouse population will be largely decreased, but it is not within the province of this paper or of my time to discuss it here.

Among the inmates of the almshouse are so many people who are the victims of conditions which they did not make and could not control that they arouse pity, and there are so many who show such evidences of refinement, of cheerful resignation and of an abiding self-respect that they arouse sympathy. If such people as these must go into the almshouse (and under our present economic system they have no other place to go), they should at least have the benefit of every effort to make their existence not only tolerable but comfortable. Nothing could be more cruel than to compel a woman of refinement to live day after day and year after year in association with a foul-mouthed, blasphemous, degenerate hag. This is the sort of thing that I have tried to prevent with

the limited resources at my command in the boroughs of Manhattan and The Bronx. Segregation is the solution of the problem of almshouse management so far as the comfort of the inmates. is concerned. I have been able to make but a crude beginning in segregation because I have not had the buildings in which to segregate the people. The incurables are kept together the males in one building and the females in another. The blind are treated similarly. I must say for both these classes, especially the women, that they conduct themselves creditably, and that further segregation except in a few instances is unnecessary. We have picked out the lame and very feeble and devoted to them two wards for the females and one for the males. Meals are served to them in the wards. People who are actually sick are taken to the hospital wards- two pavilions for the males and two for the females. Persons declared to be insane by qualified examiners in lunacy but declared to be not insane but simply senile by the Ward's Island authorities are kept by themselves. Two pavilions (R and S), are devoted to the older males, the feebler ones on the ground floor and the stronger ones on the second floor. They all take their meals in the general dining-room, but the feebler ones are placed on the first floor to avoid the stairs. Husbands and wives are admitted to the almshouse, but the wives. have to live in the women's dormitories and the husbands have to live in the men's. They have the privilege of visiting each other. In some of the English almshouses, husbands and wives are permitted to occupy apartments together. This plan,

as I know, has never been tried here. In the general develop ment of almshouse management I believe it to be worthy of consideration.

You will see from this general plan of segregation that it is still crude and that it extends scarcely beyond the physical requirements and conditions of the inmates. The segregation that is most desirable is that which touches upon the finer sensibilities