226 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
know no instance of the failure of a careful and painstaking manage- ment under the merit system."
County and municipal charities and corrections. — The conditions of management in the local charitable and correctional institutions are very different. The chief exception to the general rule of political management is the case of the orphans' homes, of which there are about forty in the state. Some of these are conducted by societies, some by church organizations, but most of them are owned and controlled by the counties. The secretary of the Board of State Charities says: "It seems that generally, even where the homes are owned by the counties, the matrons are not selected on account of political considerations."
Boards of children's guardians exist in at least two of the large cities of the state. They were evidently intended to be non-partisan, and have been so managed. Inaugurated largely through the efforts of Oscar McCulloch, it could hardly have been otherwise. From a report sent us by N. A. Hyde, president of the board of Marion county (Indianapolis), we take the following :
The board is appointed by the judge of the circuit court and reports to him. The board appoints the matron and assistants, who hold office while performing satisfactory service. There are no written rules of administra- tion. Appointments are made solely on grounds of personal fitness. No influence of party nor favoritism is known in the administration. No trace of panisan spirit has ever appeared in the board.
In these cases the merit system may have been easier to apply, both because the officers are generally not voters, and because the boards are mainly under the control of women. In all other kinds of local public charities the election is along political lines. The i,oi 6 township trustees, who act as outdoor relief officers, are thus chosen. It is frequently charged that party advantage determines some of the relief. A prominent poli- tician informs us that control of the office of trustee is looked upon by party leaders as being of the highest political importance. He suggested that a comparison of the relief granted in election and non-election years would show that politics is a large factor. There are no statistics as yet available over a series of years making the comparison. possible. Over a third of a million dollars are annually distributed through the agency of the trustees for outdoor relief ; nearly half as much additional is expended for this purpose by the county commissioners. Fortunately a number of these officials are men of high integrity. For men who fall below that standard the pressure of political influence to use the opportunities of the position for party advantage must be tremendous. The law of the state does not make the receipt of outdoor relief a bar to the suffrage, and the twenty thousand adult male paupers are thus in many ways a source of political corruption.
