um, if success is to be measured by the
development of individual character. Power to regulate or shorten their
stay is not vested to any practical extent or purpose in any outside
agency. Within, with every benevolent desire to do the right, every
interest of the institution as a whole tends to confuse the perception of
it. The more children, the more money; the fewer children, the less money.
A thousand children can be more economically managed for $110,000 than
five hundred for half the money. The fortieth annual report of the
Juvenile Asylum (1891) puts it very plainly, in this statement on page 23:
"Until the capacity of the Asylum was materially increased, an annual
deficit ranging between $5,000 and $10,000 had to be covered by appeals to
private contributors." Now, it runs not only the New York house but its
Western agency as well on its income.

The city pays the bills, but exercises no other control over the
institutions. It does not even trouble itself with counting the
children.[31] The committing magistrate consults and is guided more or
less by the Officers of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children, in his choice of the institution into which the child is put.
But both are bound by the law that imposes the "faith-test." The
faith-test, as enforced by civil law anywhere, is absurd. The parents of
the eighty per cent. of children in institutions who were not orphans,
split no theological hairs in ridding themselves of their support. Backed
by the money sacks of a great and wealthy city, it is injurious humbug.
This is not the perfection of organized charitable effort for the rescue
of the children of which I spoke, but rather the perversion of it.

It is reasonable to ask that if the public is to pay the piper, the public
should have the hiring of him too. A special city officer is needed to
have this matter in charge. Nearly six years ago Commissioner Lowell
submitted a draft for a bill creating a department for the care of
dependent children in New York City, with a commissioner at the head whose
powers would have been an effective check upon the evil tendencies of the
present law. But we travel slowly along the path of municipal reform, and
the commissioner is yet a dream. Some day we may wake up and find him
there, and then we shall be ready, by and by, to carry out the ideal plan
of placing those children, for whom free homes cannot be found, out at
board in families where they shall come