f on the side of those in distress there is awakened a
reciprocal regard and a willingness to change their way of life by
degrees. Visiting by "districts" is set aside, for "friendliness" is not
a quality easily diffused over a wide area. To be real it must be
limited as time and ability allow. Consequently, a friendly visitor
usually befriends but one or two, or in any case only a few, families.
The friendly visitor is the outcome of the movement for "associated
charities," but in America charity organization societies have also
adopted the term, and to a certain extent the method. Between the two
movements there is the closest affinity. The registration of applicants
for relief is much more complete in American cities than in England,
where the plan meets with comparatively little support. At the office of
the associated charities in Boston there is a central and practically a
complete register of all the applications made to the public authority
for poor relief, to the associated charities, and to many other
voluntary bodies.

The Elizabethan poor-law system, with the machinery of overseers,
poor-houses and out-door relief, is still maintained in New England, New
York state and Pennsylvania, but with many modifications, especially in
New York. A chief factor in these changes has been immigration. While
the County or town remained the administrative area for local poor
relief, the large number of immigrant and "unsettled" poor, and the
business connected with their removal from the state, entailed the
establishment of a secondary or state system of administration and aid,
with special classes of institutions to which the counties or towns
could send their poor, as, for instance, state reform schools, farms,
almshouses, &c. For the oversight of these institutions, and often of
prisons also and lunatic asylums, in many states there have been
established state boards of "charity or corrections and charity." The
members of these boards are selected by the state for a term of years,
and give their services honorarily. There are state boards in
Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota,
Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, North Carolina and elsewhere. There
is also a district board of charities in the district of Columbia. These
boards publish most useful and detailed reports. Besides the state board
there is sometimes also, as in New York, a State Charities Aid
Association, whose members, in the cou