VISITATION OF CHARITIES. 
The Opinions of Hon. John Jay. 
A LET T E%wJn 
ON THE 
Position of the State Board of Charities toward the Bill 
to give the State Charities Aid Association the 
Right of Visitation. VISITATION OF^OTSOTiS. 
Hon. John Jay has written the following letter to Miss 
Sarah M. Carpenter, Commissioner of the State Charities 
for the Second Judicial District, concerning the bill now 
pending in the Legislature, which authorizes any Justice 
of the Supreme Court to empower persons named by the 
Aid Association to visit any public charity in his district 
for inspection of its workings: 
Madam.— During our recent official visit in West Chester, 
when we touched upon the question of the Aid Association, 
you did me the honor to say that you would be glad to know 
more fully the reasons why I had regretted the opposition of 
the State Board to the pending bill, and why, as a visitor of 
the State Board, I would welcome its passage as securing for 
us the most valuable assistance. I respond the more readily to 
your courtesy after reading your elaborate report on the 
numerous charities of the Second District, and I recall with 
pleasure the expression of your wish that the two bodies 
might work in harmony. There is evidently a misunder- 
standing somewhere, which seems to be shared by some mem- 
bers of the State Board, and I observe that the distinguished 
Editor of Harpers Weekly (April thirtieth), while declaring 
that ‘ ‘ the assertion or implication that the State Board has 
been hostile to its volunteer ally, is wholly unfounded,” holds 
that the Board “ has been remiss in not frankly stating the 
grounds of its opposition to the bill as it stood,” and adds 
“ it has been placed but none the less unquestionably in a 
false position.” 
Notwithstanding the amendment of the bill, it is reported 
that its passage still encounters the opposition of the State 
Board, and it certainly seems desirable and in accord with 
the high dignity of the State Board that, if it is not hostile 
to the Aid Association, the fact should be made clear ; and 2 
if it is opposing the pending bill, it should state with frank- 
ness and courtesy the grounds of its opposition, so that its 
objections may be fairly met and the bill amended as may be 
found desirable. It authorizes any justice of the Supreme 
Court to empower persons named by the Aid Association to 
visit, inspect and examine on its behalf during one year, 
with a view to the public benefit, any poor-house or alms- 
house within the judicial district of such justice; and it 
would seem that by the amended bill the Association is to 
report annually to the State Board the result of their visits, 
with suggestions — a provision that recognizes the official 
supremacy of the Board and secures for it the labors of 
its ally. 
This plan of authorizing visitors through the judiciary has 
obtained for thirty years in the case of the Prison Associa- 
tion, and it applies also to institutions under the General 
Benevolent act. When the State Board declined any longer 
to appoint visitors nominated by the Aid Association, except- 
ing on the conditions that they should not report elsewhere 
than to the State Board, nor publish the information acquired 
without its consent — a condition which tended to delay the 
correction of abuses which might be arrested by a prompt 
invocation of public opinion through the local press — that 
new rule led the Aid Association to ask that their visitors be 
authorized by the justices. The managers asked only the 
right to visit, uncoupled with any restriction on their use of 
the information thus obtained. 
No Danger in the Bill. 
Now, if the Aid Association, under this apparently harm- 
less bill, is in fact to obtain power that will supersede and 
humiliate the State Board, and disable its members from the 
performance of their grave duties, it is proper that that fact 
should be made to appear. If our countrymen are clear in 
their right to visit, when and by whom they please, their own 
charities, if they view with disfavor all official attempts to 
limit the popular observation of the official management of 
such institutions, they are equally clear on the point that 3 
there shall be no clashing of authority, no intrusion upon 
official powers, no interference with official rights and duties 
and responsibilities. Every official body and every individual 
official must be protected in his official right. On this point, 
in case the State Board shall think that the bill will curtail 
its powers, complicate and confuse the management of its 
trust, and arrest its efforts to correct abuses and establish 
reforms, it is eminently proper for it to show that these dan- 
gers are involved in the bill. Thus far this has not been done, 
and our most conservative people, those most interested in 
these matters, find no such danger in the bill. On the con- 
trary, they demand, with singular unanimity the passage of 
the act, as a measure which will secure to the State Board of 
Charities a continuance of the aid which it has enjoyed in 
the past from the Aid Association, which the citizens insist 
has brought to their common work the best elements of 
society throughout the State, marked by character, culture, 
special training and large experience. They attribute to the 
Aid Association the skill, judiciousness and tact which only 
training and experience can give, with the added life, vigor 
and inspiration that are born of well-directed voluntary efforts. 
The question, therefore, as it stands, you will observe is 
entirely distinct from that of the rule adopted by the State 
Board, which was forcibly sustained by the argument that 
the State Board was responsible for the acts and utterances 
of its own appointees and must, therefore, control them; and 
the Aid Association did not discredit that principle when it 
held in its turn that its own visitors should report to the 
association as the body on which rested the responsibility of 
their nomination. 
No Responsibility on tiie State Board. 
But the appointment of visitors for the Aid Association by 
the justices would impose no shadow of responsibility on the 
State Board. The new visitors would represent in their 
appointment neither the State Board nor any political body, 
but rather, as Mr. Choate said in his very able argument, 
which remains unanswered — his friends suggest for the reason 4 
that it is perhaps unanswerable — they would represent the 
public eye, the public conscience and the public judgment. 
It is in this light, as an association devoted to the public 
good, having and asking no legal power save the right to see 
with no restriction on the right to speak, excellently 
instructed in the science of pauperism, and with its trained 
county committees, thirty-one in number, that the continued 
assistance of this body, with the right to visit, is regarded by 
the most thoughtful, conservative, cool-headed, practical men 
among us as an invaluable aid to the State Board in detect- 
ing abuses and suggesting improvements for the judicious 
and wholesome management of the State charities, with jus- 
tice to the beneficiaries on the one hand and the taxpayers 
on the other. This is the view held by such accomplished 
statesmen and men of affairs as Governor Morgan, Mr. 
Belmont, Mr. Dodge and Mr. Hewitt, Mr. Peter Cooper, Mr. 
Astor and Mr. Vanderbilt, with bankers like John J. Cisco 
& Son, Morton, Bliss & Co., Brown Brothers & Co., Drexel, 
Morgan & Co., Seligman & Co.; great merchants and 
thorough managers like Royal Phelps, Samuel I). Babcock, 
Samuel B. Schieffelin, Jackson S. Schultz, Benjamin II. 
Field, Morris K. Jesup, Howard Potter, Samuel Sloan and 
E. S. Jaffray ; jurists like the venerable Charles O’Conor, 
Janies Emott, George F. Talman, Theodore W. Dwight and 
Noah Davis ; scientists like Drs. Egleston, Derby, Chandler, 
Dawson and Draper; men noted for their useful services to 
the public, pliilantrophy and art, like Frederick Law 
Oimstead, Charles L. Brace and John Taylor Johnston ; with 
names long identified with the respectability of New York, 
like those of Stuyvesant, Gallatin, Goelet, Emmett, Cutting, 
Gracie, Kingsland, Kane, Hammersley, DeForrest, Bayard, 
Sands, Talmadge, Van Sohaick, Lorillard, DeRham, Murray, 
Travers, Prime, Iselin, Edgar, LeRoy and Livingston ; and 
lastly eminent divines versed in the philosophy and manage- 
ment of large charities, like Dr. Morgan, Dr. Henry C. 
Potter, Dr. Howard Crosby, Dr. John Hall and Dr. Morgan 
Dix. 5 
While an indorsement of the pending bill by such names 
furnishes a sanction of the measures such as few legislative 
projects can boast, there are certain classes in our community 
whose opposition to any bill looking to a scrutiny of our 
State charities would excite small surprise. 
Regret it as we may, our politics are not immaculate. The 
increasing power and wealth of the Republic offer tempta- 
tions, and our political methods, with tlm engrossment of our 
people in private affairs, afford facilities which the skill of 
our politicians, intensified by the desire for wealth and power, 
have successfully devoted to the construction and perfection 
of political machinery by which power has been wrested from 
the people and transferred to the managers of the machine ; 
and popular government has been converted, as notably in 
this city, into a gigantic scheme of plunder. Hardly a place 
in the Nation has been too high for this corruption. At 
Washington it stained the lofty honor of the War Depart- 
ment, and national commissioners bore to Vienna, as their 
contribution to the culture of the age, the morals and methods 
of our political slums. Since we met have been disclosed the 
Post-office frauds that have been quietly hatched under the 
wraprascal of hypocrisy, and to-day the people of New 
York, led by their physicians in solid phalanx, and demand- 
ing clean streets to avert threatening pestilence and an 
advancing death rate, are answered from Albany that the 
cleaning of their streets is a matter of patronage and votes. 
When such an answer can be given to such assemblages as 
gathered at the Cooper Institute and at Stein way and Chick- 
ering Halls, one need scarcely wonder that the rights of 
children and paupers are not always too sacredly regarded 
in regard to the moneys and the offices connected with the 
State charities, and included in the general plunder alluded 
to in the maxim, “To the victors belong the spoils” The 
improvement in our prisons, poor-houses and asylums from 
fearless and rigid inspection, as voluntary and unofficial as 
that of Howard, has been very great ; but we are still 
reminded how easily they might relapse into schools of 
brutality and vice, “through whose instrumentality the law 
itself was the principal teacher of the science of law-breaking.” 6 
Although the statistics connected with the poor-houses and 
alms-houses, which alone the Aid Association asks the right 
to visit, as given in the interesting tables of the State Board 
for 1880, are small when compared with the total statistics, 
including Homes for the Friendless, Hospitals and Dispen- 
saries, all of which are subject to visitation by the State 
Board. The number of persons relieved in the alms-houses 
and poor houses during the last year was 137,777, including 
more than 5,000 insane persons, and besides idiots, epileptics, 
blind, deaf-mutes and children. The estimated value of their 
property was about $6,000,000, and their expenditures for the 
year $2,300,000. And probably many managers and spoils- 
politicians, excepting such as are sufficiently astute to mark 
the threatening aspect of public opinion, ate opposed to the 
addition of volunteer visitors named by a body in whose 
appointment they had no choice, and among whom they may 
have no friends. 
But why among the opponents of this bill should be 
arrayed the State Board, 1 confess I cannot understand, 
and its resolutions of January eleventh seem to render its 
opposition the more mysterious, and to recall Mr. Curtis’ 
regret that it has placed itself in a false position. The reso- 
lutions, as reported, declared: 
“That the proper execution of the duty devolved upon 
the Board is not compatible with the delegation of similar 
powers to other bodies, and more especially to private incor- 
porations, self-perpetuating and irresponsible.” 
Mr. Choate remarked of this clause that no terms could be 
more unhappily chosen to describe an association which 
devotes time and money for the public benefit, in revealing 
what is going on in charitable institutions, and which is 
dependent every hour on public opinion for its support. 
But is the proposition itself accurately stated and well 
founded ? Do not the official powers of the State Board 
extend to many other State institutions and embrace wider 
Some Statistics. 7 
functions, and is not the alleged incompatibility of the proper 
execution of those powers with the right of the Aid Associa- 
tion “to visit, inspect and examine” the poor houses and 
alms-houses a mistake ? Do the character of these people of 
the Aid Association and the record of other laborers for the 
past eight years really justify these suggestions of inter- 
ference and incompatibility ? 
The recent address of their special committee on the sever- 
ance of their relations with the State Board, bearing the 
trusty names of Louisa Lee Schuyler, Abby Howland 
Woolsey, Theodore W. Dwight, Henry C. Potter, Florence 
Bayard Lockwood, Susan M. Van Amringe, Frederick Law 
Olmstead and Howard Potter, refers to the members of the 
Association as “men and women representing the best ele- 
ments in their communities, of all religious sects and of both 
political parties, of recognized ability and purity of charac- 
ter, with the keenness of eyesight and freedom of motive 
which are most surely found in non-official organizations, 
using the local press, but always working within such well- 
devised restriction as cannot fail to make the volunteer 
system, and the publicity which is its necessary accompani- 
ment, efficient for the public good.” 
A Record Free from Offense. 
Their record seems equally free from offense to the authori- 
ties and from danger to the charities of the State, and pre- 
sents features of which the large experience of the State 
Board must enable them to appreciate the importance. Such, 
for instance, are the thorough organization of the four stand- 
ing committees on children, on hospitals, on adult able-bodied 
paupers, and on the elevation of the poor in their homes. To 
enable the members of these committees to become familiar 
with the best thought of the day on a subject of systematic 
charities, a library of more than a thousand volumes in vari- 
ous languages has been collected, thirteen practical treatises 
have been published by members of the association, some of 
whom have studied with this view charitable institutions in 
England and the Continent. 8 
The reforms which the Aid Association lias aided and 
accomplished in New York have exerted an influence in 
other States. “The Children’s Law,” the passage of which 
it largely aided, has led to the establishment of children’s 
homes. “ The Training School for Nurses attached to Belle- 
vue hospital” has furnished heads for twenty other schools 
or hospitals and has received from voluntary contributions 
$70,000. Other hospital improvements, the act concerning 
tramps, the tenement-home system in New York, the Sanitary 
Reform Society, the elevation of the poor in their homes the 
improvement of county poor-houses and infirmaries, especially 
of the pauper insane, the collection of papers, magazines and 
books for seventy-four different institutions, are among the 
results of the Aid Association which have given it so strong 
a hold on the regard and confidence of the people. 
• 
The last of these resolutions of the State Board declared 
“ that it is incumbent upon this Board to place itself upon 
record in opposition to the proposed bill enlarging the 
authority of the State Charities Aid Association, as one calcu- 
lated to imperil the efficiency of this Board, and to bring 
into discredit the valuable system of visitation organized and 
administered under it.” 
Here, again, a grave official statement of the Board would 
seem to have been drawn by one who knew nothing of the 
former relations between the two bodies, and how it could 
have been acquiesced in by the older members of the Board 
is a thing not easy to understand. Is it or is it not a fact 
that the State Board, now in its fourteenth year, had no visit- 
ing committees till they were furnished by the Aid Associa- 
tion, under the law obtained by that Association in 1873, look- 
ing to the harmonious co-operation of the two bodies, which 
lasted till it was interrupted by the new rule of the State 
Board in 1880? And now, when the Aid Association, tem- 
porarily deprived by that policy of the legal right to visit, 
asks that its visitors be authorized by the judiciary, is it quite 
fair for the State Board to oppose the bill on the ground that 
the Aid Association, which it describes as a private self-per- 
petuating irresponsible body, will bring into discredit the 9 
valuable system of visitation organized and administered 
under that State Board, when that system was in fact the 
work of the Aid Association, organized by its managers, 
legalized on its application and administered by its own 
visitors ? 
Mks. Lowell’s Opposition. 
There is one other argument against the bill which has been 
presented to the public on behalf of the State Board by your 
esteemed and accomplished associate, Mrs. Josephine Shaw 
Lowell, whose contributions to its annual report for 1880 add 
so materially to its value. Mrs. Lowell, in a note to the 
Evening Post of April seventh, referred to the statutory power 
of visitation conferred upon the State Board, which it regards 
as ample provision for the official inspection of charitable 
institutions, for which reason it opposes the bill granting to 
the Aid Association a legal right of visitation “as unnecessary, 
and therefore objectionable.” 
Then there comes this closing paragraph : 
“No one who understands the great good done by the 
State Charities Aid Association In the past, by its volunteer 
visitation of county institutions, can for a moment desire that 
its work should be interfered with. Let the official work of 
inspection continue in the hands of the State Board of Chari- 
ties as heretofore, and let the State Charities Aid Association 
maintain its character of an independent, vigilant and active 
volunteer society.” 
In the view thus presented on behalf of the State Board 
of what is desirable, I am inclined to think that the Aid 
Association would entirely agree — that is, that the official 
work of inspection of all charitable institutions “except 
such as have a board of managers appointed by the State,” 
with power to send for persons and papers, and to adminis- 
ter oaths, continue in the hands of the State Board as hereto- 
fore, and that the work of volunteer visitation of county 
institutions, by which the Aid Association has accomplished 
so great good in the past, shall not be interfered with. 10 
This is a direct and clear proposition, and leaves the only 
question to be decided one of fact, whether, for the continu- 
ance of its olden work of “ volunteer visitation of county 
institutions,” the importance of which is so frankly conceded, 
“a legal right of visitation” is or is not necessary. 
How there can be two opinions upon this point is not 
apparent, when we remember that it was the exclusion of 
the visitors of the Aid Association from the West Chester 
poor-house which formed the groundwork of their applica- 
tion to the legislature to confer the power of appointing visit- 
ors upon the State Board. The reluctance of managers of 
public charities to recognize even the legal right of visitors 
was illustrated in the incident mentioned by Mrs. Lowell, in 
her valuable paper on the Public Charities of New York 
City, in the last report of the State Board, that she was 
compelled to appeal to the legal authorities to sustain her in 
the exercise of an unquestionable right against a refusing 
superintendent. 
What chance would remain to the Aid Association of 
becoming able to continue, the visitation of county institu- 
tions by the consent of the managers after those managers 
had been advised that the Legislature, at the instance of the 
State Board, had declined to recognize the fitness of their 
being secured a right of entrance. 
In conclusion, let me ask, why should the State Board, 
which, as Mrs. Lowell’s note seems to imply, clearly under- 
stands and appreciates “the great good done by the Chari- 
ties Aid Association,” wish to deprive it of the power to 
visit when that power can be conferred in a manner which 
will subject the State Board to no responsibility, nor lessen 
in any way its official powers i 
Regard for tiik State Board. 
The State Board of Charities is an institution deservedly 
held in very high esteem. In the successful prosecution of 
its important duties the people of the State are profoundly 11 
interested, and the position which it has assumed in this 
matter toward the Aid Association has naturally carried the 
high weight of official authority. But if the Board, from any 
misconception of the facts or error in judgment, shall have 
been placed in a false position, it will have to encounter the 
criticisms of those intelligent and influential classes in the 
community which stand firmly by the Aid Association and 
insist that official supervision of the State charities shall not 
exclude the public gaze through visitors appointed by the 
judiciary. 
Let us hope that the friends of these two institutions, which 
are engaged in a common cause, and which for eight years 
acted in harmony and with such magnificent results, will 
assist to compose this regrettable difference by the passage 
of a bill affording all proper facilities for the double work, 
with no diminution of the dignity and power of the one nor 
of the independence and rights of the other. 
I have the honor to be Madam, with great respect, 
Faithfully yours, 
JOHN JAY. 
No. 5 Washington Place, New York, May 6, 1881.