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As Commissioner of Public Charities, the writer was an ex officio member of the Board of Trustees of Bellevue and Allied Hospitals during the first two years of its existence, but his part in the work of that board was so inconsiderable, owing to the pressure of his duties as Commissioner, that he may speak of the work of the board without violating the dictates of propriety.

In a word, the new board of trustees has laid deep and secure the foundations of a new and regenerate Bellevue Hospital, not only in its physical aspects, but in its management and in its spirit. There is every reason to believe that this board will succeed in placing the hospitals under its jurisdiction on a par with the best hospitals of the country, and that its work will soon receive that same confidence and commendation on the part of the public, and be as much a matter of municipal pride, as is the case with the Boston City Hospital and the Boston Public Library. To do this the board must maintain with each successive administration such relations as will enable it to secure liberal appropriations, both for maintenance and for permanent improvements. It must be able to withstand the insidious efforts which will doubtless appear in all sorts of unlooked-for places and will be felt through many unsuspected channels, once more to reinstate favoritism and make the hospital an adjunct to a political organization.

It is to be hoped that the Bellevue board will not be called upon to pass through all the experiences which have befallen the trustees of the pauper institutions of the city of Boston. In the writer's opinion, no one who has even a moderate acquaintance with their work can deny that great improvements have been effected by this board and that the institutions under its jurisdiction have been vastly improved and have been much more humanely managed and are far more creditable to the city of Boston than was the case under the former system. Yet we have recently seen this board subjected to a series of plausible charges, brought by one of its own members, with the assistance of certain disaffected employees of the board. These charges were, after investigation, placed by the board itself before the mayor, with the request that he order an investigation. The investigation was undertaken by a committee of the Common Council of the city of Boston, which, after a long inquiry, brought in a majority report (the committee dividing on strict party lines), which was characterized editorially by the Boston Herald of December 4, 1903, as "deserving no more confidence than the verdict of a bribed jury." The same authority states that the investigation was undertaken for the purpose of securing the abolition of the board of trustees and the re-establishment of a single paid commissioner.

A partisan majority of the committee finds certain of the charges against the board sustained, and, without suggesting in what way a change in administration would remedy the conditions which they think they find to exist, recommends that the legislature abolish the board of trustees and provide for the appointment of one salaried commissioner. It does not seem likely that this recommendation will meet with much favor at the hands of the legislature of the State of Massachusetts, especially as the minority of the committee finds every charge against the trustees unfounded. The incident is significant, however, in showing the persistency of the influences which would subordinate public charities to political considerations.

It is not for the writer to speak of the administration of the Department of Public Charities during the past two years under a salaried commissioner who had had previous and extended experience in dealing with charitable questions and who was already familiar with its institutions, nor to attempt to compare the rate of change for better or for worse in the Charities Department during the past two years with any preceding period, nor to attempt to guess as to the extent to which whatever charges were made during the past two years will be continued under a different administration. All this will enter into the history of this question, which, as stated above, is making rapidly, and on the basis of which something more nearly approaching a consensus of opinion should be reached within the next decade as to the best form of administration for municipal charities. Greater than all the problems of the department and underlying all of them is the greater problem of securing efficient, disinterested administration.

Homer Folks,

Secretary New York State Charities Aid Association; Commissioner of Public Charities of New York City, 1902-1904.