748 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
officials, too drastic. They cried out: "You will overflow the asylums for the poor!" The students of scientific charity knew that the reduction of outdoor relief had never crowded poor asylums; that since the first crucial experiment, by the heroic Dr. Chalmers in Glasgow, many experiments of the kind have been tried; in this country the notable ones being those of Brooklyn, Indianapolis, "New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Chicago; that the results of such experiments had always been a reduction of pauperism and little else, when outdoor relief had been cut off or reduced.
At the Indiana State Conference of Chanties in 1899, a few months after the law had gone into effect, but before its results could be measured, the most doleful forebodings were heard. To double or treble the population of all the poor asylums of the state was among the mildest evils to be expected. The author of the law, and the statesmen who enacted it, were called visionaries, fanatics, impracticables, hard-hearted, and cruel. They bided their time; they told their critics to wait and see. They were serene in the fact that, although all the laws of social science are not yet known, yet some of them are, and those are as certain as any other of the laws of nature.
In December, 1900, the state conference met again. Among the papers presented was a report upon the workings of the new poor-relief law of 1899. The story was simple, brief, and convincing. A comparison was made of the total expenditures for the state for outdoor relief and medical charity of the years 1895 and 1900. The comparison was as follows:
For 1895 - $630,000
For 1900 ... 210,000
Saving - - $420,000 per annum
or exactly two-thirds of the total for 1895. At the same time the number of inmates in county poor asylums had diminished from 14.8 in each 10,000 to 12.3 in each 10,000 of the total popu- tion of the state.
The money test is perhaps not the best test of a social reform, yet it is a true one as far as it goes. But who shall say what
