In regard to the matter of practical economy and saving to the state, from placing its hospitals, and other like institutions, under the care of the religious orders, we are permitted to give the following extract from a letter from a Catholic lady of Cincinnati:
"The only public institution we as yet have which is supported from the public purse is the prison, managed by the Good Shepherds. In his annual report, the mayor always praises their economy and excellent management, but he has never had the magnanimity to publish the thousands annually saved, in comparison with the old _régime_. Their salaries are fixed at $100 a year for six sisters--$600, which is $100 less than the pay of a single policeman. The sisters have the entire management of the prison. The Harris School is in full operation. The house can receive no more than about fifty-five. Colonel Harris, the founder, a Protestant, always expresses his surprise at _the little outlay_. Our own experience shows an immense economy, as well as superior moral influence in the effects of our charities, so beneficial in softening the hearts of the poor."
We may here take occasion to remark that a religious order affords guarantees of honest administration in a higher degree than any individual can do by his personal responsibility. The legal security, or values pledged, may be equal; but in one case there is at stake only a business responsibility, in which it is often regarded as smart to outwit a committee of inspection; while, on the other hand, corporate honor is involved, and the officer entrusted with funds is doubly responsible to the committee of inspection, and to the order of which he or she is a member, under the more extended affiliation of the church.
Moreover, the discipline of the religious orders is very rigorous on the chapter of economies, and there are not by any means the same opportunities or temptations for an officer to divert funds from public to private uses. The inspectors themselves will often be Protestants.
It behoves us to examine the use of hospitals in the general system of humanitary functions. The hospital is a corollary of the city. The city is a gland or glandular system of elaboration for the social and intellectual secretions of humanity--arts, sciences, and refinements. But the advantages of the city are obtained only by great sacrifices; among which is the separation of great numbers of persons from their local and family attachments, obliging them to derive their subsistence from industries more precarious than those of rural life. More wisdom being required to direct one's course in the complex relations of the city, more are bewildered, misled, overwhelmed; vast and powerful currents of crime and of waste are generated, and restorative measures are needed to counteract them. { 48} Now, the necessity of cities and that of hospitals being admitted, how, let us ask, can this kind of help be rendered, this sort of duty performed, so as most worthily to attest the principle of human solidarity, so as to benefit most the recipients of charity, to honor most the organs by which charity is rendered, and so secure the best kind of service in this arduous function; finally, how best to economize the resources of collective society in the adaptation of means to ends?